Customer acquisition for agencies and freelancers: remarketing & affiliate marketing

Referrals, affiliate marketing and remarketing are important levers for customer acquisition. How do you use these strategies correctly? What do you need to consider? And what does this mean for your SEO? We'll tell you the most important basics.

This article is the second part of our series on customer acquisition for agencies and freelancers. To learn the basics of how to acquire new clients, we also recommend reading the first part: It deals with target groups and generating inbound leads. You can also download the series of articles as a complete e-book.

Before we get to some advanced methods of customer acquisition, let's first look at a well-known strategy. It allows you to use your WordPress website to increase the engagement and interaction of your visitors.

It's relatively simple: offer free content. Everyone likes free, easily accessible things. At least if it is of a high-quality nature and - in the case of content - not simply "dripping" with self-praise or advertising. See our (free 😉 ) guides on content marketing for agencies, content strategy and testing content ideas. Your website strategy should include:

• Free downloads of PDFs, longer texts such as white papers, e-books, sample templates, etc. 
• Interviews with experts and familiar faces in your industry (written and/or video)
• Video courses or short tutorials
• Podcasts and webinars
• Trial offers and easily accessible advice, such as with Raidboxes

Be attentive and respond quickly. There is nothing better for (potential) customers than the pleasant surprise of receiving quick feedback from a company after a complaint. And when they are immediately offered a targeted solution. If you do the same, you will not only have gained a new customer for life. But also a good source of recommendations, testimonials (short customer statements) or case studies.

The supreme discipline: Remarketing

Now to the strategies for advanced users. Remarketing is a way to stay in touch with potential customers. At its core, remarketing (also known as retargeting) consists of creating targeted advertising campaigns for users who have already been to your website. Or who have otherwise engaged with your content but have not yet made a purchase.

The idea behind this is that someone who is already familiar with your brand and your products is more likely to move further down the conversion funnel ("purchase funnel", part of the so-called customer journey). The most popular of the many remarketing tools are Google Ads and Facebook Ads.

Once users have engaged with your content, they are tagged with a cookie and added to a specific list of remarketing targets. Next, they are shown an ad campaign that is specifically tailored to the people on that list:

• Standard ads are for people who have previously visited your website and have done nothing else there.
• Dynamic ads are targeted at specific products that the person has viewed on the page.
• Mobile ads: In-app and mobile-optimized ads that target audiences that are more likely to be on smartphones and other mobile devices.
• Search engine ads are intended for people who have already been to your website but are now looking for something similar on Google.

Such campaigns are an effective tool for your online marketing, but it is essential that you take the principles of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) into account. Contact a suitable law firm specializing in online law for advice and to avoid warnings.

Why is remarketing so effective?

Remarketing sometimes produces very good conversion results, and for good reason. The approach of earlier years with large scatter effects has increasingly been replaced by granular and micro-targeted ads that establish a personal connection to a prospective customer. And this is how it works:

• Personalization: Knowing what prospects searched for on your website and when opens an endless series of doors. You know which page they visited, in what order and when. This allows you to create ads that target your visitors' current interests, no matter where they are in the conversion funnel.
• Reach: Google Ads alone reaches over 2 million websites and advertises with a return on investment of up to 8 to 1. So for every euro you spend on Google Ads, you can theoretically see a return of 8 euros. In practice, however, these values are usually significantly lower, so you should try this out for your target groups and industry. Facebook Ads also has a very high potential for leads, even today and also in the WordPress environment. See our guides to Google Ads and Facebook Ads campaigns.
• Create awareness for your brand: On the internet, it's easy to forget about sites and products that briefly interest us and lose sight of them forever. With remarketing, you can gently remind people of something they were previously interested in. Without taking them by surprise.
• Granular marketing: Since you can use targeted advertising to create different lists of potential conversions for different content and subpages, your marketing strategy can be refined into a finely tuned machine. Also and especially in the area of long tail content.

SEO campaigns and blogging

Let's shift up a gear and talk about SEO. By now, everyone should be familiar with search engine optimization. But if you're still a little unclear on the subject, there are great tools out there. Not only do they guide you through the basics of how everything works, but they also help you choose the right keywords.

