Are you ready to get the most out of your 4th quarter affiliate marketing?

 

From Halloween to the winter holidays, you need to make your content marketing plan checklist, and check it twice.

 

Once you’ve got your overall content marketing plan in place, here are four action items to help you hone in on your content strategy:

 

Customize your content marketing mission statement so it directly speaks to your audience

For starters, take the words “content” and “marketing” out of the equation. Your goal isn’t to write content or market to your audience. Your mission is to deliver exceptional, valuable information to your clients that they can’t get anywhere else.

 

For example, if you blog about shoes, you need a strong, specific mission statement: “I want to help people find the best deals on designer shoes.”

 

Now, hone it in for your 4th quarter marketing mission: “I want to help people find the best deals on the hottest designer shoes for the holiday season.”

 

This level of detail clarifies your niche and allows you to focus on the hottest trends and topics of the season.

 

Tailor your topics to address your audience’s biggest challenges, questions, and concerns

Get away from the fluff and deliver blog or article topics that move the needle. In order to drive traffic, traction, and clicks, especially during the holidays when everyone is vying for consumers’ time, attention, and wallet, you need to deliver posts that:

  • Solve readers’ problems
  • Provide information about cost/price
  • Offer clear, comprehensive comparisons
  • Give honest, meaningful reviews
  • Rank the “best of” or “top”

 

If you need help anticipating your readers’ queries, check out the BuzzSumo Question Analyzer. This (Premium) tool allows you to input a keyword or phrase, and then scours hundreds of thousands of forums and websites to deliver the most commonly asked questions related to that topic – plus links to the best answers.

 

Leverage eBay’s marketing efforts to amplify your own

You want to deliver the best, most relevant results and information to your audience and we’re with you every step of the way. For example, eBay’s online Halloween hub makes it easy for buyers to quickly find the exact costume they’re looking for. It also makes it simple for you to find great recommendations for costumes to share with your readers. Similar special promotions and earning opportunities will be available for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and all holiday shopping points in between.

 

Review your analytics and reports to identify your best opportunities and audience

From traffic to demographics, your site analytics will give you rich insight into what makes your audience tick – and click. Your social media analytics should also give you an idea of the content and themes that are most engaging to your followers.

 

If you combine those with insights from your reports from the eBay Partner Network, you can see sales trends and know what worked (and hasn’t) over time. Don’t just skim the surface; take a deep dive into your stats.

 

Make sure you examine data from rich reports like the Transaction Detail report to help you determine which categories, pages, and listings are producing new or reactivated buyers.

 

Set your sights on holiday content marketing success by making sure you’ve hit all the highlights on this holiday prep checklist.