Are you considering rebranding while running an affiliate program? Then I should warn you: rebranding an affiliate program can be complicated, risky and expensive, and should only be considered for the right reasons.
Rebranding. The turning point shows how much your brand is expanding, maturing, and changing as it should. New packaging, products, or logos can give you a competitive edge, update and renew your company’s image, and bring brand new customers to long-established brands.
While rebranding is exciting, it also requires a lot of time, money, and strategy. The last thing you want is for your efforts to go unrecognized.
The key to the success of your rebranding is to create buzz before, during, and after the initial relaunch. In addition to internal marketing, successful brands accomplish this by partnering with influencers who can announce you’re exciting new improvements to their engaged online audience.
Here are eight best practices brands can use to leverage their relationships with influencers for the most effective rebranding initiatives.
It will also not help new managers make their mark, nor will it help companies in crisis cover it all up.
Such problems could be solved with a new, more effective marketing plan. If something is not working the way you want it to, do not throw it all away and start over!
You have invested time, effort, and money to get to this point. Instead of throwing everything away, salvage what you can and build on it. Changing your company name, logo, or colors won’t always fix your difficulties.
When Is Rebranding Beneficial for an Affiliate Program?
Rebranding should only be considered if your company’s mission, vision, and values have changed. It may be useful if you’re entering new areas where your current logo and other brand elements are ineffective or attempting to reposition your brand in the market. Expansion of offerings, mergers, and acquisitions may also warrant rebranding.
If you decide to go ahead with it, don’t be in a hurry! Take the time to prepare everything so you get it right the first time. When running an affiliate program, it becomes complicated. You must safeguard your reputation.
On the one hand, you want to preserve any semblance of brand awareness and reputation you’ve already established. Then, on the other hand, you want your new company’s image and behavior to make both customers and affiliates feel like they can trust and work with them.
Rebranding entails more than just a new logo. This entails a series of adjustments that must be made consistently and deliberately by you as merchants and your partners and affiliates.
When physical things are involved, the situation becomes considerably more difficult. When compared to digital products or services, where the majority of changes must be made online, rebranding physical products affects labels, packaging, supplies, and more.
Here are the three most important things to think about when setting up your affiliate program so that it doesn’t have a negative impact on your business.
Key Aspects of Rebranding and Their Impact on the Affiliate Program
1. Product and Brand Presentation
Depending on your industry, you may use your logo, tagline, and brand colors everywhere. These can be found on your website, product labels, tags, and packaging, as well as product guides and instruction manuals.
They are also included in your affiliate network merchant profile. They are also used by your affiliates, wholesale, retail, and dropshipping partners. Maybe you’ve also spent a lot of money on ads and traditional marketing materials and initiatives.
Before you spread the word about your rebranding intentions or make any adjustments, be sure you have everything covered and that you operate consistently. When you’re finished, anyone looking up your brand should notice identical elements all over the place. If you don’t, your company’s reputation, brand image, website conversion, sales, and affiliate program stats will all be hurt.
2. Affiliate Program Promotional Materials
Many businesses that run affiliate programs overlook the significance of creativity. Don’t go along with it! Instead, alert affiliates of your plans ahead of time and ensure that when the time comes, they have fresh banners, product and lifestyle photos, videos, and so on that are consistent with your new branding strategy.
If they don’t, the disparity between what potential buyers see on your affiliates’ sites and what they see on your website or receive from you after purchase may have a negative impact on your website’s conversion rate and, by extension, the performance of your affiliate program.
Low conversion means fewer sales, lower affiliate compensation, and a low EPC, which is the major criterion affiliates use to choose which merchants to recommend. All of this has an impact on affiliate program data, which in turn has a cascading effect on overall business performance.
They can be avoided if you remember to give new, high-quality creative to your affiliates in time for them to align with your rebranding strategy. If you play your cards well, they may even assist you in spreading the message. They might readily publicize your plans through blog posts, newsletters, or social media.
3. Product Trials
Many affiliate network merchants don’t know that rebranding requires them to send new products or samples to reviewers and influencers so that they can write about them.
If you have altered the labeling and/or packaging, the video reviews and photographs that were previously available are no longer an accurate reflection of your products and/or services. They instill erroneous expectations (of a certain label, packaging, etc.).
