The CMO Guide to Affiliate Marketing
by Peter Klein
Having built and run multiple performance marketing divisions over the past decade, I’ve learned that the best thing I can do for the industry is bring more advertising budget into our space. I’ve partnered extensively with Revenue Performance magazine over the last three years, and we are collaborating again to offer this guide for CMOs to help educate them on best practices for engaging affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is the smartest online advertising investment CMOs can make. How can I make this statement with such bravado? Let’s start with why brands need affiliate marketing. Read More…
Build it or Buy it: The Future of Performance Marketing Technology
by Malcolm Cowley
Ever since humans learned to use simple tools some 2.6 million years ago, technology has unrolled in cycles. The ongoing drive to make life easier or more productive continuously sparks new lines of innovative products, which in turn creates more wants and needs. The speed and scope of these progressions depend on the item and industry. For example, on one end of the consumer electronics spectrum, the KitchenAid® mixer has remained virtually unchanged in both appearance and mechanics since its invention nearly a century ago. Conversely, the iPhone, which would have boggled Alexander Graham Bells mind, rolls out a new version every year. Read More…
Technology Gives Performance Marketers the Edge
by Rob Durkin
Technology-savvy players such as Amazon and eBay set the standard for technology and tools in the performance marketing channel. However, e-commerce sellers, advertisers and affiliate marketers of all sizes can benefit from utilizing product data feeds. This technology enables simple access to new online channels that drive incremental revenue and consumer engagement with products.
In this article I examine how new tools that simplify the creation of product data feeds, advertising units and widgets can help merchants drive sales online by enabling affiliates to build unique content and monetize traffic. Read More…
Do You Have What it Takes to Survive?
by George Bordo
When it comes to evolution and possible extinction it doesn’t matter what terminology you use. Whether it’s “natural selection,” “the law of the jungle” or “survival of the fittest,” the meaning is the same. Only those who can adapt to their surroundings and outwit their competition will survive.
The principle is extremely relevant to the performance marketing industry at this time, with rapid change making many fear for their own survival. But the fact is that affiliate networks and big brand merchant affiliate programs still have time to adapt and so to survive. Read More…
Eight Tips to Take your Client Relationships to the Next Level
by George Hansen
I have been lucky enough to have had the opportunity to work with many large and well-known brands during the course of my career and have regarded my work with these clients as the equivalent of making it to the professional leagues. But just as any draft-pick joining a pro-team is not guaranteed to be a champion, so dealing with top-level clients doesn’t mean that you are going to be a success.
But you can maximize your chances by using my eight point guide that I focus on when working with my top clients. Read More…
Does Your Website Inspire Trust?
by Tim Ash
Human beings are social creatures that seek out companionship and relationships. Our map of reality can be viewed as a series of concentric circles that include our most trusted relationships, with those who are in our hearts at the very center.
We crave trust. Without it, we would be consigned to a world where we must examine everyone’s actions with suspicion and assume that they are working only for their purposes and not ours. Because of the sheer number of social interactions that we have with complete strangers, we must at least extend some trust. Otherwise many acts, both small and momentous, simply could not happen at all. Read More…
Uncovering Site Problems for Landing Page Optimization
by Tim Ash
A lot of people in online marketing spend much of their time trying to figure out how to drive traffic through organic search and pay-per-click advertising, but too little time evaluating what site visitors do once they actually get to the landing page. Marketers should be trying to get Web site visitors to act in some way—like clicking through to another page, or downloading a white paper, for example—but most landing pages fail to accomplish this adequately. Fixing your landing page can ensure that you are getting the most out of your website traffic. It’s the single most effective way to maximize the effectiveness of your online efforts and skyrocket profitability. Read More…
An Interview With Jason Spievak: Pay-Per-Call Performance Marketing
by Geno Prussako
Pay-per-call advertising has been growing rapidly over the last year or so, allowing advertisers and publishers to generate hot leads from potential customers who prefer to use the phone. Some industry insiders are already estimating that it will become a multi-billion dollar market, with companies like RingRevenue, KeyMetric, CallButton, ValueLeads and others extending the pay-per-call payment model into affiliate marketing.
Pay-per-call bridges the gap between online and offline by making it possible for affiliates to drive phone leads too. For merchants, the beauty of the performance-based pay-per-call marketing is, of course, the low financial risk involved. The action that will trigger an affiliate payment is predefined (e.g.: calls over 3 minutes), and tracking is handled by the service provider. Read More…
Network Insights
Fraud: Where the Buck Stops
Fraud has been a problem in the performance marketing industry from the beginning. The concern of many is that despite numerous industry initiatives, the situation doesn’t seem to be getting any better. Networks have developed various fraud prevention technologies, created databases of fraudulent affiliates, enforced strict compliance policies and do their best to encourage best practices, but advertisers and their agencies say much more needs to be done.
“Fraud is a significant problem and an unfortunate reality,” says Keith Kochberg, CEO of iMarketing, a leading, full service, online marketing agency. “Even if you catch some fraudulent publishers, there may still be problems with the ones remaining.” Read More…
Big Bucks, Bad Business: Who’s Getting Google-Slapped and Why
by Lisa Morgan
Google is cracking down. Last month, Google filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against Pacific WebWorks and several others as part of an effort to stop fraudulent “Google Money” schemes. These are scammy offers that use Google’s brand to attract unsuspecting customers and then trap them into hard-to-break continuity programs, often via negative option contracts. In a move that many see as being related, Google has also moved “to remove scammy URLS from our index,” and to, “permanently disable AdWords accounts that have a poor or harmful user experience whether or not they use Google’s trademarks illegally.” Unfortunately, it’s not just scammers that are getting hit by these new measures. Read More...
