The economic repercussions of COVID-19 crisis may be far from reaching its peak, but the effect has already been observed. In the affiliate marketing vertical, 2020 marketing plans have been significantly hit. With budgets cut, marketers are looking to tap-in to the most cost-effective channels to achieve their goals.
Both organic traffic and conversions have taken a nosedive most industries barring a few like the food, healthcare, media, and pharmaceutical sectors which have all experienced growth in traffic and conversions during the pandemic. It is no surprise, considering how many of us read coronavirus news and how the remaining three fall into essential goods.
Hence it is all but obvious that the competition for commissions in these sectors have undoubtedly spiked, and you’ll need to edge your competition in order to profit from the surge in the traffic from these sectors. Here is how you can do that:
- According to a recent study by FirstSiteGuide, 35% of bloggers reported an increase in their revenue due to the ongoing pandemic. These are the conversion winners who have been able to adjust their topics and content to the situation.
- Despite the organic traffic of most websites being down at the moment, SEO and content-focused affiliates should not lose hope as their model is a long term one. They should concentrate on improving their websites and producing more engaging content to improve their organic visibility. This would set them up for times when things return to normal.
- For the PPC affiliates, they must keep their ads up to date with buying trends because due to the pandemic, the cost per conversion is much higher now. It implies that consumers are buying only when necessary.
- In line with the buying trends, make sure that you’re not bidding for products that are currently out of stock. For the moment, you can temporarily exclude these products from your campaigns. You might also want to lower your spend or pause campaigns for non-essential goods.
- Branded terms may give you higher conversions during the pandemic and are your safest bet during these times of uncertainty. Keeping your budget in mind, consider reallocating your ad spend more toward the period of market recovery after the pandemic peaks.
- Keep exploring for new affiliate programs. The pointers mentioned above do well and good, but it is never harmful to look for new programs, especially ones that have done well during the pandemic.
Take, for example, the one I found on SASaffiliate.com. The stupid and simple affiliate program or SAS as they call it helps you take a shot at earning commissions on online reviews. This particular sales funnel lets to rank for product reviews that people are searching for just before they make the purchase and hence provides you with a shot at the lowest hanging fruit of the orchard.
Along with the much sought after sales funnel that I mentioned earlier, the program also provides:
- All the training necessary to implement the funnel.
- Over the shoulder videos in the member’s area.
- Extensive training sessions every day.
- Four weeks ‘ done with you’ ranking training.
- All the templates that you will need to create customer reviews and much more.
- The program can be put in place for anything ranging from local SEO to e-commerce and more.
- Also with their platinum program, you get a shot at 40% commissions before anyone else.
