Affiliate Marketing Materials List

[Kirk Ward]

Hello,

I have a non-IM site and am recruiting affiliates, all well and good. Some are even promoting the site and sending customers. I'm using iDevAffiliate as my management system.

Being the greenhorn that I am, the only tools I have built are a couple of text links.

I would really appreciate feedback from you folks, giving me ideas on ...

(1) What materials I need to develop in order to have a powerful marketing system for affiliates. What would YOU like to see provided? And,

(2) Do you have any recommendations for a "one-stop-shop" that can produce a good creative package of such items? Someone who specializes in building affiliate marketing materials, such as banners, logos, email copy, link copy, ebooks, and so forth and so on?

Appreciate any feedback you can provide.

Thanks,
Kirk Ward

[Richard Adams]

Hi Kirk,

Text links are certainly better than nothing. But the more resources you can give affiliates, the more likely they are to promote for you because it makes their life easy.

So I would suggest banners in a range of different sizes, product images if it is an ebook etc. that you're promoting and sample emails as a basis. You may want to add articles, reviews, an interview with you and so on too.

Also, you say you arer in a non-IM niche, so consider how experienced your affiliates are. In some markets there are still a lot of pro marketers about (check out the weight loss products on CB if you want to see an example!) but in others there may be many people who have no real idea about affiliate marketing.

For these people I designed a short email course to talk newbies through how to make the most money from my affiliate program. It's not for sale, I'm afraid, but basically an autoresponder will send out weekly information on banner placement, gathering an email list and so on to any new affiliates who request it and I believe that this is quite a powerful technique.

Best of luck to you!

Richard

[Kirk Ward]

Thanks Richard,

That helps quite a bit. With all the choices of "stuff" that can be offered, I was really looking for the essence in order to get started. Your answer helps me focus.

FYI - My niche is bookkeeping, accounting, tax preparation and consulting. All offline services. I teach these guys how to market their services using offline techniques. (I'm still not sold on the internet for local marketing.)

I've built an email course before, and I'm thinking it can easily be reworked for the affiliates. That'll be step one.

Thanks again,
Kirk

[citrus]

Hey Kirk,

Here's a list of promotional tools that you should consider using (this is off the top of my head):

-banners (of all shapes and sizes)
-ecovers (if applicable)
-PPC ads
-solo ad copy
-email ad copy
-blog posts
-tweets
-linkroll for social bookmarking, ezines, etc.

You mentioned one-stop shops, but I would not recommend using one (I don't even know of any) unless you're ok with B quality material. What I'd recommend is to find a specialist who's great at what they do for each thing that you need.

Curtis

[charleskirkland]

Richard

If you want to do some insane numbers with local internet marketing then use "Facebook Ads" you can target down to
your perfect buyer.

Everything I have use this for a local business they have all called me after the 2nd week and said stop because
they can't handle the amount of new business that is being created. Now we run them every 2weeks on and off.

But check this out. Make sure you add video to your affiliate page.

http://www.seocodebreaker.com/affiliates.htm

Once somebody signs up I have it setup so the affiliate link is created with the clickbank id in place.

http://www.seocodebreaker.com/affiliates1.php?getpostdata=get&name=charles&email=freeseocd@gmail.com&site=submit&ip=74.236.140.177&clickbankID=barnplan&ref=000

By doing this you are asking your affiliate to do one less thing.


Charles

[Rob Toth]

Hi Kirk...

First a side note I'd like to mention:

As with many situations, having a lot of variety in great tools can be both good and bad ... simply because too many tools can create overwhelm and confusion. On the other hand, not enough tools means less "ease of use" for your affiliates. My suggestion: do make sure you have variety, but don't go overboard.

But let me run through some of the items I'd consider:


Broadcast emails - 2-3 suggested

Autoresponder emails - 2-3 suggested (can be same as broadcast, though a broadcast should be setup so either email can stand on its own... whereas the AR emails should be best written as a series, ie: email 2 could be positioned as a "followup" to email 1)

Blog Post (for their blog)

Review Article (for article directories)

Banners - preferably 2 varieties and always focusing on "direct response" vs "pretty"
125 x 125 blog button banner
horizontal banner
vertical banner
larger "thank you page" banner
* also can double as image ads if they are running image PPCs

PPC ads - pre-formatted for Google but also encourage them to run MSN and Yahoo tests
* can also work as classifieds ads for ezines etc

short text ads - status updates, forum signatures, facebook status

Twitter promos - 140 char promos ideally written for Twitter usage... have several of these

browser warning bar - (top area notification bar, pre-coded)

exit pop up - (banner ad or other pitch worked into exit pop, pre-coded)

peel away ad - (corner ad, same thing, pre-coded)

crawl up bar - (again, same, pre-coded)

rebrandable PDF - preferably with dynamic rebrander system

video - one that they can use on their blog, in conjunction with their thank you page banner etc

brandable video - for distribution in video networks

postcard images - yes, some people actually still market via direct mail. ;-)

what else?

I'm sure I missed several but the above are what come to mind first so a handful of those is what I'd certainly make a priority.





As for 2 ... I'm sure there are dozens of very qualified individuals on this board alone, but that's certainly a service I offer (and, in fact, get frequently hired for).

Best of continued success with your business!


oh... and also throw in TRAINING, MOTIVATION and RECOGNITION elements to your affiliate program!!

[Michael McMillan]

One thing I try to do for my people, and I appreciate when others do for me is to provide what I call "talking points" for people doing blog posts and pre-sell pages. I'm really not interested in being provided with a word-for-word, copy-and-paste post to use. I would rather have a bulleted list of 10-20 key points that I can work from and add a little personalized touch to my pre-sell pages. I don't wan't mine to have the same copy as everyone else's.

Doing this means that I include what the vendor believes are the key benefits to the user, but it also allows me to set up pre-sell pages quicker without having to think every detail through to the nth degree. What I really want to do on pre-sell pages is to give visitors a taste, but not the whole meal--and give them a compelling reason to click through to the sales page for more info.

Another thing is if the vendor has some kind of short video on their sales page, I can say, "Check out a video providing proof of exactly what I have told you here." That sounds a lot better than, "Click here to buy the product." A softer approach to get them to the sales page.

I just want to warm them up and want more info; I want the vendor to crank up the heat and close the sale.

[euhlir]

Thanks for the list rob. You gave me a couple new ideas.

I think the most beneficial is usually the emails and autoresponders, but that really depends on who you're trying to get for jvs.

Blog owners and seo marketers might prefer banners and videos, while other big jvs might prefer a nice email setup they can send to their lists.

From what I found the 3 big things affiliates like to see are text links, banners, and emails. Of course the more you give them the better.