Sharing the Wealth – The Solution to Brand Bidding Groups
posted in Affiliate Marketing, Closed Groups, PPC Brand Name Bidding |
As you are aware Brand Bidding Groups (BBGs) have generally been for the familiar privileged few & favoured affiliates within some networks with the result of maximum reward with minimum effort with content affiliates suffering the stealth tax of cookie over-writing. There are a affiliates who are millionaires by doing something a monkey could do & offer little or nothing to the affiliate marketing space apart from being suited n booted & pretending to have a corporate persona as wide boys talking industry jibberish.
The solution I propose opens this all up to protect content affiliates & share the wealth where no network has suitable reason to withhold integration of the concept, unless there is possibly something to hide.
Here is the process of how it would be set up, now you must read through the WHOLE of this to understand this is quite simple & the real potential for all affiliates & the merchant.
1) An affiliate agrees to volunteer themselves!!! They look after the brand bidding group on a non-profit basis on direct to merchant paid search activity on brand terms, hybrids & obvious variations & mis-spelling. Obviously they would liaise with the merchant regarding the content of ad copy if it is necessary, though often this is best left to experienced affiliates to manage the campaign responsibly & professionally. You’ll also find volunteer affiliates will be more expansive in their use of keywords & not just exact match of brand [BRAND]
2) A separate Google, MSN Adcenter or Yahoo (YSM) account would be set up for each merchant so that the network, merchant and affiliate(s) involved have access to as well for keywords used & advertising spend. The reason for this will be more apparent a little later, so start licking your lips now.
2) What is paramount is transparency!!! The name of the affiliate(s) and the keyword database are available. Other affiliates not directly involved with the non-profit brand bidding group can also put forward suggestions of keywords to add to the mix & possibly integrated.
3) There will be no overwriting of content affiliate cookies at all!!! Content affiliates also include those who do paid search on product or generic keywords in paid search whether this is direct to merchant (i.e. permitted to use the display URL of the merchant in advertising or bringing traffic into their own site). This would require a separate network account being set up (an easy enough process), the main bit of work would require liaison between the network & some integration of code on the merchants behalf. Now at the moment we see Affiliate Window have done the honourable thing with Woolworth’ s. I don’t wish to knock it and it’s good progress, but the disadvantage of the Woolworths approach though is that it rely’s on cross referencing with a white list of keywords. The beauty of this scheme I am suggesting is that this separate link NEVER overwrites other affiliate links, but it can be overwritten in the normal manner of last referrer currently adopted. This content affiliates cookie always wins.
4) Obviously this non-profit affiliate can promote the merchant in the familiar manner as a content affiliate, on generic & product related terms in the normal way by using their affiliate links from their day to day account.
5) Now, the above is a great start within itself, but with paid search engines you can only use a certain display URL once (i.e single display URL policy). This is where some work is required on behalf of the network to earn their over-ride. Quite simply separate domains (either owned by the network or merchant) are set up for creation of landing pages or templates probably (preferably varying in design). The network would create these template / landing pages in liaison with the merchant for the brand bidding purposes, but if flexible enough these can also be utilised by normal content affiliates to integrate into their sites, thus offering multiple usage of the templates / full page sized content units.
The purpose of this is to provide more coverage in advertising listings with an increase in advertising slots incase competitors are bidding on the merchants brand & hopefully increase the transition of traffic actually going to the merchant. This needs to be only fully adopted if competitors are appearing in the space for keywords relating to the merchants brand. It’s a safeguard to counter competitor advertising or could be used in unison with the merchants own inhouse brand activity if they have one.
Now, the Non-Profit BBG can use one of their own URL’s to display the template (when bidding on brand going direct to a landing page), but there would need to absolutely zero leakage to other parts of their web site or web sites they own to make it fair i.e. to ensure other parts of their web site don’t benefit from bidding on brand. For their normal (non BBG) link then they fall into the same offerings as other affiliates.
It is important networks do work for their over-ride rather than sitting on their laurels ensuring these templates whether created by merchant or network are updated at reasonable intervals.
Now for the Deal Clincher
6) You are maybe asking what happens to the commission earned from this brand bidding. Well, we share the wealth of course, it all goes into a massive Prize Pot to share amongst other content affiliates who promote the merchant. The cost of the paid search activity (remember from a separate Google, MSN, Yahoo account) is deducted from the total commission earned via the brand bidding. These figures are released to the affiliate community for transparency.
7) The way the Jackpot Pool can be shared out is as follows. The Jackpot can be divided into 5, 10 or even 20 equal amounts. For the content affiliates promoting the merchant, 1 sale = 1 ticket where an affiliate can win no more than one prize for that specific merchant. Prize funds could anything for £20,000 to £100,000 or even more (don’t forget Millions have been made by these brand bidding groups, agencies & networks), which is a lucrative cash bonus for any content affiliate. Alernatively half the prize pool could be divided proportionally amongst their top 10 affiliates & the remainder going into the lucky dip. The frequency of these draws could be quarterly for lesser amounts of annually for a huge bonus.
Whereby:
- Content affiliates will more likely be incentivised to promote the merchant. Of which some could be used to launch their own bigger or greater projects, plus of course reaping the rewards of their own hard work.
- The merchant has a greater potential to receive an increase in incremental sales because of the generous Jackpot / Prize Pool available.
- The network still receives their over-ride, with any increases in incremental sales, plus they would be held with higher esteem with affiliates for their transparency & dedication to sharing the wealth amongst content affiliates.
- The wealth is shared amongst more worthy content affiliates across the industry rather than the familiar pre-chosen select few that some networks embrace.
Disadvantages
a) Some networks may jump on the bandwagon – Using the spin of strategic groups by maybe only offering a token program here or there trying to fool un-savvy affiliates or those that see things through Rose Tinted GlASSes. A network must be committed to this fairer solution of handling BBGs.
b) Finding volunteer affiliates – This wouldn’t be too difficult as I know, including myself, there are content affiliates who would embrace this. Setting up brand bidding campaigns on the different paid search engines only takes a small amount of time & requires little managing, except for occasionally updating ad copy & ensuring ROI is obviously profitable.
c) Who will fund the PPC activity? Well this should be the network of course. Why would they object? They have to do something for their money, it’s a no brainer really, since they would still receive an over-ride whereby PPC costs are recouped anyhow, rather than the volunteer affiliate awaiting for their expense. Any network objecting to this would need their scruples testing, when this should be weighed up against the increase in incremental sales & esteem they could gain & hold amongst affiliate peers which would transcend to other programs on their network. Just think about it for a moment!
You may ask, then why doesn’t the network simply do the whole branding themselves. Well who says some don’t do this already through mates or their selected cartel of affiliates with kickbacks. At least with what I propose it’s transparent & again the wealth is shared.
This solution in my book will clearly demonstrate which networks, merchants & agencies truly have any sincerity to what is a very workable solution. What traction this idea developes into, I cannot predict, but the opportunity is there to do the right thing for content affiliates & the industry as a whole, with the ball firmly served into their court.
There you go my fellow peers. The proposed solution to brand bidding groups & sharing the wealth amongst the true content affiliates.
Any additional advantages you feel this offers please offer a comment, so that we can get this solution rolling. And any volunteers please feel welcome to put your name forward. Any merchants interested in trialling this concept can email me “moose [at] mooseontheloose.co.uk” or PM me through the forum where my handle / username is “Qui Gon Jinn“
