Collective Conversations ICYMI: Owning Your Affiliate Strategy

If you’re new to Collective Voice or missed our last webinar, we’re sharing our best tips for amping up your affiliate strategy to earn big.

Watch the full webinar below, or keep reading for the biggest takeaways!

1. Develop Your Your Brand

Having a clear brand—including a unique point of view, aesthetic, and voice—is a crucial aspect of a strong affiliate strategy. What makes your audience follow you? Why do they shop from your suggestions? Digging deeper into your unique value propositions will help you refine your affiliate efforts. 

Here are a few things to consider when identifying and building your brand:

• What sets you apart: Think about the content categories that you fit into. Beauty, fashion, home, or something else? Consider what unique perspective you bring to that category; there may be a lot of makeup Creators, but maybe you’re a wizard at recreating celebrity makeup looks. 
• Niche audience: Who is your target audience, and what do they want? Try to get as specific as possible. Maybe they’re not just 20 year olds who love style, but more specifically, they’re college students who love trendy style hacks. Focusing on that niche audience will drive deeper engagement and establish your brand.
• Be Authentic: Show that uniqueness to your audience! People want to feel like they know and can trust the person behind the brand. Your authenticity will incentivize them to engage, click, and purchase.

2. Get To Know Your Audience

Once you understand your brand, turn your focus to getting to know your audience! The best way to make sure what you’re sharing aligns with your followers is by understanding them.  

Start by defining who they are. This can include age, demographics, and other defining factors that could contribute to their shopping habits. You can find these specifics through Analytics on your social platforms! 

Then, understand their wants and needs. Do they shop for themselves? Their home? Their kids? An easy way to find this out is to ask them what they want to see more of! You’ll also be able to tell from the products they buy from your links. 

Finally, uncover the reasons they follow you. Do they love your easy recipe ideas for busy weeknights? Once you know a little more about them, you can start to create content that addresses their needs in a way that’s authentic to your brand.

3. Become a Trusted Shopping Authority

Fostering trust with your audience is an ongoing process, and it’s key for driving consistent engagement and sales. Here are our 4 tips for becoming that trusted shopping authority.

1. Be Transparent: Always disclose any paid, gifted, and affiliate relationships where you can. And when you are sharing products, offer unbiased recommendations based on your genuine experience.
2. Share Candid Content: Giving your followers a window into your life and processes will help remind them that you’re just like them, and have the same needs that they do! Share behind-the-scenes glimpses into your process, like product testing or selection, to humanize your brand.
3. Offer Exclusive Deals & Discounts: Try to stay on top of public sales that you know your followers will be interested in. If a brand you share organically can offer a custom promo code, that’s a great way to incentivize your audience as well. Even consider hosting a giveaway to reward your community! 
4. Build Community: Your followers already have one thing in common, and that’s following you! Because they follow you, they probably have similar interests and needs. Encourage your followers to engage with each other through your content. Ask for their recommendations in your IG stories, and start conversations in your comments sections to really foster a sense of community.

4. Feature Retailers and Products That Align With Your Brand

By knowing your brand and audience, you can confidently feature retailers and products that seamlessly integrate with your brand and appeal to your followers! 

Here are a few handy tips for selecting products and brands:

1. Feature products you already love: Consider where you already shop and create affiliate content with products you already use and love.
2. Select retailers that fit your audience demographics: Consider your followers’ demographics and choose retailers that align seamlessly with those core factors. For example, do they like to shop multiple brands in one place? Who are they shopping for? What occasions do they shop for most?
3. Diversify your product mix: Remember, your followers shop for different things! You can promote a variety of products from different retailers and different price points to hit the full funnel. Consider what’s trendy and what’s timeless for a blend of appeal! 
4. Understand commission rates: Once you’ve found retailers of interest, look into their commission rates, cookie windows, and sales periods so you can be strategic about what you share and when, so you can earn big! 

5. Plan Strategic Content

Now that you know how to build an effective and indvidualized affiliate strategy, it’s time to create content that aligns with your strategy.

Here are some steps to follow when coming up with a plan that suits your existing content and also takes it to that next level! 

1. Identify Platforms and Formats

Opt for social platforms and formats that resonate with your audience demographics. Think about where your audience is scrolling and liking. Are they more active on Instagram over TikTok? Are they engaging with Reels over static posts? These are things to keep in mind when considering where your content should live and how it’s produced.

2. Create Consistent Content

Develop an audience-centric content plan by utilizing a content calendar. Thinking about your content in advance leaves room to learn from your previous performance and apply those takeaways to upcoming posts. Additionally, you’ll feel more organized and confident while creating your content when you have a plan in place. 

Remember to prioritize quality over quantity for sustainable engagement. Consistency is key, so by planning ahead you can keep your content on schedule while still staying on brand. 

3. Integrate Affiliate Content

Clearly, we’re all about having a strong affiliate strategy! But your affiliate content should integrate seamlessly into your organic content. If you’re always promoting products, you may undermine the trust you’ve built with your audience. 

Instead, make sure to keep producing organic content that encourages engagement, and use your affiliate links to support your social content. For example, if you posted about outfits you wore on a trip, you can create affiliate content of the products from those posts so your audience can engage and shop at the same time. 

4. Address Seasonal Challenges

Share content inspired by upcoming holidays, big life events, and annual trends for no brainer and timely posts. Featuring products that are on trend, on sale, or highly seasonal is a great way to tap into important tentpole selling moments. 

As these types of products go out of stock though, make sure you’re also featuring evergreen products as well. By evergreen, we mean products that are always available, like a classic pair of Lululemon leggings. That way, you always have content you can resurface and come back to for driving consistent sales.

Here’s a sample content plan for inspiration:

6. Keep it Going: Diversify, Elevate, and Sustain

How do you keep the momentum alive? Diversify, elevate, and sustain! 

• Diversify and Repurpose Content: Diversify your content by exploring different content types and platforms to engage a broader audience. Increase reach by repurposing content across multiple platforms. If you made a video that went viral on TikTok, repost it to Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, and Facebook Reels!
• Elevate Your Reach: Leverage owned and operated content to ensure your reach is consistent, and that no matter what, you always have an audience to keep coming back to. Consider having a blog or Substack to reach your previous and new audience members in different ways.
• Sustain Your Strategy: Shift towards evergreen content for lasting relevance. And make sure to direct your audience to a consistent place to shop, like your link in bio. Develop timeless templates and series that can be repeated and repurposed.

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