To do so, you will need to send products to affiliates with new labels and packaging. This allows people to create new reviews or update current ones.
This could add to the already exorbitant rebranding costs. However, it is a required step that has certain advantages. You will receive additional backlinks, search results, and attention.
Some reviews are almost certainly outdated, forgotten, or buried beneath more recent reviews of rival products. Some affiliates may have honed their skills and become better at highlighting the benefits of a product and persuading people to buy.
It may be beneficial to begin with the top reviewers and progressively work your way down to the rest. They should be able to assist you if you have a high-quality creative, skilled and dedicated affiliate program manager. They can contact affiliates, send them a new creative, and ask that their promotions be changed to match.
4. Changes to Merchant Website and Affiliate Program Links
The modifications you make as part of your rebranding process will, without a doubt, be reflected on your website. It may be the last thing on your mind, but if it causes a website outage or causes the domain name or product URLs to change, you must take action.
It is easier to alert affiliates if you know when it is going to happen and how long it will take. Set up redirects and change links and banners on your own instead of giving up your old domain, making a new one, and relying on all of your affiliates to change their links right away.
If you don’t do it, you’ll lose affiliate traffic. People who link to your site with broken links will get affiliate warnings, a bad user experience for the people who come from them, lost sales, and lost commissions.
All of this can be avoided, so take care of it. If you don’t succeed, admit it, apologize, and take action! This post teaches you all you need to know and do to fix downtimes in affiliate tracking.
5. Unsuccessful Rebranding Seen Through the Eyes of Customers
Assume you’re a buyer who learns about a wonderful line of products from an affiliate website, advertisements, or social media. You want to learn more, so you look them up on the internet. You get a lot of outcomes, but instead of each one confirming the concept that you’ll get good value for your money, you become confused.
The same brand name appears with several logos and colors. Some retail websites display generic, specifications-focused product names that have nothing to do with the merchant website.
When you look at video reviews, you’ll notice that some link to merchants while others go to the merchant’s website. Some products are labeled with a blue label, while others are labeled with an orange label. You click on links that should take you to the merchant’s website but instead get a 404 error notice.
You’ll notice that the brand name is spelled differently as you navigate from one website to the next and from one page to the next. You might even be able to locate different spelling variations on the same website.
Do you take the risk of ordering if you don’t know the product you’ll get? Imagine ordering and receiving a product that isn’t labeled or packaged the same way you see it online. Even if you don’t return it, your experience will be less than satisfying.
6. New Branding, Old Influencers
Use familiar faces and current relationships to your advantage.
When possible, collaborate with influencers with whom you’ve already had success. They have become brand spokesmen, and their followers are accustomed to hearing the influencers discuss your brand. The goal is to reach out to those who are already interested in and familiar with your brand. They’ll be ecstatic to witness the modifications.
And just because one individual decides to buy doesn’t imply that all of your target customers will follow suit. How can you avoid such problems and ensure that your rebranding efforts are fruitful? Pay attention to the points raised above and follow the advice provided below!
11 Rebranding Suggestions for Merchants with an Affiliate Program
1. Learn from the Best
Whether your industry has at least one competitor or a related merchant who has rebranded is up to you. Examine their motivations and evolution. Find out what they are good at and what they are bad at so that when the time comes, you can use the former and avoid the latter.
Your partners and affiliates, believe it or not, can be of immense assistance here. Some of them may have gone through a rebranding process. Others have undoubtedly watched the process. They can offer knowledge and experience.
2. Involve Everyone in the Process
While the decision may be solely yours, as previously stated, it affects most, if not all, of your company’s departments. As a result, make sure to bring it up with your staff, particularly your affiliate program manager.
They will know what to expect, what their obligations are, and how they might assist. From accounting to marketing, customer service, logistics, and affiliates, everyone else will be far more willing to support your rebranding efforts.
3. Plan your budget carefully.
Some big costs come with rebranding: new logos, websites, marketing materials, and packaging designs. New product photoshoots, video commercials for new products, and intense marketing campaigns also come with rebranding.
You can’t stop the ball once it’s started since you’ve gone over your budget. As a result, make certain that you are aware of the expenditures and that you are able to cover them. Members of your different teams can help you figure out what each department needs and how much it costs.
