Affiliate Marketing Trends 2020? Affiliate marketing is one of the oldest forms of e-commerce. If there is one thing that I am sure about is that it is continually evolving… and fast. There are always new things to learn and improve on.
What was relevant a year ago, may be considered outdated this year. Considering there is so much competition in this industry, you might want to update your learning and strategies so you can emerge on the top of your game.
What you need to do now is to determine the affiliate marketing trends in 2020 to help you step up. We can help you with that. Without further ado, let us proceed with the discussion.
Affiliate Marketing Trends 2020: Personalized Shopping Experience
We see a trend of using data to give the customer a satisfactory shopping experience. Data provided translates to more engagement as customers feel happy to be treated as a VIP and not just any other client.
This is comparable to having your personal shopper wherein your shopper can help you pick out items based on the products you have previously bought from the site or from survey questions. Based on those data, the assistant can figure out which ones you like and don’t like.
In addition to that, the assistant can recommend products to complete your shopping experience. Others do this by combining data from your previous buys (if there’s any) and a chatbot service.
Affiliate Marketing Trends 2020: Seasonal Offers
Campaigns that are valid all year round will not be gone. However, we can see numerous affiliate marketing campaigns intended for special events or seasons. For instance, we see more and more fitness and/or outdoorsy products being promoted before summer comes.
We also notice bigger and better offers every time a new diet fad appears. There are also Black Friday deals or Valentine’s Day promotions. If you want to get more sales, make sure that you know your holidays so you can plan your campaigns ahead of time.
Affiliate Marketing Trends 2020: Diversify
The world wide web is a huge space so there are plenty of options and opportunities to promote your campaigns. There are blogs, various social media platforms, and even word-of-mouth.
What you need to do now is to enlist new affiliates. Target those who use different strategies or platforms from you. They can be your current customers, site owners, vloggers (video bloggers), bloggers, review sites, known influencers, businesses, and other affiliate marketers. We are sure that you already have people on the top of your head.
These affiliates have their own platforms or channels of specialty. Having affiliates with varying skills will produce different kinds of content to promote your campaigns. For sure, your brand will be “displayed” in different spaces and will reach new audiences.
Example, if most of your site traffic comes from social media platforms, try to tap review sites so you can be seen by a brand new audience.
Affiliate Marketing Trends 2020: Influencer Marketing
Influencers live for likes, comments, and follows. They use those metrics as their bargaining chip to get paid for promotions. These metrics are hidden in Instagram so advertisers and influencers have both found ways to still check their Return of Investment (ROI). They have implemented the use of referral codes and affiliate links.
These can help them track the number of people who came from an influencer’s site (and saw the code) and actually ordered. After which, the company gets a sale and the influencers get paid. This is a win-win for both parties.
If affiliate marketers are doubtful in teaming up with influencers before, now is probably the best chance to reflect on this decision. And if you do decide on pursuing influencers, make sure that you pick the micro-influencers.
Who are micro-influencers? These influencers only have 1,000 to 100,000 followers compared to others who are already gathering millions, thus the term. They concentrate more on their niche of expertise such as beauty, fitness, health, travel, gaming, among others. Since they have fewer followers, their community is more close-knit and engaged.
When there are more likes and follows (or engagements), the post where the ad is more visible, and always appears at the top of the feed. Based on research, the more followers an influencer has, the comments and likes decrease. Therefore, the number of followers is an important factor to look into.
In addition to that, micro-influencers are thought of as more genuine. They will most likely use the product they are promoting. For this reason, it is rare for people to question or contradict their choices. For instance, do you really think an influencer as big as the Kardashians will use a beauty product that only costs $20? Think about that.
Affiliate Marketing Trends 2020: Video Presentation
Haven’t you noticed that there is more and more video content today? The reason is that clients are more drawn to them. There are even figures that can prove that.
According to Forbes, viewers are 95% more likely to recall a call to action after looking at a video. Those who read about a call to action in text format only have 10% likelihood of remembering about it. As per Wyzowl, 72% of people prefer to understand a service or product through videos, while 84% of customers purchased something after learning about a product through videos.
If you are unsure about how to go about this on your own, you can partner up with affiliates skilled in video content. You can get help from live streamers, influencers using Instagram Stories and Facebook Live, YouTubers, and vloggers. They are adept in this field.
It is worth noting, though, that although YouTube is a huge and popular platform, there are other means or spaces that can be utilized for this purpose. For instance, your blog can publish how to videos and tutorials, unboxing and product reviews, featuring favorites, and more.
Another example, an energy drink company can partner with a gamer who live streams her games. This will show the gamer’s followers that they can get the same energy if they drink what she’s drinking. Or, a makeup company can team up with a beauty vlogger to demonstrate different ways to use their product.
You can also do collaborations. This is where two known personalities (might be from different channels) appear in one video to work together. For example, a known brand ambassador can interview a makeup artist and ask them to try a product she is promoting.
These are just some of the many ways to introduce a product or create noise around it. If you are going this route, make sure that you are providing materials for your affiliates so they can make their own videos, too. For this, you will need promo codes or referral links, your brand’s logo (for thumbnail use), pricing information, and details of the program.
The referral links can be added in the video caption so traffic is sent to the site. Better yet, you can provide coupon codes to be used in the video.
Video ads take a lot of time and effort so make sure that you pick people to build a strong relationship with.
Affiliate Marketing Trends 2020: Mobile-friendly Ads
Currently, people use their mobile phones to surf the web. For this reason, it is suggested to avoid long-form content because it is more difficult to read on a small screen. People are not really fond of scrolling down to read all the necessary details. This also applies to landing pages.
Mobile referrals should be directed to a landing page that is mobile-friendly. The font and its size, and everything else should fit a small screen. For this, clearer and more visible call to action buttons must be used. Checkout fields should only consist of the most essentials so purchasing takes a shorter time.
Also remember to keep your site’s loading speed extra fast to keep your client’s interest. The key here is to make the experience as easy and as fast for the customers. For this, you might want to consider vloggers and influencers as mobile content creation is their strong suit.
Affiliate Marketing Trends 2020: Voice Search
We are starting to see people doing voice searches more often now than before. Compared to text searches, voice searches are more specific. They are usually longer and in question form. Thus, affiliates will have to work hard on SEO for their websites.
The younger generations are more likely to use voice searches while multitasking. For instance, a person calls a friend while cooking, and browsing her social media news feeds. Therefore, you need to optimize your site. You will need to have a straightforward content if you intend to target this market.
Conclusion
These are affiliate marketing trends 2020 edition. Our technology is awesome and it can be a blessing for you if you know how to use it to your advantage.
What you need to do now is to adjust, optimize your site, and watch out for more coming trends as this industry is changing really fast. If you act fast, you can find more opportunities to sell and grow.
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