One of the most effective advertisements for a product or service can be a customer testimonial or a review from an objective source. With all of the hyped up advertising copy out there, consumers are skeptical marketing efforts.
This can be difficult to overcome, but as an affiliate, your job is to pre-sell the offer and initiate the relationship of trust between the consumer and merchant. And a recommendation from a satisfied client or industry publication serves as a very persuasive sales tool.
The testimonial as affiliate text link provides tangible proof to your site visitors and newsletter readers that the company you are promoting is capable of doing what they boast about. This sort of creative can be as short as several words, or as long as a paragraph or full page.
You’ll notice that most affiliate programs do not offer testimonials as affiliate text links, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use them. It’s actually a good thing for you if they are not being offerred to all affiliates. Then, you can contact the affiliate manager and ask for permission to use customer testimonials as affiliate links yourself.
If you prefer to run banners over text links, suggest to your affiliate managers that they ought to create some banners that are based on testimonials.
Affiliates can also pick and choose customer tesimonials from some merchants (example: InstrumentPro).
If you are a customer of the merchant you are promoting, try writing a testimonial of your own and run it by the affiliate manager.