Today's topic is rather interesting as this is the dilemma faced by many merchants.
Should I maintain strict control over the use of my brand and trademarks?
Strategy 1:
"No." Allow brand flexibility; extend full brand usage rights.
Pros:
* Empowered publishers will find many ways to drive conversions
* Maximum brand reach online
Cons:
* Risk of brand abuse when undesirable content frames your brand
* Altering of creative and destination URLs in ways that are inconsistent with your brand
Brand flexibility is good for advertisers who:
* Have sufficient resources for monitoring and branding education
* Have stringent publisher acceptance criteria
* Are looking to aggressively increase consumer acquisitions online
* Are looking to significantly increase the number of publishers in their program
* Are less sensitive to issues relating to usage of name, image and likeness
Strategy 2:
"Yes." Maintain brand sensitivity and control or limit usage of my trademarks.
Pros:
* Consistent brand message across all channels
* Protection of established image and brand messages
Cons:
* Loss of potential revenue from publishers who know how to convert
* Potential loss of paid search page real estate (to competitors or resellers)
* Brand control is good for advertisers who:
* Have a well-established brand and significant investment in brand positioning
* Have a brand requiring a very specific context for proper promotion, or may have contractual obligations to manufacturers from whom they license products
* Have marketing activities in multiple channels requiring coordination for consistency
How Your Brand Fuels Your Bank Account
If you are prepared to offer support to minimize branding abuse, it would be recommended that you allow publishers to use your brand and trademark materials to drive traffic and increase your return on investment (ROI).
Instead of excessive brand control, we suggest you shift your focus to monitoring and education to prevent brand misuse. Treat your publishers like an online sales force. If they are well-trained and have the right collateral and best practices to promote within the scope of your brand requirements, they can effectively market your program to consumers.
On the other hand, if you choose a strategy of tight control over your brand, you should use consistent promotions across all channels to reduce channel conflict; use the same offers and creative on your Web site, in stores, and in your affiliate marketing channel.
Because publishers typically misuse branded material only when they feel they are provided with insufficient tools, we suggest you compensate for strict usage terms by offering ample creative and tools. Provide enough links, options, and even data feeds (especially if you are a retailer) to support creative publishers. Also, think of boosting your commission payouts or incentives, because strict promotion rules can generate higher lifetime value traffic, which is worth additional compensation.
Oct 20, 2008
General introduction to Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is one of the most powerful ways to make money online today. There are plenty of affiliate marketing tips out there that will jump start your way into making over 6 figures a year just by selling other merchants products. If you do not know what affiliate marketing is, please let me explain. Affiliate marketing is when you sell someone else's product or service for a commission. You can sell someone else's product or service through your affiliate marketing website or through paid advertising. The e-commerce pionner The e-commerce pionner Amazon.com
is probably the first one that put this concept into practice. There are different ways for you to earn your commission:
Cost per click (CPC) - When a visitor clicks on the merchant advertisement and the affiliate get paid by per click.
Cost per lead (CPL) - Affiliate will get paid when the lead generated.
Cost per sale (CPS) - Affiliate will get paid when the sale generated (Maximum Earning Program)
Success in affiliate programs is not easy, affiliate marketing requires extremely hard work. There are many affiliate marketing help message boards around that will answer any questions regarding affiliate marketing that you may have. Once you find the right affiliate marketing niche, it is easy sailing from there.
You will need the following to be a successful affiliate marketer:
1. A Niche Affiliate Marketing Product-You need to find a product potential customer's NEED, not WANT. Your job is to bring the customer to the sales page and make them NEED the product and not just WANT it. Many customers see products all the time they want, but convincing them they NEED the product will lead to a affiliate marketing sale of up to 75%.
2. A Website- Now you do not need a high cost website, just something basic and neat. The purpose of your website is to offer some sort of review page, reviewing the affiliate marketing product of your choice. You need to show potential customers the benefits of your affiliate marketing product and why they need it.
3. Set up Paid Advertising- Go to Google and click on the AdWords section. You need to bid on keywords your potential customer will search for when searching for your affiliate marketing product. You don't want to spend to much money here and you may not need paid advertising, but it truly does help and lead to sales.
4. Article Writing-It's FREE! You need to write as many articles as you can inserting keywords on each article. You need to submit them to EzineArticles. I suggest you submit 50+ articles on any affiliate marketing product you choose.
Affiliate marketing can be one of the most profitable and low start-up costs businesses out there. There is nothing that compares to the benefits affiliate marketing can bring. In less than 4 hours, you can have a product that is already making sales with NO start-up costs.
is probably the first one that put this concept into practice. There are different ways for you to earn your commission:Cost per click (CPC) - When a visitor clicks on the merchant advertisement and the affiliate get paid by per click.
Cost per lead (CPL) - Affiliate will get paid when the lead generated.
