Copywriting and Affiliate Marketing: Why Is Copywriting Vital for Successful Affiliate Marketing?
It’s probably fair to say that the most creative, engaging, and persuasive copywriting is also the most memorable. Think about it: how many ads do you remember? Ads that use plain language, avoid cliches, and are tailored towards the target audience are likely to stay in your memory longer than those with awkward wording or irrelevant buzzwords.
A well-written advertisement is also more likely to lead readers to take action, such as signing up for a newsletter or buying the product advertised. No matter what your objectives as an affiliate marketer may be, it’s important that you choose your words carefully.
Do you want a boost to your business revenue? Something cost-effective and relatively simple to put in place? Then you might be looking for affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing can be a great strategy to make yourself a little extra cash, whilst also boosting your own brand awareness, reach, and engagement.
Copywriting and affiliate marketing go together like strawberries and cream. For a good affiliate marketing strategy, you’ll need great copy — not just because good copy works better than bad, but because the link between copywriting and affiliate marketing is far more important than you think!
In this blog post, we’ll go into what affiliate marketing is, why copywriting is so important for its success, and what the benefits of great copy can be.
Read on to find out why copywriting should not be overlooked when developing an affiliate marketing strategy...
What is affiliate marketing and why is it a good strategy?
Before we talk about how important copywriting is in the world of affiliate marketing, you first need to understand affiliate marketing itself. So, let’s deep-dive into what it is and why it’s a good strategy for your business.
Affiliate marketing is a simple and quick way to earn extra revenue for your business, and it’s a business model all of its own for some people.
In the simplest terms we can muster, affiliate marketing is being paid for someone clicking on a link in your content.
In slightly more specific terms, it’s usually a commission or set amount paid to you (by the owner of said link) whenever someone performs a specific action on that domain or page.
It sounds quite complicated, so let us break it down a bit.
The process usually looks a little something like this:
Step 1: Link owner tells you what they will pay for (click, sale, sign-up, etc.)
Step 2: You place the link in your content or website ad
Step 3: Someone clicks on that link and goes to the page
Step 4: User performs the action
Step 5: You get paid
Essentially, you are paid to drive traffic and sales for someone else. Sounds like easy money, right? For bloggers and businesses, it can be a lucrative addition to an overall content strategy, but it’s about more than just sticking in a hyperlink at random.
If you actually want to make money from it, there are some important things you’re going to need to know.
Why is good copywriting important for affiliate marketing?
Successful affiliate marketing can’t be done by just inserting links and ads into random content you’ve whipped up in a hurry. It takes time, effort, energy, and a considerable amount of practice to get right.
Why? Because the key to it is great copywriting.
Without good content, your affiliate marketing strategy simply won’t work. It needs to be integrated into your overall content marketing strategy and requires expert copywriting skills.
You need to stand out
So, you’ve landed some affiliates — great start! Now you need to get them in front of people. The first step in affiliate marketing (after finding affiliates) is to make sure people see the links and ads that you want them to click on.
If they never reach the page, they can’t click on the link, and you can’t make any money from it.
The solution is good copywriting. The key to being seen is going to lie in your SEO strategy, which requires high-quality, relevant content that is optimised for certain keywords.
Copywriting and affiliate marketing rely heavily on SEO optimisation. Your copy needs to give value to your reader, but it also needs to be relevant. The keywords you want to use for your content will need to be accurate and used appropriately, but it’s also important to make sure your affiliate links fit here, too. If your affiliate sells baby clothes, it’s going to stick out like a sore thumb in an article about construction equipment.
You’ll also need to be concise, and to meet the user’s intent: do they want to buy, research with intent to buy, gather information, or have a specific question answered? Whichever it is, your content needs to be the solution to that query.
Going above and beyond what competitors have done will help you to stand out. Offer more information than they have. Elaborate. Go deeper. Write longer, more valuable content.
