The marketing field is very big. Affiliate marketing is just one of many ways to specialize in marketing. This has helped a lot of businesses make more money each year and changed the way we think about marketing. It has also given rise to affiliate marketing trends that most people don’t know about.
Up to 79% of companies and marketers use this strategy to promote their products because it has become such an important part of marketing. Affiliate marketing doesn’t need a lot of money to start, which is why so many people are using it for their businesses now.
Affiliate Marketing Trends In 2023
As a data-driven affiliate marketer or someone who uses the strategies to sell their products, you need to know what the trends are. You also need to be aware of the trends that analysts see coming.
So, these are the most important changes in affiliate marketing you can expect in 2023.
1. Virtual Shopping
Online shopping has become popular faster than even the most optimistic people thought it would. The world as a whole has seen a huge rise in the tech industry because of the amazing and helpful technological advances made by humans.
Now, technology has made it easier than ever to buy and sell things online. Transactions are finished in seconds, and very few people are involved in the processing and delivery of goods.
The marketing industry will benefit a lot from this growth. With this change, businesses can now let several people try out affiliate marketing for little or no cost at first. It can help people know about your business without you having to spend a lot of money on advertising. Because of these new and interesting trends, many businesses are now spending more each year on marketing.
In addition to shopping online, people will soon be able to shop in real life. This could happen this year or early next year. During live shopping, influencers would give affiliate partners discount coupons. This is a great feature for businesses, marketers, and influencers.
2. Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is one of the best ways to advertise products right now. In this age of technology, many people with strong opinions about a wide range of issues and products have come to the fore. Several statistics show that people today listen to influencers the most when they want to make an informed decision.
Small and large businesses now use the voices of these influencers to tell customers what to buy and when to buy it. In particular, they hire these influential people to get people to buy their products. The people who get the most out of this are micro and nano influencers.
If you work in marketing, you already have a small amount of influence. This is because one way to be a good marketer is to promote a specific group of products.
Now, some people who have a lot of followers on social media are also enrolled in affiliate marketing trends to learn how to make money doing what they love and selling products that are related to their interests. Analysts think that by 2023, this kind of marketing will help you sell more than traditional advertising.
3. Voice Search
Voice search is being worked on right now. But it is slowly becoming a force to be reckoned with in the marketing world. Have you ever used voice recognition software on your phone to look for something? If so, you probably used the marketing strategy of voice search.
Several numbers show that 50% of affiliate marketers’ traffic comes from mobile devices1, and many of us now use voice search for almost everything. Voice-activated searches will be a big part of affiliate marketing for many people in a few months or years.
As you might have guessed, long-tail SEO is likely the best way to take advantage of this trend. Make sure you do enough keyword research and other SEO-related work to find out what your leads and potential customers are looking for when they use their voice.
4. Link-building
Affiliate marketing has been around for a long time, but link-building is still one of the most popular ways to do it. If you’ve ever tried to get a website to rank, you know how hard it is to do. To stay in the top spots, you have to make a lot of important decisions and update your content often.
A large number of affiliate marketers deal with this problem by building links. Link building is just putting a link to your website or landing page on another page. If you don’t know what that means, let me explain.
In general, the more links there are between websites and landing pages, the better. Google will probably think more highly of your site, which means it will show up higher in its general search results.
Even though it’s been done before, co-marketing and link building will still be one of the top trends in 2022. Affiliate marketing trends and building links can open up a lot of doors.
Also Read: Best Side Hustle Ideas For 2023 To Make an Extra Income
5. Crypto Boom
In the past few years, cryptocurrencies have grown very quickly. There are many cryptocurrencies now, and they will stay around. The cryptocurrency community has made a lot of progress in the last few years, and there is still a lot of room for more growth.
Even though cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin have been around for a while, others like NFTs are becoming more popular. People invest in cryptocurrencies every day, and there are a lot of them on the market at the moment. This opens up a lot of great opportunities for affiliate marketers and traders all over the world.
In addition to individual investors, banks and even whole governments are putting money into the idea of cryptocurrencies right now. This year and for the foreseeable future, the number of affiliate programs for cryptocurrencies will grow.
Every product has its marketing plan that increases sales by a factor of ten. Affiliate programs will let many marketers sell more than one product on well-known sites like Google, YouTube, etc.
Also Read: The Most Profitable Niches for Affiliate Marketing
6. More Video Content
Videos are the most interesting type of content, and affiliate marketers must take advantage of this medium as more sites like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok focus on video. People would rather watch a story, video, or Livestream event than read a post.
One of the most important affiliate marketing trends for video is Livestream shopping. During an online event, a store or influencer goes live on social media to talk about a product, answer questions, and sometimes offer discounts or coupons. People tend to buy at these events, which could be because of peer pressure, the speed of the event, or the excitement of buying live.
As part of this trend, affiliate marketers who know what they’re doing will offer interesting videos and live events. Here, it’s important to make an affiliate marketing plan to make sure that your video content is fun and fits with what your audience likes. You could grow your social media video presence by making content for a specific audience niche.
7. It’s Time to Talk About Privacy and Data Safety
You might think that all of these steps to protect user information are bad for affiliate marketers, but they give you chances to learn more about marketing.
