Affiliate marketers use affiliate landing pages for various marketing purposes. However, the two main purposes of a landing page are to promote an affiliate product or to collect email addresses (sometimes both.)
A landing page is an essential tool for all affiliate marketers. At some point, you will want to create a sales funnel or opt-in page and you will need landing pages to get the job done.
I’ll share how you can use landing pages for marketing purposes, how to create your own landing pages, as well as how I use landing pages in my own business.
The Squeeze Page or Opt-in Page
The most common use of a landing page is to collect your visitor’s email address. This type of page is also called a squeeze page.
That is because you offer some type of freebie to literally “squeeze” your visitor into inputting their email address.
You can, of course, collect more than an email address. If you want to collect a visitor’s first name and phone number, you can do so.
However, many affiliate marketers focus primarily on an email address.
In order to get more of your visitors to submit their email address, it helps to provide a free incentive. This is what is referred to as a lead magnet.
Below is a screen capture of one of my own landing pages. The purpose of this page is to collect email addresses.
As you can see, I offer a free 5-day email course in exchange for a visitor’s email address. You can offer whatever you want.
A popular lead magnet is a free guide of some kind in PDF format. For example, if you were promoting a keto diet product, you could offer a free guide of keto recipes.
In order for people to get your free guide, they would have to input their email address plus any other fields you may have on your form.
Email Autoresponder Service
In order to collect your visitor’s email address, you will need a place to store them as well as being able to schedule and send emails.
The software that can do this is called an autoresponder. An autoresponder service will store the email addresses and other contact information that you collect into a database.
The job of the autoresponder is to send out email messages that you’ve created in advance. You can schedule these messages to go out at specific times.
The autoresponder service that I use is AWeber. It is a very popular autoresponder service used by many internet marketers. I like the service because it is easy to use.
The Sales Page
Another popular use of a landing page is as a sales page. Many internet marketers use a single landing page to promote their product or service.
You may have come across the long-form sales page before. They have been in use for as long as I can remember. One-page sales pages convert well which is why they are still in use today.
SamCart is a shopping cart platform that specializes in the 1-page sales page. You can easily create a sales page with the checkout form and upsell option on the same page.
You can test out SamCart using their 14-day free trial.
Sales Funnel Pages
You can also utilize landing pages in a sales funnel or marketing funnel. This is when the main landing page sends the visitor to another landing page which can have an upsell or down-sell.
Sales funnels can be simple or they can be complex. The easiest way to create a sales funnel is by using sales funnel software. ClickFunnels is awesome software for creating marketing funnels.
The key with sales funnels is to sell a low-priced product up front and then promote a high-ticket product or recurring fee (subscription-based) product later on.
For example, you may have seen the “free book” offers that some marketers promote. They offer a free book and the customer only has to pay for shipping.
This type of funnel does two things. First, it qualifies customers that may eventually buy from you again and it enables you to upsell a high-ticket product, subscription-based product, etc.
The most basic sales funnel can be two to three pages.
The Bridge Page
A bridge page is a type of landing page that displays after you’ve collected a visitor’s contact information on your initial landing page.
Many affiliate marketers utilize a bridge page to pre-sell visitors on an affiliate offer.
As you can see in the image above, the bridge page is the second page of the funnel. You can post a video or it can be all text that tells the visitor about the offer which will be presented on the next page.
A percentage of people that land on your bridge page may buy the product that you’re pre-selling. Others will not. Either way, you have their email address and have permission to continue contacting them.
Driving Traffic to Your Affiliate Landing Page
Affiliate landing pages are effective but only when you have a consistent flow of traffic going to them. You can generate traffic in a number of ways.
Some of the best free methods for traffic generation are blogging, social media, and YouTube.
Many people don’t want a blog or don’t see the benefit of maintaining one. However, blogging is a powerful free traffic generator.
YouTube is another effective free traffic generator. I get tons of traffic and clicks to my landing pages and affiliate products from videos that I post on YouTube.
Initially, I was hesitant to create videos but I’ve slowly become more comfortable on camera. You don’t have to be on camera if you don’t want to.
You can create screencast videos of your computer screen. I’ve done plenty of those and they work quite well. The screencast software I use is called Screencast-o-matic.com and it works great.
Social media platforms are effective. I’ve found Instagram to work well if you utilize the stories feature.
Overall, I recommend focusing on one traffic source, building it up, and then moving on to another. It is a time-consuming process to try and be effective on all of them at once.
Each platform takes time to manage. My primary traffic sources are my blogs, YouTube, and Instagram.
It has taken me time to develop each (currently working on Instagram) but once they’re working, they can deliver traffic 24/7.
My Closing Thoughts on an Affiliate Landing Page
Affiliate landing pages are an invaluable tool for selling products and services.
As you progress in your affiliate marketing journey, you will likely want to create landing pages to promote affiliate offers.
I have a background in web developing so it is easy for me to create my own landing pages. Most people require software to get the job done.
I’ve mentioned some software above but I will recap them below so that you have some options for creating your own landing pages.
- LeadPages – great for single landing pages or sales funnels
- ClickFunnels – create simple or complex sales funnels
- SamCart – specializes in 1-page sales pages