Create an Affiliate Strategy

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Determine which affiliate search engine marketing policy fits your company's needs. You have three options:

  1. Allow affiliates to manage all search engine marketing.

  2. Prohibit affiliates from any search engine marketing.

  3. Restrict the marketing of branded keywords, but allow generic keywords.

A couple of factors will influence your decision:

  • Your competitive landscape

  • Your affiliate commission payout

The greater the competition for your keywords, the more time-consuming it is to manage advertising and optimization campaigns . Hard-working affiliates achieve premium positions for the merchants they represent. Why not let them run all of your search engine marketing and pay them strictly for sales? If they're aggressively marketing generic terms and not exclusively scoring easy sales from your trademarks, they're certainly earning their keep. You can supervise their overall efforts but let them focus on the daily tasks . One less marketing program you need to worry about.

On the other hand, if you prefer to execute your own search engine campaigns, you will be competing with your affiliates for organic rankings and having to continually pay more for Pay-For-Placement (PFP) positions. Perhaps the competitive arena for generic terms is a challenge you welcome. Furthermore, if you're the brand holder, there should be no competition for your trademark terms. Are the profit margins on search engine sales worth running campaigns in-house, or outsourcing to one search engine firm for a fixed fee? A well-branded company might use an affiliate program to reach new customers via e-zines or content sponsorships, but prohibit the search engine space they can dominate fairly easily and cost-effectively.

Is there a happy medium? Kind of. Merchants can prohibit affiliates from marketing their branded keywords, while allowing them to fight for coveted generic terms. Competent affiliates will rise to this challenge and deliver new customers ‚ if the price is right. Don't expect affiliates to rush into your program if you remove the easy trademark sale from their grasp and then only offer a 10% commission fee on a $10 item. More importantly, be prepared to constantly monitor your branded keywords to terminate relationships with affiliates who violate your trademark protection agreement. All in all, if you're willing to police and market your trademarks, then this option might be a profitable deal for both you and your affiliates.

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Search Engine Advertising. Buying Your Way to the Top to Increase Sales
Search Engine Advertising: Buying Your Way to the Top to Increase Sales (2nd Edition)
ISBN: 0321495993
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2004
Pages: 155

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