If brand bidding will be part of your upcoming PPC campaigns, there are some definite pros and cons worth highlighting, and important considerations to keep in mind for merchants and affiliates alike.

Brand bidding is when an affiliate targets specific keywords associated with a brand, as opposed to a generic word, such as a noun or adjective that describes the product.  Usually when brand bidding, an affiliate is bidding on a trademarked name, and is often therefore “competing” directly with the merchant.

Today’s blog will look at brand bidding from the merchant’s perspective, and tomorrow we will examine this somewhat controversial subject from the affiliate’s standpoint.

Considerations for Merchants
Our first recommendation, and perhaps one of the most important things to say, is that no matter how you feel about brand bidding, it’s definitely something that needs to be clearly indicated in your Terms & Conditions.  Affiliates will be looking for this information, and you need to make your policy very clear.   To ensure there is no confusion, it’s a good idea to create a list of specific keywords that are off limits to affiliates, as well as a list of words that are allowed.

Pros
If you’re new to the online platform or don’t have your own PPC marketing strategy in place, then allowing affiliates to market your brand name online can be an effective way for you to build your brand awareness.

Say, on the other hand, that you have an established online business, and you invest in your own PPC campaigns—are there still benefits to allowing brand bidding?  Many people feel that allowing brand bidding contributes to increased visibility on a more consistent basis, and that this strategy can only help your business’ bottom line.  You may also choose to allow affiliates to use your brand name, limiting their usage to markets or search engines where you are not active.

Cons
Once you allow brand bidding, quality assurance does become a bit of a concern.  Affiliates could bid on your brand name to promote a competing brand, or use this keyword to send visitors to a rinky-dink site or to a site that also promotes other brands—that you may or may not want to be associated with.

For merchants who sell items that might also be sold by non-trademark owners (like the knock-offs you find on the streets of New York), allowing brand bidding may actually contribute to promoting your competitor’s fraudulent brand.  Major apparel, luxury, jewelry, fragrance, and other well-known and sought after brands are the hardest-hit by trademark infringement.

Misconceptions
Some people mistakenly believe that allowing brand bidding will drive up your bid price because more people are bidding on your keyword.  While this is true to a degree, the truth is that having relevant, high-quality content landing page and a high quality score will give you access to cheaper keywords, and is a more important consideration for search engines like Google.  Relevancy and high-quality content will, therefore, more strongly contribute to the price you will pay for a keyword, than having a competitor bidding on the same keyword.

Allow High-performing Affiliates to Brand Bid
On a final note, you might consider using the Share Results affiliate marketing software to segment your affiliates and assign different rights to different groups.  This is a great way of allowing your high-performing affiliates to take part in brand bidding, ensuring your brand name is always associated with high-quality affiliates. 

Check back tomorrow for more on brand bidding for affiliates!

A recent article on ClickZ.com cites that businesses in the Entertainment and Health industries paid more for lead gen services delivering “premium” details “during the second half of 2009.” Another clear sign that lead generation or lead gen is big business for companies, especially those in affiliate marketing. Thousands of companies in the affiliate marketing industry specialize in lead generation to acquire new customers. There is a strong preference for the ease with which an affiliate can get paid commissions simply for referring customers through a lead form rather than an action that requires a credit card. As such, affiliates get a bit overzealous about generating revenue and forget that merchants have specific needs for their products and services, too. That said, an affiliate should be aware of what exactly the merchant needs from them, in order for both sides of the business to benefit from lead gen campaigns.

Evaluating Traffic Placements
Affiliates are often driven to sign up to an affiliate program when the payout and the offer looks like an attractive fit. However, these days, traffic placements are more comprehensive now that social media has entered the mix. A paid search affiliate should ask more questions about whether or not a merchant will permit things like brand name bidding and direct link. Even more important, some merchants may not be too keen on lead gen affiliates using social media to generate leads. For instance, Planning Family is a great offer that has gained popularity with Share Results affiliates, but this merchant does not allow affiliates to generate leads via channels like Facebook or Twitter. To be certain about what methods of promotion are accepted when generating leads, go directly to the affiliate manager of the program.

