Top 7 Trends in Social Media for Marketing Agencies in 2019

Ten years ago, you could’ve successfully marketed your clients’ products without social media. Today, there’s no chance.

Social media is the first place after Google where customers look for products, and, what’s even more important – brand image. 87% of consumers would purchase a product based on values, and the average revenue increase when a brand is presented consistently is 23%.

Even though we love our PPC campaigns, there’s nothing like social media to help the customers get to know your clients and their products. And because technology and customer priorities change from year to year, today we’re taking a look in the future.

Here’s what we can expect in 2019, and how you can use social media as a marketing agency to ensure your clients succeed.

1. The Rise of Social Shopping

Social shopping has become increasingly popular in 2018 and with Instagram’s new shop-on-the-gram features, it’ll become even bigger in 2019.

Users will now be able to find products in images and videos, save them to their collections, and find new products in the Explore section. Even though there have been talks of Instagram creating a separate app, there’s no reason.

Consumers of 2018 love shopping through social media. It comes pre-packed with referrals and comments from other people, and they can see their favorite influencers advocating the products.

In addition to Instagram (which is a visual platform), Facebook took after WeChat’s social retail example and is now working on features that will make it much easier for customers to shop without leaving the app.

Even though we may have to wait sometime before you can integrate your clients’ stores with Facebook, the social shopping trend can still be incredibly beneficial for your clients’ businesses.

Social shopping is fueled by referrals, and with social shopping on the rise, you should consider using satisfied customer testimonials in advertising. Social proof is very important to consumers of 2018, and it’ll encourage them to buy from your clients even more in 2019.

2. Micro-Influencers Driving Macro Sales

Influencers are no longer people; they’ve become walking, talking billboards in the last five years. Their followers (and your customers) quickly realized who actually provides value, and who sells products they don’t believe in.

Social media marketing in 2019 will be value and thought-driven, no doubt about it. And as far as word-of-mouth goes, micro-influencers are the channel you want to use.

They’re typically social media users who have between 1,000 and 20,000 followers and extremely high (real) engagement rates. Their community is tight-knit, which actually means a narrowed-down niche for your clients.

In their study, Mediahub realized that micro-influencers increased their marketing campaign engagement by 50%. And what’s even more interesting is that influencers with around 1,000 followers actually resulted in more success for the brands they worked with, generating 85% higher engagement than regular influencers (with over 100k followers).

Since the main motto behind marketing and shopping in 2018 and 2019 is: value, honesty, and convenience, micro-influencers fit right into that category.

If you want to optimize your clients’ campaigns (and reduce the spend on that area) in 2019 as a marketing agency, start working with micro-influencers.

3. Relevant, Interactive Content

Content marketing is here to stay, and it’s the number one way to drive sales through social media. After all, content strategies increase your clients’ ROI: they generate 4x more leads per $1000 within 36 months.

It’s also good for branding and customer communication. Consumers today won’t repeatedly buy from your clients’ brands if they don’t understand them.

So in 2019, make it your priority to include content into your marketing strategy – and not any kind of content. Create content that’s relevant instead of outdated, and increase engagement by making it interactive.

[Image-Source:Ion-Interactive,https://image.slidesharecdn.com/marchthoughtleadership-2-150326170354-conversion-gate01/95/balancing-your-interactive-content-priorities-3-638.jpg?cb=1427390261]

With the state of social media features today, it’s not hard to create interactive content.

Interactive content on Twitter:

• Polls
• Hashtags
• Questions
• Conversational video
• Partnerships and sponsorships
• Daily trends (e.g. #MondayMotivation)

Interactive content on Instagram:

• Questions
• Polls

• Shopping features
• Stories

• IGTV

Interactive content on Facebook:

• Polls
• Stories
• Facebook Live
• Messenger chatbots
• Quizzes

Interactive content on LinkedIn:

• Storytelling
• Quick, relevant status updates
• Questions as a driver for white papers
• Advice (how-to posts)

Consumers in 2019 won’t be happy if they can just observe your clients’ social media. They have to actively interact with it in order to find value, and ultimately make the purchasing decision.

