How to use Facebook as an Affiliate Pro

More than two billion people use Facebook every month to communicate, share the moments of their lives or to discover something new and useful. With such a large audience and unique features to promote and reach the target audience, Facebook has become one of the most efficient and popular ad tools for publishers.  
If you haven’t tried it yet or maybe searching for new tips – you are certainly welcome to continue reading!

1. Your Personal page

Personal Facebook profile is thought to be one of the easiest ways to start affiliate marketing, but there are definitely some pitfalls here…

Yes, you already have some loyal subscribers, mostly family and good friends, who will gladly click on your links, like and share your posts. But…will they purchase anything really?  

Probably not, and it is quite obvious, they might be always here to support you but may not be interested in the products you promote. Moreover, at some point, you might not want to mix the things up: family and friends are family and friends, but your affiliate marketing business is still a business, so you totally understand when they get tired of seeing promotional posts with links. This issue won’t affect the influencers though, as they know how to provide the content well (more value than promotion).

Taking into account what is said above, we can assume that using your personal Facebook page can turn out to be not so successful unless you are an influencer.

At this point you can think about creating a separate page and start developing it, attracting followers, providing interesting content so that people will share your posts and others will follow you. It is a long way but it may work out.

Publishers have two different ways of developing the page:

1. either they present themselves as experts in some particular topic and recommend products of that topic,

2. or they can create a personal brand, become popular and recommend any products they wish.

What to post?

Simple as it is. You discuss or make reviews of usually one or maybe some connected topics. It is better to choose the topic upon your interests. For instance, if you travel a lot, why not make some money out of it? Help your subscribers by adding the links to the travel advertiser’s websites. Indoleads has so many awesome offers here, don’t forget to check out the Top 10 travel offers to get you started! Moreover, travel related influencers can also review the clothes and gadgets for trips, which allows you to join even more offers to cooperate with.

2. Facebook pages

And what if you don’t want any of your friends or family members on Facebook know or get involved in your affiliate business? Then this form of promotion is definitely for you.

It is very similar to having a blog where you share information on some particular subject, but the main difference from the personal profile is that public page can be a kind of anonymous, in other words, nobody will know that it is yours.

Promotion here might be even harder, cause you have to attract your followers from scratch, as the page is anonymous and brand new. Keep in mind that to attract many followers the page should be well developed and posts should be consistently published.

3 main components which can make a Facebook page an effective source of promotion:

1. target audience,

2. information of high quality and value,

3. affiliate links.

This rule might be already overexposed, but it will probably never lose it actuality: content is your holy grail! That’s to say, you should firstly think of attracting as much audience as possible through interesting and valuable content. Facebook helps you here with everything it has: posts with links, videos, polls, and images — everything you want to make the page more interesting.

3. Facebook groups

Facebook groups are quite similar to public pages, but still, it is necessary to mention the differences between them.

Publishers create groups on some topic and attract many members there. Then they start discussions, for example, about best gadgets from China and post affiliate links to the best deals — the process isn’t sophisticated.

But it’s necessary to remember that groups let everybody make posts, therefore, other publishers can also post their affiliate links and steal your traffic by this. The groups can be viewed as a kind of small forum where many people share information. It means that unlike managing public pages, you are not the only one who manages and creates posts — all members can do it. Thus, it is more difficult to control the flow of information and sometimes it can go wrong.

But on the other hand, sometimes followers prefer this type of communication as they can share their opinion on this topic. The main con is that groups don’t provide admins with any statistics, so if it is necessary to know the target audience or any other insights on posts it is better to create a page.

4. Facebook ads

This paid type of promotion is quite popular among publishers who have worked in affiliate marketing for a while as it requires certain skills and knowledge in targeting.  Promotion of different sources depends on the objectives. For instance, you can boost a post or drive traffic to your Facebook page, your website or the website of an advertiser.

Let’s dive into each promotion separately:

•  Page promotion

It can be the best type if the Facebook page is your main ad pace and you want to draw attention of the potential audience to it. In the column right under the profile photo, you will find the blue button “Promote”, you should click on it. A pop-up window will appear offering you several options, and you need to choose the option “Promote your page” tagged with an orange flag. Right after clicking on it, you will see the ad settings where you can manage your promotion post. (We will describe the whole process in the next article).

• Website promotion

This type has many advantages such as possibility of placement (apart from mobile or desktop version, you can also place it on Instagram), carousel ad (you can showcase several goods or services through one ad), Facebook pixel which provides an opportunity to see in statistics which actions users take. You need to know how to use Ads manager to promote a website (we will explain it in the upcoming article). Facebook provides an opportunity to transfer a visitor either to the main page or to an exact page (deeplink to the specific product, for example), thus you can generate traffic to the advertiser’s website through the affiliate links. It’s better to use bright images so that users will notice (banner blindness applies to all social networks as well).

We should also mention that retargeting works well with this model as users are more likely to notice the posts when they are already interested in the product, and retargeting means that they have already visited the website (don’t forget if advertiser allows retargeting).

•  Post boosting

This is a promotion of one post which you can easily perform just by clicking one button “Boost” under the post. It is used when the main aim is to draw attention of potential audience to the exact post. You can create an attractive post about some product/service and place affiliate link to it, and when users click on the link and purchase the product, you will receive the deserved reward.

This is definitely the fastest way as you just need to click on the button, to choose objective and target audience. But as always, don’t just focus on this solely, try to work from different angles.

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Final thoughts

No matter what type/types of promotion you choose, content is your bread and butter. There are two content strategies which are commonly used. The first one is aimed at developing content and providing followers with useful information and by this motivating them to purchase the goods using your links or from your website. It is a long but reliable strategy as you build your relationship with users by giving something helpful and by assisting them in solving their problems or satisfying their needs in buying some products. It also makes them more loyal.

The second strategy is focused on fast sales and generating more profit. It is when targeting works the best. Publishers promote posts and start driving traffic to the advertiser’s website. Of course, no one prohibits you from combining these strategies by posting content of high quality and sometimes promoting interesting posts — it is a matter of how much money one can spend on ads. But the general rule stays the same: work on your content, use Facebook tools wisely and the payoff will come. It will, we have already checked!

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