I’ve been running a successful Amazon affiliate marketing site for more than a year, making thousands of dollars per month from sales on my site. But after much trial and error, I’ve found that the one vital piece of information that I lacked was click-throughs. I knew that people were visiting my site and doing my videos’ recommended activities, but I didn’t know how effective my pitches were in getting them to click on the links to make a purchase. That is until I found out from a friend of mine that tracked conversions for a living that the numbers don’t lie, and she helped me to fix my site’s weak spots. So in this article, I will walk you though my process of tracking links in AWeber, from video to product to sales, and what you can learn from it. I’ll also include some nifty tools that you can use to analyze and optimize your affiliate marketing efforts.
Why Are You Tracking Links In The First Place
When I first started out as a digital marketer, I was under the impression that affiliate marketing, also known as performance marketing, was just a form of advertising where you place ads on websites that you own and get paid when someone clicks on the ad or takes a specific action (like buying a product). Well, as it turns out, this is only part of the picture. To be able to measure the effectiveness of your affiliate marketing campaigns, you need to be tracking the links that you’re driving to (also known as “conversion tracking”) in addition to measuring ad impressions and clicks. Why? Well, when someone clicks on an affiliate link or watches a video and buys a product after doing so, yet never made it to your site, you don’t know how effective your ad campaign really was. This is why most affiliate marketers will tell you to track the links that you drive to, so that you can optimize your campaign and figure out what’s working and what needs to be changed to increase conversions. If you don’t track the links, you’ll never know if a particular campaign tactic is working or not.
The Importance Of Video In Increasing Consumer Awareness And Generating Leads
In case you’re wondering, video isn’t going anywhere, and it’s not a fad. According to HubSpot Blogs research, 79% of consumers currently use video in their day-to-day lives, and this number is steadily increasing. Even if you’re hesitant to use video on your site solely for marketing purposes, there are dozens of other reasons why you should definitely include it.
The first reason is that consumers now prefer to consume content in video format. One study found that videos attract 24% more views than articles, and 42% more views than text-based content. Videos also work well on social media, where users can interact with content via social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
Here’s another fun stat: 57% of consumers have watched a food or drink product’s testimonial or review before purchasing the item. So if you have a food or drink product that you’re promoting, it would be wise to create a short testimonial video (around 30 seconds) to see if this will increase customer trust and engagement.
In addition to making your site more accessible to consumers, video also has the ability to engage them. If a video shows that a product can meet their needs, solve a problem they’re facing or simply entertains them, then they’re more likely to be interested in the product or service.
How To Track Links In AWeber Step By Step
If you’re brand new to affiliate marketing, tracking links can seem like a daunting task, so here’s some helpful direction on how to make it easier. First, you should set up a Google Analytics account, which you can learn more about here. Once you have your Google Analytics account set up, you can use their free Google Analytics tool to track the links that people are landing on your site. You’ll find this under the “admin” menu in your Google Analytics dashboard. Simply enter your website URL into the field, and then click on the “Start tracking link now” button.
As soon as you click on the button, you’ll be taken to a new page where you can choose the type of links you want to track. To start, choose “internal” links, which are links that come from your own site. These will not be tracked by Google Analytics. For example, if you create a link to a product that is sold on your site, but the link also goes to an Amazon page where you’ve posted about a different product, then these links will not be tracked by Google Analytics. You can also choose to track “affiliate links” or “commercial links” in the same way.
Setting Up Goals & Segments For Your Affiliate Marketing Campaign
Now that you have your analytics tool set up and linked to your AWeber account, you can enter your sales goals and key performance indicators (KPIs) for your affiliate marketing campaign. You’ll need to set these early on in your campaign, so that you can track your progress toward reaching your goals. For example, maybe you want to set a goal of getting three qualified leads to sign up for your free trial of Acuity marketing software by April 1st. Once you have your sales goals and KPIs set up, you can track your progress throughout the year by looking at your analytics reports.
Creating Unique, Long-Haul Keywords For Each Blog Post
If you’re running a blog with a lot of content, it’s important to make sure that your keywords are relevant to each blog post you create. When someone searches for a product or service that you promote, your blog post will appear below the results, enticing them to click on your content.
For example, if you run a blog about lifestyle, fashion and style, you’ll want to make sure that your blog post titles and headlines include keywords like “lifestyle,” “fashion” and “style.” When someone searches for those keywords, your blog post will appear above the results, giving you the opportunity to convince them to click on your content.
Setting Up Email Marketing
If you have a large following on social media, you might consider using email marketing to stay in touch with your audience. There are plenty of sophisticated software packages available that can help you get the most out of your email marketing tool, like HubSpot and Marketo. With these types of tools, you can automate email campaigns, mass emailing lists of people and track the results of your email marketing efforts in real-time.
Tracking Video Campaigns On Behance
If you’re running a video marketing campaign on a budget, it’s important to track what’s working and what isn’t. One of the best tools free of charge that I’ve found for video tracking is Behance. With Behance, you can create event videos (like product demos, webinars or how-to articles) from your smartphone or desktop, then follow the progress of these videos in real-time. This makes it easy to measure the results of your online marketing efforts, regardless of whether you use Google Analytics or another analytics platform.
Learn From The Best
If you want to be able to track the results of your affiliate marketing efforts, there are several platforms that can help you out. One of the best free tools available is called Linky, which allows you to create and follow detailed links to everything on the web. These links will track your clicks, as well as the conversions (i.e., sales or leads) that you generate from these clicks. For example, if you’re running an affiliate marketing campaign for a clothing store, you can use Linky to create a unique link for each product that you promote on your site. Then, when someone clicks on one of these links, you can easily track the conversion on your store’s sales page.
Another great free tool for tracking links is Searcheze, which works in a similar fashion to Linky but instead of connecting you to the entire web, it only shows you the best results of your search queries. This can help you to find the right keywords without having to enter a lot of information. After entering your search terms, you’ll see a list of keywords and their estimated search volumes. When you find a keyword that has enough search volume to make a difference, you can use this tool to find the best performing articles, blogs and videos that are optimized for that keyword.