Evaluating the Potential Customer
Affiliates should evaluate whether or not they have the right prospective customer base for the product or service. A database of 100k US-based female users may seem like the perfect fit for an offer like Free Stuff For Your Baby, but what percentage of them are expectant or new moms? What is their average age of their children? Do they have any other children? What is their average income and do they respond to products for babies? This is just something to think about before launching a campaign for a merchant that is targeting a niche market.

Quality not Quantity
Lead gen affiliates often make the mistake of thinking that when generating leads for a merchant that it’s all about volume. This isn’t always the case. A merchant like eLearners may be interested in a high volume of education leads, especially during peak school months like January and September. However, unless they see those prospective students actually enrolling in the months ahead (especially during a downturn economy), it’s not very profitable for them to payout a lucrative amount for each lead. So, evaluate the quality, by asking the affiliate manager of the program for merchant feedback. Also, Share Results Traffic and Transaction Reports are available to use in order to determine just how many web visitors are clicking through specific tools and are successfully filling out and completing a lead form.

Negotiating Commission
Some affiliates have come to us requesting higher commission on an offer before they’ve even signed up to an affiliate program. While $1.20 CPL may not seem like a lucrative payout for a lead, there’s more to consider than just the commission. Remember that merchants have to look at how much they can offer based on their budget. They may only have a small margin to work with and need to be reassured that those leads will actually convert. If a commission is not that lucrative, but the offer is an excellent match for the customer base, one approach to getting a higher commission can be to launch a test campaign over a period of one to three months (or whatever can be afforded) and then ask for feedback from the merchant about how those leads referred actually converted. If the conversion rate is high enough, it’s a good time to inquire about getting a commission increase. Communicate with the affiliate manager for the program and make a case. This obviously doesn’t happen overnight, but stay the course and keep being open to negotiations, just don’t do it before signing up.

Thanks to affiliate programs like eLearners.com (and now CuteKid.com’s CPL campaign) affiliates are getting their feet wet in the lead gen business. Remember that success in lead gen doesn’t happen overnight. It can be a long process of establishing what the merchants need in a customer and the need for affiliates to refine their strategy used to target that audience.

What are your thoughts on lead gen? Feel free to contact us via affiliates [at] shareresults [dot] com with your feedback and questions.

I think I do. I don’t follow football but I do follow gossip. Celebrity gossip. So Gisele
(Victoria Secret model, mother of one, wife of Tom Brady) has had her baby boy and The Patriots are totally not in the Superbowl. That is an in-depth of an analysis as you’re going to get out of me.

BUT, with a little elbow nudging, my colleague Adam has graciously given me the “G2K” (good to know) guide about this year’s big game on Sunday.

1. The teams that are playing in Super Bowl XLIV are called the Saints and the Colts.

2. The Colts are heavily favored because of Peyton Manning.

3. Peyton Manning is the quarter back of the Colts and is apparently “awesome”, “really good” and “the best goddamn quarterback of all time”. Also he was just named the NFL’s MVP.

4. Sean Payton is the head coach for the Saints. He is so not a quarterback.

5. New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Payton has been quoted saying he is “confident his players can ‘deal’ with Peyton Manning in Sunday’s Super Bowl”.

6. So really this game thingy on Sunday is just a beef between two guys, Payton and Peyton. Cat fight!

7. I’m still not watching. But will eat the ceremonial football chili!

If you plan on watching, how are you going to show your love for Payton’s team (The Saints) or Peyton’s team (The Colts)? If you’re at a loss, you should check out TundraGear’s site they offer up NFL pins and hats of your favorite team. OR unfavorite, whatever you decide.

