2013: The Year Of Affiliate Attribution?

You’ve probably read a thing or two about affiliate attribution in a trade publication or heard it mentioned at industry events.

Affiliate attribution is one of the hottest and most controversial topics in the performance marketing industry today, and many Internet retailers are trying to figure out the best approach.

Not only is it a consideration for the affiliate channel, but it’s becoming an even bigger factor as more companies move toward omni-channel.

The question remains: how do you fairly compensate affiliates for their involvement with your customer based on the touch-points they’ve had during the purchase path?

How Attribution Works

An attribution model allows Internet retailers to track the different ads or “touch points” that result in a sale or other defined action taken by a consumer, giving credit to each touch point that contributed to that conversion. This can include different marketing channels or programs in-house, as well as affiliates that have interactions with that consumer leading up to the sale. Traditionally in affiliate marketing, the sale is credited to the last click prior to the conversion.

While it’s a hot topic, according to a recent Econsultancy study on marketing attribution, only 54% of businesses carry out any form of attribution; but, of those who do, 89% say attribution had a positive impact on their business, with 29% saying the impact was major.

Mobile is one of the main drivers behind Internet retailers wanting to have a better understanding of the customer journey, as consumers are using mobile devices to read online product reviews and price comparisons in brick-and-mortar stores (showrooming).

What Does This Mean For Affiliates?

Well, it depends on who you ask. Some affiliates like that Internet retailers are moving toward affiliate attribution, as the last-click-wins model is often limiting.

Affiliates involved early on in the sales funnel, such as content marketing or review sites, may be especially interested in this approach. While a blogger or review site may educate and influence the consumer or even change the consumer’s purchase decision entirely — they receive no credit or compensation if the consumer clicks through a subsequent affiliate link or ad with the last-click-wins affiliate attribution model.

Other affiliates are not pleased if they’ve built their entire business around being in the right place at the right time in affiliate marketing. Coupon websites often get miscategorized as right place/right time affiliates; however, I disagree. While there are plenty of websites advertising coupons on the Web, there are well-established coupon sites that have a large following and influence that help bring the customer across the finish line.

Affiliate attribution helps complete the picture so you have a better understanding of the true value affiliates bring to your affiliate program while exposing those that are merely opportunistic marketers.

Figuring Out Affiliate Attribution

Wondering if your organization is ready to roll out an affiliate attribution model? There is not a one-size-fits-all attribution model that works for affiliate marketing; so, it’s important to understand what all is involved. Here are a few things to consider when thinking about affiliate attribution:

1) Understand the technical requirements. The first thing you need to determine is whether or not it is technically feasible to implement an affiliate attribution model. Does your affiliate network have the capability to support affiliate attribution models to payout commission? Do you have the technical resources available to implement?

 

2) Understand your existing data. Most companies have the data, but lack the analysts to make sense of it all. Data is virtually worthless unless you can analyze and understand what it is saying about your affiliate program. Have you done a deep-dive into your analytics and weblogs? Do you understand how your customers are finding you?

 

3) Get all stakeholders involved. Redefining or implementing a new affiliate attribution model can quickly turn into a land-grab, or worse, a political battle, if the context and expectations are not-well defined and communicated. Be sure to get all stakeholders involved early. Having their buy-in will set the tone that this is a cross-functional business discussion that requires input from everyone that has revenue responsibilities in marketing.

 

Implementing An Affiliate Attribution Model

Implementing a new affiliate attribution model can be a significant change within a marketing organization and for those affiliate partners working hard to promote and advertise your brand. It is important to understand the implications and have clear communication, both internally and externally, with those that may be impacted.

Affiliate attribution should not be a strategy to pay less commission to your affiliates; it should be a means to pay affiliates that have more influence with consumers a higher margin for delivering more value within your affiliate program.

