The average consumer is estimated to see between 5,000 and 10,000 ads online every day. Strategies such as banner ads and pop-up ads don’t reach audiences as they once did and viewers see them as intrusive. That’s where commerce content partnerships come in — a winning solution for both publishers and brands to speak with their customers.
When you share your brands through content partnerships, you can:
- Get more eyes on your content
- Help readers access helpful information
- Increase sales
- Build stronger audience relationships
However, commerce content partnerships take a great deal of behind-the-scenes effort to make a successful strategy work, including:
- Connecting with the right brands for your publication
- Creating contracts and agreements
- Tracking consumer insights
- Making or receiving payments
You need easy-to-use and efficient content commerce tools to make the most of your partnerships. With the right systems in place, you’ll automate processes, build partnerships, and scale your business faster.
How automation tools support your commerce content strategy
Automation tools remove the repetitive and time-consuming work that slows down your partnership efforts — while giving your partners what they need to generate more revenue and grow their audiences.
Some of the ways automation tools make setting up your commerce content partnerships easier include:
- Personalized outreach to quality brands
- Performance tracking to drive sales
- Creating contracts
- Simple payments for optimized revenue generation
Why you should use automated marketing tools
A survey conducted between impact.com and FORTUNE Brand Studio found that commerce content partnerships yield impressive results:
- 45 percent of publishers see higher total revenue
- 41 percent of publishers improved cash flow
- 34 percent of publishers increased their profit margins
But it’s hard to achieve results like that when running your program with manual tools.
A partnerships management platform like impact.com allows you to capitalize on current trends, connect with potential partnerships, and earn additional revenue. Advanced tracking and consumer journey insights give you a complete view to fully evaluate your partnerships’ value and improve contract negotiations.
Ultimately, these tools help expand your partnership opportunities and grow your business.
How to use automation in your commerce content strategy
Saving time and resources draws many publishers toward automating their commerce content strategy. You can reduce costs and increase revenue when you house your search, communication, contracts, payments, tracking, and analytics together. Automation cuts out the go-betweens in partnership negotiations with advertisers and invites honest conversations about what your partners pay for and at what price. Parties can share the data that both brands and publishers collect to assist in these negotiations.
Where to use automation tools in your commerce content strategy
Automation tools don’t just cover one task or area in your partnership management. You can use automation tools in four key areas of your commerce content strategy.
1. Connect with advertisers using a partnerships platform
Automation tools give publishers access to thousands of diverse merchant partners in one place to expand their revenue streams. Partners can include cashback, media houses, health and beauty products, and fashion brands — to name a few. These partners look for various content types, including reviews, lists of products, or buyers’ guides.
With automated tools, brands and publishers can access thousands of potential partnership opportunities at their fingers. Software can also help with finding the right partners — for example, you can filter potential partners by offering, types of deals, and more. Instead of putting in the legwork to find the right partners, automation does it for you.
2. Earn additional revenue with automation
When you automate your search using a platform like Pressboard by impact.com, you can eliminate the middle person and retain a more significant revenue share.
You can create agreements using custom contracts to align compensation with value. These agreements can include advertising revenue models like:
- Cost-per-click (CPC): The cost is based on the number of clicks on advertisements.
- Cost-per-acquisition (CPA): The cost is based on the number of actions (such as a sale or download) that came from an advertisement.
The once-trusted cost-per-mille or CPM (the price of 1,000 advertisement impressions on one web page) can mean misaligned expectations and now takes a back seat for publishers.
3. Understand the customer’s journey to purchase
Many partnership management tools track a customer’s journey through the marketing funnel, from link clicks to research — all the way through to purchase. A platform with increased tracking capabilities allows you to pinpoint precisely where a customer is coming from and what steps they took to get there.
Doing this will give you the information needed to be transparent in your partnership. As a brand, what do potential customers need to get to purchase your products? How can publishers help them on their journey? What type of person viewed your commerce content as a publisher and ultimately bought the product?
With this automated and transparent data, your partnerships can be even more fruitful with the ability to:
- Identify valuable partners that last-click models overlook and partner up as the customer journey progresses.
- Recognize partners that bring in high-quality buyers with customer value.
- Compare your partnership program with other channels, such as paid search and display, to adjust your spending.
With this in mind, publishers need to get to know their audience’s wants and needs to help decide what pieces of content to write based on changing social events, trends, and media. Even uncover the most competitive deals to include in your articles.
4. Get paid faster with automation
Many publishers find manual billing workflows outdated because of the time and effort. Automation tools that manage all aspects of contracts and payouts allow you to select your preferred payment method, currency, and payment terms.
How to find the tools that complement your strategy
The impact.com partnership management platform removes analog systems and spreadsheets for a more centralized and collaborative workflow. Gain better insights, simplify your functions and tasks, and grow your business with automation.
Want to get started on your commerce content now? Contact a growth technologist at grow@impact.com today.
Want to know more about commerce content marketing? Check out these impact.com resources:
- The state of commerce content in 2021 (research report)
- Commerce content providers and the new digital paradigm (research report)
- Ultimate guide to commerce content (blog)
- Top 5 examples of Commerce Content (blog)
