How to adjust your affiliate marketing campaign to keep up with consumer trends
Being able to adapt to changing consumer trends can play a big part in the success of an affiliate marketing campaign. Here, Virginia Rizzi, head of affiliate marketing at Glass Digital, discusses the best ways you can stay ahead of the game.
For a while now, affiliate marketing has offered businesses a low-risk, high-reward strategy to boost sales and generate leads. However, to really see the true potential of this approach, it’s incredibly important that marketers are able to keep track of the latest consumer trends and rapidly adapt any relevant campaigns. Not doing can put a brand at risk of being left behind by savvier businesses.
If you are going to make sure that your affiliate marketing is providing you with the very best return on investment, you will need to base your campaigns on the latest consumer insights, anticipate any seasonal trends, and keep up with what’s going on in the wider world. You will also need to ensure that you’re well placed to meet demand if you experience an increase in orders.
Here, I’m going to share some of the best ways you can adapt your approach to meet these criteria.
Know your consumers
If want to be able to anticipate changing consumer trends, then you need to make sure that you know your consumer. By taking the time to do so, you will be much better placed to anticipate how their shopping habits will change so that you can build campaigns that target them in the best places at peak times. So, you should aim to gain as much understanding about your ideal consumers as you can.
You will need to focus your consumer research in a few key areas to begin with: the demographic of your customers, when they access your site, how long it takes them to buy, and what items they are looking to purchase. Also, consider where your customers come from. Do the majority arrive via ads on social media or through traditional media? Do cashback sites provide a high level of custom? If you can pin-point what channels provide the most traffic, you’ll be able to position your ads there.
To get relevant data, you can look at a range of resources, including keyword research, on-site analytics, sales data, and even through surveys. The approach you take will depend on your business and your consumers, so think about what is most likely to capture the data you need. Remember to always comply with GDPR regulations when you’re gathering this information.
Be ready for seasonal trends
Another key element of adapting to trends is being ready for the seasonality of the market. Now, it’s likely that you already have a good idea of the products and services that do well at certain times of the year for your business, but the key here is to make sure that your affiliate campaign is ready and targeted at the optimal moment. That being said, it won’t do any harm to review your sales data to see if there are any areas you’ve missed, and it might also be worth looking at the data in more detail to see if you can glean any new insights that may inform your campaign.
If you’re really going to maximise the seasonal peaks, timing and execution are everything. You need to make sure your brand features in the right places at the right time. For instance, if you sell TVs as part of your range, you won’t want to miss out on the peak period when tech sites do their round up of the best Black Friday deals. You also need to combine what you learned about your consumers at the research stage with your insight into seasonal demand to ensure your strategy is highly targeted.
Follow trends influenced by current events
While the habits of your consumers and seasonal trends tend to remain static for long periods with more glacial shifts, trends influenced by current events are chaotic and harder to predict. The recent upheaval caused by COVID-19 is a perfect example of this, where spikes in demand for products like hand sanitiser, loungewear, and toilet paper came from the leftfield as a result.
Despite these trends being hard to anticipate, the best affiliate marketers keep their campaigns agile and are ready to adapt. Therefore, if you’re following a development that you think could change things in your industry, don’t be afraid to switch up an existing campaign to adapt or to create something on the fly to target it for your brand. Be prepared to assess your results as you go, and if you find a good basis to make changes, don’t wait around to follow through with any tweaks.
Ensure stock levels can meet demand
So, you’ve launched a successful affiliate campaign that is well researched and timed, and customers are flocking to your site to buy an on-trend product. However, the bad news comes through from inventory: you’re about to run out of stock. Time and time again, I’ve found limitations of the supply chain can be the undoing of a profitable campaign, so it’s worth paying this area some attention.
A lack of stock is a difficult issue to navigate, but I have found the best approach is for there to be a clear line of communication between affiliate marketers and ecommerce managers. With ongoing dialogue about what’s in plentiful supply and what isn’t, campaigns can be created around items that won’t be sold out anytime soon. Ecommerce managers can also look to restock any products that prove to be a hit ahead of any campaign relaunch. Take steps to ensure that any product feeds that the affiliate marketer has access to shows the latest data, as this will inform their choices.
Targeting your campaign at the right customers at the right time, as well as being flexible enough to spot and readjust to new trends, is the key to success in affiliate marketing. And, don’t forget to put the infrastructure in place to ensure stock levels can meet demand.
