How to Stand Out as an Affiliate During the Holiday Season

It’s the holiday season and that means it’s hard to stand out in your affiliate promotions. With so many deals, discounts, and deadlines, standing out is a challenge. So, how do you cut through the clutter and noise and differentiate yourself this holiday season? That’s what this episode is all about!

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Links Mentioned in this Episode

How to Stand Out and Capture Attention in a Crowded Marketplace

Warm-Up Guide

Affiliate Bonus Packages

How to Write Review Posts that Rank and Convert

The Ultimate Guide to Holiday Affiliate Marketing Promotions

Warm Up Your Audience Guide

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Previous Episodes of The Affiliate Guy

How to Stand Out as an Affiliate During the Holiday Season

Holiday Affiliate Guide Pt. 1: There’s More than Just Black Friday & Christmas

3 Lessons from a Hater

Affiliate Marketing Sales Secrets: How To Sell Without Being Salesy, Scammy or Sleazy

How to Get Started in Affiliate Marketing FAST (Your First Steps to Your First $1000)

My #1 Affiliate Recruiting Email Ever

How to Stand Out as an Affiliate During the Holiday Season

As we’ve been talking about throughout this series, one of the downsides to this time of year the holiday affiliate promotion season is it’s just crazy competitive. There’s a lot of noise. It’s a crowded marketplace, there are all these deals and discounts and deadlines, and it’s like one after the other. Right. You don’t think about it just from a holiday perspective, we go from Memorial day, then you got July 4th. Yeah. You got July 4th, but from July 4th through like, as far as I big holidays where you really go all out and celebrate, I mean, labor day. Yeah. There’s like a cookout, but there’s not really like a big thing, it’s not an all-day thing.

Typically you go a long time and then all of a sudden it’s like Halloween, Thanksgiving. And then you’ve got things like black Friday and Cyber Monday. And then it’s like all the Christmas parties and then Christmas itself, and then new year’s eve and new year’s day. It’s like, oh my goodness. There’s a lot in such a short period of time. And I guess it’s one of those ways to beat the winter blues. I don’t, I don’t know. But if you’re in the Southern hemisphere, it’s not, I don’t know, but it’s just crazy. It’s like the opposite of bears, people hibernate all year and then they come to play during the holidays. They come out to play in terms of spending. And there is so much money on the line.

So how do you, how do you stand out? I’ve done lessons on standing out before one was called how to stand out and capture attention in a crowded marketplace. I did that, I did a live lesson on that. That’s not what I’m talking about. We’ll link to that, by the way, if you want to know how to stand out in general, I’m not talking about in general here.

This is about standing out right now during the holidays. And I want to share 10 strategies to help you stand out with your affiliate promotions here in this crazy month or so. So the first thing you got to do:

1) You got to know that the early bird gets warm.

The key to any successful promotion is to have a plan and not a perfect plan, just a plan. And you need to create that plan now. So what are you going to mail about what days and times are you going to mail? Are you going to send two emails on a certain day, three on a certain day? Are you going to email early in the morning for something or late in the evening for other things, are you going to do blog posts?

You’re going to record podcast episodes do lives well graphics. You’re going to use like you got to ask yourself these questions. You gotta ask them well before the promotion and make a plan doing so is going to have a dramatic impact on how well you’re going to do during holiday affiliate promotions. You got to do these willing events because you got to see how they all work together.

You can’t tease your cyber Monday, deal on Sunday. If on Sunday you’re promoting a big deal, some sort of a thing that has a deadline that night and you can’t really do both. You need to focus on one or the other. So then you need to think, okay, well, when do I need to tease the cyber Monday? Do I need to tease? Maybe on Tuesday, I needed to tease the Black Friday and the Cyber Monday deals and things like that. So you get to ask those in advance. Speaking of teasing, you got to start teasing days or weeks in advance.

You got to start revealing deals and offers weeks in advance, if possible, at least a week and a half, two weeks in advance, like make them into an event. Look at what the major retailers are doing. I’m recording this at the end of October, I’m recording this at the end of October, they’re already talking about their black Friday deals. If I was going to have a black Friday offer,

I am by the way. So be watching for our crazy Black Friday deals, Black Friday, Cyber Monday deals are coming up November 26th through 29th. See what I just did there, right? Like I’m going to tell you about what’s coming up now. Actually, truth is, as I’m recording this, we’re not entirely sure what one of those is going to be.

