How Do Affiliates Make a Sale?

While marketers aren’t selling their own products in affiliate marketing, they are still “selling” to their visitors. Because affiliate marketing is all about making the sale, the affiliate’s job becomes convincing people that making a purchase is a good thing. To a very small percentage of people, the ability to sell comes naturally. The vast majority of people, however, don’t know the first thing about making a sale. As an affiliate marketer, this is tricky. While online sales aren’t sales in the traditional sense, like what a buyer might experience while purchasing a car, affiliates still have to know a little about closing a deal.

In sales, the acronym AIDA has been used for over eighty years to describe the four basic steps of a successful sale. These letters stand for “attention, interest, desire, and action” and describe the way to appeal to the customer and close a sale. These four terms work much like a funnel. No one can sell to everyone, because there are always those who will walk away, regardless of the deal. This happens at every stage of the process. Eventually, though, affiliates will build an interested and motivated customer base, who is willing and interested in buying.

First, the affiliate begins with attention. With online selling, attention is the first eye-catching reaction a visitor has to a website, page, or email message. If there’s nothing to catch the visitor’s eye, there’s no reason to stay and check out the rest of the site. Attention is important because leaving a website is easy. The average consumer will walk away from a site if there isn’t something compelling to view. Eye-catching design, attention-grabbing headlines, useful articles, and interesting photos are all methods used by the marketer to create some attention. If an affiliate can get the customers’ attention, they can move on to the next step.

Once affiliates have the attention of their visitors, they need to create some interest in their product or service. To do this, the affiliate has to understand the potential customers and offer them reasons why the product is worth buying. Does the product solve a problem in the reader’s life? Does the product allay the fears of the consumer? When creating interest, the affiliate needs to offer solutions to problems and show usefulness and value.

Once the customer’s interest has been piqued, the affiliate must create desire for the product. The affiliate has already appealed to the customer’s practical side, so now the affiliate’s job becomes to appeal to the customer’s wants and desires and remind customers that they don’t just need the product, they want to own it.

At the very end of this process comes the call to action. Now that the customer knows the benefits of the product and has the desire to purchase the product, the affiliate can begin to ask for the sale. This is frequently done by holding off on sales-related language until the end of the process. If the seller is a traditional a merchant, the sales information is usually displayed front and center. Merchants must list prices of products and shipping so that consumers know if they are getting a good deal. Affiliates, on the other hand, have the option of being more secretive.

Of course, affiliates sales approaches will differ based on their personality and the products and services they promote. Selling a mortgage is different from selling decorative hand soaps, obviously, and the target market and sales language will be different. This is where paying attention to the competition will give affiliates a sales boost. What solutions do the competitors offer? What is their sales language? Affiliates should study their competition and keep track of their findings to help find the best possible way to make the sale.

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