Today’s post is all about understanding your readers! What do they want. What do they need?? This is the key to good affiliate marketing.
The first step to rocking affiliate marketing isn’t finding your perfect affiliate product. It’s understanding your audience and what they need.
You shouldn’t even think about choosing products to promote until you know who your readers are, what problems they have and what solutions you can give them.
This is the key to creating content that your reader loves and how to convert them into buyers. The best part, you’ll be leading them to purchasing things that are useful and that they actually want!
I know a lot of people have a hard time with the smarmy salesman image. But essentially as bloggers who make an income, you are in sales.
But there are no sleazy sales tactics here. No, you are going to figure out what is troubling your audience, and give them solutions you both feel good about.
As always, this post may contain affiliate links. This means if you click on a link and make a purchase, I may get a commission, at no extra cost to you. I only promote products I love and use. You can read my full disclosure here.
So let’s get into it.
Contents
Understanding What Your Audience Needs
No matter what type of product or service you want to promote it’s imperative that you understand who your audience is, and what makes them tick.
In fact, the beginning of any type of business is to find out who your audience is and get to know their desires, wants, and needs.
Find out what kind problems they have, then look for ways to solve them.
If you can offer solutions to your audience you’ll do a much better job at promoting any type of product or service. It will be the answer to their prayers.
Once you know your audience you’ll have a better understanding of how to speak to them and write for them.
You’ll understand them so well that they will feel like they know you and they’ll realize that you are also committed to providing them products and services that they not only want, but truly need.
Not only that, they’ll quickly realize that you’re a real person, and one that they can count on and trust.
Affiliate marketing is an awesome way to earn money. Real money that can pay your bills, take you on a vacation and even help you quit your day job!
But, the real money won’t come unless you truly understand who your audience is and what they need.
This is a big topic that Michelle from Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing talks about in her course.
She makes $50,000 per month through affiliate sales alone. Her course is amazing, and perfect for those wanting to see more affiliate sales.
How to Get To Know Your Audience
So… How do you understand who your reader is? What they want?? What do they need?
I know. I know!
Reading this sort of things made my eyes roll back into my head when I was starting out too!
But I promise, it’s really not all that complicated. Stay with me.
Start With What You Know
It’s so much easier to market to an audience you already know. You can even be in your own market!
I find a lot of blogs actually start out with this. So many mom blogs are born from moms writing about things that they struggled with but found solutions to. (My own blogging journey started out this way.)
This makes it so much easier to understand your readers, because they are essentially you, a few years ago.
-OR-
Research What You Want to Know
Even if you want to move outside of your comfort zone to an entirely new market unfamiliar to yourself and what you already know you can do market research to find a target audience.
In fact, even if your market consists of people like you, you should still do research. Our own experiences are subjective, so you need some objective information to ensure that you really do know that audience.
Key Areas for Researching Your Audience
To research your audience, I suggest checking out Facebook groups. There are so many interest specific groups where you can ask questions and connect with an audience in that field.
Now, when using other peoples Facebook groups it’s important to know the rules and group etiquette.
Don’t join a bunch of groups and just start advertising your articles or services. This is not only ineffective, but it’ll get you kicked out of a lot of the groups.
Instead, start conversations, help answer questions and be sure to ASK questions! Become an active part of these mini-communities and get to know these people.
Here are some of the key things you want to research about your audience:
Audience Demographics
The main information here are their general basics. Pinpoint information like:
- Age
- Gender
- Income
- Education
- Marital Status
- Do they have kids
What Kind of Lifestyle Do They Live
Values and lifestyle are super important for you to understand about your target audience.
This will help you find products that help solve their problems and which price point they can afford.
For example, if your targeting frugal moms on a budget, trying to recommend a $500 finance course will probably be a total flop.
You’ll want to find out what exactly will help them create and stay on a budget, within a price range that doesn’t make them cringe.
It’s also important to know how they form their opinions and get their information and whether they are early adopters or slow responders.
Some people want to cut to the chase, get what they need and go. Other want to be nurtured into the experience and have time to think about it.
Create an Ideal Reader Profile
Once your done researching your market, you should then be able to create your ideal reader profile.
Just create a profile of one customer that you will write and create all of your marketing material for.
It’s so much easier if you give that one person a job, an income level, and even a name and assign them children if that is your target.
This fake person will be the person for whom you write all blog posts, all social media posts and emails to.
Listen and Adapt
Over time you’ll get to know your audience better. By interacting with them, asking them questions and listening to their conversations with eachother, you’ll be able to truly understand what their problems are. They may even evolve over time as society shifts and changes.
This means keeping up with your market research is important.
Conclusion
Only with proper market research can you determine who your audience is, and finally, what they need. You’re only going to choose affiliate products that solve problems for your target audience, and once you do that, you’ll start making more money than you ever thought possible.
Think about your audience. Who are they, what do they do, and what do they really want and need?
If you’re ready to start making real progress with affiliate marketing, I cannot recommend Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing. This is THE most popular affiliate marketing course out here, and for a good reason!
I took it, and it was worth every penny. You can read more with my full review here: Making Sense of Affiliate Marketing
