ReveNews
Affiliate Marketing Lacks A Brand - Needs A New Name
Last week I wrote a piece over at MarketingProfs Daily Fix entitled ‘What is affiliate marketing’s brand?’ I posted there because, frankly, I wanted to go outside our playing field and see what other marketers thought. Nobody writes about affiliate marketing over there.
What I found out was two-fold, and I suppose not surprising.
1. Most marketers, not in affiliate marketing, don’t know what affiliate marketing is even still.
2. My question was flawed because of #1. Since they didn’t know what it is, they’ve never really experienced it, so to them, affiliate marketing has no brand.
We have a bit of a problem here. I’m to blame as much as anyone else having worked in this industry since 2002. We’re not getting our industry noticed enough. Sure, we do our work here at ReveNews, and Lisa with Revenue Mag as a huge push forward, and a few other blogs and sites here and there… but…
Our marketing brothers and sisters still don’t believe we’re family. And even worse, non-marketers hear the word affiliate and either fall asleep or run away scared from confusion.
What’s the answer? Education of course, and we’re doing that, but what else can we do?
I’ve been thinking about this for years in the back of my head and I have only one thought on the matter, maybe you have more, feel free to list them below.
We need to get rid of the phrase affiliate marketing? Even performance marketing isn’t good enough. We need a sexy brand name.
The “estate tax” didn’t get any press until it was rebranded the “death tax”, right?
If Performance Marketing is not sexy enough, how about “Marketing on steroids”? hehe or “Innovation Marketing”, but that is also not sexy.
Good words are usually less sexy than bad ones.
I don’t think that the rebranding of “estate tax” to “death tax” made it any more “popular”.
That is the tricky part, “Sexy” AND positive. You don’t want to create a negative hype, don’t you?!
> I don’t think that the rebranding of “estate tax” to “death tax” made it any more “popular”.
I disagree there - it made the concept a lot more consumable and relatable.
Everybody experiences death, but who thinks of the assets tied to it as an estate? I think that term connotes wealth, which is certainly not as common as death.
Back to the message at hand, I’m not sure how plausible it is to rebrand an industry, though it could be a good thing.
After all, plenty of laymen, when I describe the concept to them, think it’s MLM, but I don’t think “affiliate” is to blame.
I agree with Beth and some others who make the comparison to Direct Marketing in the Offline World.
See comments to my post Affiliates are not an extended Sales Force from August.
I’ve always said that affiliate marketing is putting banners on a website (ala 1999 or Web 0.5)
What we do is PERFORMANCE MARKETING!!!
Jim, you must admit that performance marketing looks a bit sexier if spelled all upper case, don’t you
Might I suggest some sexier brand terms. Extended Marketers, Traffic Interlopers, Adwhore Pimps or just plain old “Incentive Marketing”
You know, maybe it’s the “marketing” part of the phrase, after much thought.
I like incentive better than affiliate. I always explain affiliate marketing to people as virtual salesmen who work on commission. That always makese sense to people, always.
Salesmen marketing? lol, dunno.
Hey Jim, did you read the post I referred to?
I don’t know what you do, but I am certainly not doing any sales.
I suck at Sales. I couldn’t sell a glass of water to a starving man in the desert. It is not one of my strenghts, so what I am doing can’t be Sales then.
I rather be a Traffic Interloper or Adwhore Pimp than a Sales man
I like Performance Marketing or even Virtual Marketing. Both have to be explained, though, to almost everyone. I like your explanation, Jim, since it’s concise and one that everyone can understand.
Putting on my history buff hat here . . . Many groups are essentially named by their detractors. When the name sticks, though, what was originally intended as a negative eventually becomes embraced as a positive (or at least it’s no longer viewed as a derrogatory term) by a majority of society. Historic examples include Christians in the first century, capitalists in the eighteenth century, Democrats and Republicans in the ninteenth century, and even geeks in the twentieth century.
I’m just glad we’re not called Cyber Marketers. Hey, they could say we do Geek Marketing. I kind of like that one. I may have to put that on my business cards.
Just in case, I picked up…
PERFORMANCEMARKETINGSUMMIT.COM
PERFORMANCESUMMIT.COM
So go ahead and change it now.
Shawn, did you also pick up PerformerTip.com?
