| Affiliate Marketing Views |
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Welcome to the exciting world of affiliate marketing! Or, win-win marketing, because when done well, everybody --- the marketer, the affiliate and the affiliate network---wins. I'll discuss current happenings and my own insights into the implications and provide a forum for constructive discussion in the win-win spirit of affiliate marketing. Hopefully, we’ll create a platform for insightful, prophetic and even contentious thinking, while ensuring it is interesting, informative and valuable. |
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Capitalizing on blogging....
David Utter of WebProNews comments that affiliates could use blogs to market themselves. Blogging has its own challenges, he says, and points to three virtues that affiliates have to inculcate to ensure that blogging is an effective marketing technique for them. You could apply these three aspects to achieve success in virtually anything in life- optimism, discipline and focus.
I am excited about the potential of blogging (and enjoy it as well). But as David points out, it does take all of the above attributes to get yourself to write the blog everyday (I can vouch for it!). You could probably add another to the list- Patience-- don't expect to start receiving anything other than spam comments for a few weeks, unless you proactively market the blog.
Moreover, it is not just about putting anything on the blog--- it has to be interesting and capable of attracting an audience, before that audience can be "distracted" to interact with the advertising on the site. (In an earlier post, I wrote about people trying to generate AdSense revenues by creating more websites--- I think the same principles apply here).
Generating that audience for your blog is no different from trying to attract traffic to your main website-- there is no escaping the rigours of creating a critical mass that will yield justifiable returns. It comes back to the basics- invest the time and effort in creating the content and building the traffic.
The offline analogy is that of a department store trying to increase sales by opening more outlets. The outlets provide additional avenues for putting the products/services you sell in front of the buying populace; whether it will increase sales will depend on how good the outlet is and how you manage to attract the people to walk into it.
Likewise, blogs will provide an additional medium or potential source for sale, but if you are not willing to invest in its content and marketing, it's definitely not worth trying.
Until next time,
Ben Flux
Are you watching the search marketing cost closely?
As the online shopping boom peaks for Christmas, one thing is certain- the major search engines are bound to reap a huge windfall in PPC revenues, as marketers seek to catch the attention of shoppers.
A DoubleClick report for the last quarter itself indicated a rise in search marketing costs- both cost per keyword (CPK) and cost per click (CPC). If that was the state of affairs in the 3rd quarter, one can well expect the costs to mover further up between now and the peak Christmas shopping season.
This is definitely a time for us to be extra vigilant of our marketing costs, because chances are that in the euphoria of driving more sales, we may neglect the cost per sale. That's never a good thing to do, and particularly now, when the marketing dollars could be drained off rather quickly.
In the meantime, here is some good news--- I noticed posts on the Search Engine Watch forums indicating that Google is re-introducing its Adwords display at the bottom of the page (which it used to have long back). Why Google is doing this is a matter of conjecture--- but we could hope that by adding in more advertising space, the bid costs could be brought down slightly lower than what they would otherwise be. Obviously, more ad space would mean potentially more click-throughs for Google, which means more revenue for the company.
Can't blame the smart company for cashing in on the season, can we?
Until next time,
Ben Flux
Pay-per-call: Can affiliates leverage this method?
Miva (known previously as FindWhat) has been working to make a success of its pay-per-call advertising method, which I believe it launched in the UK in September. With strong rumours going around that Google is set to get into the pay-per-call advertising market in a big manner, this nascent advertising method suddenly seems to have grabbed a bit of attention.
No coincidence then that Miva announced that it had signed up its first partners (probably an attempt to remind the world that it had gone public with its plans much before Google had). The news report on Netimperative quotes research from The Kelsey Group that pay-per-call advertising could be a $4 billion market by 2009 (and about GBP600 million in the UK alone). Considering that it is still in its infancy, one can well imagine the rate at which this form of advertising is projected to grow.
Now, question is: how can affiliates make the most of this advertising mechanism, if at all? Pay per click advertising has been one of our most potent marketing tools; can we ignore the pay per call mechanism?
I'm quite certain that if this advertising method takes off, we (affiliates) will be there to capitalize on it pretty soon. Yet, we may have to define the model ourselves. Trust me, that's quite some food for thought; it will be interesting to see how many manage to crack the code before the crowd joins in.
