The festive season is an exciting time of year for many people. For affiliate marketers, this means it's the best time to attract insane amounts of conversions from those holiday shoppers with your affiliate marketing website!

It’s never too early to start strategising and preparing your affiliate marketing holiday promotions for the busiest shopping period of the year. Preparing early will allow you to develop a comprehensive holiday marketing strategy. This ensures that you’ll be competitive and can capture as much of the festive period shopping revenue as possible.  In this article, we'll share 10 powerful tips that will help you get ahead of the competition and make the most out of this lucrative holiday period.

What Affiliate Marketers should do in preparation of the festive period:

1. Promote the seasonal offers from your customers’ favourite brands
2. Create high-converting holiday pages
3. Focus Your Budget and Promotion Efforts On Trending Holiday Products
4. Leverage Free WordPress Plugins To Instantly Create a Robust Affiliate Website
5. Communicate the Details of Your Offers Clearly
6. Create Content For Pinterest Early in the Season
7. Optimize Your Campaigns Based On Historical Performance Data
8. Experiment With New Niches and Think Outside The Box With Your Marketing
9. Make Eye-Catching Marketing Creatives That Are Easily Shareable
10. Create Unique Site Content

 

 

1. Promote The Seasonal Offers From Your Customers’ Favourite Brands

In preparation for the holidays, take the time to dig into your analytics to see which brands your existing customers and audience shop for the most. Affiliate marketing during the holiday season is all about showing your customers exactly what they're looking for while they're most eager to spend. Nearly every brand offers exciting promotions to their customers during the holidays, so this is your opportunity to maximize your revenue potential by focusing your marketing efforts on the brands that your customers already love.

This strategy is effective during the gift-giving season as well as during the Black Friday / Cyber Monday weekend. Consumers are eager to get a deal on brands they already know and trust, whether they’re shopping for themselves or for gifts.

 

 

2. Create High-Converting Holiday Landing Pages

Seasonal landing pages are paramount to a successful holiday affiliate marketing campaign. The competition during the holidays is fierce but creating impactful and engaging seasonal landing pages can help to give your marketing efforts a competitive edge.

A well-crafted page should inspire customers and help them make informed purchase decisions. When shopping for gifts or snagging deals for themselves, your customers need to believe that they're buying the best products for the best price. Your landing pages need to tell a story that entices your buyer and convinces them that this is the hottest product to buy this season.

Here are some best practices when creating landing pages during the affiliate marketing festive period:

• Optimize for mobile. Over 55% of shoppers do their browsing on their phones.
• Include a Call To Action to increase conversions.
• Use high-quality images and engaging seasonal creatives to help the products shine.
• Include reviews and testimonials to create more trust around the product.
• Write a brief but impactful description of the product, highlighting top features and benefits.
• Include an "add to cart" button for conversions.
• Add some festive verbiage to your advertising copy to get into the holiday spirit.
• Leverage video. Landing pages with video can increase conversions by as much as 86%.

Every product you're promoting will require a unique landing page. The singular focus will make your landing pages more impactful and create a more compelling story for each product.

 

 

3. Focus Your Budget and Promotion Efforts On Trending Holiday Products

To maximize your affiliate marketing conversions during the holiday season, you'll want to focus your budget on products that are trending during the festive season. Now that more people are vaccinated and the holidays can be in person this year, there will be a greater focus on physical gifts instead of experiences.

Many consumers wait until Black Friday and Cyber Monday to make their high-ticket electronic purchases for the year. These two days, in particular, are big days for electronics and kitchen gadgets, so you'll want to make sure you're set up to promote any of the following that might apply to your audience:

• Gaming consoles
• Airpods
• Smartwatches
• Robot Vacuums
• Laptops, tablets, and computers
• Headphones
• Televisions
• Cellphones
• Instant Pots
• Coffee and Espresso Gadgets
• Kitchenaid
• Bluetooth Speakers
• High-powered blenders
• Cameras
• Subscription Services

This list is also applicable to the Christmas season, but it's worth seeing what products are trending within your target market as well. Skincare, makeup, cookware, and exercise equipment are also very popular during the holiday season.

 

 

4. Leverage Free WordPress Plugins To Instantly Create a Robust Affiliate Website 

RevGlue offers a free WordPress plugin that will enable you to add a rapidly converting affiliate website to your existing site in a matter of minutes. Once you add the plugin, you can use the ready-made templates to create a robust affiliate website using your brand colours for a seamless addition to your site.

By adding the plugin, you'll be adding the following features to your customers’ shopping experience:

• Cashback 
• UK shopping directory 
• Coupons 
• Daily deals
• Price comparison
• Mobile comparison

This free plugin streamlines an otherwise tedious process that would require extensive research and expert coding. These tools can help you increase your passive income and improve your user experience as well.

If you'd prefer a more customized option, speak with our experienced development team, and we can create a bespoke affiliate project for you.

 

 

5. Communicate the Details of Your Offers Clearly

It's important to remember that consumers are being bombarded with offers during the festive season. As an affiliate marketer, you will need to effectively communicate your offers to customers to ensure that the product information, discounts, and delivery times are perfectly clear. If shoppers are confused by your offer, they’ll immediately click away to find something straightforward and trustworthy. Since you'll be promoting several different products and discounts throughout the season, planning ahead with a detailed strategy and promotion calendar can help you avoid any potential mistakes.