You need suitable keywords to increase your rankings. And to maximize your reach. An introduction to SEO would go too far in this e-book. However, we have put together the following step-by-step instructions for you:

• 8 steps to an SEO audit - instructions for agencies
• SEO success with keyword research
• WordPress SEO: Optimizing texts for search engines
• Image SEO optimization with WordPress

You should apply the SEO principles to all your blog posts, articles and landing pages. And make sure that you search for keywords that have low competition and the highest possible search volume. These keywords should be relevant to both the post itself and your business in general.

Aside from the SEO issue, the smart approach to get visitors to interact is to make sure that each blog post answers a specific question. It needs to provide details and information that your readers may not know and that they won't find in such detail or quality elsewhere.

Not only do blog posts of this kind represent a free bonus for potential prospects, as discussed above. At least if you create captivating and entertaining content. But you can also use appropriate call-to-actions (more on this in a moment) to generate interest in the rest of your website, giving you the opportunity to attract new leads. Here are a few basic blog post areas you should focus on:

• Headline: Create a good headline that has the following characteristics: It should be interesting, unique, useful and specific. But also contain central keywords.
• Interaction: Display your social media sharing buttons prominently, encourage comments and ask your readers for feedback.
• Call to action: Make sure that every post contains a call to action (CTA). This is an invitation to your visitors to contact you by phone, email or chat for more information. Or to sign up for your newsletter, for example, or to visit a product page or landing page.
• Attractive design: Use lots of graphics, photos, bullet points, diagrams, embedded videos and more to grab attention.

Facebook groups

Facebook may not have the same status as it once did with younger people, but it is still often the first port of call for those looking for more information about a product or service in their area. At Raidboxes, we too have seen time and time again how effective marketing on Facebook can be - regardless of what you personally think of the platform.

A good way to get more potential customers to visit your website organically is to position yourself as a local expert on a topic that you are highly knowledgeable and passionate about in relation to WordPress. You can also start your own Facebook group. It doesn't matter whether it's about technology, specific plugins and themes, web design or online marketing. If possible, choose a topic in a niche that overlaps with your products and services.

With a little patience, this can be very successful - if you do it right and offer content with added value (tutorials etc.) instead of unattractive self-promotion. So make sure you keep a low profile and simply offer your expertise without selling your services. Logging on to Facebook for a few minutes a day and finding and answering a relevant question or an active comment thread can really pay off!

Referrals and affiliate marketing

You can do the best SEO in your entire industry. You can run remarketing campaigns down to the most customized granularity. You might even have the money to invest in offline campaigns or sponsor big (online) events and trade magazines.

But according to studies, none of this can be as valuable as real customers who recommend you to others. An exciting trick for companies as well as WordPress agencies and freelancers is: Don't just think of your customers as those who secure your revenue. It would be even worse to neglect the customer base you've already gained just to focus on new growth.

If you are serious about customer acquisition, then you need to recognize that your existing customers represent real value. You should nurture them just like your products and services. If you don't, you make yourself interchangeable and less credible. The secret is to use your existing customer base to create even more value for yourself and your customers through recommendations and referrals.

Referral marketing

Recommendations are the lever you use to spread your message and the quality of your services and products. Studies show that people are more likely to buy something that has been recommended by a friend or acquaintance. By offering a small reward in return for a referral that leads to a sale, you can grow your customer base organically. And on an ongoing basis. There are a number of approaches to soliciting such referrals:

• Offer a small reward, bonus or commission, more on that in a moment
• Give them a coupon or discount
• Offer premium content free of charge
• Question about experience reports

Don't think it can work? Then take a look at these statistics on referral marketing:

• 90 percent of consumers trust recommendations from friends and family
• 70 percent rely on customer reviews that they read online
• 74 percent say that recommendations have an important influence on their purchasing decisions
• 88 percent trust online reviews written by other buyers just as much as personal recommendations
• 32 percent of people only trust online reviews if there are multiple consumer reviews
• Recommendations have been shown to increase the effectiveness of marketing by 54 percent, but
• 39 percent stated that monetary or material incentives greatly increase their chances of recommending a brand

Make sure that your referral program only pays off if the referred person sends you customers who also make a purchase. Who sign up to your email list or whatever your goal is. Otherwise, you could be flooded with spam referrals that don't add any value. Once you've set up the referral program on your website, simply send an email invitation to your existing customers to get the ball rolling.

