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New affiliates often think of psychology and how it applies to writing the ads for their affiliate marketing, but forget to consider the psychology of the sales cycle. You can have great marketing but if you catch your prospect at the wrong part of the sales cycle, your sales are probably low and you are spending too much money on your online marketing.

You are about to learn the psychological process of the consumer as they transition from a prospect to a buyer. Not everyone who buys something on the Internet will go through this process, but the majority do. You must learn the three phases of the sales cycle so that you know the optimal time to jump in with your online marketing and go for the sale.

Browsing Stage (Step 1)

What if someone wants to buy a new sofa. They do not know much about which sofa is good. They will probably seach for "sofa", "sofa set", "good sofa", "cheap sofa", "sofa reviews" or something similar.

These are terms that indicate a browsing or research mindset and are not the keywords you should be going for with your affiliate marketing website. Ponder this for a moment. Are you really willing to pay $0.25 and even $0.50 a click to send someone to your direct sales landing page who is not looking for a sales pitch but instead wants to research all her available options? So many affiliates new to affiliate marketing make this mistake. Is it not a better goal to spend money driving someone to your landing page that already has their wallet out, credit card in hand, and wanting to buy?

Now if you have created a blog with lots of original articles, then it is great to try and drive prospects who are in the browsing and research stage to your blog. The organic traffic that comes to your blog doesn't cost you a thing. Hopefully you have filled your blog with articles that educate about the affiliate product you are selling. After a prospect has finished their research in your blog, you will have first stab at them in your web marketing by the text and banner ads in your blog. However, if you are using Google Adwords where you are paying per click for traffic, you can't afford to tap people in the browsing and research phase. Allow your blog to do that. Instead, you want your online marketing and Google Adwords ads to only call those people to your landing page that have their credit card in hand and are ready to buy.  

Investigation Stage (Step 2)

After the prospect has looked at some sites and read reviews, let's say the customer has decided Simmons is the best brand and the customer likes the look of the Simmons Canyon Queen Sleeper sofa. They will now typically start to do research on that specific item. So the search could now look something like “simmons canyon queen sleeper sofa review”.

Because the search is more specific, we are moving further towards the buying stage. Products with the word "review" next to them are very popular keywords to bid on in affiliate marketing. The idea is to set up a review page where you review several types of affiliate products and then give your recommendation on which one is the best to buy and why. Some super affiliates swear by the conversion power of a review page.

Buying Stage (Step 3)

Not many people will buy a product the first time they see the product online. It is common for people to make up to 8 visits before they actually buy something. This is why all affiliates should be list building. You need to offer a free report in your online marketing in exchange for them joining your autoresponder so you can pitch to them multiple times.

Once a prospect has made a decision to buy, you will notice a change in their psychology as evidenced by a shift in the keywords they type into a search engine.

“buy simmons canyon queen sleeper sofa”
“buy simmons queen sleeper sofa”
“purchase simmons canyon queen sleeper sofa”
“purchase simmons queen sleeper sofa”
“best deal on simmons canyon queen sleeper sofa”
“best deal on simmons queen sleeper sofa”
“best price on simmons canyon queen sleeper sofa”
“best price on simmons queen sleeper sofa”

You can see how in this example, the prospect probably has his/her credit card out and ready to make the purchase. They may do a quick price comparison but they are certainly at the last stage of the buying process. This is where you want to hit them with your web marketing efforts.

You will get much fewer hits with specific terms like these, but the important thing is these are more likely to result in a sale, plus you have not wasted money on broad keywords. Lots of traffic isn’t much use without sales or qualified leads.

A good example of this is when a customer of mine was doing affiliate marketing for the Nintendo Wii gaming system. He knew that the Wii gaming system was a top selling item but he just couldn't seem to grab his piece of the money pie. In fact, he was losing $200 per month in Google Adwords costs with few sales. When I studied his Google Adwords account, I saw keywords like:

"wii"
"nintendo wii"
"wii game console"
"wii gaming console"
"wii game system"
"wii games"
"wii video games"

His problem, like so many new affiliates, was that he was getting prospects at the wrong point in the sales cycle. I asked him how he knew someone was looking to purchase a Wii with the keyword "wii"? Perhaps they just wanted to read about the Nintendo Wii. Or maybe they already owned a Wii and were just researching what new things were out there. They might have been looking for a news article about the Wii to write an article to submit to article websites. I changed his keywords to:

"buy wii"
"purchase wii"
"best buy on wii"
"buy nintendo wii"
"purchase nintendo wii"
"buy wii game console"
"purchase wii game console"

. . . and so on.

The amount of traffic to his landing page decreased by 50% but his sales increased by 250%.