Monetise

How to use Google Places as a Lead Generation tool

admin — Tue, 21 May 2013 14:00:15 +0000

Google Places is an excellent way to promote your local business to prospective customers. Google Places provides customers with a map of your location, reviews, ratings, and general business information. Best of all, adding your business to Google Places is able to increase your customer base at little or no cost to you.

We all know that Google is the top search engine, worldwide. When local customers seek any type of service – whether it be car repair, electronics purchases, or maintenance services – Google Places is much more likely to be used than the Yellow Pages.

How does Google Places work?

Potential customers search Google for businesses that pertain to their specific need. Google Places automatically coordinates into the Google search, providing the customer with an address, phone number, and reviews of local businesses which provide the sought service.

Personally, I use Google Places to find any business services that I need. For instance, I recently had my vehicle’s oil changed. Using Google Places provided me with directions to the business, as well as reviews from previous customers.

I was able to save a significant amount of money and time by using Google Places to find what I was looking for.; while the business was able to gain a customer without spending any money on advertising. It’s a win-win situation for both. Many prospective customers will do the same exact search to find their favorite businesses and restaurants that are within their local servicing area.

How do I add my business to Google Places?

There are numerous ways to go about adding your site to Google Places. Many SEO experts use Google Places as the first source of adding a “backlink” to the business’ website. This not only adds business exposure, but also creates a higher “Page Rank” within Google’s rating system.

To manually add your business to Google Places, visit http://google.com/places. From this point, you would enter your business information into a “new business listing” category; which would include a location of your business, website (if applicable), and a contact telephone number to reach your business.

Within 1-2 weeks, Google will add your business to their search result listings. Prospective clients will now see your business within search results, and a small “pin” will be added to Google Places’ map when the customer searches for that specific type of business or service.

Why should I add my business to Google Places?

The best form of advertising is, of course, word-of-mouth advertising. When local customers have good experiences with your business, Google Places allows the customer to create a review about the service that they received from you. This provides prospective customers with the ability to make an informed buying decision on which business that they would like to choose for their particular need.

Obviously, for most small business owners, obtaining new customer is just as important as repeat customers. When leads are generated from Google Places, new customers are obtained; and with a good experience, repeat customers are retained.

By allowing your customers to review and rate their experience with your business, you are enhancing the very free-enterprise system that originally started your small business in the first place. Most buying decisions are based off of reviews and customer referrals. This is an excellent way to add buying-decision power to your prospective customers.

How can I gain leads from Google Places?

We have already mentioned how to gain new and prospective customers through referrals and searches – but what about leads? Does your business want to add a database of customers’ email addresses, phone numbers, or other information?

This is the best part. In order to gain customer information, all that you must do is direct the customer to your website with a link in Google Places.

When the customer clicks on the link for your website, they can be taken to a “squeeze page” to gather information. Here, the customer enters their email address and other relevant contact information.

Using Google Places as a lead generation tool has proven to be the most cost effective way of gaining leads and prospective customers for your small business. Take advantage of this opportunity today by visiting http://google.com/places.

A Review of Internet World 2013 – Is it Worth Going Again Next Year?

admin — Tue, 14 May 2013 02:00:38 +0000

For nearly two decades, Europe has hosted one of the most prominent digital tradeshows in on the planet. Known as Internet World, the gathering of international minds and major online conglomerates is designed to both discuss the current state of the online world as well as examine the future of online business, interaction, and development. Each year, the conference reinvents itself to become more in line with existing Internet trend and long-term hopes, meeting with the need and challenges of an entirely new generation of developers. In 2013, that was once again the case.

A Strong Focus on the Social Aspect of the Internet

The momentum behind social media and online engagement has been building for several years, but it may finally have reached a head in 2013. Facebook released its “Home” phone in a partnership with HTC, Google began to deeply integrate its Google+ social network into every aspect of its services, and Twitter continued to dominate the discussion of major world events.

