Posts Tagged "CitizenHawk"

ad:tech San Francisco: Affiliate Marketing – The Big Challenges

Posted on May 17, 2011 in Affiliate Marketing, Conferences & Networking |

Session Description: As the affiliate marketing industry grows, it continues to encounter challenges on multiple fronts. One front burner issue for brands and advertisers remains affiliate legislation. From New York to California to Texas, the nuances of tax collection in each state are still being worked out and, in many cases, litigated. With this vital issue still in flux, what are brands and marketers doing to move forward? How can advertisers keep track of the state-by-state laws, and how can they develop strategies for today and for the future? Trademark legislation is also a key issue for affiliate marketing and we’ll explore how brands walk the fine line between protecting their brand and getting wider exposure. Finally, we’ll tackle how affiliate legislation in various states will impact all online retailers.

This session took place Wednesday, April 13, 2011. The speakers:

  • Carolyn Tang Kmet, Director of Affiliate Marketing, Groupon (Moderator)
  • Angel Djambazov, OPM, KEEN Footwear
  • Rebecca Madigan, Executive Director, Performance Marketing Association
  • Brian Looney, Senior Director of Business Development, CitizenHawk, Inc.
  • Seana Montgomery, Senior Paralegal, McAfee

Impression comment

Bullet Point Review!

  • Affiliate marketing has become a legitimate marketing channel.
  • Ad Tax, aka Amazon Tax
    • Lots of spin going on from the pro side.
    • No physical presence – not required to collect sales tax.
    • Reality is that there’s no money involved
  • What does it mean for merchants?
    • If you have an affiliate program in states where this passes, you must now collect sales tax for all purchases made into the state, Or
    • Terminate affiliates (obviously the feared option).
  • What happens when it passes?
    • 25-35% loss of income to affiliates.
    • Lay offs, downsizing, some companies may close entirely.
    • People move out-of-state.
    • Income tax decreases.
  • Legislation has been beaten back 25 times.
  • Passed in 5 states.
  • 8 states in play in 2011.
  • Brand Protection is Important.
  • Typosquatting relies on typos in URLs.
  • Bad spelling is as prevalent as the common cold.
    • Typing too fast, fat fingers, old keyboards that stick, small keyboards on mobile devices.
    • More than 20% of all Internet traffic is typed in.
    • 15-30% of the time the URLs are misspelled.
  • Companies often classify this as a legal issue instead of a marketing or traffic issue.
  • Defending yourself against a typosquatter is expensive when you get lawyers involved.
  • URDP – uniform domain name dispute resolution policy.
  • Trademark infringement considered anything confusingly similar.  Typos don’t count but content does.  $1500 to file a complaint in court.
  • You’re not filing against the domain name, you’re filing against the domain owners.
  • Turn trademark enforcement into a profit center.
  • Laws are international, but more enforceable on .com & .net.
  • Marketing channels are business tools.  Each should be employed for a specific purpose.
  • You’re obligated to police your brand – your trademark can get canceled if you don’t prove you’re actively policing infringements.
  • Learning from KEEN Footwear.
  • Be sure your affiliates understand what affiliate marketing is.
    • Affiliate publisher joined, tried selling his own brand of shoes thinking affiliate meant an endorsement similarly to the definition of “affiliate” in the TV world.  Eventually showed up at the corporate offices demanding Keen CEO do more to leverage their partnership in trying to sell is shoe related product.
  • Not all publishers understand what the channel is.  Educate them.
  • Be sure to clearly define all legal aspects.
  • 20% of your affiliates are driving the majority of the revenue.
  • What can you do to measure impact of amazon tax:
    • Monitor legislation in states crucial to your success.
    • Join the PMA to help.
    • Stay informed through geekcast.fm, ReveNews.com, PMA blog.
    • Create a contingency plans with a different payment or advertising model to not loose these valuable partners.
  • Garbage can bills popping up including more junk trying to get out-of-state retailers to collect sales tax.  Just says “don’t do business in our state”.
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SMX @ ad:tech: Paid Search Fundamentals

Posted on May 5, 2009 in Conferences & Networking, Marketing | 1 comment

Session Description: Paid search lets you generate traffic from search engines by purchasing ads, usually on a cost-per-click (CPC) or pay-per-click (PPC) basis. This session covers the basics and current best practices of how to purchase placement from the major search engines, including the best ways to succeed with your ads, how to successfully measure performance and how to optimize your complete paid-search marketing strategies. Come join Danny Sullivan and several paid search experts in what promises to be an in-depth review of the paid search marketplace.

