How The Quality Edit scales their commerce content strategy
Posted 1 year ago by Tyra Brown
With The Quality Edit, less is more! Co-Founders Lauren, Lee and Scott at TQE are committed to serving today’s discerning customers with product recommendations that are the best of the best. With the product market more saturated than ever before, TQE has a niche way of filtering out the good from the bad. As they say, they are your new friend with damn good taste.
Luckily, we were given the privilege of getting an insight into how TQE cultivate content for their website, the development of its commerce content strategy and scaling its revenue by Co-Founder Lauren Kleinman.
Tell me about your commerce content strategy
The Quality Edit is a fast-growing media company that curates the best brands for the modern consumer. We monetize our audience in two ways:
- Commerce-enabled content surfacing our editor’s selection of must-have products that can be found across the web
- Advertising partners that work with TQE in a whitelisting capacity or through our full-service performance agency, Quality Media.
Our goal is to help make our audience’s shopping decisions easier as now, more than ever, shoppers are faced with an incredible surplus of products to choose from with few voices you can trust to find only the very best. Less-is-more with our recommendations: each product must pass muster for quality, design, brand aesthetic and ethos. The bar is high, intentionally. We independently review products but we may earn commissions when you buy through our links, many of which are Skimlinks enabled.
What were you looking for in a partner and why did you choose Skimlinks?
Skimlinks is the most seamless and easy to use affiliate linking platform in the space. It’s a catchall for publishers to find affiliate links for nearly every brand and product an editor would want to recommend. We are consistently auditing Skimlinks data to understand trends across content performance, trending products, high value brands, and more.
How do you decide which merchants to feature in your articles?
Our recommendations are largely editorial-driven and based on the individual preferences of each editor, however, we do try to ensure that many of the products and brands we recommend are ones that have consistently been proven to resonate with our audience historically as well.
How have you seen blogs developed over the years? What direction do you see it going?
We believe in the power of storytelling and long-form first-hand editorial reviews. As more and more content becomes operationalized through platforms like AI, authentic and first-hand recommendations become more valuable and important to our readership.
How do you plan ahead for key shopping events?
Our Editorial Director and Co-Founder Scott Silver, leads our tentpole strategy for each of these key shopping beats. We aim to have coverage across all big holidays and corresponding sales, sourcing gift guides and roundups for our community of writers learning into each of these moments. For bigger campaigns (think Q4/Holiday), we embark on larger 360 campaigns that have a presence across all of our TQE surfaces: thequalityedit.com, email, and our social channels.
How did you start affiliate marketing?
Our founding team has been familiar with affiliate marketing from the early days, and in many ways contributed to the explosive growth of commerce content in publications. Back while my co-founder Lee Joselowitz and I were heading up marketing at Ritual, we saw the power of working with top-tier publishers like Buzzfeed and the tremendous impact performance partnerships with publishers had on the bottom line for the business.
Do you have any tips for anyone who wants to start affiliate marketing?
Start with real recommendations and reviews and a distinct point of view. Tone, voice, and audience fit are most important when it comes to recommending great products and voice. Affiliate marketing should not be intimidating and platforms like Skimlinks make it extremely easy and seamless to get started.
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Thank you Lauren for giving Skimlinks an insight into how The Quality Edit has mastered its commerce content marketing strategy. For anyone looking to get into affiliate marketing or wanting to strengthen their strategy, we hope these tips prove useful.
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