Black Friday Survival Guide for Affiliate Marketers

Black Friday’s approaching, and with it, marketers’ blood pressure is rising.

It’s a bit like the Alaskan salmon run for grizzly bears, but if all the grizzly bears were partially blindfolded. 

A vast surge of opportunity to stock up before the end of the year, but you need to be in the right place at the right time. There will be a lot of guesswork involved. Trust not only your instincts, but all of the data you’ve acquired this year.

To assist with the frenzy, we consulted smart thinkers across the industry to give their top tips.

Study them all below:

“Plan your chaos.

“My advice is to lock in your best performing partners/publishers early, try to automate what you can, and keep space for the last-minute miracles (or fires) that always come. 

“The goal isn’t perfection; it’s staying calm enough to think clearly when things go wrong.”

Annie Amusu, Senior Affiliates & Partnerships Manager, TrustedHousesitters

“Don’t waste thousands on tenancies that don’t drive actual sales. Haven’t tested a placement this year yet? Don’t start during peak season. Go with what worked before to avoid losing money. 

“Make sure your creatives (yes, that includes feeds too) are up-to-date. For feeds, make sure you include Bestseller labels, and optimise descriptions/titles for maximum SERP relevancy. 

“Tag all your placements to measure true incrementality like upper funnel contribution, e.g. use post-view tracking somewhere toward the end of an article to measure clickless contributions.