Black Friday and Cyber Monday, two of the biggest shopping days of the year, provides a treasure trove of information to the affiliate marketer. These are the days which reveal both hot selling products and likely trends going into the new year.
Using data collected from these two days can align all efforts with your choice in affiliate programs and promotions.
You could double down on your affiliate promotions during these sales holidays or use the information to develop entirely new projects!
Here’s what we want to cover:
- Off-site research
- On-site research
- Its application
You don’t have to be an analytics wizard to benefit from Black Friday and Cyber Monday research. Scraping the surface is often more than enough. So, let’s dig in and see what we can find.
Off-site BF & CM Research
This is the best part of affiliate marketing: you’re not doing the expensive market testing.
The businesses and large companies know the value of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Meaning, they’re pouring tons of financial resources in their promotions and marketing efforts. They wouldn’t do this if it didn’t make them money… this is where you benefit.
This is also found through existing efforts on website and advertising:
BlackFriday is one of the largest websites dedicated to the shopping holiday. There you will find all the latest deals as it gets closer to the dates. The site has been going strong for many years and they’ve done their hard work in creating an easy-to-use experience.
Do this:
- Follow these BF/CM site newsletters for hot deals
- Select products based on social signals and affiliate criteria
- Quickly build promotions using content templates
Then, look at what’s being advertised:
Businesses are paying big money for these PPC ads during the sales holidays. They’re not wasting money on untested campaigns. This gives you the opportunity to reverse engineer their advertising and even overtake their advertising campaign by one-upping them.
Outside of BF/CM sites and ads – you could always stay in-tuned with social media.
Do a search on Facebook for “Black Friday” and find site pages…
Or, look for groups that have lively discussions…
We suggest compiling data about hot products and inspiring ads/shares in a spreadsheet. This spreadsheet gets added to the content marketing refinement plan.
Alright, moving on…
On-site BF & CM Research
Those just getting into affiliate marketing should focus on the off-site data collection (mainly) because the site likely hasn’t received enough analytical data to warrant sweeping changes. Those with mature sites will have this info (which is who this section is mostly for).
So, you’ve got your website and it’s collecting visitor data. Great.
This should tell you a few things:
- Popular website pages
- Site navigation
- Clickthrough’s (on affiliate links)
This info should become your starting point to refine the content and update it for the current year. This would include updating stats and strategies. It will also involve updating product and service recommendations based on what’s hot.
These are the pages you’ll want to pin to the home page and promote on social media.
There are several other opportunities to collect data:
- Visitor surveys
- Giveaways
- Blog comments
- Direct messages
Each of these show interest toward the content and offers. It’s not an exact method of measuring interest but it will give you a good direction.
Verify this data by comparing efforts to the competition (and off-site recommendations seen above).
For example:
If your affiliate site covers drones and you notice an uptick in interest toward VR models (based on community feedback and interaction) then you’re looking at a good candidate for affiliate promotions during Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
This is replicable across every niche market and industry.
It takes just a few hours of your time to collect this information from your site. The majority of your time will be spent crafting conversion-centric content and social media campaigns to leverage the data.
Speaking of which…
Using that Data in Affiliate Marketing
You’ve been collecting this data – now what?
There are a few ways to move forward with the data:
- Niche sites
- Product reviews
- Buyer guides
- General content
Those dedicated enough could use our Black Friday Niche Blueprint or Cyber Monday Niche Blueprint to develop a site dedicated to the two shopping holidays. These aren’t anything new – they’ve been done many times before – but a micro-fraction of the total sales during this time makes it worthwhile.
The process is straightforward:
- Set up a website
- Create content around sale items
- Promote hot offers on social media
- Continue to build links throughout the year
It’s a long game but one that pays off well.
Next, you should begin creating reviews for these products.
It’s better having purchased these items so you’re able to explain the ins and outs of their benefits and features though it’s entirely possible to do reviews for products you don’t own.
Here are a few of our resources for creating conversion-centric reviews:
After that, you should create buyer’s guides.
These guides are cornerstone pieces for the website and used for several beneficial purposes with the main being an email lead magnet (something worth opting into your list).
In this work you’ll share product recommendations and extra information such as “how to use X” or “little know features with Y”. Think of it as a go-to source for someone interested in the offer. Else, make it extremely helpful such as a guide like “Best X books for Expecting Mothers” (you get the point).
Lastly, fill out the content with general content:
- Tips & tricks
- Top 10’s
- Interviews
- Tutorials
Each of these pieces will improve the user experience as someone digs around your site going from page to page. Each page will have additional affiliate offers.
The point is to get this niche site high enough in search to gain a decent amount of traffic for when those Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals go live. Plus, building brand authority so people will expect you to give them the heads up once everything drops.
Getting the Most from Black Friday and Cyber Monday
There’s a lot of potential here.
A lot of affiliates get wrapped up in these sales holidays – doing their promotions – then head onward to the next holiday and projects. They fail to take a retrospective look so each year it seems like mayhem.
You can do better.
Years of Black Friday and Cyber Monday data is already there. You’ll find inspiration in real-time as the promotions get closer, too. Plus, you’ll build a database full of helpful analytics and reports the longer you’re in this affiliate marketing industry.
Let the source companies do the expensive market research — Double down on their efforts.
There’s tons of money to be made during these two days. A fraction of a percent can turn quite lucrative when you consider the numbers. Put that data to good work.
