Freddy’s Fast Five: Mastering Marketing Angles

The affiliate marketing industry has taught me a lot of valuable lessons in business and advertising. I first entered the industry back in 2009 (some would call me an affiliate marketing dinosaur… but I prefer the term OG), and since then I’ve helped over 1500 affiliates successfully grow their online marketing businesses. When you work with this many affiliates, you develop an ability to identify some of the traits that separate the decent sized ones from the super affiliates.

In my experience, every super affiliate knows that one of the most important factors that decides if your campaign will make a ton of money or burn a gaping hole in your pocket is your marketing angle.

For those who aren’t familiar with the term marketing angle, it’s best described as the story, or ‘hook’, that will take a visitor from your ad to the offer page and hopefully convert them. Sending a lot of traffic to your ad isn’t enough to build a successful campaign, you must entice the visitor to buy or act. This is achieved by determining the pain-point or problem you’re trying to solve and showing how the product or service you’re promoting is the solution to that problem.

Today I’m going to share my Fast Five tips on how to master marketing angles and take your business to the next level:

1. Marketing is a Science

I know that sounds like a classic cliché, but I truly believe the most successful affiliates in the world are the ones who are willing to test the most. If you decide to just rip a couple of pages and hope that one of them hits, then you’re doing your business a disservice. Instead, research potential pain-points of your target market (Observations), develop multiple creatives based on different angles (Hypothesis), split test different ad sets (Test), determine which angles generated the highest performance (Analyze Data), and scale up on the ones that yields the highest ROI.

2. Use the Force... The Life Force 8

If you want to really study the psychology behind marketing and selling to consumers, then I suggest reading the book **Ca$hvertising by Drew Eric Whitman.**In the book, he talks about how the Life Force 8 are the eight basic human instincts hardwired into every person:

  1. Survival, enjoyment of life, life extensions
  2. Enjoyment of food and beverages
  3. Freedom from fear, pain, and danger
  4. Sexual companionship
  5. Comfortable living conditions
  6. To be superior, winning, keeping up with the Joneses
  7. Care and protection of loved ones
  8. Social approval

If your angle fulfills one or more of these desires, and you can communicate it in a way to convince your visitors that this is the case, you’re all set for success. Keep in mind that it’s very difficult to hit all of them at once, but if you can include one or two desires it can make a huge difference for your campaign.

3. First Mover-Advantage

“But, Fred, what’s the point of creating new angles when someone will copy them in a few days, if not hours.”

This is a common response I hear when I suggest creating and split testing new angles. What many affiliates ignore is that there is a clear advantage to be the first to discover a new successful angle. In the world of affiliate marketing, being the first to find the right angle and solve the right problem will decrease your ad cost significantly. Attracting more visitors when traffic is cheap is the name of the game, and it is how super affiliates truly separate themselves from the competition.

4. Leverage Holidays, Seasons, and Trends

In order to make your lander more relevant, build out unique angles to leverage holidays, seasons, and trends. As I write this article, Black Friday/Cyber Monday are right around the corner and will cause a drastic spike in consumer spending. According to a 2018 National Retail Federation survey, more than 164 million consumers plan to shop over the five-day Thanksgiving weekend. An easy way to increase ROI is to add copy/images promoting a special deal for an upcoming holiday. You should brainstorm different ways to include a high-traffic holiday like Black Friday into any of your angles.

5. Develop a Formula to Build Angles Quickly

“But, Fred, I’m not a creative genius and I just don’t have the time to come up with new angles.”

I’ve helped hundreds of my affiliates come up with some compelling angles over the years. A trick I’ve learned is to develop a formula that can be used regardless of the vertical you’re trying to promote. Here are five themes to consider when it comes to effectively putting your angle to work:

Create a sense of urgency – if they don’t act now, they’ll miss out on a time-sensitive offer or limited availability.

Offer an advantage – such as saving time or money, making something easier, or answering a need.

Demonstrate low risk – products that offer samples or time-limited trial periods decrease perceived commitment and pre-empt buyers remorse leading to increased click-throughs.

Generate a concern or question – find a pain-point in the minds of your prospects, and then provide a solution to it.

Make it easy – remove any potential barriers to achieving your conversion by demonstrating how easy and hassle-free it is to get their needs met right now. A great example would be to include a progress bars, or telling the prospect how many minutes it takes to complete the order.

I believe formulating a compelling angle is the foundation for developing a successful campaign. Every ad has an angle and as you pay more attention to this, you’ll be able to identify those angles quicker. By practicing this skill, you can learn to take a campaign from the red to the black in an instant, and your ability to repeat this process will allow you to attain the holy grail in affiliate marketing: a profitable and sustainable online business.