Are you wondering how to use Facebook for Affiliate Marketing? Is it a good platform to start your affiliate business? Are affiliate links allowed on Facebook? How can I monetize a Facebook Page with Affiliate Marketing?
If you have asked yourself any of these questions then you have come to the right place!
In this article I’ll share the good, the bad and the ugly of using Facebook for your Affiliate Marketing business so you can decide if it is the right choice for you.
When you finish reading it you will know what are the best strategies you can use to promote affiliate products using Facebook, make money and keep your account safe!
Let’s get started…
Pros of doing Affiliate Marketing with Facebook
Let’s start with the advantages of using it for your affiliate business. Here are some of the main benefits affiliates can get from Facebook:
1. Massive audience for Affiliate Products
With over 2.7 billion monthly active users as of the second quarter of 2020, Facebook is by far the biggest social network worldwide.
Additionally, users are very active on the platform as showed in a study where 51% of users declared to check Facebook more than once a day and 23% said to do it at least once a day.
As an affiliate, this means you can reach more people by using it and eventually have more opportunities to grow your sales.
2. It Works for Most Niches in Affiliate Marketing
Since Facebook has such a massive audience and penetration in so many countries and demographic groups, this means the perfect audience for your affiliate offers is very likely to be on Facebook out of all social media.
The demographics are also very diverse which makes it friendly for a wide variety of niches. Contrary to other social media like Pinterest where the majority of users are female or TikTok where most are teenagers, Facebook audience includes people of all genders and ages.
If you are not convinced yet, check out the graphic below for Facebook’s USA audience.
3. Different features to promote your affiliate offers
Another benefit of using Facebook for affiliate marketing is that you can choose between its different features and pick the one that most suits your needs, expertise and goals.
If you rather have immediate on-demand traffic you can use Facebook Ads, If you want to create a community you can use Facebook groups or if you prefer to leverage you personal profile you can choose that too.
I’ll explain more in detail later on the best way to optimize each of these strategies.
Cons of doing Affiliate Marketing with Facebook
Every platform has its own drawback and it is best that you know them now so you can use your knowledge and unique strategies as an affiliate to overcome them.
1. High Competition for your affiliate offers
While it is truth that Facebook is the social media with most users, it is also the one with most advertisers since every company and marketer wants to get a piece of that audience.
This makes it more competitive and expensive if you plant to use Facebook ads. Not everyone can reach the same audience at the same time so Facebook uses a bidding system where whoever offers to pay the most per click, ‘wins’.
This has cause Facebook ads costs to increase overtime and will probably continue to do so but in most cases it is worth it and you can still be very profitable.
2. Can’t use affiliate links
Probably one of the biggest ‘issues’ for new affiliate is not being able to use affiliate links directly through Facebook ads which is still possible in other platforms such as Snapchat.
However, this drawback can be overcome easily by creating an affiliate bridge page that will also help you increase your profits and build a long term business. I’ll explain more about this later.
3. Not the best customer support
You’d think that spending thousands of dollars a month in Facebook ads will get you something better than a robot response or 3 days to hear back from them. Spoiler: it doesn’t.
They also have a very strict policy when it comes to what is and is not allowed in their ads platform so it is something you” need to work around to use it for affiliate marketing.
But don’t worry, in the next section, I’ll teach you how to set up your account and ads to avoid any issues.
Affiliate Marketing with Facebook
Now that you are aware of the pros and cons of using Facebook for Affiliate Marketing, let’s go over the different options you have to start promoting your affiliate offers.
1. Affiliate Marketing with Facebook Groups
Creating a Facebook Group related to your affiliate niches is one of the best ways to promote your offers without spending any money on ads.
Contrary to Facebook Pages that are now useless unless you are running ads, Facebook Pages still offer a great organic reach and can grow quite passively once you are passed the initial stage.
Here are some essential factors to consider when creating your Facebook Group
a. Optimize your group name and description with relevant keywords.
The most common way for people to find groups they want to join is by doing a simple search on Facebook. This is why you want your group name to include the most relevant words people would use when looking for a group in your niche.
Additionally, avoid using. clever or cute names since that won’t help you get found by your ideal audience
For example, if you want to create a group in the fitness niche for women, you would do much better with something like. “Fitness & Weight loss for Women. Diet and Workout Tips” that with “Superwoman club”.
b.Create an attractive cover image
After your group name, the first thing people will see before deciding to join your group is your cover picture.
