In an article I wrote recently, I described some recent findings that showed that marketing to men on Facebook was a much cheaper practice, and that better performance came from it. On that article, a certain commenter mentioned something about the reported results pointing to men being more inclined to purchase things on Facebook. Well, with Facebook being widely used on mobile devices these days that comment may make a lot of sense. I say this because of a recent reporting of information from eMarketer that describes the differences between men and women regarding how likely they are to make purchases on mobile devices.
According to findings by online market research company uSamp, about a third of men have purchased digital content via their mobile devices. Almost the same amount of men have purchased consumer electronics on mobile, and 23% have used the device to buy movie and event tickets.
However, women did not purchase quite as often in those categories on mobile devices. Instead of a third, only about 20% of women bought digital content. Also, instead of the 27% of men that purchased consumer electronics on their mobile devices, only 8% of women did. As for movie and event tickets, women were far behind the 23% of men, as only 11% of female respondents said that they had purchased tickets on their devices. The only category in which women did more mobile purchasing than men was, as you may have already guessed, health and beauty products.
However, that does not mean that women are not bringing in any sort of success for marketers;
A mobile shopping study by digital ad agency Moosylvania also points to women as heavy mobile coupon users. According to their findings, 44% of female US smartphone users redeemed an online coupon via mobile in November 2011, compared to 34% of men.
EMarketer states that this same survey revealed that 32% of female mobile device users opted into receiving location-based mobile coupons while only 26% of men did. Offering deals and promotions on mobile platforms is quite a heavily used marketing strategy at present, and those marketers using this method should expect to rely heavily on women as their target.
Both uSamp and Moosylvania are saying that men are buying more on mobile devices than women. They are also both saying that it is the female mobile device users that are grabbing hold of all of the offers, coupons, and promotions put forth on mobile devices. To me, these results point to the simple fact that women prefer to do their shopping offline, while men prefer to shop quickly and easily by using their mobile devices. Put that way, it makes sense. Women love to shop, and doing it the easy way would probably take all the fun out of it. However, if you are a marketer who is looking for mobile commerce, then you are probably better off targeting your efforts toward men. For those who are looking for successful performance marketing through the use of coupons or deals, then female mobile users are your market.
The main goal of this website is clear—to help performance marketers with the latest and best methods to get their jobs done correctly, as well as to inform them of the on goings around the web that relate to their decisions when trying to create successful ad campaigns. Today, I found something that may help performance marketers quite a bit, and I found it in Google’s latest AdWords blog entry entitled, “Introducing The Google Display Network Playbook for Performance Marketers.” The new performance marketing playbook provides performance marketers with 35 pages of fantastic advice regarding Google’s Display Network, of course.
Take your marketing to the next level with the Google Display Network and reach customers through all the online touch points that make their day-to-day lives complete – at scale and with efficiency. This playbook guides you through the steps to meet your performance objectives with the following sections:
– Intro to the Google Display Network for performance goals
– Leverage targeting to find your audience
– Use creative as a performance driver
– Take advantage of manual or automated bidding
– Become more savvy with measurement
– Optimize to hit your goals
The playbook is meant to help performance marketers with display ads, from Google in particular. To me, it sort of seems like a way for Google to promote their Display Network, which is not necessarily bad. What better way to support and promote your services than to release an entire playbook on how to use them?
Anyway, in their blog post, Google gives a more clear picture of exactly what is covered in the playbook.
How reach + precision = performance
With 93% reach to US Internet advertisers, and sophisticated technology to find your specific audience, you’re more likely to reach performance goals at scale.
Performance across all devices and channels
In this always connected, yet fragmented, world, the Google Display Network spans across devices (desktop, mobile and tablet) and channels (social and video) to connect you to your potential customers, wherever they are.
Increasing the holistic value of your campaigns with display
Search and display campaigns complement and reinforce each other. What’s more, tools like remarketing help you re-engage with users that have already shown interest by visiting your site.
Google has always been one to offer some of the best tools for performance marketers to use, but marketing advice is a bit rare. Either way, it seems easy to trust a company like Google with their advice, considering how successful they have been in providing marketers with marketing success. The playbook is already available for download here. It goes in depth describing just how using the Google Display Network could be one of the best decisions you make in your performance marketing career. But, come on. Even without the playbook, Google already has quite a great reputation with performance marketers, and I’m not sure that any of them are questioning the performance that comes of advertising with Google.
For a long time now I, along with hundreds of other people, have been stressing the importance of the optimization of websites for mobile devices. Consumers are starting to use their handheld devices more and more today, and they are using their computers far less than they used to. Because of this, it is important to optimize for the mobile web. After all, advertising is all well and good, but if a consumer can’t even find their way to your website when they want or need to, then all of your money and effort are for nil. These are all facts that I have stated before and that most people have heard before, but Google has just released the results of a survey that really show how important mobile optimization has become.
