Prelending and how to use it

The main task (and dream) of an affiliate is to generate leads, recoup the advertising budget and get to a good plus. For this purpose, there are a lot of tools to not only keep the attention of users, but also to push them to make those target actions that the affiliate needs. But not everyone is really professional in using tools and different approaches.

In this article, let’s talk about prelending, its types and functions, advantages and disadvantages. Is it possible to create prelending yourself, what to pay attention to and how to attract the audience and much more.

What is preloading?

Prelending in affiliate marketing, also known as a transit page, is a page placed between an ad and a landing page. This one-page, similar to a creative, is used by a webmaster to promote products and services by pre-grabbing the audience’s attention. 

The prelanding page, also called a “pad,” does not emphasize the benefits of the product or service, the benefits to the customer after purchase, and lacks an order form and call to action. Prelending does not contain explicit advertising: instead, several pages tell the story of a fictional character who faced a problem, tried many remedies, and only thanks to this product got rid of it.

Why prelanding?

• To pique the user’s interest

For example, you can detail a problem, cite a story from other people’s lives (stories involving famous personalities are often used), mention a product or service that can help solve this problem, tactfully hint at the possibility of purchasing it.

• Get rid of untargeted traffic

After switching from prelanding, the audience that is likely to be ready to perform a targeted action – to place an order, download an app, leave contact information, pay for a service, purchase a subscription – is the one that gets to the landing page.

• Individual work with groups of users

One and the same approach cannot be equally effective for all categories of users. Different creative approaches can be used for each segment, depending on age, gender, location, income level, interests and problems.

• Successful moderation

When promoting products and services from banned categories, prelanding is the only way to get approval from the site’s moderator. For example, a link to a page where you can sign up to a casino is likely to be blocked. However, a prelanding with a story about a big win containing an offer to switch can successfully pass moderation. The important point here is that there is no opportunity to purchase a product or service on the prelending.

The need for prelending is not necessarily related to the promotion of black or gray offers. Often this approach is used to demonstrate an increase in conversions on a landing page. For example, if CR is normally 1-3%, it will rise to 20% after creating a prelanding that will only bring targeted traffic. However, you need to realize that this method can lead to losses: firstly, it is an additional cost, and secondly, the actual conversion rate may decrease because potential customers may not perform the targeted action due to redirection. Prelending (paving) in affiliate marketing is used in situations where directing traffic directly to a landing page is impossible or ineffective.

Types of prelanding

1. Forum format – a platform, with advice;
2. Parsing of expert articles;
3. Mini games in the form of a wheel of fortune to promote online casinos;
4. Format everything was bad, and now full pockets of money, and life is different;
5. Value comparison aggregators;
6. Prelending masquerading as a news site;
7. A questionnaire where the user takes a small test and an algorithm gives them a link;
8. Screaming headlines (clickbait) with a call to action;
9. A one-page page with a text or video testimonial from a grateful player or user;
10. A blog, a success story.

Advantages of prelendings

Informing and warming up the audience. 

The main purpose of creatives and pop-ups. If the user has already been interested in such topics, the probability that he will perform the desired action is higher. Most page visitors need more information to make a decision. Pre-landing provides information in stages to pique interest and motivate you to click on the link to go to the landing page.

Bypassing advertising restrictions. 

To promote gray verticals on social media, you need to bypass advertising restrictions. Large platforms (Google, Facebook, Yandex) have algorithms that block advertising of questionable goods and services. Prelanding allows you to hide the promoted product and increase the chances of passing the moderation of the advertising campaign.

Working out the target audience and screening out untargeted ones. 

It allows you to filter interested users from the general audience. This helps to increase KPI – an important indicator for advertisers. For example, asking about age on prelanding can help exclude audiences under 18.

Choosing the right transit page format depends on the target action, target audience, vertical and the offerer. However, it’s not always perfect.

Disadvantages of preloading

Low-quality transiting scares away the user. 

This is especially critical for white verticals with expensive offerers. It happens that even a well-assembled prelending does not generate the necessary trust in the audience.

It takes money to create prelending. 

You’ll have to spend on hosting rent and page development.

