Conclusion and Next Steps
Affiliate Marketing A-Z
1. Affiliate Marketing A-Z
Estimated time: 10:55 minutes
(Completed)2. Affiliate Marketing 101
Estimated time: 14:53 minutes
(Completed) (Completed) (Completed) (Completed)3. Get Started in Affiliate Marketing
Estimated time: 11:23 minutes
(Completed)4. Choosing Products and Services to Promote
Estimated time: 13:16 minutes
(Completed) (Completed)5. Build Your Web Presence and Create Valuable Content
Estimated time: 14:37 minutes
(Completed) (Completed) (Completed)6. Conclusion and Next Steps
Estimated time: 08:55 minutes
Module 5 – Conclusion and Next Steps
In this final module, you'll learn some tips to continue seeing the best results from affiliate marketing. You'll also have the opportunity to review the course and plan future action.
Analyze Your Performance
A critical part of the marketing process is analysis, and affiliate marketing is no exception. Monitoring and analyzing your performance to date gives you a clear view of what works and what doesn't, allowing you to adapt and adjust. When you first start out with affiliate marketing, there is some trial and error and 'best guesses' at play. You probably didn't have extensive psychographic information about your target audience, and you may have only had a vague understanding about what drives them to purchase.
However, as you start testing out platforms, content, and links, a clearer picture of your audience will start to emerge. Once you have that information, you can come up with an improved marketing strategy, switching your focus to what does work and testing out new, more creative ways to share your links and boost your affiliate earnings.
Your Platforms
When creating a web presence, you focused on putting your content in places that would appeal to your target audience: Facebook, YouTube, product reviews on your blog, etc. After 4-6 weeks of testing the waters and collecting data, analyze what has worked so far and what hasn't:
⦁ Where are most of your conversions coming from? YouTube, Facebook, blog posts, email newsletters?
⦁ List all of your platforms and rank performance from best to worst.
⦁
Within all of these platforms, use any analytics tools they provide to get more data on the audience that is visiting there (e.g., Facebook Audience Insights, Instagram Insights, and Google Analytics).
Your Content
Continue to dig deeper and analyze the content on these various platforms:
⦁ What kind of content is performing the best? Reviews? Image optimized social media posts? Product demonstrations on
YouTube?
⦁ Get a sense of what genre of content your audience likes to consume. What tone they prefer – Lighthearted? Serious? Inspirational? Aspirational?
Your Links
Links are the centerpiece of your affiliate marketing strategy. This is why you have established a web presence and created content: to get your audience to click on your links and convert.
How are your links performing? Are people liking posts or videos that feature affiliate links but not clicking? Or are they clicking, but not converting?
Analyzing these three elements in isolation isn't enough. You have to put all the information together to get an understanding of how you can increase conversions. Focus on what the issue may be and what isn't resonating with your audience: the content, the products you are featuring, the specific product in a specific link, etc.
For example, if people like your posts but aren't clicking the link, is the affiliate link a bad fit with the content or does it feature a product or offer your audience simply isn't interested in? Or, if you are getting a lot of people to your site but they aren't clicking, maybe you need to adjust your traffic building strategies and keywords because they aren't attracting the right customers. Run each link through this analysis to get a better understanding of which products, promotions, and content perform best.
Evaluating your performance and adjusting your content and affiliate links is an ongoing process. Some things will work, some won't, and it will start to become apparent what is performing well based on the commissions you receive. That is one of the most exciting things about affiliate marketing – you get real time feedback about what is working and what isn't.
The steps outlined in this course are the foundation for your affiliate marketing efforts. You can refer back to the material when you are ready to expand your audience or product offering (or both) and work your way through the modules again.
What You Learned
This is a course you can refer back to time and time again. It's important to reflect on what you've learned, so answer these questions and complete the action plan table in your Action Guide.
⦁ What have you learned about affiliate marketing?
⦁ What difficulties have you encountered?
⦁ How do you plan to address these?
⦁ What further steps can you take to become totally comfortable with the process?
Action Steps:
⦁ Write down all of the platforms you use to share affiliate links (e.g., Facebook, YouTube, blog etc.) and using data from your affiliate network, merchant partners, and/or your own tracking system, rank how each platform performed from best to worst. Were the results what you expected? Write down what you found out in your Action Guide.
⦁ Using data gathered from affiliate network, merchant partners, and/or your own tracking system, write down the type of content that is performing the best. Reviews? Image-optimized social media posts? YouTube demonstrations? Write down five things you have learned from analyzing the data you received about your content.
