Here at CJ Affiliate we continue to seek growth in the trademark bidding sector. For those not yet familiar with the practice, trademark bidding is the use of third party search engines, such as Google or Bing, to show text and banner ads via their sites, while bidding on trademarks of other companies to drive traffic to their ads.
With the right strategies and policies in place, brands harness the power of CJ's affiliate network. We recently spoke with Tim Katlic, Head of Marketing at Savings.com, about trademark bidding. Read on for best practices between advertisers and publishers:
CJ: What should an advertiser look for when choosing a trademark plus (TM+) partner?
Tim
In general, it is ideal to have two to four publishers, as it provides the right balance of performance and ease of management. Any more than four search partners becomes cumbersome, especially from a compliance and communication perspective.
At the same time, an advertiser needs enough ad "real estate" covered on the search results page to capture the most search traffic possible. With just the right number of ads on a page, customers find the best deals available without feeling overwhelmed or getting annoyed by a poor user-experience.
Advertisers should choose partners with strong reputations for efficiently driving sales. A clean landing page, accurate deal promotion, and a responsive team help advertisers reach their goals. The right partner will offer a combination of both strong conversion rate and the ability to drive sales via all types of devices (computer, tablet, and mobile).
CJ: How can an advertiser work with their account manager to keep realistic expectations?
TK
A sound search program is essential to creating a level playing field. While establishing a search program, there will be some back-and-forth between advertiser, account manager, and publishers. The advertiser and account manager must work together to create a process to save headaches down the road.
Once the search program starts, there will likely be an incremental boost in sales and new customers, but the amounts may vary. The nature of active promotions (i.e. discount amounts, availability of a promo code) dictates how well users engage with paid ads. Search ads (e.g. a 20 percent off site wide discount code) often have better click-through and conversion rates than ads only leading to a "10 percent off with newsletter signup" deal.
Stay tuned as we continue our interview with Tim and find out the steps to take to ensure publisher compliance as well as other best practices around trademark bidding.
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