Earlier this blog series, we discussed effective text and image creatives and how to use them to most efficiently promote products and services. In this post we’re going to look at monitoring the efficiency of your campaigns and some strategies for going about it.

At Share Results, we believe strongly that relationships are the basis for effective affiliate marketing programs. Strong bonds between affiliates and merchants are the foundation for any effective affiliate marketing program. With this in mind, we’ve created an affiliate marketing software solutionthat not only enhances transparency between the two entities, but also allows them to work together closely by using in-depth tracking and reporting features that monitor how well your creatives are performing.

In order for affiliates to be successful, the merchants whose products they are promoting must provide effective creatives to their affiliates. Knowing which creatives are going to be most successful requires some information:

1. The number of impressions must be tracked. How many viewers saw the page where this ad was located? Knowing how your traffic got there, and who they are is also a big part of this equation. It’s very important to understand who your visitors are. Did they get there via a search engine result, or were they recommended by someone else’s site? These differences should play a part in directing your campaigns.
2. Then, the click through rate must be examined. How many people who saw the ad clicked on it and went to the landing page (the page where the item can be purchased?
3. And lastly, the conversion rate: how many people who clicked through to the landing page actually made purchases?

If an ad is getting a high volume of impressions, but very few clicks, then there are several questions that you can ask. It could be that the ad’s placement on the page needs to be adjusted.  And it could be that the ad itself, be it a text or image creative, needs to be reworked.

Ask Yourself

Are you reaching the consumers you want to reach? Is this the right page for this ad? Does that ad have a strong call to action?

Use rotating ads with different images and text to test these until you find the one that works best.

If your ads are attaining a decent amount of clicks per impressions, but visitors are not converting into sales, then it is up to the merchant to look at the efficacy of the landing page. Also, it could be that the creative is misleading in some way, or has not effectively targeted the individuals who are most likely to convert into a sale upon arrival at the purchase page. There are many variables, so it is worth trying many different tactics to reach potential purchasers, and follow the results closely.

Merchants have the ability to see which affiliates are sending traffic to these landing pages, plus their URL, by using the ACID report in Share Results. With this information, they can discover the top performers and what kind of website works best for their product or service.

A great way to achieve success in this area is to constantly be testing and refining your campaigns as well as the creatives you are using to run them. Using a software system that can track all of this information for you will put you miles ahead of your competitors who may not be armed with the same information that you have at your fingertips. Merchants and affiliates must work together to ensure the success of affiliate marketing programs and the reports available in the Share Results software solution help them to do exactly that.

Once again—and there is no way we can stress this enough—always be testing your creatives.

A better understanding of how your creatives are performing = the ability to tailor campaigns based on top performing creatives = the ability to make more money from your affiliate marketing campaigns.

Apple has undoubtedly created a new frontier for mobile marketing that will see advertisers leap at the opportunity to reach customers in a brand new way.

Apple’s unveiling of their newest gadget created a ripple of excitement and few signs of skepticism as techies awed at its design while others saw it more as an oversized iPod. The new device – approximately 9 times the size of an iPod – offers users a media-consuming touch screen device that is set to compete with a variety of different products already available on the market.

For the critics that believe this is simply a large-scale iPod, there are a variety of functions and applications that are fundamentally changing the way we consume new and old media.

Of all media, book publishers had the most vested interests in the interface and capabilities of the iPad. Set to be a direct competitor with Amazon’s Kindle, the e-book experience that Apple is creating is far beyond the simplicity of reading an e-book. The “sexiness” of the page turning and high-resolution screen partnered with the Apple brand add tangible and intangible value respectively to what Amazon could never match.

Along with gaming and visual media such as movies and television, the iPad’s screen allows users to dive into a growing variety of products available through iTunes.

But the noticeable technical and visual aspects of the iPad are not what strike us the most. With the iPad, Apple has created a new platform that presents an assortment of content in a more personal way. This new frontier has created a dynamic market of mobile marketing possibilities that advertisers are drooling over.

