Videos are a great medium to keep your audience engaged and increase conversions. Customers today prefer watching a two-minute video instead of reading a two-page long article. Social media has reduced the attention span of human beings.

In order to attract and hold their attention, you might only have 7 seconds. Otherwise, you can expect them to move on without showing any interest or buying from you. As affiliate marketers, it is important for you to incorporate video content in your marketing strategies to derive fruitful results.

What is affiliate marketing?

In simpler terms, affiliate marketing is when a retailer offers a commission to any third-party in exchange for traffic on to the retailer’s website or sales generated for her through referrals.

It is a great source of generating passive income from home. There are different types of affiliate marketing present today such as WebMasters, Search Affiliates, Bloggers, Social Media Influencers, Coupon Websites, Review Websites, Loyalty or Incentive Programs, Email Marketing etc. Feel free to opt for any type that suits your need best.

Importance of video content in affiliate marketing

A video of your product or service makes 52% of customers more confident in buying. Without a video, you’re probably missing out on those extra affiliate sales. Videos have already changed the affiliate marketing game on the digital landscape, and the trend only seems to be growing. For instance:

• 59% of executives say they would rather watch a video than read text
• Almost 50% of web users look for videos related to a product or service before buying.
• 4 times as many consumers would rather watch a video about a product, rather than reading about it.

Using videos in your affiliate marketing efforts can up your game and help you convert more leads than the traditional methods. You can introduce the following strategies.

• A video sales letter that can convince your customers with complete details of your product or service.
• A video portal for subscribers that offers helpful videos.
• Product reviews to show quality, usability and the value for money your customers will get.
• YouTube videos can help you retarget your website customers.
• FAQ videos can help you bring down barriers between you and your audience.

Now that we’ve discussed the importance of videos in affiliate marketing, here comes the million-dollar question: how can you up your affiliate marketing efforts with video content?

Creating an effective affiliate marketing video doesn’t need to be very complicated or expensive. As a matter of fact, there are a number of free tools available that can help you come up with stunning video content.

That being said, let’s jump on to the platforms which allow you to pull off your video affiliate marketing efforts and help you increase your conversions.

YouTube for affiliate marketing

YouTube is the largest video platform and the 2nd largest search engine. It is by far the most preferred platform for hosting affiliate marketing videos. YouTube offers an audience of a billion users per month and to reach out to them, all you need to do is create your own channel free of cost. Once done, you can showcase all your videos with ease.

Despite the tricks you use, your primary objective should be to redirect traffic to your landing page. You can also redirect them to your email sign-up form.

Nonetheless, there are two major tips that you need to always bear in mind when showcasing your videos on YouTube.

Tip # 1

You need to promote your affiliate links with your videos. Ensure placing them in the actual video via annotations. It will allow viewers to redirect themselves whenever they are ready. You can introduce them in the beginning, middle or the end of your video.

Tip # 2

It is a wise practice to include your affiliate links in the video descriptions as well. It will allow your viewers to check out your product or service even if they didn’t pay attention to the annotation in the video. See how Matthew Woodward places links in his video description.

Tip # 3

Down the line, you will have an option to run your videos as ads. Feel free to sponsor them on YouTube in order to reach a higher number of viewers. The more the viewers, the higher your conversions will be.

Also, YouTube gives you access to analytics so that you can analyze your audience and videos in depth. Evaluate the data, see what is working for you and repeat the successful recipe again and again.

When creating, uploading, organizing or hosting your videos on Youtube, it’s important that you keep the following 10 things in mind:

1. The name of your video file should be useful and sensible
2. Always add a complete description
3. Add links
4. Watermark your work
5. Transcribe your videos if possible
6. Utilize annotations
7. Add custom thumbnails
8. Add your videos to playlists
9. Make your channel visually appealing
10. Don’t get out of context

Facebook Live and affiliate marketing

Facebook Live is an effective way to outgrow your clientele while consolidating your brand’s image. It helps you increase your total reach and gain instant feedback. Facebook prioritizes such pieces of content and sends notifications to those who follow you.

Apart from reaching more people, you will also be able to let your audience grasp a better picture of who you are. You can establish yourself as an influencer or a brand. Using Facebook Live for your affiliate marketing efforts will allow you to create a relationship with your audience that is based on trust, which will eventually bring you more conversions.

Facebook Live helps you increase your total reach and gain instant feedback. It allows you to create a relationship with your audience that is based on trust.

You can find out which of your posts they like more, what products they are more likely to buy etc. You might also get a few tips on what future blog posts to write, what sort of advertising you should do or anything else regarding your niche and being successful in affiliate marketing.

Top 10 tips on using your videos for affiliate marketing with Facebook Live:

Questions & Answers session

With Facebook Live you can answer the questions of your audience in real time. You can also inquire about their opinion as to what they think about your product or service. Also, what kind of products they would like to see more often. This way, you know what works for your audience and how you can further promote your products in order to get more conversions.

