Something Most Marketers Don't Know But Should

[domainiac]

Sorry if this post goes a little long...

I wanted to share with you a common mistake that many affiliate marketers make and how to use the knowledge to your advantage.

In the real world, I teach selling. I am mainly in the midwest and have taught classes from Chicago to Dallas and Cincinnati to St Louis.

One of the many things I teach is setting the customers frame of mind. Without going into too much detail, great sales people are always in control of the sale but seldom seem like they are. They make the customer feel empowered to make a choice when any choice is good for the sales person.

Too many choices or too few choices will negatively effect close rates.

That is why review style pages work so well with affiliate marketing. 2-3 choices is the "sweet spot" for most customers. It allows them to feel as if they have made an educated well thought out choice. That they were in charge of what they were going to buy. The reality is that any of the choices would make the sales person happy.

There is one crucial point that most review sites miss. This is something that is the key to making sales. There must be distinctive differences between choices.

There needs to be enough similarity between the choices so that they focus on the customers core want but if they are too similar customers have a difficult time making a choice. In fact, they are afraid of making the wrong choice. At that point, all the salesperson (or affiliate in this case) has left is hoping their recommendation is compelling enough to trigger a buying decision.

If you look at most review sites (maybe some of your own), they will have 3 products that typically have the same price, the same offer and sometimes almost identical design.

There is nothing to trigger a buying decision other than the sales page and the affiliate's recommendation.

I have taken review sites and changed my #2 choice to a product in that category that was either a different price or had a different angle. More times than not it increased conversions of my #1 rated product and even generated sales for my #2 product.

You see, some customers will buy based on price alone while others will buy on perceived value. That perceived value can be in the form of quantity of offer or quality of offer.

A classic example was the run your car on water niche in the spring of 2008. You had one product @ $97 and many at $49. Putting 3 of the $49 products actually lowered overall conversions. Placing the $97 option as the #2 or the #3 choice raised conversions of the #1 choice. You also would get sales from the $97 site. Why? Some people feel if they pay more they will get a better product. (perceived value)

This is not always an easy thing to accomplish with clickbank because of so many copy cat products. One product is popular then there are 12 identical products at the same price with similar pages.

If this is the case, you must create the differentiation. Some try things like; tech support not as good or plans were more difficult to follow, etc.

This will work to some extent but really what you are doing here is elimination selling. You eliminate other choices for whatever reason leaving the customer with only one choice. This method is fine if the customer is ready to buy coming in. However, you have taken away that feeling of empowerment from the customer. They are only making the choice of to buy or not to buy rather than which one they want.

You want to avoid any negative description on any of the 3 reviews.

It will better serve your purpose to highlight a feature on your #1 pick even if all 3 have the same feature. There are a lot of tricks to doing this (I can't give out all of the secrets).

The best scenario is finding a niche where there is products with differences. This is especially true if you can find this in a Hot niche.

That is why I developed GreenLivingKit.com (shameless plug)

There are some great products in the DIY energy niche. However, they are all basically the exact same thing for the exact same price. You could follow my tips above and find some small differences and call those out or you could promote something on your page that was actually similar enough but different.

Green Living Kit offers the customer a choice. More products at a higher price. Some customers will say ooh this one is less money and buy one of the $49 products. Some will say ooh this one offers more products and purchase the green living kit.

It will raise your conversions even if you put it #2 on your page. People will have a true choice. They will feel empowered to make a buying decision.

Those customers that are now leaving your review site because they don't feel inspired to buy will be inspired. They are making a smart choice (the smart choice to a customer is making a choice that matches up with their personal core buying triggers...price, quality, etc.)

In short, a true choice will increase conversions.

I hope you will use this post and look at your sites. See if there are changes you can make to increase your conversions. Look for alternate products to put in your #2 spot to differentiate your offers.

If you are in the energy niche, I hope you use this post to do the above with my new product green living kit.