⦁ Analyze the content that converted and write down the overall tone of the successful content. Is it lighthearted? Inspirational? Serious? Aspirational?
⦁ Answer the questions in the Action Guide on what you've learned from this course.
⦁ Review the course thoroughly and use the action plan in the Action Guide to record your goals and what needs to happen next.
In this final module, you'll learn some tips to continue seeing the best results from affiliate marketing. You'll also have the opportunity to review the course and plan future action.
Analyze Your Performance
A critical part of the marketing process is analysis, and affiliate marketing is no exception. Monitoring and analyzing your performance to date gives you a clear view of what works and what doesn't, allowing you to adapt and adjust. When you first start out with affiliate marketing, there is some trial and error and 'best guesses' at play. You probably didn't have extensive psychographic information about your target audience, and you may have only had a vague understanding about what drives them to purchase.
However, as you start testing out platforms, content, and links, a clearer picture of your audience will start to emerge. Once you have that information, you can come up with an improved marketing strategy, switching your focus to what does work and testing out new, more creative ways to share your links and boost your affiliate earnings.
Your Platforms
When creating a web presence, you focused on putting your content in places that would appeal to your target audience: Facebook, YouTube, product reviews on your blog, etc. After 4-6 weeks of testing the waters and collecting data, analyze what has worked so far and what hasn't:
⦁ Where are most of your conversions coming from? YouTube, Facebook, blog posts, email newsletters?
⦁ List all of your platforms and rank performance from best to worst.
⦁
Within all of these platforms, use any analytics tools they provide to get more data on the audience that is visiting there (e.g., Facebook Audience Insights, Instagram Insights, and Google Analytics).
Your Content
Continue to dig deeper and analyze the content on these various platforms:
⦁ What kind of content is performing the best? Reviews? Image optimized social media posts? Product demonstrations on
YouTube?
⦁ Get a sense of what genre of content your audience likes to consume. What tone they prefer – Lighthearted? Serious? Inspirational? Aspirational?
Your Links
Links are the centerpiece of your affiliate marketing strategy. This is why you have established a web presence and created content: to get your audience to click on your links and convert.
How are your links performing? Are people liking posts or videos that feature affiliate links but not clicking? Or are they clicking, but not converting?
Analyzing these three elements in isolation isn't enough. You have to put all the information together to get an understanding of how you can increase conversions. Focus on what the issue may be and what isn't resonating with your audience: the content, the products you are featuring, the specific product in a specific link, etc.
For example, if people like your posts but aren't clicking the link, is the affiliate link a bad fit with the content or does it feature a product or offer your audience simply isn't interested in? Or, if you are getting a lot of people to your site but they aren't clicking, maybe you need to adjust your traffic building strategies and keywords because they aren't attracting the right customers. Run each link through this analysis to get a better understanding of which products, promotions, and content perform best.
Evaluating your performance and adjusting your content and affiliate links is an ongoing process. Some things will work, some won't, and it will start to become apparent what is performing well based on the commissions you receive. That is one of the most exciting things about affiliate marketing – you get real time feedback about what is working and what isn't.
The steps outlined in this course are the foundation for your affiliate marketing efforts. You can refer back to the material when you are ready to expand your audience or product offering (or both) and work your way through the modules again.
What You Learned
This is a course you can refer back to time and time again. It's important to reflect on what you've learned, so answer these questions and complete the action plan table in your Action Guide.
⦁ What have you learned about affiliate marketing?
⦁ What difficulties have you encountered?
⦁ How do you plan to address these?
⦁ What further steps can you take to become totally comfortable with the process?
Action Steps:
⦁ Write down all of the platforms you use to share affiliate links (e.g., Facebook, YouTube, blog etc.) and using data from your affiliate network, merchant partners, and/or your own tracking system, rank how each platform performed from best to worst. Were the results what you expected? Write down what you found out in your Action Guide.
⦁ Using data gathered from affiliate network, merchant partners, and/or your own tracking system, write down the type of content that is performing the best. Reviews? Image-optimized social media posts? YouTube demonstrations? Write down five things you have learned from analyzing the data you received about your content.
⦁ Analyze the content that converted and write down the overall tone of the successful content. Is it lighthearted? Inspirational? Serious? Aspirational?
⦁ Answer the questions in the Action Guide on what you've learned from this course.
⦁ Review the course thoroughly and use the action plan in the Action Guide to record your goals and what needs to happen next.
