How do you build your audience mattress?
What is an "audience mattress"? Your audience is a key element in your affiliate marketing success. It can be subject to unforeseen variations, such as a Google algorithm update, a depleted acquisition budget or an out-of-date product (hand spinner, online poker, software for phoning the other side of the world, etc.).
An "audience mattress" therefore refers to a minimum, stable volume of visits that you guarantee on your site, which is unlikely to be affected by audience-related risks. In this article, we'll look at the various steps involved in creating one.
Why build an "audience mattress"?
The "mattress" serves as a guarantee to minimize the impact on your audience and your revenues. By implementing the right actions, your site will always generate traffic, whatever the time of year, and enable you to continuously generate clicks to your advertising partners' sites.
How do you create this "mattress"?
Content is the key to achieving this goal. Depending on your site's theme, you first need to identify sustainable topics using Google News and Google Trends. Start by writing regular content on sustainable products and topics, and you'll gradually build up your site's audience until you reach a stable level: the "mattress". At 10,000 to 15,000 unique visitors per month, the audience is monetizable.
Once you have reached this level, it is essential to keep these pages alive on your site:
- Directly: by updating the article and adding content.
- Indirectly: by creating satellite content with links back to the original article.
It's important to create this type of "cold" content on a regular basis. To keep it fresh, here are some examples of content to create:
- Coupons are an effective way of creating short articles that appeal to Internet users. They're considered "hot" content with high potential. It's up to you to follow the latest news and sales highlights to mention a product price cut, a refund offer or an update that justifies quoting your article.
- Buying guides allow you to add links to products. You can include these products in different guides according to their theme. For example, for a smartphone: "the best smartphones under 200€","10 high-tech gift ideas under 200€" or "How to play Pokemon Go with several accounts without breaking the bank".
- Product tests require more preparation and time to write, but they allow you to create interesting articles in terms of quantity and quality. They bring real added value to your site's editorial content, and set you apart from the good-value sites and listicles specialists. They lend credibility to all your content.
💡 A Listicle is an article whose main content is a list.
Finally, don't put all your eggs in one basket. On certain themes, the law or fashion can change overnight, wiping out all your hard work. If your site is monothematic, it's best to be 100% sure that your core business is not likely to be affected by these changes. If this is the case, diversify your subjects to reduce the risk.
These actions bring your content to life and create a mesh within your site. The resulting virtuous circle improves your site's visibility in search engines and generates regular traffic on its various pages. Once you've reached this first stage, congratulations, you've started your site's audience pump.
How to optimize copywriting?
How can you be more effective in your efforts? The logic of Test & Learn is important. What works for one site doesn't necessarily work for everyone. So it's important to understand what your audience likes about your site. There are several data tools available to help you. Start by looking at your site's audience statistics.
Web Analytics data
The data from your Analytics solution enables you to identify the pages on your site that generate the most traffic. The average duration of your visitors' visits is also key. A high volume of visits to a page with a low duration and a high bounce rate can indicate several things:
- The visitor didn't find the information he was looking for and left. This may be a problem of content that needs to be reworked (better hook, summary, article structure).
- The user found the information, but wasn't in the buying phase or didn't find your CTA (call to action).
Conversely, if visitors stay on a page for a long time, it's worth digging deeper. Is it :
- The type of product chosen?
- Type of item (test, unpacking, product match)?
- Data provided on the subject (technical details, photos, etc.)?
You're the one who knows your site best, so it's up to you. Analyzing your readers' behavior in relation to your content is an essential investment of time.
Platform data
To help you bring KPIs (key performance indicators) to bear on your decision-making process in a factual way, another analysis tool may be useful: sales achieved with different merchants. Some affiliation platforms provide this data. Use them to guide your content production, tailoring your content to your visitors' natural interests. With these tips, you create a virtuous circle: you discover new areas of interest for your audience and broaden your target.
Updating content
Writing an article can be long and tedious. Updating it is less time-consuming and can give it a new lease of life. The jargon is "refreshing" or "gardening" a paper. Here are a few ways to go about it:
- Product update: add a box in the article to highlight a product update or the addition of a feature. Example: a new version of an antivirus that now includes a VPN.
- Adding information: a safe bet. If, for lack of time or because you've forgotten, you didn't cover a point in your article, adding it later can be interesting. For example: the quality of the camera used for night shots will enable you to add some beautiful images.
In addition to keeping your article up to date, these additions allow you to revisit your articles, adapt CTAs (calls to action) and check your links. These are all points to keep an eye on, which can generate additional clicks on your tracked links.
Key points to remember
Building a mattress of quality content is imperative. This can be a time-consuming task, but Rome wasn't built in a day. To achieve tangible results, it's important not to waste your energy massively producing content that isn't qualitative and well thought-out. Take the time to think things through and make the right choices that will deliver sustainable results in the medium and long term.
