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The Ultimate Affiliate Marketing Landing Page Guide

Implement these optimization tips into your landing page and marketing efforts and you will see massive conversion and engagement increases across the board.

Photo: Zac Johnson, Online Marketer and Creator of Zacjohnson.com; Source: Courtesy Photo
Photo: Zac Johnson, Online Marketer and Creator of Zacjohnson.com; Source: Courtesy Photo

Landing pages are one of the most effective methods to turn an audience into high value leads. Through the use of a landing page, you can turn a service, product or affiliate offer into an attractive opportunity once you target your exact demographic audience.

In this comprehensive affiliate guide, we’ll look at why every online marketer, brand and business needs to be using landing pages within their outreach and marketing efforts. It’s not just about creating landing pages, it’s about knowing how to optimize them, track conversions, improve your results and also going after your exact demographic audience.

 

What are landing pages and why are they so important?

The best way to explain a landing page in it’s most simple form, is to think of a movie trailer shown in a theater. No one really wants to see movie trailers, but when you do, you get sucked in and are shown only the best parts of the movie being advertised. All of this is done in hopes of getting you to come back to the movie theater in the future to see the full movie.

Landing pages work in a similar way. A landing page aims to show a visitor the highlights of whatever is being advertised. The headline, sales copy and images are all focused to entice you to take immediate action. In the image below you can see a example landing page that covers all of the major call to actions and data points.

 

Photo: Landing page example; Source: Courtesy Photo
Photo: Landing page example; Source: Courtesy Photo

At the same time, landing pages are extremely effective because they act as a pre-sell page prior to a visitor taking a desired action. With all of that said, here’s an inside look at how affiliate marketers effectively use landing pages to increase conversions and drive more traffic. Meanwhile, I’ll reveal the best ways to optimize a landing page for peak performance.

 

Creating Affiliate Landing Pages

While landing pages are used in all forms of marketing, it’s the affiliate marketers that seem to get the most creative and find new ways to target their audience the best. In affiliate marketing, a publisher or marketer is given a product, site or service to promote and it’s their job to deliver high quality leads at a lower cost than it is to acquire the lead — the margin in between is their profit.

To give you a better idea of how landing pages work in affiliate marketing, it’s best to lead with an example.

Dating services are one of the most popular affiliate marketing offers. Not only are there different types of offers, but they also offer a decent commission payout just for referring new users to a site. However, many tactics in the dating space lead to a landing page. A better way for affiliates to increase conversions is through the use of a custom landing page they can use to pre-sell and send traffic to, first.

As an affiliate marketer who wants to use a landing page to increase conversions, the first step is to determine your target demographic audience. In this case it is:

 

  • Single Men

  • Living in San Diego, CA

  • Who are interested in Women

  • Between the Ages of 27-35

 

Now that we know our target audience, we can build a landing page with our target audience in mind.

With a great looking landing page in place, the affiliate will likely see higher conversions on the back-end affiliate offer, as the landing page appeals directly to a specific demographic.

 

Maximize Landing Page Conversions

With an ad campaign and a custom landing page working in tandem, it’s time to step up your game and make sure your landing page is optimized. At the same time, while traffic is flowing through your landing page, you can split test different areas of your landing page to see how, and where, you can increase conversions.

Split testing is the concept of making minor changes on a page and comparing results from the previous and current version. A good example in this case would be switching a yellow “JOIN NOW” button to green and seeing how, and if, conversions might change.

In a color change case study by David Dellanave, the CTO of ShoeMoney Media Group, we can see a 3% to 5% conversion swing just from a simple color change of green to orange. Over the life of a campaign, this increase in conversions could results in several thousands of dollars worth of lead data.

Split testing is just one way to improve landing page conversions. Through the optimization tips below, not only will you boost landing page performance, but you will also eliminate distractions and increase conversions in the process.
 

  • Increase landing page speed. The faster your landing page loads, the faster people can engage. If you page takes too long to load, visitors will leave.

  • Split test everything. Beyond color changes, be sure to split test as much as possible. This includes placements, sales copy, images and registration forms.

  • Optimize landing pages for mobile. More people are viewing the Internet through mobile devices and tablets than ever before. Make sure your landing pages load correctly across all devices.

  • Create a clear call to action. The call to action on your landing page is extremely important. Have a great headline and let your call to action tell visitors what to do.

  • Less text is more. Don’t overwhelm site visitors with too much text. Focus on action points, images and where they need to click.

  • Bullet points work extremely well. To eliminate text and still get your point across, feel free to use bullet points to highlight key features and benefits.

  • Create a sense of urgency. By promoting a limited time offer for a visitor to take action, you will see a boost in conversion rates. Encourage visitors to take action now and not miss out.

  • Remove distractions and navigation. Navigation menus, footers and sidebars aren’t needed on landing pages. Remove these distractions to keep the focus on your one call to action.

 

Implement these optimization tips into your landing page and marketing efforts and you will see massive conversion and engagement increases across the board! For more optimization tips and tricks, also be sure to check out these landing page based infographics.
  
This article has been edited and condensed.

Zac Johnson, the creator of Blogging.org, is an entrepreneur with nearly 20 years of experience in the online marketing space. You can learn more about Zac through his blog at ZacJohnson.com. Connect with @zacjohnson on Twitter.

 

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