As we enter the 2019 holiday season, it’s an opportune time to be reminded of the importance of brand protection and compliance. As we know, a company’s brand is considered a vital asset with significant investment involved. With this in mind, it is so important to be aware of how this asset is presented online.
“The average internet user spends more than a quarter of their life on the World Wide Web” – Source.
This year has brought the emergence of automation and AI to the digital space. Search engines have provided marketers the ability to leverage deeper insights on how we can connect with our audience. Data and information have never been more valuable and easily accessible than it has today.
What can happen to your brand without vigilant brand protection?
Without oversight of your brand terms, competitors and bad actors can take advantage of your valuable asset. Competitors can systematically target your brand terms with ad campaigns to gain the upper hand. Your brand can then lose above the fold prime real estate in your search engine results pages (SERP) results. With this, competitors can control the perception of your brand with targeted ad language.
Affiliates can steal your traffic or provide your consumers with poor user experience. Reseller sites, Comparison sites, and Review sites can either mislead your customer or take advantage of your brand term traffic. Coupon sites are notorious for providing user’s poor experience by exposing them to expired offers. Search Arbitragers are one of those bad actors trying to take advantage of consumers unaware of what they are contributing too.
There is no shortcut to compliance oversight for brand protection. Below are a few examples of how your asset can be used to negatively impact your business.
Here’s an example of a brand being a step behind the conversation:
Example of Search Arbitrage bidding on a brand, for their own financial gain:
What can be done?
The key to brand protection is in diligent monitoring, backed by strong policies and partnerships. It’s important to have an integrated strategy, supported by automated systems, and a team with a keen eye.
In regard to competitors, it’s about awareness.
- How is my brand being targeted?
- Are my competitors in compliance with search engine policies?
For affiliates and other bad actors, it’s about vigilance and strong partnerships. Strong partnerships can help provide an avenue of influence to a landscape by possibly driving down bad actors. By working together with your partners, you can provide higher quality results that improve a user’s experience. Since the SERP landscape is constantly changing, attentive monitoring is needed to address these issues and to be able to take advantage of them.
Affiliate Compliance Monitoring is worth the effort, offering peace of mind. Protect your program and your brand and make sure you’re monitoring the right things.
Specializing in compliance and monitoring, All Inclusive Marketing can help make sure you’re protected. To learn more, talk to an expert today.
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