By James Agate, founder
of Skyrocket
SEO - the trusted content & link building partner of
digital agencies and a number of super-affiliates.
According to Google “Whether we're shopping for corn flakes,
concert tickets or a honeymoon in Paris, the Internet has changed how we decide
what to buy. We call this online
decision-making moment the Zero Moment of Truth -- or simply ZMOT.” (Source)
In essence we are talking about the internet having created
an additional moment of influence between a consumer recognising the need for
something and them actually making the purchase.
The Zero Moment of Truth is when consumers are online
research their potential purchases, looking for reviews, looking for discounts
and in many cases justifying their decision (to themselves or a partner).
In fact, according to Google’s ZMOT survey over 84% of
respondents said that online feedback and research helped to influence their
purchase decisions.
For your affiliate business, this creates an immense
opportunity.
Many affiliates are already taking advantage of the ZMOT
without really thinking of it as this i.e. if you run a coupon site or a
product review site then you are trying to target customers at the Zero Moment
of Truth.
Today though I want to talk about some techniques that you
can deploy that go beyond generic advice like “start a review site”! :-)
#1 - Understand your value add
“The art of good business is being a good middleman” the
immortal words of mob kingpin Eddie Temple in the superb Brit-gangster film Layer
Cake. This epitomizes my feelings on what affiliate marketing is
all about - yes, we are middlemen (and women) but we need to be good ones if we
want to operate a strong business and be around for years to come.
Understanding where you add value is going to be critical
particularly if you are in the business of benefiting from organic traffic.
Google in my opinion will continue its work of changing the face of the
industry by weeding out the kinds of sites that merely act as an extra step
between the SERPs and what the consumer actually wants.
Whether you offer a detailed guide to a topic, an impartial
comparison of multiple products or you provide something else that is useful to
the customer in need, it doesn’t really matter “what” it is as long as there is
something there beyond earning you a quick buck in commission.
Understanding why you exist and focusing on communicating
that is how you’ll grow your affiliate business long term.
#2 - Target your content
The large part of the industry isn’t “there” yet when it
comes to quality content.
There is a mistaken belief that ‘quality’ simply means
legible and free from spelling, grammatical and syntax errors... whilst these
are obviously important factors for quality content, the importance of
usefulness to the reader is often overlooked.
Effective keyword research and matching the content to the
query is the route to generating useful content. If a consumer is looking to
open a merchant account for their new eCommerce venture, and has searched for
“how to accept credit cards” they probably don’t need information about credit
cards from a consumer’s perspective, they want to know about the process
involved with opening a merchant account like what paperwork they need to fill
out, how much it is going to cost etc.
It is nuances like this, which make it a costly mistake to
entirely automate your keyword research efforts.
If a prospect is in their ZMOT looking for information then
inadequate content is likely to destroy your chance of a conversion. “Just
about readable” isn’t going to cut it when it comes to content creation.
Whereas if you are offering deeply valuable content then you can de-rail a
prospects purchase path in a good way (i.e. bring them to you before they make
a purchasing decision).
In addition to answering the query you should also consider
the type of content and what audience it is likely to attract. Many affiliate
marketers for example need to reach consumers who are brand new to a market if
they are trying to get them to open a forex trading account perhaps so think
carefully about the actual type of content you invest in and the audience this
will bring. Investing in content that is somewhat relevant to the query is
unlikely to bring you the commissions you desire.
I would go so far as to say you should always be focusing on
education - that's how you build long-term value in the affiliate space.
Your competitors may be able to outspend you on PPC or buying
links but you can attract a following and grow a much stronger brand by
teaching people and positioning yourself as the expert. This audience can be
leveraged for commissions time and time again.
There are exceptions to this rule naturally as some
affiliates value add will be the ability to deliver a discount but there again
it could be argued that if most integrated some form of education they could
offer visitors a reason to return rather than merely pass through.
#3 - Think off-site
The Zero Moment of Truth is all about the consumer digging
around for information, comparing various sources from review sites,
independent blogs, social media and so on. If you can control or influence as
many sources in an authentic manner then you are dramatically increasing the
chances of a conversion.
It is certainly challenging to understand the best way of
influencing off-site activity as an affiliate (since you don’t want to go to
all that effort only for the consumer to make a direct purchase from the
merchant) and this is why you need to add value somewhere in the path to
purchase to give the consumer a reason to visit before they are referred to the
merchant.
Developing hubs, relevance structures around your site and
investing time in interacting in communities in your market are effective ways
to reach consumers in their ZMOT.
- Microsite development - are microsites a credible link building strategy?
- Blogs - guest posting puts you on an influential blog and can give you the opportunity to effectively reach ‘ZMOT consumers’ with your message. That’s why a relevant guest post is much more than just another link.
- Yahoo Answers - this may sound low-rent but in a number of markets, we have found it an incredible way of generating highly responsive traffic long-term.
- Quora - similarly to Yahoo Answers except we haven’t seen quite as much success with this.
- Independent sites - including List.ly, Squidoo, Tumblr, Dribble etc. This isn’t just about scoring some low-value links by the way. Turning each of these hubs into an off-site outpost for your main site as a way of dominating more of the path to purchase for consumers and keeping you in the front of their mind.
#4 - Promote (and acquire links) intelligently
Content & query mis-match can be one of the biggest
destroyers of conversion for affiliates and indeed any kind of business selling
online.
If you find that you have a page that is ranking for a
keyword but is perhaps less targeted than another page on your site then look
at how you can push the visibility of the correct page. This may be a simple
redirect if you are lucky. In most cases though, it is a more complicated
exercise as it is likely to be your homepage ranking for a keyword for example
when in fact you have a deep page which would be far better suited to that
query - you probably won’t be redirecting your homepage anywhere!
In line with improving a user’s experience, you need to help
Google present the right page for that query. The
homepage probably ranks
because it is more authoritative than the deep page so more often than not these
are the first pages we will focus any link building campaign around as these
offer the greatest opportunities for traffic and conversion boosts.
It isn’t just links that help to nudge the right page into
the right spot in the SERPs, site structure plays a big part and ensuring the
deep page isn’t orphaned somewhere in the depths of your site for example. This guide
to information architecture gives a lot of the best practices that you need to
ensure are covered.
CTR from the SERPs to an obviously relevant deep page in our
experience (on information-search type keywords) is much higher versus a
listing just for a homepage where the user feels they are likely to have to
perform the search again.
#5 - Take control of comments
Over 30% of respondents in Google’s survey said that they
look at the reviews below blog posts about products and services when they are
trying to find out information in their ZMOT.
This makes complete sense because the general feeling is that
the writer of the piece may well have an ‘interest’ in being positive about
product X or service Y whereas the people writing the comments are just like
you or I (in the sense that they are consumers looking for information).
Responding to comments, offering resolutions where you can
and attempting to clarify any confusion can ensure that consumers in their ZMOT
aren’t presented with negative publicity about a product you are promoting or
your website itself.
I’m not suggesting whitewashing the comments section of your
site and deleting anything resembling less than positive feedback because this
will more than likely destroy the effectiveness of a page since it loses all
feel of authenticity. However if the consumer comes across a criticism of the
thing they are searching for information about followed by a well-crafted
response which answers the query then they are likely to feel more confident
about continuing down their path to purchase.
Any thoughts or questions? Add them in the comments section
below and I will happily get back to you.
