5 Holiday Content Ideas for Affiliate Marketers

Between Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, and New Year’s Day, there are plenty of opportunities to bring the holidays into your affiliate marketing efforts and generate excitement for your store’s sales and promotions.

We’ve compiled some content ideas you can use this holiday season:

Gift guides

Giving the perfect gift is an art form. Gift guides made by affiliates, especially if they are niche focused, are an effective way to generate leads to specific products.

Gift guides are great for almost any type of channel or platform. This can be dedicated holiday content for blogs and websites. It can also be used for social media posts, like Pinterest boards curated with pinned gift items or dedicated Facebook image albums featuring each item.

Gift guides are especially great video content, such as affiliates explaining why each product makes for the perfect gift. Here’s an example of YouTube video content from a Sephora beauty blogger.

Gift guide content should be curated and tailored. Make gift guides manageable by organizing lists based on specific factors like age, gender, interest, or budget.

Some popular gift guides include:

• Must-Have Holiday Gift Guide
• Affordable Holiday Gifts
• Holiday Gift Guide Under $50
• Top Gifts for Women/Men
• What To Get Your Boyfriend/Girlfriend This Christmas
• Stocking Stuffers under $10
• Secret Santa on a Budget
  

Or niche-specific gift guides:

• Best Holiday Tech Gifts 2019
• Gift Guide for the Traveler
• Food Lover Gift Guide
• Picture Perfect: Gifts for Photographers
• Unique Gifts for Geeks
• Eco-Friendly Gifts To Give
  

Be sure to include high-quality images along with the text. Make all gifts easily accessible with links to gift-specific landing pages. Audiences should be able to click through to any featured gifts almost instantly.

Wish Lists

Wish lists are perfect holiday content for influencer promotions. As their title implies, these affiliates have an influence on their audiences. So, what they say they want for the holidays is likely going to provide inspiration to their followers and consequently impact the buying decisions of their followers.

Collaborate with influencers on creating a list filled with products from your store, tailored to their niche.

Much like gift guides, lists should be manageable and accessible. It should also be specific to the influencer, making it a genuine experience for audiences (they will know something is up if a beauty influencer is trying to push tech products).

We’ve mentioned before how influencers tend to focus on social media channels. Here’s how they can share wish lists:

Instagram Influencers: Post images filled with wish list items, each with a number corresponding to product names. If you work closely with the influencer, consider sending products beforehand for them to create flat-lay images and videos (like the sample below).

Since Instagram doesn’t allow for links on the image, product names are important to include in the caption. Include info for how to purchase in the caption such as “All of these items can be purchased @yourstory. Click the link in my bio to shop”.

Be sure affiliates tag your brand’s Instagram page and feature their affiliate link in their bio.

YouTube Influencers: Create videos featuring a run-down of each product on the wish list. Influencers can offer their insight into why they want this product and why it’s a must-have this season. Check out this example of a YouTube wish list.

Like Instagram, it’s best to number or name each featured wish list item. Use these numbers or product names with corresponding affiliate links in the video caption. YouTube allows for multiple links to be posted, so affiliates can provide links for each item they feature (using our deep-link feature). This will direct audiences to specific products rather than a general landing page.

Pinterest Influencers: Pin wish list items to a holiday-specific PinBoard. Each pinned item should include affiliate links that directly lead to specific product pages, where audiences can easily make a purchase.

Much like gift guides, wish lists should be curated and specific. This means making a wish list not only tailored to the influencer but also for their niche like “fitness” or “travel” or “techy”. This will maximize exposure by bringing up their pins in related searches.

Holiday Sale Overview

Sales are synonymous with the holiday season. It’s likely your store will be having special discounts that affiliates can actively promote. One way to start is with a holiday sale overview, a general way to convey everything related to your holiday sales.

Affiliates can post an overview of your sale featuring product discounts, site promotions, and bundle savings. This post could also include when the sale is active and how much customers can save. If you want to direct traffic to a certain product, affiliates can use our deep-linking feature.

A sale overview is great for blogs and website pages. It also works well for long-text social media posts on Facebook and LinkedIn.

Here’s an example of sale affiliate placement from Health Magazine.

Product Reviews

Affiliates share their experience with your brand and why they love your product(s). Product reviews can easily be tied in with gift guides during the holiday season.

One of the best platforms for product reviews is YouTube since product reviews tend to be more in-depth and often show the product in action. Affiliates can list all the products they review in the video caption with a direct link to products (again, using our deep-link feature). Plus, affiliates can offer a coupon code during the video to tempt audiences even more.

If you have a new product coming out, use affiliates to introduce your new products to audiences, by sharing their review and creating hype around the product launch.

Holiday Urgency

Affiliates provide a great voice of urgency for sale deadlines. Use social media posts to convey short messages in posts, stories, and graphics.

Some phrases they can use include:

• Holiday Countdown Promotions
• Last Day to Ship
• Time is Running Out
• Last Minute Deals
• Sale Ends Today
• Last Chance to Save
• Flash Sale
  

Interested in more?

We’re here to help you throughout the holiday sale season. Be sure to check out the Tapfiliate blog for more advice.

Jessica Rangel

Spending my days writing marketing content, cycling around canals in Amsterdam and attempting to master the Dutch language.