How Affiliate Marketing Can Boost Your Holiday Strategy

Digital Marketing / August 24, 2022

It’s that time of the year: time to get ready for the Mega Shopping Days like Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Boxing Day.

Why Choose Affiliate Marketing during the Holiday Shopping Season? 

Black Friday is all about having great deals. Why not extend to Affiliates where customers are loyal towards certain coupon sites and are hunting for the best deals? 

Affiliate Marketing can help reach new customers that may have been missed through Paid advertising. During the high sales period we see an increase in CPM & CPCs with increased competition on platforms such as Google and Meta. However, Affiliate marketing is paid mostly through commission (flat fees, CPMs, CPCs deals may be applicable to certain partners), which leads to less elevated spend on these tactics. 

Best Tips for a Successful Affiliate Marketing Program during the Holidays

1. Plan, Plan, PLAN:

Start planning now. If you would like to test out Affiliate marketing, start your program at least 3 months in advance. That way you can start recruiting and testing different publishers. If you set up during Black Friday, publishers may be too busy to join newer programs as well as launching the promos/creatives. 

Additionally, look to see which publishers (coupon, loyalty or traffic/review sites) you’d like to partner with. How does it fit with your media mix? Ex: when launching a new collection, it would be good to partner with a review site at the same time as you are launching paid ads. This way consumers who are being shown ads of the new collection can then search up a review to further learn about it. 

2. Start Communicating Your Goals: 

Start sharing your Q4 & Black Friday/Cyber Monday goals and plans with your Affiliates early. Have discussions on additional placements or tactics in advance in order for your brand to have optimal exposure during the high sales season.

3. Start Testing:  

Use the summer period to test different placements to see which categories or promo messaging resonate better with your audience. That way you won’t need to do all the figuring out a few weeks before BF/CM. 

4. BF/CM Super team: 

Start evaluating your program and reach out to your top performing Affiliates for additional discounts for their audience. Your Affiliates work hard to drive sales and the high sales season is the perfect time to adjust contracts & commissions so that both you and your Affiliates can benefit from the higher sales. This will help to further build your relationship with your partners. Black Friday is a high period for all clients and Affiliates will need to choose where to push their time & efforts towards. Having additional incentives can help them to choose to place more effort in your program.

5. Inventory: 

With issues in logistics, it’s best you start taking a look at your inventory and start mapping out any “hot” items for Q4. Knowing in advance which products may be out of stock during BF/CM and making it aware to your Affiliate partners so that you are all prepared.

Let’s Talk Affiliate Marketing!

It’s never too early to start prepping for Black Friday. Learn how you can add Affiliate Marketing to your media mix to have a successful Black Friday. Contact us to learn more about our program.