It is no surprise, then, that many major keynotes and talks focused on the social web. Companies from all across the spectrum. Information sessions were held to discuss the unique challenges facing designers and developers, who are now expected to fully embrace a long list of social technologies and interactive sharing tools. Companies like Facebook, Sitepoint, and numerous others discussed their expectations of even deeper social integration online in the years to come. Overall, the social nature of this year’s Internet World was perhaps the most telling sign that the medium is moving firmly into a new generation.

The Adaptive and Responsive Web Takes Center Stage

Another major trend online that has been causing a great degree of debate among developers is the fight between adaptive and responsive design when catering to mobile devices. This, too, was a hot topic at Internet World 2013, with any number of sessions dedicated to the benefits of each medium. Of course, consensus is beginning to side with responsive design as the single best way to meet the needs of Internet users, giving them a single design and a uniform appearance across desktops, tablets, and smartphones.

Is Internet World Durable Enough to Withstand New Developments?

Any long-running conference or trade show is bound to encounter debate about whether or not it can survive the fast-paced industry that it focuses on. The Internet World trade show is certainly no different, especially because it focuses on a product that seems to change and rapidly develop by the day. This year, there are more concerns than ever that the trade show might not be able to withstand the major sea changes occurring in the tech world.

First and foremost, the number of exhibits at the show this year declined from the number in 2012, which is a rather stunning turnaround for the conference when compared to its explosive growth since the early 1990s. That might be because so many vendors are focusing on using the Internet more as a connection mechanism, as something of a behind-the-scenes operator for mobile applications that more specifically cater to the demands of mobile users.

Even so, it bears mentioning that the Internet isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Despite the rising popularity of smartphones and tablets, the Internet continues to come online for the first time in developing countries throughout Asia and Africa, introducing new populations for the first time to tools as basic as email and technologies as advanced as mobile applications.

Developers Will Always Need a Place to Meet

With the Internet now a permanent fixture in both professional and home environments, and its reach still rapidly expanding around the world, it’s likely that Internet World as a trade show will continue to be held annually for years to come. The number of vendors may certainly decline, but that won’t affect how important the show is for developers around the world.

In most cases, Internet World serves as a chief way to unite developers who are variously working in Internet design, application design, mobile web development, and social media integration. These developers have increasingly few platforms for in-person interaction and development. Internet World offers a way for people to represent their ideas in a more personal way, advocating for their version of the next big thing and the next great development. For that reason, Internet World is probably one of the most resilient trade shows in all of Europe.

A Great Year in 2013 and Plenty to Look Forward to Next Year

Web design and development, social media interaction, online marketing, and user engagement, will likely never decrease in importance. Developers, likewise, will never stop innovating to make each of those things easier and more accessible to the masses. As long as there’s wide-ranging innovation and development, and a target audience to be reached, Internet World will continue to be a smash hit among European and tech-minded trade shows.

How to Get Traffic to Affiliate Offers

admin — Wed, 08 May 2013 13:00:48 +0000

Getting traffic to monetized sites with affiliate offers is above and beyond the most critical component of internet marketing. There are many different types of both traffic generation methods, and affiliate offers that can be promoted. The problem lies in identifying the most appropriate way to generate traffic to a specific offer. Affiliate marketing is simply choosing a niche with motivated consumers, using the right method for acquring these consumers, and advertising the product properly.

Promoting an Offer

Affiliate marketing is simply promoting a product or a service. Thus, it is important to learn the best medium for a specific product offer. Typically, the best way to get traffic to an affiliate offer is through SEO, or search engine optimization. Google has unique algorithms that ranks pages through relevancy, content, and backlinks. By optimizing the content on a monetized website, as well as having backlinks (links to the monetized site by a ranked site), the website can be ranked higher for specific keyword queries on Google, thus ranking the site higher on the Google search results, resulting in increased traffic. SEO is by far the best method for any affiliate offer, whether it is a Clickbank product, CPA offer, an Amazon affiliate product, or anything else.

