2017 predictions - Greenlight Digital

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As we at Greenlight HQ can attest to, affiliate marketing has been around for a long time now – and it's ... Facebook,
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2017 PREDICTIONS D E C E M B E R 2016 The Predictions Edition

THE CONSUMER BECOMING

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THE AFFILIATE

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Affiliates

“The incentive has become the prospect of sharing your buying behaviour in exchange for rewards, rather than rewards being a part of the purchase itself – marking a seismic change for affiliate marketing.”

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Affiliates As we at Greenlight HQ can attest to, affiliate marketing has been around for a long time now – and it’s rare that a new affiliate will emerge that breaks into the circle with great significance. The sector is dominated by cashback sites, voucher code providers and price comparison websites, who all generate the majority of affiliate channel sales. All the top performing affiliates share one common thread: they’re there to encourage the consumer to convert through incentives, whether that be cashback, money off, or offering the best price available – this underlying similarity has been the case for many years.

THE RISE OF THE INFLUENCER

SOCIAL AS A KEY PLAYER

The emergence and rise of social media is significant within the affiliate timeline, as the power and reach of the influencer became increasingly prominent. Within any one person’s social network, there’ll be individuals whose styles and choices are considered emulative. The desire to eat at a restaurant a colleague ate at, or visit a city your family just posted from on Instagram, or buy something from the shop your friend just bought from is sparked when that content is shared in real-time through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat, amongst other social networks.

The technology behind companies such as Soreto allows brands to devise social sharing strategies on the fly with dynamic creative optimisation, A/B testing, and reporting access which shows what kind of shares work best and which don’t in real time, thus allowing them to adapt and optimise immediately.

AN EVOLVING AFFILIATE MODEL With the emergence and understanding of the power of the influencer model has come a variety of new technology providers which are enabling brands to share their product lines through buyer’s social media networks and then rewarding them for sharing what they’ve bought. Companies such as Wom.io, MentionMe and Soreto provide simple tech integrations on the brand side to encourage and enable customers to share what they’ve bought post-purchase. The attraction to the brand is obvious: increased reach and awareness, improved conversion rates, increased number of followers and social buzz. According to Soreto, there are 2.3 billion active social media users in the world, and 50% of all social media interactions are shares1. Furthermore, there are 830 million photos posted daily across Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, and according to the New York Times, 65% of new business comes from referrals2.

For customers, the situation is still poised. Millennials increasingly use social media in private groups and share more than the public eye realises. Instead of going to a friend’s house to get dressed before a night out, social media enables the virtual “what shall we wear?”, which plays into the social sharing player’s hands. The jury is still out on whether consumers are comfortable sharing their buying patterns and purchasing behaviour. It’s fair to say that some will and some won’t be happy to do so, but as this sector develops in 2017, I predict that this kind of activity will become more common, and consumers will become private affiliates to their friends’ networks. This will be the start of a powerful and new revenue stream for brands who embrace the opportunity and make the dialogue seamless, normalising the concept of sharing for rewards. 1. 2.

http://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing/socialmedia-strategy/new-global-social-media-research/ https://www.referralsaasquatch.com/7-surprising-stats-aboutcustomer-referral-programs/

MATT BROWN HEAD OF AFFILIATES

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