The Lifestyle

This value proposition should tie into a lifestyle that you’re promoting and this is what’s
going to tie together your brand with the products you choose to sell. So if you’re on
Instagram, you need to promote this lifestyle and to inspire your followers. This is what
will turn them into real fans and what will get them excited for the products you’re
offering.

If you have a fitness product then, your Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter should be filled
with pictures of people working out on the beach, lifting heavy weights and looking sexy
and healthy in their training gear. For that wedding product, you might upload images
of beautiful weddings in exotic locations and with stunning decorations. Perhaps you
could also share tips, advice and inspiring stories. This gives people a reason to follow
you and warms them up to the idea of the product you’ll be selling to them
intermittently.

The Five Touches

This brings us nicely on to the idea of the sales funnel. You can consider a post on social
media to be ‘one touch’ – or one interaction with your audience. This is important to
recognize, because the general wisdom is that any sale takes approximately five touches.
Throughout these five touches, you’re able to then build excitement and anticipation for
your product, you’re able to build trust and authority for your own brand and you’ll able
to demonstrate the value of what you’ll be offering.

Your sales funnel means a sequence you’ve designed to attract and reel in leads. It might
start with a social media post, follow up with a blog post and mailing list, follow that up
with a newsletter and a free ‘seminar’ and ultimately lead to your landing page and
product. (The mailing list is key here as it gives you the means to make the multiple
touches.)

This is another reason it pays to slowly build up your own audience and platform rather
than relying permanently on PPC.

Building Content, a Mailing List and a Social Media Presence

So how do you go about building this audience?

There are two main routes: one is through your own website, which you will fill regularly
with content to be found through social media and Google and the other is through the
social media directly.

To succeed on social media there is really one rule: which is to provide lots of value.
Don’t just post about promotions but remember the lifestyle aspect we spoke about
before. Give people a reason to follow you and ask yourself: would you enjoy the kind of
content you’re sharing?

What’s also important is to be everywhere: be on as many social media sites as possible
to create the maximum number of ‘in-roads’ to your content. This should at least mean:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram
• Pinterest
• LinkedIn
• Tumblr

This also helps to make your brand appear more professional and well structured.
On top of this, you’ll need to create a website of your own to host your landing page and
your blog posts. The best way to do this is through WordPress which you’ll install onto
your own webhost with domain name. The full eBook explains how to easily get set up
with a great website.

Creating Amazing Content

From here, you now need to start posting blog posts to your site. Doing this will act as a
free demonstration of the value and knowledge you can provide – it’s the perfect
example of that ‘first touch’. At the same time, it brings more people to your site and
encourages them to join your mailing list and to subscribe to you on social media.

So what makes great content? Again, the key is to genuinely provide value and that
means that the content should be the kind that you would like to read yourself. Most
importantly, this means that it should be unique and different from all the other content
out there. If you write an article on ‘ten things you’re doing wrong with SEO’ then you
won’t stand out at all from all the other sites. The same goes for ‘top ab workouts’.

Try to find something new to talk about and a new, exciting angle in your niche. Find
ways to combine different topics in interesting ways and always have a very specific
target audience (or ‘persona’) in mind. This latter point will help you find routes to
market to share to and it will encourage people to share – either to express themselves
or to share the content with people they think will like it.

Make sure the articles are in-depth and that they have been well-researched. Ideally,
they should be about 1,800 words long. Remember how important we said it was to
choose a niche that you’d enjoy discussing? This is why!

Another thing to note is that there is nothing stopping you from using your articles as
landing pages. All you need to do is to take your affiliate link and to embed it in the body
of your text. If you do that, and if you promote the product in the content, this can lead
to some direct sales. This is a great way to convince yourself to keep writing and to get
even more value from all the effort you’re putting in.

Of course if you don’t like writing or can’t write, you may want to skip this step. Better
though, would be to hire someone to write for you or to use another type of content. One
other type of content that is vastly overlooked is video. In a video you can very easily sell
the benefits of a product and engage your audience.

Growth Hacks and Scaling

Now you’ve seen the basics of affiliate marketing, it’s time to accelerate your progress
and to explode your profits.

There are a number of ways to do this. One exciting growth hack for instance, is to use
‘influencer marketing’. This simply means that you find someone who already has a very
big audience that trusts them and then you try and get them to promote your website or
your affiliate link directly.

How do you do that? One option is simply to pay them: as in the case of a solo ad (paid
e-mail promotion). Another option is to write them free content, which is known as a
guest post. Better yet though, is to interact with an influencer on social media that
doesn’t know quite how big they are. Use Twitter analytics to identify your most
influential followers and then engage with them by asking questions or retweeting their
posts. Often they will respond in kind out of politeness if nothing else!

Another powerful trick is to network with the big influencers in person. Go to
networking events and even try hiring their services. Once you’ve had a face-to-face
discussion, you will be much harder to ignore.

Scaling

From here, you now have a working business model that’s growing quickly. But you can
scale it even more for even more impressive profits: and one of the simplest ways to do
this is simply to repeat the business model you’ve laid out for yourself. Just find another
product, another audience and set up a second income stream.

You can do this as often as you like, essentially making your affiliate marketing efforts
infinitely scalable and drastically increasing your resilience. Not only have you
multiplied your profits but you’re now far less likely to suddenly lose all your income
because of a fluctuation in the market etc.

Alternatively, you might choose to branch out into physical products, to sell new items
to your existing audience, or to create your own product.

Either way, you now know everything you need to know to start building and growing a
highly profitable affiliate marketing business. Start with modest goals and be strategic
and logical. Don’t overcomplicate matters and choose a niche that has a clear demand
for a product. If you do all that, then you will succeed. Good luck