It is no coincidence that Apple recently acquired Quattro Wireless – a specialist in mobile advertising. The potential gains for mobile marketing is massive and with devices like the iPad carving out new opportunities, Apple has set themselves up for huge future returns. And since the iPad does not support Adobe Flash, marketers are being forced to develop new kinds of ads, rather than adapting Web ads.

As such, an entirely different approach to mobile ads could come sooner than expected. The mobile platform offers advertisers the same tracking and reporting that comes with traditional Internet ads, and it reaches their audience wherever they are, given they have access to an internet connection – something that is becoming the norm in most major metropolitan cities.

Windsor Holden, a principal analyst at Juniper Research, predicts worldwide mobile ad spending will quadruple to $6 billion or more, by 2014.

The opportunity is significant, and the only question that remains is: How will advertisers integrate their offers into the platform that match the needs of their target audiences?

Image creatives are often known as banner ads. These were very popular in the early days of online marketing, but at some point began to be slightly less effective. With recent innovations in design and technological advances, image creatives are once again becoming a very effective tool in an affiliate marketer’s toolbox. Indeed, banner ads are everywhere on the Internet and it’s likely that anyone surfing the Net on a given day will come across several.

Banner ads come in all sizes and flavors. From small square ads to rectangular banners that take up almost the entire length of a page and everything in between. There are no real rules or specifications as to what makes a successful image creative, but what is clear is that with so many being shown to surfers on a daily basis, one must find a way to stand out from the others.

The point of an image creative is simple: it is designed to entice someone to click on it, taking them to a landing page that should eventually lead to a sale. Why will a person click on a banner ad? Simplicity reigns here again. They will click because they have been offered a good or service that they are interested in obtaining. So how does one go about creating an ad that does this?

You must get their attention.

You ads must stand out on a page. As already mentioned, with so many banner ads out there, standing out in the crowd can sometimes be difficult, but there are a couple of ways to grab the attention of your potential customers. The answers aren’t all that much different than create great print ads, but with the Internet, there are more possibilities.

That said, an ad should not be distracting, nor should it intrude upon the page that it is on.

Images should have something to do with the product you’re promoting. A great way to get those images to stand out is by using animation.  Animate, however, with caution. Even though big, blinking ads that scream at you will command attention, these are often ignored. Also, people often associate this type of ad with scam sites, so keep your animations engaging, but simple.

When using images, use ones that convey the message you want to send to potential customers. If the product is a vacation, an image of a couple relaxing on a beach sends a positive message to the viewer that indicates what they’re going to be getting out of this product or service. Show them the benefits.  And let your images be of top quality. The quality of the ad will be associated with the product you are marketing, so be sure to adjust accordingly.

In addition, these banners must load quickly. Slow loading banner ads may miss their chance to reach the audience you are trying to attract. Work with designers who know how to make ads that will appear on the page quickly, and in the time necessary to reach your audience. This is important as image quality is inversely proportional to load times, so finding a good image optimization technique will help you to find the middle ground between those two issues.

And once you’ve got their attention, image creatives must tie in what we learned about yesterday: the text that accompanies the image must be clear and concise, with a strong call to action.

Again, and we can never stress this enough, the way to find out which image creatives are going to work the best is by testing, testing and retesting. Keep abreast of the statistics of how your creatives are performing, and rotate your banners to test several at once. Never limit yourself to just one creative.

Affiliates and merchants must work together to create effective ads. The most important part of this equation is to understand the efficacy of these ads, and it’s through tracking the results that this information will be gleaned. In the next part of our series, we’ll look at how to use Share Results’ affiliate marketing software to track your ad campaigns, be they text or image creatives. Come back next week for more!

What are Text Creatives?

