Topic: Content Marketing

Content Marketing

How do You Build a Brand and Become Recognized? 1

Posted by Mariameg on September 6, 2020 in Content Marketing

How do You Build a Brand: Although you may not be selling products that are of your own brand, it’s important that you build a good brand name for yourself as an affiliate marketer. Your brand is how others will identify you as a standalone business from the brands which you are promoting, and is hugely important in ensuring that you build up your own client base and are recognized.

Take, for example, some of the more successful comparison websites out there. These websites are shining examples of affiliate marketing done right

– they make money off other companies’ products such as auto insurance, home insurance, or travel insurance – without having to sell a single product of their own. But, they have a distinguishable brand which customers can instantly recognize them by.

When it comes to branding, it’s important that your customers can recognize you straight away. Your brand isn’t simply your logo, though – it’s based on a whole set of different factors, with the most important being the qualities and values that your business stands for. What kind of experience do you want customers to have when engaging with your brand? What kind of values does your brand represent? Which type of customers do you want to engage most with your brand? These are all questions which you should be asking when it comes to putting together a memorable and reputable brand image for your affiliate marketing business.

Your Target Market

There is nothing more important than your target market when it comes to designing, creating and building a brand. Take into consideration the type of customers who are attracted to the products and/or services which you promote as an affiliate marketer. For example, if your affiliate site promotes baby items, you will want it to be attractive to new moms and dads who are looking to buy for their little one.

On the other hand, if you sell luxury items, you are aiming to build a brand which the people who buy these types of items can easily relate to. For this reason, it’s vital to research your target market and really get to know them.

Find out about the values that they hold, the way they engage with businesses, and the sort of things that they will find interesting. Once you have this information, you can then begin building a brand which will speak to them and appeal to them on a number of different levels.

Your Brand Voice

The best brands are the ones which the customers can really relate to. Think of your favorite brand – is it easy to see them as a ‘person’? Brands which have a human voice and are on the same level as their customers tend to be the most popular, and for good reason. Today, customers aren’t looking for advertisements that simply throw all the good points of an item at them – they want to know WHY they should be buying from a particular brand or buying a certain product, and what it can do for them in order to solve a problem or enhance their lives. Because of this, you should aim to

give your brand a ‘human’ side. This means forgetting the overly professional, robotic wording that some brands use and instead connecting with your customers on a human level.

Where does your brand voice come into play? First and foremost, your website should be the best representative of your brand and its voice. The way in which the content on your website is written can say a lot about your brand – for example, whether it has a sense of humor. Along with this, it’s important to remember to keep your brand voice consistent throughout all of your content, both written and non-written. This includes product descriptions, social media postings, emails, videos, photographs and everything else in between.

Visual Branding

Once you have taken all of the above factors into consideration, it’s time to start focusing on building a distinct visual brand which ties in well with the values and qualities of your business. Your visual branding consists of a number of different things, for example your logo, the colors that you use for your site, logo, social media pages and more, and any distinctive phrases or words which you use in order to describe your affiliate site. When de- signing your visual brand, it’s vital to keep your target audience in mind.

Create designs which will appeal to them based on what you have learned about them during your research. You may even wish to conduct surveys, focus groups or other research which gives members of your target market

the opportunity to choose their favorite of a series of brand imagery, helping you to decide which would be the best one to go with.

Brand Consistency

When creating and building your brand and brand image, consistency is absolutely vital. This is extremely important for affiliate marketers who use a variety of channels, for example a website, blog, email and social media profiles in order to promote affiliate products and services. A consistent brand enables customers to instantly recognize you and helps to keep any confusion to a minimum. As well as keeping your brand voice consistent throughout, it’s also important to make sure that other parts of your visual brand are also consistent, for example using the same logo on each channel that you use for promotion and customer engagement.

Where and How to Promote Your WebSite? 1

Posted by Mariameg on September 6, 2020 in Content Marketing

How to Promote Your WebSite: Even when you’re practicing all the right SEO techniques, you really don’t want to leave it up to chance that users stumble across your site when searching on Google. It’s important to remember that it can take a while for new websites to reach the top of Google search results even with good SEO, therefore you will need to turn to a range of different digital marketing techniques in order to best promote your site.

Video Marketing

We’ve mentioned video marketing first, because it is easily becoming one of the most popular ways to promote a whole range of different things on- line. The best thing about video marketing is that it can be done on popular platforms such as YouTube and also tied into social media marketing in or- der to attract more people to your affiliate site and encourage them to buy the products which you have advertised. A great way to use video market- ing is through the use of video reviews. If possible, it can be a great idea to purchase the products that you are promoting yourself, and create an in- formative, engaging video review that users will love to watch. Of course, it has to be a positive review! You can then display a link to your website, or the page on your site where the product is listed, to let interested users know where they can purchase it. Although this may not be feasible for some affiliate marketers, it’s definitely worth doing if you can.

