The importance of preselling
The number one strategy to increase your affiliate sales is preselling.
Before we begin, we need to first define what preselling is. There are two components to it – art & science. It’s a process of taking your reader and getting them ready to buy. Then sending them to the product sales page to make the purchase. If you do it well, it’s completely invisible.
In a nutshell, you provide value. And give them a link to the product you’re preselling. We’ll get into how to do it correctly in a minute. But before we do, you need to know why it’s so important. Here are a few benefits of preselling:
- It helps your reader trust you – Readers who trust you are more likely to click your links. And the more clicks you get the more sales you’ll make.
- It takes your reader out of defense mode – When you’re not hyping or pitching a product, your reader lets their guard down. And in turn they read to understand what you’re saying. And your intention is conveyed more easily.
- It puts them in a buying mood – Now they’re open to hearing what you’re telling them. And in turn, they’re open to other messages, as well. For example, the sales message on the page you’re linking to. Sending them to the sales page in this state makes them more receptive to the actual pitch.
- It increases your sales – You’ve prepped them and referred them in the right state of mind. With the guard down and trusting your recommendation. This dramatically boosts your sales rate!
- Your customers are happier – Plus, they feel they’ve made the buying decision on their own. Versus being pitched or convinced. And this leads to greater satisfaction with the product.
- Your profits go up – Satisfied customers are less like to refund. And that translates to more commission staying in your affiliate business.
The need to presell is clear. You earn more commissions. And increase your customer satisfaction. Everybody wins!
How does it work?
You’ve learned the importance of preselling. So, hopefully you’ve decided to start preselling. You’re ready to learn how to do it properly. Remember, there are two components – art and science.
Becoming an artist
Effective preselling requires gaining your readers trust in order for them to let down their guard. And the only method of doing this is to give exceptional value to your readers. The art of this is to provide enough information to be of value, but not enough to satiate the hunger. That is, they have to be wanting more when you refer them to the product sales page for the product you’re trying to sell. And because you’ve gained trust, they’re more receptive to the sales message and more likely to buy.
The science component
There’s also a specific formula you need to follow.
One of these key elements is the presentation of the information. You have to have your end in mind. Your goal is to sell the product you’re promoting. How can providing information accomplish this goal? First, you can provide useful but incomplete information. Or you can give them so much information that it feels overwhelming to do what you’re talking about. Whichever method, you send them to a product website that solves the problem you just created.
But you can’t link to your affiliate link. You have directly to the home page of the product. That’s because nobody likes to click on affiliate links. But how will you earn affiliate commissions if you don’t use your affiliate link? There’s a trick to make this work… You use the “covert cookie” strategy.
Next, you want to make sure you’re linking on related words and phrases. It’s habitual to click on words and phrases that are hyperlinked. And when the words are in context like this, it makes perfect sense for your reader to click them.
Putting all of this together creates a powerful affiliate marketing formula for success.
OK, here’s the not-so-good news:
This process is not easy – at all! Let’s talk about everything required to put this plan into action: Awesome content. First and foremost, you have to be able to write a great article that provides valuable information. This means you have to be able to write well, and have enough knowledge to be useful. Preselling skills. First, you have to give good information. But, you also need to know how to present the information in a way that give value to the reader. And still leave them wanting more. Or make the information so overwhelming they realize they can’t do it on their own.
Product selection. Next, you’ve got to pick the right product to presell. If you can manage to get the article written well. All your efforts are wasted if you send your reader to the wrong sales letter.
Techy stuff. To be most effective you have to use the “covert cookie” method. This is pretty easy – you just make a 1 pixel X 1 pixel image with no border and make the “source” of the image your affiliate link. (But if you mess it up, your referrals won’t be tracked.)
Wrapping it up:
Now you know exactly how to presell effectively. Using these techniques will increase your affiliate sales by 500% or more! The important thing is to use these techniques for everything you promote as an affiliate. Please don’t be lazy. Put in the effort to reap the greater rewards.
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