Big data is making it easier for marketers to understand each interaction a consumer has with your brand leading up to the sale. With Internet retailers needing to better understand their customer to justify marketing spend and increase their return on ad spend, 2013 could be the year of affiliate attribution.

http://marketingland.com/2013-the-year-of-affiliate-attribution-37553

Top Ten Terrific CPA Networks

 

What is CPA? CPA, known as cost-per-action, is a form of paid advertising. The marketer generates the lead for the website, and in turn, the owner of the website pays the marketer for each lead.  The process usually happens in four steps. First, the marketer signs up with an affiliate network such as CPAWAY or ClickBooth. After signing up as a publisher, discover a way to move traffic towards the client’s website, Next, the marketer would find affiliate and appropriate links. Finally, the marketer will drive the traffic to the appropriate links.

 

In case you are looking for a CPA website, here are ten reputable CPA networks in alphabetical order:

1. 1.Adknowledge
2. Adscend Media
3. Affiliate Venture Group
4. Clickbooth
5. CPAlead
6. Cutting Edge Offers
7. Max Bounty
8. Neverblue
9. Peerfly
10.  W4

 

1. Adknowledge

Founded in 2004,Adknowledge is an international company that is in the Facebookelite club of

earning one of the prestigious Facebook Strategic Preferred Marketing Developer (sPMD) designation. Adknowledge is also one the first twelve CPA companies to receive this award.

This is a high-powered company. 

2. Adsend Media
Based in Dallas, TX, Adsend Media was founded in 2009. Although Adsend Media is a young company, they are a powerhouse and quickly turned into an award-winning institution. In June 2011, Adsend Media was named #10 by OfferVault,  #4 by Performance Marketing Insider, and #7 by Revenue Performance. Adsend Media is also affiliated with Performance Marketing Association and The Executive Council of Performance Marketing.

3.Affiliate Venture Group
This company, small yet strong and growing, isowned by Ricky Ahuja. Affiliate Venture Group is located in Richmond, VA, and was ranked number ten on the 2012 Performance Marketing Insider list.
 
4. ClickBooth
This company, based in Sarasota, Florida, started in 2004. The founders are Amanda Huntington and John Lemp. ClickBooth  has a host of awards, including but not limited to Technology Company of the Year (2008), #1 Affiliate in the World by website magazine (2009), the Bronze Telly Award (2010), The Summit Creative Award (2011), Florida Trend’s One of the Best Places to Work (2011), and Performance Review’s Blue Book #1 CPA Network (2013).  The accolades prove that not only is this a good company to work with, but also a good company to work for. 

5. CPAlead
Founded in 2006 and based in Las Vegas, Nevada, CPAlead is a small company yet a leader in the field. They have over 150,000 clients. This company has the distinction by launching a CPAlead Widget. The CPAlead widget gives an advantage to both advertisers and publishers.

6. Cutting Edge Offers
This company is considered the pioneer of CPA companies as they have been in operation for over fifteen years. Cutting Edge Offers is number six on the list of the top ten according to the2012 Performance Marketing Insider.

7. Max Bounty
Max Bounty was founded in 2004, and is a Canadian company. They are renowned for customer service such as payments in several different currencies and through different methods. Max Bounty has 16,000 affiliates. Max Bounty is considered number seven on the top ten list according to the 2012 Performance Marketing Insider.

8.Neverblue
Neverblue was founded in 2004 by four savvy guys with a vision, and now Never blue is number four on the top ten list according to the 2012 Performance Marketing Insider.  This company is considered as the generalists in the world of CPA  marketing, and is a strong stable company. 

9.Peerfly
Peerfly has earned the number one spot on the top ten list according to the 2012 Performance Marketing Insider. Peerfly is a relatively young company, but they have built trust with their audience. Also, Peerfly can do anything in CPA marketing, so customers do not have to go to different companies.

10.  W4
W4 rounds out the list of ten terrific CPA networks, and is considered one of the top twenty CPA networks according to The Online Advertising Blue Book. W4 focuses on buying customers, not clicks, and they are known for successful campaigns and excellent technology.

