What Kind of Marketing Material Do They Offer?

Good merchants know how important it is to provide their affiliates with good marketing material. Some merchants only offer standard banners and text links. This type of marketing collateral is generally not effective. Banners no longer work because of banner blindness. Banners are mostly ignored by users who are just looking for good content.

Examples of good marketing material:

Electronic product catalogs (datafeed) - With a good electronic product catalog, an affiliate can market specific products and services for a merchant. Product catalogs should include pictures, good descriptions, and specific URL’s that point to destination pages on the merchant’s website.

Affiliate links with custom destination pages - The worst place to send a visitor from your affiliate website is to a merchant’s home page. Home pages are not optimized for sales conversions. Good merchants will provide their affiliates with deep links that point to specific areas of their website optimized for sales conversions.

Content links or web pages - Many merchants will provide their affiliates with content for their website. This is an easy and fast way to start promoting a merchant. You may find that by customizing the content for your visitors, you will have more success. Plus, if several affiliate partners are using the same exact content, it will be hard to make your offer stand out from the crowd.

Keyword lists - Some merchants will provide a recommended list of keywords for their affiliate partners. Sometimes the keyword lists are general and sometimes they’re very specific and comprehensive.

Websites - A few merchants are now providing their affiliates with entire websites. If the merchant provides a website, all you have to do is register a domain name, and point it to your affiliate website. In some cases the merchant may even provide you with a unique domain name. All you have to do is drive traffic to the website. You don’t have to worry about hosting or updating the website because it’s all handled by the merchant.