7 Simple Steps Any Beginner Can Create Affiliate Marketing Funnel That Converts
Do you want to make more affiliate sales? Have you been struggling to create a successful affiliate marketing funnel that converts visitors into buyers? You’re not alone. The truth is, most people struggle with this process, and they can’t figure out why their campaigns aren’t converting as they should be.
I will share seven actionable steps to build a fantastic affiliate marketing funnel from start to finish in this post (all the technicalities needed). These are the steps I use when creating my funnels, and your customers will love these tips too!
Are you ready to know about generating affiliate sales?
Now, let’s get started!
What Is An Affiliate Marketing Sales Funnel?
A sales funnel is a series of steps that a business takes to guide a potential customer from not knowing about the company, learning about the industry, and finally making a purchase. The funnel’s goal is to make it as easy as possible for someone to purchase without too much effort on their behalf.
So, an affiliate marketing sales funnel is simply a type of sales funnel designed for affiliate marketers who don’t have products or services. Most of the money they get comes from promoting products for other companies.
In fact, the sales funnel is available in almost all affiliate sites, no matter people are aware of it or not. Understanding the sales process, optimize and making some tweaks can help you get a significant result.
Is it sound great?
Keep reading; I will explain and show you why having an effective sales funnel can generate affiliate sales and get long-term success.
Stages Of An Affiliate Sales Funnel
Sales funnel affiliate marketing follows the basic principles of a buyer’s journey, which includes four stages: awareness, consideration, desire, and action.
Accordingly, a standard affiliate funnel often includes three main stages, each serving a different purpose:
- Stage #1: Involves driving traffic to your offer via SEO-written blog posts, paid ads with free offers, and social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, or Twitter.
- Stage #2: where you use that free offer to convert traffic. This stage aims to fill visitors in an email list to control their buying journey better and seize the golden chance to re-sell to them.
- Stage #3: Enables better conversion rates by warming up the audience with an email sequence or bridge pages. Eventually, you are ready to pitch your offer and convert them into consumers.
Why Affiliate Sales Funnel Important?
I have over three years of experience in affiliate marketing. I sell as many products as possible to generate my income online.
- It’s maybe products from Clickbank, Jv Zoo, or Warrior Plus.
- Books, tools, or online course training
- Look at the Funnel Secrets blog, I promote products from Clickfunnels and other tools related to the sales funnel.
And here are popular strategies that most affiliate marketers and I used to sell affiliate products.
Strategy #1: Create a blog post > write affiliate product review > Optimize for search engine results > hope customers buy
Strategy #2: Run some ads (Bing Ads, Youtube ads, PPC – Pay per click, Facebook Ads, etc.) > Drive paid traffic to a landing page (sometimes they push traffic to the affiliate sales page directly) > make profitable if we luck.
There is nothing wrong with these strategies. To be honest, it’s still working on these days (at least for me)
The problem is that you don’t control the traffic. This means if Google or Facebook changes their algorithm, all of your hard work for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or advertising can be thrown away in an instant!
This is the reason why you need to create sales funnels for your online business. Instead of driving traffic, we will convert them into a type that can be controlled and impact conversion rates!
To be clear: The sales funnel is not a conversion-boosting hack or magic key that helps you rich overnight. This is a marketing technique that you can add to your marketing campaign to get better results. Please don’t compare the methods, instead find a way to combine your sales funnel into each one (blog post, CPC, Facebook ads, or pull traffic from social media) that leverages their power for maximum results.
And here are the advantages of an affiliate funnel.
1. Build Trust with your audience
Most people tend to kick off their purchase journey of any product or service after a search. If you employ only ads, you risk losing up to 72% of potential buyers.
Consumers are likely to seek educational materials at this awareness stage other than just blog posts or affiliate links.
For this reason, it would be a great marketing tactic to offer free content and build trust be for sending them to the sales pitch.
2. Boost Conversion
A confused mind always says no.
The traditional website includes a navigation bar, sidebar, footer, and content containing many links directly to many places.