Conclusion
CPA, also known as cost-per-action and a form of paid advertising, is an effective and powerful way to drive and increase traffic to websites. There you can turn visitors into customers. If you take the four steps of CPA mentioned in the introduction, draft excellent content creation, and find the best CPA marketing professional for your specific needs, based on the ten mentioned companies, you will transform your website and company from obscurity to smashing success.

http://www.blogmarketingbook.com/top-ten-terrific-cpa-networks/

 

Keyword Research Tactics That Deliver

You can gain valuable knowledge when you take the time to listen and learn from fellow internet marketers. The rationale behind this is the fact that you will become educated and will be taught from those who are skilled in this area. You can also educate yourself with a little research and ingenuity. This could be an experience that you may truly enjoy. Below, you will be given a few thought that will explain the importance of keywords and how to go about finding them.

It’s not going to take you long, as an Internet marketer, to learn why this process is so important. But it takes a little longer for marketers to pick up on the subtleties of the mental position of Internet surfers. More importantly, you want to know whether you’re attracting people who are ready to make a purchase or the ones who are just window shopping. They’re not thinking about buying just checking out their options. Once they have all the information they need, then they begin to narrow things down and switch to closer to buying mode. So remember that and keep in mind what kinds of phrases you are using for your marketing. If you want to always have enough solid and fresh content for your readers you need to closely monitor the trends in your niche. You can do that with Google’s trending tool in combination with Google Alerts. You should identify your niche’s leading experts because these are the people who are going to have the most information and know what’s going on in your field all the time. So with all that information, you can write about anything new that comes up. With niche experts, you can comment on pretty much anything they do or say, you can disagree with them and you can write about it. This is one of the best ways to make sure that you can come up with a lot of relevant and useful content for your readers. See this ecommerce software video to find out which software is suitable for tracking the content of your website.

Pay attention to verbiage in headlines. Make sure your verbs are active rather than passive. Action verbs encourage your audience to take action and do something. Instead of saying they ‘can’ do something, tell them they ‘will’ do something.

Let them know what they can expect from taking the action you’re encouraging. Action words are among the most potent tools a writer has in his or her arsenal.

People have the tendency to be lazy creatures. Most people will take shortcuts rather than learning how to write those compelling headlines. It’s also partly responsible for writing to become such a huge market for Internet marketers. But learning how to really do these things well will make you a better online business person.

m/2012/09/10/keyword-research-tactics-that-deliver/

SEO Tips To Help You Make Money Online

The Internet has opened up multifarious opportunities to earn money. The website has become a formidable tool that can help you to attract customers from all over the world. However, even if you are not engaged in any e-business, still you can make money online by creating your own blog.

However, you can only capitalize on this by making sure that your website/blog is optimized for search engines i.e. SEO, which would increase the chances of people visiting your website. Heavy traffic diverted to your website will definitely increase your prospects of earning money online. Here are some SEO tips that will help you to increase your traffic and make good money online:

Always include relevant content in your website
Your content should be of superior quality which should impress the searchers. Make the content interesting and of course, it should be keyword optimized, which is essential for a good SEO strategy.

Make good use of social media for promotions
Social media is a powerful tool these days and it alone can increase your search ranking dramatically. Rich keyword content in social media profiles figures prominently on the search results. You could also build quality inbound links with the help of social media.

Make sure that your SEO does not have any loopholes
It is important to ensure that there are no technical lapses in the SEOs of your website, otherwise all your efforts will turn to waste. Make sure that all your web pages are linked internally. You must ensure that you do not have too many images in your website which can impact your SEO ranking negatively.

Ensure that you have sufficient keywords in your website
It might sound easy, but it is essentially difficult to use keywords optimally to your advantage. There are thousands of websites and many do not know much about SEO optimization, hence, you could cut through the competition by ensuring more traffic through SEO rich content. Ensure that the main keywords are in your sub-domains, domain and tags.

Enlist your website in various directories
It will be beneficial if you submit your website to multiple directories as it will hep you get indexed quickly.

Get ads on your website
You could make money online by having links or ads on your site to click on. However, you will eventually make good money once you start doing well on the search engines.

Include interesting pictures on your website
Pictures attract a lot of online users and these can be used as a medium to attract visitors to your blog. Learn more about the ALT Tag and how you can use it to use your pictures efficiently give you a long lasting result.

http://www.bluewiremedia.com.au/blog/2012/12/seo-tips-to-help-you-make-money-online