The distance between the user and the advertiser’s product increases. 

If the user is not warmed up enough, he may not reach the target action that the webmaster needs.

Prelanding in gambling

For GEOs with non-rich populations, the online casino player success story format works great: was poor, went to the casino and won millions of dollars. 

For rich countries, tandem prelending and gamification is used. There is a wheel of fortune icon on the page.

Prelendings for gambling offers are usually of two types: a wheel of fortune with free spins, or an enticing page with registration and bonuses. The user spins the wheel and the system reports the winnings, which can be claimed via a link. 

The task of prelending in gambling: to show that online casinos are easy money and simple games, to fuel the user’s excitement in the moment, to show how many bonuses and nice prizes you can get.

Tips

The following 5 tips will help you avoid the major problems that come with this tool:

• Don’t take other people’s pads

A user who catches you copying content will never take the expected targeted action. Therefore, work only with unique preendings.

• Think through the structure and design

It is necessary to prepare the layout and layout plan of elements in advance. After the layout, it is important to conduct testing to detect errors and improve the usability of information display. 

• Play on the pains of the target audience 

If you come up with a story that is close to the audience, they will take any targeted action that is required of them.

• A catchy headline 

It’s important to convey what the user will get and why they need it. Test several variations of headlines and first paragraphs to see what works best and what will ultimately help engage the maximum target audience.

• Expertise

Having not only text but also figures, facts, graphs, charts will increase the relevance and credibility of the content in the eyes of users. During the testing phase, you can ask people you know or an expert to evaluate the credibility of your efforts.

Now let’s turn our attention to what undermines users’ trust in prelending:

• Poor quality content (grammatical and punctuation errors, illiteracy in general);
• Blatant deception or fake information that is easy to verify;
• Deliberate and intrusive head-on sales pitches;
• The success story is unrealistic and moves into the fiction section;
• Brightly colored design that quickly makes the eyes tired;
• Disrespectful attitude to the potential customer (foul language, insults, black humor);
• Problems with the adaptation of the page on different devices, a broken design, etc.

What should be taken into account when creating a prelanding?

Since prelanding is a “pad” and should serve as a clinging link on the way to the target action of the offer itself, you may have a question: how to make prelanding clinging and interesting for the audience? In order to learn how to determine the right approach to creating prelanding for an offer, you can refer to the following parameters: 

1. Define the target audience. First, you need to define the portrait of the audience on which a particular prelending approach is aimed. Think about what the audience expects from the product, what results, and highlight them in a clear and catchy way. This will make it easier to create a unique offer and highlight the benefits that will “hook” the user, that is, guaranteed to lead to a lead.
2. Provide guarantees and testimonials. To increase the loyalty of the audience on prelendings it is customary to leave feedback about the product or service. Not only comments increase trust:

• Quality certificates;
• medical proof of product safety;
• interviews with celebrities;
• reviews and reactions from opinion leaders (e.g., a world poker champion);
• product or outcome guarantees.

3. Storytelling. A marketing technique that uses stories and narratives to motivate the target audience to take action. Best to avoid:

• humor;
• aggressive provocations and calls to action;
• obviously deceptive judgments.

There are advantages to creating prelending on your own, of course:

1. Self-customization of all the parameters of the system;
2. Personalization of pages for the needs of the promoted product;
3. Setting the technical parameters of the pages, the ability to optimize and adapt to different devices;
4. The ability to customize the pad for a particular GEO.

There is an option to use ready-made templates for your work. 

The advantages of this method are:

1. Simplified user interface, a known set of features;
2. Built-in control system, which can be slightly edited;
3. Smaller financial costs for launching the pad.

Conclusion

Prelending is a good tool in the arsenal of an affiliate, which will help to increase conversion and allow you to make a profit where it seems that all traffic goes to zero, or even in the minus. The main thing is to be able to feel the potential audience and not to miss the moment of action. 

You need to use pads wisely, for example, in premium verticals they can be harmful. But in niches where the audience is less discerning, they increase profitability many times over. After reading the prelanding, the user should already be motivated to use the advertised product or service. We wish you success and cool prelandings!