It’s incredibly important to establish a content calendar that will help you constantly engage your clients’ customers. You don’t have to do it manually, as DrumUp offers content scheduling features (and much more).

4. Social Media Marketing Personalization

Accurate audience segmenting and targeting has been the number one marketing priority since the dawn of marketing itself. However, when it comes to personalization, it seems like a lot of brands are struggling with it.

The lack of personalization puts off consumers so much that 74% of them feel frustrated when content isn’t personalized. As a counter-point, marketers who use personalized experiences see a 20% increase in sales.

[Image-Source: Accenture, https://mms.businesswire.com/media/20161013005226/en/549456/5/Personalization_Survey_Graph_1.jpg]

What can you do for your clients as a marketing agency?

The first thing is obvious: gather data. For this, use social listening. Social listening will also help you curate content better, and create a content calendar that perfectly fits the customers’ interests.

DrumUp makes this really easy. Without it, you’d have to go through multiple feeds at once – and still risk not getting the right information. DrumUp’s algorithm will do that for you, and show you exactly what kind of content your audience needs.

The second thing you can do to personalize your marketing efforts is to understand the customers’ motivation for buying the product. This may seem simple on paper, which is exactly why a lot of marketing agencies haven’t had the appropriate amount of success in 2018.

Run an audience analysis and cross-reference it with your social media strategy. No matter which social media you’re using, engagement should be your number one priority. Segment audiences according to channels, and tailor your approach to their personal preferences.

Focus on personal interactions. Even though we’re all looking at screens, don’t take the human touch out of the equation. Facebook Messenger offers innovative chatbot features, Twitter has DMs, and nothing has ever been as effective as LinkedIn outreach.

Speaking of LinkedIn, LinkedIn Dynamic Ads were quite a revolution when the platform announced them. Their significance will grow in 2019, as they’re an incredible way to personalize the experience for your clients’ customers.

Personalizing your social media strategy won’t just help you get new customers; it will help you retain the existing ones, and generate more referrals than ever before.

5. Brand Awareness and Values

Marketing success is going to be very hard in 2019 without openly stating your client’s brand values. This will be the ultimate way to reach new heights of brand awareness, and create customer loyalty from the very first purchase (while also increasing the value of each purchase).

The goal of social media marketing in 2019 is to sell to customers who feel like your client’s brand is their friend.

While brands traditionally steered clear of stating opinions or standing up for values, this will become indispensable in 2019. While keeping ethics in mind, your brand should stand for similar values to those of your customers.

[Image-Source:-SproutSocial, https://www.marketingcharts.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Sprout-Topics-Demonstrating-Brand-Transparency-on-Social-Aug2018.png]

Sponsorships and donations can go a long way when it comes to brand awareness. So does employee advocacy.

Additionally, you can also use user-generated content to show appreciation for your customers. Big brands frequently do this, on a smaller or bigger scale.

For example, hashtag competitions are a big favorite of brands like Nike. Their customers are encouraged to post their own content related to the brand, and then the brand page re-shares it. This can be especially useful for your clients if they’re in the B2B space as it gives the other side more exposure.

It’s no longer enough to talk about what your brand stands for. Action should be following it closely. Especially where customer prioritization is concerned.

6. AI-Powered Customer Service and Marketing

A huge part of user experience has been shaped by instant customer service which SaaS companies like ZenDesk started providing. It’s easier and more pleasant for customers, and it means a lot for the bottom line of your clients.

However, you can use the AI-powered customer service principles for your marketing efforts, as well.

We’ve previously touched on Facebook Messenger chatbots, but while they can be used to respond to customers’ queries, they can also be used for marketing.

For example, if you want to boost the customer response to your client’s marketing campaign, you can contact them directly with the help of chatbots, and present the idea in a more personable way.

Twitter DMs can go a long way if they’re not robotic, as well. If there’s a particular offer that would interest a segment of your customers, you can divide them with Twitter Lists, and message them.

