Can’t We All Just Get Along?

Internal search engine marketing teams and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Firms using PPC (Pay per click marketing) may be adversely hurting affiliating marketing. The uphill battle for affiliates and their managers is consistently growing as search becomes more popular and more search firms come to fruition. Internal search marketing teams almost always argue in favor of limiting affiliate search activities. Similarly, hired search engine optimization firms are looking to impress the company that pays their bills. Therefore, some firms tend to recommend guidelines that may hinder the company’s affiliates from performing. Both lines of thinking may be hurting the whole company’s bottom line. This is an age-old debate that needs to be seriously addressed. Why? This debate is potentially causing enormous untold profits to be lost for companies. In today’s article I will touch on how the internal search teams and seo firms may be putting a strain on the affiliate marketing world. Furthermore, I will offer reasonable suggestions to help get your affiliates back in the game.

First, internal search engine marketing teams using PPC may be hurting contemporary affiliate marketing. Companies with in-house search marketing teams are always battling with the affiliate team. Sound familiar? The search engine team is trying to show how much revenue and profits they have produced for the quarter. In the other cubicle, the affiliate team is trying to get as many quality affiliates to run traffic to their properties. The catch is that they are competing in the same space. Merchants are quick to side on the search engine team by not allowing affiliates to 1. Bid on trademark terms 2. Set maximum bid prices 3. Only offer a strict keyword list. These companies are potentially missing out on building solid affiliate partnerships. Simply, by synchronizing the two may bring the company more revenue and profitability in the long run.

Second, SEO Firms are hired to help drive more pay per click and organic search engine optimization. They may persuade the decision makers not to allow their current affiliates to bid on trademark terms or allow them to bid in the same pay per click space. How convenient, since that produces more competition and hurts their overall image to the company who hired them. If your company is thinking of hiring a search engine firm to help with your search strategy, be sure to be present in the meetings. Encouraging testing of affiliates and PPC results should be the topic. Then the company can get an overall view of the two teams working together to increase the bottom line.

For example…

Let’s say your paying affiliates .80c and your return on investment is a dollar so you’re making 20% on the campaign by opening it up to affiliates. Your in-house search team is able to generate leads at an effective cpa of .50c there by increasing your margin to 50%

How does this benefit the company overall?

Your in-house team is able to generate 10,000 leads a month and your affiliates are able to generate 30,000 leads a month.

The net profit on your in-house/consulting team is 10,000 * 50c = $5,000
The net profit from your affiliate efforts is 30,000 * .20c = $6,000

So, while your margin is greater with your in-house efforts the net profit is actually higher from affiliates. In addition, by employing affiliate marketing on search you more than doubled your net profit and helped push the competition away from valuable keywords

Below are some simple suggestions to mention at your meetings. After interviewing large merchants about their thoughts on affiliates paid search activities, some of the suggestions below are cited from an article authored by Fredrick Marcikini. Fredrick is the founder and CEO of the pay per click marketing firm iProspect. Again, all of the suggestions should be tested rigoursly before making any solid policies for your affiliates.

· Affiliates extend your paid search advertising budget by promoting your brand with you in the same space.
· Competing with affiliates on the same keywords is valuable because they help you dominate the page.
· If your affiliates are restricted from paid search advertising, they’ll simply switch teams and bid for the same keywords on behalf of your competition.
· Encourage your search team that you will help find and terminate affiliates allowing any cloaking, "doorway page generators" – showing one version of a page to a user, and a different version to another user.

· Do not tolerate Duplicate or fake content – Affiliates that are copying your  content.

· Help seek and destroy Page Scraping – Affiliates that are copying other websites content word for word.

Companies investing in affiliate programs and pay per click marketing should discuss issues from a global company view. The goal is to control which sites appear in the search engines and in advertisements. Why take the chance and allow your competitors to advertise in the same space, when your affiliates will help you? The only way to prove that working together can increase the bottom line is to test it. However, working in harmony with smart affiliates and the search engine/consulting team just might result in more net profits.