A big part of my job is educating search marketers on the potential to drive growth with affiliate marketing. I come up against frequent misconceptions you may carry yourself:
3 Search Misconceptions About Affiliate Marketing Debunked
- Affiliate cannibalizes attribution.
- Affiliate steals clicks from brand properties and drives up CPC.
- Affiliate coupons cut into margin without adding incremental value.
If any of those sound familiar, I’m delighted for the chance to shed some light on a channel that can help you gain market share and drive incremental (and profitable) growth at a time when those are all at a premium.
3 Search Misconceptions About Affiliate Marketing Debunked
Let’s tackle the above myths one at a time.
3 Search Misconceptions About Affiliate Marketing Debunked
Misconception 1: Affiliate steals brand clicks and drives up CPC
This is the biggest and most immediate hurdle I tend to identify with search marketers, so it’s a good place to start. Search marketers tend to see affiliate links as enemies that drive up CPCs on competitive keywords.
3 Search Misconceptions About Affiliate Marketing Debunked
The truth
There are a couple of ways to break down this misconception:
3 Search Misconceptions About Affiliate Marketing Debunked
From a paid perspective, affiliate teams can and should be willing to work with their paid search partners to put measures in place to keep both parties happy.
3 Search Misconceptions About Affiliate Marketing Debunked
This often starts with the affiliate team providing the paid search team with a list of terms on which they can take any of three actions:
3 Search Misconceptions About Affiliate Marketing Debunked
- Approve the terms for affiliate use.
- Flag the terms where they want the affiliate team to apply bid caps that won’t drive up costs.
- Remove the terms from the affiliate list altogether.
Once the teams align on that strategy, search teams often realize they have more control than they previously thought, and it’s often easier to collaborate on the common goal: growing market share through a strategic approach to the SERP.
What we often find is that there’s a ton of unmined opportunity to work with affiliate partners…
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