Until next time,
Ben Flux
Helping bargain hunters find the best deals
A couple of days ago, Hitwise released data related to the considerable increase in traffic to comparison shopping sites, according to which the major search engines sent a significantly higher volume of traffic to comparison shopping sites.
Even though the data was from the US market, I would think it is fairly indicative of what could be happening here in the UK as well. There's another piece of news that could be of interest to shoppers-- Froogle introducing a local shopping feature, that according to Search Engine Watch that will "let people find products and services for sale in bricks-and-mortar stores near locations they designate." The main feature will be the ability to compare products/prices.
What the above indicates is that online shoppers--- like the high street shoppers-- would prefer (just as we would expect..!!) to have the option to look around, compare products and prices, and be assured of getting the best bargain deal.
The reason I think this has an effect on affiliates is that the manner in which most traditional affiliates operate does not fulfil that need. If you are operating only by placing a banner, without giving the site visitor enough information about the product or service and the choices they have, it will be a challenge converting that visitor into a sale.
I doubt I need to spell out what this requires us to do... the message is pretty clear, isn't it?
Until next time,
Ben Flux
Gearing up for Christmas shopping...
Almost a month ago, I had written about the opportunities that the Christmas season will present us with. Almost as expected, there are some exciting forecasts ahead of us.
TradeDoubler released information about a survey it conducted, according to which European buyers are expected to shop online significantly higher than they did last Christmas.
I am giving below excerpts from the TradeDoubler release.
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• 20% expected increase in online Christmas shopping
• 56% of Europeans to shop online this Christmas
• 100% increase in number of consumers doing at least half of their shopping online
.....across Europe, 56% of respondents plan to do at least a quarter of their Christmas shopping online this year. Furthermore, the number of people who plan to do at least half of their Christmas shopping online has doubled, when compared to last Christmas.
....UK shoppers are setting the trend for their European counterparts with a massive 80% of shoppers planning to buy at least a quarter of their Christmas purchases online this year.
..... Another positive finding for online advertisers is that amongst the most tech savvy 18-24 age group, 100% of respondents in the UK are now planning to do between 25% - 100% of their shopping online this Christmas.
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Read the full press release regarding the TradeDoubler survey here.
Sounds great, doesn't it? Affiliates are bound to benefit from the rise in online spending-- especially those that are promoting the right products at this time.
Without meaning to put a dampener to the above good news, I also spotted a piece of worrying news. NetImperative reports that online retailers may not be entirely ready to fulfil the demand that is expected. This obviously doesn't affect affiliates directly (at least not this time around), but we could do without anything that is going to shake the confidence of the online buyer.
The impact of any mess-up during the festive season will be felt in the future... may be next Christmas, or probably even earlier. So, let's keep our fingers crossed, and look forward to some bumper sales this winter!
Until next time,
Ben Flux
Unilateralism in affiliate/ merchant relationships
One of the most common complaints of affiliate marketers seems to be the unilateral manner in which merchants and networks change their terms and conditions of the affiliate marketing relationship. Almost every other day, I read a post or two related to this. It is obviously a serious issue, especially for professional affiliates, for many of whom this is their only revenue stream.
Azam considers the plight of affiliate marketers to be worse than that of the checkout staff at Tesco. While that may be taking things too far, I suppose we need to take the spirit in which he makes this aggrieved statement. It hurts the affiliate deeply when merchants/networks cut down commissions or suspend accounts without even bothering to let the affiliate now, well in advance. That is definitely a basic right of the affiliate (even if there may be nothing to that effect spelt out in the terms and conditions)-- or call it a basic courtesy that can be expected from a principal.
Unfortunately, the truth is that a lot of affiliates don't often get the respect they deserve. I wonder if merchants/networks fail to see the extent of effort it takes an affiliate to promote the products they do?
Does this mean that nothing can be done about it? Certainly not. Affiliates will continuously need to constructively voice out their genuine grievances in appropriate foray. Merchants can ignore repeated calls for attention at their own peril, because in today's age with the speed at which bad news about a company can travel, merchants can ill afford to put off listening to their customers and partners.
