When To Use A Pre-Lander vs. Direct Link?

I get asked this question all the time…

When do you use a “pre-lander” when promoting an affiliate offer vs. direct linking to it?

My answer is always the same: you want to do both! 

I get it…  Sometimes us affiliates are lazy and we just want to grab a link and throw traffic at it.

But sometimes an offer needs more “pre-selling” to get visitors to successfully convert.

The other day Bill and I were talking over lunch and we were talking about how we’ve had the most ridiculous campaigns work!

You would not believe some of the landing pages that we’ve made, that end up being our winners!  A completely different approach, unique angle, and our CVR goes through the sky!

Much as direct linking, a lot of affiliates also just want to rip their competitor’s landing page (that they’ve found running or using a spy tool), but that doesn’t always work either.

Direct linking… Ripping landers… The only competitive advantage this leaves you with is your budget!  

There is no such thing as a “secret” traffic source.  If they’re big enough to have any amount of volume, some affiliate somewhere knows about them.

Therefore if you’re going to be running the same stuff as everyone else, you have to give yourself a competitive advantage!

When you approach a campaign, take a few minutes to sit down and ponder what is the quickest way you can gain a user’s trust, and what’s a way you can make them take action.

This isn’t rocket-science and it starts to come easier the more times you do it.

But for those of you that are having trouble coming up with angles and being creative, I recommend start reading some books on the phycology of marketing and advertising.

I try to read at least one new book a week as I know if I just get one nugget out of each book, that’s 52 nuggets a year I can add to gain a competitive advantage against other affiliates.

With all this said, there is a time where it’s appropriate to direct link:

• The offer has an aggressive conversion flow
• Your traffic is laser targeted
• Your traffic is dirt cheap
• You have multiple, multiple offers

Here at RevMax, we keep our media buyers updated with what offers are converting the best.  If a market is particularly hot, it’s sometimes worth direct linking an offer to see if it has potential.  If it doesn’t convert after the first 1,000 clicks, then you would want to look at pre-selling it with a landing page.

You can do wonders with laser targeted traffic.  Most-of-the-time you gain this by forming a relationship where you can buy all Carrier X traffic for Country Y.  With traffic this targeted, you’re sometimes able to direct link your offer and get plenty of conversions to make a nice ROI.

If you’re a ninja and able to get some stupid cheap clicks, then direct linking makes complete since!  Some of my largest campaigns have stemmed from ways I was able to get traffic for nothing or next to nothing!  Obviously if the traffic is no cost to you, then any $$ is +ROI.  But still, you eventually would want to look at optimizing this to get more $$$.

One thing I plan on covering in extensive detail inside of our upcoming Private Mastermind is how to build out funnels for everything…

The one and out affiliate method (traffic -> lander -> offer) is the method 9/10 affiliates use.

If you’re able to get super creative and send your traffic through a “conversion funnel” you can normally milk much more ROI.  Through this process there is room to direct link many different offers.

With affiliate marketing your main goal is to find a competitive advantage.

The more advantage you have, the more money you’re going to make.  Therefore, why limit yourself just because you don’t want to take some extra time to develop out a campaign?

The next time you start a campaign, go in with the mindset, that you’re going to do everything you can (within regulation) to have a massive ROI!