It’s often said that affiliate marketing is a sure-fire way to boost your business. It’s true and false at the same time.
True, because it’s a performance marketing. This means, in other words, that an advertiser only pays according to the results obtained.
Wrong, because if your campaign isn’t set up properly, you’ll have trouble achieving a good ROI. It’s even possible to lose money if you choose the wrong affiliate partner and/or compensation method.
In a previous post, we talked about
marketing personas
that help you get to know your target precisely. In this article, we take a closer look at the customer journey.
What is the customer journey?
The customer journey can mean :
- The actions taken by a person from the from the identification of a need to the purchasing phase ;
- The customer/company relationship.
Note: for this second proposition, we can also speak of a customer life cycle.
Here, we’re going to take a closer look at the customer journey, which is similar to the buying journey in that we’re going to follow a user step by step, from discovery to action and the post-purchase follow-up.
You’ll see that affiliate marketing can meet the needs of all users, regardless of their position in the customer journey.
The affiliate marketing customer journey: discovery phase
First stage of the customer journey: the discovery or attention phase. Here we want to offer our targets the right the right information to interest them.
We work on the assumption that Internet users don’t know us, and that before we can make them want to call on us, we need to show them our expertise on a specific subject. our expertise on a specific subject.
We therefore use a communication strategy focused on gaining visibility. You need to attract a large number of visitors if you hope to convert any of them.
At this stage, social networks are very powerful affiliation tools. It is also advisable to create a landing page on your site and share banners leading to it.
Another possibility: ask influencers to talk about your product and/or service.
Here, we need to position ourselves as specialists. Your prospect is in the research phase, and as a company, it’s vital to show him that you have the answer to his needs.
The affiliate marketing customer journey: the interest phase
Once you’ve given visitors the opportunity to find out more about you, your services and your products, you now need to arouse their interest.
Of course, it’s always necessary to reassure them of your expertise and your ability to meet their expectations. However, we are entering the pre-sales phase. This means, in other words, that we’re gradually moving from one information phase to a marketing phase.
The most popular affiliate business levers at this stage are emailing, shopping guides and price comparison sites.
Your prospect hasn’t made up his mind yet, and you need to give him a helping hand to to make them want to trust you.
Affiliate marketing customer journey: action phase
Once you’ve attracted your prospect, you need to convert them. Here again, affiliation can help you by providing interesting solutions.
We are thinking, for example, of
cashback
and promotional codes which are increasingly popular with Internet users. But also at retargeting which consists of calling back to you people who have left the purchase path with a promotional message, often including an offer that must be seized as a matter of urgency.
The objective at this stage : to remove the final obstacles to the act of buying, so as to definitively transform a prospect into a customer.
The affiliate marketing customer journey: the loyalty phase
You might think that the customer journey ends when your target has performed the desired action (purchase act, newsletter subscription, shopping guide download, etc.). However, it should be noted that the cost of customer recruitment is much higher than the cost of customer retention. That’s why it’s essential to make your former customers want to buy from you in the longer term.
Here again, affiliates who can help you set up special offers such as promo code and/or cashback are aids not to be underestimated. Like the
retargeting
/remarketing which can facilitate the act of repurchasing by reminding your customers of you.
How to optimize your affiliate marketing customer journey?
After reading our article, you’ll have understood that the actions to be taken are not the same depending on how far along your prospect is in the customer journey. In addition, an interest in the customer journey enables us to identify the problem phase(s). In other words, the moment when the target no longer wants to be in touch with the company.
Setting up a customer journey and precise KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) gives you the opportunity to know where the leakage is coming from and why you’re having trouble converting.
In this sense, you have surely understood that the customer journey on the web is similar to the notion of the conversion tunnel. In fact, the aim of these two concepts is the same: to identify the different stages leading up to the sale of a product or service, in order to offer specific (and personalized) responses at the right moment in the relationship. However, the conversion tunnel stops at the moment of conversion, the customer journey goes a step further, looking at the entire company/customer relationship (including long-term loyalty).
In all cases, these are concepts that we apply on a daily basis at Casaneo to offer our customers quality services. Are you looking for an affiliation platform capable of supporting and advising you on all the issues related to your affiliation campaigns? Please contact us.
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