Secondly, put in some effort into building personal relationships with the merchants/ affiliate managers. Pick up the phone and talk -- you may find an easy resolution to the problem.
And last but certainly not the least, if you are a true performer who is delivering results or capable of delivering results, work towards setting your own terms and conditions, as Vinny Lingham suggests. Merchants will seriously consider this, if they realise that they have more to lose by not having you on board as an affiliate.
Let your performance speak and command the agreement of the merchant to your terms and conditions. After all, we are in the business of pay-for-performance marketing.
Until next time,
Ben Flux
Leveraging e-mail marketing for cost-effective marketing
"An email address is the most important thing you can gather in terms of currency," E-mail Vision strategic consultant, David Hughes was quoted as saying by TravelMole at the CIMTIG and Designate co-ordinated seminar at the World Travel Mart show in London last week.
How true! The title of the article that I am referring to sums it up well-- "marketing that costs pennies, not pounds." An opt-in e-mail address is as valuable, if not more, to a marketer today as a mailing address or a telephone number was a few years ago. While the e-mail id gives you the address to reach your target customer, the 'opt-in' gives you the license to knock on his door... the opportunity to present your prospect with the goods/service you are trying to sell. Permission marketing via e-mail is probably one of the most effective means of keeping your prospect 'warm' and interested.
The key point of the talk that I refer to above was that the potential of e-mail marketing was considerably under-utilized in the travel industry. It seems a bit ironical, though not entirely surprising (I hope that doesn't sound like a paradox!). The travel industry has been one of the early adopters of most successful online marketing techniques, and therefore one would expect it to be maximizing on the e-mail marketing opportunity. At the same time, I am not entirely surprised at the reportedly lower-than-expected adoption because I believe marketers are wary with all the anti-spam regulations that are coming to be in place. Increasingly, the penalties for spamming in different parts of the world are getting stringent (as this post will tell you), and with often a very thin line separating a legitimate e-mail campaign from what a user perceives as spam, marketers could well be erring on the side of caution.
I believe the opportunities from good and responsible e-mail marketing aren't limited to the travel industry. We affiliates could leverage this successfully for reducing our marketing costs considerably for the range of products we market. Traditionally, most affiliates may not have used it as much because they have probably driven traffic through other means (or just been passive). Many have not even tried to build a relationship with the visitors to their site.
Yet, I am pretty certain that this is not sustainable in the longer term. The only way forward for affiliates/publishers is to build a continuous relationship with a potential customer. What better way of doing it than getting the site visitor to part with his/her e-mail address, in return for the prospect of getting some real value-- be it in terms of information or great offers. There is an investment in terms of your time and effort to provide that value to the user, but as you will find out, it is well worth it.
Just a word of caution-- respect that permission that the visitor has given you to knock on his door!
Until next time,
Ben Flux
Is affiliate marketing contextual marketing ?
I read this post by Berth Kirsch titled Contextual marketing meets affiliate marketing with some interest, particularly towards the end of the piece where she asks why the big affiliate marketing networks haven't developed a contextual marketing framework.
Already in many ways, affiliate marketing is contextual (well, in a roundabout way at least)--- professional affiliates use pay-per-click contextual marketing aggressively to drive their sales, don't they? Smart affiliates also try to place the advertising for products they sell contextually, where they are most likely to be noticed and potentially lead to a sale. The most sophisticated ones actually build the infrastructure themselves to pull up their affiliate ads at the right time and place.
Maybe this has not caught our attention because in the vast majority of cases, it was not technology or automation that was doing the contextualization of the affiliate ads. As and when the kind of contextual affiliate marketing that Berth alludes to in her piece takes root (could be soon enough?), it will again lead to some questions on the model in which we operate and the role that we play. What exactly will affiliates have to do to earn their commissions?
Currently, affiliates are the decision makers and they face the consequences of their decisions. Will it be the same when we have automated, contextual ads appearing on our websites?
Irrespective of which way this goes, affiliates marketers cannot escape contextualization of their marketing to get results. At least that much we know.
Until next time,
Ben Flux
Investing in content-- warding of the threat from search engines
One of the clichés-- or call it, irreversible truths-- of Internet Marketing is that 'content is king'. With the increasing power of the search engines, keeping this axiom in mind is critical to the survival and success of affiliates.
