Tools for better affiliate relationships, co-branding and social influencers

PARTNERSHIP& INFLUENCERSTRATEGY IN 2017

Partner with another brand to discover new audiences

Amplify ThroughCo-Branding Campaigns

Track how people search for your brand on third-party sites to improve distribution

Use Internal Site Searchto Improve Affiliates

Harness the power of social media and YouTube celebrities

Work with the Right Social Influencers

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Table of Contents

In the digital era, brands not only compete for market share, but for consumer engagement. A single moment of attention is a precious commodity.

Pursuing strategic partnerships with external companies or social influencers can provide brands with access to new, highly engaged audiences. In other words, partnerships unlock new ways for brands to meet consumers where they are.

However, not every partnership is fruitful.

Brands can distribute their products on affiliates where few people seek them out, while missing out on marketplaces where they are more coveted. They can launch co-branding campaigns with a company whose audience doesn’t align with theirs, or attempt to partner with social influencers without evaluating their audience overlap.

In this report we will break down real examples of how brands can evaluate the strengths of their external relationships, so they can double down on partnerships with the most opportunity for brand amplification and audience growth.

Introduction

Many brands today sell their products or services through third-party distributors and aggregator sites. However, optimizing your market share across different affiliates can be a challenge.

In this chapter we demonstrate how brands can track internal site search data to improve their competitive performance across different online marketplaces, and strengthen partnerships with affiliates whose audience favors their product.

Use Internal Site Search to ImproveAffiliate Strategy Track how people search for your brandon third-party sites to improve distribution

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For retail and CPG brands, it’s crucial to understand how and where your customers are searching for your products.

Amazon and Walmart are the two most highly-searched e-commerce marketplaces for household products in the US. For example, if we compare the top sites which sell grocery products, Amazon and Walmart combined pull well over 90% of all coffee searches within their internal website search. That being said, their audiences search for the same product quite differently.

When seeking coffee on Amazon, consumers are much more specific in their searches, whereas nearly a quarter of searches on Walmart are just for the term “coffee.” A brand like Folgers pulls a much higher share of coffee searches on Walmart than Amazon, whereas a company selling whole coffee beans would fare better on Amazon.

Amazon vs. Walmart:Serving the Coffee Craze

Source: Coffee search variations on Amazon and Walmart measured over 9 weeks ending April 1st 2017.

AMAZON WALMART

Retailer Influence:Coffee Searches

Chip Brand Search ShareOnline Grocery Sites

Brands can further improve their affiliate strategy by evaluating their competitive standing against similar brands—across multiple marketplaces. If you are a chip brand trying to expand your market share with online grocery shoppers, you might ask: Where are shoppers searching the most for our brand? Where are they seeking our competitors?

For example, the chart below breaks down the internal website search for the five largest online grocery sites. This provides chip brands with a detailed look at their market standing across the online grocery landscape, which we’ll explore further on the following page.

Chip Brand Breakdown

Source: Chip internal site search variations measured over 9 weeks ending April 1st 2017.

When we weigh both search share and ranking, we see that sometimes the website where a chip brand has the greatest search share is not the same as the one where they have the biggest competitive advantage.

For example, Lay’s pulls a large percentage of chip searches on Kroger.com (11.1%), but ranks below Frito Lay and Pop Chips, which is a competing brand. Lay’s is more competitive on Meijer, where it ranks #1 against all branded chip searches. Their search share on Meijer is relatively smaller than on Kroger (only 8.8% of chip searches), but from a competitive standpoint Lay’s has a key advantage there.

Source: Chip internal site search variations measured over 9 weeks ending April 1st 2017.

Top Online Groceries for Chip BrandsBased On Internal Search

One of the best places to find a highly engaged audience, is through another brand. In this chapter, we demonstrate how well-executed co-branding initiatives can reap rewards for both companies. Even across industries, brand partnerships can increase audience overlap and provide valuable new audience segments for each brand to tap into.

Amplify ThroughCo-BrandingCampaigns Partner with another brand to discover new audiences

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Because their purchase cycles are lengthy, auto brands need to capture customer interest in the early, aspirational stages.

Ford did just that, by partnering with GoPro on a video series campaign called “The Unstoppable Life” in June 2016, which combined GoPro’s edge in extreme sport and the spirit of Ford’s SUV “being unstoppable”.

During the campaign, Ford and GoPro’s audience overlap increased by 11.27%, as did the size of each brand’s individual audience. This means that more consumers were searching for and engaging with Ford and GoPro simultaneously post-launch. Compare that to key competitors, Toyota and General Motors, whose audience crossover with GoPro declined during the campaign.