You want this to motivate them to join by using a well-designed image that shows what the group is about.
This is also your first chance to add a ‘Call To Action’ that invites them to visit your affiliate link or your landing page if you already have one.
Facebook images are not clickable but you can still write the phrase “click here” so when users click on the image, it expands and shows the description. This is where you’ll want to add your link.
c. Collect the emails of people who join your group.
This will help you to build your email list while your group grows. I won’t go into much detail about it here but basically, email lists are the creme de la creme of the marketing tools and they will help you build a more profitable and sustainable business.
You can check this article to learn more about why it is essential to build your affiliate list if you want to protect your business long term.
You can use a tool like Group Leads (free chrome extension) to help you connect your Facebook questionnaire with your email provider and collect leads on autopilot.
d. Create your group rules
Group rules are super important to keep your group spam-free and attract the right type of audience.
Unfortunately, there’ll always be some sketchy profiles trying to use your group to post sell their own products or steal members for their groups.
You can avoid this by creating a couple of simple rule and a no-tolerance policy so when someone violates one of these rules you can remove them instantly.
Adding some open-ended questions to your questionnaire will also help you avoid spammers from joining your group since most of the time they won’t bother answering.
e. Create a Pinned Post with links to your affiliate offers
Adding a pinned post that stays at the top of your timeline is another chance to start engaging with your audience, telling them a little bit about the group and what they can expect from it.
Additionally, you can add a link to your affiliate offers or landing pages to start directing some traffic and make some sales.
Offering a ‘freebie’ or lead magnet is a great incentive to get people to click in your links. After they download your free item, you can redirect them to an upsell for an affiliate offer.
If you are unfamiliar with landing pages, funnels, and upsells, make sure to check out this article later on how to build an easy high-converting affiliate page.
f. Make a weekly or monthly post welcoming new members
Similarly to the pinned post, you can make a post every week or month tagging all new members and use it as another opportunity to start building trust with them.
People join a Facebook group because they expect to receive answers to their problems and connect with other people who are going thorugh the same so the ‘selling’ in this case should come only after you provide some value and show genuine interest in them.
To get a better idea of how to manage a Facebook group for better engagement, join some groups in your niche and you’ll quickly see which are the ones where people feel confident to ask and engage and which ones are mostly filled with spam. (Don’t let your group be the second type)
Affiliate Marketing with Facebook Groups Pros and Cons
Pros
- It’s free
- It can grow organically when optimized for keywords.
- User-generated content helps keep the group engaged
- Good reach compared to Facebook pages.
- Can help you grow an email list.
- You don’t need to have a website or blog.
Cons
- You don’t own the audience.
- At mercy of Facebook’s policies and changes.
- Needs constant monitoring and involvement.
2. Affiliate Marketing with Facebook Paid Ads
The second option for doing affiliate marketing on Facebook is using paid ads. If you have the budget to invest in paid traffic, then Facebook ads a solid option to consider.
Here are some of the factors you should consider to succeed as an affiliate with Facebook ads.
a. Get Familiar with Facebook Advertising Policies
I once had my account banned for showing an anatomical illustration of a glute muscle because Facebook tag it as a ‘close up’ of body parts.
Whether or not I was violating the policy is up for debate but the point is, you don’t want to go through that trouble so it is best to stay away from gray areas and keep your account and data safe.
As I have mentioned before, Facebook customer support is disappointing so if you receive any penalties or suspensions it is pretty hard to actually talk to a human and get a response, let alone get your account back.
b. Use a Landing Page
As I have mentioned before, Facebook doesn’t allow for affiliate links to be used as the destination URL when using Facebook Ads.
This doesn’t mean you can use Facebook ads for your affiliate offers, it just means you need to add what is known as a ‘bridge page’ or landing page that exists ‘between’ your ads and the affiliate offers.
If you are a visual person, check out the graphic below to get an idea of how this works. In this case your traffic source are your Facebook Ads > when someone clicks on them, they will first land on your bridge page > and there is where you” place your affiliate link so they are redirected when clicking.
I recommend checking this article to learn exactly how to create the best bridge page for your affiliate offers.
More on the retargeting piece later.
c. Understand the Facebook Pixel
The ‘Facebook Pixel’ sounds like something complicated and intimidating but it is actually just a piece of code that you copy from from Facebook Account to, in this case, your landing page.
It looks something like this.
But as I said, you can copy it straight from your Facebook account so that’s all you need to understand. Its purpose is to collect information on what type of people are visiting your page and what actions they are performing.