Cost per sale (CPS) - Affiliate will get paid when the sale generated (Maximum Earning Program)
Success in affiliate programs is not easy, affiliate marketing requires extremely hard work. There are many affiliate marketing help message boards around that will answer any questions regarding affiliate marketing that you may have. Once you find the right affiliate marketing niche, it is easy sailing from there.
You will need the following to be a successful affiliate marketer:
1. A Niche Affiliate Marketing Product-You need to find a product potential customer's NEED, not WANT. Your job is to bring the customer to the sales page and make them NEED the product and not just WANT it. Many customers see products all the time they want, but convincing them they NEED the product will lead to a affiliate marketing sale of up to 75%.
2. A Website- Now you do not need a high cost website, just something basic and neat. The purpose of your website is to offer some sort of review page, reviewing the affiliate marketing product of your choice. You need to show potential customers the benefits of your affiliate marketing product and why they need it.
3. Set up Paid Advertising- Go to Google and click on the AdWords section. You need to bid on keywords your potential customer will search for when searching for your affiliate marketing product. You don't want to spend to much money here and you may not need paid advertising, but it truly does help and lead to sales.
4. Article Writing-It's FREE! You need to write as many articles as you can inserting keywords on each article. You need to submit them to EzineArticles. I suggest you submit 50+ articles on any affiliate marketing product you choose.
Affiliate marketing can be one of the most profitable and low start-up costs businesses out there. There is nothing that compares to the benefits affiliate marketing can bring. In less than 4 hours, you can have a product that is already making sales with NO start-up costs.
Oct 14, 2008
Google Affiliate Network needs some improvement
As an affiliate specialist who is in charge of the entire company's affiliate program, I have always tried hard to focus my energy on the issues that requires my attention most. We have been on Performics , now known as Google Affiliate Network for a long time. Having been acquired by Google, the Performics interface has not changed as quick as I expected. I have noticed some areas that really need to be improved.
First, sending nicely designed newsletters has always been one of our most important methods to keep in touch with our hard-working publishers. However, I have not seen the possibility of sending HTML format letters directly from Performic's interface. This made me have to pass the newletters to our EDM team to finish, which requires extra time to be invested in scheduling the timetable of affiliate newsletter.
Secondly, sending coupons codes or launching any bonus campagins is also time-consuming. With a relatively large number of publishers in hand, I have to send coupons through e-mail message to inform a selected group of publishers to confirm. However, not every publisher is lucky enough to get the coupon, for that I apologize. By contrast, Shareasale has launched a new "Post your coupons and deals" function to make the whole process more cost-effective. Coupons now can be uploaded to Sharasale's interface and we can decide whether all publishers will get the coupon or some of them will.
Despite the problems mentioned above, however, I am still confident about Google Affiliate Network and is looking forward to see any possible improvements made. The tracking system has been accurate and it is one feature that we would recommend other merchants to try. The report provides both generic and detailed data that shows how each publisher or even each banner link perform within a period of time.
As a company based in China, we hope to apply many low cost methods to assist and communicate with our publishers. Maybe merchants in the US do not feel the same way as I do because they can make phone-calls to contact publishers anytime they want or even have a face-to-face meeting. For us, however, a well-developed interface with lots of functions to choose is vital to the quality of our affiliate program. Even if we can make international phone-calls, the time difference still brings a little challenge :)
First, sending nicely designed newsletters has always been one of our most important methods to keep in touch with our hard-working publishers. However, I have not seen the possibility of sending HTML format letters directly from Performic's interface. This made me have to pass the newletters to our EDM team to finish, which requires extra time to be invested in scheduling the timetable of affiliate newsletter.
Secondly, sending coupons codes or launching any bonus campagins is also time-consuming. With a relatively large number of publishers in hand, I have to send coupons through e-mail message to inform a selected group of publishers to confirm. However, not every publisher is lucky enough to get the coupon, for that I apologize. By contrast, Shareasale has launched a new "Post your coupons and deals" function to make the whole process more cost-effective. Coupons now can be uploaded to Sharasale's interface and we can decide whether all publishers will get the coupon or some of them will.
Despite the problems mentioned above, however, I am still confident about Google Affiliate Network and is looking forward to see any possible improvements made. The tracking system has been accurate and it is one feature that we would recommend other merchants to try. The report provides both generic and detailed data that shows how each publisher or even each banner link perform within a period of time.
As a company based in China, we hope to apply many low cost methods to assist and communicate with our publishers. Maybe merchants in the US do not feel the same way as I do because they can make phone-calls to contact publishers anytime they want or even have a face-to-face meeting. For us, however, a well-developed interface with lots of functions to choose is vital to the quality of our affiliate program. Even if we can make international phone-calls, the time difference still brings a little challenge :)
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