If you are new to affiliate marketing, you have a lot to learn, including some unfamiliar terms. One of them is “offer”. But before you can graspon the meaning of the word in this niche, you need to know its general definition, meaning and features in other fields.
Offer: What is it?
An offer is simply a proposal of goods, services or any product with a description and a call to action. It also provides information on the benefits and advantages of buying this product, such as delivery and payment options, discounts and promotions and the steps required to get it (purchase, registration, subscription, etc.).
There are different types of offers, such as:
An offer with a clear benefit — an offer that gives you more for the same price. For example, “Get 50 extra bonuses”;
An offer with savings — an offer that comes with a discount. For example, “Buy now and save 30%”;
An offer with conditional reinforcer — an offer that adds a bonus product or service. For example, “Order two products and get the third one for free”.
Offers in Marketing
In marketing, an offer is tailored to the needs and wants of the target audience. It can be displayed on a website, as a social media post or an advertisement. The goal is to capture attention of potential customers, spark their curiosity, and persuade them to buy the promoted product.
To achieve this, marketers use various techniques, such as:
Personalize offers for a specific audience, instead of using a generic statement for everyone. For example, “This bed is perfect for those who value a comfortable sleep”.
Highlight the benefits and outcomes for the customer and mention the time frame. For example, “You will master English in 2 months”.
Anticipate and address possible questions and objections before they come up. For example, about quality or price: “We only sell original products at the best price”.
Offers in Advertising
Offers should catch the customer’s eye at a glance. The example below illustrates Headspace’s Instagram ad. It uses a custom-made call to action that appeals to the user’s emotions and senses. “Snuggle up to Headspace” creates a cozy and personalized feeling, also implying the benefits of meditation. The ad offers two incentives: a 30% off deal and improved sleep. The CTA button “Subscribe” makes it clear how the user can access the offer and start snuggling up. The ad is accompanied by a sweet and serene image that reinforces the message and tone of the CTA.
Another effective offer is shown below:
Plated is a service that delivers fresh ingredients and recipes to your door, so you can cook delicious meals at home. Here are some of the hooks they use to attract potential customers:
You can save up to $135 on your first week of meals with this huge discount. This creates a sense of urgency and value for the user.
A mouth-watering image of a dish that looks appetizing and healthy stimulates the user’s senses and emotions.
“Everything you need to cook dinner, delivered.” This simple and catchy slogan summarizes the benefits and convenience of the service in one sentence.
Three icons with short inscriptions below highlight the main features of the service that address the user’s needs and pain points: food you’ll love, reliability you can trust, and dinner in 30 minutes or less. These icons are easy to scan and memorize.
Offers in Email Marketing
They mainly rely on catchy text. If the text is not appealing, the customer will not open the email and might even delete it.
Here is an example of an email advertisement from Wag! and why it can be engaging for subscribers and motivate them to take action:
Wag! is a service that connects dog owners with local, trusted, and 5-star dog walkers, boarders, and trainers.
The subject line offers a unique and personalized reward: a custom emoji of their dog. This appeals to the user’s emotions and curiosity. It also creates urgency and scarcity as the offer is limited and time-sensitive. The user has to book a walk today to enter the contest and win. This encourages the user to act fast. The subject line also highlights the main benefit: 6 months of free walks. This saves the user money and time.
The content reinforces the subject line with large and bold text and exclamation marks. It shows 4 images of different dog breeds with custom emojis. This illustrates the reward and makes it realistic and appealing. There is also a clear and simple call to action: “Book a Walk Today”. This explains to the user what they need to do to join the contest and win the reward.
A well-written email offer will surely drive customers to the website. Learn how to set up email campaigns correctly here.
Job Offers
A job offer (or HR offer) is a proposal of employment by an employer. It outlines the main terms of the employment contract, such as position, working hours, probationary period, salary, etc. It is not legally binding and does not guarantee anything to either the employer or the job seeker. That means that even if the offer is signed by both parties, the employer can revoke the offer or the job seeker can change their mind and decline. However, many large companies that care about their reputation, take job offers seriously.