2. How-to guides

When your audience show interest in your products, you can show them how the products work. If you are promoting a beauty product, you can use it on yourself and convince them why they should buy it. Now that you’ve tested it for them and showed them how it works, they will be even more convinced to purchase it.

3. Promote your content

Imagine you didn’t get desired engagement on one of your posts. You can use Facebook Live to make a quick recap of what you’ve been offering recently and promote it again.

Chances are, your audience might have missed it or perhaps didn’t find it interesting. Now is your chance to put a spin on it and persuade them to check it out.

4. Give product reviews

If you have a physical product to promote, you can use Facebook Live to demonstrate it online to your audience. For instance, open a package online and discuss how the product will benefit them. If you understand your product well (which we hope you do!) and have tried using it yourself, you can share some specific details with your audience. This might convince them to try it out!

5. Broadcast events or highlights

As an affiliate marketer, if you attend international conferences or other events, you can let your audience know about it. We’re sure that you are already uploading images or short videos on social media, but Facebook Live will make a huge difference.

Show your audience what you learned at a conference. Share the highlights of an event and educate them how it inspired you. Get your followers excited about what’s hot in your industry.

6. Promote upcoming events

You can also use Facebook Live to promote upcoming events. If you are hosting an event, or you are a speaker at an event, allow your audience to be your confidant. Provide them with hints as to what is about to unveil.

It makes them feel special and some of them might actually visit your event in order to find out more about it. You can announce free tickets to ensure the presence of a number of people.

7. Interview market leaders

It’s a great idea to interview someone who is held in high regard by your audience. Your interview with them can start a discussion about something of your interest.

8. Make special announcements

It is a great way to announce breaking news about yourself or about your niche. People will visit your page more often in the hopes of getting the latest updates from the industry.

9. Behind the scenes

Show your audience your daily life. Show them how your products have proven to be beneficial to other customers. You can also show them the making of your product, if that’s possible. The opportunities are endless.

10. Create hype for upcoming products

You can tease your audience by promoting new products that aren’t commercially available yet. The interested people will visit you again when you actually start promoting the new product as they already saw a glimpse of it, and will be looking forward to purchasing that product if it had interested them.

Instagram for affiliate marketing

Instagram came up with a momentous change in regards to video content to compete with the video giant – YouTube. It has been a favorite of the younger generation simply because YouTube gave them the ability to create and watch longer video content.

Thence, Instagram Television came into being, more commonly known as IGTV. It is an additional feature of Instagram that allows users to create and share videos up to one hour long.

Until the introduction of IGTV, Instagram allowed users to post videos that were one minute long only. Instagram explained in their press release why IGTV is their next big thing:

When social media platforms introduce new features like these or come up with significant alterations, affiliate marketers who use these platforms as a traffic source are highly likely to garner higher reach and conversions.

IGTV has provided affiliate marketers with two amazing advantages.

1.Creating video content

The opportunity to post video content that can go as long as an hour – allows affiliate marketers to become creative with their approach. For instance, without the 60-second video restriction, affiliate marketers can take more time to make their audience understand their product effectively. Apart from that, longer video length allows affiliate marketers to utilize detailed how-to or instructional videos as a feasible content strategy.

You can also offer extended product reviews that will allow you to increase engagement, build a greater following, and obtain conversions. Also, if you’ve been using YouTube earlier, you can reuse the same content on IGTV and gain similar success.

2. Facebook ads marketing

Instagram is a business and IGTV was not introduced just for fun. Their long-term plan is to incorporate it with Facebook advertising. Instagram cannot anticipate its users to sit-in through ads when the video they are watching is only 30-sec long.

But, what if the videos are of 3-min, 10-min, or even 30-min length? Such video content is long enough to warrant some sort of advertising and probably that’s the endgame here.

As an affiliate marketer, if you’re using Facebook advertising as a traffic source, the introduction of new options and targeting parameters can provide you with new markets. Sooner or later, IGTV will gain popularity and capitalize itself. It is your job as an affiliate marketer to take advantage of that capitalization.

To sum up

Utilizing videos in your affiliate marketing efforts has become quite affordable and widespread in the past few years. It has grown because of the advances in technology, but mainly because it is easy to distribute your content worldwide.

Developing marketing videos for your affiliate business requires creativity and first-hand knowledge of your audience. A mix of the aforementioned tips will allow you to create miracles in your niche at a minimal cost.

When videos are emotionally charged, they can spread over the web in a matter of days. You will enjoy millions of views and this is the entire point of utilizing video with affiliate marketing. Take my point: Creativity survives!

About the author:

Arsalan Sajid is a business graduate and digital marketer by profession. He works as a Startup Community Manager at Cloudways – A Managed Cloud Hosting Platform. He loves to create value for the Startup community. He is a big fan of cricket and does Netflix and chill in his free time.