Merchants - What do you really think of us affiliates when.....

[BigB]

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Merchants - What do you really think of us affiliates when we push you from #1 in Google to #2 with your own product?

Do you think:- "Great - there's room for one less competitor on the first page"

or:- "Damn - I'm paying commission on sales I would have got anyway"

or do you just take a good look at our site and pick up some SEO tips?

[tobyt]

Her's some betting odds.....

Paying 5 to 1 that less than 10 High St merchants respond to this thread.


I'd also like to put another question, especially to those High St merchants that might see this....

Undoubtably one of the most important aspects of any successful corporate budget is the amount devoted marketing and advertising. The most successful companies I have known, hate having to pay for the expense of advertising but they know it is a necessary evil. So when a group of people (in this case affiliates) come along and offer to pay for your advertising and marketing costs for you (referring here to those affiliates involved with PPC) why on earth would you prevent them doing that?

And of course I am referring to those rather short sighted merchants that refuse to allow their affiliates to bid using any terms that contain their name. It certainly does not make much sense to me...or am I missing something?

[Graham@Buyagift]

Hmm...good question. I think ultimately it depends on the type of company. In our instance at the moment we don't have the resource inhouse to dedicate as much time to SEO as some of our top affiliates do, so I'd say great another one of our products knocking the competitors out.

Graham

[JamesG(FUSE)]

As the 'middle-man', we know the merchant's point of view with regards to keyword bidding is quite simple. Any organisation worth their salt (either online or high street) WILL have budget to spend an all forms of advertising and marketing (especially SEO) to promote their products/services. If you don't advertise or market your product, how do you expect to sell it?

They will understand the importance of doing their own activity and get frustrated when affiliates bidding on keywords which may contain the merchant's name, push them down the listings. There are valid issues with regards to the money, time and effort spent on developing their own brand name (particuarly purely online businesses) and therefore get frustrated when affiliates acting on their behalf counter-act their own activity.

It's a balance. My experience has shown me that providing affiliates don't bid on keywords which directly relate to the merchant's brand, they are very happy for affiliates to bid on the products and services they do with their own (and more often than not) definitive SEO marketing.


James Galvin
FUSE Media

[NaturalInstinct]

It is indeed a very good question. It's not really an issue for us because we don't spend money on SEO so we haven't paid for one form of advertising only to have to pay affiliates on top. Therefore it doesn't bother me, it's just good to have lots of results in the top 10.

However, ask me again if we ever decide to pay an SEO company lots of money

[Graham@Buyagift]

I assume you were referring to natural listings and not paid?

Graham

[rlonghurst]

It's a good question, especially with the abundance of product feeds which means affiliates can often optimise their sites better than the merchant that provides the contant.

Of course, it's bound to be irritating for a merchant if an affiliate beats them in the rankings, especially if they're doing it with that merchant's images and text.

But it could be worse -- the affiliate be promoting one of our competitors...

Richard
http://www.lovehoney.co.uk/includes/affiliates.cfm

[BigB]

Yes, Graham, I was asking about natural listings, not paid. PPC policies is another whole debate.

[tobyt]

Personnally speaking, if I was a High St merchant and had a full understanding of how PPC and Affiliate Marketing worked, I would actually look to really take advantage of having a group of Affiliates paying to bid on my Brand name, simply because it would mean that my Brand got the profile that I was looking for online, plus I still get the sales, and then I would be looking to spend the money I had budgeted to spend online, to further increase my off-line marketing. I mean that is'nt rocket science - it's called strategy.

JamesG, while I take your points onboard, when you descibe affiliates counteracting the merchants efforts to build brand online. This is the perfect example of merchants not having a true and full understanding of the scope and potence of affiliate and PPC marketing, and failing to build good lines of communication with their affiliates. I think you will agree that brand building and profile is all about being seen. As long as the customer sees the merchants brand at the point of advertising, ends up on the merchants site and completes the transaction there - that is the brandbuilding exercise.

A smart merchant should have sat down and talked to their affiliates and developed an understanding of what their affiliates could achieve before making relatively uneducated decisions about how they are going to build their brand online. Put it this way, what do you think Branson would say if every pub in the country wrote to him and offered to put up a Virgin Wine sign up outside their pub - completely free of charge. Can you see Mr. B writing back saying no, thanks for your offers of free marketing, but it conflicts with our own marketing plan. C'mon, lets get a little real here....

....I would humbly suggest that many of these merchants do not have anywhere near a full comprehension of the potency of affiliate marketing, and if they did they would be demonstrating it by getting at least a dozen of their best affiliates into their offices and sitting down with them before making their decisions about how they intend to conduct their online marketing strategy.