This session took place Wednesday, April 22, 2009. The speakers:

  • Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, SearchEngineLand.com (Moderator)
  • Mona Elesseily, Director of Marketing Strategy, Page Zero Media
  • Chris Zaharias, VP, Search Sales, Omniture
  • Nick Sheth, Director of Business Development, Gap Inc. Direct

Unfortunately the presenters talked really quickly, so I tried to get down as much as I could!

Bullet Point Review!  Mona Elesseily:

  • Get campaign architecture straight from the beginning.
  • Think about keywords.
  • Tap external sources.
  • Proper tracking should be in place from the beginning.
    • Is your company equipped to track?
    • Define your PPC objectives.
    • Tie the objectives to solid metrics.
  • Tracking online conversion.
    • Online order and pickup offline.
    • Store location page.
    • PPC local
  • Focus on ad copy.
    • Brainstorm.
      • Product and Service descriptions.
      • Calls to action.
      • Offers.
      • Features/Benefits.
    • String things together after brainstorming.
  • Think “buying cycle”.
  • Testing yields results!
  • Get rid of extra information if it doesn’t impact conversions, doesn’t belong.

Nick Sheth:

  • Know Your Trademarks.
    • Register your marks with Google (including misspellings).
    • Ensure you have clear, well communicated policy usage of marks by partners (affiliates, shopping engines, partners, etc.)
    • Monitor your marks with a service
    • Remember your domains (offensive and defensive).
      • Suggestions: Alias Encore (which, again, I can personally vouch for), CitizenHawk.
    • Hold domains that are even remotely related.
  • Know Your Promotions & Offline Marketing Calendar.
    • Calendar your promotions and share them with your agency and all digital marketing teams.
    • Leverage offline marketing (buy terms, watch trends, use content ads).
    • Finely tune search copy; don’t use blunt force – promotions should be relevant to your ad group.
    • Work closely with marketing within your organization on all levels.  Building trust is paramount to gaining the autonomy needed to execute quickly.
  • Know Your Site.
    • Landing page relevancy – right page for right copy and keyword.
    • Product availability and assortment – consider using data feeds to automate.
    • Dead pages – seems like common sense but there are a lot of ads out there that point to dead pages.  Make sure you have internal tools and/or an agency to monitor pages.
  • Know More About Your Site.
    • Use on-site search to drive SEM & SEO.
    • Use paid search to get ideas for SEO.
    • Use SEO for paid search keyword ideas.
    • Have a human review – don’t leave it all up to automation.
  • Know What Works.
    • Develop a culture of testing, including landing pages, copy, and promotions.
    • Build a test budget into your annual P & L.
    • Statistical significance is key.
    • Maintain a testing plan that always has tasks and is consistent.
  • Know Your Business.
    • Understand your goals.
    • Understand how you are moving the needle.
    • Ensure you’re thinking about your portfolio optimization.
    • Question branded search and answer: is it incremental?
    • Look at everything holistically.

Chris Zaharias:

  • Start -> key business requirements -> keyword research -> campaigns & ad groups -> syndicated strategy -> ad copy -> bid optimization -> analyze & conversions
  • Business goals -> KPIs -> Optimization
    • Use pre-defined metrics.
    • Clicks, Impressions, Click-Through Rate
    • Return on ad spend.
    • Cost per Acquisition.
  • Define and value customer metrics.
    • Cart abandonment rate.
    • Average Order Value.
    • KPIs to measure branding.
  • Multi-KPI Optimization.
  • Search reacts to TV advertising.
  • Measure across channels.
  • There’s a myth that the long tail keeps growing – this isn’t true.
  • The long tail is now in reverse.
  • People are using search as navigation – i.e. they already know what they’re looking for but they go to a search engine to find it easily instead of typing in the URL directly.
  • Assumptions:
    • The long tail keeps growing.
    • There’s 1001 things to do in search.
    • PPC = Traffic Management.
    • Listen to your search engine.
  • Reality:
    • Win the head, win the battle.
    • Return on efficient, defined work flow.
    • Pre & post-click are equally important.
    • Search engine advise is often a contrary indicator.

I don’t have any notes from a question period, and I definitely don’t remember there being time for questions.  Overall this was a completely useful session for me, given that I’m not an old hat at PPC marketing.  It was presented very well and clearly thought out.  I appreciated the slide presentations that all three presenters used and I only wish they’d shared them online somehow!

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