Job offers are usually sent by email after a brief interview to summarize all the agreements. They can vary in format, depending on the company’s policy. For example, some companies have a verbal interview, during which all the conditions are stated and then a contract is signed right away. In other companies, the offer is presented as a specially designed document or even a video.
Online Offers
Social networks are platforms with huge amounts of traffic that can be reached by targeted ads. Targeting is advertising aimed at a specific segment of the audience that matches certain criteria.
Offers in targeting are proposals of a specific product or service to a specific audience. On social media such as Facebook, Instagram, etc., you can select the interests of the audience when setting up an advertising campaign. This way, you can target the people who are most likely to be interested in your offer.
For example, let’s say you want to sell a necklace. You need to choose several segments of the audience for this offer. These could be:
women who are interested in jewelry;
men who have a wedding anniversary or their wife’s birthday coming up;
friends of a woman who has a birthday soon.
With such narrow targeting setting, the chances are that this offer will highly appeal to the potential customers.
Also, the term “online offers” has another meaning. To promote a page on social media, many people initially use methods to increase the number of views, likes and comments. When a user visits a profile for the first time and sees the engagement of other users, they are more likely to show some activity as well.
Bots and offers are often used for promotion. Bots are special programs that are more useful for quantity, so that the newly created profile is not empty.
Some bots can be active, they are also called offer bots. In other words, they are automated programs that can simulate human behaviour and interact with users. These bots can be used for various purposes, such as promoting products or services, generating leads, collecting feedback or engaging with customers. Offer bots apply different techniques to attract and persuade users, including personalizing messages, highlighting benefits, creating a sense of urgency or addressing possible objections. They can also use natural language processing and machine learning to understand the user’s intent and respond in a conversational manner.
And what are Instagram or YouTube offers? Real people. In this case, offers are real people who like, dislike, share or comment on posts or videos. For comments, you can either provide your own text or specify the tone: negative, neutral or positive. If someone posted a negative comment under a YouTube video and got many likes, it automatically rises to the top of the popular comments. To prevent users from seeing the comment, you can push it down or hide it by using dislikes from real accounts. For example, a dislike on a comment can be bought in an online shop for less than $0.02, 1 like costs $0.01-$0.02 on average, 1 subscription — $0.03-$0.04.
Offers in Affiliate Marketing
Offers in traffic arbitrage are proposals from advertisers that marketers (or affiliates) agree to promote. They can be various products for home, health and beauty, games, gadgets, dating apps, weight loss pills, online casinos, etc. Advertisers pay affiliates a fee for a specific action performed by leads (potential customers). This can be a purchase, registration, installation of an app, etc.
Marketers can work directly with the advertiser, if they trust them, but more often they use an affiliate network as an intermediary. There are many affiliate networks for any niche and each one tries to provide more favorable conditions on offers.
Types of Offers
Offers can be classified into several types, depending on their legality and morality:
White Offer. This is an offer of any product or service that does not intend to deceive the buyer in any way. If a smartphone is sold, it means that the buyer will pay for it and receive a smartphone, not a box of bricks. White offers are usually clothes, accessories, toys, goods for home and garden, design services, photographers, etc.
Grey Offer. It is an offer that somehow exaggerates facts or promises. There may be a slight deception involved. For example, pills for weight loss or enhancement are unlikely to work as expected by customers. Or for buying some app, the card may be charged an extra fee, which is either mentioned in small print or not mentioned at all. Grey offers are drugs for various diseases (heart, joints, diabetes, weight loss or rejuvenation), online casino games, apps with hidden fees, etc.
Black Offer. These offers are designed to scam. Often such offers contain malware to steal money or card data. For example, a virus embedded in the app that drains money from a card or bitcoins from a wallet when installed.
Offer Niches
Offers can belong to different niches, depending on their topic or category:
E-Commerce — this niche includes various products of both well-known brands and their low-quality copies.
Gambling — a niche with online casinos, card games and money wagering.
Betting — sports betting and esports.
Finance — a niche that combines banking, microloans, brokerage and other financial services.
Dating — a niche with offers in the form of dating sites and apps. It is divided into mainstream (real long-term relationships), casual (sex without commitment) and adult (more explicit format, also sex).
