On the third day of Christmas, my true love gave me…Personalized Promo Codes, Paid Search Keywords, and Pear Tree Gift Guide. Or something like that.
Affiliate marketers say most holiday marketing plans should be finalized or close to finalized by early fall, given publisher inventory shortages and influencers' full calendars. .
“[Affiliate’s] It’s not like a social or email campaign that you can run a few days before Black Friday or Cyber Monday,” says Marshall Nyman, founder and CEO of affiliate marketing consulting firm NYMO & Co. “The next two weeks are kind of a finish line before we have to look at everything and make decisions for the fourth quarter.”
As brands finalize the details of their year-end campaigns, what are the best strategies to make the most of the season of giving?
Less is better
One of the main benefits of affiliate marketing is the number of touchpoints available to reach consumers, says Karl Holzworth, affiliate director and influencer at digital marketing agency Group 8A . Group 8A is Theory, and Robert's customers include brands such as Baraket and Echelon.
“You can do paid social with affiliates, you can do paid search with affiliates, you can do influencer with affiliates,” he said. “There's no place we can't go.”
Over the past year, Holzworth has seen affiliate marketing budgets shift toward pay-per-click (CPC) media placements, where publishers write articles promoting their brands and receive compensation based on clicks on their articles. He said he did.
But Holzworth says that despite the abundance of affiliate options, old and new, brands should take a step back and consider how many products and offers are being thrown at customers and publishers during the holiday season, and where. He said people should be strategic about their investments.
“I think we're doing ourselves a disservice by bombarding people with irrelevant information because we're not taking the time to look at the partnership from everyone's perspective,” he said.
The time is money
In an ideal world, Holzworth said, marketers would talk to customers to understand what drew them to their brand or a competitor. Additionally, a deep dive into existing campaign performance data and budgets could help hone the strategy for the fourth quarter, he said.
“If you do an internal audit and say, 'Oh, I'm paying 8%,' you might find money.” [commission rates]. All my competitors are paying $4. You can still win if you pay 6. So let me use that 2% of her money to do something else. ” he said.
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Nyman said brands need to send products to publishers as soon as possible to secure limited spots such as gift guides, especially if they don't have an existing relationship with the publisher.
“It's really just a matter of figuring out which publishers are the best fit for my brand and product, and getting in front of them and understanding what they have to offer in Q4,” he said. Ta.
Given the fourth quarter's advertising saturation and increased publisher fees, Nyman said he wants brands to reduce spending in the fourth quarter and spend more on the year to ensure coverage, whether paid or organic. He said he often recommends focusing on connecting with successful publishers.
“Affiliate marketing is a sales job. It's about going after people and promoting you,” he said. “You have to be the squeaky wheel.”
Matt Uhl, CEO of affiliate management company Acceleration Partners, said one way to attract interest from publishers and influencers is to offer exclusivity. “That way you'll get a lot more interest than if the same guy who's advertising on the internet generally makes a 10% offer.”
consider the economy
With holiday spending expected to be down this year, Uhl said he's interested in seeing whether lower-priced brands do better in affiliate campaigns by offering additional discounts.
He said he expects messaging to change to meet where consumers are. “As people become more cautious about discretionary spending, I think a lot of brands will try to position their products as must-haves rather than nice-to-haves,” he said. Stated.
Wool said he expects to see more investment in influencer marketing and third-party reviews, as well as publishers, to convince people that something is worth spending money on.
“People are choosing between rent and holiday gifts, and it's a really difficult choice,” he says. “They're going to be very particular about what they want to spend their vacation money on. So all brands need to recognize that and say, 'How do we work with publishers and creators and work with them in that environment?' I think we need to think about how we can position our own content.”
