The artificial intelligence market is growing. It’s projected to reach nearly $400 billion in the next five years. What’s driving this growth? More business owners are investing in AI technology to help them do everything from complete tasks to grow the business. As the benefits of AI become clearer, this investment is going to keep growing. What about people working on the affiliate business model like you?
You might be wondering how AI is implemented in this industry. Better yet, you want to know how adopting AI can help you get more out of your affiliate business.
This guide is just what you’ve been looking for. In it, we’ll take a look at how AI is changing the affiliate business model. Then we’ll examine what that means for your business and your growth.
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What Is Artificial Intelligence?
When people talk about “artificial intelligence,” many people think about robots. This isn’t far off, but today’s AI looks a little bit different than the androids you might be picturing.
Take a self-driving car, for example. These vehicles come with plenty of computer processing power. They collect data from their surroundings, then make decisions about how to react.
These machines are artificially intelligent. They’re also capable of taking all that data they collect and learning from it. They use a process called machine learning, which allows them to take huge data sets and crunch the numbers.
Once the machine has processed the data, it can identify patterns in outcome. From there, it can make decisions about the “best” course of action in a certain situation. The more data you give the machine, the more it can “learn.”
This is also the principle behind neural networks. One example of a neural network is an AI that names nail polishes. Another is learning to identify pictures of sheep, even when they show up in strange places.
AI Gets Down to Business
Plenty of AI is more business-focused, of course. A great example is a demand-side platform, or DSP. Ad agencies use these platforms to buy optimal ad spaces all over the web.
How does that work? The AI takes the campaign information given to it by the advertiser. It compares ad spaces against the campaign details, such as target market and price.
Once it’s finished with its analysis, the DSP can decide if the ad space up for grabs is a good placement or not.
If the DSP also has machine learning capabilities, then it uses the data from every ad it buys to make smarter buying decisions.
AI has many other uses across businesses. Chatbots are another good example. They interact with users visiting a website and provide answers to common questions.
We already mentioned self-driving cars, which make getting around easier. AI is even used in mines and construction to help analyze safety. AI can inform business decisions so business leaders grow in the right direction.
How Does AI Fit the Affiliate Business Model?
From that quick review, it should be clear AI can do some amazing things. You still have a question though. How can AI be used in the affiliate marketing business model?
There are actually quite a few different ways affiliate marketers have been adopting AI into their businesses. Some of these are mundane, such as helping you verify your links are still working. Automating this task with AI is helpful.
AI is also involved in plenty of the affiliate marketing tools you might choose to adopt for your business. Take email campaigns, for example. You probably use a tool to help you manage your campaigns.
One of the most basic uses of an AI in this platform is sending out auto-reminders or auto-responders. This takes work off your plate, but allows you to follow-up with leads and potential customers on time.
An example might be someone who clicks a link through your site and views a product. They may even add the product to their cart.
Then they wander off. You can send a follow-up email a few hours or days later, asking them if they’re still interested in the product. You may even offer a special coupon code for a discount to get them to seal the deal.
You didn’t need to manually go in and set up this email. You didn’t even have to click “send.” The AI did it all for you.
Better Audience Targeting for Affiliate Marketers
One of the most important uses of AI for any marketer is its ability to give you insights into who is look at your content or clicking your links.
Like the DSP can learn about good ad placements, AI can analyze who is most likely to click on your link. It can also help you identify your most popular content or highest-performing landing pages.
How does AI help you do this? Simple: it crunches the numbers. AI collects a huge amount of data, and it can then analyze it to identify patterns you might otherwise miss.
With the information AI presents to you, you may discover a common theme among your most-clicked links or popular blog posts. You may also be surprised to know who is visiting your site or even get other insight into their behavior.
What this information does is allow you to make smarter business decisions. Which products will you choose to promote, and which affiliate networks will you join? AI can help you discover better networks and placements for your audience.
It can also help you direct marketing efforts and content strategies. The more information you collect and analyze, the better you’ll be able to tailor your blog posts and content offers to your audience.
AI Helps You Divide and Conquer
Another useful feature of AI is its use in doing the work of segmenting your audience. Much like this technology can take the work out of responding, it can also do the legwork on divvying up your audiences.