Same goes for LinkedIn: InMail is still the best way to directly reach customers.

Social media marketing in 2019 is going to be big on doing things directly. And great AI tech is going to help you do it without manual work.

7. Content Marketing Will Be a Major Player in 2019 Marketing

You probably noticed that we’ve emphasized the importance of content. However, it’s still one of the main ways to reach (new) customers on social media.

It’s an excellent way of providing additional value, educating prospects, warming up marketing campaign leads, and ultimately, converting them to customers.

You can experiment with different forms and channels, but the more your content stimulates engagement, the better will your results be.

This can be a lot of work if you’re doing it on your own, so try out DrumUp. It takes care of everything for you – from scheduling to finding content to share.

So automate your marketing, and focus on the most important thing: making your client’s business thrive.

[Image-Source: https://mybigplunge.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Infographics-Rise-Of-Social-Media-My-Big-Plunge.gif]

Source: 

5 Experts Share How to Market on Instagram (with Tips & Actual Examples)

According to predicted social media and content marketing trends for 2018, Instagram will overtake Facebook with brand engagement. If you’re a social media manager planning your marketing strategy for 2018, this is the perfect place for you to be. To understand the best ways to market on Instagram, I asked 5 Instagram marketing specialists the following questions.

1. Which 2 content marketing tactics would you suggest to Instagram community managers?
2. Describe 2 of your best Instagram marketing campaigns.
3. Share your 2 best time-saving tips for Instagram marketing.

Apart from suggesting the use of aesthetically pleasing images and relevant hashtags, experts on our panel also suggested employing a reliable social media management tool to save time on Instagram management.

Read further to see what else they had to say.

Deborah Sweeney
CEO
MyCorporation

Expert advice:

Engage with other followers outside of the ones in your feed. Check in with some of your favorite hashtags to find new users. Like their photos, comment, and follow them to develop a rapport together.

“Here are some tips I recommends for successful Instagram marketing:

-Be mindful of where you place hashtags. Rather than clutter a post caption with tons of hashtags, hide hashtags in a separate comment or use line breaks after your comment that look like this: […].
-Use images that are aesthetically pleasing (not salesy or obviously stock images) and credit the photographer of the image if you did not take it.
-Engage with other followers outside of the ones in your feed. Check in with some of your favorite hashtags to find new users. Like their photos, comment, and follow them to develop a rapport together.

We recently started an Instagram Series called “Meet Our Team Monday” where we share a few pictures of a randomly selected employee and write a bio about them in the caption.

Our social media coordinators love interviewing the weekly candidates and have found that the office enjoys getting to know fun facts about their co-workers as well! It is also a great way for the employees to stay engaged with our social media channels and get excited to see who the next pick may be!

In order to save time while Instagram marketing, we encourage you create content in advance and schedule it to be posted through a social media management tool! this will decrease stress and help you to stay organized.”

Lexi Carter
Digital Content Coordinator
Southern Utah University 

Expert advice:
Curate more user-generated content to make your profile genuine and authentic.

“Follow Inspiration Accounts
Instagram can be used in such diverse ways depending on your industry. To discover the right tone for my captions and get ideas for content, I follow over fifty other university accounts. By dissecting other universities’ highly engaging posts, I am able to adapt and implement certain ideas into SUU’s Instagram strategy. Plus, I can quickly calculate engagement rates and compare SUU’s top posts to nationally-recognized universities.

Engage/Utilize Your Audience
Along with following accounts I want to be like, I follow my community and engage with them frequently. I’ve identified key influencers who organically promote events/programs/locations at SUU and around Cedar City and utilize their photography skills for our profile.

By curating user-generated content (and always crediting them in my caption), I cut down on the amount of original content my team needs to create. Our profile is also stronger because the photos are more genuine, organic, and relate directly to my audience.