Doing all this will give you a better chance of being seen over your competitors. Once your content is seen, only then can the audience be directed to your affiliate.
You need engagement
Copywriters know how to insert keywords and links naturally, in a way that makes users more inclined to follow them.
Now that your audience has found your content, what next? Yep, you need to convince them to click on your affiliate link. For affiliate hyperlinks within the written text itself, this is where a great copywriter really shines.
Remember how we just talked about SEO and keywords? Well, just like how you can’t stuff keywords in at random, the same is true for affiliate links — the link needs to be inserted into the content as naturally as possible. It needs to be relevant to the context it’s written in and to the anchor text you’ve used; those are the words the link is attached to in the text.
Copywriting and affiliate marketing work hand-in-hand to encourage readers into the right places. An expert copywriter uses their knack for writing relevant, engaging content to place the affiliate link in the most appropriate way — and one of the best ways to do this is by answering the reader’s questions with the affiliate link itself.
You need shareability
More people will want to read your article in full, and perhaps more of your content overall, if it meets their needs.
We’ve discussed how to get your content seen and how to get people to click affiliate links, so what’s next?
Improve your reach! Google isn’t the only way to get your content seen; a common way to increase reach and views is to make your content shareable.
People who see, enjoy, and learn from your content are more likely to share it with others. Great copywriting not only enhances SEO and engagement, it further increases the reach of your content, because it’s so helpful that people want to share.
This is key in affiliate marketing. Organic traffic from Google alone is unlikely to get much extra in your pocket, but get the content shared across Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and even LinkedIn, and you can increase your revenue from your affiliates tenfold.
Copywriting and affiliate marketing both need to grab a reader’s full attention to be truly successful. Good copywriting elicits emotion, fills a need, and, in some cases, entertains. It makes the reader feel seen, heard, and respected, which all make it more likely they’ll share it with others.
You need to keep and grow affiliates
Now we need to talk about retention. Not retention of your audience or viewers — retention of your affiliates.
There are some affiliate programs that are free to sign up to and can make you some money, but the big bucks is in building your own relationships with companies that match your company’s intent.
To do this, you need quality content. Without it, affiliates are unlikely to see you as an authority source, because Google is unlikely to either. If your site authority isn’t high enough, they won’t want their links on your website, as it can actually hurt their own rankings.
Increase your website authority by publishing excellent-quality, informative content, relevant to your sector and to the kinds of affiliates you’re looking for. Once you’ve got yourself established, you can start to approach companies to offer them affiliate deals.
In addition, a history of high-quality content means affiliates be more open to being approached by you, or may even approach you themselves. Great copywriting and affiliate marketing from the get-go will land you more long-lasting connections in the future.
Do you need a professional for your content and affiliate marketing?
We’ve given you some great tips throughout this post, including how good copywriting can help you reach more people and get more affiliates.
You’ve learnt all about the match-made-in-heaven that is copywriting and affiliate marketing, the importance of copywriting in order to increase engagement, and why affiliate marketing is such a great part of your content strategy. But one question remains — a question we’re sure you’re probably asking yourself by now.
‘Can I do this myself?’
The honest answer? Maybe!
With enough research, tips, and practice, you might be able to get a good affiliate marketing programme together. However, if it’s worth doing at all, isn’t it worth doing to the highest standard?
Copywriting and affiliate marketing are intricately and implicitly linked, so it stands to reason that an expert, professional copywriter can boost your affiliate marketing campaigns to new levels.
In short, it’s an investment: you find a low-cost but high-value copywriter, and increase your return on investment because your affiliate links make more money. Simple!
At ZippyLingo, our team of copywriters are experts at creating industry-leading, professional copy that can help your affiliate marketing content shine brighter than your competitors’. Years of experience have led us to an in-depth understanding of the marketing and linguistic worlds, so they can weave your message into an intricate web of excellence.
Want to know more? We’d love to hear from you! Give us a call or send us a message and we can talk about your copywriting and affiliate marketing needs.