Even though a website can help you build authority in your market, but at the same time like a roadblock breaks your conversion.
Instead, the sales funnel is a series of landing pages. Each page has only one goal or call-to-action that guides your visitors through the process you want.
3. Having A List Of Potential Customers Means You Can Re-Marketing And Promote More Products In The Future.
When we come to affiliate marketing, we don’t have our own product or service. However, the best part is finding and joining a good affiliate program and promoting any affiliate product you want.
(An affiliate product with a high commission, CPL – Cost Per lead, offer lucrative and recurring commission, etc.)
The ideal affiliate marketer does not sell a product but instead gives the best solution to consumers by providing honest opinions and selling high-quality products.
Your website may get a lot of visitors. They visit, read the content of what interests them and then leave without buying anything. So having an email list can help you build authority and relationships with potential customers that could make them come back again in order to buy from you.
Besides, You can drive traffic to a new post or promote another affiliate product immediately by sending an email.
You own this traffic, so you should be able to use it as many times as desired!
4 Best Funnel For Affiliate Marketing
There are many different sales funnels types that you can find on the market to help you generate affiliate sales. Over years of experience and looking at hundreds of affiliate marketing sales funnel, I realize there are four friendly sales funnels for beginners.
- Lead Magnet Funnel
- Bridge Funnel
- Survey Funnel
- Membership Funnel
1. Lead Magnet Funnel
- The number of pages: 2
- Difficulty levels: Easy
The Lead Magnet funnel (or lead generation funnel) is a simple affiliate marketing funnel that you should start – Not only in affiliate but also any online marketing industry.
An essential thing in this funnel is attracting your audience by giving away a freebie that we call Lead Magnet (or bait).
Your affiliate product will be promoted inside the lead magnet or on the Thank You page. It’s ok If people leave and don’t buy anything because now you have their contact information to connect with them by email marketing.
I always use this on my website when it comes to converting a visitor into a lead and eventually turning them into customers.
2. Bridge Funnel
- The number of pages: 2 or 3
- Difficulty levels: normal
The Bridge Funnel is such as an upgrade version of Lead Magnet Funnel. After people submit the form on the opt-in page in this funnel, they will be directed to the bridge page.
As an affiliate marketer, you don’t control the main product pages.
The bridge page often includes a video or specific copy that emotionally connects your audience and pre-sell them before sending them to the sales process you don’t control.
3. Survey Funnel
- The number of pages: > 5
- Difficulty levels: Easy
The Survey Funnel is the best and most effective way to sell your affiliate products because you can create them almost for free and in less time.
The funnel starts with a short quiz before asking people to sign up for the offer. This will help them determine their personal best fit product that will automatically be sent to their inbox after they subscribe.
Depending on their answer before, you’ll introduce the affiliate product suitable for them on the answer page. So it makes your sales message more personalized and high convert.
4. Membership Funnel
- The number of pages: 4
- Difficulty levels: hard
The membership funnel is the most difficult to create, but it’s very effective. As an affiliate marketer, you will provide valuable training for free then promote your affiliate offer on the thank you page or introduce it as a resource in the membership area.
It is hard to create because the success of the sales funnel depends on the quality and value that your consumer takes.
So these are the most popular affiliate marketing funnel that converts really well and are friendly for beginner pick to start.
Pro Tip: There are a lot of effective sales funnel strategies that you can find on the internet (free webinar funnel, small priced course funnel, etc.). However, suppose you’re new in affiliate marketing or sales funnel. In that case, the bridge funnel is the best affiliate marketing funnel that you should build for the first (or next) affiliate marketing campaign.
How To Build An Affiliate Marketing Funnel?
I know that an affiliate marketing funnel may sound complicated to do. But don’t get intimidated because it’s not at all!
Now, I will share seven simple steps to build a successful sales funnel for affiliate marketing.
It’s time to get started, but before we go deep into it, here are the software that I use in this guide:
- Landing page builder: Clickfunnels
- Headline generating: Funnel Scripts
If you haven’t enough budget for Clickfunnels so you can use Leadpages or Systeme instead.
