Increase Search Revenue While Protecting Your Brand

Affiliate Summit West 2010 Increase Search Revenue While Protecting Your Brand Lori Weiman (CEO, The Search Monitor) Brendan Lawrence (CEO, The Smartest Search) Debbie Bookstaber (VP of Strategy, The JAR Group)

What Is a “Search” Affiliate?
“ Search Affiliates" buy keywords and profit on the arbitrage between the click cost and the affiliate CPA payment.

What Should Influence Bid Policy?
Views of affiliates often shape policy.
Cannibals & leeches…
Or valuable strategic partners?
But competitive landscape should be the determining factor.
Key issues include:
Organic rankings
Brand volume
Competitors
Competitors’ Affiliates

Defining Your Search Policy
It’s about more than brand bidding.
Affiliate Managers should have a policy on:
Display URLs
Ad Copy Restrictions
Competitors on Landing Pages
Secondary Search Engines
Social Media Sites
Define your enforcement process as well.

Permissive Search Policy
Open Bidding
Potential Harm to PPC Search Results
Higher Affiliate Search Revenue
Overall ROI is lowest
Discourages almost all Legitimate Publishers
Restrictive Search Policy
No Search Allowed
Low Risk of So-Called “Affiliate Search Cannibalization”
Reduced Affiliate Search Revenue
ROI is improved, but overall revenue may be reduced
Discourages Legitimate Search Publishers
Hybrid Policies
May restrict position, limit campaign to secondary engines. Display URL enforcement.
Strategic partnerships with trusted affiliates: brand bidding permissions, custom landing pages, ad copy.
ROI improves, Revenue increase, but it takes more work!
Allows for Constructive Performance-based Partnerships
What’s Your Search Policy Sweet Spot?

Clarity
Create clear, easy-to-understand search policies.
If brand bidding is forbidden with the exception of a few strategic partners, tell your affiliates.
Communication
View affiliates as strategic partners.
Provide the tools necessary for their success.
Consistency
Monitor your brand terms.
Enforce your policy consistently and fairly.
Consider professional tools– such as The Search Monitor.
How to Manage a Hybrid Search Policy

How We Know What We Know….
We crawl the major search providers on a regular basis looking for competitors and affiliates.
We identify affiliates who direct link
We identify affiliates who operate their own web pages
We watch brand terms, head terms, and long tail
From every city, state, and country, in every language worldwide
Crawler Surfs keyword phrases Daily, Worldwide Keyword Database

Brand Terms Are Highly Competitive on PPC Google, Yahoo, and Bing Consider: 10 positions Max. on pg. 1 of SERPs

Can You Use Your Affiliates to Increase Revenue on Brand Terms?
Do: Increase Revenue By:
Cornering the Market – Push out the Competition on brand terms
Protect Your Brand – think capture the flag.
Don’t: Decrease Revenue By:
Direct Linkers
Compete for Visibility
Drive Up Your CPC

When Affiliates Hurt Revenue on Brand Terms: Direct Linkers
Affiliate does not have a web site. Links its ads directly to the merchant’s site. ‘Steal’s merchant’s identify in its ads. Competes with merchant.
Affiliate Link (Affiliate Network URL) This Behavior Costs You Money Bidding Against One Another – Driving UP Your CPC

Quantify The Problem: Measure How Frequently You Are Knocked-Off of Your Brand Terms Fisher-Price Shop for Fisher-Price Toys Here Buy Toys and More Online at BRAND fisherprice.BRAND.com 65% 35%

Instead – Use Affiliates as a Solution
Affiliates Can Improve Performance on Brand Terms
Increase leads/sales
Corner the Market – Push out the Competition
Protect Your Brand – think capture the flag

Use Affiliates To Corner the Market
Use Your Affiliates to Occupy More Positions on the page
Many times your affiliates have better landing pages than you do, and better quality scores than you do.
They may be able to get into a higher position than you can.
Leverage your affiliates with high quality scores.
Don’t be a 1 out of 10 – become a 10! (out of 10 that is)

Use Affiliates To Protect Your Brand
Consider These Facts:
Search Engines DO NOT Police Your Brand
Search Engines DO let advertisers sponsor Your Brand
This Means That Competitors Will Sponsor Your Brand
The Best Way To Protect Your Brand is to ‘Encourage’ the competition to go away.
Empower your affiliates to sponsor your brand
Put rules in place to prevent things that concern you
Direct Linking Rank / position rules
Time of day rules
Ad Copy rules
Provide your affiliates with the ad copy that you want to see
USE YOUR AFFILIATES TO PUSH OUT THE COMPETITION!

Let Your Affiliate’s Help By Sponsoring Your Brand Terms
You Get More Page Real-Estate = More Clicks / More Sales
Look at Vonage
Vonage: Great Example of Owning Your Brand Terms

Elements of Strategic Search Partnership
Strong relationship with affiliate manager
Agreement on position and search engines
E.g. Bid in position 2 or lower
E.g. Bid on brand terms in secondary engines only
Utilize Display URL for specific cases (competitor terms, coupons, etc.)
Bid on long tail keywords as well as brand terms.
Custom landing pages or permission to use display URL in select cases.
Strict Policing and Enforcement of Agreements.

Case Study: Blue Man Group
Goal: Blue Man Group wanted to increase ticket sales to their Las Vegas show and convert more direct sales rather then letting ticket resellers dominate search.
Solution: Create a private Top Performers Partnership program with agreed upon bidding rules.
Results:
BMG increased revenue by $1 Million after 8 months, with direct ticket sales increasing 25%.
The two publishers in the partnership had ROI of 66% and 35% respectively over the course of the campaign.

Case Study: eBillMe
Goal: eBillMe wanted to block competitors on key search terms and increase revenue
Solution: Custom Display URLs with agreed upon bidding rules for top search partners
Result: Top Two Results were covered and overall traffic on brand terms going to eBillMe controlled sites increased by 22%* Compete.com 11/09
Increased overall Revenue 15% while increasing ROI 10%
The Publisher using the Custom Display URL, ShopDebtFree.com had a 35% ROI during the campaign

Case Study: eBillMe - Beforehand

Case Study: eBillMe – After (Increased Revenue)

Case Study: Greensbury Market
Goal: GreensburyMarket.com wanted to increase sales on competitive keywords in the organic, gourmet food segment
Solution: Develop a Strategic search partnerships allowing Top Publishers to use their Display URL for non branded terms, while also giving custom landing pages.
Result: Net Revenue Increased 25%, over General PPC and Affiliate efforts, with no upfront fees for Greensbury Market
The Publisher was able to make over $2000 in Profits from their Commissions after PPC Spend

Increase Search Revenue While Protecting Your Brand

by Affiliate Summit on Jan 12, 2010

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Increase Search Revenue While Protecting Your Brand — Presentation Transcript