The foundation of Affiliate marketing focuses on forming trusting relationships between the Publisher, the readers and/or potential consumers. How to create this trust?

• Choose an appropriate programme relevant to the audience.
• Create quality content.
• Update on a regular basis.

Whilst many publishers ignore the importance of content when planning their marketing strategies, it is in fact essential for the creation of a bond between the promoted product and the content of the post and it is this bond or affinity which helps achieve consumer loyalty and trust, thus increasing the number of conversions.

The world of content marketing is not impervious to changes it evolves just like any other part of marketing, therefore one has to keep up to date with the latest cutting edge developments in order to create a successful plan of action that will in turn help you to monetize.

The trends of 2017:

• Data Mining:

  Who reads which posts?
  Data is the future of marketing and most of all in that of affiliate, knowing how to transform a huge volume of information into usable and valuable data, moving from “Big Data “to” Smart Data” can give a publisher the competitive advantage. Gaining insight into the main sources of traffic and the user demographics makes a difference as it has already been shown that posts supported by data receives more hits.

• Niche Marketing:

  Brands are defining more and more, gone are the days when publishers could promote any product without some form of filter. The greater the specialization is within the sector the better the segmentation and the trusting relationship with the user.

• Personalization:

  Personalization is a direct consequence of Niche Marketing, it can break through the barriers by creating content relative to the user which includes preferences, wishes, needs or interests all which are crucial in creating loyalty, obtain more traffic and also improve SEO positions by mentioning keywords in a more in a natural way.

• Influencers, Key Players:

  Merchants recognize the undisputed power of the influencers as they are progressively more interested in creating strong links with content creators not only to the increase the number of sources of income but to build a brand which is more recognizable and stronger.

  Lavishing attention on content not only means more followers and subscribers but also increases the chance of it being a lure for the big brands thus increasing revenue.

• Think Mobile:

  The publisher who doesn’t adapt their website or blog to a mobile or tablet platform remains at a clear disadvantage to their competitors according to studies such as that of Mobile Marketing; in 2016 41% of users used their smartphones to make a purchase, a figure large enough to keep the word “responsive” at Top of Mind.

• Video Matters:

  The content which has grown most over the last year is the video and what’s more, the latest statistics show it will continue to do so, they predict that 70% of all traffic will come from videos, we already know that users prefer it to reading long posts. In addition videos can easily be watched on a mobile screen, a device on which, as we mentioned before, more and more transactions are being made.

The success of a content strategy depends a lot on its ability to react to each new trend that comes along. The right combination of them will help determine the number of hits, the percentage of conversions and improve SEO, all key elements which help increase monetization.