Search engines are no longer mere search engines-- the bigger ones will potentially become the biggest shopping sites, irrespective of the model they choose to adopt (e.g. Froogle and Yahoo! Shopping). Yahoo Shopping has just rolled out a bunch of new features, "including the beta launch of The Shoposphere and Pick Lists, features that aim to bring online the social elements of shopping", as reported by the Internet Retailer. They are also likely to introduce Yahoo! Shopping mobile at some point so that people can shop anytime, anywhere. Meanwhile, Google is actively promoting results from Froogle at the top of relevant search results.
As many of us already recognize, these could be serious threats to our business going forward. The only way we could mitigate that threat is to be able to continue to attract users to our websites with something unique; something that will be different from what they would find on another website, or for that matter, the online shopping marts offered by the big search engines. And what could that 'unique' pull factor be?
Content, obviously. Users need to know an affiliate site, and find something of value to be able to come back to it again and again to make buying transactions through that site. It could be news or special promotional offers that users know they will find on your site--- but affiliates have to make that investment in coming up with new, fresh and hopefully unique content that will get in the users. Also, don't we hear the search engine experts often that ultimately, it'll be good content that will help achieve higher rankings? Since we are so reliant on search engines anyway, doesn't that make investing in content worthwhile?
Until next time,
Ben Flux
Brands -- the driving force
Let's face it-- typically if an affiliate has a choice to select between promoting a campaign for a mega brand versus a relative unknown, the affiliate would opt for the former. Quite simply, the ability of the brand to sell itself plays on our minds, and since we sustain ourselves with sales, we'd quite logically opt for the path of low resistance, which a reputed brand provides.
What we've known all along is now available in the form a colorful pie chart (which just seems to give it much greater credibility.. ). As you will read, affiliates were asked a question: "What attributes mean the most to you when evaluating an affiliate program?" The response: 53% said- Brand name, while another 26% said, Rate of commission.
I think those results epitomize true salesmanship-- in order of priority, affiliates chose the factors that will help them easily get more sales, and secondly get more money per sale.
The interesting thing to note though is that only 5% consider a "program being part of a network" to be the most important factor. Not a very encouraging thought for the networks, is it?
I don't think this preference for the big brands will change drastically anytime soon. Yet, I wouldn't ignore affiliate programs from the lesser-known or totally unknown merchants--- there may be some real, unpolished gems out there that one may be able to make a fortune of.... Obviously, the only way to be able to capitalize on it is to be constantly in touch with what the market wants or will want sometime in the future. Market Intelligence (here we go again!).
Until next time,
Ben Flux
eBay Market Place Research: Value of Information and Intelligence
Last week I wrote how critical it is to leverage competitive market intelligence to formulate your marketing strategy and tactics. If that point needed any further emphasis, here it is: eBay is just launching its Market Place Research Service, a subscription-based service, to enable buyers and sellers to make informed decisions on their trading. For examples, buyers can figure out the price at which similar items have been sold in the past 90 days, while sellers can discern product demand trends as well as gauge the likely price their sale will fetch.
With the volume of data that eBay gathers, the information that buyers and suppliers have is definitely very representative and quite a good indication of the latest trends in the market place. Obviously, eBay realized that the data that they gather has the potential to be an excellent revenue stream by itself. Everything the company has done so far has been driven by the volume game, and this one is no different--- by pricing the service reasonably low (the entry level price point is less than $3 for access of data up to 2 days), it should be able to attract a sizeable chunk of its existing customer base to sign up for this service. The numbers are staggering --- even if the company just signs up a conservative 5% of its user base of about 168 million to opt for its entry-level price-point, we are looking at about $25 million in revenue!! As you can imagine this is a very conservative estimate... Just goes to show the value of data, if one knows how to use it...
Before I digress (getting carried away by how a company can potentially leverage its existing information to create a completely new revenue stream), let me look at it from our (affiliate) perspective as usual. Quite simply, this means that affiliates will have a lot more information at their fingertips, which they can use in deciding the products they want to promote at different times. Even if the data is internal to eBay, the numbers should make it reasonably representative for affiliates to correctly evaluate and forecast future buying trends and plan their promotions accordingly.
