It’s no secret that many affiliates are over-focused on content marketing, refining copy and visuals as powerful conversion levers. But what if on-page efforts are just a part of the equation? Don’t get me wrong, polished content works just fine, but practice shows that it performs even better when aligned with the rest of your affiliate funnel.
A well-thought-out affiliate funnel enables you to connect with your audience at the right time and place, then smoothly nurture them toward a conversion, significantly enhancing the performance of your marketing campaigns and maximizing your earnings.
Read on to learn how to build an efficient affiliate funnel.
Book a demo to explore how Phonexa can optimize your affiliate funnel through smarter tracking, attribution, and automation.
An affiliate funnel is, in fact, a mapped-out path that drives engagement across channels and touchpoints to carry users through the entire customer journey, from awareness to action.
Funnels are divided into these stages:
Affiliate funnels go hand in hand with omnichannel strategies, largely by consolidating marketing efforts across multiple channels.
In some cases, you can rely on simple affiliate funnels — I mean, direct-response or single-step funnels that start by running ads and, based on customer demographics, route leads to the right advertiser through automated lead distribution. In this setup, MoFu or BoFu stages are optional depending on intent and targeting precision.
While simple funnels can work for high-intent audiences, scalable affiliate funnels often rely on more layered approaches.
| Funnel Type | Goal | Conversion Examples |
| Affiliate conversion funnel | Captures and nurtures user interest to drive specific actions before purchase | Lead form submissions, newsletter sign-ups, app installs, etc. |
| Affiliate sales funnel | Turns qualified leads into paying customers through affiliate-driven offers and engagement | Subscriptions, product purchases, completed transactions, etc. |
Mapping your affiliate funnel requires meticulous planning and strategizing. Along the way, you explore your customer personas and anticipate their behavior, confirming your assumptions through key performance indicators (KPIs).
As you optimize your affiliate funnel, you test different marketing strategies and learn which work best for your specific business. For example, as you address the traffic leak caused by poor click-through rates, you can explore optimal subject lines, copy, and banner combinations to apply to your other touchpoints for the best results.
If you promote a product or service that is not a one-time solution, you’re well-positioned to generate commissions for months or even years.
Once running, the affiliate funnel provides valuable metrics that help you forecast your revenue months ahead. Thus, you can set more realistic revenue targets and optimize your spending to determine whether to invest or withhold your money.
Chances are, you already have a website with some content. If so, the first step is to determine your target audience and create user personas, assigning them attributes such as age, marital status, salary, and location.
A simpler and more accurate approach is to build personas based on demographics acquired through web analytics.
You’re looking for affiliate programs whose products align with your audience. For example, if your blog targets aspiring entrepreneurs, you’re perfectly equipped to promote financial assistance or software solutions.
Another important factor is the commission type. Choose wisely between pay-per-lead, pay-per-click, pay-per-sale, and other affiliate marketing models.
When researching affiliate programs, using aggregators or affiliate networks can often save time compared to doing everything manually, although direct research may still be necessary for niche offers.
As a general rule, you should dedicate one funnel to one product cluster. For example, if you target bloggers, they are likely interested in website builders and hosting solutions, which you can promote through a single funnel. But when using a single funnel, bear in mind that it’s only possible when the related products in the cluster are complementary and relevant to the target audience.
In contrast, promoting solar and financial solutions would be less effective with a single funnel. So, what you want to do is determine the front-door cluster for your affiliate products, then build a funnel for it. Once it’s up and running, take care of the other clusters.
Naturally, you want to build your funnel from the top while avoiding direct advertising first. Instead, focus on valuable content that makes users explore your pages.