Adult — offers for 18+, for example, (improving one’s libido or penis enlargement). Can also include adult games.
Sweepstakes — giveaways in which the winner receives some sort of prize, certificate or gadget. In exchange, users have to enter their contact details, which advertisers can later use to send more ads.
Nutra — offers for beauty and health products.
Offer Parameters
When choosing an offer, you need to look beyond its competitiveness and consider other parameters that affect it. This will help you estimate your potential profit and make a decision faster:
GEO — the country where you can advertise the offer. All GEOs are divided into 3 tiers — Tier-1, Tier-2, Tier-3, depending on the quality of life and income level of the residents. Tier-1 are the richest countries.
Bid — the amount that you will earn for the specific action performed by the lead.
Hold — the waiting time during which the affiliate network checks the quality of your traffic and then pays you the bid.
Cap — the limit on the amount of accepted traffic. Advertisers impose it on some niches to have time to check the quality of traffic. Anything above that is not paid. For example, if an offer has a cap of 100 conversions, you will not get paid for anything above this number.
Approval rate — the percentage of confirmed specific actions. For example, the specific action for an offer is order confirmation. When users leave requests on the website, they become leads. When they receive a call from the call center and confirm that they are actually placing an order, they become an approved lead. You get paid a bid for such a lead. In other words, the higher the approval rate for an offer, the better. If the rate is 80%, it means that out of 100% of those who leave an order on the website, 80% confirm the order.
Landing page — the website that will open when someone clicks on your ad. Sometimes you can choose from several landing pages.
Payment models are divided into several types:
CPA (Cost per Action) — you get paid for a specific action performed by the user: registration, purchase, app download.
CPS (Cost per Sale) — you get paid when a user that you brought to the site makes a purchase there.
CPI (Cost per Install) — you get paid for each installation of the app.
CPC (cost per click) or PPC (price per click) — you get paid for clicks made by users: clicking on an ad or following a link.
CPL (Cost per Lead) — you get paid for the contact information provided by the user: email, phone number, name.
SOI (single opt-in) and DOI (double opt-in) are subtypes of CPL model. In SOI, you get paid for each user who performs one action: fills out a form, for example. In DOI, you get paid for each user who performs two actions: fills out a form and confirms by email.
Revshare (Revenue Share) — you get paid for a percentage of the revenue that the user generates, not a fixed amount. This is usually 40-60%. This model is used in gambling and betting. The percentage is calculated on the amount the user has lost over time.
CPA Offers
CPA offers work with the CPA model. The advertiser pays only for a specific action that the user performs, not for clicks or impressions. This action can be registration, filling out a form, installing an app, making a purchase, etc. When the user completes the action defined by the advertiser, the webmaster earns a commission.
For example: a webmaster promotes a dating site where the advertiser’s goal is filling out a profile. The webmaster posts an attractive ad on TikTok. The user sees the ad and gets curious. They click on the ad, go to the site and fill out their profile. The action is done. The webmaster gets paid the bid.
FAQ
Which offers are the most profitable?
Black and grey offers are usually the most profitable, but also the riskiest. They involve deception or fraud, and can get you banned or sued by platforms or users. You should be careful and ethical when choosing your offers.
What is the difference between an offer and a UTP?
UTP stands for Unique Selling Proposition. It is a part of an offer that should grab user attention immediately. It highlights what makes your offer different and better than what the competitors propose. For example, “The only app that lets you chat with celebrities”.
What are Facebook, Instagram and Telegram offers?
They are real followers that create natural activity in groups on Facebook, Instagram or in Telegram channels. They can like, comment, share or subscribe to your content. They can help you grow your audience and increase your engagement rate.
What is the specialty of an offer on a landing page?
An offer on a landing page should lead the user to a purchase by showcasing the benefits of your product or service, plus a promotion or a discount, plus an effective call to action. For example, “Buy now and get 50% off plus free shipping”.
SP Offers — what are they?
SP offers are offers in which you get paid if the user subscribes to something. For example, a training course, a newsletter, a membership, etc. SP stands for Subscription Payment — payment for subscription.
