Category: affiliate marketing

Turn Affiliates into Micro-Influencers with Ninja Outreach

Why “micro-influencers”? 

“Our research shows that real life influencers who are passionate about what they are recommending have significantly more buying conversations, and consumers are more likely to act on their recommendations,” – Marketing Dive

They aren’t celebrities, and they may not have millions of followers, but they’re considered authentic and knowledgeable individuals who are trusted sources of reviews.

According to the Marketing Dive, 82% of survey respondents said they were highly likely to follow a micro-influencers’ recommendation.

What’s Ninja Outreach?

Ninja Outreach is my new favorite hack. It’s a great lead gen and discovery tool. You can search any keyword to find blogs and influencers. Then, once you’re down prospecting, you can easily download all your leads  with all their info like name, site, domain authority and contact info as a csv.

Sign up for Ninja Outreach now and get a 14-day free trial here

Earlier, I did a post on “No Cost Affiliate Marketing“. This is an extension on that idea. You can use Ninja Outreach to find micro-influencers who might be willing to write a review and promote your product or service. Then, you can use their app to start an email campaign to recruit them to help market your product.

They have a great tutorial here.

No Cost Affiliate Marketing Hacks

No Cost Affiliate Marketing Hacks

The market for affiliate marketing is set to increase from $4.2b to $6.8b by 2020 with 80% of advertisers looking to add or grow their affiliate marketing channels. Making now a great time to test what kind of traction you can get with affiliate marketing. Not only can you add this to your Content strategy

 “Presenting content that drives real value in a trustworthy way can be a significant challenge for brands and content creators, but this challenge can be solved with a smart affiliate marketing strategy.” – Market Dive

Smart affiliate marketing not only adds to your content marketing strategy but can add  authenticity and trustworthiness to your marketing campaigns. A lot of high performing affiliates have huge followings and are no longer perceived as being “the drudges of the web”. Payouts are also almost always performance base making both sides highly incentivized.

Why Affiliate Marketing?

  • sites w/ huge, loyal followers
  • millions of views per day
  • performance-based
    • only payout on a sale
    • both sides are incentivized
  • easy to test
  • increase sales + increase brand exposure (two birds, 1 stone)

The benefits of my my 3-Step Launch Plan:

  • no/low cost
  • no fancy tracking
  • no network
  • no industry contacts needed

There are ways to launch an affiliate campaign without signing any IOs. Most daily deal sites have ways to post deals to the community, or submit a deal to deal editors without ever having to go through a network or scour LinkedIn for a connection. You also don’t need tracking. If you don’t have tons of channels up and running, you can just rely on referral traffic. It’s not the best way to track but it’ll give you an idea on whether or not you should move forward and dedicate the time and energy to implement tracking or onboard a network like CJ or Impact Radius.

Here we go:

  1. Craft your deal 
    1. Think really hard about how you  position the deal. What you write will probably be copy and pasted when your deal is posted
    2. Write out your ideal title, keywords, and description as you would want customers to see it
    3. Include high res images – I wouldn’t recommend a logo, especially if you aren’t Nike. Logos generally never convey the value of a deal. Find a lifestyle product image, it’ll work better
    4. If you can find links or screenshots to competitors on the site you’re pitching, even better. Then, clearly and concisely communicate to the DEs why your deal is better.
  2. Pitch your offer
    1. Communicate the value and what distinguishes this from other competitors
    2. Be personable and describe why your deal is a good deal for the sites customers
    3. Remember that these deal editors are reading a ton of other submissions everyday so be short and effective
  3. Post deals
    1. Find deal forums
      1. I’ve put together a good list here – What are the Biggest Daily Deal and Coupon Sites?
    2. Use Submit contact forms
      1. Usually found in the Footer of most sites
    3. Try emailing tips@XXXX.com
      1. Examples:
        1. http://www.dealcatcher.com/share_a_coupon
        2. http://www.techbargains.com/contact-us
        3. http://dealnews.com/contact/
        4. ben@bensbargains.com
  4. Follow up
    1. If it’s been a day and it hasn’t been posted. Follow up and ask if there’s any questions that you might answer because you’re sure that your course would benefit their readers
  5. Check the comments section
    1. If there’s a comments section, check if anyone has questions
    2. Commenting directly will help get people who are on the fence right over if they think they can ask you questions and get answers fast
  6. Submit to as many sites as possible
  7. Review performance
    1. You should be able to optimize copy and images, as well as prioritize more time on sites that give you the most leads or sales going forward

Want to try another channel? Apply Udemy’s Growth Hacks to increase sales on any Marketplace