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We know we’ve got three deals. We got three offers. We know what two of them are. We’re not sure where one of them’s going to be. And I’ll be talking about those soon and let you guys know. Now you’re not necessarily going to send in a dedicated email about each of these things, but maybe a, maybe you mentioned it. Start mentioning it in blog posts.

Maybe you’ll start mentioning it. I don’t know, like podcast episode in a newsletter, I’ll start talking about it in our weekly recap emails. I’ll post it on social media. I’ll mention it here and there over the next couple of weeks, I’ve started building a little bit of buzz and excitement, right? And so that’s the key.

We want to start building that buzz and excitement as early as possible because the early bird gets warm. So if you want to learn how to warm up your audience now, right now for those upcoming holiday posts. As I mentioned in the last few episodes, make sure to grab our guide Mattmcwilliams.com/warmlist. Go get our warmup guide.

2) You need to treat holiday promos, like a big launch

What do I mean? You go big. You only have a 48-hour window for some of this stuff, a 24-hour window. So plan on sending 2, 3, 4, 5 emails in that timeframe planning on doing social media posts. Like if you’re doing Twitter every 90 minutes throughout the day, on those days, lots of emails, lots of social media posts, lots of everything will go live pull out all the stops like you. Wouldn’t a big launch, focus on that deadline. We know from experience that in big product launches the last days when most of the sales happen, the same is true in a 48-hour sale.

Most of the sales happen in the last four hours in a 48-hour sale. You’ll typically see a big spike at the very beginning and then a drop. And then the last four hours can account for anywhere from 25 to 35% of sales, sometimes upwards of 50%. Guess when most of the sales are made in a 17-day promotion, the last four hours, that’s the way it is. Nothing moves. People like a deadline. So you’re going to stand out by treating it like a big launch. We’ll talk more about scarcity here in a little bit.

3) Create a quiz

Create a quiz that a perspective shopper can fill out, right? So you do something like finding the perfect gift. And in a minute, 60 seconds is actually better. If you say 60 seconds in one minute, I forget why I learned that years ago, but find the perfect gift in 60 seconds. And then it shows them they answer a few questions and it tells them what kind of gifts to look at and gives them some suggestions that you can link to as an affiliate.

4) Be a one-stop-shop.

A lot of people are going to be out there and they’re going to, they’re going to promote 5, 7, 10 things, right? And they’re going to promote it here and there. They’re going to send an email, here or there, blah, blah, blah. And there’s going to be like different links flying around. What if you just create one page that serves as a hub one page. So you create like a gift guide gift guides are your best friend over the holidays, but instead of writing broad ones, try to niche down as much as you can. So think of like, instead of like 10 best Christmas gifts for moms, try something like 10 gifts for soccer moms tries to niche down a little bit, or cozy gifts for the mom who loves to lounge, right? The ultimate gift guide for a foodie, things like that, the best places.

If you want to know how to do this, like you want to get ideas, just research, how people are searching for gifts to buy and you’ll figure out all kinds of gifts. And then the thing is, and it doesn’t have to be gifts. It could be deals. It could be things that are deals. I’m just using that gift guide as an example. But it could be a page where it’s just got like all of your deals for this time of year.

So we’ve got all of our black Friday deals on this page and then we’re going to update it. We’re going to remove the expired ones. And we’re going to put the Cyber Monday deals on here. Then we’re going to put the small business Saturday ones on, and we’re going to put the free shipping day ones on there. It’s just gonna be, one page, one page, very simple. It’s like Mattmcwilliams.com/deals, depending upon when you listen to this, that’s not updated just for the record, but that’ll be our, our page. And then you just update it constantly and you can add new things.

The cool thing about this is you can use this page when they go there for the black Friday deals, you can tease your cyber Monday deals on that page, but you can list multiple things. And then they come there and they end up buying multiple things. You can gain followers by telling them other than social media to follow you for the latest updates. So we’re going to say “Hey, we got this one page, follow us on social media.”

So get updates throughout this whole month. Over the next few days, we’re going to be updating this page constantly. So you want to follow us on social media because some of these deals only last for four hours to make sure you follow us. And now you pick up social media followers. It’s also really good. If you get an affiliate program, just as a side note, have a single page that you update that your affiliates can use, and they can just use one page that way it’s always updating. They don’t have to worry about 10 different links.

5) Offer bonuses.

Now I’ve shared the basics about bonus packages before, and I’m not going to go into those. If you go to Mattmcwilliams dot com forward slash AFF bonuses, you can check out my guide on how to create bonus packages. I’m not going to go into the details of just the basics, right? Things like, don’t create anything. If at all possible, try to offer something that’s a hundred to 200% of the price of the product. So if the product’s a hundred dollars, try to offer a bonus, that’s a hundred to $200. Things like that use what you have those are all in that guide. That’s not what I’m talking about here.

