Recently, I wrote in my little blog here, that brand advertisers need to start listening to Missy Ward, the founder of Affiliate Summit. I pointed out that despite the schism in the two camps, the brand world is looking more and more into working with affiliate marketers and wanting to learn from them. One of the most important points was that Affiliate Marketers tend to be innovative and know how to connect with audiences to develop results. Thanks to thousands of people who read that post, I received a lot of inquiries into how brand marketers could work with affiliate companies. 

So here are three ways I’d like to work with brand marketers through our affiliate system, in ways that would both create branding plus have a verifiable back-end ROI.

1)    Coupon Downloads. I would love to work with someone like Wendy’s in order to do downloadable coupons off the internet, and get paid on a CPA specifically on this. Millions of people could be driven to a micro-site about perhaps Wendy’s new breakfast items, and then download a coupon and print from the site in order to actually use. Being paid on each downloaded/printed coupon would allow the agency to know that there was a real interest in the product, not just random traffic sent to the site. The nice thing about coupons is that they could also track the actual use of them in stores and how many people actually ended up getting that product based on the coupon.

2)    Trailer Views on Site. We’ve all seen the trailer plays on AOL & Myspace (amongst others) for movies we aren’t very much interested in. The movie companies are often paying big bucks for each time a view is played, regardless of the interest of the actual person. I’m not a huge fan of these, partially because I’m generally not interested in that specific movie, or that I’m trying to read an article and suddenly a voice over of “in a world where there is no hope, there is a man with a really big…” comes up while I’m reading about the Michael Jackson coming back from the grave.  Here’s a better idea: I’ll drive people to your movie site, and then only pay me for people who actually request to view the entire trailer and then view it. You’ll spend a bit more money per play, but you’ll know that those people are really, really interested.

3)    Brochure Requests. While this would work for any product, I can imagine a higher end product like Bose Stereo this working really well for them. I’d be tickled pink if they’d hire me to drive traffic to a micro-site, where people would have to go through a small demonstration of how the system works and then on the back end fill out a brochure request form. This would allow them to collect users data, call them or send them information via email where to buy it. Additionally, then after the request, could easily give them the information on the screen where to purchase, plus links. 

These are only three possible scenarios – I actually have a dozen or so new ideas since writing this, and would love to talk to more brand marketers about this. If you have been trying to get a new client, keep an old one, or just want to be innovative, Affiliate marketing is the place to start. Feel free to email me at pace@mediabreakaway.com and I’ll be glad to help you with your next campaign.