Keyword research

Keyword research is the cornerstone of SEO. By choosing the right keywords, the monetized site can be ranked higher, with more monthly unique visitors and less competition. Some great tools for this include Google’s AdWords research tool, Long Tail Pro, and Market Samurai. If a specific keyword phrase gets 10,000 monthly searches, and the monetized site is at number one on results page, that’s going to lead to a large amount of traffic to any offer.

Traffic to Your Offer

There are many other ways to acquire traffic to an affiliate offer. One of the best for CPA offers is called content locking. Content locking is very simple, yet very powerful. Essentially, content locking is what the name implies: not allowing a user to access a specific piece of content until they complete a required action. Typically, this will be a CPA offer. If the user wants a piece of content badly enough, or if it is targeted to that specific audience, they will fill out and complete the offer. By implementing a content locker on a popular song or video, a large amount of traffic will be directed at the content locker, whether it be by Google or YouTube.

YouTube

YouTube is another great source of traffic for affiliate offers. YouTube marketing shares a lot of similar principles to SEO, however, it is different in some significant ways. YouTube search optimization relies on proper video titles, likes/views, quality, and affiliate link/offer placement. It is important to choose the proper advertisement strategy, and implement it in video form for the best possible results. A great example is finding a Clickbank product, finding the search volume for a specific keyword phrase (product name, product + review, etc), and using that in the videos title and description, along with video SEO to boost it to the top of the results page. If there is a large search volume for the keyword or related keywords, a lot of traffic can be directed towards the Clickbank product, resulting in high conversions if advertised properly. YouTube is a great source for traffic.

Advertisers – Why is split testing crucial for you

admin — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 10:00:32 +0000

Split testing is one of the most powerful success tools for a lucrative Internet marketing campaign. It allows you to track separate web pages or the overall site to determine traffic patterns, click-through and exit data, crucial for a successful adverting response and sales. Collecting split test data allows for ad copy optimization, discovering the most popular landing pages, effectiveness of sales letters and other data that increases web conversions (sales). Driving traffic to your site is one thing, but tailoring it to convert and remain profitable should be the prime motive for your internet marketing campaign.

What is Split Testing?

Split testing makes use of specialized software programs that tracks visitor data and response to your landing pages. For instance, if you have two major headlines for your sales page, split testing can determine which one is responsible for the most sales. This could also work in checking two different headline font colors; one color might attract more attention than the other. You could use split testing script to produce multiple banner ads spread over several e-zine sites, using different colors, fonts, and type style, then run the click-through data to determine the best choice. Split testing allows for testing two or more widely different sales or landing pages to discover which one yields the most sales conversions or opt-ins. You can modify different styles and appearances for specific pages to determine what characteristics draw more attention. There are a variety of split testing techniques that are specific to the type of service, product or business you are providing.

Popular Conversion Tests

With A/B testing, you can show every other visitor a completely different version of a paragraph, headline or lead-in tag by changing the text or logo color, font or style. The highest converting version will be your target sample. The simple A/B split test works well for email, landing pages, blogs and banner ads.

Multi-variate split testing allows for testing multiple versions of a page, font, headline or color base. It also works for different areas of the landing page, allowing testing several variants at once with a single testing command. Multi-variate takes less time than A/B split testing due to its multi-operational and compilation abilities.

The Taguchi Method split testing is a more sophisticated variety of the Multi-variate method. It involves three different testing parameters: The loss function, innovation in the design experiment and the off-line quality control philosophy. Simply put, the Taguchi Method requires that you to understand all the intricacies of your website, product or business by breaking down several displays or text components into different areas. The different areas are then tested and tracked individually. This method requires some advance study to master the application and might require some tutoring assistance.