In this world of constant connectivity, consumers expect to find the information that they want, when they want it – especially when they’re on the go. We know that this applies to their web browsing experiences on mobile, so we took a deeper look at users’ expectations and reactions towards their site experiences on mobile. Most interestingly, 61% of people said that they’d quickly move onto another site if they didn’t find what they were looking for right away on a mobile site. The bottom line: Without a mobile-friendly site you’ll be driving users to your competition. In fact, 67% of users are more likely to buy from a mobile-friendly site, so if that site’s not yours, you’ll be missing out in a big way.
While most of Google’s blog posts are strictly about the on-goings of Google, understandably, this is quite a unique and powerful post from the internet giant. Their study, called What Users Want Most From Mobile Sites Today, was conducted by Sterling Research and SmithGeiger, two independent research firms. The survey took information from 1,088 adult mobile internet users back in July, and the results were a bit shocking, especially this far in the mobile game. Aside from the information that was given in the quote above, Google also found that 96% of the surveyed adults had stumbled upon a site that was not optimized for mobile, even though 75% of them prefer mobile optimized sites. Here are a few of the more pertinent facts from the survey;
74% of those that visit a mobile-friendly website said that they would probably return to it.
67% of those that shopped on mobile devices said they were more likely to purchase things from websites that were optimized for mobile.
61% of respondents said that they were quick to leave a mobile site if they could not find what they were looking for right away
There was a lot of useful information taken from the survey, but with these facts alone, it should be clear how important mobile optimization is. Everyone has read about it, and everyone has heard how important it is, but it still seems as though some people are not getting the point. If people are still being forced to use sites that are not optimized, then mobile marketing will not be as successful as it should be anytime soon.
Targeting consumers takes a lot of research and requires marketers to take a lot of different factors into consideration. This is well known as fact. However, when considering gender targeting, there are a few things that some marketers may not be aware of. With Facebook being the big name in targeted social advertising, Kenshoo Social, a social marketing solutions company, partnered with Resolution Media, a marketing insights company, on a social media insights report entitled, “Men are Cheap.” This report was compacted into a small infographic in a post on Kenshoo’s company resource page, and the image gives the best points that their research revealed regarding gender targeting on social media platforms.
I always love when a company takes all of the more important aspects of a report and organizes them in a way that takes only a few seconds to understand rather than the half hour it takes to read the multiple pages of their report. Anyway, in their infographic, Kenshoo first notes that only 42% of Facebook users are men while the other 58% are women. That’s easily believable, since my personal News Feed is just filled with women and not so much men. The reason that this fact is significant in the report, though, is because they then go on to state that marketers are spending more of their time and money marketing to the men on Facebook, statistically. The specific numbers say that on average, 53% of social marketing budgets are allocated to targeting men, and 47% to women.
With that said, it is clear that the marketing that is targeted toward men is bound to be more successful. As men are served more advertising on Facebook, they end up clicking more. The impression volume for men on Facebook was 58%, and for women it was 42%. In addition, the click volume was a 60-40 split, also with men in the lead.
What else does this mean, though? Well, as the title of the report states, men are cheap. It is less expensive to market to men on Facebook than it is to market to women. While the cost-per-thousand impressions for women on Facebook was at $0.20, the CPM for men is at about $0.16. This difference would eventually end up being a much bigger difference in the long run, which makes targeting men more cost efficient. Plus, the CPC for women on Facebook, as stated in the report, is at about $0.68 while for men, it is only about $0.50.
So, men are cheaper to market to on Facebook, and they tend to bring in more successful results, according to this new study. So, what does that mean for female Facebook users? They make up over half of Facebook’s user base, so it is absolutely necessary to divert a huge chunk of attention toward them. Well, I have always been told you have to spend money to make money, and if your target market is women, then the statement is even more true on Facebook. It would be interesting to see what results marketers would get if marketing to female Facebook users were as cheap and effective as marketing to men is, considering the difference in numbers.
It’s always interesting to see what the new happenings are with Facebook as they continue to slowly build their name in the marketing world. While looking around, I realized that the talk of the town was Facebook’s new partnership with Datalogix, a company that measures the affect that online ads have on offline purchases. The partnership will be one way for Facebook to assure marketers that their Facebook marketing campaigns are working. It is often difficult to measure the impact that online advertising has on consumers when they shop offline, and it can give marketers a slightly skewed perception of the performance of their campaigns. Facebook wants to make sure that no result is missed, assuring the world that they are a viable marketing source.
Brad Smallwood, Facebook’s head of measurement and insights, gave some insight into just how beneficial the partnership will be (reported by Financial Times).
