We’ve got another rollout of expert advice from some of the industry’s best affiliate experts. Founders, corporate associates, and marketers are these affiliate experts, so the insights you are about to uncover come from the chief minds behind the result-oriented marketing campaigns.
According to these experts, some of the affiliate marketing best practices that marketers should pursue in 2020 include the following:
- Focus on a particular audience from a niche
- Constructing ties of quality that actually add value
- Use targeted ads to ensure that knowledge about the product/service you endorse is obtained by the right audience
It is now time to find out some of the most severe affiliate marketing errors these affiliate marketing influencers want to prevent for newbies in 2020, including:
- Not adjusting to developments such as catering to voice searches on Google
- Publishing content of low quality which does not add value to the audience
- Hard-selling products/services before establishing a long-term partnership with customers
They want to make some mistakes avoided by the fresh and aspiring affiliate marketers and adjust to the changing affiliate marketing ecosystem.
Here’s a rundown of what these specialists think this year can propel affiliate marketing and promotion.
Let’s dive right in without further ado and find out what these industry experts have to say about common errors in affiliate marketing.
Opinion of experts: Three affiliate marketing mistakes to avoid in 2020
Canzanella James
Founder, Nights of IM.
Promoting any type of offer, a lack of targeting, and finally, a lack of landing pages would be three things that would not work for affiliate marketing.
First of all, when it comes to affiliate marketing, the offer is everything. You need to make sure that you cherry-pick that set you up for success properly. I thought I would never succeed when I first started affiliate marketing online. That’s simply because I was recommending an offer that was never going to convert. So promoting anything just isn’t going to work under the sun.
Next, when it comes to affiliate marketing, targeting is huge. Who do you target? What are their most profound fears? What would they like? What is it that keeps them up staring at the ceiling at night? These are the kinds of questions that you need to know the answers to whenever you create content related to affiliate marketing. When you speak to everybody, you speak specifically to nobody.
Finally, many of the top affiliate offers are becoming more competitive. Without offering some type of bonus, you just won’t be able to compete. This is where the landing pages come in and allow you to increase your conversions and make more sales. So if you want to compete in terms of higher conversion offers, use bonuses from landing pages. Use landing pages for bonuses if you want to get the edge when it comes to offerings that are not as competitive.
From Michael Anderson
Founder at Explored Passport.
This does not work because unless the webmaster guides them through the process, users will not click on or buy anything from an affiliate link.
It’s much better to use a limited number of affiliate links contextually within articles instead of inserting as many affiliate links as possible. This way, when your reader sees an affiliate link, it seems natural. In addition, you have the chance to tell the reader why the use of your affiliate link will benefit them.
Overall, it will not work in 2020 to leave many affiliate links throughout a website. Instead, a webmaster must strategically place affiliate links within the content and work to guide the reader to make a purchase.
Becky Playa
Affiliate Marketer at Mom Beach and Business Blogger.
Simply putting a link to an affiliate in your content will no longer work. The product needs to be sold to your audience. Why would this product need them? How can their problems be solved?
Using hashtags on Facebook to promote your affiliate marketing post is another affiliate marketing idea that will no longer work. On Facebook posts, the use of hashtags reduces their visibility and can be marked as spam.
You are making a huge mistake if you refuse to get into the video to promote your affiliate marketing. Right now, video is a big medium and will only get more popular in 2020. If you choose not to use a video, you leave money on the table.
Jake Hay: Jake Hay
PopShorts Partner and Head of Development.
This year, having too many affiliate links associated with one influencer will not work. Quality over quantity is important in 2020.
It is important to make sure that an affiliate aligns well and makes sense with your brand, and without being reviewed, they are not just auto-approved.
Promoting affiliate links on one platform only: sharing connections across multiple platforms enables a wider reach because each social platform reaches different segments of an influencer’s audience.
In 2020, not informing affiliates about brand messages and product information will not work: An educated affiliate is the one on which a company can rely with conviction to promote a product or service.
Aleksandra Cote
Alexandra M. Cote: B2B Digital Marketer, Content Writer, and Strategist.
Relying solely on your blog: While many affiliate marketers are happy to do blog posts such as reviews or lists to promote their links, video creators and influencers on Instagram gain more traction from the visual content they put together. More and more individuals are moving away from written content, so you also need to tap into other channels to maintain a sustainable affiliate marketing strategy.
Not running tests: In an affiliate marketplace, it’s easy to just put a few words on your product and some images, but you also need to optimize them.
Every once in a while, change your image files. Do a different thing. Provide an ebook or even a pitching template and ad placement suggestions, perhaps.
