How affiliate programs may help improving your brand equity. Presentation given by Dr Celine Brandt at the WEBcon 2014 event in Aachen.

1. How affiliate
programs may help
improving your
brand equity
Céline Brandt, Ph.D

2. AffiliateMarketing
• Affiliate Marketing is performance-based advertising
• The affiliate promotes the merchant’s product/ service and get
remuneration for every sale, visit or subscription
• Pay-per-sale, pay-per-lead (newsletter sign-up), pay-per-call or
pay-per-click
• One of the most powerful customer acquisition tool
• The merchant pays only when the results are there
• Almost no research
• Dealers or partners, who promote our
brand, investing their own money to sell
our products/services
• Independent intermediary  choose
what affiliate programs to promote, what
merchants to push more aggressively and
on what merchants to spend less efforts
• Preferential treatment for superaffiliates

3. Consumer-based brand equity (KL Keller)
• BE: the differential response to the
marketing of a product or a service
that is only due to the brand
• In short, when you have strong
brand equity, your customers will
buy more from you, they will
accept to pay a price premium,
they'll recommend you to other
people, they're more loyal, and
you're less likely to lose them to
competitors.

4. Consumer-based brand equity (KL Keller)

5. Consumer-based brand equity (KL Keller)
Knowledge
Awareness
Recall
Recognition
Familiarity
AFFILIATE MKT
Promotes the
merchant’s
product/service

6. How does affiliate marketing contribute to the publisher’s
brand salience?
Encourage affiliates:
push strategy: Special
offers (top affiliates),
commissions, e-mails,
blogs, newsletters,
contests Make them
proud  respect and
trust
Platform to reach
and engage with
new audiences
(site + e-mails)
Increase the
availability of the
brand for more
familiarity
Content displayed
on affiliate sites:
awareness-driving
tool/ high quality
enough in order
not to erode the
brand image

7. Examples of affiliates: focus on awareness
Agreement with TradeTracker to provide some unique voucher codes to
some affiliate in exchange of a permanent referral during a defined
period
Push strategy: Newsletter for the affiliates in the NL and for the CJ
affiliates

8. Consumer-based brand equity (KL Keller)
Image: primary characteristics and
features; product reliability,
durability, and serviceability;
service effectiveness, efficiency,
and empathy; style and design;
and price
AFFILIATE MKT
Leverage secondary
associations
Reputation building
A different experience

9. How does affiliate marketing contribute to the publisher’s
brand performance and imagery?
Leveraging
secondary
associations
Reputation
building
(throughout the
affiliates
network)
Design of an
experience
based on the
affiliate’s
consumer
knowledge
Invite pertinent
affiliates in
terms of image
(snowballing
effect)

10. Examples of affiliates: focus on image

11. How to profile affiliates in term of image?
Website
Target
Audience
Promotional
methods
Marketing
Focus
Competitors
promoted

12. Associations that could impact negatively the
publisher’s brand image
• Inapropriate content
• Misuse of the trademark
• Negative feedback
• Incentive
• Monitoring
• Enforcement (coercive measures)

13. Consumer-based brand equity (KL Keller)
Quality, credibility,
relevance, superiority
warmth, fun, excitement,
security, social approval,
and self-respect
AFFILIATE MKT
 Brand defense
 Information
sharing

14. Brand defense and information sharing – what drives the
affiliate to enlarge their role?
Brand defence:
indicator of the quality
of the relationship
Information sharing:
preference,
experiences,
discussions, problems
2 types of
performances:
technical and
relational  focus on
the relational
performance
Drivers:
Financial dependence
of the affiliate
Relational
performance of the
publisher
Applications:
Segmentation of the
affiliate network

15. Examples of affiliates: focus on brand defence and information sharing

16. What would drive the affiliates to enlarge their
role?
In a special edition of HBR on how to motivate people, Fryer wrote in her article
called “Moving Mountains”:
There is no trick to motivating others. It requires a clear,
unbiased understanding of the situation at hand, deep insight
into the vagaries of human nature at both individual and group
levels, the establishment of appropriate and reasonable
expectations and goals and the construction of a balanced set
of tangible and intangible incentives
Delegating Participating Selling Telling

17. Delegating Participating Selling Telling
Superafiliates
(generating
significant
volumes of
sales)
Skilled and
experienced
affiliates but
insecured
Capable
affiliate but
lack of
education or
confidence
Affiliates has
very low level
of maturity
External rewards Internal motivators
Cash bonuses,
tangible prizes
Autonomy, prestige,
sense of enjoyment
1
2

18. Consumer-based brand equity (KL Keller)
Behavioral loyalty, brand
love, sense of community,
active engagement
AFFILIATE MKT
Facilitate
 Brand value
creation
 Co-innovation
 Customer
support

19. Brand value creation and co-innovation– what drives the
affiliate to enlarge their role?
The affiliate will
facilitate the common
research of new ideas
Discussions on how to
improve the
experience
Motivates visitors to
take part to the value
creation (creativity
and ideas generation)
Drivers:
Creativity of the
affiliate’s website 
open to role
enlargement
Community aspect 
open to role
enlargement
Drivers:
Congruence between
the publisher and the
affiliate
(complements)
reinforce the affiliate’s
image and increases
the value of the
content

20. Examples of affiliates: focus on brand value creation and co-innovation

21. What’s in for me?
1. Superaffiliates are vital at the beginning of the BE building process
to create the awareness
2. For the next 3 steps, bloggers are as interresting as superafilliates as
they offer image complementarity and they consider easily role
extensions
3. From the affiliate side, financial dependence plays the strongest
role in the acceptance of roles enlagement
4. From the merchand side, relational performance has to be the focus
number one to motivate role enlargement
5. The higher in the pyramid, the more relationnal the merchand
should be
6. Create a special structure to manage the relationship with bloggers
7. Identify the high potential affiliates based on financial dependence,
congruence, creativity and community-orientation

22. Thank you for your attention
Q&A?