Facebook said it is paying Datalogix for the data-matching. So far, the two companies have measured 45 campaigns and in 70 per cent of cases, for every dollar a marketer spent on Facebook it earned an additional $3 in incremental sales.
Apparently, Facebook’s new partner has accrued purchasing data from 70 million households in the US which has been taken from the loyalty programs of over 1,000 retailers. Using the email addresses from these programs and matching them to the email addresses used to create accounts on Facebook, the company can see if people bought items at a store after seeing an advertisement on Facebook.
This type of partnership is not new for Facebook, though. The company has already been partnered with Nielsen, the well-known marketing analytics company, since 2009, and also has a partnership with comScore, another famous analytics company. Facebook is trying to make sure that no stone goes unturned for its marketing clients, so that the results they think they are seeing with Facebook’s marketing platform are completely true.
Of course there is the possible issue of infringement upon Facebook’s privacy policies. It has been reported that there is fear that this new partnership will contradict the settlement that Facebook came to with the US Federal Trade Commission, in which the charges were for violating privacy promises to customers. This is especially concerning, since Facebook users will not be able to opt out of the Datalogix studies unless they actually visit the Datalogix website themselves instead of having the option on Facebook.
Aside from the possible privacy issues that the partnership may cause, it will definitely be a fantastic new method for gathering information regarding the results of Facebook advertising. Since analyzing results is just as important as creating results, Facebook has made the right move with another partnership with a data analytics company. Facebook has, for a while now, been striving to be the best in social media marketing, and the only way to achieve that is to make marketers think that they are the best. Therefore, the company wants all results to be accounted for, so that Facebook receives all the credit that is due to them.
Among creating successful marketing campaigns and finding the next best technique for reaching the consumer, marketers and brands often find little time to maintain their presence on the web. Regardless, it is an absolutely essential factor in maintaining a good standing with consumers, as well as keeping up with competitors. According to a recent article by eMarketer that reports information from SEOmoz, an SEO software provider, marketers and brands have been focusing a lot of their attention lately on SEO, social media, and content marketing rather than things like conversion rate optimization. Visibility on the web is important, and it is getting pretty expensive, so marketers have been paying close attention to the better ways to keep in sight on the web.
The SEO software provider found SEO was the most time-consuming—and most used—inbound marketing tactic for online marketers worldwide: 23.9% spent more than half their time on SEO. Just 7.8% invested similar time in social media marketing and 6.3% in content marketing.
EMarketer is stating that people are starting to pay even more attention to SEO than they already did, meaning that online presence is becoming a main focus once again. In the survey performed by SEOmoz, 57% of the respondents stated that they work on SEO for their brand or business on a daily basis. Also, 54.2% of these same respondents stated that they find time every day to focus on site analytics and 48.1% of respondents said that they focus on social media presence every day. So, with an average of half of the world’s marketers focusing on these three tactics every single day, there must be a giant demand for online presence.
That is not to say that online presence has not always been of huge concern, but it seems brands and marketers are again putting quite a bit of effort toward the subject.
SEOmoz found over two-thirds of online marketers worldwide generated short-form content assets such as blog posts, social media updates, articles and guides—all of which are used in SEO, social media and content marketing.
Even though the world is being drawn in to becoming a completely visual society these days, with images and videos plastered all over the web, building an online presence cannot really be done successfully with the use of visual content. In order to optimize for the purpose of being visible online, actual text written content is the more effective path to take, because it offers the potential for SEO.
EMarketer goes in depth into which social media platforms are best for online visibility of a brand, but the results come as no surprise. The same social networks that have always worked best still do, and they probably will for a while. Online visibility has quite a bit of weight in the success of a marketing campaign or simply in the success of a brand or company. Of course it is important to find a successful way to reach the people, but they must first be able to find a brand in order to become interested in it.
Arikka Greene of 3 Little Birds, a staffing agency speaks to Murray Newlands about her company and how tons of companies are looking to fill jobs in affiliate and performance marketing. Arikka also talks about why it’s a dumb idea to post that you are looking for a job on Facebook. She says that there are several hot sectors looking for immediate talent. This is a great interview on learning how to get a job in Affiliate and Performance Marketing.
Be sure to watch past the credits for some funny outtakes.
What an insanely chaotic day it has been for Affiliate Venture Group in light of the recent Top 10 Network from Perform Insider announcement where we happen to make it to #3 this year (up from #10 last year). While I thought we would do well, I did not envision making it to #3. The amount of out pour of well wishes and virtual taps on the back we have received from our supporters and those that came across the news has been astonishing to say the least.
Frankly, we are a success because our partners are successful.
