Are we wasting our time doing creative for Affiliates?

[Spreader]

Hello guys,

I hope you are all well. I've a question for ya....

Are we (merchants) wasting our time doing creative for Affiliates to use?

I've been pondering this question for a wee while, and the reason I ask is because of the 'apparent' lack of use/support/interest for creative that we produce.

Take for example our recent Fathers Day campaign posted here. This campaign took literally days to produce - costing £100's if not £1000's in man power to design, build and create. The upshot - at the time of writing only 48 Affiliates had viewed the post on the forum.

Likewise with the Buyagift Fathers Day Campaign. I can't comment on the cost, but judging by the quality of the creative I would suggest it has a similar cost to ours. Again, at the time of writing only 67 people had viewed the campaign.

Likewise, when checking our Affiliate Stats most sales come through text links/data feeds etc.

So - could our time be better spent doing something more productive? Instead of producing creative for our affiliates to use (or not to use as the case may be), could we be spending our time and money producing other tools which assist affiliates?

Please don't see this as a rant - it's not. I'm just interested to hear others POV.

Cheers,


Zak.

[kcheung]

Zak,

I'm actually working on a project that will help here, its a personal project, if you send me a PM I'll give you a shout with the details.

Ken

[jsp_1983]

What did your affiliates say when you asked them about creatives?

[theitgirl]

I guess it would depend largely on the sites in question. I like to use the creatives provided by merchants to enhance the look of the site. It's true that they're not as effective for driving sales - my text links work far better. But I still get a lot of clicks on the banners - and it's all about brand awareness.

In all honestly for me personally I get frustrated with my merchants who don't update their graphics frequently!

[Andrew Starr]

Likewise, when checking our Affiliate Stats most sales come through text links/data feeds etc.

If that is where most of your sales come from, then maybe that's where you could move a larger % of your resources to?

[Paul_MN]

Did you follow up the release by talking to affiliates individually and encouraging them to add the creatives?

Did you send an email out to them all letting them know of the new campaign?

Did you really show the benefit of affiliates adding this stuff to their sites and give them ideas for how they can best implement it.

In my experience just announcing a new campaign is not enough, affiliates often fall in to one of two categories - either very busy, or very time poor (some might say lazy!).

Additionally with a few exceptions most top affiliates are too busy working on their sites to be veiwing and posting in threads on here.

To get the most out of a campaign you have to be prepared to work hard on communicating with affiliates, developing relatioonships, etc. Relying on a forum post or two will mean even the best campaign affiliates have ever seen is likely to be ineffective.

Just my thoughts from my experiences.

[loquax]

Few thoughts..

1. June 21st seems a long time away (i know we should be prepared)

2. Is Father's Day that popular compared to Mother's Day - for me it's not something that has the same interest?

3. Mother's Day is easy - flowers/chocolates - and therefore an easier event to promote. Do more people buy for MD than FD?

4. Retail is a bugger of a sector at the best of times and time/effort/energy to possibly pick up a few sales or lose sales to cashback etc. - it's hard to get excited about it.

The creative is great and I appreciate you work hard but "here's some FD creative" (at least for me) isn't going to make me deviate away from day to day stuff in the same way Mother's Day, Easter or Xmas would.

Jason

[babrees]

I only like to use generic banners, and prefer static at that. If I were to do a feature on, say, Father's Day then I would prefer to write content and have text links or my own graphics.

I personally don't like it when I have to scroll through loads of outdated banners to try and find a generic one, often finding that the merchant doesn't have one, although they have Christmas, Valentines Day, etc.

HOWEVER, if there was a generic banner that changed for special occassions, I wouldn't mind that. I just don't have the time to keep changing banners when they are out of date. Although the BIG problem with that is if merchants don't keep it up to date, which the majority of merchants wouldn't.

[Pete Taylor]

We prefer generic creative TBH. Most people click on text links on sites and less on the banners.

People now want flash banners on the sites instead of the old 'tic, tac, toe' gif images.

[scriptmonkey]

at the time of writing only 48 Affiliates had viewed the post on the forum.

Is this representative of the number of affiliates that had actually picked up the creative from awin or por?

As Paul_MN alluded to, I didn't get an email telling me about this creative, one of my main gripes with merchants. In fact, this is the first I've seen of it.

So - could our time be better spent doing something more productive

You could couple your new creative campaigns with a little email shot

[Hero]

the complaints you'll have if you don't update your creative much outweigh the time you'll save. Even if the complaints come from affiliates who have never generated a sale for you.

You are going overboard with your creative tho

[deadgoodundies]

I've got to admit we no longer do as many creatives as we used to because the majority of our sales now come from text links or affiliates doing PPC.
Generally we just launch new generic banners each season (maybe a few brand specific ones) and then leave it at that unless an affiliate specifically requests something.
The cost in both money and man hours to create new banners all the time compared to where the sales were coming in from just didn't balance.

Personally as a shopper on the internet I never click on banners but more often than not would click on a text link.
Regarding letting affiliates know of new things they either pick it up from our newsletters, through the paid on results email, I email them direct or following us on twitter.

[aaclapham]

I have found hardly anyone clicks on banners, however I do like using creatives that are in newsletters as the images go well in my blog posts.

[scriptmonkey]

With banners, I find that if they're out of context with the site they're displayed on, then they get clicked and make sales, odd, but true in my case,

[thegiftexperience]

I think it is a situation were you will never please everyone. If you did not spend as much time on your very creative banners then i am sure some people would be upset that you chose to neglect that area.
If you over publicize everything you do with e-mails and forum posts and phone calls, then people will complain that you are spamming them.
I am not saying that all affiliates are moaners, but when you deal with such a large number of people, you are never going to keep everyone happy.
I think banners are reflective of an affiliate program; if you have spent time on them, then it shows you want to spend time with affiliate marketing. Where as if you only have a small selection of poor ones, then it will appear you have no time for your affiliate program.