Tracking Types

When potential customers click on your website to visit and then abandon it without perusing any other area or page of your website, it involves Bounce Rate Tracking. This tracking test also reveals where the visitor has followed a link to a specific page and has left. This is a good red flag test where a number of factors could be culprit, like the wrong or inappropriate message or information, sub-standard formatting, difficult reading due to harsh color contrasts and other such factors.

Exit Rate Tracking involves a visitor who has visited your blog or website and clicked through to several other pages before leaving the site. Exit rate tracking can determine the visitor’s length of stay per page and track the click path from one page to another. It can tag which are the most popular pages by frequency of visit and time spent.

Popular Tracking Areas and Resources

Some of the most popular tracking areas for your website or blog include, headlines, offers, Fonts, ads, formatting, colors, ad and sales copy, advertising, articles, registration or membership and pricing options. Split testing can be performed on all of these areas. You can learn exactly what needs changing by gathering the data results and find out how much improvement is gained by modifying the content. For those who are tech-challenged, split testing companies or managers can perform the tests to help you optimize and increase sales in all your ad copy, in addition to perfecting your landing pages for maximum draw.

Some of the best split testing resource programs include Coin Flipper, Easy Split Tester, Free A/B Split Testing, Conversion Prophet, Google Website Optimizer, Evolutionary Splittester and Split Test Accelerator.

What to Expect from AdTech this 2013

admin — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 10:00:31 +0000

ADTECH is a company with many insights into the future. They have led the way in a number of digital advertising ventures in the past, and they don’t seem to be slowing down. They offer solutions for hosting, seamless integration of audio, video, and digital ad campaigns, and other innovative solutions for the digital business world.

It is predicted that this year ADTECH will continue to grow. They have plans to increase their tools for digital marketing by focusing on making ads “app ready.” There is no doubt the focus on digital marketing and mobile technologies have spurred this on. Millions of people per day are on mobile devices, searching out the internet for the latest applications to help them in their business or for personal use. ADTECH is preparing the way for businesses to make sure their advertising is app ready with their new ADTECH Mobile tools and solutions.

They have created their SDK (Software Development Kit) to enable you with the tools need to integrate apps in your digital advertising campaign. The software enables app creation for the iOS, Android, and Windows Phone.
It is also compliant with the MRAID 2.0 standard, a rich media format which allows you to have all the features you like in your mobile device.

ADTECH has also streamlined and improved its download time, even for users with bad connections, and has added an offline capability to provide for offline download capabilities.

ADTECH has also partnered with AOL this year, making it even stronger in terms of company image. AOL Chairman and spokesman, Tim Armstrong reported recently that Marketplace by ADTECH helps round out AOL’s marketing offerings, due to the company offering multiple digital ad solutions across the board.
It is expected in the future that ADTECH will continue to grow, as technologies become more flexible and reliable, and the need for more and more higher level digital marketing solutions increases.
The Marketplace platform by ADTECH allows companies to have an all-in-one solution for business and digital advertising needs which offers cross-platform ads and solutions for a variety of advertising styles and purposes. This makes the company very versatile in its delivery model and increases its credibility.

The merging of ADTECH with AOL’s marketing solutions offers a near-perfect combination of supply-and-demand platforms which offer customers multiple choices in digital advertising, delivery, and service that is tough to beat.

With the current technologies becoming more diverse and capable of performing more functions for businesses, there is no doubt they will achieve even higher in 2013.
Another great tool recently developed by ADTECH which will prove successful for them in 2013 is the ADTECH Canvas program. Google Analytics and other forms of shopping behavior monitoring software allow for the habits of potential customers to be tracked and studied. This is critical in today’s world of digital revolution, when it is so important to know which channel buyers are coming from, what they purchased, and why. This increasing demand by businesses for a “need to know” will increase the popularity of such programs as ADTECH Canvas.

