Understanding how to presell is one of the most important techniques an affiliate can learn. Pre-selling is the foundation of any successul affiliate business and affiliates and internet marketers who understand how to presell whatever product or service they decide to promote are well on their way to earning killer income online. Trying to be a successful affiliate marketer without understanding the fundamental concept of preselling is like trying to be a physicist without understanding Newton’s Laws of Motion. It’s just not going to happen.
The classic definition of preselling
Before we delve into how to presell let’s talk about what pre-selling means. By definition, preselling means one of two things: 1) promoting a product that has not yet come on the market by means of advertising and 2) conditioning a potential customer for the potential purchase of a product or service. It should be pretty clear which definition of preselling applies you your internet marketing efforts.
What type of affiliate marketer are you?
If you do any type of affiliate marketing online you probably already understand that EACH of your website’s visitors IS a potential customer. It is up to you to construct your website or blog in such a way that you gradually and naturally condition your visitors (i.e. pre-sell them) so that they will be more willing to actually purchase a recommended product or service from you rather than making their purchase elsewhere. That just sounds SO simple, doesn’t it? Well the concept of preselling is simple, understanding “how to presell” is not difficult, but actually implementing this technique effectively is rather tricky and until you understand how to change your mindset from the traditional mindset of typical affiliate marketers (e.g. write reviews, tell my visitors how great product A is, then place an affiliate link to buy product A, then do the same for product B etc.) to the successful mindset of super affiliate marketers (e.g. how can I help my visitors solve a common problem that I’ve identified) your affiliate marketing efforts will continue to be underwhelming.
Fundamental Principles of pre-selling
The first Fundamental Principle of pre-selling is understanding that your website visitors do NOT come to your site to buy something (unless your site is shopping.com or a giant shopping portal, then maybe). But if you just happened to arrive at KillerIncome.net today by virtue of this article appearing in a search engine, I will bet money that you did NOT come here to buy anything today – and that’s okay 
. If you operate a typical affiliate website, most likely your visitors do NOT come by because they decide, “I want to buy something from Joe’s website today”, they come by because they are looking for information about something. Now that information could be information about a product you happen to be selling from your site or perhaps a product that you are selling from your site could help this particular visitor solve a problem they are having. But, in general, your visitors probably do NOT stop by with the intention of purchasing something from your website.
What motivates your website visitors?
So, understanding that a visitor stops by mainly for two reasons – 1) to find information and 2) to solve a problem that the information on your site helps him or her solve – how can we apply this knowledge to our discussion on ‘how to presell?’ Let’s examine the two reasons mentioned above, separately.
- Visitors Looking for Information – Visitors looking for information are probably researching something. Certainly, they could be researching various products that they may purchase at some later time or they could be simply looking up information on how to be a more successful affiliate marketer. This type of visitor might buy something from your site or they might not. If you become highly skilled at preselling, you can turn this type of website visitor into a website customer. Super-affiliates can do this.
- Visitors Trying to Solve a Problem – Visitors trying to solve a problem are already ‘pre-qualified’ and by that I mean they are more apt to make a buying decision while on your site if some product or service that you are selling from your site can help solve their problem. Their buying tendencies increase, proportionally, with the urgency or immediacy with which they must solve their current problem. So, by identifying the potential problems of your site’s visitors and then constructing your articles in such a way that they actually help your visitors solve the problem in question, you will gain their trust and they will be more likely to buy something from you. Let’s look at a simple analogy in the next paragraph.