I’m talking about specifically holiday offers. It feels like it’s, there’s like a special thing done for a special reason. It’s a very special holiday occasion. So you can put a little bit of an extra spin on them. You can put a festive spirit on the whole thing, right? You can frame your bonus package as being generous and wanting to give back this holiday season, right? So you can theme it around the holidays, around Christmas, around Hanukkah, whatever it is, you can theme it around new year’s.

So it’s like, this is the goal-setting package. This is the make 2020 to your best year, yet package, things like that. And so again, if you want to know how to create the bonus packages, you can just go to that link. I mentioned Mattmcwilliams dot com forward slash AFF bonuses. I’ll link to that in the show notes. So you can just click on that and grab that. And we’ll walk you through how to create these packages, but think about what are some extra things you can do to sweeten the pie, sweeten the pie.

We’re gonna sweeten the pie of the pie. I think they are already sweet. I dunno if PI needs to be sweetened anymore. The last time I had pie was really, really sugary. And I ended up with like the shakes afterward, because I don’t eat sugar anymore was anyway. Whew. Okay. Way off track there. But here’s the point though? Sweeten the pot, right? We’re going to sweeten the pot. And so we’re going to offer these bonuses as a way to incentivize people to buy these bonuses can be for 24 hours only, or half a day, only four hours. Only things like that.

6) Pull the plug early on non-performing offers

The sixth way that you can stand out is to pull the plug early on non-performing offers. And what does that mean? How does this help you stand out? This is kind of sounds weird. The thing is you don’t have time to ride out. Non-performing offers. All right, when you’ve got it’s the middle of July and the launch is two weeks long and it’s not going great at the beginning, you got time, but things are moving too fast. This time of year, they’re moving so quickly. During this time, you don’t have time to have something not performing. If something isn’t working and you promoted it heavily for a day or two, just consider not finishing that promo. Let’s just say it’s five days long, just consider pulling out and finding something else.

Now, remember what I just said about the deadline though? And maybe it’s not going quite as you thought it would, but things could pick up if something’s not performing quite up to speed, maybe the deadline’s going to move things. Maybe just people need a little bit of scarcity, so you might want to stay with it. But if something’s totally bombing, you just got to scrap it and learn why later do a debrief later, figure out why it didn’t work. But right now, just, just pull the plug and they working to move on.

7) Videos

The seventh way you can stand out is do videos, do video reviews, do unboxings, do explainers, where you walk through products and how you use them, do lifestyle videos using the product. Things like that. Video is a great way to stand out. Most people they’re doing written product reviews, which are great. If you want to know how to, by the way, how to do a product review, just go to Mattmcwilliams.com/reviewposts. And you can download the guide. It works for written product reviews and video product reviews.

So when I do a video product review, it’s basically, I use the written product review as a script and then kind of go off and share a few extra things so that it’s not just, I’m not just reading from a script, but effectively it’s the same concept. It’s the same concept is, is a written product review. So if you want to learn how to do those, we’ll put that link in the show notes and you can download the ultimate guide to creating a product review that actually ranks that’s important and converts. You can’t have one without the other. Oh, my product review converts really well.

Yeah, because you’ve had five visitors in the last year and two of them bought, okay, that’s not as good as if you’d had 5,000 visitors. That’s 40%. I’d rather have 5% of 5,000 visitors buy and you also can’t, oh, we’ve got the number two ranking on Google. We’ve had 5,000 visitors to my review and how many of them bought two? Oh, that sucks. and that’s not very good to get a ranking convert that applies to written reviews and to video reviews. All right.

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8) Use Scarcity

Number eight is to use scarcity and I mean really use it because you probably got a deadline for the black Friday deal, possibly a weekend deal between black Friday and Cyber Monday, or a small business Saturday deal. You’ve got cyber Monday, you’ve got the end of Hanukkah. You’ve got free shipping day. You’ve got the last day to guaranteed shipping maybe like where it’s the cheap shipping or free shipping, then you get the last day for expedited shipping. I mean, just off the top of my head, that’s seven deadlines in a three-and-a-half-week span.