Another trend which will affect ADTECH’s future success if the advent of various advertising mediums coming closer together in terms of ad management. Videos are being used more frequently in business ads online, as they are seen as one of the primary factors in purchase conversions. Smart TV technology will also be at the forefront of ad campaigns as a medium, as advertisers rush to get in on this new platform. Once it catches fire and more Smart TVs are sold, the possibilities and the reach for advertisers and businesses will be unlimited. Windows 8 advertising capabilities are already possible, and ADTECH will be a part of this too.

As the technology changes, and the need for better analytics emerges, technology companies will always be working to solve the tough issues of being faster and more efficient in this growing market. There is no doubt AD TECH will be at the forefront of these digital solutions, working on their next big release of SDK programs, which will no doubt, have an impact on the digital marketing world.

Missing Out on Mobile Traffic?

admin — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 10:00:37 +0000

A successful affiliate advertising campaign relies on consumer appeal, relevant content, and above all else, traffic. When more visitors reach a website containing affiliate advertisements, the more potential customers are being exposed to what the site has to offer.

With the increasing trend of mobile Internet use, many of today’s website owners are missing out on the mobile traffic that they desperately need. Mobile traffic is crucial to the long-term success of every website on the Internet, and by 2015, over half of the traffic on-line will come from smartphones and tablets.

Mobile Site Compatibility

In order for mobile users to reach the affiliate offers a website is advertising, the website must be compatible with all of the top mobile browsers in use today. Android, iOS and Blackberry are the current top 3 mobile platforms, and it’s every website developer’s responsibility to ensure that visitors from these systems get the best viewing experience possible.

Tablet and smartphone sales are steadily on the rise. Projections from leading analysts differ by small percentages, but they all agree that mobile traffic will dominate Internet use activity by 2015. Because of this, no website without full mobile compatibility will be able to sustain high traffic numbers after the next few years.

Mobile Device Targeting

There are several ways to give a website more mobile appeal, but direct device targeting will yield the most traffic possible. To gain the attention of the mobile community, compatibility is essential, but providing relevant information by specific devices will draw in tremendous amounts of mobile traffic.

Device specific content such as wallpapers, tutorials and reviews are a great way to gain a larger number of mobile visitors. When this practice is combined with relevant merchandise associated with targeted devices, it can yield greater affiliate sales than device targeting alone.

A user of one particular mobile device will be more likely to purchase an accessory that’s presented in a targeted way. By promoting goods and services that are supported with informative content, visitors are far more likely to take action.

Keeping Up with Mobile Trends

As mobile users continue to become the majority on the Internet, mobile trends are defining the way affiliate advertising is delivered to new viewers. When new compatibilities are available for mobile browsers, it’s a good idea to keep pace in order to support every mobile feature possible.

Staying current with what’s popular in mobile technology is also highly beneficial. Mobile compatibility is a must for today’s websites, but mobile trends will be essential to mobile targeting in a few short years.

The Mobile Internet of the Future

By 2015, the changes presented by mobile advancements will be clearly exhibited across the entire world wide web. The time for blogger, e-Commerce and non-profit websites to make changes is now, but these changes are even more important to affiliate websites because of high competition levels.

In order for any affiliate program to be fruitful in the future, missing out on mobile traffic must be avoided at all costs. Mobile technology is already making its impact on today’s Internet, but mobile users will literally hold the future of Internet advertising in their hands. In order for websites to gain the visitors needed for sustainable traffic, mobile compatibility, device targeting and staying current with mobile trends will determine whether a website sinks or swims in the future.

5 Questions that Must be Answered to be Successful in Performance Marketing

admin — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 14:00:24 +0000

There are many affiliate programs out there that are designed to help you earn an extra income by rewarding you for helping them bring in customers. This is a win-win situation, as both you and the company gain from this partnership. However, it isn’t always easy to bring in more customers for a company. There are five basic questions that you should ask yourself when working in performance marketing.

Question 1: Why Would They Want This Product Or Service?