I believe affiliates will have to acquire a love for numbers and sharpen their analytical skills based on all the quantitative data that becomes available to them. That will have to be the fundamental basis for decision making--- sure, one mustn't lose that great virtue called instinct, but that is best used as a casting vote.
Until next time,
Ben Flux
P.S: i) Zanox UK Affiliate Academy will be held on the 18th at the Soho Hotel in London
ii) Check out TradeDoubler's Christmas promotions page
TradeDoubler goes public... .how about stock options for affiliates (seriously)?
Earlier this week, TradeDoubler successfully completed its IPO in a Swedish stock exchange. The company has taken rapid strides since starting out in 2000 and going public in five years, having recorded over 62.3m Swedish Kroner in profits last year. Traffic Junction has had a good partnership with TradeDoubler and we are glad to see the company grow.
This really seems to be a reasonably good time for the networks-- just look at what we have been hearing from ValueClick, LinkShare, Zanox, and now TradeDoubler in the past couple of months. As I have alluded to in the past, all these augur well for us affiliates.
If I have one complaint with the TradeDoubler IPO, it is that there didn't seem to be a lot of information easily available (or if it were indeed available, I may have been looking at the wrong places, though I wouldn't want to believe that), apart from the news that the company was going public. It would have been interesting to know details of the TradeDoubler's plans with the capital being raised with the public offer, because I'm sure that will have some bearing on us affiliates in the not too distant future. Is the company expanding geographically? What product and technology development plans does it have? What will be its marketing strategy and advertiser acquisition targets?
I understand that all of these would not be explicitly stated, but I'm sure that we'd have been able to piece togetether the information. Anyway, one of the advantages of TradeDoubler going public is that we can now expect to hear more details from the company more often, as its strives to fulfill its disclosure obligations.
Lastly, what can affiliates aspire to gain from a network going public? Obviously, we would expect that as a network embarks on its expansion and growth path, affiliates will benefit by being able to promote more profitable products.
Also (and I say this quite seriously), if employees of companies are awarded performance-related stock options and stock grants, how about the affiliate networks rewarding its top affiliates with a similar incentive? That would make affiliates much stronger stakeholders, with a lot more to lose for non-performance. Win-Win option, isn't it?
Until next time,
Ben Flux
Look over your shoulder -- stay ahead with competitive intelligence
We often face an interesting dilemma: how much should we focus on our competitors (both real and perceived)? Most of us instinctively know that we need to be watching out for companies who could take away a share of our pie. However, the challenge is often to find the right balance in worrying about the competition and adopting appropriate strategies to quell the threat, and focusing on our own business goals and convictions.
Obviously, this is an age-old dilemma, not peculiar to us; yet, in the environment that we operate in and the business that we are in makes things a lot different and more challenging. But with the Internet playing such a pivotal role in our businesses, tracking competitors has become absolutely critical. Noted search engine marketing expert, Paul Bruemmer, recently reiterated a similar sentiment on the value of competitive intelligence.
With customers and marketers alike turning to the search engines to meet their respective objectives, marketers are slugging it out on the search engines in the battle for the rankings. There is hardly anything preventing any company anywhere to buy a competitor's trade mark as a keyword and bidding on it, and benefit from the traffic that owes itself to a user looking for the trade-marked product/ service. Now, that is pinching traffic from right under one's nose. An obvious question may be: what can be done about it?
Lots can be done, if one can employ the right partners to leverage their expertise and experience (knowing ALL the tricks of the trade!) to prevent competitors from taking undue advantage. One question I hear is: hey, we are a big company with big brands, and we can take care of the competition-- we can monitor what's happening?
That's often a result of grossly underestimating the nature of the challenge. The Internet is a 24/7-beast--- quite literally, your companies may be sneaking in the cloud of darkness... Does the big company employ people 24/7 to track and monitor competitor activities on the internet? "We'll automate the process of monitoring," that's the next response. Fine, but is that your core competence? Is that something you should be focusing your resources on, or let a competent and trust-worthy third party do it?
Competitive tracking is also not a defensive strategy---- you could use it aggressively as well. Where are your competitors appearing in the search results? What keywords have they bid on, that you may have missed? Is that an opportunity for you to trial and potentially generate some revenue?
