Practical Ideas to Protect your Brand in Affiliate Marketing
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Practical Ideas to Protect your Brand in Affiliate Marketing
The ability to control the reputation of your brand in Publisher marketing is a concern shared by both Advertisers already adept in the channel and those relatively new to it. Here are some simple pointers to help brands strike a balance between embracing Publisher opportunities and ensuring those opportunities do not compromise or devalue their brand.
Attracting and Engaging Suitable Publishers
To attract and engage new Publishers, put together an ‘affiliate pack’ containing information on your customers’ demographics and shopping habits to educate Publishers about the kinds of customers you are targeting. What do you know about their onsite shopping habits or their average order values? Advertise this information, together with your brand’s Unique Selling Point (USP), alongside your program’s description to help make sure Publishers are referring on-target traffic.
Ensuring Publishers are clear about how to represent your Brand
Start by ensuring your program’s terms and conditions adequately reflect what Publishers can and cannot do, and how you will deal with any breaches. Rather than lifting the customer T&Cs from your site, ask your Network for guidance on Publisher-specific T&Cs that adhere to industry best practice – particularly important in the areas of voucher codes and PPC. Policies on paid search should stipulate what is acceptable around the use of your brand, both as a keyword (including mis-spellings and brand and generic terms) and with respect to Publishers using your brand in display URLs, ad titles and descriptions. If you do not want Publishers bidding on your brand ask that they include it as a negative keyword in their campaigns.
Vetting and Monitoring New Publishers
Advertisers should always ask their Network(s) what checks are carried out on new Publishers and what tools or resources are committed to ensuring activity is consistent with your brand. Publishers should provide details of what sites or promotional methods they use and give you visibility over this. Review new Publisher applications to your program manually, and if you are working to a capped budget consider operating an invite-only program in the short-term to retain control over spend.
Guarding against Fraud
Fraudulent transactions by some unscrupulous customers can come via any channel, but there are a number of suggestive indicators to look out for. Ask your Network for the referring URLs of incoming sales so you can check and audit each site. Be alert for unusually high conversion rates or short latency times between click and transaction: some orders may have a high on-site conversion but fail to complete once received. Also look at the IP addresses orders have come from. If these are all the same a Publisher might be submitting multiple transactions themselves, revealing that the customer has had little or no engagement with your brand. It may also highlight transactions from incentive sites, indicating that a single member is attempting to claim cashback or rewards with no intention of fulfilling their order.
Keeping Copy and Creative Compliant
Through your Network’s interface Publishers will be able to access pre-approved, compliant creative, but you may wish to share your brand compliance documentation when organising bespoke promotions – such as co-branded emails or competitions – with Publishers. Regularly update your creative to reflect your latest deals and supply it in the sizes suggested by your Network or the IAB. Offering a ‘copy bank’ of pre-approved copy in various sizes – 25, 50, 100, 200 words – will also give you control over the messaging displayed by your Publishers and allow them to use this on-site without having to worry about compliance.
Working with Voucher Codes without De-valuing your Brand
Voucher codes can be a very flexible and effective marketing tool, but some work better than others. A consistently popular code is for free delivery – customers hate paying for shipping and many abandon their baskets after factoring in this cost. Indeed, research indicates that customers prefer free delivery codes even more than discounts on the items themselves. To increase the urgency of a customer offer, try a short-term or ‘quick expire’ code to incentivise the User to transact. Similarly, the average order value can be boosted with a ‘stretch and save’ code, like ‘£5 off all orders over £50’, as an alternative to a 10% off voucher. If you do not want to discount the basket you can still offer a free product: perhaps a box of chocolates with every order of flowers? Certain codes can also attract particular kinds of customers. A discount on your first purchase, for example, can be used to capture new customers.
Safeguarding your Brand on Cashback and Incentive Sites
Due to their incentivised nature, cashback and reward portals are vulnerable to abuse by members seeking the cashback but with no intention of buying. Finance or lead-based Advertisers may already be familiar with this. Asking these Publishers to display on-site messaging to their members will help pre-empt and discourage fraudulent transactions, as will lengthening the validation time so you can be sure of securing the customer before paying out.
In summary, as is the case with any marketing or sales channel, there will be certain pitfalls brands should look out for when running a Publisher program. This article has attempted to point out some of these pitfalls and propose a few practical ways brands can address some of the issues they present.
Owen Hewitson