In this affiliate marketing lead generation guide, you’re going to learn 7 solid lead generation strategies for attracting, converting leads for your affiliate business.
As we dive into these strategies for finding your ideal customers and then of course converting them into leads in your affiliate marketing funnel, we need to talk about 2 keys to success.
Table of Contents
Lead Generation Target Audience
When it comes to lead gen, the goal is not to cast a very wide net. The goal is to be very focused on the specific type of customer or prospect that you are looking for.
And that’s actually going to increase your conversions and as a result; affiliate sales.
You really don’t have to worry about trying to connect with anyone who might be a good fit.
You want to try and connect with that one person who will be a good fit for your product or service for the product you’re promoting as an affiliate.
And as we go through the first 3 affiliate lead gen strategies, you’re going to want 1 traffic source to focus on.
Prospect Pool
The next thing you need to understand is the prospect pools and this is where your ideal customer’s attention currently is.
And you’re going to decide on what your strategy is going to be to grab their attention and of course, bring them into your funnel and lead generation process.
1. Paid Advertising
And the first one is going to be paid advertising. Now there are a lot of paid advertising platforms for affiliate marketing out there but the best ones to focus on would be Google ads, YouTube, and Facebook ads.
So one of these 3 would be the best place to start. If you’re looking for paid advertising.
Now, let’s go ahead and talk about the budget before we get into anything else because a huge objection is that this is going to cost a bunch of money and to a certain extent, yes, it can cost quite a bit of money.
So if you’re looking at starting with Google ads to have at least $1,500 a month to spend before you start seeing a solid return on your investment.
And that will take about 3 months to achieve with YouTube in-stream ads. You’re going to be able to drive traffic off of YouTube.You only need $500 a month, which means around $1500 to $2,000 you’ll start to see a positive return on your ad spend.
And then Facebook ads; it’s also going to take a couple of months and you should have at least $2,000 a month for your Facebook ads.
Now I am a huge fan of YouTube and Google ads. and so when it comes to Google ads, I highly recommend starting with search ads because you’re going to be able to target people who are looking for your specific product and service right now.
And there are virtually no other platforms out there that allow you to be targeted this easily.
Yes, there are other platforms that allow you to do the same things, but when you’re comparing Google search ads to YouTube ads, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest, you’re going to find that your budget’s going to go a lot farther with Google search ads, simply because you can target people exactly when they are looking to buy.
2. Content Marketing
Now, the second lead generation strategy for finding a prospect pool, identifying where your ideal customers are, and grabbing their attention would be content.
Now I’m not saying that you need to make 500 articles or go start creating YouTube videos every other day.
The good news is you only need a couple of strategic content posts that can help with your lead gen.
The power of content marketing is it can help engage with your prospects and educate potential customers and this actually builds you up as an authority.
So with your content, unlike paid media, you’re going to actually start to build an audience. And so you’re going to be seen as an authority with that audience as you build up that affinity.
Now, of course, the downside is with paid traffic you’re going to start seeing results probably in 2-3 days.
Whereas with content marketing, you’re going to see results sometimes in months, especially when you want to start an affiliate website.
So it takes a lot longer and you’re still going to have some out-of-pocket costs because the content does take a little bit to produce, but it is a lot cheaper.
And so the trade-off is you’re not investing as much upfront, but you’re just waiting a much longer period of time in order for it to start working.
When it comes to content that generates leads you can choose your platform between:
- YouTube
- SEO
- Social media
And other free affiliate marketing traffic sources. but these are the 3 that I recommend and the one tip is to integrate calls to action throughout your content so your content actually generates leads as opposed to grabbing a bunch of attention and then not actually contributing to your bottom line.
3. Affiliate Marketing Networking
When I say networking, I don’t necessarily mean trying to go to conferences or trade shows, or local meet-ups.
What we’re going to focus on here are online groups specifically affiliate Facebook groups and LinkedIn groups.
You can also follow a strategy where you just answer a bunch of Quora questions, and then you link up your website or your landing page.
Although I’m going to focus on groups because that’s going to get you results a whole lot faster.
So what you want to do is identify groups that are full of prospects, not groups that are full of people in the similar business you are.
So let’s say, for example, we had some sort of really cool digital marketing software for agencies. And so we would want to go and find Facebook and LinkedIn groups that are full of people who are either agency owners or are key decision-makers who work at agencies.
And when we join those groups, we want to figure out how to be valuable and helpful.