Here are 2 of our best Instagram marketing campaigns –

School Pride & Location
In almost every post, we try to connect SUU to our beautiful surrounding locations or promote school pride. Our followers on Instagram range from current students, prospective students, alumni, faculty and donors, so by focusing on these broader themes we can reach our entire audience.

Here’s a snap of SUU’s football team winning the Big Sky Championship

Here are our engagement rates for this campaign

(higher education industry standard = 3.5%)
Cedar Sunrise: 15.5%
Big Sky Champs: 18.7%
Aviation Football Field: 10.7%
Campus Sunset: 14.6%
Thor Street Paint: 11.7%
Zion Student: 8.8%

T-Bird Takeover
Instead of partnering with student influencers on our main account, we have created an influencer account called ‘T-Bird Takeover’ (@tbirdtakeover).

Each week, a different student takes over, giving followers a glimpse into their life as a T-Bird. Students highlight their major and academic experience, campus events, study abroad programs, clubs, athletics, study strategies, jobs, etc.

The account gains dozens of new followers each week, mainly students watching their friends takeover or their department represented.

Here are 2 tips to save time while Instagram marketing –

Track hashtags to find content. People who are posting quality photos want them to be found, and so they include various hashtags. If you can identify what those hashtags are, you’ll easily gather user-generated content that you can schedule to post.

Utilize the bookmark feature. I have several folders I save posts to as I’m scrolling. The folder I use most is my SUU-specific posts. It’s so much easier to sort through the content I find and compare photos when it’s all gathered together visually instead of just by URL.

The other folder I use on a daily basis is my ideas folder. I save posts from other universities, companies, and influencers to inspire my photos or captions. Especially for holidays or trending yearly hashtags, it’s so helpful to be able to look back on the best ideas from other people and incorporate them into my strategy.”

Shana Haynie
Co-Founder, COO
Vulpine Interactive

Expert advice:
Post videos and stories regularly. This is a more interactive approach that allows you to be more authentic with your audience.

“While every company has slightly different goals concerning their social media presence, two content marketing tactics I would suggest that Instagram community managers can use are:

a. Using a mix of original images and lifestyle pictures from high-quality stock photography websites.

If you are looking for high levels of engagement, professional photos often receive a lot of likes. While this is just a vanity thing in terms of business goals, Instagram’s algorithm likes engagement and will lift the rest of your account if you continuously receive a high ratio of likes to audience size.

b. Posting videos and stories regularly. This is a more interactive approach that allows you to be more authentic with your audience.
In an Instagram Case Study I recently published, I went into detail about how my agency gained 11,060 targeted followers, 933,000 impressions, and increased website traffic from Instagram by over 300% in 7 months for an eCommerce company (SixThreeZero).

The strategy wasn’t too crazy: we did a deep dive into the brand, their audience and their goals, and came up with a plan to shift their following towards an older audience to align with the people who are actually making purchases from their website.

At the time, they weren’t seeing much traffic from Instagram and they were targeting a much younger audience. But, by the time we parted ways, they were seeing 300% more site visitors and the follower age group had shifted by 10 years.

To do this, we focused heavily on the content, the hashtags, and the posting frequency.

1. We had our client create images with older people in them, and used the description to create engaging content that spoke directly to our main target personas. We also came up with an “every third post” schedule where we alternated between product, user generated content, and lifestyle posts, and this created a really cool column effect on their feed.

2. We did research into the most relevant hashtags to use for the industry, our brand, and reach / engagement, and used these in every post.

3. We kept the posting frequency to 2x per day, every day of the week, in our highest engagement time slots.

Another account that we’ve seen some really great results is also an eCommerce company that sells men’s and women’s sneakers. They came to use with a strong Instagram presence, and in fact, we didn’t take over any of the engagement, posting or content strategy. We just advise on content and run Instagram and Facebook paid ads to help them sell their product, drive traffic to the website, and grow their audience.

For a Halloween ad campaign we ran for them, we launched a slideshow and series of image ads aimed at selling a 50% sale for select shoes on the website. Based on $1,354 in ad spend, we generated $7,874 in revenue across both platforms.

