How to Build a Sales Funnel for Affiliate Marketing
$130k+ in course sales.
$77k+(N50M+) in digital product sales.
$200K+ with a single funnel.
$100k/month in online marketing.
Do these look familiar?
Every day we read about feats of Affiliate Marketers making a ton of money from Affiliate marketing.
One would think they have some sort of chakra or special magic.
But there’s none. They just implement the principles of sales and marketing, which include using sales funnels.
Like every other business, you need a sales funnel to boost sales of your products and increase your chances of closing deals as an Affiliate.
Kenny Nwokoye, a Marketing Consultant says, “the biggest and most important reason why affiliate marketers need to build funnels is that it simplifies the buyer’s journey. Making steps clear every step of the way while providing enough information to get a favorable buying decision is crucial. Plus funnels when merged with backend automation allow an affiliate marketer to build a life of freedom.”
But that’s not all.
Chigozie Mmebo, a seven-figure affiliate marketer also says, “It is important to use a Sales Funnel as an Affiliate Marketer to customize the experience your leads have on their way to making a buying decision. This helps to increase your sales conversion.”
There are many ways to promote products and get paid as an Affiliate. But to play the long game, you need to use a sales funnel.
In this article, we discuss how to build a high-converting sales funnel for affiliate marketing. Read on to learn.
How to Build an Affiliate Marketing Funnel in 7 Steps
Want to learn how to build a high-converting affiliate marketing sales funnel and crush all your sales goals?
Follow these steps for the best results.
#1. Have an irresistible offer
One of the hallmarks of affiliate marketing is to have an offer tempting enough to invoke a purchasing decision in your customers.
This means selling your product in such a way that your customers believe it’s the only solution they need to their problems. This way, they are forced to take you up on your offer.
Here’s how to create a unique offer as an affiliate marketer;
- Clearly state your product’s unique selling proposition (USP). That is, what do you offer that’s highly beneficial, and why should prospects choose you over your competitor? If your USP is more than one, make sure to capture them individually using bullet points.
- Figure out how to package your offer to make it appealing to your customers.
- State the results you can promise from using your product/service.
- Turn features of your products/services into benefits for your customers.
Every day, consumers scour the internet in search of discounts, or sales offer that can benefit them. In fact, 75% of consumers report scouring their email inboxes just to look for relevant discounts.
So, create unique offers that cater to at least one of the seven psychological triggers in marketing.
- Reciprocity:- a knowledge that when you receive, you’re more likely to give.
- Scarcity:- the more difficult it is to get something, the more we want it.
- Consistency and Commitment:- tiny bits of effort leads to long-lasting results.
- Authority:- people not only respond to authority but to its appearance of it.
- Liking:- people agree to things they know and like.
- Clustering:- organizing items into various categories to stimulate remembrance.
- Social Proof:-leveraging testimonials, reviews, and ratings from people to drive sales.
Here’s an offer example based on these seven psychological triggers from Bruno Nwogu, a seven-figure Affiliate Marketer from Nigeria.
Be sure to have an irresistible offer, as it could be the only reason people get into your sales funnel.
Discover all you need for a high-converting sales funnel. Use this Sales Funnel Checklist
#2. Create a landing page for opt-ins
A landing page is your opportunity to connect with your audience and offer valuable content before you bring them to your sales funnel. It is like every other web page, but with one singular focus, helping you capture leads.
It becomes more effective when there’s a high-value lead magnet in front. So when prospects come to download your lead magnet, they fill out the opt-in form and are lured into your sales funnel.
Most successful affiliate marketers write thought-provoking copy to stir up certain emotions from their audience, include testimonials from lots of people to back their claim, and a call to action to help prospects make a decision faster.
Here’s a typical landing page example from Bruno, a multiple seven-figure affiliate marketer from Nigeria.
A good landing page has the following features;
- A daring promise
- Clear benefits
- Clear call-to-action
- Convincing copy
Landing pages are very important to creators looking to sell their digital products. Every word, sentence, and image leads to one action – converting prospects to leads and then to loyal paying customers.
The most effective landing pages contain two most important things – text and elements.
The texts, also known as copy, are written to compel the reader to take action. While the elements further complement the copy in influencing the reader to take action.