4. Think about trademarks and SEO.
If you’re planning to change your brand name or how it’s spelled, make sure the new name may be registered as a trademark and protected. The last thing you want to do is ignore this and leave your business name vulnerable to trademark infringement.
This can seriously tarnish your reputation, incur additional fees, and have a negative impact on your affiliate program. You can expect deceptive advertising, increasing PPC expenditures, and important affiliates abandoning you.
SEO is another factor to consider while deciding on a new brand name. There are a lot of keywords that are relevant to what you sell, as well as what kind of business you run. If you want to research these keywords, make sure your website is set to show up at the top of your search results for these keywords.
5. Make an effort to obtain a fantastic logo.
During rebranding, the logo is frequently the first thing altered. Many merchants regard it as an abbreviated version of their company name and are mainly concerned with whether it matches brand colors and looks good on the website, labels, and packaging.
The logo should ideally be able to inform your target clients who you are and what you’re selling without the need for more explanation. Many of your affiliates, especially those who specialize in saving money and giving gifts, will only show your logo on their site.
If visitors don’t recognize it and can’t determine what you’re offering from it, they’re unlikely to click it, and as a result, they won’t learn about your offers, visit your website, or buy from you.
6. Use Stock-Clearance Sales to Announce Your Rebranding
You want to get rid of old label products and packaging to make room for new ones, especially if you have a large product inventory. It’s never a good idea to send your customers things that aren’t exactly what they see on the website.
Organizing a sale is a wonderful way to avoid this and ensure the success of your rebranding efforts. Make sure to include your affiliates, especially reviewers and people who have a lot of power.
Work with your affiliate program manager to ensure that they are informed of the sale and its purpose in a timely manner. The discounts will help you sell more quickly, raise the conversion rate of your website, and improve affiliate program statistics such as EPC.
When the time comes to provide fresh products to your affiliates for review, they will not refuse. Sales are also a great time to show off your new goals, values, and mission.
7. Collaborate with your partners to ensure that changes are implemented in sync.
When you rebrand, you want to do it all at once: on your own website, on the websites of your resellers, on any third-party directories, and so on. It won’t benefit anyone if you alter your merchant website’s logo and pictures, but resellers and affiliates will continue to promote the old ones.
On the other hand, it will cause confusion and misinformation, as well as make your customer service staff very busy. They will have to answer questions, process refund requests, and try to keep customers happy.
8. Maintain Consistency
There is no turning back once you’ve begun the rebranding process. Do not change logos or begin another rebranding process. It implies that you have no idea what you’re doing and cannot be trusted.
Any logo and brand name can be popularized with the correct marketing approach, but once tarnished, a merchant’s reputation is tough to repair. Customers, partners, and affiliates need to know that you’re accountable, dependable, and knowledgeable about what you’re doing.
9. Be Consistent, Both Inside and Outside of the Affiliate Program
Many adjustments will be required as you move through the rebranding process, from the website content to the affiliate program description. To make sure that your new brand is reflected in all of the images, videos, banners, and other materials on your website, you need to make sure that they all match.
So, take some time to go over everything and make any necessary changes. Use Ctrl+F to look for different spellings of your business name and change affiliate banners in your affiliate network to make sure that the changes are reflected everywhere.
10. Make up a Campaign Hashtag.
Hashtags make it easy for visitors to find information related to your rebrand. And, because Instagram allows users to follow hashtags, your work will be seen by even more people.
11. Make Your Rebranding Public Outside of the Affiliate Program
There is no such thing as excessive publicity. To ensure your rebranding efforts are known, you can use sponsored ads, commercials, and truck-side ads for advertising, affiliate recruiting drives, giveaways, and newsletter blasts to get people to sign up for your newsletter.
It is critical to assist you and your partners’ audiences in associating everything wonderful about your brand with the new image you are attempting to establish. The more you see your brand, the more you want to take advantage of it and grow it, and marketing is sure to help.
The more popular your brand is, the easier it will be for your affiliates to promote it to their audiences and drive traffic and sales. If you work together, you will get what you want: sales for you, commissions for your affiliates, and great statistics for your affiliate program!
Last Updated on April 10, 2024