Read this post to know how to sign-up Funnel Scripts free level account.
Here is an entire workflow of the sales process.
1. Identify Your target audience
Identifying your target audience is essential because it allows you to better market to that specific group.
The apparent reason is that people in different age groups or demographics will have different needs, concerns, and preferences for the goods and services they are looking for.
Now, create an avatar profile so that you can get a clear picture of your ideal customer and tie them to specific products.
- Pain points
- Questions
- Roadblocks
- Desires
- Result they want
- etc
Remember that you do not create the market, they are always available out there, and your goal is to identify who you want to serve and understand them deeply.
There are many ways that you can use to find your customers questions and desire.
Method 1: visit Ubersuggest
- Look at the left navigation bar and click on “Keyword Ideas.”
- Type the keyword that you focus on, and click search
- Click on the “Questions” section
Ubersuggest helps you to list the question that people search on Google, including volume searches, so you can know the problem they face.
Method 2: Research on Quora to figure out people’s questions about your topic.
The cool thing is that you can read people’s answers and collect solutions. It’s really helpful when you create your lead magnet in step 2
You already know the questions and problems of your audience. Now, you can create a lead magnet (ebook, video, checklist, etc.) to solve their answer.
2. Create Lead Magnet
As mentioned above, your lead magnets or target offers should meet your target audience and chosen social platforms. Each type of product and service will work well with different kinds of offers.
If you sell the product on Clickbank, so many vendors are doing it for you, and you just bring it to give away for free.
On Clickbank marketplace, it’s accessible to checkout product affiliate tools.
Click on the link, you can see that vendors provide many resources to help your work easier.
In this case, I only focus on the “Free giveaways” and “Email Swipes” (we will talk about this in step 6)
Click on the link to download an ebook. Now you already have a lead magnet on your hand, so you can giveaway it for your audience for free.
What if the vendor doesn’t provide lead magnets for you to give away? Here are a few options that you could do:
- Based on the question you researched on step 1 + analyze competitors to create your lead magnet (DIY – Do It Yourself.)
- Create a guideline and hire freelancers on Fiverr do it for you
- Buy PLR content and rebrand it.
3. Create Opt-in Page
An opt-in page is designed to persuade anyone landing there to sign up to your email list for better control over a buyer’s journey. It should be right to the point and deliver the most convincing and compelling reasons why they should leave their email address there.
With Clickfunnels you can create entire sales funnel easily. In the dash board click on “Build a funnel” button to create a new campaign.
Clickfunnels provides two options includes:
- Classic editor (collect email, sell your product, and host webinars section)
- Funnel Cookbook builder (click on the “X” to close the pop-up)
If you’re a beginner, I highly recommend you should start with Funnel Cookbook builder because it has many beautiful template design
The goal of the affiliate sales funnel is to generate leads and send people to the affiliate sales page. So, in this case, I will tick on the “Generate leads” and “I want the Their Contact Info ” box on the left column.
As an affiliate marketer, it would be best to choose Bridge Funnel, Squeeze Page Funnel, and Lead Magnet Funnel.
Clickfunnels provides free and paid sales funnel template design, so you can pick which you love to start.
In this case, I pick Rippln – Bridge Funnel
Next, click on the “Edit Page” to customize your opt-in page
Also, you can add an image to your landing page quickly by dragging and dropping the icon
As you can see, customizing the landing page is very simple. You can do almost everything by using Clickfunnels.
It would help if you read the Funnel Hacker Cookbook, so you can understand how to create a beautiful landing page for non-design users.
A good opt-in page should list the most expected benefits with clear CTAs and social proofs. It also comes with a relevant promise. No one will be willing to give their emails without anything in return, so attracting them with a free offer doesn’t sound half bad.
Don’t underestimate this stage, as you can start a new relationship with potential leads and customers.
4. Create Bridge Page (Optional)
A bridge page offers you a good opportunity to connect and interact with the audience. There is often a short video of affiliate marketers, their reviews, testimonials, a CTA, and maybe a gift in this stage. This way can layer on social proof, gain more customers’ trust and drive more traffic.