Actually that brings up the question, if we change Affiliate Marketing to Performance Marketing, what do we call Affiliates or the Affiliate then? Performers and Performer?
How about Second Life Marketing? Wayne? Aehm… no that name is already taken.. mmmh.
Affiliate Programs are also called “Partner Programme” = “Partner Programs” in Germany.
May be we should call it “Partner Marketing” for classic Rev Share Affiliate Marketing and “Performance Marketing” for the CPL/CPA Marketing.
I think that this is closer to the truth and the words even highlight the core concept behind each of them and also separates the two and ends the discussion about which affiliate is a threat for which affiliate where everybody talks about a different type of affiliate and assumes that everybody else is talking about the same.
Shawn, Ok, I’ve officially changed it. Poof!
Seriously though, it doesn’t matter what we want to call it, it matters what makes sense to those on the outside… so that they can easily understand what it is we do.
Otherwise, how can the brand grow without the extra exposure and participation? Can it?
I think “performance marketing” is a good way to explain it to someone outside the field but the term is too wide a description - after all, who would say their marketing doesn’t perform?
Although “affiliate” shares a business meaning with television stations and hospitals, in the online space it is clearly defined and understood, among those in the niche.
For my two cents, what’s important is not renaming the practice, but defending it against the claims of its detractors a la capitalism and Christianity.
First off, if the industry wants a brand, it has to stop plastering “search marketing” all over its materials. While it is clearly related to affiliate marketing, I think its been overshadowing the affiliate part. Trying to “include” it en masse makes it look like a bit of a joke, as the search industry dwarfs affiliate marketing.
Second, “performance marketing” is a bit of a joke, as you can run any campaign you want as performance marketing, the difference here is that you’ve pushed the risk component over to affiliates.
So, what you’re left with is essentially CPA marketing.
The challenge with that is, noone seems to be sure of whether or not CPA networks are included in “affiliate marketing”. Most are affiliate networks, so they could be considered as much a part of this as CJ or Linkshare. Hell, they even poach affiliates. So are we including them?
In the end, isn’t the most “valid” description… CPA Marketing? Isn’t anyone who is buying traffic CPA essentially fitting in to our world?
Networks certainly don’t define it, as Amazon has its own tracking. “Affiliates” certainly don’t define the space, so anyone can be an affiliate.
How about CPA Network Marketing?
Or just network marketing?
I think we’re all missing the point here. It’s not what WE want to call it, it’s what we NEED to call it so that the rest of the world understands it.
Like I said, the estate tax never really got any big press until it was coined the death tax. When that happened, every reporter in the biz went hog wild. It’s good reading, good press.
Now, I don’t honestly think this blog post is going to change the term. I’m only hoping for discussion. It’s obvious the rest of the world, even marketers, don’t “get it”.
So we can either just keep letting them not get it and try to educate them, or think about making it easier for them to get.
Easier always works better in my book.
Again, maybe we need to take the word marketing out and start thinking outside of that box. Ask anyone about marketing as a brand, and most will tell you they don’t like marketers.
Or am I too worried about what outsiders think? Not sure, just thinking out loud.
> Or just network marketing?
That’s a synonym for MLM.
“I think we’re all missing the point here. It’s not what WE want to call it, it’s what we NEED to call it so that the rest of the world understands it.”
Who cares about what the rest of the world thinks. It’s affiliate marketing. When you strike gold, you don’t tell everybody about it, let them stay confused
> > Or just network marketing?
>
> That’s a synonym for MLM.
Perfect.
> Perfect.
Are you being facetious, or do you think MLM and affiliate marketing are one in the same?
Carsten: “Jim, you must admit that performance marketing looks a bit sexier if spelled all upper case, don’t you ;)”
Cute…
What we need is a Tag Line then.
Affiliate Marketing: Harness the Power of the Internet through Partnerships
or
Affiliate Marketing: Email Spam and Typosquatting was yesterday
Affiliate Marketing: Search Engine Marketing via Proxy (I know who will love this one)
Affiliate Marketing: Multi-Level Marketing without the Multi
Sorry, too much fun posts this weekend, I could not help it hehe.
How about…
Commission Based Marketing
Commission Based Marketer
That about sums it up and that is how I explain it to those who ask.
Let the revenue from affiliate marketing grow upto a suitable level, the new sexy name would follow immediately. The other best route is pay some consultant like me to rename this process.