With 2014 in full swing, people around the world are focusing on resolutions for the new year. This is a huge opportunity for affiliate marketers to hone in on what consumers want and offer products to help them achieve their goals.
Unfortunately, that window of opportunity doesn’t last long. According to the New York Times, a third of those who make resolutions give up on them before February.
So, how do you milk the most money from your affiliate campaigns before it’s too late? Let’s break down some options:
1) Promote new offers that directly relate to popular resolutions. The top 10 according to USA.gov are:
- Lose Weight
- Manage Debt
- Save Money
- Get a Better Job
- Get Fit
- Get a Better Education
- Drink Less Alcohol
- Quit Smoking Now
- Reduce Stress Overall
- Reduce Stress at Work
- Take a Trip
- Volunteer to Help Others
If the list above looks familiar, it’s because it’s coincidentally similar to the best converting niches in affiliate marketing—and we can vouch for that, too. At RTX Platform, almost all of these niches are popular among advertisers because they’re always in demand.
2) Optimize your current offers with a “fresh start” or “self improvement” angle. Let’s say you’re selling cookbooks. Cookbooks don’t inherently have much to do with the new year, but you can easily promote cooking in general as a great skill to master in 2014. If you’re selling insurance, for example, you can use words like “protect” and “safe” in your ad copy to entice consumers to prepare for unforeseeable catastrophes in the new year.
You can apply this method to almost any product or service simply by highlighting how your offer can improve consumers’ quality of life throughout the year.
3) Look to LY for insights. If you’ve run similar offers for the New Year in the past, now’s the time to look back at that data. Ask yourself these questions, and use your answers to drive your optimization strategy for this quarter:
- What tests did I run in Q1 last year, and what were the results?
- What goals did I set for my campaigns this time last year? Did I reach them? Do I want to aim higher this year?
- Did my offers generate positive ROI? If so, can I afford to increase my overall budget this year to earn even more?
- When did I have the highest ROI in Q1? Were there specific periods of time that I should have increased my budget?
- How did my KPIs perform in Q1 compared to the rest of the year?
- Are there any trends in my Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) from Q1? If so, what caused them? Am I likely to see those same trends again?
- Did any outside influencers affect my campaign’s performance?
- What keywords and targets converted best? Can I afford to bid higher on them this year? What variations of successful keywords can I add?
- What locations converted best? Is it smart to expand my reach?
- When did my New Year’s offers stop being relevant? Could I have made better optimization decisions once the New Year’s buzz wore off?
How are you optimizing your affiliate marketing for 2014? Share your tips in the comments!