This way, Facebook ‘learns’ about your audience and can optimize your ads to show them to people with the same profile.
d. Increase your affiliate sales and profits by retargeting
Did you know that most people need at least 7-8 contact points from a brand or a product before making a purchase?
If you consider that, it seems crazy to simply run ads to a cold audience and expect them to have a high conversion rate.
Which is why retargeting is so important. Put simply, retargeting means to show your ads to people who have already interacted with them before but didn’t make a purchase.
This is also possible thanks to the Facebook Pixel. Once you have installed it on your landing page, you will be able to show ads to anyone who has visited it and even add filters like a time range, amount of times, etc.
This is a key piece to creating a profitable affiliate campaign with Facebook Ads.
e. Pay attention to the back-end
When it comes to online sales the back end is where the profits are.
It refers to the products or services you sell to a customer who has already made an initial purchase with the company. In other words, back end sales refer to the sales made to existing customers.
Selling to an existing customers is way easier and cheaper than selling to a new one and that is a piece a lot of new affiliates fail to understand that keeps them chasing new customers and wondering why they are not profitable.
Successful companies know this and so they are willing to break even or even lost money in the front end because they know they have a strong back end where they’ll make their profits. This is what is known as a sale funnel.
With adversiting costs increasing every year, it is essential to have a back end sales process that allows you to increase your profits and invest more in acquiring your customers.
If you want to understand more about this make sure to check out this article on how sales funnels work and why you need one.
d. Keeps your Facebook Ads and Affiliate Pages congruent
If we were to analyze a big brand customer journey, we would notice that there is a congruency among all the elements of the campaign including the ads, website, etc. This goes unnoticed for the customer but is what makes it a seamless process where they don’t stop to wonder if they have landed in the right page.
The same should apply to your affiliate campaigns. While you do not own the affiliate landing page, you should create your ads and bridge page so the user experience flows naturally and trust is built.
Look at the colors, images, and copy of your affiliate offers and make sure to apply them to your own ads and pages.
Recommended: Facebook Ads for Affiliate Marketing Ultimate Guide
Affiliate Marketing with Facebook Ads Pros and Cons
Pros
- On-demand traffic
- Easy to scale
- Doesn’t take up much of your time.
- You don’t need a website just a landing page.
Cons
- Has a learning curve, if you are new you can lose some money.
- Strict Advertising Policies
- Bad customer support from Facebook
3. Affiliate Marketing with your Facebook Profile
Last but not least, you can also do affiliate marketing by using your own Facebook Profile or what affiliate likes to call ‘organic traffic’.
This is a great way to get started if you don’t have money to invest in ads but you do have some time to put into your affiliate business.
Here is what using your own profile to do affiliate marketing looks like:
a. Create a lead magnet and landing page
The first step for this method is to create a lead magnet and a landing page to collect emails.
A lead magnet is a free item that you offer visitors in exchange for their emails. This is the best way to start growing an email list that you can send your affiliate offers forever and without spending any money on ads.
In the next step, I will show you how to optimize your Facebook profile to direct people to your landing page.
This way, once they visit your profile they will be motivated to go and claim it.
To create a great lead magnet that attracts your potential buyers, start by thinking about your affiliate offer and understand what is the problem someone who would buy it, is facing.
- For example, if you are promoting an affiliate offer for a weight loss training program, you can imagine a person who would buy that us looking for weight loss solutions so you can offer a lead magnet with 10 exercises to lose fat.
- Or if you are promoting a course on how to train your dog, you can assume a person who would buy that is trying to educate their dogs so you could offer a lead magnet of ‘Best tricks to teach your dog at home’.
Once you have created your lead magnet, create a simple landing page where people can claim it by opting-in with their emails.
This one above is an example of a simple landing page I created for a lead magnet on that took me 10 mins using one of Clickfunnels templates.
You can get a step by step guide on how to create an affiliate landing page here.
b. Optimize your Facebook profile to drive traffic to your landing page
Once you have your landing page ready, you are ready to optimize your Facebook page to start sending traffic.
The whole goal of optimizing your profile this way is to start collecting leads that are interested in your niche and whom you can later sell your affiliate offers.
The idea is to turn your personal profile into a ‘walking’ ad that promotes your free lead magnet and invites people to claim it by visiting your landing page.
We do this by using all the elements available such as your profile picture, cover picture, featured picture, bio, and description.
