Marketing

Online Marketing Glossary: Doorway Page

Posted on Aug 19, 2008 in Affiliate Marketing |

Doorway Page (also Gateway Page):

• A webpage created  expressly in the hopes of ranking well for a term in a search engine’s non-paid listing.  It does not deliver much information but is designed to entice visitors to enter.

Some people refer to this practice as a thin affiliate site.  The site is pretty much useless in terms of the content, but it ranks well for consumers who are searching for the products.

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Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine

Affsum Session: Performance Marketing Association Q&A

Posted on Aug 18, 2008 in Affiliate Marketing, Conferences & Networking | 2 comments

Well, I think many people attending this session were expecting the topic to be heated, but l’m not sure they were expecting some of the venom that seemed to be in the room.  Speaking for myself, I certainly didn’t.  Originally there was only supposed to be one panelist fielding questions, but since 4 out of 5 working group leaders were in attendance, they were also recruited to speak.  So ultimately the panel consisted of:

• Rebecca Madigan, Performance Marketing Association
• Sam Harrelson, Publisher, Cost Per News
• Brook Schaaf, Schaaf Consulting
• Brad Waller, VP Business Development, AdJungle.com
• Peter Bordes, CEO, MediaTrust

Guns were slinging!  Unfortunately there’s not many bullet points to be had, but here you go.

Bullet Point Review!

• PMA is in germination phase – not a real entity yet.
• Why start now?
  • Misinformation & lack of representation.
  • Legislation.
  • Lack of transparency.
  • Maturity of industry.
• Formation process still underway.
  • Interviewed over 60 industry leaders, Formation Advisory Board voted in by 100 peers.
  • Working groups of 45 volunteers.
  • Working groups make recommendations on formation.
  • FAB 11 ratifies formation proposals (click here to see members).
• The working group committees are Scope/Objectives (headed by Sam Harrelson), Governance (Brook Schaaf), Fundraising (Peter Bordes), Membership (Durk Price), and Operations (Brad Waller).

Points (or other observations in this case) brought up during the Q&A

• Right off the bat the questions were hostile.  There’s animosity about the PMA using the NY Tax situation as a launching point for formation despite the fact that they can’t do anything to help.
  • Essentially there’s nothing the PMA can do since they’re NOT a fully formed organization, no matter how much they want to help.
• Rebecca acted as moderator and moved the conversation on after almost 20 minutes of hostile banter.
• The PMA blog as been quiet because the people in working groups have had their heads down working on things without much to report at this point.
• The term “Performance” has been used over “affiliate” because it is more inclusive of the larger base of members within the industry.  Inclusive of a lot more relationships than just the affiliate – merchant relation.
• The PMA has a very similar model as a chamber of commerce but the scope is still being set up.  They are looking at the chamber model in forming things.  Mostly they want to improve visibility & credibility.
• Rebecca was questioned as to why she didn’t attend the meetings in Albany that the NY affiliates had since she’s actually the only paid member.  It was decided that there was no reason because it would have been redundant and she can’t represent an organization that isn’t formed and doesn’t officially exist.
• They were asked why they divorced themselves from ABestWeb after the controversy, to which they responded that they didn’t divorce from it BUT once a particular few threads got ugly and became increasingly unprofessional they just stopped participating in those threads.
• There’s no conspiracy regarding Rebecca’s involvement – Anik Singal of Affiliate Classroom generously donated her salary for a year and she’s just being paid to “corral cats” and help form the organization.  Her comment was that if she weren’t paid for this she’d have bailed long ago based on the assumptions about her involvement and what she’s had to deal with.
• An affiliate asked how they can be assured that the PMA won’t be overtaken by large company sponsorhips and forget the little affiliate?  The affiliate industry is it’s own little ecosystem and the heart of it is the average affiliate.  They’ve been very hypersensitive to the issue to ensure that affiliates are included.

It seems that there’s lots of confusion about the organization – or lack thereof – and hopefully the Q&A has taken things in the right direction.  Perhaps Q&A wasn’t the right moniker.  Maybe Suggestion Session or Feedback Forum might have worked better.  It was disappointing to see one of the most vocal critics of the PMA – ABestWeb founder Haiko de Poel Jr – leave the session half way through in apparently disgust.  I hope that future discussions going forward will be a bit more productive than the session in Boston.

Online Marketing Glossary: Abandonment

Posted on Aug 18, 2008 in Marketing |

Abandonment:

• When a user leaves a shopping cart with an item prior to completing the transaction.

Many factors contribute to why people would abandon without purchasing. A high probability is the complication of the check out process or having to sign in or create an account to do order. The easier it is for customers to order, the higher the likelihood that they’ll complete the purchase.

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Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine

Online Marketing Glossary: Keyword Domain Name

Posted on Aug 17, 2008 in Affiliate Marketing | 1 comment

Keyword Domain Name:

• The use of keywords as part of the URL to a website.  Positioning is improved on some search engines when keywords are reinforced in the URL.

Many people take advantage of this in buying their domains, not just because of the improved results with the search engines, but to keep the URL as relevant to your topic as possible.  When the URL is relevant to the content, it’s easier for visitors to remember when they want to come back.

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Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Martheketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine

Online Marketing Glossary: Rank

Posted on Aug 16, 2008 in Affiliate Marketing |

Rank:

• How high a particular webpage or website is listed in a search engine’s results.

Obviously the higher you rank, the more prominent your results are going to be and the more traffic you will see.  This is true across any industry.

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Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine

Cribbed Content for August 15th

Posted on Aug 15, 2008 in Affiliate Marketing, Conferences & Networking, Marketing, Rambles |

it’s been a crazy week, but a lot has been going on in the business world (not to mention my world lol)

• CVS Pharmacy bought small California chain Longs Drugs this week for $2.9 billion.  Growing up with Longs, I’ll miss seeing the name around but they’re not one of the better stores so I don’t see it as a loss.
• AOL jumped into life streaming with their acquisition of Social Thing this week as well.  I’ve never used Social Thing much, but I definitely won’t use it if it just gets pulled into their system.
• Affiliate Summit East 2008 in Boston wrapped up – I’m slowly getting all of my coverage posted.  The next time I go to the show I hope to have a better laptop with a better battery and better wireless card so I can blog from the sessions instead of taking notes and blogging later.  So much for live & current coverage!

That’s really about it this week since I wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention to antyhing outside of the summit.  I did pick up some good tools, so the Free Toolsday column should be back soon!