While Facebook did generate the majority of the revenue, our Instagram followers grew rapidly during this time, and we had heightened engagement as well. Our top performing engagement Instagram ad received 17,000+ impressions, 113 link clicks, and 18 add to carts for around $50 of investment.

No one ever said that building an Instagram presence was going to be easy! Here are two ways to save time:

a. Use a social media scheduling tool. My agency uses one to help us plan out content weeks in advance. This is great if you have a strong strategy and have a ton of content that you want to get out there on a consistent basis. It also has some analytics included in the platformto help you figure out your best times to post, which hashtags are being used on your top performing posts, and lets you repost content that you find to your feed without leaving the platform.

b. Hire a virtual assistant to work on your account while you are busy doing other things like content creation. You can set a virtual assistant up with a process and instructions for targeting, and they can search out the appropriate accounts to follow and engage with. You can even supply them with templated messages to send out to specific groups of people depending on the goal you have in mind (follows, event attendance, website visitors, etc). I like to use hashtags and locations as a place to start, but the targeting will depend on your business.”

Harry Hugo
Co-owner
Goat Agency

Expert advice:
Ensure that you have engaging content that resonates with your audience.

“Engaging content should be the top priority for Instagram community managers, so they should create content that is both entertaining and evokes emotional responses.
Content should also be posted regularly, across the newsfeed and stories to ensure you are a sustained voice in your followers feed.
The Malibu Campaign: We curated a ‘Summer Squad’ of 80 influencers to become brand ambassadors for Malibu. These influencers posted multiple times throughout the summer and created an always-on activation for Malibu. Influencers created high-quality, engaging content with Malibu merchandise integrated – positioning Malibu as the go-to drinks brand for the summer. As part of the always-on, summer activation, we had key spikes of activity around the festival season and ‘Pina Colada Day’.

This campaign drove:

152 influencer posts, 94,023 engagements, 2,300,743 reach, 1,241,881 impressions

The Jacobs Creek Campaign: We used a combination of Mummy Bloggers and lifestyle influencers to target the very specific audience. We ran the campaign on Instagram with two hero pieces of content hosted on YouTube to give Jacob’s Creek an abundance of aspirational and aesthetically pleasing content for their own channels. All influencers were carefully briefed to integrate Jacobs’ Creek into their very own Summer Moment to make the campaign look as organic as possible.
This campaign drove:

55 posts, 2,350,394 reach, 113,152 engagements, 697,415 impressions
Saving time is not always a priority for us, ensuring we have good content that resonates with the audience is of higher importance. However, pre-planning the content that will be posted and getting several shots that can be taken at the same time, but posted at separate times can save time on content creation.”

Julia Kennedy
Audience Development Marketing Champion
Museum Hack

Expert advice:
Reply as though your response could go viral.Don’t Treat your followers like a nameless, faceless mass. Take care of your audience by acknowledging their responses, answering their questions, and making them feel important.

“Reply as though your response could go viral. This is the Internet — anything can be shared to the whole world at any time. It’s better to go viral for a stellar customer response than a snippy retort. Take your time when crafting responses. Social media feels like it should be fast, but it’s easier to take a moment to proofread your post and say it right the first time rather than correcting a mistake once something’s already published.

Don’t Treat your followers like a nameless, faceless mass. Take care of your audience by acknowledging their responses, answering their questions, and making them feel important. Create relationships! Don’t over-do it or spam your audience. Your fans and followers are more likely to engage with or share things they find important or informative – and no one likes it when you blow up their newsfeed.

