Affiliate Marketing and Appealing to Different World Views

Everything a person looks at, experiences or examines gets filtered through a specific world view. Seth Godin, in his book All Marketers are Liars emphasizes this issue (among other things) as a key point in crafting stories or messages that will appeal to potential customers. One of the key themes in the book, is that merchants should not try and appeal to a multitude of world views, or else they risk their message becoming too diluted, unfocused and generic.

Affiliate marketing can be a valuable tool in expanding a merchants reach to different types of customers with different world views. Just on the surface, consider that couponers know their visitors are hunting for discounts and deals, forums know their customers have in-depth interest in particular niches', and content/blog sites will of course appeal to various niche interests.  Recruiting different types of quality affiliates to an affiliate program allows a merchant to touch these potential customers, through the affiliate partners that they might not never have been able to reach when focusing on their core customer's world view.

For example, consider a trendy woman's fashion merchant. Logic would dictate they this merchant would craft their message to their core customer segment, woman interested in trendy fashions. Now, suppose we have a webmaster who runs a blog with a community of married men who are computer enthusiasts (aka nerds) (note: I would definitely be a member of this community). Right before Christmas time, these men are desperate and searching for advice and tips on gifts to buy their wives/significant others. The blog owner signs up for the woman's trendy fashion affiliate program, and offers this merchant up to his community. Just like that, the trendy woman's fashion site gets exposed to a group of men who wouldn't ordinarily be visiting this site, and who are looking for things to purchase.

Among the advantages of CPA marketing; measurable and clear ROI, it's important not to neglect the huge advantage of expanding the merchant reach to customers not ordinarily exposed to a merchant. Good affiliate managers will be on the look out for these types of affiliates and will be actively recruiting them into a program.