First of all, nobody is going to buy a product or service that they don’t want or need. That is just a waste of money, and so you need to figure out why somebody would want to use the company that you’re doing performance-based marketing for. Highlight the best qualities in the content that you are displayed to your potential customers. Talk about why they would want to use it more than anything, and spin things around to make it feel like they have to use this product or service.

If there is competition in the area you’re doing performance-marketing for, make it your job to make this product or service shine above the rest. People are going to try and find the best price and quality, and so focus on these two areas.

Question 2: What Type of People Would Want This?

The content you create needs to be focused on your audience. The vocabulary and images you use will be different depending on who you’re trying to get to purchase the service or product. For example, when marketing to teenagers, advertisers try to use artistic advertisements that are full of color and cool designs. The content in these articles feels like the teenager is being talked to by a friend, and the vocabulary is kept low so that they can fully understand.

Do this with your target audience. Whether it needs to be professional, artistic, creative, intelligent, or any other style; make sure that it fits the people you’re working to get to spend their money.

Question 3: Where Should You Be Marketing?

This partially goes hand in hand with the type of person you’re marketing to. This helps you determine the location that you should be advertising to because different types of people will be in different parts of the Internet. For example, by going off of teenagers in the last example, you will find many of them on social media or blogging websites.

Pinpoint your audience and get to them at their source. Find the spot that they’re most likely to spend a lot of time at, and try to market to them in their location. Don’t try to bring them to you, you have to go to them first.

Question 4: How Effective Are Your Current Marketing Techniques?

After you’ve been marketing for awhile, you need to figure out what is working and what isn’t. Think of your marketing techniques like a tree. When a tree has leaves that aren’t producing more than they are taking in, the tree will drop the leaf and grow a new one. This is exactly what you need to do!

Question 5: What is Your Competition Doing?

If you’re out of ideas, you can always cheat off of your competition. Figure out where they are advertising, how they’re doing it, and try to understand why they chose their marketing techniques. This could give you some ideas to springboard yourself, or you can choose to market in the exact same spot to attempt to steal some of the traffic from them. If you do it right and use the above marketing techniques, you’ll rob them blind!

Internet World Conference 2013

admin — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 14:01:53 +0000

We’re excited to be attending the Internet World Conference at the end of April and we thought it would be nice to give you the low down. Don’t forget to drop us a message if you’re attending and we’ll be sure to come say hi!

In its two-decade life, Europe’s Internet World Conference has expanded broadly to accommodate the exponential growth of the industry it seeks to advance and enlighten. The 2013 conference, hosted on April 23-25 by media company UBM, promises to be an even more all-encompassing than any of its predecessors.

Divided into six “worlds” — for Digital Marketing, Content Management, Mobile, ecommerce, Social Media and Cloud & Hosting — the experience can best to navigated by any Internet professionals looking to hone their insights and technological prowess within their own specialties. For example, in the Digital Marketing World, the latest advances in analytics, web development, online ad tools and email service providers will be conveniently located within one area of the vast expanse of Earls Court 2 in London, instead of scattered amongst the five other industry sectors. Exhibitors flock to the event to market their creative output; last year, nearly 5,000 attended the world just to buy new digital marketing solutions. For all six worlds, 98 percent of visitors came in 2012 with buying at the top of their agendas.

Each of the worlds has dedicated theaters for exhibitors to give presentations on their products and to supplement educational seminars aimed at broadening the Internet knowledge of all visitors — companies sharing their lessons learned from both mistakes and failures. Each world has a packed theater schedule of presentations, from some of the top practitioners in the field today.

The Keynote Arena offers a full slate of the top futurists, brands and content providers to share their insights, from Dana Nasr, head of agency sales for Twitter, to Tom Woolias, the retail industry head for Google UK. The adjacent Solutions Theater has an equally packed schedule with presentations aimed at — as the name suggests — solving some of the most vexing problems facing Internet workers, from the general to the highly specific: For example, James Eder, founder of The Beans Group, will address how digital media can help brands reach and grow the youth market, and Yannis Karampelas, founder of Netstudio will give seven good reasons why the open source content management platform Drupal is a must-have. Both of these theaters, as with those in each of the worlds, will be buzzing with new insights from the very beginning of the conference to the end.

