The creative conundrum

TAGS: Affiliate marketing | Banners

No affiliate program is complete without a set of good quality creative banners for affiliates to use on their sites. The type and range of creative available for a merchant can vary greatly, and one merchant recently posed the question ‘Are we wasting our time producing creative for affiliates to use?’  Steven Lynch will discuss his thoughts on the best way to manage the creative for your affiliate program.

Last week a merchant posed a question to affiliates over on the A4u Forum asking if they were wasting their time producing creative for affiliates to use. After investing a significant amount of time (and money) into producing a set of new creative banners for their upcoming Father’s Day campaign, they hadn’t seen a huge take up from their affiliates.

Do we need creative banners on our affiliate program?

When you set up your affiliate program, you will need to provide your affiliates with a set of creative banners that they can use. These should at least be generic, logo banners with a strong call to action. I would recommend that you try and provide the following sizes, as these tend to be the most commonly used by affiliates;

• 88x31
• 120x60
• 120x90
• 120x240
• 120x600
• 125x125
• 234x60
• 250x250
• 300x250
• 468x60
• 728x90

Will affiliates use your banners?

Although the post on the A4u forum suggested that there hadn’t been a lot of interest shown in the banners that they had designed for their affiliates to use, there is still value in producing creative for your affiliates.

Take the findings in the latest Econsultancy Affiliate Census 2009, which said that banners were the second most used method (26%) for affiliates to link to their merchants. Only ‘Text’ came higher, and in many cases it is safe to assume that affiliates using text to promote a merchant will do so with creative banners to support what they are saying.

Adding a banner to a page of text can make a difference and enhance the page it appears on, when used correctly. The banner can attract the attention of the reader and encourage them to read the text alongside it, whilst it also provides extra brand exposure for you and increases awareness. Whilst the visitor may not necessarily click through the banner, it can stimulate the visitor’s interest in your product/service and play a part in getting them to visit your site through a text link.

What type of banners should we offer?

As I said earlier at the very least you should provide affiliates with a set of generic banners that promote your brand and main USP’s with a strong call to action. I would also suggest that you refresh these quite regularly, with any other key marketing messages that you might be promoting elsewhere.

You can also compliment your generic banners with seasonal banners, so that affiliates can switch to these during key periods. For example Christmas, Valentines and Mothers Day tend to be key sales periods for many retail merchants, whereas Father’s Day may not necessarily drive a significant increase for some merchants so it could be less worthwhile investing time and money into creating a set of banners for those periods. If an affiliate does want to promote something specific to Father’s Day, produce a banner specifically for them that they can use. This will also show how pro-active you are with your affiliates and demonstrate your commitment to helping them generate sales.

There are many different types of creative banners being offered to affiliates by merchants, including search based creative that allow visitors to land on a page specific to a product they are looking for, video creative that visitors can interact with or see how a product works and dynamic banners that update automatically with your latest offers, which are all fantastic innovations and will help increase conversions when used on the right affiliate sites.

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