Instagram takeovers can be cheeky and creative. They show a different perspective not only to your followers but your employees will feel like what they do is being valued. Do you have a group jetting off to an important conference? Is the sales team demoing a product in an interesting place? These are perfect instances to hand the Instagram account over to your employees. Let them post photos of their adventures and activities – whatever they think your audience will enjoy. This not only engages your followers in a unique way but allows your employees to show-off a little. Encouraging them to be proud of the work they do, makes all the difference.
Our SF Team took over our Instagram for Halloween to have fans pick the best costumes

We take tons of photos on our tours! To show them off, get some social proof, and to build the relationship with our tour-goers we re-post user submitted photos on a dedicated day, #TourPhotoTuesday. While a big part of the museum experience traditionally requires visitors being physically present to see exhibits and collections, audience engagement is no longer dependent on actually being in the museum. Social media gives organizations the freedom to extend the museum experience to a digital space and break down the physical walls, offering the opportunity to create their own communities of museum-lovers.

Save time by planning – set aside time to create a plan for the week, gather images, and create copy. Use whatever social media planner you use (we love Buffer) for easy quick reminders to post.”

Feature image via Pexels.com

Source

10 Fantastic Instagram Posts and Why They Work

Don’t let the simplicity of Instagram lull you into posting boring content. While it might appear that people are just randomly posting photos, and yes, some people are, many people have mastered the art of the Instagram post. Let’s look at ten fantastic Instagram posts, why they work, and how you can use these ideas for your future Instagram content.
Reverse engineering can prove to be a rich resource for future content marketing posts. Using examples from big brands with big marketing and advertising budgets, I’m providing you inspiration for your Instagram content. Be sneaky smart and get ideas from the best in the business – but make sure that you are unique in your execution, design, and text. Boost your Instagram success with these ideas and put your own twist on them.
Being inspired doesn’t mean stealing ideas.

1. Share User Generated Content

Benefit Cosmetics created a short video from a customer created YouTube video to share on with their Instagram audience.  Clients and customers singing your products praises are pure gold. If you have a product that you can send samples of, connect with those influencers and build a relationship with them.

Your takeaway: Share testimonials from customers on your social media. 

2. Provide inspiration

Pantone is all things color! In this post, they are celebrating spring with lilacs and a lilac color swatch.

Your takeaway: Be an inspiration for your Instagram followers.

3. Build your audience with consistency

Is there anything more iconic than a Tiffany blue box with a white ribbon? People even recognize their brand blue as Tiffany blue. Building on their offline brand, Tiffany’s reinforces their brand by sharing stunning photos of their products.
Sharing great content on a regular basis builds the relationship with your fans and let’s them know you’re serious about what you’re doing.

Your takeaway: Building your online presence using your offline reputation builds familiarity with your customers. 

4. Provide assistance

Brit & Co is all things fun and creative. Their colorful posts lead to bigger DIY kits on their website. How about a homemade hot sauce kit?
The #DIY hashtag has over 11 million posts! Hop in.

Your takeaway: People love to find inspiration on social media. Can you share a how-to or educate your fans with a DIY post of some kind? Sure you can!

5. Entertain!

Hootsuite had a whole lot of awesome going on at the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas. This is a photo from their Hoot Bike that people were riding on all over town. I just can’t get enough of their cute mascot, Owly.

Your takeaway: How are you connecting in fun and remarkable ways with your clients and potential clients? Mark the moment with a photo and share on Instagram. It doesn’t have to be in person, it could be a photo from a Skype call or Google+ Hangout on Air. Be creative!

6. Share your story

Designer Timothy Goodman shares photos from his work on his Instagram and WOW is it inspirational!

Your takeaway: Share behind the scenes at your company or what you do at your business. People love to connect with stories and get an insiders peek into someone else’s world.

7. Celebrate milestones

Seghesio Vineyards is celebrating their 120th anniversary with an Instagram contest. Their simple rules are listed on the post and they included a trackable link in their bio to the rules.
“Join us in celebrating our 120th Anniversary with the#120DaysofSeghesio photo contest. You and three friends could win round-trip airfare to the Sonoma area, accommodations for four in Healdsburg, a private meal at Seghesio, a walking tour of the vineyards and more! Just upload your photo representing the number 120 or Seghesio to Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, using the hashtag #120DaysofSeghesio. Full rules and more info can be found at the link in our profile.”

Your takeaway: Celebrate milestones with a contest to generate awareness of your milestone and let your fans celebrate with you!