I am truly humbled just to be a member of the ECPM group with all the major C-level execs who deal in the millions and millions every month but when you add this top 3 placing – well I am just left speechless. There are obviously many that did not make the list that deserved to be on there – but my guess is they were busy making money while we were reaching out to our publisher base.
While I consider this to be a step in the right direction to truly become successful, it is certainly not the be all end all.
It did however get me to thinking what success is and what it means to me and after deliberating a whole evening while watching Russell Wilson of the Seattle Seahawks get a miracle win over the Green Bay Packers – it dawned on me and said best by Early Nightingale, “It is the steady advancement towards a worthy goal”. The beauty of this definition is that it is valid and holds true for majority of the individuals. Sure the goals may be different for us all, but it is the actual process that will determine the outcome.
Needless to say there will be doubters and those who will question our success and they have every right to do so. As long as I can put a roof over the heads of my family and those that work with me – then I consider myself successful.
However, I did want to see what success meant to others so I reached out to 5 of my respected dear friends in the industry and no doubt verifiably more successful than myself/AVG, to truly gauge and see what success meant to them and more importantly – what their blueprint was to achieve it.
A) What does Success mean to you?
Three key factors: 1. a constant, consistent and growing business based on “zero advertising dollars spent” and based purely on referral and word of mouth. Word of mouth for doing a great job and having a great reputation is still the best form of marketing. 2. An influential spheres of influence, friends, colleagues and business associates who only speak good things about your company when the discussion comes up. 3. Friends, colleagues and partners that are always willing to help you and reciprocate kindness and generosity because they have received it from you first.
B) What has been your blueprint for success?
Effective number crunching, thrifty financial management and efficient operations of course are always important to run a growing organization, but to me the primary blueprint for success has been three essential words; Relationships, relationships and relationships. Our business and in particular our industry must more than ever be based on solid and trusting relationships – both giving and receiving. Ultimately what others say about your business is ultimately your measure of success.
A) What does Success mean to you?
Success means achieving the result you set out for at the beginning of a project.
B) What has been your blueprint for success?
The words I live by are successful people do what unsuccessful people are unwilling to do and that holds true daily in my life the more someone tells me it can’t be done the more I am determined to prove it can!
Work hard and remember more money is made on a “no” than a yes
A) What does Success mean to you?
Whether or not you support the Obama’s, there’s no denying that Michelle gave one of the best quotes I’ve heard regarding success during her speech at the DNC. She said, “Success isn’t about how much money you make, it’s about the difference you make in people’s lives.” I feel I live by this quote every day. Wealth is a great thing but that’s really all it is. You have to know how to leverage wealth (money, power, resources) so you can affect people’s lives in a positive way. Otherwise, you’re just a wealthy failure.
One of the most rewarding and “successful” things that PeerFly and a lot of companies in this industry do is give opportunities to people in poor countries, who don’t have a lot, the ability to make a decent living as long as they have an internet connection and a drive. PeerFly has affiliates in over 160 different countries that are all on an equal playing ground. We’re giving the opportunity to someone in India, for example, the ability to make just as much as someone here in the US has. That’s success.
B) What is your blueprint for success?
I believe there are many, many variables that go into my blueprint for success. However, the biggest thing I can attribute to where I am now as a business owner is all my previous mistakes and failures. Without failing and making countless mistakes, I would have not learned to overcome them. Every time you fail, there is always an alternate route. Eventually, you will know all of your detours. The key is to keep trying.
A) What does success mean to you?
Success is happiness and fulfillment on many levels; healthy family, meaningful interpersonal relationships, professional achievement, making people smile and being comfortable in my own skin. It’s being able to look at my wife and be proud of what I accomplished in a given day yet still have the motivation to strive further each morning. Success is also being able to balance personal and professional goals, and being able to both learn & teach from people that assist in that quest. To me, success is knowing that I am maximizing my skills, talents and knowledge to the best of my ability.
B) What is your blueprint for success?
It’s taken me nearly a decade of trial & error. . .and more error. . .and then a few more errors. . .to figure out a ‘blueprint.’ Frankly, that blueprint is a living, breathing, eternally evolving concept, because situations are always changing. The necessity of adaptation has been hastened by the immediacy of the internet as a whole, but the ability to foresee potential challenges and preact – as opposed to react – has always been a hallmark of my ethos. Appreciating success is another cornerstone for me as well; it’s important to recognize that a strong work ethic is paramount, fueled by a relentless energy. Thusly, I try to share any insight I may have, the same way my forbearers & mentors shared with me, taking nuggets of wisdom from each unique situation. One other very important facet of my blueprint is to wake up each day and know why I’m involved in each pursuit, and what it means on a grander scale. Motivation has to come from within, and it has to be accompanied by genuine passion.