Social Media Marketing

With almost everybody in the world signing up to at least one of the main social media networks, it makes absolute sense that your new affiliate site should have a presence on social media. You can do this by either posting links to your website and its pages on your own personal social media pro- file and encouraging your friends and followers to share it with the users who follow them, or even setting up a dedicated page or profile which you will use purely to promote your affiliate site.

Social media is quickly becoming one of the most used ways to find new products and/or services online, and you should never underestimate its power when it comes to website and product promotion. The affiliate pro- gram which you are using may also provide links which are suitable for so- cial media updates, giving you the option to post them on sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram as well as your affiliate site. Us- ing social media massively increases your audience, and gives you access to members of your target audience who may not know about your site. It’s also a great way to engage with the people who are buying products through your site, too – comments sections and direct messages can be used to answer questions or simply engage and get involved with your tar- get market.

Email Marketing

Many affiliate marketers use email marketing as a method of promoting their different products and services. This is because email is one of the most-used mail services in the world today, and a well-thought out, interesting email can be a great way to encourage customers to shop. However, there are a lot of different things which should be taken into consideration when you decide to use email for affiliate marketing. One of the main concerns which you should have is that of spam and junk mail. Every day, anybody with an email address gets at least one spam mail in their inbox, and although this does tend to go to a dedicated inbox, many miss the filter. Because of this, email users tend to dismiss most emails that don’t catch their eye immediately when they look at the subject line, so make sure that your subject line is different from that of every other email marketer out there.

Along with this, the issue of privacy is also one which should be considered when you use email marketing in order to promote your affiliate site. You should only ever send emails to pre-approved email addresses, which have been added to a mailing list with consent.

Content Marketing

Last but certainly not least, content marketing is a hugely powerful way of promoting your affiliate site. Content is king on the internet, and good con- tent both on and off your website can be an ideal way to keep it updated, attract new customers, and promote your affiliate products. Starting a busi- ness blog which is a part of your website is one of the best ways in which you can use content to promote it. A business blog means that you will be able to update your website’s content regularly, leading to better SEO and more interest in your site itself.

But, what do you blog about? Depending on the types of niche which you have chosen for your affiliate marketing venture, there will be plenty of different topics which you should cover. For example, if you are promoting on- line casinos, you will be able to write a huge variety of different blog posts on this topic. This could include ‘how-to’ guides for a range of different casino games, tips and tricks for winning, historical information about online gaming, or even the latest online gaming news. No matter which niche you have chosen, a little bit of research will give you access to endless possibilities when it comes to material to write about on your blog. Promote your blog posts on social media in order to get more views!

How do you Set Up and Optimize Your Ads? 0

Posted by Mariameg on September 6, 2020 in Content Marketing

Optimize Your Ads: Now that you have chosen a domain name, a web host, and have designed your website it’s time to get to the fun part. By now, you will have chosen the type of products that you would like to advertise in order to make mon- ey, and will have found a suitable affiliate program (Amazon Associates is a great start, but there are many others out there which you might prefer).

Once you have signed up to your chosen affiliate program and have been

approved to advertise on their behalf, it’s time to get down to business.

The majority of affiliate programs will provide you with pre-designed and pre-approved advertisements which you can then use on your affiliate site. These are usually easy to place directly onto your site via the use of a HTML code which you will simply need to copy and paste into your site’s code. Many programs will provide a range of advertisement types, including banner ads of all different sizes, pop-up ads, text ads and more. The ones which you choose will depend on the design of your website and how you plan to promote the product or service.

However, simply placing an ad on your site is not enough to effectively promote it. When buying a product, customers like to know as much information possible about not only the product or service which they are considering, but also about the business or brand. For this reason, it’s important to write product descriptions for the items which you promote. A good affiliate marketing site will have a different page for each product that they

promote, with a compelling and interesting description that encourages the reader to buy. The more informative, the better!

Search Engine Optimization

Optimizing your affiliate site for search engine crawlers is extremely important in order for your new business venture to be a success. For example, if you’re promoting women’s clothing, you will want your site to show up as high as possible in Google’s search results when a user types ‘women’s clothing’ into the search bar and hits go. Because of this, search engine optimization should be a top priority.

There are many different things which you need to do when it comes to search engine optimization, and it should be done both on and off your site. If you have never done any SEO before and are not very knowledgeable on the subject, it may be a good idea to get in touch with an SEO professional or digital marketing company to help you out.

