Intro:
The affiliate marketing strategy is more popular than ever in the wake of COVID-19 and the HUGE transition to digital marketing and e-commerce. In 2022, more marketers will use affiliate promotion as a campaign strategy due to the increased success of influencers and the enormous social media growth.
In fact, affiliate marketing is currently used in some capacity by over 80% of all e-commerce firms, according to specialists at Streamline Marketing. They also assert that it is essential for increasing brand visibility and engagement in a cutthroat online environment.
As a result, we'll discuss affiliate marketing in general for your business in this piece as well as 4 specific trends in affiliate marketing that you should watch out for in the coming year 2023.
First, you should know what I am discussing here called affiliate marketing. A quick recap of affiliate marketing.
What Is Affiliate Marketing?
Using the strategy of affiliate marketing, a business pays a person (an affiliate) a commission for any sales generated by their suggestions.
To put it another way, when you operate as an affiliate (also known as a blogger or publisher), you use your knowledge of web marketing to point clients in the direction of a specific product. When a member of your audience decides to make a purchase or perform an action as a result of your recommendation, you get paid.
Who are the affiliates?
An affiliate might be a company or a person. Bloggers and other content producers frequently work as affiliates. They typically work in industries that are directly related to or identical to those of the company whose products they are advertising.
Affiliates are people who engage in additional marketing initiatives, like producing videos and blog posts, to help advertise a product or service. When a visitor of theirs makes a purchase or completes a lead form on the affiliate company's website, the affiliate is paid.
How much and for what (lead or purchase) the affiliate is paid depends on the affiliate program's rules. In general, a specified percentage of the goods in question is often the basis for the commission. Even a different amount that the advertiser and publisher have determined may be used.
What companies are they?
Any company that is prepared to compensate affiliates for promoting its products is referred to as an affiliate company (sometimes referred to as a merchant, advertiser, retailer, or brand).
For bringing in more clients and sales, affiliate firms pay their affiliates. Payment mechanisms such as pay-per-click, pay-per-lead, and pay-per-sale are often employed (more on these later). This approach is also known as performance marketing.
READ THE COMPLETE GUIDE ON AFFILIATE MARKETING HERE
A Look at Affiliate Marketing Trends in the Year 2023
Affiliate marketing has undeniably changed the success of SMEs over the past ten years. In fact, 84% of marketers assert that since the start of the pandemic, affiliate marketing alone has raised their return on investment by a sixth.
This is partly a result of an international e-commerce boom and a dramatic global shift toward smartphones. The conversion potential for online companies has increased as more customers than ever before want to shop electronically, interact on social media platforms, and consume sponsored content.
Digital demands will continue to rule the marketing industry as 2023 approaches. With technological advancement increasing, we are observing new trends that may impact the approaches used in campaigns of future
Let's take a closer look at some of the affiliate trends that 2023 may highlight and discuss what shrewd marketers should do to make sure they remain successful in the coming year.
1) Voice and virtual searching
In 2020 alone, the e-commerce industry rose by a third, heralding the start of a new era of online purchasing. The year 2022 has witnessed the emergence of immersive AR-based browsing, live social media shopping, and an increase in voice and virtual search as technology advancements push for a new virtual e-commerce experience.
According to Google, 27% of web users already utilize a verbal or virtual search engine.
This has and will continue to open up a lot of opportunities for affiliate marketers in 2022. Future affiliate strategies must avoid using text-based content and traditional link sharing as the campaign strategy moves its emphasis to smartphone users and a push for immersive shopping trends.
Instead, marketers should concentrate on affiliate promotion that is audio and visually based. In order to compete with user-generated content, strategies must be quick, inventive, and natural. Accepting the power of social platform trends has become crucial for success as more than 50% of affiliate traffic now comes from mobile devices.
Social media platforms are a terrific place to start, whether you want to put money into augmented reality-based Snapchat filters or sprinkle inventive affiliate links into TikTok's live purchasing function. It's fantastic to take advantage of emerging trends in virtual commerce, like TikTok live shopping.
2) Building Local Links
Although link building has been seen as a more established strategy for affiliates with websites, savvy marketers can change their strategy for 2023 in a number of ways.
Link builders should focus on ranking locally if they want to see a rise in conversions rather than trying to rank worldwide in a well-liked niche, demographic, or phrase. The answer in this situation is to begin internal link building and blog authoring with a local audience in mind, as well as to get in touch with local, more focused affiliate brands.
For instance, did you know that local terms and services accounted for 93% of all Google searches in 2020?
Source Bright Local
Local SEO will stay popular among digital marketers and owners of small businesses. Looking local not only increases the likelihood that your blog or website will rank highly in organic search results but working with brands and influencers who share a company's mission and values also increase the likelihood that relevant demographics and potential customers will engage with your content.
3) Metaverse marketing
The emergence of the metaverse is one concept that has gained traction recently. The metaverse continues to move us closer to a "virtual" future by transforming trends in remote working, gaming, and now marketing and advertising.
In particular, the gaming sector has expanded significantly after Mark Zuckerberg's 2021 Meta statement. Digital transactions and immersive marketing techniques may focus on the metaverse in 2023 as metaverse platforms like Horizon Worlds, Roblox, and Fortnite pave the road for in-game advertising.
Future options for affiliate marketers that establish themselves in the metaverse are plentiful. There are several methods to partner with metaverse platforms and experience increases in user engagement, from promoting virtual goods to becoming an avatar or even developing their own virtual world.
Consider Balenciaga as an example. In conjunction with Fortnite, the apparel company promotes its line electronically by letting customers buy digital copies of their goods and by including affiliate links to their website in-game. Is it possible for you to promote your own or someone else's items within the metaverse in the same way?
Photo: Courtesy of Epic Games
As more brands than ever before invest in a piece of immersive advertising, Bloomberg projects that the metaverse may be an $800 billion market.
If affiliate marketers want to make money off the most well-liked virtual platforms in 2023, they will need to stay on top of metaverse trends and get a taste of the future of digital currencies like NFTs and crypto.
4) A World Without Cookies
Affiliate marketers will need to adapt to what audience targeting may look like in the future after Google announced that it will stop using third-party cookies in 2021 – specifically, a cookieless future!
Frequency capping, demographic targeting, and the critical analytics needed to build a successful campaign were once handled by third-party data, but first-party data campaigning and contextual targeting will take over in 2023.
Indeed, 51% of marketers invested in contextual targeting in 2022 alone, making it a popular affiliate strategy going forward.
If marketers want to develop a campaign that targets the proper demographic in a cookie-less future, they will need to rely on on-page analytics, conversational marketing, and social listening. For a chance at engagement as we move into a market that is dominated by consumers, advertisers need to know their target through and out.
Summary of Affiliate Marketing Trends In 2023
Many of these trends in affiliate marketing are just beginning to materialize practically. For social media platforms, search engines, and the brands that use them, 2023 is predicted to be a year of digital innovation.
As affiliate advertising moves into a virtual future, we anticipate seeing imaginative campaigns come to life!
