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Are they just cannibalizing your customer base (real or potential), or is their freedom and imagination reaching new customers that you would otherwise not be getting?
They will inevitably be targeting the same audience to some degree (they picked your program because they clearly share that audience with you), but they might be extending the customer base quite significantly, and selling where you might not have been.
Rather than 'all or nothing', any problem may be better managed by tweaking the commission, or the terms.
And I'm sure there's many other issues that I've not thought of; it's not an easy question!
It does depend on your market, but as a potential affiliate for any decent product, I think your proposed restrictions are unreasonable; I would not join such a program unless it was the only one in town - or paid much, much better than rivals.
Interestingly, most affiliate schemes insist that affiliates DO mention the parent company, thus SEO-ing the brand on a well made site. Arguably, every promotion of your brand will benefit the brand. And therefore benefit you.
A better solution would be to invest in quality SEO for your site, knowing it will be paid for by increased profits from (obviously) savvy, quality, ambitious affiliates.
Every restriction you place on associates is ultimately a restriction on your business; be sure that's what you really want to do. Fighting with your friends makes life easier for your rivals.
[edited by: Quadrille at 10:06 am (utc) on Aug. 27, 2008]
Am I the first person to have trouble with affiliates getting the lion's share of the SERPs where the brand terms are concerned then?
Am I the first person to have trouble with affiliates getting the lion's share of the SERPs where the brand terms are concerned then?
Unless a brand is truly major with an almost unlimited marketing budget (think McDonald's, Coca-Cola, etc.), it really can't hope to directly address all the possible market segments the brand might appeal to, i.e., regional, language, age, income, lifestyle, niche interests, etc. Many good affiliates don't try to compete head-to-head with the brand, but tend to exploit different market segments where they give buyers (better) reasons to buy through them.
It might help to think of good affiliates as an expanded marketing agency giving the brand exposure in areas it otherwise couldn't reach.
In the meantime, there's no reason at all for the sponsor site not to rank for the brand and other major search terms. Again, the brand site can't cover everything, but the affiliates will fill in the blanks. ;-)
a few of them are doing better SEO than you
That's the root problem here.
The solution is for the parent company to get smarter about its own SEO, and non-affiliate promotion in general. If affiliate pages are the only thing ranking in searches for product names, the company needs to get better at its own online marketing.
Remember that few search engines will give a single site more than one or two spots, so even if the parent company's SEO improves enough to ensure top ranks the front page will still have several other spots to fill.
If you do anything that restricts affiliates from ranking well for your brand names, you could easily end up with search results that include negative things like competitor reviews or whiny forum posts complaining about your products. That would not be an improvement!
Let affiliates do what they're good at, and approach the "problem" from the positive direction of improving the company's own SEO, and beefing up marketing in general.
There's a good chance that such affiliates rank well for competitor names as well as your own, and for every user who sees a competitor link because they found the page for your brand name, there could be someone who sees your link because they found the page for a competitor name. Do you really want to give up such well-targeted exposure?
Again, the answer here is for the parent company to improve its own site and its own SEO, not to impose paranoid restrictions on affiliates. If your site offers better value and a better user experience than the competition, you should be welcoming exposure that lets users compare you directly to the competition, not trying to hide from it.
it will go to a page featuring our brand as well as our competitors
What about if your competitors are offering better deals?
If so, then you do have some decisions to make. You probably have to site down and do a thorough analysis of what these types of sites are contributing to your sales, then go from there.
Branding itself is a big part of marketing, let the affiliates help you market your brand. You should still be making money on the sales affilaite drive, so focus your time on improving your site and let the affiliates do their thing. (I'm not suggesting letting your affiliate program run wild, it does need to be controlled)
[edited by: MadeWillis at 4:34 pm (utc) on Aug. 27, 2008]
Me to fix? I am not in charge of pricing or prduct
Sorry, I didn't mean "you" personally, I was thinking of "you" as the company. I should have worded it better. However, you personally can make sure those in charge of your company's pricing know about the deal the competitor is offering.
SEO is painful as it is a massive group of legacy sites
Look on the bright side ... that means there's lots of room for improvement which could end up looking very good on your resume. :)
featuring our brand as well as our competitors
when you get to our brand page it is plastered with ads of our chief competitor
There's quite a difference between those two comments. If the page that ranks for your brand name is indeed "plastered with ads" for the competitor, as opposed to simply mentioning the brands in a reasonably even-handed way, then yes it might be reasonable to ask the affiliate to tone down the competitor's presence on that page.
Before you do that, though, try to figure out where the competitor ads are coming from. Do you think the affiliate might have placed them deliberately, or are they coming through an ad network that has automated targeting? That might make a difference as to how you'd tackle the issue. If the affiliate has a lot of pages, and some ad placements are automated, it's entirely possible the affiliate isn't aware how that particular page looks from your perspective.
Bt the solution has to oe that solves the root problem, and not one that risks reducing sales or slowing brand expansion.
By the sounds of it, the company needs to invest more in the site - not just in SEO.
A strong affiliate presence for additional key words and phrases can only help the brand, and it's the company site that has the problem, not the affiliates.
Weakening the affiliates weakens the Big Picture.
Good Luck!
we mainly seem to have "thin-affiliate" comparison type sites and they are really slamming the SERPs with the company's brand but when you get to our brand page it is plastered with ads of our chief competitor who is running a better deal
Just being picky, but in this field pinning down the language can be important.
ensure conversions grow and improve
The goal of improving conversions is worth a great deal of thinking and testing and tweaking. It will increase profitability for the merchant's own promotions, and will also make the company more attractive to affiliates.
The most effective way to get affiliates to feature you prominently is to be the company that puts the most money in their pocket for the traffic they send. From an affiliate's point of view, closing a better percentage of sales is worth just as much as paying a higher commission.
I really have to stress that there are companies who do affiliate sites of their own, that belong to them, or to one of their employees - or possibly to their affiliate manager or OPM.
I've seen it myself, and verified with someone "reliable" who confirmed it, the first time I caught it. It's a merchant who's with a major network whose affiliate site has pages with links to all the competition, but it's very clear who's actually being "promoted."
If this is the case here, they're poaching customers using the brand name - but in a way that isn't really covered by the affiliate program's TOS.
Don't mess around looking at companies. You have someone in your SERPs who has the knowledge and connections to do well in your sector. Reward him!
>>Find the top ranking site for your brand name, and then hire the owner to SEO
If the top ranking site for their brand name is a comparison site that's pushing buyers on the biggest competition, chances are that top ranking site belongs to the competitor, or an "agent" of theirs.
>>You have someone in your SERPs who has the knowledge and connections to do well in your sector. Reward him!
But what if that owner is actually their competitor?
And, generally, you need to look at your affiliates as bringing you business rather than stealing percentages. If it really seems that way to you (assuming they aren't literally stealing :)) then you may want to reduce your percentages or increase your prices?