8. Join the community

I love this powerful post from Urban Decay Cosmetics celebrating Single Awareness Day. The tone and content fits their brand perfectly and they received over 42,000 likes on this post.

Your takeaway: Empower your community with encouragement and positive motivation.

9. Connect with hashtags

I really love what Target does on this post. They’re inviting their Instagram fans to tag their favorite #designcrush in the comments and tagged New York city designer Timothy Goodman on the post. This is a very fun post and it got a lot of engagement on likes and comments.

Your takeaway: Ask your community to connect with you using relevant hashtags to your industry, brand, or products.

10. Have fun

Oreo nails it as usual.


Your takeaway: Don’t take your social media too seriously.
I hope these examples of fantastic Instagram posts have given you a few ideas for future posts for your Instagram presence. I can’t wait to see what you cook up!


Source

Affiliate Marketing in 2018, What You Need to Know

Affiliate marketing is constantly changing and evolving and 2018 is going to be another year when we can expect some incremental shifts and some more radical shifts. I am going to spend a bit here explaining where I see affiliate marketing in 2018 heading and hopefully shed some light on the industry as a whole.Before I get started, I want to clear your mind of ONE thing. Affiliate Marketing is not going anywhere. The opportunity to build a full-time business through affiliate marketing is still as possible as it has ever been.
In fact, there is becoming a greater shift of investment by large companies into their affiliate programs and their affiliates. You can expect more of this in the year ahead.
There are 5 main shifts/changes that you can expect in the year ahead within the AM world.

1. Affiliate Programs Need Affiliates More Than Ever.

I am sensing a bit of desperation in the commerce world. Very successful retailers of the "offline" world are losing their grasp of their overall market because of the "progressive online" companies that have focused primarily in the online retail space.
You have the likes of Etsy, EBay, Amazon, AliExpress that have truly invested a great deal of their energies into affiliates and their online retail experience. They are continuing to thrive and grow and will do so in 2018.
Then you have companies like Sears, Toys R Us (as well as several others) that are going completely out of business because they didn't focus on affiliates and their overall online retail experience.
We are going to see more of this. There will be more retailers that will go bankrupt in 2018. There will be a much greater focus by existing retailers in their online experience, affiliate programs, and working at a higher rate with affiliate marketers.
Those that continue to invest in this manner will see positive growth in their businesses in 2018. Those that don't, are unfortunately going to experience the same demise as many other "offline focused" retailers that simply do not get the new economy.

2. Authority Bloggers Will Continue to Reap the Rewards.

One thing that you can be assured about is that those that focus on OWNING their niche in 2018, are going to continue to attract the attention of larger affiliate marketing agencies, networks, and affiliate programs.
As an affiliate, you have a lot of power as you start to accrue a brand in the industry. The same way celebrities attract huge contracts for selling contracts through commercials if you focus on building your brand in your given niche/industry you are going to continue to attract these types of partnerships.
Often times as you gain true branding in your niche. Affiliate programs consider offering you more incentives or better commission (like our all-expense-paid Super Affiliate Conference).
So embrace your niche, work to become the best within it, and don't try to diversify and wear too many hats within the online world. It only takes ONE niche to be very successful online (as in millions in revenue per year).
Also, help as many people as you can in your niche. Make it a goal of 2018. If you can help 100% more people this year, you can expect 100% growth. If you can help 500% more people this year, you can expect 500% growth in your affiliate revenues.
If you haven't already had the opportunity to check out my Live Class on "Insights into Efficiently Becoming an Expert in 2018", I recommend you do so. All Premium members have access and it is going to give you some unique perspective on building a brand through the course of a year. It CAN be done.