An analogy to demostrate the concept of preselling
A well dressed gentleman knocks on your door just as you are getting ready for dinner. He looks like a salesman so you just ignore him. He knocks again and his knocks become more insistent. You are getting more annoyed, but you realize that he is not going away. Reluctantly you decide to answer the door just so you can tell this jerk to leave you alone and the first thing out of his mouth is that your central air conditioning unit is on fire and the flames are perilously close to your house. You run outside and see that the man is correct, but you don’t have a fire extinguiser (shame on you), but he has one in the trunk of his car and he helps you extinguish the fire before it spreads to your house and potentially destroys your home. The fire is out and your home is safe thanks to this quick-thinking good Samaritan. You invite this man into your home because he has earned your trust, you remark that you weren’t even going to open the door because you thought he was a salesman, and you observe how lucky you were that this gentleman just happened to have a fire extinguisher in the trunk of his car. Your curiosity gets the best of you and you inquire as to why this man just happend to have a fire extinguisher in his trunk. “Funny you should mention that”, he remarks, “I actually AM a salesman and I sell fire extinguishers for homes, offices and vehicles and it’s surprising how many people – just like you – aren’t prepared for when something like this happens.” You reply, “I’ll take twelve!”
Analyzing the anecdote
The anecdote above really exemplifies what pre-selling is all about and how effective it can be if done correctly. In the funny story, our hero (the salesman) identified a problem that our customer (the homeowner ) didn’t even know he had (the fire). Then he proceeded to, first and foremost, help the homeowner solve his problem – not sell him a fire extinguisher. But, by doing so, it became obvious to the homeowner just how important it was to have a fire extinguisher at the ready in case of a similar emergency in the future. It is your job as an affiliate marketer to presell your visitors in a similar fashion so that they are conditioned to buy from you or join your newsletter or complete whatever action you would like them to take.
A practical example of how affiliates can successfully presell their visitors
Finally, let’s look at a practical example of how an online business can use these techniques and pre-sell their visitors so that they are conditioned to take some action or make a purchasing decision while on their website.
Example: You are an affiliate of various internet security software providers and you have identified a potentially disatrous security hole in Internet Explorer that can compromise users’ privacy and make them suceptible to hacking attempts. You write a detailed explanation of the security hole, including how to fix it and you mention – casually – that a new internet security software product (insert affiliate product here) can prevent this issue from happening again.
Using good SEO techniques you realize that potential visitors will use keywords such as “how do I fix the new IE security issue” or “ways to avoid being hacked” and NOT “review of (insert affiliate product here)”. In addition you send out an email to your mailing list directing them to your recent article that explains how they can determine if they have this particular problem, as well as ways to fix this problem. Be careful when composing such an article because a common mistake some affiliate marketers can make when attemtping to use this preselling technique is to turn their helpful article into a type of internet extortion. For example, instead of helping your visitors solve their security breach, your article, instead, leads them to believe that the ONLY way they are going to fix this potentially hazardous security breach is to buy whatever you are selling.
If you’re not careful, you could end up writing an article that uses fear as a motivating factor to, basically, extort your visitors into buying whatever product you are selling. Essentially, you could accidentally ‘threaten’ your visitors by telling them that the only way to fix their issue is to buy your product and here is the link and that they better buy it now or else. This is the WRONG way to pre-sell, but is a trap that affiliate marketers can easily fall into if they don’t remember the following basic principle (which also allows us to refine the definition of pre-selling we examined above):
“Preselling is helping your vistors solve a particular problem and, by doing do, conditioning them to be receptive to your affiliate offers because you are helping them without asking for anything in return and gaining their trust in the process.”
This is the KillerIncome.net definition of pre-selingl and it is very powerful because establishing trust is the second Fundamental Principle of how to presell. Once you have gained the trust of your website visitors by providing helpful, as we as useful, content your visitors will be much more receptive to the products you endorse (with your affiliate links, of course). But be careful to make sure that the products you do recommend provide value otherwise you could lose your credibility and the trust of your visitors.
So, just to summarize, learning how to presell is not difficult, but implementing this affiliate marketing technique does take some practice and we have only just scratched the surface of pre-selling, which is just one of the main concepts associated with successful internet marketing. If you would like to learn more about the techniques introduced in this article and find even more practical examples of preselling, as well as learn other fundamental affiliate marketing concepts take the FREE Affiliate Masters Course.