To a tee, ALL the above esteemed successful people define it as a certain goal or achievement and do not have to be financially driven.
Someone said it best, “Success is not the key to happiness BUT Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.”
What do you think, is this true? Talk about it below.
Wealth, like happiness, is never attained when sought after directly. It comes as a by-product of providing a useful service.
Henry was right. Great wealth can be attained by providing exceptional service, and the better service you provide, the more opportunity for wealth. The question is, how do you provide a service or make it easy for people to get what they need as quickly as possible? After all, in this world of lightning speed expectations, people want results, and they want them fast!
That leads to the question: When people need something and they are on the go (aren’t we always on the go?), where do we turn. The answer is, we turn to our phones. No, I’m not talking about that thing plugged into your wall. I’m talking about the almighty cell phone. Let’s say you are comparing mortgage refinance rates and want to get different options from a trusted mortgage company. You pull your phone out of your pocket or purse and search “mortgage refinance rates.” Now, the results will bring back several options; 10 organic search results that you can click on, squint your eyes at, and try to read on that little screen on your phone! Or, you can actually talk to someone. After all, you have your phone in your hand. If there was just some way you could hit a button and be connected to a mortgage advisor that could help answer any questions you had about mortgage rates…
Indeed there is a way to talk on your phone with the right person, and if you look around at the sponsored results on Google (you know, the yellow boxes with ads in them), you have the option of clicking to call. Click the number and you’re talking to someone on the phone, getting the answers you need without having to squint your eyes. Now that’s something Mr. Henry Ford would be happy to see! Convenience is “the money” and not just to the searcher in this way, but to the right online marketer, literally.
“What does this have to do with being a marketer?” you may ask. If you’ve ever wanted to provide a service and get paid for it, yet not have the overhead of running a traditional brick and mortar business, then this has everything to do with being an online marketer doing pay-per-call marketing. With Pay-per-call marketing, you get paid when someone…calls. Let me explain.
Pay-per-call advertising allows you to post a phone number on cell phones using search channels such as Google Adwords or Microsoft Adcenter, and if someone clicks your number and stays on the line for a certain duration, yet get paid! This is one of the most brilliant forms of affiliate marketing because the conversion rates are so high; I’ve seen steady conversion rates of around 40% and higher. Think about it – if someone wants, or better yet needs a service, they are usually going to call for it. Let’s say someone’s house is flooding at 3:00am on the morning in his or her town of San Diego, CA. They have to act fast. There’s no time to grab the computer and the cell phone is usually the closest thing to them. The first thing that this person types in their phone is “24 hour plumber san diego.” They want the phone number and they want it fast. Remember, that means no organic search results. They want an ad on the top of the results with a phone number they can click and they want it NOW! If you provide that clickable number and the person calls it and stays on the line for 1 minute (or depending on the advertisers requirements), you could get paid anywhere from a few dollars to $20 or more!
So how do you get this set up? Just like traditional affiliate marketing, you sign up with a trusted mobile pay-per-call Network, apply for the various offers (one being a plumbing service offer in the example above), get accepted, and start promoting your ads with the phone numbers provided to you by the Pay-per-call network. If you do the proper market and keyword research, write a compelling ad, and have a basic understanding of how advertising works with the various search engines like Google Adwords or Microsoft Adcenter, then you can make some good money.
Once inside the Pay-per-call network, you simply go to the campaign you want to promote after being accepted by the advertiser. From there, click “Add Promo Number,” and your unique phone number will be generated to promote via Google, MSN, or other online and offline channels depending on advertiser restrictions.
What Kind of Money Can You Make with Pay-Per-Call Marketing?
You can make some terrific money with pay-per-call marketing. It all comes down to how hard you are willing to work. For some idea, take a look at this great article: Pay-Per-Call Earns Internet Marketer $500K.
I can’t reveal the niche or offer related to the earnings below as this is sensitive information, but take a look at the daily earnings over a month’s time period below. These are commissions from just one campaign from a successful pay-per-call marketer.
Now, I repeat, with just one offer this affiliate is generating as much as $1,500 a day in commissions. It takes time, patience, and a methodical approach to scale earnings at this level, but here is proof that it can be done; it’s easy money once you get your first campaign off the ground. Imagine if you had several successful campaigns at this level. There are plenty of people that do, and if you’re serious about taking your online business to the next level, then you could do the same.