WATCH LIVE CLASS: Insights into Efficiently Becoming an Expert in 2018

3. More People Online = More Affiliate Marketing Opportunity

Every year the world population grows. Ever year access to the Internet continues to grow. Every year more people are more active on the Internet than ever, through more devices.
There was a point in time when people were fearing the demise of desktop computing and people actually using anything but a mobile device. It was a big fear, in particular in the SEO space and with affiliate marketers.
What has happened though is that people now are online more than ever, people often times have 3-4 devices they can connect to the internet with and consume information with (desktop, laptop, iPad, smartphone, now home enabled devices), and people are now spending more money than ever as a result.
People also have ramped up their search habits.
Offline constructs like libraries, books, newspapers and offline retailers are continuing to become obsolete, meanwhile, anything online is only gaining more popularity.
This is a good thing for affiliate marketers. In fact, the opportunity has never been so big and the affiliate marketing snowball is going to continue to grow in size in 2018.

4. E-commerce is Thriving, More Hybrid Opportunities

Affiliate marketing is great. But it certainly is not the only way to monetize website traffic and if there are greater profits outside of affiliate marketing within certain pages on your website, then authority sites are going to continue to leverage these.
For example, if you are selling something that is not branded (a wooden clock), there are many opportunities to drop ship through companies like AliExpress where you can ship products at a much lower cost than you can charge for them, sometimes you can make 100% plus on the actual price of the product.

If you take a $15 clock like the one above, you sell it for $30, you double your money. This is a logic that has been in place, but where the "brand" isn't as sensitive (like a generic clock), you are going to see more opportunities in this space. There is much more administration and costs associated with accepting payment, dealing with returns, and managing product support. But accepting payment and hosting a store on your website through plugins like WooCommerce can be a great opportunity.
We have some existing training on this, but we are going to be exploring facets in the direct "e-commerce" space through more live classes and training in 2018.
Affiliate marketing is definitely going to remain our focus with the largest share of our training, but we also feel there are going to be new opportunities arising out of the e-commerce side of things that conventional affiliate-based sites will be able to leverage (as technology continues to improve).
The ability to operate a hybrid website where you recommend products through affiliate programs, as well as other means like drop shipping, and owning your own products/services are going to become more of a reality in 2018 and beyond.

5. Lots of Opportunity Outside of Amazon

Amazon is eating a disproportionate piece of the pie, the most we have ever seen. They are blowing away sales records and one thing that can be said about Amazon in the last 10 years is that they have invested in their affiliate program, their affiliates (associates) and maximizing revenue.
During Black Friday of 2017 it was stated that Amazon took anywhere between 45-50% of all online sales. That is a big deal, but this certainly does not mean that Amazon should be viewed as your only option. Online sales broke records once again in 2017, and will do so again in 2018.

Affiliate programs are going to continue to pop up. Networks continue to recruit brand new merchants and continue to expand their offerings. And often times you can find much better commission share (% wise) outside of Amazon.
There are 100,000's of affiliate programs out there across every industry offering a wide range of commission rates (1-75%), so explore your options and be strategic about what you promote on your sites. There is likely a greater windfall of revenue if you do your due diligence and you seek affiliate programs outside of just Amazon's.
Cookie life (the time in which you get credit for an affiliate commission) are typically better than Amazon as well through other affiliate programs and networks. Some like Wealthy Affiliate, offer affiliates LIFETIME cookies, meaning you get a commission if someone goes through your affiliate link and joins at any time, forever. Compare this to shorter cycle cookies like Amazon (which are only 24 hours).
Successful merchants on Amazon and other mass shopping agencies are going to become more privy to the benefits of having their own independent affiliate programs and either join affiliate networks or set-up their own independent affiliate programs. They will earn the merchants larger profit margins this way and they will also be able to pay affiliate more than commissions. A win/win.

---

There you have it.
Those are some trends I see either taking place or evolving in 2018. The affiliate marketing industry has never been more exciting in my opinion and you can expect the most affiliate opportunities we have ever seen in the year ahead.
I would love to hear your feedback though. Where do you see the affiliate marketing industry heading in 2018? What are some trends you have noticed in your own niches? Do you have any questions or personal feedback? Drop a comment below!
Here is to a successful a brilliant 2018 ahead!



Source