Search Marketing & Affiliates

This week #EcomChat explored the relationship between search marketing and affiliates and how they could be integrated. The following writeup was from @JackSaville1, covering the key topics of the hour.

During the session, a need to control affiliates (or the way in which they can represent you) became the clearest key point. The difficulties of balancing this control also featured prominently.

Without control of affiliates, a number of problems were suggested:

• Firstly, competition over search terms, as @panda_doodle pointed out: “last thing you want to do is have your on PPC going on and then have affiliates competing with you, you’re going to end out paying out twice and if your margins are small that could mean bust long term”
• Secondly, the dangers of being over reliant on affiliates without control of your own brand marketing, as @AndrewGirdwood pointed out “Ideally a brand wouldn’t become too dependant on any affiliate. Seen it before. Always super scary.”
• Thirdly, if controls are too strict, affiliates may cease to work with a particular merchant, and the online presence of the brand would potentially decrease while the affiliate sends sales to your competitors.

So control is important. Affiliate ‘control’ may be positive as well as negative, for example @AndrewGirdwood suggested the simple, effective tactic to “Give affiliates notice of upcoming sales; mutually beneficial if there’s buzz around a sales brand. Ie; HMV’s Blue Cross”

But many of the notes & suggestions were really negative controls and restrictions on affiliates. A number of people suggested a restriction whereby the affiliate is only allowed to bid on certain keywords.

• An initial stage could be to identify the keywords that you want to solely bid on. As suggested by @AndrewGirdwood: there’s a matter of “what’s your brand?” Going to stop affiliates bidding on keywords suggested by your offline? #grey #ecomchat
• Then, as suggested by @AndrewGirdwood: Assign affiliates to verticals/keyword portfolios to help add to your trends analysis – esp in the world of %100 not provided. #EcomChat
• @JamesGurd : @panda_doodle yep agreed, challenge is to make any affiliate PPC activity complimentary e.g. focus on 1 category #EcomChat
• @panda_doodle : @JamesGurd #ecomchat i don’t think its a challenge, you tell them from the start DONT bid on X, Y & Z the rest is open to them that would make it complimentary to your already on going in house experiments / marketing plans
• @AndrewGirdwood: @panda_doodle @JamesGurd Yes, for PPC it’s easy. Make a contract. Make certain keywords a contracter breaker #ecomchat

James Gurd suggested trialing opening up tranches of keywords and rewarding affiliates by opening up further tranches should they do well:

• @JamesGurd : @ReferralCandy Plus use a trial period to test waters. Give them a small piece with prospect of more if ROI proven #EcomChat

There was also the suggestion to limit which pages affiliates made available to Google. However there was some chatter over whether or not asking them to ‘noindex’ particular pages would be acceptable:

• @JamesGurd: @AndrewGirdwood How about trying to restrict their ability to have product pages indexed so not competing in SEPRs? #EcomChat
• @AndrewGirdwood : @MontseCano @JamesGurd I don’t think you could tell your affiliates to noindex some of their pages. You can’t control mentions. #ecomchat
• @pferron : #ecomchat – restriction are ok, but agree with @AndrewGirdwood asking some pages to be noindex if possible an restriction too far
• @JamesGurd : @pferron @AndrewGirdwood I would tend to agree but have met people who think this is sensible. Quite an aggressive stance

Andrew Girdwood pointed out that if the restrictions are too strict, then the affiliate may cease working with the merchant, and move their traffic elsewhere:

• @AndrewGirdwood: @JamesGurd @pferron The affiliate will just dump them and go with a competitor for the conversions. Counter productive. #ecomchat

Especially true if you have asked the affiliate to invest time & effort in promotoing you, as @pferron said: “All PPC campaign are a struggle at start so Affiliate needed deep pockets and high degree of faith in Conversion Rate of site”

Which led to more talk of trying to stop affiliates competing with you for particular terms in natural search?