This is a small but very important insight into how a customers frame of mind can completely change the outcome of a sale and how you can help mold that frame of mind.

I could go on for hours on just this one topic (it probably feels like I have already ) but I will end it here.

Greg

[bl4ckmaN^]

Greg totally agree with you on review sites. They are very poweful, BUT only if used correctly. (as you've explained)

However, I'm sure you understand that these type of sites can't be used in every niche.

[mytvtalk]

great advice thankyou

[jimmyslyder]

informative.....Keep up the good work...

[edrectory]

Great information . I reckon what I'll do is use review style landing pages to crack some smaller niches up, smaller niches that have products that are similar, do the same job and can be reviewed. I'll target like mid tails for these and see where I get .

[endaaank]

This will be a great way to start making new review sites. Thanks!

[JoseArmando]

Wow what a distinction! I would never have come up with that myself.

Basically here's the thing,

even though we're pulling niche traffic, say "weight loss"... that doesn't mean there's only ONE segment of buyers in there...

In fact, there's multiple segments and that's the EXACT reason why the narrower you go with your pitch the higher the conversion.

What you're doing here is appealing to different segments of the same traffic on a single landing page.

I'd even dare to assume that the most optimal way of doing review pages would be to segment your traffic into three chunks.

So weight loss would be segmented for example:
- people who are seeking for the quick fix and don't care about the price as long as they get their result FAST (appeal to the quick fix side of the product)
- people who primarily look at how much are they paying (tell them they're getting a great package at amazingly low price)
and maybe
- people who want to achieve their goal in the most healthy way possible (tell them how the plan will benefit their body on the long run)

Ideally, after narrowing it down to three huge chunks we'd be able to find something for most of the people that are being sent to you.

There are many different things going on with this technique... The most important one is that once you segment the market and find EXACTLY what each segment wants you'll connect with these people waaayyyy better than what'd happen if you just had broad pitch.

It's the feeling they get when they read pitch that was narrowed to their needs and desires when they go "Whoa I NEED to get this!"

And the best way to achieve this is to connect with them on a personal level - so that from their perspective we're almost reading their minds since we know exactly what they want.

I mean... we could go even further with this...

Instead of rating products

1. best one
2. second best one
3. third best

We could just segment our landing page with three choices.. None is better than another, they're just different types of offers for different people.

1. Fastest results
2. Best price
3. etc

Now that I've thought of it... Maybe.. the best thing to do is not to segment the traffic into what they desire... but into what they get triggered by.

Some people are triggered solely by "social proof"... This means that when they see that other people like something they want it too.

So it might be useful testing three choices like this:

1. Highest quality (highest perceived value)
2. Best choice by readers (social proof)
3. Doctors choice (authority)

The conclusion... possibilities are endless. Maybe there's no system that's the best for all niches. Once you're operating on a big scale and funneling huge amounts of traffic you might want to see which technique works best for that specific niche...

[domainiac]

@Jose

You really got it. You are right about the possibilities being endless. Just having a different way of looking at it will make your landing pages better.

It can be difficult to know the best approach but you will know to no longer use the same approach.

Once you have developed your ability to do this, you will never again have #1 pick 5 stars, #2 pick 4 stars or anything like that.

Your products will have differences real or perceived (hopefully different in the trigger they pull) yet be similar enough to appeal to the overall niche.

Greg

[rolf]

This is a great explanation Greg, I have seen the differences in offerings described before but never "clicked" with me to accentuate these differences myself. So often I've just given no.1 five stars and no.2 four stars.

So I've just written a green energy review showcasing your product and swerd's and emphasising the differences.

[domainiac]

This is a great explanation Greg, I have seen the differences in offerings described before but never "clicked" with me to accentuate these differences myself. So often I've just given no.1 five stars and no.2 four stars.

So I've just written a green energy review showcasing your product and swerd's and emphasising the differences.

I hope just thinking a different way when developing a review site will help in conversions regardless of the niche you are promoting.