For the more advanced call performance marketers (like the one who generated the earnings in the above screenshot) who understand the value of tracking, there are ways to track calls that come in from specific keyword queries. With RingRevenue (the platform that generates the phone numbers and call statistics like the one above), this is possible by utilizing their special RingPools™ technology. The search query used to find your ad is picked up with a piece of JavaScript code that is put on your landing page and tied to each call that is generated. For every call, the script will deliver detailed performance data, including the advertising source, the keyword that drove the call, and other useful information. You can then adjust your bid prices and keyword strategy based on the given data. Determining your ROI by keyword is essential with Pay-per-call or any form of keyword driven, paid traffic. RingPools™ are a great way to acquire this data. See this video demonstration for more information:
Now you know there are people out there making very good money with pay-per-call marketing. If that’s not enough, understand that the world of mobile presents us with the largest marketing platform available today. Did you know that there are about 7 billion people on this planet? 5.1 billion of those people own a cell phone. Yes, that’s right, over 70% of the world’s population owns a cell phone! I’m not going to come up some hypothetical explaining how much money you could make if you could reach just .00000001% of that, but just know that the world of mobile is growing, and on a localized level we are riding an explosive trend of mobile search.
In fact, according to BIA Kelsey, local engagement via mobile devices is growing to such an extent, that by 2015, it is projected that in the United States there will be more local searches from smartphones than from PC computers.
Jason Spero from Google mentions this about the current state of mobile:
It is true across the board. Roughly one in seven searches, even in the smaller categories, are happening on a mobile phone, but how many of you are putting one seventh of your resources into mobile – anyone who hasn’t got mobile only business? Your customer is trying to engage you… it would be like not doing business with your customers on Thursdays.
Considering the above projection, there could be no better fit than pay-per-call marketing for taking advantage of this astronomic number of local searches. Why is this the case? Most pay-per-call offers are localized in nature. In other words, the products and services promoted through call-based marketing are applicable to just about any local region in the U.S. and other countries (more advertisers in other countries will partake in this model when they understand how effective it truly is). If over 40% of all mobile searches are local, this translates to a significant opportunity for mobile to pay-per-call marketing.
If you haven’t already, now is the time to get in and learn pay-per-call, one of the easiest, most effective forms of marketing available to us. Pay-per-call marketing is on a long path to exponential growth and we are just at the beginning of it. Advertisers benefit greatly from the pay-per-call model as the conversion rates are high and they only pay when they get a quality lead. For these reasons, some of the biggest companies in the world are subscribing to the pay-per-call model of advertising and they are always looking for quality publishers to promote their products or services, such as plumbing, tax, auto insurance, vacation offers, and much more.
We are sitting on mobile marketing goldmine. It’s time to jump in if you haven’t already. The question is, will you get in now and grab your piece of this mobile empire?
Performance Marketing Insider is delighted to announce the results of our Top 10 Survey of CPA Affiliate Performance Networks for Summer 2012. Six months have passed since our last survey and it’s been a weird, crazy six months with several well known, major companies either going bankrupt or disappearing completely from the industry.
Therefore the map of affiliate networks has changed enormously, making this survey harder than ever to conduct. In some cases the differences between the networks were just a few votes and there are many networks that could have been in the top 10 easily, with just a few extra votes from their supporters.
We had a bit of an issue with fraud this year, with some companies utilizing proxies to try to put in fake votes: most of those networks were then removed when the majority of the votes came from known fraud proxies. The fine folks at Scrubkitverified the data independently, removed fraudulent votes in order to make sure that this was the most fair survey ever done. They also counted the data, which was exported from Survey Monkey to ensure that the ranking were accurate and unbiased.
Almost 10,000 people voted this year bringing in a much wider base of affiliates to show their support of many different new networks. Because of that some networks are making their first appearance into the top 10, and some completely dropping out of the rankings. More affiliates have entered the industry and are making their preferences known — and that if you don’t keep up with the times, make the changes necessary, you’ll quickly lose support in this fast moving industry.
So here are the rankings of the top 10 affiliate networks for Summer 2012:
10) CPAWAY is down from #5 last year, and they are still considered one of the best networks. They have been become the king of parties, and this has helped grow their base. They have also launched Incentivize.com a new incent-based network that is sure to grow their revenue even more.
9) W4 didn’t even make the survey last year, as it was still a new growing company. However, the three founders have made clear that W4 is not only a network that is going to stay in the industry, but is one that is going to make a showing for a long time moving forward.
8) Adknowledge Affiliate Network is another company that wasn’t even ranked. However, since Adknowledge is one of the largest, most trusted companies in the industry, it seemed certain they would eventually be on the list. This year they rebooted their affiliate program, bringing some of the top email affiliates into the fold through their industry-famous email API.
7) Convert2Media almost made it last year in the top 10 but with the strong industry leadership of their founder Steve Howe, and his legendary fraud-catching videos the company has made 2012 a banner year. Expect a lot more from this company in the next year.
6) ClickBooth is down from #2, but still remains one of the top revenue generating networks in the world. They have been focusing on their new CPC platform, providing publishers with a great new revenue stream.
