Affiliate marketing and native advertising are two marketing strategies that have gained a lot of popularity in the recent times. They are both very effective in generating sales and are important marketing tools. In this article, we are going to look at how to combine these two strategies to generate income as an affiliate. But before that, let’s look at the definitions first, in case you haven’t familiarized yourself with them…
affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing, also known as performance marketing, is an agreement between a merchant and an affiliate, where the affiliate receives a commission on every sale they make. Therefore the affiliate’s role is to drive traffic to the merchant’s offer and generate sales.
Affiliate offers or products are available in almost any place like health, finance, online dating, beauty, etc. They are usually listed in affiliate networks like Avin, Rakuten, ShareAccel among many others.
To generate traffic and drive sales, affiliates use a variety of methods and techniques. Some of them drive traffic organically through SEO techniques, while others rely on paid advertising.
native advertising
Native advertising is an online advertising format that blends so well with the content of the publisher (website) that the visitor may not even recognize it as an advertisement. It is a more discreet and subtle ad format than traditional formats like display ads or banner ads.
Here’s an example of a native ad on lemonday.fr.
Unlike display ads, native ads don’t actually look like ads. They appear to be part of the editorial flow of the page, which is ideal because they don’t disrupt the user experience. Therefore, because of their “non-disruptive” nature, native ads provide a better overall experience and allow advertisers to achieve better exposure than other ad formats.
Native ads are also a remedy for ad blindness, which occurs when people develop a type of natural adblocker and consciously or unconsciously start ignoring ads.
Lastly, native advertising is also suitable for many niches and that is why it has become the preferred tool of affiliates.
In fact, the native advertising industry has been reported to be valued at over $400 billion, proving that this ad format is effective and most profitable.
Here are some steps you can take to set up a local advertising campaign and promote your affiliate product or service.
step 1:
The first step in a successful native advertising campaign is choosing the right offer for that strategy. It is advisable to choose a space that resonates with most people and avoid niches that are too small or too conspicuous.
Here are some that work well with native ads.
- health and Beauty
- e-commerce
- Health
- sayings of love on the internet
- business
- Gambling
- Gambling
- finance
- Insurance
- Make money on the internet
The above domains work great with native ads because they get a lot of interest from the audience, which increases your chances of getting conversions.
Second Step:
The second step is to choose the source of your traffic. There are many ad networks that offer native ads, but some are better than others.
Here are the premium networks:
- Taboola
- outbrain
- RevContent
- yahoo gemini
It is important to note that these traffic sources have different rules and guidelines and you should always consult them before starting a campaign.
You must ensure that your offer, landing page and promotional techniques are within their guidelines.
A good approach is to use an ad spying tool like Anstrex or Adplexity which will allow you to see what your competition is promoting with these traffic sources and how they are doing it.
An espionage tool will give you access to all elements of your competitors’ campaigns and will help you devise strategies suited to each source of traffic.
Another important thing to note is that some local traffic sources may have very low quality traffic. Most of their traffic comes from bots and if you don’t have media buying and tracking experience then you will waste your entire budget.
Hence novices are advised to stick to the sources of traffic premium,
step 3:
Once you have decided on your traffic source, the next step is to build your basic advertising campaign.
Here are the items you need to create a campaign:
a landing page
A landing page is the page for the product or service you are promoting. You don’t have a lot of control over this element of your campaign as it is provided by the merchant.
a pre sales page
The pre-sale page, on the other hand, is the page you create to “heat up” the traffic before sending it to the offer. This is where you present your proposal to your prospect in a creative and engaging way.
This page is probably the most important part of your campaign. This is where you convince your prospect to buy the thing you are promoting.
The most commonly used presale page with native advertising is the infomercial. Here’s an example:
Because the infomercial looks like an editorial page, it attracts and engages consumers more easily than an advertisement that openly sells products or services.
People come to the internet because they are looking for good content and don’t want to be bombarded with advertisements. Advertising is a great way to promote your products while providing value to these consumers. For example, value may be provided in the form of educational or recreational material.
You can create your own infomercial using a page builder like Clickfunnels or Unbounce.
In most cases, and almost all niches, you need an infomercial to make affiliate sales. Some offers can be changed without a pre-sale page, but in general you need them.
However, if you already have a blog, you can send visitors to one of your articles. Not only will this allow you to generate affiliate sales, but it will also drive traffic to your blog and grow your mailing list.
Here is an example of a personal finance blog using native ads to generate affiliate income.
In the example above, The Penny Hoarder provides financial advice to readers while promoting six affiliate offers. By using native ads to drive traffic to this article, the business not only generates affiliate revenue, but also broadens its audience and builds brand awareness.
a thumbnail and a title
Lastly, you’ll also need a thumbnail and a title. These are the first elements of your advertising that your customers will see, and so they are all equally important.
Here’s an example of a thumbnail and catchy headline that The Penny Hoarder used to promote an article we saw earlier.
As you can see, The Penny Hoarder uses very flashy images and headlines to attract people to click through. This helps increase CTR (click-through rate), which is especially important if you’re using a CPM (cost per mile) model that charges you per impression instead of per click.
The original ad campaign we just saw lasted over 6 months, which shows that once a campaign is designed well it can generate affiliate income for months or even years.
step 4
Once you’ve gathered everything together and started your basic campaign, you’ll need to keep track of it.
Campaign tracking, also known as affiliate tracking, is an important aspect to the success of your campaign. If you don’t do your tracking, either you will not make any profit or you will leave a lot of money on the table.
When you run a campaign on a native ad network, your ad will appear on hundreds or even thousands of websites. However, not all these sites will bring good results. So you should find out the low performing sites and places and blacklist them. This way you will be able to reduce your advertising spend and increase your income.
Depending on the objectives of your campaign, you can either use tracking tools provided by ad networks, or use third-party tracking tools like Volume and Bemob.
Tips for Successful Affiliate Marketing with Local Advertising
Here are some tips to help you get the best results and earn affiliate income with native advertising.
- Use strong headlines. This is more important than you think. According to Copyblogger, 80% of your visitors will read your headline, but only 20% will go to the end of the article. So be sure to use interesting titles.
- Use direct-response writing in your infomercial or blog post. This type of writing focuses on readers’ feelings to prompt them to take action, such as making a purchase. You can either learn to write direct response text or hire a copywriter on a freelance platform.
- Don’t forget about retargeting! Retargeting or retargeting is the practice of targeting people who have visited your website before. These people are already engaged with your content and therefore are more likely to buy what you are offering them if you use the right methods. Retargeting can also help you reduce advertising spend.
- Don’t guess, just test. You never know which title or image will do well. So always try at least 5 images, 5 headlines and 2 different angles for your infomercial or blog post. This will allow you to find the winning combination.
- Start with a low budget until you find your winning combination and the best placements on the ad networks you use, then take it to the next level.
Native advertising is one of the best tools that affiliates can use to promote deals and earn commission. When done properly, native advertising campaigns can last a very long time and generate significant income. Some use native advertising to generate up to single affiliates six points per day And some popular blogs are using this ad format not only to generate sales but also to increase their brand and audience.