One of the most important aspects of any marketing is knowing what the value of each lead and or customer is to your business.
However in the world of online affiliate marketing, most people are not really thinking along these lines, which is quite tragic as it not only leaves a lot of money on the table, but it also means you miss out on opportunities that you could have gone after.
What’s Your Back End Looking Like?
I hope you found that heading funny, I couldn’t help myself, but in all seriousness what we need to consider when marketing online is how well set up our back end is for making more sales, otherwise referred to as your pipeline.
What I love about affiliate marketing is that you can affiliate with pretty much anyone, if you can convince them that there’s benefit for them in doing so. When you start thinking like this, you’ll start to spot business ideas that you may not have otherwise considered.
For example, if you want to make money by doing SEO or paid traffic campaigns for businesses, then a smart approach would be to set up web design business and then up sell your customers with these extra services, as they’ll most likely need them.
If you make great money from your pipeline sales you can even get to the point where you break even or lose money on the front end, otherwise known as the ‘Loss Leader Model‘.
Another example of this is with web hosting, if you teach people who to build websites then being affiliated with a good web hosting makes sense, as the people you teach will naturally need hosting.
Here’s another example, if you collect leads for type II diabetes care, they will most likely also by products about weight loss, and also about eating healthy. The key is to find a good correlation between the front end and the back end.
Marketing Myopia
I think a lot of online marketers fall into ‘Marketing Myopia’ where they’re not looking at the potential in a niche.
I encourage you to think about ways of collecting leads in a niche, even if on low competition terms and focusing on your email follow ups and how you can increase the average dollar you make per lead.
You might be able to affiliate yourself with multiple vendors, and not just ebooks, think outside the square a little.
Paid Traffic
I know that a vast majority of information marketers are somewhat fearful of doing anything to do with paid traffic, however I really think you need to challenge your position on this if you fall into this category, as paid traffic can be great, and SEO is not free anyway.
I recently did a little experiment with an information website that I sent Google Adwords traffic to, with the sole intention of collecting leads. The site is a good site though, as I know Google is heavily focused on quality and a good user experience, so I made sure this site was well done.
Anyway the result somewhat took me by shock, as my conversions rates were sky high, I was making double my money. However here’s the crazy thing, I’m paying $8 a click and I haven’t even got the back end sales pipeline set up yet!
My point being, you can do really well with paid traffic if you have a site that converts well and especially if the back end is set up to increase the average dollar value per lead.
The key thing you need to focus on is high conversions, which is another topic that is vastly neglected by a lot of online marketers, and I have been guilty of this myself. However these days I place a lot of importance on conversions, as it can be the difference from profiting and not. If you get your conversion right, you can make money with a lot less traffic too.
Summary
In closing, I encourage you to focus less on whether or not you can make huge profits on the front end, and start to think about the sales potential on the back end. By doing this you might well be able to profit with Google Adwords, as I have, and also you’ll most likely be able to spot new ideas that you may otherwise not have considered.
Have a great day!
Related articles
Great article… One thing I started doing and this may be a bit off topic, but somewhere in the same line of thinking, is I put in 2-4 complementary affiliate offers on my “Thank You Page.”
Just another idea…..
Matt Carter Reply:
October 17th, 2012 at 5:48 am
.
.
Yeah I forgot to mention that actually, its a smart strategy
Awesome post Matt! I’m also moving towards building a list instead of trying to close the sale on the front end. Right now, I’m having a client who is interested in my seo service. Their website needs to be revamped and so on. I’m charging a very minimal fee but I know that this particular client has a lot of friends that he can refer to me in the future so im building a good relationship with him.
Matt Carter Reply:
October 17th, 2012 at 5:47 am
.
.
Sounds good Sharul
Another awesome post Matt ! I agree with that its really the time to think about of box. PPC could be a good option if your site has potential for conversions and i think conversions should be the main focus, whether you Strategy of traffic is PPC or SEO organic.
Matt Carter Reply:
October 17th, 2012 at 5:47 am
.
.
Thanks Zuhaib!
Matt
another fantastic Article Matt,
lot of good stuff for me as I am getting experimental right now with a niche about Greek tourism field, and I think that PPC+Tourism will bring some good results.
Hi Matt
Great post. You gave me an idea. I’m good at SEO. But not so good at building websites I could partner with a website creater who builds websites for small busines and we can offer Seo services to the small buisness. I won’t have to deal with getting customers. We can just upsell his existing customers.
When offering SEO services to small business should we charge a one time fee or on going monthy charge ?
Matt Carter Reply:
October 17th, 2012 at 2:01 pm
.
.
hi Dave
Yeah that’s exactly the stuff I am talking about.
As for SEO you should charge monthly
Hi Matt
Totally agree with add on sales, it really works. I dont fully understand paid advertising, but am going to look into it. I dont have a adsense account as I lost it 12mths ago, so I am unable to do that.
Thanks again for a great and helpful post.
I really like the concept of loss leader, its most famous account is from sony who sold their playstation at a loss leader model knowing that they would rake it in with sales of games disks.
Its a great lead generating model, and also for building a strong list. ‘Ethical Bribes’ and freebies – join the list!
I have to say Matt, that out of the maybe 100+ IMers lists that I have joined over the last 3 years, there is only 1 that i am still subscribed to, yours!
Cheers to that! 🙂
Matt Carter Reply:
October 22nd, 2012 at 7:06 am
.
.
hi Alexander
Thanks for sharing about Sony, that’s a great example.
Great to have you on my list by the way!
Matt
Wow !! Brilliant post Matt. Thanks for creating a paradigm shift in the way I was thinking about S.E.O. The connotation you bought in for Up-selling would definitely trigger me to think in many dimensions in future.
Thanks & Regards
Alfred Johns J
Hi, I think your post is really helpful. Especially for people who are new to affiliate marketing. After all, I am trying to use a web form to catch and value that potential. However, I have still questions in my mind about how to place and present it.
If you could give recommendations concerning my site, http://starbinaryoptions.com , I would gladly take it.
To be precise, I’ve created the site in order to offer strategy guidance for people in binary options trading business.