An open letter to affiliate managers and merchants How to get me promoting you

Author: Keith

27 May

Those of you who work with me and a few of you that don’t are probably aware that my main area is fashion, as you may appreciate there are a lot of fashion merchants out there and its a often a case of me picking the easy options when choosing what to write about, if I have content about a merchant I am more likely to give them prominence than if I have to do my own research and totally write articles from scratch.

Don’t get me wrong I am not against writing stuff from the ground up and probably between 6 and 12 articles daily are all my own work.

So what do I require to push your programme?

In a word CONTENT!!!

Unique content is best and it will push you to the top of the pile, I have a wonderful agency person who sends me 3 unique articles a week for one of the merchants she looks after, consequently 3 articles a week get published for that merchant.

So what kind of stuff am I looking for?

Well the answer is absolutely anything fashion related, short articles work best for me in the 150 – 200 word region.

One article will get you exposure, one a month gets you regular exposure, one a week… etc you get the picture.

Tell me and my users about your brands, your ranges, your new stuff, your best sellers, your clearance department, celebrities that use your products, media attention they have gained, anything really, it is all useful.

If you send me unique content I will use it.

If you send me generic content I may use it.

If you send me nothing I don’t have a starting point.

What else can you do?

Let me know when your products have been on TV or in the papers and magazines, the fresher the better, I got a heads up about a range of products that were featured on a Channel 4 programme recently, so I wrote a short piece about them, it wasn’t fashion incidentally but a health product which I could use on the main fashion site, from the moment I published they literally started flying off the shelves and I know for a fact a lot more publishers than me benefited, as the product was not unique to one merchant, a few more sales were diverted in the direction of the one I promoted thanks to being guided by the agency looking after them.

I have just realised it is a year as of yesterday that I wrote about this very same subject How To Push My Buttons And Get Me To Promote Your Wares just shows not a lot has changed.

A big thank you to everyone who sends me content, has already sent me content and is about to send me content.

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Filed under: General, Good Practices

8 Responses for "An open letter to affiliate managers and merchants How to get me promoting you"

Mark Boyd (2 comments.) May 27th, 2009 at 10:02 pm 1
Good Post Keith.

Ive never actually been given content by a merchant. Having spoken to Hannah from Existem AM for just 20 minutes on MSN she was already offering me content, so my eyes/ears are now open to the idea!

Mark
hero (6 comments.) May 30th, 2009 at 9:55 am 2
with all due respect, Keith, although I know exactly where you’re coming from and I appreciate that you need the AMs to help you help them, I think this is a bit OTT.
First of all, can you imagine the merchant/AM having to create unique content for all their affiliates? My money is that it won’t be unique for long. And, yes, I’m sure they could do this for their top affiliates, but, let’s be honest, it’s not their top affiliates asking for the content usually.

Second, ok, they’ve written things for you – does that guarantee that a)it’s actually good content b)it’s relevant to your users c)it has SEO in mind? I’m pretty sure it’ll take you twice as long to address these things before you use it. Exclusive customer deals are also applicable here.

Third, and take my word for this, merchants get extremely frustrated when they put the effort in and provide unique content, only for it to not be used or not make any difference to the positioning offered. It takes only a couple of disappointments for merchants to give up.

Four, you always come across certain affiliates who you approach to recruit on the program and they tell you they are interested, but only if they get x, y, z from them (deals, content, tools, commission, privileges) – do they really think a merchant will give all that for someone who hasn’t sent them one click? Unless it’s a site they either recognise the name (and we’re talking big publishers here) or it’s a site they asked you to approach, chances are slim you’ll get what you ask for. Negotiation gets easier if you have shown your potential.

Five, and I love this bit – you send info on what is selling well, on offline promotions, on offline advertising, on absolutely anything an affiliate should need to write a brief copy, but you send it to all the affiliates. It’s not used, because you haven’t “bothered” to send it to your 50 content affiliates separately…

I’m not addressing these comments specifically at you, obviously, it’s more on a generic level, and mostly targetting new affiliates who a lot of times expect all the work to be done for them – I think all the ready-made tools out there have given them the wrong idea of how to succeed in this industry.

I think I’m also in a moaning mode this morning
Keith May 30th, 2009 at 10:12 am 3
Thanks for your input Hero.

Basically my post was borne out of frustration too, I get a plethora of emails asking why I don’t promote xxxx merchant, why I haven’t made a sale etc, half the time I can’t even remember signing up for said programmes.

When it comes to writing content myself I tend to stick to merchants I know I can make sales with rather than taking a shot in the dark at something which for me has an unproven track record.
hero (6 comments.) May 31st, 2009 at 12:21 pm 4
sure, I appreciate that, but if you’ve never promoted a merchant, it’s you who has the unproven track record for them, not the merchant.
All merchants, for all types of marketing activity (ppc, seo, email marketing, discounts etc) need to be tested at some point, otherwise you won’t know if they will work for you. I can tell you what has worked for other affiliates, but is that good enough indication that it will do the same for you?
Keith May 31st, 2009 at 12:52 pm 5
Catch 22 situation Hero, I would dearly love to promote every single merchant, however time is a finite resource, so often gems get missed, I suspect this is the case at both sides of the fence.
Graham Keen (2 comments.) June 1st, 2009 at 10:02 am 6
Yeah it certainly is catch 22. I totally agree with Hero’s points – like affiliates, merchant time is at a premium. Whilst a great idea it is very difficult to put this sort of thing into practice, especially with unproven affiliate sites.
Joe Connor (6 comments.) June 2nd, 2009 at 12:09 am 7
Interesting to read Graham and Hero’s responses. Keith is spot on from my POV – I’m constantly badgered to promote merchants – and I do, often from scratch but as Keith mentioned it’s the simple things – tell us when you’re in the media and if celebs are involved even better, share the basic info with all your affiliates and the savvy ones will pick up the ball and run with it, it’s a lot easier than starting from scratch and has a much better chance of success for both affiliate and merchant.
Graham Keen (2 comments.) June 2nd, 2009 at 6:51 am 8
Hi Joe, I totally agree with constantly sharing info and letting affiliates run with it – it’s creating lots of bespoke stuff for a new affiliate that takes all the time, with no guaranteed coverage or success.