To write an effective copy convincing enough to your prospects, keep these tips in mind;
- Write for your audience
- Make your sentences short and sharp
- Use bullet points or numbered lists
- Showcase your brand personality
- Use subheadings to break up large chunks of text.
You can also include images and videos that further talk about your product and convince prospects to download it.
Alternatively, you can have a sales page that helps you to sell your products. But that depends on the type of sales funnel you’re building and your goal for it.
However, if you want to capture leads, nurture them, and pitch your products to them later, have a landing page.
With Selar’s page builder feature, you can create ideal landing pages designed to drive traffic to your funnel and convert prospects to customers. The best part? It’s easy to use with no technicality required.
#3. Offer a free product
A free product, also known as a lead magnet is what you offer to your prospects in exchange for their email address.
Through lead magnets, you can capture the attention of your audience, collect their email addresses to build your list, and pitch your paid products to them. In a study by Hubspot, roughly 50% of marketers use lead magnets to capture emails, 40% don’t use them, and about 10% don’t know if they are or aren’t.
The great thing about using lead magnets is the awareness it brings to your business by helping you generate more qualified leads. In other words, bringing in more traffic. These qualified leads eventually become paying customers.
However, in a bid to lure customers to your business, you need to be careful to not give out too much information. That’s because when you give off all your valuable ideas, there’s nothing left to charge for.
Fortune Nnamdi, a multiple seven-figure sales and marketing expert explains the concept of Lead magnets below;
50% of marketers who start using lead magnets report higher conversion rates than those who didn’t.
This is why lead magnets are an essential part of your marketing strategy. When you offer something of value, your customers get what they want, you get emails and everyone wins.
Reading further down the thread, Fortune Nnamdi shows how using lead magnets has provided mind-blowing results in a short period of time.
Lead magnets can be ebooks, mini-courses, white papers, reports, case studies, discounts/offers, or even a trial subscription.
When people see it as a free and valuable product, they become excited to give you their email addresses if that’s all it takes.
Learn more about Lead Magnet and how you can use them to grow your business.
#4. Create a content strategy x email sequence
A content strategy helps you to create content for customers at different stages of the sales funnel that caters to their pain points and offers solutions to them.
For your sales funnel to be complete and provide the best results, you need to have a content strategy.
- How are you going to increase awareness of your product?
- How will you gain their trust?
- How will you nurture your leads to become loyal paying customers?
- And so much more…
“A sustainable content strategy allows you to target prospects with unique, stage-specific content that can help convert them into leads and paying customers.”
Moses Clement, Digital Marketing & B2B SaaS Freelance writer.
For the top of the funnel, prospects have a specific problem and are looking to find solutions for it. They are not ready to buy yet. They just want to fix their problem. Content ideas for this category can include how-to articles or basic explainer videos.
In the middle of the funnel, prospects have a deeper interest and are not just looking for quick fixes anymore. They want to understand the problem they have and the best way to fix it such that they never have the same issue again. Content ideas you can create at this point include; ebooks, mini-courses, and thought leadership courses that buttress the topic.
For the bottom of the funnel content; prospect knows their problem and the type of solution they need. They just have to decide who to get it from. Your content and sales funnel strategy determines if they trust you enough to buy from you.
Nemanja Zivkovic, CEO, and Founder of Funky Marketing says, “Business needs a content strategy to attract the right people, educate them on the benefits of using their product, convert them into customers, and keep them as customers. Also, a content strategy will help you move potential customers down the sales funnel and keep them.”
This means having a content strategy is the Ultimate guide you need to make sales as an Affiliate marketer.
That’s because it helps you know what type of content to share, when to share it, and the frequency at which you should publish it. Ultimately, it helps you to know what type of content your prospect needs on their buying journey.
#5. Create an email automation
The role of technology, amongst other things, is to automate lots of manual processes and help you to save time. Email automation is one of such ways to save time and resources and focus on the important parts of your business – driving leads to your funnel.
Additionally, with email marketing automation, you can passively earn your affiliate marketing commission even without actively promoting the product.
Use your email service provider to create email series with different goals. Your goal can vary as an affiliate marketer. It could be to;
- Nurture a relationship with a new customer
- Educate prospects on the benefits of a service or product
- Influence a prospect to buy from you.