And here’s the key: You never promote yourself and the affiliate marketing product you promote in that group at all.
Anytime you share a link or you talk about a resource, it should be a completely separate independent company that you or a website that you don’t have any stake in.
I know that seems a little counterintuitive but after a few weeks or months of you just engaging with people and networking in there, you’ll naturally have people reach out to you via private message or DM, and you’ll be able to start the sales conversation and direct them into your affiliate funnel and start generating leads that way.
So it is a lot more manual than the first but it still works as long as you don’t come across as super promotional.
Read more about how to network the right way in this guide on Linkedin affiliate marketing.
4. Affiliate Lead Magnet
Once you’ve identified where your ideal customers are, you’re starting to generate some attention and hopefully traffic, what the heck do you do with that attention and traffic?
Well, you want to collect that contact information so you can turn those prospects and audience members into leads and the best way to do this is with a lead magnet.
Now, there are a ton of different lead magnet ideas. Simply a lead magnet is something you’re offering a value in exchange for contact information. So this can be in the form of:
- Video
- Google sheet, or
- Excel tool
I’ve put together an article all about affiliate marketing lead magnets that goes through different lead magnet ideas and how to create one specifically for affiliates.
5. Specific Training
The next one is going to be the hardest one and this is creating training. So when it comes to creating a special or specific training, you want to keep this under 25 minutes.
You’ve probably seen really long 2 hours webinars, and you’ve seen hour-long video sales letters.
That’s not what this is.
What you want to do with this special training is pick out something in your own experience that you’ve gained really valuable insights into.
So something that you’ve been able to achieve on your own, that they’re not going to find in a random podcast or blog post, and you want to create a 15 to 20-minute training that helps them solve a very specific problem or helps them achieve a result.
Essentially, you want to have “aha moments” in your prospect’s minds when they watch this video.
And so the first few minutes, you can do an introduction. Talk a little bit about yourself and then of course talk about how valuable this training is going to be.
Absolute pure value. And then absolute max where you pitch your affiliate product or service at the end.
6. Cold Outreach
The next lead generation strategy for affiliates on our list will be direct outreach. Now I know this isn’t a popular one, but it’s one that works incredibly well and it still works really well.
It just takes a lot more manual work and I think that’s why most affiliates don’t really want to do this.
And that is using cold email or cold social media outreach.
Now I am much more of a big fan of cold email and thanks to tools like SmartWriter, you can actually write super-specific outreach messages whether emails or Linkedin messages.
7. Pop Ups & Inline Forms
When it comes to collecting someone’s email address on your affiliate landing page or on your website, you have two different ways to do it.
One of them is an inline form, also known as a one-step opt-in or a traditional opt-in.
This example is an inline or one-step opt-in because all someone needs to do is enter their email address and then they’re pretty much ready to go.
A popup or a two-step opt-in on the other hand looks like this:
This strategy requires the visitor to click a button first before being presented with the opportunity to enter their email address.
Essentially it adds another step to the process, which on the surface sounds like a bad idea because why would you want to make things more complicated and involve more steps?
I’ll cover which one works better in just a minute.
But what’s important here, at least in your overall understanding of lead generation there are also other terms called a double opt-in and a single opt-in which take place after somebody has entered their email address.
A double opt-in is what you traditionally see when you sign up for something and then you have to click a confirmation link in your email address to confirm that this is you that actually requested it before you’re going to receive anything or be subscribed.
A single opt-in on the other hand means that as soon as someone enters their email address, they’re automatically subscribed without having to do anything else.
You could technically have a two-step opt-in that leads to a single opt-in or a one-step opt-in that leads to a double opt-in.
But back on the topic of inline versus popup form, which one’s best for you? Well, personally, I tend to see better results from the popup form, and the top-performing pop-ups averaged a 9.28% conversion rate which is great.
But according to statistics and studies and research were done on the subject, the answer is kind of split.
For real, there’s almost nothing in the world of marketing where things are as close as using an inline versus a popup form in regards to overall conversions. And this means 2 things.
First of all, you really can’t go wrong by choosing either one to start.
And second of all, you’re probably going to want to test the alternative at some point in the future to see what works best for you and for your audience.
I explain this strategy in detail in my email affiliate marketing guide, where you can see how to generate leads and build your email list.
Affiliate Marketing Lead Generation Final Words
I hope you got some value out of this affiliate lead generation guide, and most importantly, you have some ideas on where to find your prospects and ideal customers and of course, how to convert them.
