The Crew in NYC
Kim & Gina
Dinner at Carmines
Archive for the ‘Affiliate Marketing’ Category
10
11.09
Understanding the need for premium co-registration leads & data. TheMediaCrew has launched four new co-registration web sites in the United States and the United Kingdom. This bring the TMC network of co-reg & lead generation sites to 27. Take a look at our newest additions:
redhotproducts4u.com
redwhiteandbluedeals4u.com
seriousconsumeroffers.com
blueandwhitedeals4u.co.uk
1. Competing With Your Affiliates.
This is by far the worst mistake made by companies that offer affiliate programs. I often see companies for products I am trying to promote compete with me in the search engine rankings and pay per click advertising programs.
Why companies invest money and resources in competing with their affiliates is beyond me. By competing with me, you’re trying to put me out of business. Have marketing directors ever thought of it in that way? Because if you succeed, you will no longer have an affiliate network to speak of.
The money would be better spent on supporting your affiliate network by creating a better product, providing more referral statistics, higher commission payouts, faster support, and more, fresh promotional creatives.
2. Not Providing Your Affiliates With Useful, Real-Time Statistics.
All marketers rely on statistics to measure the effectiveness of any marketing campaign. Yet most affiliate programs only provide their affiliates with basic statistics such as number of visitors sent, number of sales, and commission earned. These statistics aren’t much help to affiliates who want to measure the effectiveness of a particular pay per click campaign.
3. Not Compensating Your Affiliates Fairly For Their Hard Work.
The #1 incentive for any affiliate is cold hard cash. Money sells! So tell your marketing director to fire the search engine optimization firm and advertising department, and redirect the resources to paying your affiliates a higher commission rate.
4. Not Providing Enough Fresh Promotional Creatives.
Most affiliate managers seem to give their promotional creatives little thought. All they offer is a handful of 468×60 banners, buttons and text links. What happens is that affiliates end up using the same ads on hundreds, even thousands of web sites.
5. Not Providing Fast, Quality Support For Your Affiliates.
This is the 21st century. Don’t make your affiliates wait longer for an email reply than it takes to send a letter by snail-mail post.
Don’t outsource your affiliate support work. If you have to, then at least train your support staff so that they understand the ins and outs of your products and affiliate program. I’m often dumbfounded by affiliate support staff who can’t give me answers to simple questions.
Andreana has been with our company for almost two years. She is one of our top Affiliate Managers. We all love Andreana. She does a wonderful job and we’re lucky to have her on our team. Andreana manages over 200 RevenueStreet affiliates. Please feel free to contact Andreana. She would love to hear from you.
4
09.09
3
09.09
As an internet marketing company, we rely heavily on our reputation to gain new clients and advertisers. A big part of building your reputation is increasing the amount of trust and credibility you or your business has in the industry. This reputation is the foundation to a successful and trusted partnership with your clients or employer. You can improve and maintain your reputation by following the 4 main trust principles outlined:
1. Integrity – This just happens to be one of our shared values. We pledge to always speak the truth and communicate openly and honestly with each other. In addition, integrity has to do with having congruency and “practicing what you preach.” Would you promote a campaign you would not run yourself?
2. Intent – What is your agenda, motive, and behavior? It is important in the online world to effectively communicate your agenda and the overall process being used to deliver the product or service.
“There are no moral shortcuts in the game of business – or life. There are basically, three kinds of people: the unsuccessful, the temporarily successful, and those who become and remain successful. The difference is character.” Jon Huntsman, Chairman, Huntsman Capital
3. Capabilities – Are you great at what you do? Do you provide industry knowledge and skills necessary to provide value to your customer/clients? You should constantly be improving your knowledge base and skills.
4. Results – What is your Track Record? Are you providing services in the time promised? Do you have systems in place to monitor and maintain time commitments? When you can establish a positive reputation of performing and being a producer, your reputation will precede you.
Take some time and ask yourself if you follow these 4 trust principles. This process will help you recognize your own credibility and focus on areas for improvement.
By: Rustam Irani| COO| TheMediaCrew
19
08.09
Come see us at Affiliate Summit East booth # 1104 and tell us what you think about our first VIDEO
The Importance of P4P
As companies have become more erudite in how they allocate their promotional budgets, they have been increasingly transitioning from the traditional advertising service/payment model that has been in place for decades. The days of paying merchants 100% of fees with no risk to the agency and very little accountability have given way to a much more effective and well-rounded approach– Pay for Performance.
P4P (Pay for Performance) advertising became exponentially more popular with the arrival of the world wide web that allows real time measurement of an advertising campaign’s ROI (Return On Investment). It flipped the traditional value proposition of advertising 180 degrees. Traditionally the advertiser/merchant was required to pay for the work of an advertising agency/network and the media/affiliate first, regardless of the return on investment of the campaign to this new payment structure. In the P4P model, the responsibility is on the agency/network/affiliate to create a performing ad campaign that converts into conversion resulting leads or customers if the client wants to receive payments from the merchant.
P4P introduces accountability into the mix, a component that was severely lacking in the traditional advertising arena until the P4P introduction, which minimizes the financial risk that has been historically assumed by the merchant. With traditional merchant returns down, it’s no wonder that conventional companies such as American Express, Wal-Mart and even Disney are herding to P4P marketing. When working with traditional marketing methods, it’s no wonder they’ve been on exit mode for quite some time.When working with a P4P model, advertisers have minimal risk; they purely pay a commission when an actual sale or lead is generated. No sales/leads, no commissions to be paid.
P4P deals are being tightly managed to produce better results for both marketers and operators of content sites that host the retailers’ ads. Affiliate network providers like TheMediaCrew.com/RevenueStreet.com are digging deeper into their networks and spending time and resources to hone in on matching retailers with the affiliates most likely to deliver buyers. “We looked at our data and recognized that only about 5% of the affiliate sites were really driving sales,” says Rustam Irani, COO of TheMediaCrew.com. “The 80/20 rule— states that 80% of your sales are typically generated by 20% of your customers—is more like 90/10 in this business. We look at pay-for-performance marketing as a way to utilize our skill sets to focus in on the affiliates that can produce the best results for our advertisers. We carefully select offers and match them with publishers we believe are going deliver the most traffic.”
Part of the value that an affiliate network brings to the online advertising scheme is that it helps the merchant determine which sites to target, and then ensures that the affiliates are doing their job. “We rely on the affiliates to make sure that the traffic they deliver is targeted. TMC/RevenueStreet works one to one with its affiliates to make sure that happens,” President Nick Foley says. “They go out and sell the offers to the affiliates. An affiliate has only a limited amount of ad space and attention to give to a cornucopia of merchants, so our job is to make sure the right affiliates allocate a larger percentage of their attention to us rather than to someone else.”
Affiliate marketing is a win-win situation for both the marketer and the affiliate; the full risk and loss are levied across all parties involved. Working together, they can be an advantage to both. The Pay for Performance pricing model is an integral component for successful campaigns in today’s online advertising industry. P4P marketing, delivers advanced solutions that facilitate strategic online relationships, driving accountable results for each client.
The growth of the P4P industry is assured by the success of the system, and with the Internet constantly evolving with ever-increasing niche markets to be found, there’s something for everyone.
By: Shannon Foley | Senior Affiliate Manager | RevenueStreet – A Division of TheMediaCrew