Above, for example, is what my profile looks like. As you can see all the elements are designed with the goal of inviting people to click in the images by promoting an attractive free guide.
Finally, add the link to your landing page to your bio and your picture’s descriptions. This way, when they click on the images and the descriptions appear, they’ll see the clickable link.
Note: if you want a step by step guide on how to transform your profile into a lead machine you can download a free guide here. (see what I did there?)
c. Connect with people in your affiliate niche through Facebook
Now that you have your profile and landing page ready to collect leads, all you need to do is start interacting with people to attract them to visit your profile.
This might sound unfounded but it is what actually happens whenever we speak with someone new online. We get naturally curious about that person and check out their profiles to satisfy our curiosity. This strategy leverages that curiosity to attract potential leads.
The best way to find potential customers is to join Facebook groups who are related to the affiliate niche you are promoting.
Join 4-5 quality groups and start engaging with people and providing some real value. You won’t be doing any selling here all you want to do is create some valuable connections so people get curious about you and visit your profile.
If you have stablished a conversation with someone in a group you can also go ahead and add them as friends to give them another reason to visit your profile.
Once you start interacting with people on a daily basis you will see the leads start coming on autopilot without the needs to pitch or sell anything.
d. Sell your affiliate offers on autopilot
Once you have people opting-in through your landing page you can start promoting your affiliate offers via email (after you deliver the promised lead magnet).
As you can see by using this method you are leveraging the power of Facebook to collect highly targeted leads but you’ll do the actual selling via email.
This way you have more freedom on how to promote your affiliate products or services and you can now reach your subscribers for free any time you want (besides the cost of the email software which is nothing compared to the cost of Facebook ads.)
There are many email softwares you can use to send your affiliate offers on autopilot to your subscribers. I personally use and recommend Active Campaignand have found it to be the best and most versatile after trying more than 5 other companies.
You can get a free trial of Active Campaign here.
If you want to learn more about creating an email list for affiliate marketing make sure to check out this article later.
Affiliate Marketing with Facebook Profile Pros and Cons
Pros
- It’s free
- Quite passive after initial set-up
- You don’t need a website just a landing page.
- You build an email list at the same time.
Cons
- Longer time to set up
- Uses your personal profile which for some might be. an issue.
Affiliate Marketing on Facebook FAQ
1. Is Affiliate Marketing allowed on Facebook?
Affiliate Marketing on Facebook is allowed on certain features like the ones I have mentioned in this article. Here is a list so you can visualize it more clearly.
Affiliate Links Allowed
- Personal page & posts
- Business page posts
- Groups posts
Affiliate Links Not Allowed
- Facebook Ads
As you can see, the only ‘place’ where affiliate links are not allowed is on Facbook ads but that shouldn’t stop you from using Facebook to promote your affiliate offers. You can simply send them first to a landing page and from there direct them you the affiliate offers.
Check out this article to learn how to create the perfect affiliate landing page for your business.
2. How do I start affiliate marketing on Facebook?
The best way to start affiliate marketing is to focus on one offer and one platform. If you want to get started with Facebook, all you nned to do is choose one offer you wnat to promote and pick one of the mehtods explained in this article to get your affiliate business started!.
3. How do Facebook groups work with affiliate marketing?
Facebook groups are a good way to do Affiliate Markeitng on Facebook. They allow you to create your own audience of highly targetted pitential customers in your niche and you can promote your affiliate offers for free.
Of course you need to provide lots of value first and answers as many qiestions as you can to keep your members engaged and build trust with them BEFORE you offer any products.
Check out the guide above on how to promote your affiliate offers with a Facebook Group.
4. Can I post affiliate links on Facebook?
You are free to post affiliate links on your personal or business-page BUT you can not use them in Facebook Ads.
If you want to use Facebook Ads to promote affiliate products all you need to do is, create a ‘bridge’ or landing page and direct your ads there first. Check out this guide on how to do it.
Takeaway
There is no doubt that Facebook is a great platform to do affiliate marketing due to its massive, diverse, and active audience.
Additionally, it offers different ways in which you can leverage the platform to your favor. For those who have a budget and prefer to invest their money, Facebook Ads are quick and scalable alternative.
And if you want to get started for free, you can also do it by putting it some more of your time and using a Facebook Group of your own personal profile.
Follow the advice on this guide and you’ll be able to avoid any of the potential drawbacks of Facebook and will be on your way to start growing your affiliate income!