More than 300 exhibitors, spanning the alphabet, have already signed on to present their products or services at the conference. Adestra email service provider will be there. So, too, will ecommerce provider Znode.

The best of the best will have a chance to flex their muscles too in the Fist Tuesday Awards, for which Internet companies submit business models and presentations by the deadline of 6 p.m. April 17. Then, at 3 p.m. April 23, on stage before their peers and a panel of Internet venture panelists, the three chosen finalists will deliver their final presentations in hopes of winning first place and being featured in Sky News Technology.

It isn’t all speaking and listening. Hands-on educational experiences abound at the Internet World Conference. In an IDM Bootcamp, attendees, with the help of IDM tutors, can pore over real-world case studies or team drills to test their instincts in a 90-minute gauntlet of marketing tasks. In another area, the GrowthAccelerator Clinic, hosted by Grant Thornton & Pembridge will be coursing with growth managers to help prospective small business idealize, actualize and materialize growth as rapidly and profitably as possible. Go the conference website to book a slot in either of these learning experiences. To save a seat for any of the theater or seminar presentations, the website also offers a Save My Seat section so the speakers and seminars you most covet won’t be missed.

To keep up with late additions to the conference’s exhibitors and speakers, peruse its blog in the weeks preceding the event. Then put your thinking caps on.

What is Performance Marketing?

admin — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 14:00:35 +0000

Performance Marketing can be defined as a form of advertising that pays a commission based on performance. This commission is paid out after the performance is completed. In the case of affiliate marketing, for instance, it is paid out only after the affiliate has recommended a product and a consumer has gone to the merchant’s website and made a purchase

Performance Marketing is More than Affiliate Marketing

Since Affiliate Marketing is based on Performance Marketing, the two terms are often used interchangeably. However, this situation is akin to using the word “Kleenex” to describe any type of tissue or “Xerox” to indicate any type of photocopying.

While Affiliate Marketing is indeed a classical example of Performance Marketing, Performance Marketing itself is actually more of an umbrella term. Contrary to popular belief, the two words are not synonymous because Performance Market includes other revenue models. For instance, it can include Cost per Lead or Cost per Download.

Since Affiliate Marketing falls into another type of revenue-sharing plan referred to as Cost per Sale, it is more accurate to refer to Affiliate Marketing as a subset of Performance Marketing.

Performance Marketing and Internet Marketing

While Performance Marketing is not entirely limited to marketing online, it has had a huge impact on Internet Marketing. Consequently, this is where it is most often found. In fact, it could be said that the success of Internet Marketing is largely based on using Performance Marketing as a business model.

Performance Marketing has worked particularly well for building a beneficial relationship between affiliates and merchants.

How Merchants Benefit From Performance Marketing

Performance Marketing allows merchants to recruit a large number of affiliates without actually having to interview them to see if they are qualified salespeople.

Usually, in order to become an affiliate of a merchant whose products you like, you simply have to fill out a form. In most instances, an affiliate does not necessarily have to buy the product in order to promote it — although, of course, this is recommended way to do business since affiliate may not want to have his or her name associated with an unsatisfactory product. In some cases, though, only product purchasers are eligible to become affiliates.

Since in most instances, there are no upfront costs for the merchant, there is no limit to how many affiliates they can attract to promote the business.

How Affiliates Benefit From Performance Marketing

Similarly, the relationship works really well for affiliates as well. It is easy for them to represent a large number of merchants without having to set up a sales page, develop products, or create a delivery mechanism.