• @AndrewGirdwood : @JamesGurd Yes, you can just kick the affiliate. Nasty but effective (watch for backdoors like Viglink) #ecomchat
• @panda_doodle : @JamesGurd #ecomchat you just give the affiliate a warning and failure to comply terminate contract with them
• @AndrewGirdwood : @JamesGurd You can also workout the niche the affiliate is mining and go after that with your own SEO. Again nasty but effective #ecomchat

Another recurring topic was that of measuring the success and objectives of the affiliate campaign.

• @JamesGurd: A2) Agree with @AndrewGirdwood it’s never all or nothing. Big challenge is to understand outcomes and how you will measure them #EcomChat
• @JamesGurd : Getting the metrics right and benchmarking data is critical. If you don’t measure well, you can end up losing £££ #EcomChat

So how could search and affiliate marketing coexist?

• @JamesGurd : @ReferralCandy Some companies without dedicated paid search team/budget test waters by letting a key affiliate do the PPC #EcomChat
• @panda_doodle : @JamesGurd @ReferralCandy #ecomchat but after that testing does the company not then disallow affiliate competition on them keywords?
• @JamesGurd : @panda_doodle It surely depends – is the affiliate better at doing PPC than you? Can you get better ROI via this route? #EcomChat
• @pferron : #ecomchat great thing abt handing over PPC campaign is taking spend out of equation but need to have robust targets & can restrict growth

So do search marketing and affiliate marketing go hand in hand? The relationship between search marketing and affiliate marketing can be a difficult one. However with adequate control over the affiliate relationship, it can be a happy partnership.

Finally, tips and examples of the complementary relationship working well were offered.

• @AndrewGirdwood : Got some great PR/Social story with content for your SEO? Offer it to your affiliates first to help spark interest in the project #EcomChat
• @AndrewGirdwood : I don’t think it’s black or white. You could let a super affilaite brand bid but drive to a different site. #grey #ecomchat
• @AndrewGirdwood :Top tip: Have great relationships with your affiliates. Talk to them often. Be honest. Listen to them. #ecomchat
• @panda_doodle : @JamesGurd #ecomchat i think amazon does it well, mass choice to promote amazon and marketplace
• @AndrewGirdwood : Tip for Tomorrow: Have a longtail publishing strategy with the longtail of your affiliates. #ecomchat
• @JamesGurd : It’s not enough that they know the basics, they need to know how to use the tools & techniques that drive ROI… #EcomChat
• @panda_doodle : @JamesGurd #ecomchat but wouldn’t ROI come from the affiliate and not company employing them? I don’t think scoring on PPC is that important
• @JamesGurd : RT @AndrewGirdwood: Bonus Tip: Treat your top PPC, coupon and cashback affiliates as agencies. Tailor deals with them. #ecomchat +1
• @pferron : #ecomchat if commissioning 4 PPC ensure your is not overly reliant on just BRAND it needs strong association in the generics for it 2 work
• @panda_doodle : @JamesGurd #ecomchat even more so if you pay for results? no results from affiliate = no cost to you
• @pferron : Top tip – Don’t be afraid to offer exclusive deals to high performers #ecomchat
• @pferron : #ecomchat ensure you have the measures in place to give you confidence in the results, agree your attribution methodology internally!
• @AnishaDattani : @pferron and generics are where higher CPC’s are so set up, dedication and monitoring is key #ecomchat
• @pferron : #ecomchat restrict growth com was more about willingness 2 take risks, Affiliate needs PPC success not always case with setting spend levels

And that was that!

Thanks to @JackSaville1 for the excellent writeup – do follow him on Twitter if you don’t already. And very big thanks also to all who chipped in.

Do join us & chip in at 1pm UK time on Monday, or feel free to share this post either on Twitter or via email with anyone you think would be interested.

Dan & James.

p.s. If you’re wondering “what is this all about?” there is an about page to explain everything.