Off Page SEO

Google ranks websites according to a whole number of factors, but it’s not only what’s going on your page that matters. Links back to your page are very valuable to Google, providing that they are genuine, authentic, and from a reputable source. For example, a link source could be a local news outlet, a popular blog, or even a well-known social media page or profile.

The more genuine links that you have back to your site, the better ranking your page will able to achieve.

One of the best ways to build up links is through the use of guest posts. In the past, link-building received a bad reputation as website owners were abusing it, simply placing links back to their page in irrelevant places, or spamming forums, in order to increase the amount of links. However, this isn’t what you’re going to do. One good link is worth more than one hun- dred bad links, and a link that is placed in a ‘black hat’ manner could land you with a penalty from Google. Instead, find relevant, reputable blogs which will allow you to guest post for them. This way, you can create a guest post which is relevant to your site and allows you to include the link in a natural manner.

Along with guest posting, there are many other ways in which you can cre- ate solid, authentic links back to your site in order to improve SEO. These include doing something newsworthy to appear in an article on the site of a local news outlet, including links to your site in business listings, and asking relevant bloggers to review your site.

On Page SEO

Although what you do off your page is important for SEO, it’s also vital to remember that your website and pages themselves have a huge part to play in search engine optimization and how high you rank in the Google Search Results. One of the most important parts of your site is the content. When writing product descriptions and other content for your site, it’s a good idea to include the types of keywords that your users will be searching for. However, it’s vital to make sure that these keywords appear natural- ly. If this isn’t possible, creating content based on the keyword is important.

Along with that, updating your site with fresh content is also a good way to improve SEO. This could be done in the form of a business blog, for example, which you could use to create articles that answer commonly asked questions, explore different ways to use the products that you sell, or even review your own products. Don’t forget that’s it’s not just text content which is important to SEO – the images that you use on your site can also appear in Image Search results.

The user-friendliness of your website is also hugely important to search engine optimization. Along with having informative content, your website should also be easy to navigate and not confuse users who visit it. Your aim is to get visitors to stay on your page for as long as possible so that they can discover more information about your products in order to encourage them to buy.

Another factor which should also be taken into consideration is page loading time. The amount of time that your site and pages take to load can directly affect SEO, with Google favoring those sites which load up quickly and effortlessly. Not only that, but a site which loads slowly can be annoying for users, and you could lose business as a result.

Last but not least, it is absolutely vital that your website is mobile-friendly. This is not only important for your reputation, but it also directly affects

SEO, with Google’s latest major algorithm updates favoring sites which are mobile-friendly over those which are not. With an increasing number of shoppers using their mobile devices to search for and purchase products and services online, ensuring that your site has a responsive design that looks and works great on any device is absolutely vital.

How Do You get Your Affiliate website Set up? 0

Posted by Mariameg on September 6, 2020 in Content Marketing

Affiliate website Set up: Once you have decided which products and/or services you are going to promote as an affiliate marketer, it’s time to get your advertisements out there on the web. In order to do this, you will need to set up a website, blog, social media page, or all three. The majority of affiliate marketers start off with a website, since the majority of affiliate programs will provide HTML codes for the advertisements which you will be displaying to your users.

Choosing a Domain Name

These days, setting up a website for the purpose of affiliate marketing is easy. Before you set up your website, however, it’s important to come up with a good domain name which your site will be known by. When choosing a domain name for an affiliate site, it’s important to choose one which is both easy to remember, pronounce, and spell. Your domain name should also reflect the type of items which you are promoting on the site. For ex- ample, if you are creating an affiliate site to market online casinos, you could choose something like ‘toponlinecasinos’ or ‘bestonlinecasinogames’. This not only makes it easy for your visitors to quickly determine what the site is about, but it is also relevant, easy to remember, spell and pronounce, and good for SEO.

Coming up with a domain name can be trickier than you think, especially when there are limited domain names available with .com. When choosing a domain name it is always important to go for .com rather than any other

top-level domain. This is because not only do many people still assume that there is only .com available, it’s also easier to remember, harder to confuse your site with others, and opens up your site to global visits from search engine results.

Setting Up Your Website

Once you have chosen your domain name, it’s time to set up your website. It’s vital that this stage is given a huge amount of thought, planning and effort as after all, it is your website where your affiliate ads will be displayed. To get the best results from your site, it needs to be not only appealing to visitors, but also easy to navigate and quick to load. You can use site-making software, for example WordPress, to easily create your site if you have no prior knowledge of coding or HTML. In this case, it’s advisable to purchase a premium WordPress – or other site-creator – package so that you have more freedom when it comes to using themes or making customized edits to your site.

You may also want to speak with an experienced, professional web design- er about getting your site up and running. For many affiliate marketers, it’s a good idea to pay a professional to design and set up your website, as they will have a good idea of the types of web designs which are the best for affiliate marketing and also how to design your website in such a way that it is beneficial for search engine optimization.