A text creative is any text that you’ve written in order to entice consumers to click through to a landing page where purchasing takes place. You’ll see these used in pay-per-click (PPC) ads, on web pages and in promotional emails. And even if you’re dealing with image creatives, they all have text as well. Whether your text is just a few words, or quite a few, the important part is that it serves to generate an interest in the product you are promoting.

AIDA and CTA

AIDA is my favorite acronym. It stands for:

• Attention
• Interest
• Desire
• Action

What this means for a text creative is that it must first serve to catch the attention of a reader, then generate their interest. Once their interest is piqued, it must create a desire in the specific good or service, and then call the reader to action.

The call to action (CTA) should tell the consumer why they should be clicking on this ad.  For example, “click here” isn’t going to give the reader enough incentive to click. Using stronger language, such as, “Click here to save money” gives the reader the incentive necessary to take action.

Your text should always give the reader the most important information on what you’re selling them. Think of your text creatives like newspaper headlines. They should convey exactly what the reader should know about your product, promotion or service. With just a few words to convince someone to take action, it’s important to give the reader the information they need to know, with a strong call to action that will convince them to click through to the purchase page.

Be Specific, Don’t Mislead

Let your reader know exactly where they’re going. Again, text like “click here” isn’t telling them anything about what they’re going to find. “Click here to find out about schools in your area” is precise and succinct. Strive for accuracy in every single line of your text creatives, be they for PPC, email, or as accompaniments to images.

It can be tempting to offer more than what is actually being offered in text creatives. Doing so will only serve to diminish the effect of the initial incentive. If you tell someone they can get the deal of a lifetime, but are only selling goods and services at regular prices, it’s highly unlikely that they’re going to be convinced to actually convert into a sale.  And chances are if they see one of your ads again in the future, they will have no trust in you, or the product you are selling.  Hence, misleading someone can result in the permanent loss of a consumer.

Keywords

Whether you’re relying on PPC or natural search results, adding keywords that apply to the landing page you are sending consumers to will increase your chances of ranking higher in search engines, and give your readers more information on what is being offered.

Price and Promotions

Every consumer has one question: “How much?” Answering that question right off the bat, especially if you are dealing with a sale or a promotion helps the reader to distinguish what makes your deal special from the others. “Vacations from $450 all inclusive,” “Shoes starting at $15/pair.” This gives an opportunity for you to shine right off the bat.

Make sure that your text is not overselling the product on offer. Create a realistic impression of what the person who clicks on the ad is going to find when they get to the landing page. In the same way that a car salesman has one chance to create a good impression, so too must online marketers ensure that the creatives they use are serving not to repel, but to attract customers and gain their trust.

The most important thing is to test your creatives to see how they’re working. Stick with the winners and rework those that are not working as well until you find the winning formula. Remember that you must always be tracking your ads to see how they’re performing.

In the next segment in our series on creatives, we’ll look at image creatives, and how to best make use of them. And in the last part of the series, we’ll talk more about campaign tracking. Come back tomorrow for another installation.

eLearners.com has announced the re-launch of the ever so popular Project Working Mom campaign, which offers working moms (and dads too!) full-tuition scholarships to accredited online institutions. The aim of the program is to provide aid to working parents and help them to overcome the obstacle they are faced with when returning to school. eLearners.com considers the major obstacles to be time, money and confidence and they are committed to addressing these issues by raising awareness, aggregating support for a solution and serving as a resource for working mothers and fathers to pursue their educational dreams. Tune into the Tyra Banks on February 3rd to find out more!

Affiliates catering to working parents or offering resources related to  pursuing online education are welcome to promote Project Working Mom 2010 via the affiliate program in Share Results. Whether you have a blog about a particular education vertical, write EDU content about specific schools, or use paid search and SEO to generate leads, you’re sure to find success with the Project Working Mom campaign. Banners are available is in an assortment of sizes.

To help affiliates better promote, here’s some additional information about PWM 2010 that prospective students should know:

Who can apply?

