If you are in network marketing or affiliate marketing, you may be trying to convert your leads all wrong.
You were likely trained by the company you are selling for to send traffic straight to their website using your link, and when people buy, you will get a commission for driving the traffic there.
While this is true, you are likely losing money by not sending people to the corporate website in the right way.
In this article we will discuss why you need a Bridge Page Funnel between your cold prospects and the company website, how to increase your bridge page conversion rates, and the importance of follow-up through email marketing.
Introduction To Bridge Page Funnels
A Bridge Page Funnel is a one page funnel that serves as a pre-frame before sending people to an affiliate or network marketing offer.
The page is meant to provide information about the offer in such a way that you can take cold traffic and warm them up to the idea of the offer before sending them directly to a corporate sales page through your affiliate link.
Sometimes visitors may even need more of a pre-frame, in which case you would add a simple landing page that would serve as your squeeze page. You would have an offer for an item of lesser value on this first page, such as a checklist or a cheatsheet.
After visitors enter their email for their freebie, they would then be presented with the Bridge Page, where a related affiliate offer will be described in detail to help get people in the right frame of mind before sending them through to the main website.
The potential customer will be warmed up when they hit the main website, and more likely to make a purchase after clicking through your call-to-action embedded with your affiliate link.
Why You Should Be Using Bridge Pages For Affiliate Marketing
The largest group of traffic you can ever go after is cold traffic.
You don’t have to target cold traffic when you are an affiliate marketer, but if you find out how to make it work, you will have a big, blue ocean that you can tap into to make a ton of sales.
Your bridge-page helps pre-frame this cold traffic and warm them up to the affiliate offer you are trying to sell.
Imagine going to your local mall, blowing a whistle to get everyone’s attention, and then screaming “Hey! This software will change your life for $397 a month! Buy now!”
This is basically what you are doing when you send people straight from your link to the affiliate program you are promoting.
There is no context provided by you, and no extra value added. You are just trying to get a sale. You seem greedy.
If you add a sales message before you send people through, you are able to bridge the gap, introduce yourself as the expert in between, and give more context to the offer and why you are promoting it. Being able to tailor this sales message gives you infinitely more control over how the sale takes place.
If you put an offer page before your bridge page, you also have the opportunity to provide related value up front, give them a special offer, and get people on your email list before they wander off to the sales page for the company’s offer.
Bridge Page Funnels For Network Marketing
The nice thing about bridge pages, is they can also work for network marketing as well.
If you are an ambassador to a brand, you are often given your own shop that is a replica of the corporate website.
This is great because you get credits automatically for sales in your shop, but the problem is that you can’t change much. The brand you represent may also not see the best angle to promote their products from the perspective of your audience.
Adding a bridge page before sending someone to a specific item in your shop gives the visitor a better understanding of the product, in your own words, before sending them off to the item in your shop.
This puts your marketing system first so you can capture the leads and pre-frame your message in a way that fits your audience.
If you have the right tools, you could even have a survey style bridge page that allows your visitors to answer some questions and then be redirected to the corresponding product in your corporate shop.
A good example of this can be seen in this interactive video selling health products for a networking marketing company.
What to Include on Your Bridge Page
One of the objectives your Bridge Page Funnel should try to meet is not only bringing product awareness to visitors (especially if they are cold traffic), but also helping people make an informed decision.
If you successfully educate people on why the product solves their problem, it doesn’t really matter what marketing messages they get when they click through your link. They hopefully are already close to making a decision based on the information and bonuses you provided.
We’ve talked a lot so far about the goals of a bridge page funnel, but not really what they should include. In this section we break down different elements that should go on your page, and why each is important to the message you need to deliver.
1. Introduction of Yourself As a Resource
The bridge page should introduce yourself to your visitor as a trusting resource that they should listen to.
By introducing yourself to the equation instead of just blindly sending people through your affiliate link, you are making a human connection. You are showing them who they are dealing with, and thus establishing trust into the buying decision.
You need to tell people who you are and what qualifies you to recommend the product you want them to buy.
This message doesn’t need to be long. A few quick sentences in your sales letter, or the first few lines of your sales video should be enough to show users that there is a person behind the funnel with good credentials and good intentions to help them fix their problems.
2.Your View and Review of the Product
Odds are you won’t get an instant buyer when you introduce the product, unless you tell them more about what they are getting.
