Guidelines for Affiliates

Refreshing your brand standards and assisting your affiliates in staying on course for the upcoming year are excellent ideas at the start of a new year. Your business has most likely seen a lot of changes in the last year, including new hires, new products, and more. Update your marketing strategy now, as you get ready for the first quarter of the year.

Establishing a reputable, successful brand requires a lot of work. You've made investments in internet marketing, staff training, branding, and product development. Encourage your brand ambassadors and affiliates to abide by your brand guidelines to prevent confusion.

3 Reasons Setting Brand Guidelines Matters

Setting up brand requirements is vital when working with affiliates. After all, some affiliates are probably working with multiple brands and different offers. Affiliates may accidentally apply another company’s requirements when promoting your products.

To develop comprehensive brand guidelines, you may need to engage other people to help you. To win the support you need to create comprehensive brand guidelines, keep these reasons in mind.

Speed up onboarding

Your goals might include onboarding 1,000 affiliates this year. In that case, you need a streamlined process to guide your growth. For example, you may have a goal to onboard 1,000 affiliates this year. To achieve this goal, consider implementing a consistent process to guide that growth. One way to start is by giving your affiliates a copy of your brand guidelines when they first sign up. This will help provide them with answers to immediate questions, and allow your team to onboard them much more quickly.

.02 Reduce (or eliminate) regulatory problems.

Inexperienced affiliates may try to push the boundaries of promotion, sometimes breaking FTC regulations in the process. Don't assume that affiliates understand the significance of FTC requirements. Rather, create brand rules that align with business objectives and FTC regulations. In the end, a lack of brand guidelines leads to more erratic affiliate activity and increases the possibility that your business and affiliates may be looked at, penalized, or face bad press for violating the rules about products.

.03 Enhance your brand consistency.

Think of the world’s most iconic brands, like Pepsi. They have communicated a consistent brand for a long time that has made them memorable. Setting up brand requirements means affiliates are more likely to represent your brand in the same way, as well as boost your consumer’s brand awareness.

How To Develop Brand Guidelines

Every company will have its own approach to developing brand rules. It is crucial to develop brand expectations that reflect your specific situation. To speed up the process, consider the following topics.

Goals:

Brand guidelines are ultimately a tool to help your company achieve its goals. Start with traditional goals like profits and revenue, but don’t stop there. You might also aim to improve customer satisfaction scores or achieve a higher net promoter score. If you are focused on developing loyal long-term customers, your brand expectations will need to reflect that goal.

Legal and regulatory considerations:

Take some time to review the requirements your affiliates must follow. For example, the FTC has specific restrictions on advertising supplements that may be relevant to your company.

Past experiences:

Reflecting on your company’s history with affiliates can be helpful. Specifically, look at the questions you are repeatedly asked. When affiliates reference your brand inconsistently, you may be able to address that problem with better brand rules. If your company has faced legal or regulatory difficulties relating to affiliate promotions or marketing, reflect on those experiences.

Size and complexity of affiliate program:

Generally speaking, a company with many affiliates will need to spend more time developing comprehensive brand rules.

Need help getting started? The following can serve as a template to get the conversation started internally.

Brand Guidelines Template

At [brand name], we use the following brand guidelines to represent all of our wellness products.

Values first: Please read our corporate values document.

FTC compliant: We take our obligations to follow the letter and spirit of the law seriously.

Inclusive: We encourage brand affiliates to adopt an inclusive approach in their marketing materials.

Responsive: When we get a question or complaint about the brand from a customer or potential customer, we respond promptly and courteously. We encourage affiliates to take the same approach.

Brand assets: We ask all affiliates to use consistent brand assets such as the following images and font styles.

Brand guideline support: Not sure if your marketing plans align with our brand rules? Click here to send an email to us.

Brand guideline reviews: We periodically review our affiliates’ websites and social media accounts to verify everyone is following our brand guidelines. If there is a problem, we’ll share feedback with you.

Communicating Your Brand Requirements

Communication is essential, whether you are launching your brand rules with affiliates for the first time or sharing an annual update. In your communication to affiliates, there are two principles to keep in mind:

Use multiple media and formats:

Give your affiliates plenty of resources to keep them engaged in your affiliate program. For instance, try using several formats like posting an FAQ (frequently asked questions) page on your website, creating a video, and updating your onboarding package for new affiliates. Sending a reminder message to your affiliates annually is a good way to keep everyone on the same page.

Market your brand guidelines:

Your affiliates are busy people, and they may not understand why it is essential to follow your brand requirements. In your communication, emphasize why following these brand requirements matters for affiliates. For example, you might point out that your top affiliates consistently follow all brand rules. This sends the message that affiliates are more likely to be successful when they follow your expectations.

Following Up

There are several ways you can follow up with affiliates to make sure they understand your brand guidelines.

Conversations with affiliates:

When you have calls or webinars with your affiliates, adding occasional reminders about your brand requirements can help.

Update your brand guidelines annually:

As your company changes, your brand guidelines will need to evolve as well. Remember to let your affiliates know about it whenever you make a significant change to your brand requirements.

Brand guideline reviews:

Despite your best efforts, some affiliates may ignore your brand expectations. You can make this type of problem less likely by carrying out periodic reviews. For example, if you have 500 active affiliates, consider auditing one affiliate at random per week. If you find affiliates are not following your brand rules, send them a warning message with specific steps to help them become compliant.

Tips To Get Started With Brand Guidelines

The first steps to a strong brand strategy are simple.

Review your affiliate communications:

Has it been more than a year since you last contacted affiliates about your brand guidelines? If so, sending them a reminder is a great place to get started.

Review a few affiliate websites and social media accounts:

Carry out several brand guideline reviews to verify that your affiliates are following your expectations. This review will help you congratulate affiliates that are doing great work and provide feedback to others as needed.

How To Manage Your Affiliates Without Burning Out

There is no doubt that managing your affiliates and ensuring brand guidelines are followed requires a significant amount of time.

Merchants require an affiliate management platform they can rely on for support because they have new promotions to provide, inquiries to field, and analytics to report on.

With the help of Refersion's technology, busy retailers can automate and simplify their affiliate administration, freeing up more time for them to focus on other important tasks.

Join Refersion's free 14-day trial to streamline your affiliate management efforts and begin developing a stronger brand right away.

Our platform is ready to manage your affiliates' and business's demands, allowing you to concentrate on making the most of this New Year.