All working parents, single, divorced or married are eligible and encouraged to apply. Keep in mind Project Working Mom 2010 scholarships are exclusively for online study at one of the sponsoring institutions.

How to apply?

Parents interested in applying for a Project Working Mom 2010 scholarship must: Complete a short application at www.projectworkingmom.com and submit an essay describing how the applicant is “going to make history with an online degree/program.”

When to apply?

The campaign will run until September 30th, 2010, however scholarships will be awarded over the eight-month period. The deadlines to submit applications are March 1, April 27 and September 30.

If you have not started partnering with eLearners as yet, feel free to learn more about them via their merchant page. You can also email us with any questions you may have about the program or its wide variety of EDU offers.

You may, from time to time see us refer to “creatives” on this blog. Enough people have asked us, “What are creatives?” that we have decided to launch a four-part series on what creatives are and how you can use them to help you build your business.

When we refer to a creative, we are talking about any advertising method by which you attempt to reach consumers. For example, the text in a PPC ad can be considered a creative, as could a Flash banner advertisement. Some creatives – mostly image creatives – are available directly from merchants, while others will be created by affiliates, or even a third party.

Essentially, anything that you do to market goods and services that requires imagination, artistry, innovation, and inspiration is a creative.  Everybody uses creatives in different ways, but they all fall into two basic categories: text and images.

In the first part of our series, we’ll look at text creatives and how they can help you reach your audience. We’ll talk about the importance of powerful PPC ads, and solid, relevant copywriting. We’ll also explore how SEO fits into the big picture, and how it can be used within your text creatives to reach your target audience.

In the next part, we’ll look at image creatives. We’ll explore what makes a successful image creative, where to place them on your website to get the best results, and some things to avoid.

And in the final part of the series, we’ll take a good, hard look at the value of monitoring your creatives and how tracking them can help improve your business. We’ll investigate how to use the Share Results software to help you get more information on what creatives are working for you, and how you can enhance your strategies in order to improve your conversion rates.

Come back tomorrow to read all about text creatives, and how to use them effectively. And be sure to get in on the conversation by leaving a comment or by sending us an email to let us know if you have any further questions.

It being my first time at the Affiliate Summit and it being my first time at the conference, it might sound naive to say it was the best conference yet… but it was. I enjoyed the enthusiasm and the energy of the conference participants, the contacts made through various networking events, the shared knowledge and experience from all types of industry and the atmosphere provided by Las Vegas itself. I barely slept, but I barely noticed! (Until I got home.)

Only some of our highlights were caught on camera – apparently I like talking more than I like taking photographs? Here, for your enjoyment is a brief recap of our time in Vegas…

In online marketing, one of the best benefits of attending conferences is putting a face to the names you are in contact with on a daily basis.

Julia is modeling some of the must-have tools when standing at a booth at the conference- well done Julia!

I purchased these Blundstone boots just before the Summit and am ever pleased as punch that I did. After tottering around in heels at parties in the evening time, my feet needed the welcome relief of some stylish comfort boots. Or is it shoe-boots? Or sh-oots?

Getting to see some of the sites of Vegas on our way to sponsored events was a real treat – nothing can prepare you for this… and it gves some great decorative ideas for your home renovation plans. Next up for reno plans: the Giant Manta Ray Aquarium.

We attended several parties and we enjoyed all of them =) It’s pretty amazing to see something like this when I’m someone who is just shy of six feet tall and feels proud on those days that I can almost touch my toes.

I think this was supposed to be an imitation of that Charlie’s Angels silhouette.

So. I admit. I always chose pubs and dives over clubs. This is what happens when you’re an ill-advised 20-something.

Thanks again to OPMPros.com for organizing such great parties.

I’m leaving this re-cap with this photo, because I enjoy it.  It is only when you enter a glass elevator do you discover who likes and who dislikes heights.

If you have your own photos to share of ASW10 – post your link in the comments! We’d love to see them.