1. Back to Basics: Statistical Significance

Back to Basics is a series where I take fundamental concepts in affiliate marketing and make them easy to understand for beginners. 
How does BMW market their cars?
Their entire marketing is centered on how Bimmers are designed for a great driving experience. It doesn’t focus on the luxury, safety, or value; it markets itself as “The Ultimate Driving Machine.”

We call this the angle. It’s how companies approach marketing on a creative level.

Angles in Affiliate Marketing

Angles are one of the most important aspects of a campaign, but most guys don’t understand or know how to implement them properly.

When affiliates think about ads, they think about

• the image
• headline
• ad description
• call to action

Angles are how you approach a campaign on a higher level.

A newbie affiliate might skip the angle process and just gather 20+ images and hope that one of them sticks. But if you test angles first, it gives you greater insight into why that image works, and gives you a way to replicate the success.

It’s easy to get caught up with clicks, optimization, etc. But remember at the end of the day, this is affiliate marketing.

Remember that the core of each campaign is marketing.

An Example

Let us explore the female dating niche.

Promoting to guys is simple. Men are visual creatures, so it’s a cat and mouse game of sneaking in images showing skin. Women on the other hand are much more emotional so the angle plays a bigger part.

Here’s an example of angles in action.

What kind of men would women find attractive? Results of a quick brainstorm

• Men with beards
• Men with tattoos
• Men with glasses
• Shirtless men with abs
• Men next to fancy cars

All of these seem reasonable, but which one’s the best? Remember the higher the click-through rate on our images, the cheaper we pay.

Launching a campaign with 1 image of each wouldn’t work because there’s not enough statistical significance. Maybe the men next to fancy cars is the best angle, but you chose a horrible image to represent the angle.

One way to test angles is to test have them all represented by 5 different images. If you test 25 ads, then you can take the average CTR of each angle.

These examples are hypothetical

We can conclude that guys with fancy cars are the best angle because they have the highest click-through rate.

One exception I would make is if there was an outlier image in another group. If there was an image in the shirtless men category that did a crazy CTR such as .70, I would keep the angle in rotation as well.

Remember there are no rules in affiliate marketing, these are just hints for you to discover your own methods.

Expanding the Angle

So women like men with money. YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST! How can we make money with this revelation?

• Let the angle affect the landing page. Test out a picture of a woman next to a fancy car on the landing page. Test out the headlines and make it reflect the angle.
• Test a More Targeted Offer. Instead of eHarmony, maybe an offer that’s more oriented towards meeting wealthy men?
• Hammer the ads. Now that we know women like pictures of men next to fancy cars, test out 20 more images.
• Test out more angles. We only tested out 5 angles, there are much more.

One key point I want to bring up is the concept of synergy. The components of your campaign become more powerful if they match and strengthen each other.

The components of your campaign should come together like Voltron, not Frankenstein.

How Do You Come Up With Angles?

I don’t have a process for coming up with angles because I can just sit down and churn them out. But that doesn’t really help you now does it?

Put Yourself in Their Position – Use your imagination and pretend you’re a 40 year old woman. What kind of men would they desire? It’s cool, no one thinks you’re fruity.

I guess for female dating it’s not as easy. But If I were to come up with angles for the battery app niche it would be super easy since my phone dies all the time.

Go Where They Are – Research and try to understand the mindset of your target audience.

Years ago I was in the “exercise / weight loss niche.” My office use to be across from Lenox mall so I had my employee go to the mall and offer overweight ladies $20 for a 30 minute interview. I would get countless $$$ angles because I got ideas straight from the source.

Go to forums where they hang out at. Listen to the audience and understand what they want.

Look at Bigger Companies for Inspiration – For the female dating example, most of the niches were from other companies. There are offers focused on meeting wealthy men, men in uniform, muscular men, etc. These guys have done the research for you and you can piggyback off of it.

The Life Force 8

Is there a way you can align your angle with any of the Life Force 8?

Why would men with fancy cars be the best angle? Because it aligns with #1, #3,#4,#5,#6,#7,#8

More Angles

I don’t want to leave you today with just one angle. Lets brainstorm some more. I gave myself a fun challenge and making the angles relevant to current events.

• Credit reports – Target just got hacked and its all over the news. Use fear as an angle
• Weight loss – Summer’s coming up. Tell people they can get a sexy body for the summer with your system.
• Holidays – Holidays and seasons make great angles.  The few weeks before Valentine’s day are great for the dating niche.
• App Development Training Course – Teaching people how to make apps? Maybe you could entice them with how to create the next Flappy Birds with dreams of making $50k a day.

Become More Systematic

Hopefully the article helped you understand what angles are and the importance of them. I have had campaigns of mine go from breaking even to literally 300%+ ROI due to the angle changing.

If you noticed in my example, I have a system for the way I  run campaigns. I don’t just run a few tests and cross my fingers that it’s profitable.

If I’m not making money in a campaign, i can pinpoint the exact step where I’m messing up. From there I know what I have to do to improve. It works the other way around as well. I need to know WHY a campaign is successful so I can replicate it to future campaigns.

The best part is I can pass the system on to an employee, or I can teach it to anyone I want. There’s no “feelings” involved.

With a system I don’t let emotions cloud my judgement.