Low-quality content creation: If you give bad content, in return, you’ll probably also get low-quality content. Put your best effort into the content that your affiliates provide. Also, remember you are no longer writing for search engines. You write for real people who want explanations, advantages, and clear tips.
Clancy Sean
Director of SEO at Edge Marketing.
Putting all your eggs on one micro-niche is one of the largest affiliate marketing errors.
Meanwhile, no idea or market is undiscovered in 2020, while discovering untapped markets was a great way in years gone by.
A better bet is testing out a few niches. Within a few months, you can establish which test performs the best, then switch your efforts to that.
Wilhelm Taylor
Manager for Career Development at Velvet Jobs.
He believes that having a blog or website will no longer be limited to affiliate marketing. This means that affiliates will exclusively use social channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest to promote their offers to affiliates.
On the other hand, content-related collaboration, pushing bloggers and other content marketers to the forefront, will become even more popular.
Also, traditional tracking technologies will become obsolete, which means that affiliates will not need to embed or add affiliate links to tracking codes.
Andresen Lydia
Analyst-Organic Augurian’s Search.
A cadence of sponsored content that is too frequent is something I see far too often in the influencer space. Influencers’ marketing space is becoming increasingly saturated, and followers are becoming much less likely to convert to seemingly inauthentic content. Every brand deal that is offered may be tempting. Still, influencers should think about their brand in the long term and concentrate on relationships with brands they genuinely love.
The best practice when blogging became popular may have been to send impersonal emails to gain backlinks. Still, blogs today receive hundreds of brand-link inquiries. Sending mass emails to all of the industry’s blogs won’t work as well. In the additional work to build close relationships with a few relevant blogs, brands are far better off-putting.
In 2020, big influencers won’t be worth the cost anymore.
Their demographic is often too broad. Only a small percentage of their followers may make up the audience that a brand is trying to reach. A brand could afford several micro-influencers for the same cost as a mega influencer. Smaller influencers are more affordable and have more followers involved, so a brand may see fewer general impressions, but relevant impressions may increase.
Donawerth Sarah
Social Media & Manager of Content at Carro.
Offering a measly percentage: To make sure that you offer competitive rates in the affiliate space, you should do the research. If an influencer can go for a 12 percent commission somewhere else, then none of the good influencers will accept 6 percent from you.
Working with random influencers: With black hat tactics running rampant, the potential of affiliates abusing your network is greater than ever before.
Make sure that you see what they are posting and know where they intend to promote your brand if you are working with affiliates and influencers. If you build a relationship with them and know about the influencers that you work with, this is easiest.
There are many affiliate programs that are set up and left to rot, hoping that the program will run on its own. In order to keep your affiliates engaged with your program, you should send out newsletters at least monthly, as well as offer bonuses, promotions, and other offers.
Maksym Babych
Upload, CEO.
Provide the lowest price: No one wants to work with brands offering their affiliates the lowest price. People from affiliates and brands want to get value.
Work without training and onboarding materials: When buying a product or a service from an affiliate, people want convenience and comfort. The process of selling should be easy. You must have outstanding documentation to ensure convenience for your buyers.
Lack of a clear USP: The market has many offers available. Today’s affiliate marketers will select those who are the easiest to sell. Note that businesses that do not have a clear mission, value, and USP will not be able to build a sales strategy for partnerships.
About Jenna Alburger
At Outlier Creative, Cofounder / Marketing Strategist.
Less is more: It can be a challenge to try and manage a large team of affiliates. Choosing a few partners who can contribute to your brand in an impactful way is better.
Look for highly engaged audience affiliates. It is better to have a small, highly engaged audience than a large, disengaged audience.
It’s important for brands to have some level of control over how their brand is promoted, to insist on having a lot of control over the message. Too much control, however, can backfire. Authenticity is what will move the needle in 2020, and an overly-scripted message will just not work. Instead, partner with affiliates that you can trust to keep it personal by taking a few creative liberties.
Advertising with an affiliate just once In affiliate marketing, frequency is often overlooked. Your chances of success can be harmed by advertising too much or too little) with a specific affiliate. The frequency will depend on the platform/channel, but more than once, you will definitely need to advertise
Conclusion
The opinions of these affiliate marketing experts suggest three aspects for 2020.
- Targeted audience focus
- In the correct niche, promote
- Build links for quality
Consider these three points mentioned above, and in your journey, you can surely avoid making affiliate marketing errors.
In addition, in 2020, the practice of link building is going to change significantly. Quality of content and quality of link building plays a major role in driving your audience – that’s why it’s important to spend time making sure none of these two are compromised.
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