From SEO to AI: The Affiliate Marketing Advantage for Search Volume

With artificial intelligence (AI) revolutionizing the way consumers search, many brands are reallocating their budgets away from conventional SEO strategies. Did you know that half of U.S. mobile users utilize voice search on a daily basis, versus typing in a question on Google? This shift can make it challenging to maintain high rankings across the major search engines if your brand is only using traditional SEO. Affiliate marketing, on the other hand, thrives on partnerships with affiliates who can adapt to evolving search behavior and promote products or services effectively.

Why You Should Shift Your Search Budget to Affiliate

Reallocate your search budget to affiliate. Here’s why:

• Performance-Based Model: Affiliate marketing operates on a performance-based model, meaning brands only pay for actual conversions or specific actions taken by customers, such as sales, leads, or clicks. This approach ensures a more direct and measurable return on investment (ROI) compared to traditional SEO, where success can be harder to quantify. It enables brands to allocate budgets more efficiently based on the results they achieve through affiliates and publishers.

*Bonus* – There are a multitude of affiliate partners with search traffic that offer performance-based options, allowing marketers to maintain a presence in all major and emerging search engines while paying only for measurable outcomes!

• Enhanced Trust and Authority: What can’t SEO offer? Trust and authority. Affiliates often have their own established audiences and can lend credibility and authority to brands through their recommendations. This trust can lead to higher conversion rates and improved brand perception, which can be challenging to achieve solely through SEO efforts.

• Diverse Traffic Sources: Affiliate marketing allows brands to tap into diverse traffic sources and reach audiences they may not have accessed through traditional SEO alone. Affiliates can promote products or services on various platforms, such as social media, blogs, email newsletters, and more. This diversification helps brands reduce their dependence on search engine rankings.

Discover how Perform^[cb] helped a popular fashion accessories brand achieve a 404% boost in revenue by strategically recruiting and optimizing with a diversified array of partners.

• Scalability: Affiliate marketing programs can be scaled up or down based on performance and business goals. Brands can quickly adapt to market changes and allocate resources where they see the most impact. This flexibility is essential in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.

• Cost-Effective: Compared to maintaining an extensive SEO campaign, affiliate marketing can be extremely cost-effective. While SEO requires ongoing content creation, optimization, and technical maintenance, affiliate partners often handle the content creation and promotion, reducing the brand’s workload and associated costs.

• Competitive Advantage: With many brands pulling back their SEO budgets due to AI disruption, redirecting resources into affiliate marketing provides a competitive edge. Brands that swiftly adapt to evolving trends often outperform their competitors.

• Measurable Results: Affiliate marketing allows for precise tracking and measurement of affiliate-driven sales or leads. Brands can identify which affiliates are delivering the best results and make data-driven decisions to optimize their marketing strategies.

Future-Proof Your Brand

While affiliate marketing offers significant advantages, it’s important to note that a well-rounded digital marketing strategy may still include SEO efforts to capture organic search traffic. However, in a landscape where AI has disrupted search behavior, diversifying marketing efforts through affiliate marketing becomes a strategic move to ensure sustained growth and success for brands.

Ready to make the shift? Connect with Perform^[cb]’s team of affiliate marketing experts today!