What is affiliate marketing?

You can engage your existing customers even better by using affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is an innovative strategy for bringing prospects and leads to your website - or your customers' websites - and converting them. You or your customers offer third-party providers compensation for generating leads and referring visitors who view and hopefully buy the products and services.

The affiliate - i.e. the third-party company - is rewarded with a commission to encourage them to come up with creative ways to drive traffic to you. You can take a look at the Raidboxes affiliate program as an example. And of course you can also use it to recommend us to others. Raidboxes offers its affiliates attractive commissions of up to 1,500 euros per new customer.

If you think about the fact that you can't go just about anywhere on the internet without a product or other link leading back to Amazon, then you've stumbled across those who have made affiliate marketing flourish. Amazon offers bloggers, influencers on Instagram & Co. and website owners ("publishers") a small payment for every customer they send to the platform. The company has thus increased its reach immensely - without any major financial risk. This is because payment is usually only made upon successful referral.

By using cookies and analytics, the company running an affiliate program can track and analyze the incoming links from its various affiliate sites. This allows you to see how many of them are converted into sales. With an affiliate program, you reach contacts of your affiliates and customers who might otherwise never have become aware of you and your website. Do you recognize the leverage of such programs?

A business worth billions

Nowadays, affiliate marketing is a multi-billion dollar business and makes up a large part of digital marketing. However, it still generates huge profits for those who know how to use it in a targeted way. Here are a few facts:

• 84 percent of publishers and 81 percent of brands use affiliate marketing
• Every year, spending on affiliate marketing in the USA increases by 10.1 percent
• Almost 65 percent of affiliate marketers generate traffic through blogging
• Affiliate marketing is estimated to be worth more than 10 billion euros worldwide
• Over 50 percent of the traffic coming from affiliates is now generated on mobile devices

Of course, you need to gain your own experience. However, we know some agencies and freelancers from the WordPress community for whom affiliate marketing is clearly worthwhile.

Set up an affiliate marketing program

Before you jump into an affiliate marketing program with both feet, you should first know some basic facts:

• Impressions are not sales: Affiliates that promise 100,000 impressions will do you no good if zero of them are converted into sales.
• Pay attention to your prices: Analyze the use of affiliates by your competitors. Get to know the usual market price for commissions and which agreements are typical in your industry (revenue sharing, subscription models, etc.).
• Integrate it into your strategy: Keep in mind that affiliate marketing can only be one part of your marketing activities. Have a clear understanding of your goals and how the program fits into the rest of your marketing plans. Your individual channels and measures should not compete with each other but complement each other.
• Identify potential partners who are a good fit for you: Brands and companies should look for partners that they believe will actually contribute to revenue growth. Keep this under constant review during the collaboration by calculating the return on investment for your program (income in relation to expenditure).

Stay innovative and discuss with your affiliate partners how additional sales can be generated. For example, through targeted content and advertising material created specifically for individual affiliates. Affiliates are usually keen to work with you because you have the same goal.

Referrals and affiliate marketing are clever, lucrative ways to attract new customers. Above all, with the right partners, you can be sure that the funnel will be continuously filled with new leads and purchases. Here are all the other articles in our customer acquisition series:

• Target groups & inbound lead generation
• Upselling, cross-selling & performance measurement
• Building customer relationships & customer relationship management
• The entire series of articles as an e-book B2B customer acquisition made easy

We would be delighted if you not only read along, but also if we hear from you: How can we help you grow your WordPress business? What are your own experiences in customer acquisition with WordPress and WooCommerce? Get in touch with us at any time or book an appointment with our sales team. We will be happy to deepen our knowledge with you.