You’ll sometimes hear someone on the affiliate marketing side of the fence talk about how search marketing and affiliate marketing channels should be able to peacefully coexist, but you’ll seldom hear anyone from the search side agree.

Today David Roth, Director of Search Engine Marketing for Yahoo!, Inc. has a great article over at Search Engine Land about how both channels not only can, but should coexist if you understand how to do it right!

Search & Affiliate Marketing: Making Them Work For You

Have you ever heard these complaints?

* “We’re losing control of our brand because of our affiliate marketing channel.”
* “Affiliates are cannibalizing our direct SEM/SEO efforts.”
* “We’re bidding against our affiliates on keywords and it’s driving up our CPCs.”

Nonsense. If this is happening to you, it’s your own fault, not the fault of your affiliate channel. Marketers who think that affiliate marketing and search marketing can’t peacefully co-exist are kidding themselves and need to be stopped. Believe me. I’m a search marketer, not an affiliate marketing manager. At Yahoo!, I have a counterpart in our group that runs the affiliate marketing channel. We maintain very close communication and we are able to cooperate to maximize value to the company by finding the right balance between affiliate and SEM programs.

Search marketers will often say that you shouldn’t run affiliate programs because your brand will be damaged by affiliates. That’s a cop-out. Yes, you should be very concerned about protecting your brand. To do otherwise would be irresponsible. But to suggest that you will lose control of your brand by having other marketers drive sales for you is insulting to those of us who understand the business. More…

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