To deliver your ToFu pages to the right audience, focus on the intents behind the keywords.
| “First off, I’ll take a look at what the traffic is in that particular niche to know how many people are searching for what kind of keywords, and how great the long-tail list of keywords is. For example, if you were going into something like insurance, everybody wants homeowners’ insurance, car insurance – that sort of thing. But, you know, if you can go deeper into it, say, car insurance for drivers with good credit, and see what kind of searches are going on in there. Are people actively looking for it? That’s one of the things you have to keep in mind.” – Jeannine Crooks from the Phonexa’s Amplify webinar |
From a promotional standpoint, you may want to strategically place banners across your content just to keep your offer in the reader’s field of view. This is a simple yet effective way to garner some recognition.
At this point, you reach the middle of the funnel, a stage where you can use opt-in pages to capture visitors’ contact information.
Opt-in pages essentially include:
In MoFu emails, focus on explaining how promoted products solve the user’s problems. If you add tracking links, don’t forget to also include affiliate disclosures to comply with Federal Trade Commission (FTC) guides.
By leveraging E-Delivery, Phonexa’s email marketing solution, you can organize acquired emails into lists and develop a template for each. Thus, you ensure that your email communication is highly resonant, including personalization tokens and addressing recipients’ pain points and desires.
Get started with Phonexa to see how our solutions can elevate your affiliate marketing and boost your ROI.
At the bottom of the funnel, you want to roll out the strongest marketing incentives to persuade users to take action:
To increase conversions, include limited-time offers, free trials, refunds, and product demos.
Note: Don’t expect to convert all users immediately. In complex niches like finance or insurance, they may need time to evaluate options, even at the bottom of the funnel. So be persistent yet not obtrusive with your communication. The rule of thumb is that 2 to 3 emails per week are enough.
With paid ads, you can reach potential leads instantly – any demographic – so the most important thing is to display the right ads to the right users while making sure you’re not overplaying.
Here’s how you can use paid ads at different affiliate funnel stages:
| ToFU |
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| MoFu |
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| BoFu |
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Important: You can improve the performance of your paid ads by over 60% by tying them to dedicated landing pages that build upon the ad’s message, smoothly guiding users to take the desired action.
Creating a website is the easiest way to kick things off for aspiring affiliates. Through a well-structured website filled with valuable content, you can gradually establish your image as a reliable source of knowledge and also use SEO to enhance your efforts.
A proper SEO starts with technical aspects:
Once your site is fast and secure, it’s time to map its structure and develop your content clusters. Along the way, leverage Ahrefs or Semrush to create effective keyword strategies.
And then you want to incorporate external SEO, a practice that increases your domain authority by building a backlink profile. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel here – just explore websites from where your top competitors source backlinks and get similar placements.
Rarely does a marketing strategy perform to its full potential out of the box, so it’s all about constant tracking and analysis, which Phonexa’s HitMetrix can help you with.
Customer journey insights from HitMetrix, ranging from heatmaps to full website sessions, are easily translated into actions, for example, through A/B testing.
For large-scale publishers, the data provided in web analytics is often insufficient to inform their business decisions. With Phonexa’s performance marketing software suite, you gain access to a comprehensive toolkit that delivers holistic insights into your traffic and facilitates time-saving automation.
Our products give you complete control over web leads and callers: how they were generated, the length of their journey, and what touchpoint drove them to action. With Phonexa, you don’t have to hop tabs to find the right data – all valuable insights are at your fingertips.
Here are two core solutions you get at a single price:
| LMS Sync | Lead management & distribution software |
| Call Logic | Inbound call tracking & routing software |
These additional features come along and expand Phonexa’s core functionality:
Learn more about why publishers choose Phonexa:
Take a product tour now to experience Phonexa’s solutions in action.
An affiliate funnel is a consumer-processing algorithm that aligns with the customer journey to deliver the right message at the right time. You know what type of coordinate engagement users are expecting as they progress from awareness to consideration to purchase.
Create your user personas and join affiliate programs that align with them. Then create content for each stage of your funnel, incorporating web and social media content, email marketing, and paid advertising.
An affiliate marketing sales funnel should address common objections and provide in-depth product presentations to effectively engage potential customers.
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