The strategy is beneficial for cold audiences who have yet subscribed or shown interest in your products.
Finally, add your affiliate link on the call to action button to redirect your subscriber to the vendor’s sales process. (Where you’re making money)
5. Create Thank You Page
A Thank You page is where you express your gratitude and say thanks to those giving their information on the opt-in page. This page should be simple and offer them whatever you have promised to deliver.
The Thank You page is the best way to create trust and brand awareness among leads, making it easier to convince them to buy affiliate products and services.
6. Write Email Follow-up
The best part of an affiliate funnel is automation, saving you a great deal of time and effort to reach new leads. An automated email series can work cooperatively with an Opt-in page to capture more leads and guide them to purchase.
This email series should lead those new subscribers to the best features and benefits of your affiliate products.
7. Testing And Optimize
This last step is optional but can be extremely powerful in helping you get more sales. In this step, you A/B test your page and optimize it for better conversion.
In each step of the funnel, you can create any variation as you want to look for what works and what doesn’t
You should test the landing page from top to bottom of the funnel, and here is what you need to test:
- Headline
- Sales message (text, bullet points,…)
- page design (layout, button color, image, video, etc.)
- Your lead magnet
In most cases, changing your headline can have a significant impact on the conversion of visitors.
Funnel scripts are the perfect way to create an attention-grabbing headline. Just fill in some blanks and click on Build. Everything is done!
How To Drive Traffic To Affiliate Sales Funnel?
There are various ways to pour leads into the affiliate sales funnel, but implementing ads, SEO, and social media marketing is the fastest and best way to drive traffic and deliver great ROI.
Watch the video below to hear what Russell has revealed about affiliate marketing traffic strategy.
1. Running Ads
The best method to drive consistent and quick traffic is undoubtedly running paid ads on social platforms like YouTube, Facebook, or Google.
To save budgets and create a perfect tactic, focus on an ideal market and choose compatible ad targeting options accordingly instead of overwhelming yourself with too many audience segments.
We highly recommend targeting other influencers’ followers with the same audience to have the best starting point.
2. Search Engine Optimization
SEO involves organic ads that get your content in the Google rankings for its useful phrases.
While this method costs minimal budgets, it takes time and effort to generate, sometimes at least six months. But if you have a stable standing and commitment, your business will indeed become lucrative.
3. Influencer Marketing
In affiliate marketing, building a good relationship with influencers and famous individuals is the key to growing your business. Potential customers are more likely to hear from their idols or influencers rather than the businesses themselves.
Why not take some time to send out emails to those individuals and contact them in your space? The process is more time-consuming than other methods, but you will indeed feel satisfied with its results.
4. Solo Ads
Solo ads are often email-based and can be purchased from other email list owners. Those dedicated emails include an entire message about your promotion. This method is ideal for those on a tight budget yet still want to drive more traffic.
If you want to run a solo ads campaign, I highly recommend you should join the testimonial group to read reviews about sellers first.
5. Social Media
Undoubtedly, social media are the most lucrative platforms for affiliate marketers. From there, they can reach a wide range of audiences of all ages, genders, locations, and jobs.
But for each social platform, affiliates need to come up with different forms of content. YouTube, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and TikTok work uniquely.
Affiliate Marketing Funnel Examples
1. Spencer Mecham Funnel – Membership Funnel
Spencer Mecham is an affiliate marketing expert. He is a founder of Buildapreneur and Affiliate Secrets 2.0.
Look at his funnel, he already has a website similar to other marketers. The cool thing is that he attracts his target audience by giving away free courses.
After choosing the course that people are interested in, he’ll send them to the opt-in page.
After clicking on submit button, they will be directed to the bridge page. The landing page has a video explaining why they need email marketing software and convinces them to use one!
The button links to a company that he joins an affiliate program – where he can earn money for every sale made.
Finally, the membership area contains valuable video training. Also, he recommends his affiliate product as a tool and resource to help people work more accessible and more effectively.