5) CPAleadis a new entry into the list, and is one of the large incent and content locking companies. Based in Las Vegas, they are known for their ability to take almost any offer and make millions overnight with their huge base of incent affiliates. With the new CEO Peter Tarr, the company has grown in huge leaps and bounds.
4) Adscend Mediais down from #3 this year, but it doesn’t mean that things aren’t going great for them. Fehzan Ali and his team become the heroes of the industry, beating Facebook and the Washington AG in a legal battle. Focused on content locking, they are definitely making a name for themselves.
3) Affiliate Venture Group became a name in the industry based on ethics and networking in 2012 and quickly became a favorite of affiliates and advertisers. Ricky Ahuja and Chris Kautz-Scanavy charmed the industry this year bring new found attention to their company.
2) MaxBounty made 2012 their biggest year ever and has celebrated their success with numerous giveaways and launching perhaps the biggest affiliate rewards program ever seen in the industry at AffiliateRewards.com
1) PeerFly is once again at the top of the list, partially because of its enormous base of loyal affiliates. People just really love Peerfly. They have managed to perfect the art of the offer, getting whatever product or customer necessary to make their affiliates happy. Last year Luke Kling, one of their affiliate managers won the prize of top affiliate manager. If anyone is looking for an offer, they’ll probably have it.
We have also made this handy infographic, which you can click on for a full version.
This infographic was sponsored by Cake Marketing, a fast growing and very popular affiliate marketing software system and the networks that use their platform are marked on the infographic for your pleasure.
Marketing to the new digitally mobile society is getting easier and easier, considering the countless new innovations in the field. Among the many ways to market to mobile consumers is SMS marketing where text messages are used to market directly into consumers’ phones. There are some who have seen great success with this method, but for the majority, SMS has not really been a big hitter. In an infographic that appeared in an article from Direct Marketing News, a reason for the bad results from SMS marketing is given. The reason is that most consumers do not really like them very much either that is to say, they prefer email as their method of receiving mobile messaging promotions.
The infographic is based on results from StrongMail and Forrester Consulting’s survey of 322 consumers. Of those surveyed, exactly half of them said that they preferred receiving promotions and other forms of marketing through email rather than through SMS or while using apps. This makes sense, considering the performance of desktop email marketing when it was still high in popularity. Now that people use their mobile devices for everything, most of them only read their email from the mobile devices. With SMS marketing, marketers can only fit so much information into a text while still maintaining a reasonable size. Mobile email gives advertisers a lot more freedom in what they include, therefore getting a better response from mobile consumers.
The infographic also states that 65% of the respondents said that they were willing to receive promotions through email at least once a week. This statistic shows that consumers actually enjoy email marketing. Personally, I find some of the best deals around in email promotions simply because they are not offered anywhere else. Most people will tell you that they get annoyed when an advertisement interrupts their SMS conversations, but with email nothing is interrupted, which is probably one of the factors that led to consumer preference of email marketing, considering 63% of the respondents said they would rather not receive any promotions at all through SMS or in-app.
However, since there is a preference for mobile email message marketing, care needs to be taken by marketers whilst using it. The infographic lays out the “Biggest Barriers to Mobile Marketing Success;” the things that most consumers run into when trying to click or read email advertisements that make them unable to. 28% of the respondents stated that the issue they see most is bad links. Another 28% said that their biggest issue with email marketing came from running into emails that had not been optimized for mobile. These are both things that need to be avoided by email marketers while trying to have a successful mobile email marketing campaign.
So, if the mobile emails are formatted and cared for correctly, it seems that people will definitely click them. Mobile email will probably knock SMS marketing out of the way, as more and more consumers begin to prefer it over SMS as a platform for receiving promotions.
Today, I stumbled across some pretty interesting news regarding a mobile company that is developing quite an interesting marketing technique that will get their name passed all over the social media realm for nearly nothing. The company, Solavei, has in the works a brand new mobile network that will allow users to earn income while using it. Based on social sharing and sign ups, the users will be able to pay off their monthly cell phone bills and possibly even make a bit of money for themselves. This way, both Solavei and their customers can benefit from the company’s marketing efforts.
It is pretty much the classic affiliate pyramid program that has worked quite successfully in the past. So, basically, you sign up, tell three of your friends to get paid and those friends tell their three friends, and so on and so forth. This is a method that can be seen all over the place. What makes Solavei’s new mobile network quite unique are the methods that users will use to make their newfound income. The company will rely entirely on word of mouth marketing from its users. With social media being the world’s most efficient method for word-of-mouth advertising these days, Solavei will essentially be running a completely free and very successful social media campaign.