As customers learn more about technology, they also learn how important it is to protect their privacy and online data. Recently, a lot of countries have passed new laws to protect the privacy of internet users.
- On November 1, 2021, China’s Personal Information Protection Law went into effect.
- On August 14, 2020, the Consumer Privacy Act of California went into effect.
On September 18, 2020, Brazil’s General Data Protection Law went into effect.
- The General Data Protection Regulation of the European Union went into effect on May 25, 2018, and companies like Amazon, WhatsApp, and Google have already been hit with huge fines.
- Many web browsers will limit third-party cookies in the future to protect user privacy, and Chrome will do the same in 2023.
In the future without cookies, you can improve your marketing without invading your users’ privacy by improving your analysis of referral sources and your analysis of your target audience.
Also Read: Home Based Business Ideas for Canada in 2023
8. AI is Evolving
No longer is most work done by hand or with the body. Everything that can be made easier through technology should be done that way now. This trend in affiliate marketing could involve using AI to bid on popular keywords, target different groups with your PPC campaigns, and talk to people who visit your website through a chatbox.
AI is a game-changer for affiliate marketing because it can save you a tonne of time, effort, and resources while also increasing your sales. You don’t have to spend your valuable time analyzing data and improving campaigns when you can use AI to do it for you. This will let you focus on coming up with new ways to grow your business while AI takes care of routine tasks.
Also Read: Best 8 Tips and Ideas to Start an Amazon Business
How could AI be used in a business that does affiliate marketing? As a first step, you can add a chatbox to your website to make it easier for visitors to talk to you. The chatbox can answer questions, make suggestions, and handle most of your interactions online. This makes it easier for people to use your website, which could lead to more sales. AI technologies can also give you analytical data to help you optimize your content for search engine optimization (SEO), and they can even stop website fraud.
AI has been shown to boost sales from affiliate marketing by 30%. If you don’t use AI in your affiliate marketing business, you’re throwing money away.
9. Grow Partners and Payment Options
No one knew what to think when bitcoin came out in 2009. Would putting money into it make you rich? Or was it just a trend that the government would quickly put an end to? Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have been around for more than a decade, so it’s safe to say that they’re here to stay.
People are investing more and more in digital currencies and, more recently, in currencies that are not backed by the government. There are many affiliate programs for cryptocurrencies that you can sign up for to make a new stream of income. As the crypto industry grows, there are more places for people to buy, sell, and trade their digital currency.
As more people use digital currencies, they are looking for more ways to spend what they have. About 36% of small businesses accept cryptocurrency as payment at the moment. By taking this form of payment, you make it easier for customers to buy from you instead of your competitors who only accept credit cards.
There is a lot of competition between these platforms, and many of them rely on affiliates to grow their market share. You can join one of these platforms’ affiliate programs and start making money when the people who use your site trade currencies. Some platforms offer huge incentives and up to 50% commissions on transactions. We don’t have to tell you that is a good fee for affiliate marketing.
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10. Co-partnerships Between Affiliates
Have you ever heard the saying, “When the tide goes up, all boats rise?” You might think that other affiliates are your competition, but you can both benefit from working together and helping each other. Many affiliate marketing trends already allow co-partnerships, and many of them guarantee that you will still get your full commission. You can also work with your partners to figure out how you can make the most money together.
For example, you could work with another affiliate in your business to make content and show your audience who your other affiliates are. You will also be shown to their audience, which means you are likely to get new followers and website traffic. You could write a guest post for the blog of another affiliate, or you could co-host a Livestream event. This is a great way to introduce yourself to people who are new to your field.
Another option is to trade links back to each other’s websites. Backlinks are an important SEO factor, so this could be a good way to improve your Google search ranking.
Permission marketing 2.0
Permission marketing 2.0 will take a new and exciting form of influencer marketing, fueled by online discussions and brands evolving to meet consumer needs.
Influencers will not just be somebody who writes about a product on their blog, but rather somebody with a large following on social media, who has voiced positive experiences about the brand’s products or service.
Final Thoughts
Admittedly, Affiliate marketing trends are a challenging concept to master, even though it’s not hard to understand. To become an excellent earner of this marketing style, you need to understand the best platforms to use and the best ways to communicate with your audience.
Sadly, this is something a lot of marketers ignore. Instead, they rely on the aesthetic view to always pull leads and potential clients. While this may work, it is not a sustainable way of bringing new leads in regularly.
All that being said, several affiliate marketing trends gain traction every year. Some even become solid marketing methods and funnels. For you not to miss out, the above are five of the biggest affiliate marketing trends to come out in 2022-2023.
FAQ
Is affiliate marketing growing?
Yes. The number of online searches for affiliate marketing has grown exponentially since 2016 as more and more people want in on this business. Affiliate marketing is also a multi-billion dollar industry that is estimated to reach $12 billion in 2023. These numbers are only expected to grow as the world’s economy shifts toward more eCommerce and more people are interested in running their businesses.
What is the #1 affiliate marketing trend I should adopt?
That depends on you and your business! We know it may be difficult to adopt all of these trends at once, so it might be better for you to choose one that you believe you can excel at. Maybe you’re already creating great content, so why don’t you try more video content? Or maybe you need to expand your audience, so why not try partnering with another affiliate? Choose a trend or two that you can focus on and once you adopt them successfully, move on to another.
