Education & Training

This is an extremely powerful way to gain an affiliate referral or convince a potential prospect to buy.  Personally Leon believes it is the Holy Grail when it comes to selling.

When you educate someone as to why and how they benefit from the product or service you’re promoting—you are doing your prospects a favor.  

You are letting them know about the pitfalls and advantages so they can then make an informed choice themselves.

For example if you were an affiliate for a hosting company you would explain why hosting is needed.  You would warn which things to be cautious about and what to look out for.

You may warn against a shared hosting account that allows excessive WordPress use.  You may explain that it is difficult to configure properly.  Someone may install WordPress plugins that can crash and cause data memory drains on the server.  This would then cause your site to be affected by that person’s misconfiguration.

You would also recommend the features of a good hosting company such as having good quality support.  

If the hosting goes down because they have a problem with their server you want to be able to get in touch with them quickly and have them fix the problem promptly.

It’s important you don’t just state the advantages and disadvantages of what you are promoting—you need to back up and explain your reasons.

You would then recommend hosting providers that tick all the boxes and has all the features you’ve recommended they look out for.

Another means of educating your prospect is via training.  There are many ways to educate.  These include e-books, physical books, audios, videos, articles or blog posts.

For example, after capturing a prospect’s name and email address from a squeeze page you could offer a free 7 day e-course. This course will educate people why they need the product or service.  What to be wary of and why.  And what to look out for, as well as the reasons why.

For example if you were an affiliate for knitting products you would talk about the joys of knitting.  You could give information about the best place to source patterns, wool and needles—and which products to avoid.  

You would then recommend (via your affiliate link) the reputable products, whether this is raw materials, the equipment needed or the best sources of further training.

Give as much valuable information as you can.  The more you educate your prospects the more easily influenced they will be. And therefore the more likely they are to follow your recommendation.  

A lot of prospects are too lazy or busy to do the research themselves—but still like to believe they’ve made an informed decision.