Reciprocity and the Law and Science of Persuasion in Affiliate Marketing.

Reciprocity is a concept that you should be familiar with as an affiliate marketer if you want to increase your affiliate sales.

Simply because if you learn the science behind the reciprocity concept you will understand how sales are made and how the art of human psychology can help you make more money.

In general all the average affiliate marketer does is try to present his pitch to the readers and hoping that some of them will end up buying the product he is promoting.

While this works perfectly most of the times, it won’t yield a high conversion rates all the time.
This is simply because the fact that…

People don’t always use all the information available to them in order to make a decision, that’s the harsh reality.

Instead people depend on certain rules and shortcuts that guides them into taking any decision.

One of these shortcuts and rules is Reciprocity.
Reciprocity is one of the basic concepts in the science of persuasion, which basically helps you as an affiliate marketer understand how to make people take a certain decisions, like buying your affiliate offer.

I am going to explain the Reciprocity concept and how to implement it in your affiliate marketing efforts to increase your sales and make more money.
The science of persuasion tells us that reciprocity is the obligation to give when you receive first.

So a real life example will be, when a friend invites you to his birthday party (you receive) then you feel obligated to invite him back to your birthday party (give).
If someone did you a favor then you feel the need to return the favor to him/her.

This all leads us to the rule that people are more likely to say “Yes! To you when you give them something first.

Of course people will not say yes to anything just because you gave them something first, you must ask them or expect from them something reasonable.

Also it might not be as easy as:

“I give someone something then he will be obligated to agree to do something for me”.

You have to consider how you are giving something to that person.

For example, when a waiter brings you your bill in most cases you will pay the bill and pay him a reasonable tip.
But if that waiter gave you a mint with your bill then you probably going to increase his tip, and if he said to you “this mint is for you my best customer” then you will give him even more tip.

This shows us that the way you give something is very crucial even more than what you are giving itself.

So for reciprocity to work:
• You need to be the first to give
• Give something personalized
• Give something unexpected

How to Implement Reciprocity in your Affiliate Marketing Plan

Using what we know about the reciprocity concept, I am going to explain some strategies that you can implement on your affiliate page to boost conversion rates and sales.

 

• Strategy #1

Select a profitable niche that you want to sell affiliate products in, and then build a blog filled with content and perhaps free training course.
Try and promote this blog to get as much readers as you can. Over time you will see that all your blog posts got tons of likes and retweets which gives you more social media exposure.

And after sometime put an ad for the products you want to sell as an affiliate.
Because at this point many of your users will be regular visitors to your blog, and when they finally see a product that you recommend they will feel the need to buy it because you were so generous to them across the time they have been visiting and reading your blog.

 

• Strategy #2

In your affiliate product review page tell your visitors to download something that goes well with the product you are trying to sell.
For example:

If I am selling (as an affiliate) a wordpress plugin related to SEO then I will offer them a 15 pages pdf guide on SEO as a bonus.

But his bonus will be given to them before they buy the actual product.
Here I was the first to give, and I did something unexpected because I gave them a generous bonus before they even buy, and it was personalized because it helps solve their problem and it goes well with the product they are considering buying.

 

• Strategy #3

You know how nowadays every ebook, guide, software out there can only be downloaded if you opt-in or provide your email address, as much as that work it is still annoying to have to be the one to give first in order to take.

Try offering your PDF guide without an opt-in and tell your visitors that download doesn’t require them to give their email.
When you do that, at this point people feel how generous you are and how unexpected this is which is very important factor in persuading them to buy your affiliate product.
So what you do is at the end of your PDF guide, you mention the affiliate product that you want them to buy and introduce it in 1 paragraph.

People will feel the need to return you the favor of giving them something for free first.

 

• Strategy #4

If you are promoting a software product or service, then try to contact the product owner and convince them to give you a version of the product that you can give to your visitors.

Except this version should allow a trial usage for free.
It has been known that when people are given the product for free for a period of time, they end up buying it at the end. They feel how generous you are and they may end up falling in love with your affiliate product, and that is more persuasive then any word you can type.

 

• Strategy #5

In your blog, try to organize a monthly events and training sessions for your readers.
You can see Google hangouts or Skype group video chat for that or even any online webinar service that will help you host such events.

These events are amazing for selling affiliate products, because you get very personal with your audience via video or audio and you spend like 1 hour giving them advice and tips and tricks and at the end you sell them your affiliate product.

 

• Using any of these strategies or even developing your own strategies that implement the reciprocity concept can really add a huge improvement to the way you do affiliate marketing.

These changes are cheap and not time consuming yet they can bring you more money.
As an affiliate marketer I think you should always try to find ways to convince people to buy from you as it mounts to higher conversion rates.

Also there are many other affiliate marketing techniques you can learn from this one. Combine them with what you have learned here so far and you can see sales increase.

This has been a guest blog post from Ibrahim Dahy of:

A product first released on clickbank.com

This post dove into the Law of Persuasion and the Law of Reciprocity.

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