Earlier, the “word-of-mouth” was considered one of the best ways to promote and sell products and services. With time, this concept turned out to be affiliate marketing, which is now used by 80% of the brands. Today, this strategy has risen from its early murky days to be a powerful channel in the marketing channel.
The rise of affiliate marketing
Just as SEO and social media are considered as the pillars for a business’s success online, affiliate marketing is equally valued. This marketing strategy is slowly becoming a full-time business for advertisers, publishers and Youtubers; rather than just being an addition to their main income.
According to a Rakuten Marketing, U.S. affiliate marketing spend nears $5B. This amount is twice the economy of Belize. And this method is considered by 38% of marketers one of the top customer acquisition methods.
With such tremendous growth in just a few years, it has become necessary for affiliate marketers to come up with new strategies to up their marketing game. And one such way that is gaining momentum in today’s age is using AI and machine learning.
The role of AI in Affiliate Marketing
Today, AI and machine learning are being utilized for improving businesses in various ways, rather than just science fiction and Hollywood.
Online marketing is one such area where robots are helping ace the game.
AI and machine learning have gained prominence in the digital space by helping businesses understand consumer behaviour, deciphering trends, and managing relationships between brands and target audiences.
As far as AI and affiliate marketing is concerned, it offers a plethora of benefits to publishers, marketers as well as affiliate networks. iTMunch has put together a list of such ways through which AI and machine learning can redefine affiliate marketing. Keep reading to know more.
A. Chatbots and AI in Affiliate Marketing
What is a chatbot?
A chatbot can be described as an online assistant that is integrated into websites and communicates with users for a better customer experience. The main purpose of a chatbot is to help entrepreneurs to get closer to customers. Here’s an example of what a basic conversation with a chatbot looks like:
How can chatbots be used for affiliate marketing?
Let’s assume; you have a chatbot that is dedicated to providing products and services for hair enhancement. A user is talking to the chatbot at your site about hair colouring.
Here, the chatbot can be used to determine the user’s intent based on the words “hair” and “colour”. Once the intent is determined, the chatbot can come up with an affiliate link that will redirect the user to a product for hair colouring.
This is just one of the many ways in which AI and chatbots can be beneficial for affiliate marketing. And one such chatbot which has made money by conversing and understanding user requirements is Kip, an AI assistant for Slack.
B. AI and Affiliate Marketing Ads
How can AI be used to improve the effectiveness of affiliate marketing ads?
The effectiveness of any marketing program depends on the effectiveness of data analysis. Any marketer might generate hundreds of data points with the help of clicks, links, and user feedback. Over the course of time, it might get difficult to keep a track of all of these data points.
This will eventually delay the process of understanding these points and making an effective marketing campaign through it.
AI to improve speed
To solve this, you can use machine learning technologies such as Talking Ads Machine Learning Algorithms. These can be used to analyze the details and come up with trends that can be interpreted and acted on.
Machine learning to improve mobile experience
Today, most of the traffic comes through mobile devices. AI can be used to collect user queries, places visited, social media insight and browsing activities. And put all of these sources together to help marketers and brands to create campaigns to improve the mobile experience. This will eventually help improve return on investment.
C. AI To Improve Key Opportunities for Affiliate Managers
It can often get difficult for you, as a marketer to keep a track of hundreds of affiliate relationships. Along with improving communication with the target audience and mobile experience, AI can be used to monitor performances.
How AI can be used to increase growth opportunities
You can use AI to monitor your affiliate properties in an efficient and effective manner. This will help you in spotting trends in the data, which can be crucial for affiliate success. Eventually, you can use this to pick out affiliate accounts that are the most profitable, the ones which have more potential, etc. All of these points can lead to better results for both the parties.
SEE ALSO: Everything You Need to Know About Affiliate Marketing… And More
As a multi-billion dollar industry, affiliate marketing is an area which requires innovation and fast-moving ideas. This means every marketer out there needs to take advantage of the speed and efficiency that AI-powered marketing tools offer and it is something we will see more very soon. Stay tuned with iTMunch for more such affiliate marketing blogs.
