In the world of digital marketing, teamwork is the key to success. Yet, it is common for affiliate and in-house teams to be unaware of each other's activities. In such a case, effective collaboration is impossible. When uncoordinated, they start to compete with the ppc team and CPCs go up. Also, their campaigns may contradict each other which leads to brand reputation risks. Such mixed messages mislead potential users and reduce their confidence in the product.
In this article, we will explore how to prevent traffic cannibalization and foster teamwork. Also, we will explain why brand search monitoring is essential both for marketing teams, including both affiliate specialists and ppc managers.
Coordinate your marketing team
There are some basic rules to follow if you want to work in synergy with affiliates:
Schedule regular meetings. Get your ppc managers to talk to your affiliate specialists at least every two weeks. Before each meeting, clearly outline the topics to be discussed, so that the marketing team can focus on the agenda. Stay flexible with the format and frequency of meetings based on the real priorities and needs of the brand.
Encourage collaboration. Reinforce the idea that both ppc managers and affiliates have the common marketing goal. So, they should apply complementary strategies in their work. For example, if the paid search specialists struggle to reach the audience through search channels, then the affiliate team should step in to make up for the shortfall in traffic.
Share useful information. Affiliate specialists and ppc managers can share non-obvious insights about the target audience that the team noticed when analyzing the advertising campaign data. Also, provide each other with updates on any changes that may impact search engine advertising or the affiliate program. This could include changes to products or services, market trends, or competitor activity.
But let’s be realistic: it is not that easy to establish effective communication between affiliate specialists and ppc managers from the in-house marketing team. They may have different schedules, motives, and approaches to work. Also, even if you have regular meetings every two weeks, a lot may happen during the gap between those meetings.
That’s when brand search monitoring tools come to the rescue. For example, BluePear monitors your branded search 24/7 and provides you with automatically collected reports. Using brand search monitoring software helps both affiliate specialists and paid search specialists to stay aware of the actions and strategies of CPA partners and competitors.
Avoid traffic cannibalization
What is the meaning of traffic cannibalization? It is a situation when both ppc managers and affiliate specialists use branded keywords. As a result, organic leads are converted through paid channels which leads to the brand losing money.
Now that we know the meaning of traffic cannibalization, let’s learn how to avoid it:
• Prohibit the use of branded keywords in paid ads for your affiliates. This way, you can protect your brand’s search engine advertising. You will avoid traffic cannibalization and reach potential customers through your in-house marketing campaigns. If you do not prevent your affiliates from brand bidding, it may lead to them competing with your own ppc managers. Also, CPCs will go up, CTR will become lower, and you will overpay for already attracted customers.
• Exclude your top placements in Display with low CPAs from Affiliate Display. If certain placements are performing well through in-house direct display campaigns, then giving affiliates permission to use the same advertising spaces may lead to traffic cannibalization. This increased competition may drive up advertising costs for the company.
• Let your affiliate specialists use the keywords that do not perform well in your search engine advertising. There is a chance that your affiliates could do better on those keywords due to their content. Monitor metrics such as click-through rates, conversion rates, and overall ROI to evaluate the effectiveness of such a campaign.
• Don't use coupon sites without voucher tracking with dedicated affiliate codes. So that you will pay only for their last click sales that contain those codes. This way, you can avoid the scenario where affiliate specialists receive credit for sales that were influenced by other marketing channels.
After applying those techniques, you will need to monitor your brand search to make sure that affiliates follow the rules. Automated brand search monitoring software will save time for your marketing team and cover all the possible queries. With a brand search monitoring tool, you will always know if your ppc managers compete with the affiliate specialists for traffic.
Wrapping up
Mutual understanding between affiliate and in-house marketing teams helps avoid traffic cannibalization, which significantly impacts digital marketing results. Brand search monitoring is a valuable tool for paid search specialists and affiliates, helping in achieving optimal outcomes in their work, especially when combined with paid search affiliate monitoring.
