Brand protection is crucial for affiliate marketing. Read this article to get to know how to provide it to your brand.
If you’re planning to launch an affiliate marketing program, you should think in advance about how to protect your brand. Unfortunately, not all affiliate partners are reliable, so it would be wise to take preventive measures. Tips from this article will help you preserve your right over your intellectual property and maximize your revenue.
Register Your Trademark
Before doing so, avoid showing your brand name and logo in public. Some entrepreneurs follow this logic: “My business is small and hardly anyone knows about it. Who can be potentially interested in stealing my intellectual property?”.
In fact, criminals are incredibly creative. This is an example of the simplest scheme: someone steals your brand name and logo and registers the trademark sooner than you. You’ll invest time and funds in promoting your brand… just to find out over time that you can’t keep using it!
Your trademark will be registered in the area where you run your business. It will ensure that you’re the only person who is legally allowed to use your brand properties.
Consider securing other elements of your intellectual property too, such as registering your tagline trademark or protecting your color mark.
Compose a Non-Disclosure Agreement
To be precise, you might need several versions of the non-disclosure agreement. Each version will be targeted at a particular group of people whom you’ll be interacting with: from web developers to affiliate marketers, from suppliers to outsourced product managers. This document guarantees that no one will be allowed to borrow your business idea and make money from it.
Be Picky When Selecting Your Affiliates
To carry out the pre-screening, create a detailed customized affiliate sign-up form. Here are a few examples of lines that it can include:
- Last name
- First name
- Date of birth
- Country
- Province
- City
- Address
- ZIP code
- Phone number
- Accounts in messengers (indicate those messengers that are popular in your area)
- Links to social network profiles
- Preferred payment systems
- Bank name
- Beneficiary name
- Account number
- SWIFT
- IBAN
- Expected traffic
- Demographics of the audience that will be attracted
Only genuinely committed candidates will be likely to fill in such a form.
Then, conduct a video interview with each candidate who produces a good impression on you. Prepare a set of questions and ask them to each candidate. Immediately after each interview, put down its results in an Excel spreadsheet — it will serve as a perfect foundation for comparing candidates.
Write Down Your Terms and Conditions
Ask each affiliate candidate to glance through this document before signing the contract with you. Inform people about their future obligations and responsibilities.
A pro tip: even if you’re planning to offer your goods and services only within your homeland, some of your affiliates might be foreigners. Formulate your terms in a simple language that anyone can understand.
Communicate With Your Affiliates
Regular communication will allow you to achieve these goals:
- Motivate your affiliates to work harder and make them feel a part of the team
- Get to know them better
- Help them establish a stronger connection with your brand and promote it more efficiently
Any communication channel can suit this purpose:
- Your dedicated affiliate website
- Messengers
- Social networks
- Phone
Inform the affiliates about the upcoming sales and product highlights. Personally welcome newcomers to the program.
Let your affiliates provide feedback to you. Run surveys and encourage them to freely express their opinions in any format that they find opportune. This information can inspire you for improving your collaboration. The affiliates will realize that you value them.
Use Dedicated Tools
If some of your affiliates turn into malicious actors, it might be hard for you to detect it. However, if you automate the process, it will be much easier for you to prevent losses.
Let’s have a look at a scheme that is popular among unscrupulous affiliates:
- You prohibit webmasters from driving contextual traffic to your brand
- Affiliates start bidding on branded keywords
- You end up paying them for your own organic traffic
To hide their actions, such affiliates tend to resort to cloaking, day-parting and geo-targeting tactics. Only automated 24/7 monitoring can help you combat this scheme.
Bluepear.net is one of the most efficient tools that you can employ for this purpose. It was built to enable brands to track their positions on listing websites and protect them against brand bidding. It’s an AI-powered solution that over 150 happy customers have already relied on. In total, it has helped them to save over $1 million.
To join BluePear, it’s enough to send a request through the official website. A dedicated manager will set up this tool for you, so you won’t need to do anything yourself. The cost of using BluePear will depend on the number of keywords and the frequency of monitoring. You’ll appreciate the convenience and performance of this solution.