2. Stephen J Larsen – Bridge funnel
Stephen J Larsen is a special speaker at Funnel Hacking Live, coached hundreds of people into millionaires, and is an affiliate expert.
This is a sales funnel that he used to promote the One Funnel Away Challenge program. It has an informative landing page with video and text explaining what people can get out of it, as well as bonuses for signing up!
What makes this funnel standout is Stephen provides an irresistible offer which up to $2535 value.It’s unique and helpful for people who take the course. He gives people the reason why they should buy from him instead of anyone else.
Once visitors click on the button, a pop-up appears so they will opt-in to his list before being directed to the product landing page.
Now, they’re joining Stephen’s list so he could send email follow-ups to build a relationship and sell other products or services in the future.
3. Instagram Secrets ebook funnel
As a beginner, it isn’t easy to create video training like Spencer or the confidence to make video like Stephen does then the Lead Magnet funnel is an excellent way to go.
On the first page, we give away a free ebook called 99 Instagram Secrets to attract people looking to generate traffic online by using Instagram.
Because my audience wants to generate traffic online. So, on the thank you page, I introduce to them the Traffic Secrets Book
While the sales funnel is simple but powerful. It helps me entice leads and make a lot of affiliate sales
4. Funnel Secrets Survey Funnel
Besides lead funnels, the survey funnel is the next one that helps me generate tons of email addresses online.
On the first page, I create short quiz questions to attract people who visit my site.
Based on their answer, I will send them to different pages that offer a product that suits their needs.
And here is the result.
The funnel is easy to create the crucial you should focus on is the question and outcome. More specific – more engagement and effective.
Free Affiliate Marketing Funnel – Download Your Share Funnel Here
If you looking for done for you affiliate marketing funnel, so you can check out our share funnel below. Each of them are pre-build in Clickfunnel so you can get it for free in less than 30 seconds.
- Instagram Lead Funnel: Get the share funnel here
- Survey Funnel: Get the share funnel here
- Affiliate Bridge Funnel: Get the share funnel here
Take Action: Exactly What I Should Do Right Now?
Now it’s your turn to create your own funnel. I know this post contains a lot of information. So the question is: what should you do right now?
Scenario 1: You’re A Beginner, Have No Ideas, Website, Or Product To Promote
You’re a beginner who just got started from scratch, or you’ve made less than $200/month. Here’s what to do!
- Step 1: Sign-up to the Affiliate Bootcamp (it’s free) to get ideas from top affiliate marketers who’ve made millions of dollars per year.
- Step 2: Create a personal blog and optimize your post for search engines. Rank high in organic search results helps you drive traffic to your website and funnel for free.
- Step 3: Create a funnel
- Step 4: Pull traffic from social media and blog posts to your funnel. (If you have more budget, you can run some ads – optional)
- Step 5: Analyze and optimize your funnel until it’s converted.
Scenario 2: You Have A Little Success With Affiliate Marketing
If you have little success with affiliate means you understand how to generate traffic to your site. What you should do right now is scale up your business and increase sales. Here is what you should do:
- Step 1: Create an affiliate marketing funnel
- Step 2: Create banner, pop-up, etc. to drive traffic from your website to the sales funnel
- Step 3: Because you already have a budget so you can run some ads for testing. I highly recommend you should use solo ads because it’s fast to see the result.
- Step 4: Analyze and optimize the funnel
- Step 5: Scale-up
Conclusion
Building an affiliate marketing sales funnel is not an uphill struggle, but creating an effective one won’t be that simple. To have a great affiliate funnel, you need to carefully consider your target market and follow a sequence of actions.
We bet that our above guide will help you with this puzzle. An effective sales funnel is one of the best marketing strategies any online marketer can think of. It can effectively drive traffic, boost sales, and build your brand trust, so they are worth your effort!
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Author
Key Nguyen
Key is the brainchild behind Funnelsecrets.us. You’ll often find him analyzing conversion rates, tweaking landing pages, and exploring new marketing automation software. He loves to write about sales funnel building and is always tinkering with the latest conversion optimization techniques!