You need a good, honest review of the product to give them the extra insight they need to make the purchase decision.
People usually need many different touchpoints before making a purchase, especially a big one, and providing a behind-the-scenes look at what you are offering will give them more touchpoints to go off of.
If you are showing different angles and different elements of the product than the corporate website shows, you are adding that unique perspective of the product.
Try and anticipate any objections the potential buyer may have to making a purchase, and answer these objections within your review.
If all objections are removed, purchases are made.
3. Your Offer Stack
Selling a great affiliate offer?
Wonderful!
Give them more.
Create complementary products that will help make what you are selling even better for the visitor.
If you are selling software, make a quick video class on how they can have quick success when using the software. Throw in an eBook describing the exact way you used the software to make a desired amount of money. Add on a membership site where you answer people’s questions in further video lessons.
If you are selling supplements, offer people a recipe book on how they can incorporate their supplements into their daily diet. Throw in a 30 minute coaching call where you will hop on the phone and discuss their reasoning for wanting the supplement and how they can best use it to get the results they want.
You get the idea.
Now not only are you selling the affiliate product, but you are making that product more valuable by adding all of these free bonus incentives if people buy through your link.
Stacking offers like this is where the magic happens and reduces a ton of friction to getting the sale.
This also makes it easier to collect email addresses. How else can you deliver the goods if you don’t have their email?
Collect their email through a signup form, and email them a reminder to send you the receipt of their affiliate offer purchase so you can send them the bonus offers.
We will discuss more about the importance of email sequence follow-up in a moment.
4. Success Stories and Reviews
Your offer stack will be good for the user, but to really cement in the need to purchase, include some social proof in the way of testimonials.
Testimonials should include good reviews of the product you are selling as well as reviews of working with you, and how your offer stack really helps provide the success you are promising.
Utilize reviews given by your affiliate program if you don’t have any of your own yet, but be sure to build your credibility with testimonials directly aimed at working with you as soon as you are able.
5. A Clear Call-To-Action
One powerful conversion booster at your disposal is a clear call-to-action displayed many times throughout the page.
You can’t be asking people to do more than one thing within your Bridge Page Funnel, or you will get confused users.
The idea of a sales funnel is a clear and concise path from the beginning to the desired action.
Give a clear call-to-action at the end of each of the different sections (1-4) listed above.
That way if you sell someone with information from that section, they will have the quickest path to making a purchase without having to scroll and search for the button or form to get to the next step.
Following Up Through Email Automation Sequences
If you have executed your bridge page correctly, you will now possess the users email address.
Even if they don’t make the affiliate purchase after signing up, you can now further market the offer to them using different techniques over time.
A good follow-up sequence will save a lot of your lost sales.
Maybe someone didn’t have their credit card on them when they went through your funnel.
Maybe they needed to talk to their spouse first.
Maybe they needed to get the money freed up to buy the offer.
Whatever the case, an email follow-up sequence can help boost your conversion rates dramatically.
You will also be able to put people into other follow-up sequences where you can make new offers to them and give them more value over time.
The Bridge Page Funnel Thank You Page
The unique thing about a Bridge Page Funnel compared to almost every other sales funnel out there is that this particular type of funnel doesn’t have a thank you page, at least not one that you make.
The goal of the Bridge Page funnel is to pre-frame, and send your visitors elsewhere, to make a purchase on someone else’s site.
The fact that the thank you page they will be seeing, and the information (email, name, address, payment info) they will be providing is on someone else’s website, makes it all the more important to have some way of collecting email addresses within your bridge page.
If you work for an affiliate program that gives you the emails of people who you get to sign up, this step is not needed. This is how ClickFunnels operates, and it makes my job easier to build my email list.
The fact remains that most affiliate programs don’t give you this valuable asset, so you will need to offer some value up front and get people to give you their email before they leave your funnel.
Learn More About Lead Generation Funnels
There is a whole wide world of lead funnels outside of the Bridge Page Funnel, and even if you are an affiliate marketer or a network marketer, you will still find huge value in learning the other types that are out there.
Spend time mastering one lead funnel, but be open to using others where applicable.
With any lead funnel the objective is to grow your email list, and make sales if you are able.
For people who want to learn more about lead gen funnels, I always recommend people check out the Lead Funnels Swipe File.
It will teach you the basics of lead funnels, as well as give you examples of over 106 of the worlds most successful lead funnels.