Additionally, affiliates do not have to spend any time on customer service. This versatility enables affiliates to develop multiple streams of income and there is no cap on how much they can earn. The main task of the affiliate is to drive traffic to a merchant’s website.

Another huge benefit of Affiliate Marketing is that merchants often create marketing material for the affiliate to use, including banners, e-mails, and even blog articles.

Performance Marketing and CPA (Cost Per Action)

While Affiliate Marketing focuses on using paid or free advertising methods to drive traffic to a merchant’s website, the CPA (cost-per-action) model is slightly different and focuses on paying for lead generation.

In the CPA model, someone can get paid for transactions like a lead filling out a form for a loan or car insurance quote, applying for services like credit card subscription or a membership, or buying retail products like shoes or electronics. The merchant may choose to pay per lead, pay for an initial sale, or pay for a share of lifetime customer value.

Summary

While not necessarily only a part of Internet marketing, Performance Marketing has been adopted by Internet marketers as one of the best ways to build a business. This model works as well as it does because it is mutually appreciated by both affiliates and merchants. Besides the Cost per Sale model, there are other ways to use performance marketing principles such as Cost per Action, Cost per lead, or Cost per Download.

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affiliate_marketing#Performance.2FAffiliate_marketingferences

Prospect of Bing Paid Traffic – Is It Worth Doing?

admin — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 14:00:58 +0000

While Google Adwords can be very effective in generating traffic, many advertisers wonder if their competitor Bing is just as good. It’s understandable why advertisers may be a little apprehensive about trying the newer PPC engine. Many PPC platforms fail to deliver in the quality of traffic you’d expect from paid search. Some of lesser known platforms can be profitable but the traffic volumes are too low to justify the time and resources spent on it.
Fortunately, Bing paid traffic is worth investing your time and money into. According to comScore, the Bing network had 28.6% of the total search market share (combined with Yahoo). While you can’t really compare that to Google’s 66.8 of the search market share, Bing’s numbers are nothing to scoff at.

Source: http://searchengineland.com/google-bing-hit-all-time-highs-in-june-search-market-share-comscore-127397

What this data also fails to tell you is that over the last couple of years, Yahoo and Bing have been slowly taking away market share from Google. This means that users are relying on these search engines and plan to stay using them, so advertising on the Bing network can help advertisers reach a totally new audience.

Bing logo sourced from blog.purecontent.com

As far as how effective Bing paid traffic is, it seems that while the traffic volumes are lower, many advertisers are getting higher conversion rates at a lower click per cost compared to Adwords. Of course, results will vary depending on the keywords and market. Sometimes, the conversion and costs are negligible, but advertisers with small budgets should try to compare costs between Bing and Adwords if they can only invest in one.

Source: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/217201

And because not all Adwords advertisers expand into Bing, there is a lot less competition. In Adwords, advertisers may have to deal with annoying bidding wars and competitors that copy their ads. This is less common in Bing, so advertisers that are looking to succeed with paid search can try their hands at pay per click without constantly monitoring their accounts.

The one thing that really makes Bing paid traffic worth investing into is the customer service they offer. Google advertisers only get a dedicated account representative if they spend more than £330, 0000 a year while Bing offers one for advertisers that spend at least £330 a month. Advertisers that are fairly new to PPC and want to start slow may find this very beneficial, as it can help them make decisions to create profitable paid search campaigns.

Importing has always been a challenge when expanding to new PPC platforms but Bing has made it easy for Adwords advertisers to import their Google campaigns straight into Bing. They’ve made their platform compatible for Adwords so that advertisers do not have to go through the trouble of adapting existing campaigns into a new platform.

In conclusion, Bing is a network worth investing into. The quality of the traffic is very high, the click costs can often be lower and there are fewer competitors. For existing Adwords advertisers, it’s a good move to expand into Bing. For advertisers with a limited budget, Bing can provide a more affordable source of traffic. All they have to do is run identical campaigns on both Adwords and Bing to find out which platforms yield a better return.