“Unstoppable Life” Creates Unstoppable Growth

Source: Segments based on people who searched for or visited the website of GoPro, Ford, Toyota, or General Motors / Chevrolet.

Pre-Campaign: 4 weeks ending 6/4/2016. During Campaign: 4 weeks ending 07/9/2016.

On June 10th of 2016 Coach and Disney announced their style collaboration with the release of their new Mickey Mouse line, which made a big splash across fashion and style magazines.

From the moment it was announced, search variations of “coach disney” and “coach mickey mouse” shot up dramatically. Sightings of celebrities like Chrissy Teigen wearing some of the coveted bags only heightened interest and buzz, and lead to an increase in audience cross-over.

Classy and Classic: Coach & Disney Collab

Source: Segments based on people who searched for or visited the website of Disney or Coach. Pre-Campaign: 4 weeks ending 6/4/2016. Post-Launch: 4 weeks

ending 07/9/2016.

Audience Overlap Disney & Coach

33% jump in post-launch audience overlap

Disney X COACHAnnouncement

How did the Disney X COACH collaboration affect each brand?

Source: Visitation by Disney Fans on Coach.com measured using a Hitwise Digital Behavior Report. Age Index determined based on a Hitwise Profile Snapshot of

Disney Audience pre and post-launch. Pre-Campaign: 4 weeks ending 6/4/2016. Post-Launch: 4 weeks ending 07/9/2016. Image: Coach.com

In the past decade, a new voice has entered the digital stage – the social influencer. According to Tubular Insights, 57% of consumers have made a purchase based on an influencer’s recommendations.

The rising cultural dominance of social influencers has pushed brands to seek out partnerships with vloggers and YouTube celebrities. However, like any other marketing strategy, your influencer strategy should be based on measurable opportunity. This chapter breaks down how brands can evaluate the relevance, audience overlap and potential of YouTube influencers to get the most from social partnerships.

Work with the Right Social Influencers Harnessing the power of socialmedia and YouTube

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Beauty influencers attract massive audiences on YouTube with their make-up tutorials, beauty tips and style how-to’s. How could a beauty brand evaluate the best YouTube Influencer to partner with?

In the example below, we compared the audience overlap between women with different lifestyle interests (Fashionistas, Job-Seekers, Wedding etc.), and their engagement index with different YouTube influencers. As we see below, Beauty vloggers are a great match for Costume seekers and Fashionista audiences.

Audience Interests vs. Beauty Vloggers

The Wedding audience is niche and has lower cross-over, but Michelle Phan and Grav3yardGirl pull the most influence with this segment.

RCLBeauty101, who attracts more school-age girls, has the lowest concentration of wedding followers and job seekers.

Next, we break down the most engaged audience segments for top cosmetic brands, like Sephora, Clinique and Sally Beauty. While Wedding is generally a strong audience for makeup brands, Kylie Cosmetics shares even higher engagement with Fashionistas. Younique, in the meantime, has the lowest overlap with Fashionistas as well as three other audiences: Nightlife, Job-seekers and Costume.

Audience Interests vs. Top Brands

Strong alignment between Wedding audiences and cosmetics brands, especially Kylie Cosmetics, Sephora and Clinique

Kylie Cosmetics has a lot of cross-over with Fashionistas

Sephora attracts Night Life lovers

When brands better understand how their audience composition — and customer’s interests — overlap with social influencers, this provides direction on who to partner with, and for which products.

For example, Sephora might want to promote their “Girls Night Out” line with Grav3yardGirl, or Kylie Cosmetics might partner with Michelle Phan to produce a makeup tutorial on the Deer Snapchat Filter costume using Kylie’s Bronze Palette.

Shared Audience Interests

Source: YouTube influencer segments based on internal site searches for each influencer on YouTube.com. Audience segments (i.e. “Wedding” “Fashionista”)

based on search behavior indicating interest in particular theme. Segments built exclusively based on female consumers. Pulled over the month of June, 2017.

Key Takeaways

Use internal search data to evaluate how your brand is sought across affiliates

Consider not only where you pull the most search share, but where you are more competitive

Co-brand with companies who can help you tap into desirable audiences - measure audience crossover and composition before and during campaign to evaluate success

Not every social influencer in your industry is ideal to partner with - conduct an audience overlap analysis first

Understand the interests of both your audience and of a social influencer’s audience in order to align specific products with the right influencer

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For more information visit us at:www.hitwise.com

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