And another factor that often contributes to this "problem" is that many of these "marketing consultants" that have come from the traditional offline marketing arena, and whose expertise normally lies in telling these same High St merchants about how many pretty girls in mini skirts should be used to give away free product samples at Charring Cross station, are now trying to get in on the online marketing act - and the majority of them have little of no idea about the scope of Affiliate Marketing. In fact many of those "consultants" stll think PPC means Pretty Polly want a Cracker. ...and they are trying to advise High St merchants about affiliate marketing?!!?!!?

....and if you don't believe that this is true, just look at the number of High Street sites that are built using technology that prevent the site from being fully spidered! And when that happens it doesn't matter how much SEO expertise the merchant can afford to buy in ...if the page can't been "seen" it certainly ain't going to appear in any SE that I know of....

[Emma AdSelect]

Some merchants prefer to have full control over their branding. If an affiliate bids on a keyword and doesn't make it obvious they're a third party, or says something which strictly isn't true, they get quite disgruntled.

I can see the view of the merchants when it comes to brand control - maybe they don't want anyone bidding for the terms, or perhaps they simply want to be the only one. I wouldn't say it's lack of foresight or knowledge as many of the people dealing with this know a lot about the market.

[JamesG(FUSE)]

Hi TobyT,

You've certainly raised many very good and valid points. I agree that sometimes offline marketeers think they can apply the same principles without fully understanding the scope and potential of affiliates and online marketing in general. I'm not one of those.

I personally have worked in Internet Marketing both client-side and agency-side since 1998. I've worked both sides of the fences and know that merchants in particualr struggle to understand just how important affiliate networks can be to their business.

However, as many new businesses tend to want to be in control of their own online marketing to a certain degree, many still need convincing that not to do any SEO marketing and trust your affiliates to do your online branding for you - is still a long way off.

Nobody will ever turn down free branding or marketing, but some would rather be much more in control of 'how' they are marketed and presented.

Kind regards,

James

[tobyt]

Hey James (and Emma), good feedback.

I am however prompted to ask if a merchant wants to be that much in control of their marketing, why are they becoming involved in Affiliate Marketing in the first place, when literally several thousand affiliates are going to use their links, many of whom prefer text links and will write the text themselves.

Alternatively if they want that much control and want to see themselves presented correctly, why not supply the text that PPC Affiliate must use, and not vary from.

[Azam.net]

I think the search engines are a free-for-all and, as long as anybody doesn't use spammy techniques, affiliate sites have the right to be ranked anywhere.

Paid listings are a different thing and more debatable, but everybody should be allowed to compete fairly in organic listings inc. affiliates with merchants.

If affiliate site ranks higher than a merchants, then the merchant needs to take a long hard look at the person who is being paid £50K to do their site. Just because the programmer went to the same public school or university doesn't mean he's any good.

Funniest situation was when my affiliate site ranked higher than WHSmith's for the search term 'whsmith' using entirely legit. techniques (but involving a LOT of hard work). The people working for their online division had such an indepth knowledge of the net that they contacted my free web host to complained. They didn't bother to look at their own site and see how badly coded it was or didn't have any metatags.

[Emma AdSelect]

Originally posted by tobyt
why are they becoming involved in Affiliate Marketing in the first place, when literally several thousand affiliates are going to use their links, many of whom prefer text links and will write the text themselves.

The merchants who use us agree with us on text which affiliates can use, which is available on our platform. Should an affiliate want to adapt that, we have to first clear it with the merchant.

I think it's fair enough for a merchant to want to make sure their brand is being represented in the way they want.

[Receptional]

Originally posted by Emma AdSelect
The merchants who use us agree with us on text which affiliates can use, which is available on our platform. Should an affiliate want to adapt that, we have to first clear it with the merchant.

I think it's fair enough for a merchant to want to make sure their brand is being represented in the way they want.

Doesn't that make for some unweildy decision making at times? Merchants and advertisers in general are blissfully unaware that their Google adverts for "solicitor" could potentially end up on Adsense sites on "soliciting" (OK - maybe not that exact example, but you get the point) and their Overture ads could easily end up on Gator partners and their "Natural" ODP listing can easily end up in a third party's RSS feed with no control on the merchant's part whatsoever. Whilst I agree with the sentiment and indeed the law that the merchant has a right to make sure their brand is being represented in the way they want, merchants should realise that this precludes all of the major outlets for exposure on the Internet due to the partnerships built up over the years between the main portals.

So - merchants should aim to guide their affiliates, but not control their affiliates. In the UK "control of actions" could possibly also equate to an employer - employee relationship in the tax man's eyes, which would mess us all up!

Dixon.