Options to Promote Your Affiliate Campaigns

Did you succeed to choose a suitable affiliate program or affiliate network, thanks to the previous article? Do you already have an affiliate campaign and now looking for options to promote it? In this article, I summarize the campaign promotion options. We also go through a few basic rules you should follow, e.g., what is allowed in campaign promotion, and on the contrary, what practices you should avoid not unnecessarily to bother and spam the others. These methods of promotion can be used on any other online business.

Options to Promote Affiliate Campaigns

The leading role of a partner is to run an advertising campaign on a selected type of goods to motivate customers to buy it. You own the affiliate link, and it is up to you what to do next.

In general, we can say that we recognize four basic promotion types.

1. E-mail Promotion

If you dispose of an extensive database of email contacts, you can start promoting your affiliate campaigns through it. Nowadays, almost everyone has an email. What is important is how to attract the attention of a potential client.

First of all, your message should contain truthful and adequate information about the product or service. Additional value is if you can describe your own experience with promoted goods. Finally, it is advisable to provide recommendations to purchase the goods and politely push the customer to order the products.

Always add a unique link to your e-mail, through which the customer will be redirected to the e-shop.

2. Web Page Promotion

Web ad is currently a great solution on how to promote any products or goods in the most effective way possible nowadays. If you are the owner of a website, you have several options to launch a promotional campaign. They are:

• Banner placement – try to find a spot for an ad banner on your webpage. It is a rule that banners are of different sizes and you can choose the format suitable for you. Similarly, text ads also work. You generate an HTML code and place it on your website.
• PR article – this promotion option is especially suitable for people who own blogs. If you publish a high-quality PR article full of valuable product information and you share your affiliate link at the same time in the text, you just have made your income. Also, if you have the opportunity to publish such an article on another site, you should go for it.
• Video tutorial – Selling products and services through customer education is another great way to increase your chances to earn extra money. Shoot an exciting video to highlight the product’s benefits and its advantages over the competition. This kind of advertising is one of the most effective.

3. Social Networks Promotion

The boom of the Internet has created a space for social networks. There are currently several of them (Facebook, Twiter, Google+, and more). Marketing experts agree that advertising and social media promotion is the driving force of todays – it means, that it is highly effective.  Placing a link to a social network can be realized in two forms.

• Direct link– share a direct link with your unique code into your FB profile, eventually into a thematic Facebook group. To avoid spam, you should also add to it your experience or some interesting fact. The significant advantage is that you can edit the post any time.
• Indirect link– the second option is to submit a comment with a link to an article or an educational video. The procedure is the same as for the first variant. The only difference is that you do not enter your unique affiliate code into a comment or status, but a link to an interesting article, review, or video where your unique code will also be shared.

4. Discussion and Forum Posts

Have you found a discussion on the Internet or a forum where your link would fit? Then go ahead and publish it there. But first, add a valuable comment to the discussion. Otherwise, your action could be considered spam.

However, some forums do not even approve a good and useful comment. In that case, you should try it as an indirect link, i.e., link to some of your article, Youtube video, or Facebook group.

5. Personal Recommendation  

Maybe you have never thought about it, but an affiliate campaign can also be used in common communication between friends and acquaintances. Just mention the merchant’s website, praise what kind of high-quality goods they have and what great prices. Then send the person a link, and after the business has been completed, you enjoy your provision.

6. Contests and Other Options

One way of promotion is to call out competition or other activity. Many campaigns also have a discount coupon. It can push the visitor with an impulse to click to get to the advertiser’s page and make the purchase.

Caution – read the terms carefully when creating your campaigns. Some owners of affiliate program prohibit to promote them via Facebook or e-mail, others allow all of the above methods.

Which Mistakes Should You Avoid?

Whether we like it or not, it is common to make mistakes in provision marketing. After that, affiliate partners are investigating the reason for their failure. To avoid a failure within the promotion, I summed up the mistakes most frequently done by partners:

Spamming

If you decide to promote your campaign via email, one of the basic rules always applies: Do not spam! Spam causes mistrust, so you had better use your contact database. Even worse, by spamming, you harm not only yourself but also the company. You can ruin your potential for future cooperation.

It is crucial that all emails from your database are collected voluntarily. It means that all the people who shared with you their e-mail address did it willingly and because they wanted to do it. The question is now how to build a decent database of contacts. You can do this for example by creating a simple website where you offer people something for free in exchange for their email and consent to send the promotional materials.

When sending promotional emails, be sure to provide the option to unsubscribe from the database at the end of each e-mail.

Webpage with a lot of Ads 

It is said that less is sometimes more. And it is a golden rule. If you place many ads on your site, people are confused and eventually do not click anywhere. It occurs mainly with novice affiliate partners.

Impersonal Content  

Plagiarism or copying is forbidden in the world of affiliate marketing and promotion. Try to customize your text or article and add your own opinion or experience. It is much more enjoyable for the visitor to visit a page like this.

Not Working Links 

Unfortunately, sometimes the advertiser changes the links and if you do not register this change, you lose your commission. So check your links continuously. It is especially important for long-term campaigns.

Cheating on Forms and Orders Filling 

In most cases all paid actions are manually reviewed and subsequently approved. If they find out that you have manipulated with the results, you will lose all your commissions and, also, you will be banned from the affiliate program (or from the affiliate network). Let me explain this by example: If you are promoting some online games that offer affiliate partners a commission for only registering a new player, you should not encourage anyone to sign up. We can state this is a deliberate enrichment at the expense of the affiliate program owner. And in this case, it would not have to be over only with the end of the cooperation.

Unsuitable Comments in Forums

You can also advertise the affiliate campaign on the forum. However, you should not bother other forum participants. You should always – and also apply when promoting on social networks – add some exciting text, experience, something to enrich the discussion in your comment, besides the affiliate link.

Out of Topic Posts 

I have mentioned it several times already. Always contribute to thematic discussions and try to solve the problem of the people involved. Otherwise, you spam. So if someone is looking for a quality coffee machine, some coffee machine reviews or experience with some specific type, do not share the link to online games there :-). Use your logic ….

Conclusion

As you see, there are plenty of options on how to promote your online campaigns. Very important is to follow the basic guidelines and do not spam, do not bother the others.

We could write a big book about each campaign promotion method, so consider the information in this article as a proper start.

If you want to succeed in the future, it would be useful to focus on the various promotion options in more detail. When promoting by email, focus on email marketing. To promote campaigns through social networks focus on social marketing. If you own a website, you can use multiple options.

If you have not found what you were looking for in the article, try to check the discussion forum, you might find there interesting information on the topic there as well.

Are you experienced with affiliate marketing? If so, what do you think about this form of earnings on the Internet? I would be happy if you submit your opinion in the discussion. I appreciate every opinion; it may be inspirational or motivational for other readers.

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George H.

My name is George and I currently work from home as a freelancer for a PR agency selling advertising. I also freelance as an online marketer for an e-shop, and I am actively involved in creating this website. I am always looking for interesting opportunities on how to make money online. I share my findings with my readers on this website. I consider this to be my hobby. I hope, that you can find some legitimate work from home, or perhaps you might be able to earn a little extra money.