Why You Need Affiliate Marketing Creatives
If you want your campaign to be genuinely effective, you should devote a fair amount of time and attention to your affiliate marketing creatives.
Creatives are materials that marketers can use when promoting affiliate products or services and attracting new customers. These can be different types of imagery from static to dynamic banners as well as interactive content such as widgets and search forms.
The range of affiliate marketing advertising tools varies for each advertiser and network. For example, Travelpayouts offers a wide array of tools from simple instruments such as banners and links to advanced solutions like API and White Label. You can find more tips on how to place affiliate tools in our free guide.
Types of Creatives Affiliates Can Use
Сreatives for affiliate advertisements can be universal or tailor-made and unique for a specific product or campaign. Below, we have described some of the most popular and useful affiliate creatives.
Banner
An affiliate marketing banner is a commonly-used creative that generates visual interest to the posts and landing pages and grabs the attention of your potential customers. Banners can be branded or co-branded, universal or custom-tailored, static or dynamic.
Affiliate banner ads may contain your brand name or logo, coupon or deal information, high-quality product images, and calls-to-action. You may as well create “shop now” banners that direct users to your home page or that feature seasonal holiday deals.
Below are some tips on how you can optimize your banners:
- A picture plus one primary message is the most effective
- Banners should employ the same branding as your website
- Smaller files load faster
- Use standard banner sizes
- Use .PNG format if possible
There is an example below of banner that WayAway provide their partners with.
Coupon
Coupons are easy to create and distribute, they are used to offer a discount, and advertisers usually offer them on special occasions rather than constantly. Even though you can find coupons that are publicly available, it’s better to request coupons directly from your advertiser. Otherwise, bookings made with unsolicited promo codes might not be commissionable.
Coupon codes are often a simple line of numbers and/or letters and don’t involve any affiliate link or cookie which makes it easy to use and share. Coupons also contain dates and terms of use. A good example of how coupons are distributed can be found in the Omio’s promotional post offering a 15% discount to the users in the United States and Canada.
To make it special, you can create graphic coupons or images that contain a code and details. Here is an example of such a coupon by Booking.com:
Email Template
An email template is an HTML preformatted layout that you may use to generate your own unique email. With this tool, you can easily create emails, keep the style of the brand you promote and save a lot of effort at the same time because you don’t need to create it from scratch. Here are a few examples of email templates from Dribbble:
Landing Page
An affiliate landing page is a standalone web page created specifically for a marketing or advertising campaign with an affiliate-specific URL. Such a page usually serves a particular goal, including promoting a product, offering a discount, generating sign-ups, etc.
To increase conversion, your landing page should include the following elements:
- A specific description of the deal and important information about the purchase
- Crucial restrictions or limitations
- A call-to-action like phrase
- Testimonials, real-life examples, or product reviews
Travelpayouts has a list of landing pages that you can easily download and use. Here is an example of one of the Hotellook landing pages.
Link
Affiliate text links contain unique affiliate ID and direct visitors to the page where they are supposed to perform the desired action. This simple creative is the first tool most affiliates use because it can be easily integrated in content. Text links are visible, do not take much space, and can be placed anywhere in the text.
With the Travelpayouts link generator, partners can quickly create links for the desired programs and integrate them on their web pages.
Promo Video
Promo videos are one of the strongest tools to draw customers’ attention to your product. By leveraging both visual and audio, videos provoke strong emotions and have a lasting effect on the audience.
For this reason, many advertisers use videos for the promotion of a particular product, line of products, discount offer or brand in general. Here is an example of a promotional video shot by the Booking.com:
Search Form
You can also place a search form to let visitors start searching for desired tickets or hotel stays right on your website. Below, there is an example of an WayAway customizable search form:
You can tailor a search form to your content. For example, if you promote a particular destination, say, Berlin, add it to the search form and let readers check hotel prices and schedule on the spot.
Widget
Widgets allow you to provide users with more detailed information about an offer, such as flight schedules or prices, like in the examples below:
Widgets can be regularly updated to display only relevant data without any extra actions from your side. They allow your customers to look for specific products, locate best sellers in specific categories, or find special deals and discounts.
White Label
With White Label, your visitors will view search results on your site instead of being redirected to the advertiser’s website. This is an advanced tool, and setting it up requires coding skills. Advertisers often share White Label with their best-performing affiliates, so to use it, you’ll need to have decent traffic and high recognition. You can find out more about White Label solutions in our Travelpayouts database.
API
API or Application Programming Interface allows for the interaction of software components and synchronization of information. With the help of API, you can request data from the advertiser’s server and receive information about:
- The cheapest tickets to a particular destination
- Airports and airlines
- Most popular itineraries from a particular destination
- Information about offers and discount
- Detailed description of a hotel and rooms, etc.
With Travelpayouts, you can access Aviasales and Hotellook API and provide your website readers with the latest relevant information.
How to Take Advantage of Affiliate Creatives
Using creatives is a great way to boost your affiliate campaign. Start with simple tools like text links, banner ads, or search form widgets and then move to more advanced solutions like White Label or API. Remember to not only test different creatives, but also their placement and content to find the highest-converting options. Thus, using creatives might help you reach impressive results as a marketer and you’ll see from personal experience just how much bloggers make from affiliate marketing.
