Photo- edited- courtesy of “BrianBurk9” (Flickr, Creative Commons License)
Some folks may remember the classic brand failure in 1985 when one of the world’s most recognized brands, Coke, introduced “New Coke” in an effort to compete with Pepsi’s sweeter taste. This strategy failed miserably; while the New Coke was definitely sweeter, Coca-Cola had underestimated the power of its brand and customer loyalty. Simply put you can’t tell the world you have the “real thing” and then introduce a “new real thing.” This marketing blunder not only lost the trust of many loyal Coke drinkers but delivered an inconsistent message.
Merchants spend a great deal of money building their brand but don’t always realize a robust AvantLink affiliate program can support and enhance their brand. Some marketing professionals may fear that an affiliate program means giving up brand control but at AvantLink it means taking control!
Building a strong brand takes time and there are many different theories and strategies regarding the steps on how best to build it but most experts would agree on three basic rules:
- Establish Trust with your customer, provide a valuable product or service and prove yourself to be the expert in your field, and more importantly, deliver what you say you will.
- Have a Consistent Message –Logos, tag line, font, color. All big brands have a style guide and a creative department that strictly adheres to the company brand standards.
- Increase Your Visibility – Traditional media, conferences, social media, blogging, online advertising can increase brand awareness but few merchants totally appreciate the power of affiliate marketing and how much it can expand your reach.
AvantLink is a “brand guardian” for merchants and provides them with a solution to controlling their brand with banners and javascript-based text ads that dynamically update. Imagine having the power to change a logo or a promotion on hundreds of affiliate websites by quickly uploading a new image to an existing banner ad. Dynamically updating banner ads is a simple yet effective strategy, and merchants can rest assured that the creative on affiliate sites is compliant with their brand specs.
Merchants can Trust that whatever their message, or how often it needs to be changed, AvantLink’s dynamic banners can update in an instant assuring campaigns will begin and end on time.
Merchants can control their creative so they are assured their brand and messages are Consistent across all the affiliate websites and that affiliates are using the correct, most up-to-date creative.
Most importantly, merchants can Increase Their Visibility through affiliates who supply millions of impressions for their brand at literally no cost due to affiliate marketing’s pay only for performance model. Many merchants recognize the value of increasing the visibility of their brand by using an affiliate program.
AvantLink is the perfect tool for maintaining, protecting and building a brand and merchants who understand the power of affiliate marketing move their affiliate program to the top of their marketing plan.