With Selar, you can integrate your favorite email service provider (Mailchimp, Convertkit) and send targeted emails to your leads. Here’s a walk-through video of how to do so.
A typical email series automation comprises three stages. First, is the value stage. This is where you provide value upfront that lures prospects to your funnel. It could be because of a webinar you hosted, an IG live session you had, or a free downloadable resource. This is the beginning of your relationship with customers so take out everything that may make you sound sales-y.
The next stage is the nurturing stage. You can also call it the thought leadership stage. It is where you share high-quality content that’s valuable to your audience and positions you as an expert in your field.
Also share practical examples of how the strategies you share have produced results for you. There’s no need to overshare. Just real-life examples convincing enough for them.
The final stage is the sales stage. Here, you focus on including the right call-to-actions in your copy and sound sales-y. You can also include upsells to gather more revenue.
Here’s why.
You’ve delivered on your promise to help them solve a problem. You’ve even shared extra helpful tips for when they encounter a different scenario.
Now, it’s time to receive what you’ve given off. And according to the laws of reciprocity, you are more likely to receive when you give.
So, as long as you’ve given off value, be bold enough to request it in form of a purchase. You’ve earned it.
#6. Create a sales page for your product
Typically, companies already have sales pages for their products so you may not have to worry about creating one.
All you may need to do is drive traffic to the sales page so prospects can buy directly and you get your commission.
However, if there’s none available, then you should consider creating a sales page. That’s where all the magic happens.
A sales page is like every other web page that directs your prospect to one thing – buying your product. Every word, sentence, and image leads to one action – influencing your student’s buying decision.
To build an effective and successful sales page, you need to have the right elements on the page. The most effective sales pages contain two most important things – text and elements.
The texts, also known as copy, are written to compel the reader to take action. While the elements further complement the copy in influencing the reader to take action.
Take a look at this response from a Marketer for example,
It tells you that while a sales page primarily has one job which is to sell your product, it should also speak to the user about why he/she needs to get the product. That’s why you need to speak about benefits always.
We’ve written a full guide on Sales page for online courses. Check it out to know what you need for an effective sales page.
#7. Share high-quality content online
As a rule of thumb, keep your customers coming back for more. Law 11 of Robert Greene’s 48 Laws of Power says, “Learn to Keep People Dependent on You”.
When you give off everything you know, you lose relevance because there’s nothing to put a price on anymore. Even in marketing, when you give off the best of you all at once, there’s no reason for people to come back to you.
So how do you keep people coming back for more?
By continually sharing valuable content online. Let people know they can always count on you for insights into a particular subject matter.
And as you use that to capture their attention you can turn it into a specific desire and offer your product as a solution.
High-quality content is relative. So to stand out from the rest, include unique perspectives to the content.
For example, everyone knows that good content helps your SEO. You can include your point of view by saying, “Yes, good content helps SEO, but content that satisfies the user intent is the real deal.”
Notice how the two statements say the same thing but have different angles to them?
Here’s a statement about sharing value online from Bruno Nwogu, a multiple seven-figure Affiliate Marketer.
Play around with the different content formats to turn your prospects into loyal paying customers.
#8.Drive Traffic to Your Sales Funnel
This is the last but most important of all stages. To make money as an affiliate marketer, there must be people you’re selling to. And to get these people, you need to meet them where they are.
Some of the best ways to drive traffic to your sales funnel include;
- Offer lead magnets
- Share free content on social media
- Run ads
- Place an opt-in form on your website
- Invest in SEO
- Create thought-provoking landing pages
- Include CTAs on your copy
- Host webinars
- Partner with influencers
- Use video marketing
We’ve written a full guide on how to drive traffic to your sales funnel. You may want to check it out and get started immediately.
Start Now
Building a sales funnel for affiliate marketing isn’t as hard as it sounds. It’s as easy as having an irresistible offer, developing a content strategy, setting up email automation, and building sales pages you can drive traffic to.
Afterward, monitor your sales funnel for more opportunities to improve and do better. That’s how you get to make mind-blowing figures like other affiliate marketers.
The journey is long, but you can start now by creating your lead magnet and hosting it on Selar, or a landing/sales page with Selar’s page builder feature.
