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Is your affiliate marketing business plateauing? Feel like you’re stuck, unsure how to keep growing? You’re probably in need of a couple of fresh ideas. Well, looks like Christmas came early this year. Look down below for a couple of affiliate marketing tips to blow fresh wind into your business sails.

Try out the non-traditional

Marketing experts everywhere agree – everyone should give non-traditional partnerships a try.

Affiliate Storefronts are probably the most popular type of non-traditional relationships. It’s quite a simple idea – merchants partner up with non-profits (like schools, for example), and create a separate page within their non-profit partner’s site. The site gets branded by both parties, and the idea is to offer content to the usual visitors to the non-profit. In the end – everyone wins. Merchants make sales, storefronts earn their commission, while consumers find whatever it is that they were looking for in the first place.

Besides being a win-win-win situation, it is also highly praised because it allows the work to be distributed among many partners, and does not really get in the way of any other affiliate marketing strategies you might have set up before.

Chatbots

The conversational interface seems to be the next logical step in our digital evolution, and is already being dubbed ‘the next apps’. What affiliate pros seem to be thinking about is – how could they benefit from this technology?

Let’s say, for example, that your site or blog promotes smartphones. Some of your visitors might not have the time (or the patience) to read a bunch of content to find their next device. Instead, they might ask a chatbot on your site things like “Which smartphone has the best camera?” or “Which smartphone allows dual-sim?”

This presents an opportunity for the chatbot to place a relevant affiliate link. The rest takes care of itself.

Don’t forget your influencers

The idea of influencers and endorsers is not a new one, but it is one that’s picking up steam heavily among mega affiliate pros in 2017. By now, it has become a multi-billion-dollar business. Here’s a fresh example of how the influencer industry exploded: Kendall Jenner was paid $250,000 for one Instagram post promoting Fyre Festival. Crazy, right?

However, in order for your influencers and endorsers to pull the maximum out of their reach, they must be equipped with the right tools. Currently, things like promotional codes, coupons, and discounts seem to work wonders. Still, these are far from the only tools influencers use, and the only limit is your imagination. You can also take a look at tools designed for improved influencer outreach, like Pitchbox or FollowUpThen.

Ever considered going global?

Affiliates in Europe are increasingly looking for traffic in the US. Affiliates in the US are looking for the same things back in the Old Continent. Both are no longer interested in staying local, regardless of the size of the local market. Obviously, that means tackling challenges like different attribution in different countries, regulations, or network landscape. Channels might also differ. For example, Facebook is far less popular in the US, than it is in, say, Turkey. Instagram, on the other hand, is killing it in the States. As this is a trend that’s not yet fully-blown, but definitely picking up, you might want to consider going global in your strategies, as well.

Keep both eyes open for GDPR

For those thinking about spreading all over the globe, GDPR will most likely have an incredibly profound effect on your affiliate marketing business and strategies. For the uninitiated (and apparently, there is a lot of you out there), GDPR is short for General Data Protection Regulation. It is a document drafted by the European Union to help protect its citizens’ digital data, regardless of where the business using that data is. Essentially, you could be running your business in Thailand, and still fall under the laws of the GDPR, if you’re handling data from people living in the EU.

GDPR is set to come into force in May 2018, and those businesses that don’t comply could be facing draconic fines, so make sure you arm yourself with the latest knowledge.

Shoot for mobile users

Image source: statista

If you haven’t already, definitely the first thing you should do is start targeting mobile users with a bit more purpose. As of recently, mobile operating system Android surpassed Windows as the most used platform in the world, which essentially means there are far bigger chances your visitors come to you from a smartphone or a tablet, than a laptop or a desktop PC. Those are still the same people, but their behavior will be slightly different.

Make sure your content is optimized for mobile. That can mean a couple of things:

• Responsive web design (sites that transform depending on screen size and resolution)
• Seamless, intuitive sharing features
• Mindfulness towards data consumption (mobile data isn’t free to all)
• Paying attention to the length of the content in question (mobile users are more easily distracted and have less time on their hands than laptop and desktop users)

Having a mobile-first approach, and building an affiliate marketing strategy that will revolve around users with smaller screens and less attention should definitely be on your agenda.

Stay alert for cross-device tracking

We’ve mentioned this before in other articles, and honestly, we don’t think we can mention it enough. This idea is closely linked to the fact that mobile is taking over. It *is* taking over, but it has still not sent other devices to the Eternal Hunting Grounds. As a matter of fact, the number of internet-connected devices we use has risen to 3.64, and to more than seven per household. Mobile *is* first, but as it is not the only device people use, the importance of cross-device tracking grows.

So far, the majority of mobile users use smartphones to do their due diligence on a product, but if they decide to make a purchase, they will do it on either a tablet or a computer. That is why at this moment, it is important to focus on tracking users across different devices.

Conclusion – affiliate marketing tips

Affiliate marketing is like a living, breathing organism. From choosing the best network, using the right tracking software to keeping up-to-date with all the affiliate marketing tools, everything moves, changes and transforms every day. Those that don’t pay attention to risk being left behind virtually overnight. Those that do keep up with the latest, the ones that are first to open a couple of new doors, are usually the ones that reap the best rewards. Hopefully, these new ideas will help you be the ones turning the knobs on those doors.