So use that scarcity to really drive sales, use countdowns to create a sense of urgency leading up to promotion. So it’s the countdown to the Black Friday deal. It goes live at 7:00 AM on Friday, and we’re counting down to it. Use countdowns in your emails, countdown, timers. We recommend motion mail or out of timer. Use those to create countdown timers in your email copy where you’re, you’re mailing out about certain promotions that are ending tonight at midnight and social media posts a four-hour warning and a two-hour warning and use that to really create that sense of urgency. So that was number eight.

9) Create your own graphics

Now I’m going to talk about this in an upcoming episode where I talk about what do affiliate programs need to give you as an affiliate and yeah, they need to give you some great graphics. They need to especially give you holiday-themed graphics. Because as I’ll share in that episode more in-depth, we found that that increased the sales about 14% this time of year, but here’s the thing. Everyone is using the same stuff. Everyone is using the exact same graphics to promote.

So make your own holiday theme, but try something different, most are going to go red and green. That’s pretty common. So try something different, like a darker blue and gold, a lighter blue and silver, it kind of has, and white kind of has a snowy feel, alright, try some different colors, different themes instead of just everything being Santa Claus, try snow and maybe some, I don’t know, stars, things like that. Just try to stand out a little bit, look at what the company’s providing you, what other companies are providing in that niche and try to try to Zig when there’s zagging and just try to mix it up a little bit. If it’s all red and green, I guess I’d go with those different colors. Maybe their focus is their graphics are more focused on just the product will then focus on how they’re being used, things like that. Try something a little bit different by creating your own graphics.

10) Get an exclusive code.

Now, if you have an exclusive discount code, naturally, it’s different in unique. Now, not all companies when you give out exclusive codes, but I’m going to tell you right now, an exclusive code, something like Matt or Matt 20 is going to convert better than some like random, like save 2020 is going to convert better than save 20. I’ve even seen words like save 20w27ap and I’m like, what does that even mean? What kind of a code is that? But one of the biggest things I see with new affiliates, they’re just afraid to ask for things like this.

So regardless of how small you are, maybe this might even be your first affiliate promotion ever. You just getting started, ask for an exclusive code. You might just get it. I see this a lot with affiliate programs. They’re like, well, please apply here for an exclusive code and tell us, how big is your audience? How many Twitter followers do you have and what Facebook followers do you have? And what’s your email list size. It’s easier for me just to give you a code regardless of your audience size.

And it is to take the time to ask those questions and then look through them and then tell so don’t be afraid to ask the people who get them or the people who ask for them. And again, we’ve seen with exclusive codes, we’ve seen close to a 20% increase in sales from having an exclusive code. So there’s no reason not to ask for one. And that is one thing that will allow you to stand out instead of just having the regular boring code. You’ve got one that is unique. If you’re only going to be one that has met 20 and that’s going to be me.

So remember, number one, the early bird gets the warm.

Number two, treat your holiday promos like a big launch.

Third, try a quiz, some sort of like a holiday shopping quiz.

Fourth, be that one-stop-shop, create that one page that serves as a hub that you update frequently with new offers.

Fifth, offer bonuses. That’s huge. That’s a great way to stand out.

Sixth, pull the plug early on non-performing offers. So you can just get rid of them.

Seventh, leverage video in the form of reviews and unboxings and things like that.

Eighth, use scarcity and countdowns to create that sense of urgency.

Ninth, create your own graphics.

Tenth, get an exclusive code. And if you want more holiday affiliate tips.

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As I said, in the last episode, I want you to do three things:

1) Make sure you subscribe.

So you don’t miss any of the upcoming still got like five more of these episodes on the holiday affiliate promotions. You don’t want to miss any of them. So subscribe, just click the subscribe button now. So you don’t miss those.

2) Check out those past additions of the ultimate guide to holiday affiliate promotions. We’ll link to that in the show notes.

So you can get all the tips and strategies we’ve shared before because these are all new this year,

3) Learn how to warm up your audience right now for these upcoming holiday affiliate promotions. That’s what we talked about in strategy number one, you’ve got to start right now. So grab that warmup guide at Mattmcwilliams.com/warmlist. So you can warm up your audience right now and then come back for the next episode.

We’re gonna talk about seven things that your affiliates needs. We’re going back to the affiliate program side seven things your affiliates need during holiday promotions. I’ll see you then.

Thank you so much for listening today. Remember to check out all of our deep dives into affiliate marketing at theaffiliate guy.TV. And if you have a question, ask it at asktheaffiliateguy.com who knows maybe you even be featured on an upcoming episode. And lastly, if you haven’t yet make sure to leave a rating and review wherever you’re listening to this episode. See you soon.