Web Hosting

If you do not choose to use software such as WordPress to host your site, you will need to find a web host. When it comes to choosing a web hosting provider, there are many different options to choose from and each of these must be taken into consideration. These include:

Free Hosting Shared Hosting Cloud Hosting VPS Hosting Dedicated Hosting

Free hosting, no matter how appealing, should be avoided at all costs. This is because even though it will not cost you, the actual cost of hosting your website is often subsidized with advertisements, which could interfere with the advertisements that you post on behalf of affiliate programs. Websites hosted with free hosting providers also tend to be slow to load along with a number of other potential issues which could cause problems for your business.

Shared hosting is usually quite affordable, and is a popular choice for affiliate marketers. With shared hosting, your website will share a server with others. However, bear in mind that if you choose this option, there is always the danger of your site being slow, or even unreachable, during peak times.

On the other hand, opting for cloud hosting, which often costs around the same as shared hosting, is a better option as your site will be hosted on a number of virtual servers, meaning that there is little chance of server over- load.

VPS hosting, or virtual private server hosting, is a type of hosting which is similar to both shared and dedicated hosting. It allows for more space than standard hosting, but is less costly than dedicated hosting, where your website essentially has a server to itself. This type of hosting usually costs more, and is only ideal if you expect to expand significantly, therefore needing extra server space, in the future.

Whichever type of hosting service you decide to go for, it’s important to keep a few main factors in mind. This includes customer service – it’s absolutely vital to go for a hosting provider which provides excellent, round-the- clock customer service so that you know for sure that if anything goes wrong with your website, you can get in touch and have it fixed straight away.

How do I Choose a Niche and What Should I market? 0

Posted by Mariameg on September 6, 2020 in Content Marketing

How do I Choose a Niche: Choosing which products and/or services to market is one of the most important tasks faced by new affiliate marketers. With so many different product niches out there, choosing one which you think will be the most profitable can often be a very confusing and daunting task.

Many affiliate marketers make the mistake of choosing a product that sells well, but they have little knowledge of. Although choosing a product which sells well is a good step, it’s important to take a step back and think about how much you actually know about the niche, and whether or not you are interested enough in it to market it to others successfully. Do you really want to spend the rest of your life selling products that you have little to no interest in? The most successful affiliate marketers are those who promote products that they love, as they find it easier to dedicate the time and effort into promoting them.

Every Niche Has a Market

When starting out as an affiliate marketer, it’s important to understand that every single niche has a market. Whether you choose one of the larger niches such as the casino and online gaming niche or decide to promote a smaller and more unique niche, there is always the potential to hit it big. It’s not about the niche that you choose, it’s about how well you reach out to your target audience and promote the products and services of the busi- nesses which you are affiliated with.

With this in mind, it’s a good idea to make a list of the kind of things that you yourself are interested in. For example, if you are a huge fan of beauty, you might be interested in setting up an affiliate site which promotes make- up and other beauty products. Or, if you’re a die-hard gamer, why not set up an affiliate site which promotes products related to your favorite game? If you are interested in the products that you sell, you will be able to write more compelling descriptions of products and explain them better to potential customers.

Cheap or Pricey?

One of the biggest questions which new affiliate marketers face is whether they should promote products which are expensive, or go for cheaper products that more customers will be attracted to buy. A big mistake is to think that advertising cheap products is going to earn you more money as an affiliate marketer. Although you may well get more sales when you promote affordable, cut-price products, it’s important to remember that as an affiliate marketer, you will earn a percentage of the price of the item which sells. Therefore, if you promote products that have a larger monetary value, you will earn a larger amount of commission per sale. Let’s say, for example, that you promote luxury cars. By advertising a car priced at $10,000 with a 10% commission rate, you will earn $1,000 per sale. Compare this to advertising an item priced at $10 with the same commission rate – you would need to make 1,000 sales before you earn the same amount.

Go with What You Know

Choosing a niche is a hugely important part of becoming an affiliate marketer, but in general, many new affiliate marketers make this process a lot harder than it should be. As mentioned above, going with what you know is the best option for becoming an affiliate marketer.

If you’re already using the internet to talk about things that you enjoy, for example if you are a blogger, have a YouTube channel or have a social media page which discusses a theme, niche or product, tying your affiliate marketing venture in with this is a great way to get started.

If you’re unsure, make a list which includes a variety of things that you’re interested in – what you studied at college, what you enjoy doing in your spare time, and other things that you are knowledgeable and skilled about. Do people always come to you for financial advice? Why not market financial products? If you’re struggling to come up with a niche, look around you and the answer will be there.