Undoubtedly, there are numerous other benefits of keeping track of your competitors-- what new initiatives are being taken, how are the competitors performing, what areas are they doing well and where are they failing? With all the information floating around, converting this information into strategic competitive intelligence is a niche in itself. You want to make sure you are relying on the right tools, the right people and the right organization to do it for you because the price of climbing up the wrong tree can be quite steep.
Until next time,
Ben Flux
(BTW, if you are interested in knowing how Traffic Junction can help with competitve intelligence, specifically to leverage your trade marks to the utmost and prevent trade mark abuse, get in touch with us.)
Zanox goes East, set to tap China market
Zanox is going places, literally. Close on the heels of its plans to start operations in the United States, the company is now tapping the huge Chinese market with an office in Shanghai.
It's not surprising in the least that Zanox has decided to tap this market. A new Ernst & Young study predicts that China will surpass the US market for luxury goods in the next five years. What's more, online trade in China is projected to grow at almost 50% over the next three years, according to China Net Investor, a news digest. Now, that is indeed some growth!
Zanox is taking the initiative and trying to take an early lead in performance-based marketing solutions in China. Online marketing still has a long way to go in that part of the world--- but just the sheer size of the markets in Asia offer considerable opportunities for these companies. LinkShare's acquisition by a Japanese company and now the entry into China by Zanox are all indications that there will be considerable action in Asia in the next couple of years.
Zanox's international expansion strategy is apparently driven by demand from merchants who are looking to increase their global footprint and sales. So, this move will definitely be beneficial to merchants who are trying to sell their products to the huge potential audience of buyers in China (and quite possibly, rest of Asia in the near future).
I'm not sure whether existing European affiliates stand to benefit from these expansions. We'll have to wait and watch and understand what specific plans Zanox has for this and any other new markets.
We may or may not benefit directly, but that shouldn't stop us from congratulating the company on their foray into the challenging (and hopefully lucrative) China market and wishing them the very best.
Until next time,
Ben Flux
Hey, affiliates are your partners !
One of the themes I have been harping constantly --- because I whole-heartedly believe in it-- is the need for a closer and stronger relationship between affiliates, the merchants and the networks, where they are involved.
It's quite simply the nature of the beast that a certain amount of scepticism (and distrust?) between affiliates and the principals they serve is inevitable. But if WE are to move forward with a successful and sustainable business, there is also no way other than leaving that scepticism on the back burner, without letting go of it completely. I'd say-- let that tiny element remain, for it will help prevent any party from taking the other for granted.
In this post by Vinny Lingham, he talks about how affiliates often act as watchdogs for merchant sites. He mentions problems on merchant websites that have bugs or show error pages when visitors land up on them, with affiliates often having to point them out to the merchants. Obviously, that is a pity, because these visitors are most likely driven by expensive PPC campaigns or other paid-marketing channels, and to lose a lead hurts deeply.
The fact that these problems weren't detected by the merchant could be a result of several factors-- from sheer indifference and callousness to genuine oversight. Whatever it is, there is a significant cost involved.
Merchants and the networks need to understand that they also incur a cost when something like that happens. Affiliates may bear the direct cost of losing a lead that they drive to the merchant site, but what about the indirect opportunity cost of a lost potential customer? For all you know, this customer may never again visit the merchant site, directly or through an affiliate.
Like most affiliates, I understand and appreciate that there will be downtime. That is inevitable. The issue is how we handle situations when things like that happen. Whose responsibility is it to communicate and ensure that immediate remedial actions are taken to prevent money going down the drain?
This is where we come back to those (clichéd)terms again-- partnership, collaboration, communication. As I said, we all have something to gain and everything to lose by not collaborating to overcome these glitches.
I'll leave with what Vinny had to say in the piece I referenced above. That's hitting the nail on its head.
"Affiliates do play a vital role in assisting merchants with monitoring the pulse of their business, and the merchants that understand this and compensate them accordingly with disregard for inefficient internal teams, will be the merchants that constantly are in the top 5 affiliate programs year on year."
Until next time,
Ben Flux
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| • | Ben Flux - Traffic Junction |
| • | Hertford, Hertfordshire, United Kingdom |
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