FEATURE
If the regulators can see a correlation between good reviews and large placement fees , that could be a problem . Just saying .
However , on the whole , affiliates play a very straight game . They create a website , add content , do their SEO , get traffic and hopefully pass converting traffic on to operators .
Very few affiliates do social media marketing and data capture , such as build mailing lists , so on the whole they will not fall under the GDPR legislation .
In my view , as long as affiliates don ’ t overtly mislead customers , they will not fall foul of the GC guidelines on social responsibility .
In short , I think Sky Bet ’ s argument about risks with affiliates is overblown and an excuse for cutting substantial costs . Now that we ’ ve covered some of the background of the Sky Bet affiliate programme closure , let ’ s look at why closing their affiliate program is such a major misjudgement .
Organisations such as Sky Bet are of a size that stops them spending substantial money on anything that doesn ’ t have clear accountability . Therefore , they will never take organic search truly seriously because they will never know how much money it makes them .
However , as an affiliate who gets business through organic search , you ’ ve accepted the ambiguity of ‘ not provided ’. This simple fact means you ’ re prepared to commit far more relative investment in SEO .
No operator can go there If you think of search engines as questionand-answer machines , the questions people ask are ‘ search queries ’ with different search queries having different intent . So , it ’ s reasonable to say that anyone who wants to research a brand to make a comparison will want websites that can in some way compare one operator against another .
Returning to this whole idea about misleading marketing , it would be
In an ideal world , where organic search had the same accountability as paid media , what I ’ m about to talk about would be part of mainstream consciousness .
However , as we know , if you can ’ t track ‘ it ’, then ‘ it ’ is just hypothesis .
Back in 2011 , Google released a report on something they called a zero moment of truth ( ZMOT ). In this report they said 88 % of consumers research before they buy , consulting an average of 10.4 sources of information .
Half of the 5,000 respondents searched online with a search engine to get information before buying . For comparison , 18 % became a friend / brand follower via social media before buying . Additionally , 54 % of the respondents comparison-shopped for products online . Upshot : even back in 2011 , which feels like an age ago , most people used search engines as their main ‘ jump point ’ to get information to make a decision about a purchase .
“ Very few affi liates do social media marketing and data capture , such as build mailing lists , so on the whole they will not fall under the GDPR legislation ”
Death of the SEO business case For years , I ’ ve constantly said that organic search is more powerful and influencing than people realise .
Since Google moved of its users across to secure search — therefore hiding search query data — there is no easy way for a brand to categorically state that organic search makes them ‘ X ’ amount of money .
In business , if you don ’ t have clear accountability , it ’ s very difficult to get budgets .
A good parallel to organic search is public relations , where a business accepts that public relations is important , but is unlikely to spend substantial amounts of marketing money on it compared to paid media .
SEO was once a ‘ marketing channel ’ with clear ROI numbers . A brand would treat it just like paid media . Now , SEO is more like PR . It ’ s a thing every brand should do , but not spend too much money on because no one knows whether it ’ s actually profitable . implausible for an operator to build a credible comparison website where they rate themselves number one against everyone else .
Of course , you ’ re going to cite Oddschecker and Sky Bet being owned by News Corp , but if you look at Oddschecker carefully you will see that Sky Bet has no more prominence than any other operator .
My point : there are huge territories on the organic search landscape where operators can never go .
To recap :
● ●operators are getting nervous about affiliates
● ●operators can ’ t put a good business case together for organic search
● ●operators can ’ t have prominence in ‘ comparison searches ’
Power of search Let ’ s look at why Sky Bet or any other operator would be very unwise to kill its affiliate programme .
More data In 2014 , according to Retailing Today , 60 % of consumers start their research on a search engine ( what a surprise !). And according to Econsultancy , 61 % of shoppers read reviews before making a purchase .
Retailing Today tells us that consumers visited at least three online stores before making their purchase and that 66 % of shoppers looked at warranty information , 52 % pricing , 51 % model information … and so on .
MineWhat . com produced a report saying 81 % of shoppers conducted online research before buying .
Upshot : this data tells us the obvious : people use search engines to make buying decisions .
Search , trust and influence This is an area which interests me a lot … I ’ ve always found public relations fascinating and I feel that organic search is going the way of PR . In other words it ’ s something every brand should do , not just to get traffic but to use as a way of influencing purchases .
Every year the PR company Edelman publishes its Trust Barometer report . It ’ s a huge piece of work that they ’ ve produced since 2001 .
36 iGB Affiliate Issue 65 OCT / NOV 2017