The old advertising adage says “Sell the sizzle, not the steak.” Another way to say this is people don’t buy products and services; they buy benefits. Each of your advertiser’s offers has associated benefits that will cause your visitors to respond, and, if they’re the right audience, to buy.

In order to sell your advertiser offers you first have to find out what they’re about. Who is the target audience for the product? What are the primary benefits to buying it? All of this information will help you find optimal placements for your ads and create content to support them. Some publishers also include product details, which can be retrieved with Commission Junction product links, and customer testimonials with their ads.

If product benefits and details are not readily available to you, request them from the advertiser to ensure you use content suitable for their brand. Also, review the advertiser’s Web site to better understand the products you’re selling and who the target audience is. You can also request specific link types that work best with your site, but remember that all link types can be used successfully if visitors are being sold on the offer up front.

To help sell your offers, place them around relevant content or content that has the same target audience as the offers. Second, use the product benefits content as part of, or around, the ads on your site. If you have a content site, for example, a skiing site that’s promoting ski boot product links, you can include product information or endorsements directly within your relevant content and place your product links close by.

If you’re an email marketer, make sure you target your offers to the right recipients for optimal conversion rates. If you have a loyal subscriber list and know the audience well, even directly promotional emails will be met with success.

Provide More Value

You can also generate more confidence in your offers by promoting what sizzles in your advertisers’ programs. Do they have a warranty, free shipping, fast delivery, or good customer service? If so, promote these benefits along with the product so the user feels confident about buying from them, and using your Web site to do so.

And nothing persuades shoppers on the verge of buying than extra perks like coupons and discounts. Today, consumers can buy almost anything from a large number of online vendors. Give them a few extra reasons to buy from your advertisers. You can locate special offers in the Get Links tab of your CJ Account Manager™. You can also get this information from your advertisers that send regular program newsletters. Finally, use the handpicked special offers from Commission Junction’s What’s Hot email, delivered monthly and also posted in CJU

Be Proactive

You’ve found a terrific ad for your audience, and it contains a special offer for your customers. To get more leverage, place it in a top performing spot in your inventory. (If you don’t know which locations and which ads are selling the best, use your Commission Junction reports to find out today!) Give high-value ads that have high commission rates and are well suited for your audience the best opportunity to succeed.

If you have an opt-in email list, you can create a “special offers” email specific to this purpose and insert your top four or five offers complete with product details, benefits and more. For this tactic to work, the emails must be targeted and consistently offer real value to the recipient. Your recipients should have opted in to receive your emails, and for best results we recommend developing your own list in-house, instead of using rented lists.

The Role of Testing

You’re probably thinking that this is too much work – you have tons of ad space, many pages, hundreds of ads, and these techniques are too time intensive. This is where testing comes in. Our most profitable publishers usually have a few very successful affiliations – relationships with specific advertisers whose ads work for them on a consistent basis. Use testing to establish which advertisers and what kinds of offers and ad types really resonate with your customers. Based on that information and using an ad’s EPC (earnings per 100 clicks), you will become better at selecting the right ads and tweaking your ad placement for best results. It does require ongoing work, but it pays off in commissions.