Using the new network is pretty simple. On their website, they lay out the steps for getting started and the list is not very lengthy.
Select your device and plan.
Sign up for Solavei Phone Service
Connect with other Solavei members.
Share Solavei with your communities.
Earn money.
Get paid on your Solavei debit card.
Here is their exact quote from their website explaining what makes them different from a traditional mobile phone service.
We think a person’s voice is the most powerful form of marketing, so that’s what we want to invest in. While other companies spend billions on traditional marketing, we reward you for sharing Solavei with your connections.
They are probably right, considering some of the things I have read about and written about. Most signs point to the fact that word-of-mouth is still the marketing outlet that people tend to trust the most. By embracing that fact right off the bat, Solavei will see success. Sure it is risky to rely entirely on the social sharing and word of mouth of users without a backup marketing campaign, but with the complete trust that people put in reviews and social media activity these days, the risk is not enormous. Here is how they came up with the idea, and how they believe it will be a success.
We began with a simple idea: A single relationship has the power to make life better for many people. We took this idea and turned it into a company that can make commerce less expensive and even profitable for everyone. We started with mobile phone service because it’s something all of us already use and it’s the technology connecting us every day.
GameTheory LLC, once one of the biggest text messaging marketing companies on the planet, has had their text messaging shut down by the New York Attorney General. This was a result of a settlement with the NYS AG, Eric T. Schneiderman, after an investigation that claimed that GameTheory was spamming users in order to trick them into signing up for texting services.
These charges appeared on the victim’s wireless telephone bill in a way that was difficult to detect. For months, consumers would pay for text messages they did not want before they realized they were being charged. For example, between May 23, 2011 and July 5, 2011, Game Theory sent text messages claiming that the recipients had a “secret crush,” and that the recipient needed to respond “yes” to find out who it was. However, in the process of finding out the identity of the “secret crush,” the recipient was also unknowingly signing-up for a text message service…”
“There is no legitimate purpose for scams that deceive New Yorkers, and we will continue the fight to protect people’s privacy and their hard earned money” Schneiderman said in a press release. “As a result of this settlement, Game Theory is out of the texting business for good, and this corporation will be held accountable for its conduct.” Game Theory’s deceptive practices violated the General Business Law (Article 22-A) and Executive Law § 63(12).
According to the settlement, GameTheory will be leaving the text messaging business and pay $500k in fines to the State of New York.
GameTheory has since re-branded itself Mobile Plus Inc since the lawsuit was originally announced.
A service that Facebook released this year that has been getting some pretty extensive attention from Facebook advertisers is their Offers feature. This is the feature that Facebook created to allow advertisers to promote deals to their Facebook fans that were separate from other sponsored advertisements. Anybody who uses Facebook (which is just about everyone) has seen them pop up in their News Feed every now and again, and occasionally there is one that pertains to your interests and you click it. I know that personally, I click these offers all the time, as they often are deals that can’t be found elsewhere. So, it is clear why it has become such a popular commodity with marketers on Facebook. They show good results and they are free to use.
However, it seems they aren’t free anymore. If you read about the happenings of Facebook, then you have heard that Wall Street has been sort of demanding a bit more revenue and profit from Facebook, and therefore they have been looking for a new way to monetize certain features. Reuters is now reporting that Offers is the feature that Facebook has chosen to monetize next, because of its ever growing popularity with Facebook users and Facebook marketers alike. This decision from Facebook is actually good for marketers, even though it really does not seem that way at first glance.
The Offers feature will now require marketers to pay $5 on related ads in order to use it. This cost will, of course, depend on the size of the company’s Facebook pages. The good that this will do for advertisers exists with the fact that Offers are now tied to related ads. Targeting offers to those Facebook users that find them irrelevant will now be less of a problem.
From Reuters:
“We think this aligns incentives nicely,” said Gokul Rajaram, director of product management for Facebook’s advertising and Pages businesses. “The best results on Facebook Offers will come from organic distribution plus paid distribution.”
In the past, some Facebook Offers have not been relevant to all users, partly because some people saw deals in their News Feeds from merchants located far away from where they live, Rajaram added.
“The requirement to pay for related ads will focus merchants on who and where they want the offer to reach,” he said.
In the end, Facebook is simply trying to help itself with its Wall Street dilemma while trying not to impact Facebook advertisers much at all. By helping advertisers with better targeting and sort of forcing them to try out Facebook Ads, some doors are opened for Facebook marketers even though they will have to start paying. Marketers will be getting something for their money though, as they will now have access to the offers they already love, but these offers will be enhanced by the tie-in with related ads. The $5 dollar cost is not a number that is out of this world, but some marketers use Offers mainly because they are free. We will see how the popularity of the Offers feature shifts when the monetization is official.
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