Another thing to be mindful of is the dates of your promotions. If you plan to have Pre-Black Friday, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Pre-Christmas deals, you'll want to be sure that the dates of your offers are correct. If you have a mailing list, it can be helpful to release a sneak-peak calendar ahead of time, so your existing customers can get some insight into what products and discounts they can expect in the coming months.

 

 

6. Create Content For Pinterest Early in the Season

Pinterest is often a forgotten social media network but, unlike Instagram, users that browse Pinterest are already in a purchasing mindset. 9 in 10 consumers use Pinterest for purchase inspiration. Christmas shoppers and planners start browsing Pinterest for ideas as early as April, with the most traffic between June and December. This means that creating gift guides today to share on Pinterest could result in sales as early as tomorrow.

Another thing to consider is holiday decor. People turn to Pinterest for decor inspiration, so this is the perfect opportunity to create decor guides using links from different Christmas affiliate programs.

 

 

7. Optimize Your Campaigns Based On Historical Performance Data

Historical data is a powerful tool that you can use to your advantage during your affiliate marketing Christmas and holiday campaigns. A good strategy is to review the budget from previous years and note your return on ad spend (ROAS) to determine which promotions and campaigns were the most successful. It's also valuable to see which channels (email, search, social, etc.) drove the most traffic and led to the highest number of conversions.

When comparing your top-performing campaigns to your low performers, identify the critical traffic and conversion driving elements. In doing so, you can try to repeat what worked and change the aspects of your marketing that weren’t successful in the past. Also, take the time to identify which products and brands have historically been the most popular with your audience.

By using historical data to optimize your campaigns and forecast your marketing budget, you'll be taking a more calculated approach to capture festive buyer sales this holiday season.

 

 

8. Experiment With New Niches and Think Outside The Box With Your Marketing

With so much competition in the holiday affiliate marketing space, it's crucial to stand out and take a unique approach to your marketing efforts. Most businesses and affiliate marketers will be using discount strategies with their eye-catching campaigns, so what are you going to do to set yourself apart from the rest?

Starting your planning early allows you to experiment with unique, outside-the-box strategies for your affiliate marketing plans. You can:

• Target a new audience by catering your marketing efforts to their unique needs.
• Try a new social media platform that you haven't leveraged before. 
• Create a unique shopping experience for your customers by creating an interactive, 3D store to emulate the in-person shopping experience. 
• Experiment with a new niche that you're passionate about and create a quick website that provides value for audiences within that niche.
• Leverage video in the form of reviews, unboxings, explainers, or lifestyle videos using the product.
• Develop an interactive quiz that the shopper can fill out. "Find the perfect gift in 60 seconds” for themselves or their giftee.
• Work with TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube influencers by collaborating on a holiday wishlist. Have them create a wishlist from your offerings that they can share and link to from their social media or YouTube video. 
• Incorporate countdowns to create a sense of urgency.

 

 

9. Make Eye-Catching Marketing Creatives That Are Easily Shareable

Your advertising creatives should grab the attention of your audience immediately. In a few seconds, they should be able to understand what product you're promoting and feel compelled to find out more. Your content should be optimized for different social media platforms to increase the sharing opportunities and reach new customers.

Here are some best practices for eye-catching creatives:

• Use images of people as they tend to perform better than cartoon-style graphics.
• Keep your pictures simple with a focus on the product. 
• Split-test your creative early on to see what works best with your audience. 
• Create a sense of urgency to encourage your audience to take action.
• Make sure all text is legible on small screens.
• Incorporate seasonal themes throughout the holiday shopping season. 
• Keep your themes consistent with your landing pages to establish trust. 

 

 

10. Create Unique Site Content 

Unique site content is a value add to your existing customers and a great way to leverage SEO in your quest to find new buyers. Here are some content ideas to consider:

Create multiple gift guides. Creating gift guides gives you the ability to use various long-tail holiday keywords. Consumers are typing in searches like "best gifts for X," "2021 gift guides for X." It’s worth it to take the time to make gift guides for different partners, family members, friends, and co-workers, so your guides have the chance to rank for multiple holiday searches. You can create even more specific guides like best gifts for cooks, tech lovers, skincare lovers, etc. Gift guides can be done in a list format or through interactive, shareable PDFs that highlight the products with a fun, festive theme. 

Create a promotional calendar. Creating a holiday promotion calendar can get your audience excited for the holidays. It keeps them coming back if you choose to offer different promotions each day or every few days for different product niches. 

Post video unboxings and reviews. People like to see a product before they buy it. By having video unboxings and reviews on your site, they can become familiar with the product without having to leave your site.

Create video gift guides. Repurpose your digital gift guides by turning them into videos. Short-form videos can be shared on social media sites like Instagram and TikTok. Longer videos can be posted on YouTube or directly on your site.

 

Conclusion

As an affiliate marketer, the festive period is prime time for you to make a massive percentage of your annual sales. To maximize your revenue opportunities, leverage RevGlue’s robust suite of affiliate marketing tools that automate the technical aspect of your business, leaving you to focus on creativity and strategy.