If your affiliates resort to brand bidding, they might deprive you of some part of your income. Read this article to find out how to prevent losses!
If you launch an affiliate program, you should be ready to face an unpleasant fact: some of its members might turn out to be malicious actors. To earn more money, they might intentionally break your partnership agreements. You’ll be losing a part of your revenue and your brand reputation might get undermined. Read this article to find out how to detect nefarious affiliates and what to do with them!
Compose a Detailed Affiliate Agreement
People who sign this document should understand from the onset what they aren’t allowed to do:
- Bid on branded keywords
- Appear on branded keywords
- Link directly to your website
- Use your brand name or specified misspellings in the ad title or the ad copy
Inform them in advance that if they violate the rules of your agreement, you’ll sanction them.
Set Up Your Monitoring
It’s impossible to carry out high-quality monitoring manually. Automated AI-powered tools are essential for this purpose, such as BluePear. Here is what it can do for you:
- Track your branded search queries 24/7 across all device types and geographical locations
- Generate reports with screenshots to prove the facts of wrongdoing
- Help you save a lot of money
To assess the amount of losses that this tool can help you prevent, use a handy calculator on the main page of https://bluepear.net/. Probably, the numbers will impress you.
BluePear is incredibly easy to use. To get started, you only need to inform the manager about the required:
- Keywords
- Search engines
- Devices
- Geographical locations
If you lack keywords, the BluePear manager will compose a list for you. Plus, this professional will take care of the set-up. You won’t have to deal with the technical aspects yourself or integrate the new tool with those that you already use.
The cost of using BluePear will depend on the frequency of monitoring and the number of keywords.
Filter the Detected Violations
When analyzing the reports, you’ll probably discover that two types of actors benefit from brand bidding:
- Those who signed an affiliate agreement with you
- Those who didn’t
You won’t be able to do anything with the second group. By appearing on your branded keywords, they don’t break any rules.
But you can and should reach out to the representatives of the first group to discuss the situation.
Get in Touch with Your Affiliates
Before you launch your affiliate marketing program, draft a sanctions system for those who don’t obey your rules, for instance:
- Issue a warning to whom you catch violating your rules for the first time
- Reduce the commission to those who keep acting maliciously after the warning
- Remove from the program those participants who refuse to obey
Don’t break off your relationships with the affiliates who did something wrong for the first time. There is a chance that they genuinely misinterpreted the rules of your collaboration. Find time to talk to them immediately after you discover what they did. Explain the consequences to them and inform them about the fact that they won’t remain unnoticed.