What does that mean for you? AI can help you create new audiences within your email marketing list. If you’re thinking about ads, it may be able to help you craft campaigns to target each individual audience.
Protect Your Campaigns from Fraud
Many affiliate marketers already know their campaigns are vulnerable to things like click fraud. AI can help you protect yourself and your business from fraud.
Many platforms already use AI for this purpose. AI can confirm clicks, helping you know that they came from a real person and not a bot. When this feature is employed, you can be sure the traffic you’re generating is real.
Mobile Marketing Made Easy
Another way affiliate marketers have been making use of AI is with mobile marketing. As consumers continue to shift their use to mobile, marketers are wondering how they can follow them.
Marketing on mobile has been trickier, but AI could help. It could help you get in touch with the right people or put ads in the right places.
How Does AI Benefit Affiliate Marketers?
In theory, AI sounds like it could help your business quite a bit. Getting better insights about your traffic or even just validating links can save you time. Increasing the security of your campaigns is never a bad idea either.
That’s one of the biggest benefits of using AI in the affiliate model. If you want to be successful with the affiliate business model, you have to put a lot of time and effort into it. Much of the time you spend will be on time-intensive tasks that don’t generate a lot of revenue for your business.
AI transforms this workflow. Instead of spending time following up with people about that link they clicked, you can focus on other tasks.
When AI follows up with leads and or helps you generate them, you can redirect your time, effort, and talent.
Giving Your Audience What They Want
Another benefit of using AI is giving your customers more of what they want. When you can craft better strategies, you can make sure what you’re offering is lining up with what people are looking for.
With more insights into your audiences, you can develop campaigns and content they actually want to see. In turn, you’ll generate more content, more clicks, and more shares.
This also helps you build a relationship with your audience. When they know they can turn to you for great product recommendations and advice, they’ll stop in more often. They’ll even recommend you to friends.
Find the Right Fit
Beyond helping you reach your audience, AI also helps you find the right affiliate opportunities for your business. With better insight about your audience, you’re in a better position to evaluate affiliate networks.
You can look at products, services, and brands in different networks and see how well their offerings line up with your audience. In turn, you can also reach more networks and connect with more brands. This creates more opportunities for affiliate promotions.
When you’re able to find a better fit for your business, everyone wins. The brands you’re working with reach people who are actually interested in what they’re offering. The people in your audience discover great brands they may not have heard of otherwise.
Grow Profit and the Business
You also benefit when you find better affiliate opportunities for your business. When you’re promoting the right products and services, the people in your audience are more likely to click and more likely to buy.
You can also spend less time on routine and administrative tasks. That gives you a chance to develop real relationships with your audience. This, in turn, builds trust and rapport.
It also gives you more opportunities to follow up with leads and convert them to sales and clicks. In turn, you’ll be able to grow your affiliate income.
As your income grows, you’ll also be able to reinvest in your business and grow it in a logical way. You won’t need to guess if a new affiliate network makes sense to join or wonder what content your audience really wants.
Where to Start with AI
Affiliate marketing models used to be all about the hustle. Marketers like you were expected to do it all. You needed to tirelessly correspond with people and produce new content and campaigns.
AI can give you the help you need to work smarter, not harder. So, how do you get started with AI for your affiliate marketing business?
One of the best places to start is adopting a great platform for contacting leads. You might think about a platform that lets you run email marketing campaigns.
Even if you’re not running email campaigns, you can use these platforms to help you respond to customers or create contact forms. You may also use AI to help you with certain website tasks, such as monitoring your links. AI can also be used to enhance security and protect your campaigns from fraud.
From there, you can work on adopting AI for other tasks. AI isn’t there yet, but some people predict it will soon automate the whole affiliate marketing funnel.
When that happens, those who are already familiar with AI will be in the best position to reap the rewards.
Affiliate Marketing Is Evolving
As you can see from this quick survey of AI, affiliate marketing is undergoing a lot of change. AI and other technological developments are overhauling the way we used to do things.
As a result, the affiliate business model is changing. It’s no longer about grinding. Instead, it’s about strategizing, crunching the numbers, and being ready to adopt new technology.
AI will help affiliate marketers work smarter and grow their businesses.
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