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Affiliate Marketing during COVID times

October 1, 2020
Heiko Hildebrandt

Heiko Hildebrandt

My name is Heiko Hildebrandt. I'm located at the Target Holding headquarters in Lillestrøm, Norway. Since 2014 I have been CEO at Target Circle.

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Why affiliate marketing is important during Covid-19

In modern business history, never have we witnessed a more serious disruption of general business activities (including big, middle, small businesses or even micro). Entrepreneurs and small private businesses have been left with a very small or even none income. Some businesses are currently trying their hardest to make cuts in their marketing (and other) department to quickly save some money. Which is, ofcourse, very understandable. These are uncertain times and a lot of companies have seen their business shrink a lot in the past few months. However, making cuts to the marketing department can be devastating to your business down the line. If you’re not making enough money as it is, how are you supposed to make even more money in the (near) future if you cut your marketing budget?

It may sound counterintuitive, but it’s very important to maintain your marketing budget right now. Or even go for a marketing upgrade. Even if business is slow. It may cost more money right now, but it ensures the viability of your company in the long run. Affiliate marketing is a very effective addition to your current marketing mix. And it can be implemented seamlessly alongside your current marketing activities. In this blog we’re going to look at the advantages of affiliate marketing during Covid.

Why should you start with affiliate marketing during COVID

Affiliate marketing is the approach many companies are considering to diversify their revenue streams. They’re creating their own programs to boost sales in new markets or are participating in them to earn extra cash.

Running an affiliate marketing program is an easy way to expand brand awareness and market reach without investing heavily in marketing. For example, if you have 25 affiliates in your program, each promoting your products to their entire audiences, you could potentially get your products in front of thousands of people every time. That’s a considerable number of brand impressions you’d have to generate (or pay for) yourself.

The benefits of running an affiliate campaign during COVID-19 times

First off, affiliate marketing is a smart option in this time of economic uncertainty — it offers a range of benefits whilst keeping your customer acquisition costs down. In particular, the performance-based pricing model involves no upfront investment costs, as you only need to pay affiliates when conversions are made. This is a far cry from platforms like, let’s say, Google Adwords where you pay for impressions, meaning you could pay a lot of money without even making a single dollar!

Companies of all shapes and sizes are discovering they must adjust their strategies in order to reach customers and capture lost in-store traffic. Many brands have cut back on in-store and paid media spending and shifted their budgets to online channels, especially those that can drive cost-effective, measurable, bottom-of-funnel results such as affiliate marketing.

In the affiliate marketing ecosystem, brands partner with bloggers, influencers, publishers, even other brands to promote their products or services. By only paying for sales, leads, or new customers that their partners deliver, affiliate marketing allows brands to efficiently scale while optimizing their return on ad spend and cost per action (CPA).

Brands with creative and agile affiliate programs are the ones who will have loyal customers and partners long after this global crisis is over. With that in mind, here are some ways brands are adjusting their affiliate marketing strategies in the time of Covid-19.

Find new ways to communicate with affiliates

Live events were a great way to communicate with your affiliate partners. But live events got hit hard by Covid. Brands that used live events as an important channel had to find new ways to communicate. Online forums and communities have been very useful for this goal. You can discover new partners, find out about affiliate trends, follow or give webinars and learn new marketing strategies. It’s more important now than ever to stay in touch with the entire world and monitor changes in the industry as much as possible. Without coming within 6 feet of a single person.

Put more focus on in-demand product categories

A lot of brands have used COVID to take a critical look at their product categories. Are their current categories still popular enough, or are other categories more in demand, maybe due to COVID? Since the beginning of Covid, consumers are spending a lot more money on things like home goods, apparel and food. And significantly less on a number of other products.

Offer more engaging promotions

Now more than ever, consumers are looking for ways to save money. They are more attracted to discounts and promotions. Smart brands use this knowledge to boost their business. By offering relevant, contextual, and engaging incentives they are winning the affiliate marketing game. With affiliate marketing, you can not only reach your target audience with your promotions, you can also track and measure the performance of every promotion. Allowing you to see which one is effective, and which one isn’t.

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Is affiliate marketing profitable during insecure times like COVID?

In short, yes. It can be. During COVID we’ve seen a worldwide increase in online sales. But that doesn’t mean you can just sit back, relax, and watch the money pour in. COVID changed the world, vastly. Both online and offline. That means you have to adjust everything to the new situation. What is your marketing strategy, how do you reach out to people, what message do you send and what product category do you focus your marketing efforts on?

At the end of COVID, you can probably look back on affiliate winners and losers. The winners are those who put a lot of effort into adjusting to the new situation. The losers will be those who tried to continue on the same path as always or those who threw in the towel as soon as things got tough. COVID isn’t a death sentence for your business, marketing strategy, or affiliate program. On the contrary, it’s a chance to perform better than ever. But you’ll have to work hard and keep adjusting to make that happen.

COVID-19 and Target Circle

Affiliates and advertisers worldwide are working hard on creating opportunities during the pandemic, enabling each other to build key relationships with high-traffic volume and affiliate sales.

Our affiliates are currently continuing to drive web traffic and sales volumes with minimal disruption, helping companies reach new customers from different countries. Either through review websites, blogs, social media, paid search, download portals, or coupons and discount sites, you can find the suitable type of affiliate to ramp up your online business.

We are living in challenging times. While the COVID-19 outbreak impacts countries worldwide, we are doing everything we can to support our clients and our affiliates to run their affiliate program business on our Target Circle platform.

Are you looking to start your own affiliate marketing program? Or are you looking for a way to fully automate your current affiliate program? Our partner marketing software can help you do exactly that! Browse our website for more information, or get started with your 100% free trial today.

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