Posts made in 2009

ad:tech San Francisco: Master Class Workshop: Kick-Ass Creative—Left Coast Style

Posted on May 6, 2009 in Conferences & Networking, Marketing |

Session Description: Leading Left Coast creative directors showcase a cross section of innovative digital and integrated work for multiple clients including the strategy behind each campaign and the related pieces that supported the work. Learn from these master class creative directors about how to inspire and harness the big idea in an increasingly digital world dominated by fragmenting media and attention spans. What customer insights and trends spark new ideas and how do leading creative directors factor in evolving trends such as on-demand media and user-generated content when developing campaigns? This is the place to be to see the latest examples of strategic and tactical creative thinking and execution.

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

• Conor Brady, Chief Creative Officer, Organic (Moderator)
• Niels Aillaud, Senior Manager Digital Marketing, LG Electronics
• Scott Briskman, VP, Executive Creative Director, Agency.com San Francisco
• Jared Cluff, VP, User Acquisition, Ask.com
• John Rabasa, Executive VP, Managing Director, Publicis Modem West

Unfortunately this sessions was really a long brag session from LG and Ask.com.  While the television media they showed was funny and entertaining, I expected this “master class workshop” to actually teach me a few things.  Maybe some tips on creating engaging creative?  Nope.  So I was pretty let down and I only have a few notes for you.

Bullet Point Review!  LG  Electronics:

• Markets may be conversations, but make sure you are invited.
• Social media is about two things: context and people.
• Participation is good but creative participation is better.
• A good campaign is organic and will want to keep going.
• If your brand is befriended (e.g. on Facebook or Twitter), be a friend back.

Ask.com:

• Positioned Ask.com as an answer engine.
• Video ads delivered an 80% reduction in CPC.
• Crawls were 4 times better – higher traffic than traditional 15 second spots.
• They were surprised by the top performing question they asked – Who is Kim Kardashian?
• The agency is not bringing ideas that are exciting to them just because they’re exciting – they’re bringing them because they make sense for their business.

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
    • Suggestions: AdGooroo, The Search Monitor, BrandVerity (I can personally vouch that this one is awesome), or Mark Monitor.
  • 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!

Affiliate Marketing Fanatics #6: ad:tech, Cafepress, and Hootsuite

Posted on May 4, 2009 in Affiliate Marketing, Affiliate Marketing Fanatics |

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Affiliate Marketing Fanatics – A Publisher (Mike Buechele) and an Affiliate Manager (Trisha Lyn Fawver) talk about all things Affiliate Marketing. From blogging to branding, social media to search, video and more!

We’re back after two weeks away. Here’s a rundown of what we ramble about this time around.   In in this episode we discuss:

• Trisha is the newest member of Paulson Management Group.
• TweetDeck, Seesmic Desktop, Digsby, and Hootsuite.
• ad:tech San Francisco Recap.
• The enormity of the Affiliate Summit Beer Garden.
• Cafepress changing pricing structure to standardize pricing.
• CA tax development.
• Shout outs: Shawn Collins, Lisa Picarille, Todd Farmer, Angie Seaman, Brian Caldwell, Teresa Caldwell

ad:tech San Francisco: Performance Marketing – Getting the Most from Your Marketing Dollar in a Tough Economy

Posted on May 4, 2009 in Affiliate Marketing, Conferences & Networking |

Session Description: How can marketers get the most from their budgets in a difficult economic climate?  We’ll explore how to attain more from a smaller budget via performance marketing with practical, tactical solutions.  We’ll look at the pros and cons of allocating dollars to performance marketing and we’ll discuss what technological innovations are coming to the performance marketing space that will maximize budgets and minimize challenges.

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

• Neil Strother, Analyst, Forrester Research (Moderator)
• Peter Bordes, CEO, MediaTrust
• Steve Schaffer, Founder and CEO, Vertive
• Jarvis Mak, Senior VP, Global Research and Insights Director, Havas Digital
• Kelly Powers, Senior Manager, Customer Acquisition, Zazzle

This session was definitely geared towards those marketing and advertising professionals that are not already in the performance marketing game.  It was very insightful to watch from that point of view in mind.

Bullet Point Review!

• Neil asks “What is performance marketing?”
  • Paying only for results, whether those results are leads, referrals, a percentage of the sale.  Advertisers get to determine how much they pay.
• You can leverage your affiliates to assist with your paid search efforts.
• You need to have good landing pages.
• What’s the real value of the actions being driven?
• What you’re paying for is marketing.
• Affiliates have more incentive to drive more qualified traffic and customers.
• Affiliates drive higher conversions, average orders.
• There’s three types of advertising, CPM, CPC, and CPA.
• Merchants only want to pay one touch point for the sale.
• There’s a mentality that affiliates are frowned upon; CEOs will be wary of the methods but CFOs will be excited about the value and efficiency of the channel.
• AM is very data driven – more money is shifted towards traceable marketing.
• Executives need to understand affiliate marketing; the whole industry is misunderstood.
• Industry is starting to get the data out and break through the black box and lack of transparency.
• Peter briefly explained what’s going on with the #advertisingtax to the crowd.
• A couple of states have been able to stop the #advertisingtax but it’s moving fast.
• Fraud has grown exponentially, especially in lead gen.
• Paying for leads welcomes fraud in som,e industries, ask yourself if you can pay for a different action.
• A major player will soon announce a ranking system (Peter couldn’t divulge who).

Points brought up during the Q&A

• Is there a metric to show brand safety?  No.  It’d be nice to take the focus off the brand.
• Yes you need brand awareness, but that’s not going to drive a sale.  The best offer is.
• It’s not infinitely scalable; you can always throw more money at search, etc. but throwing more money at affiliate marketing doesn’t work because the core is the relationships.
• Amazing how much more some merchants pay on other marketing methods and channels over affiliate marketing.
• Advertisers need to do a better job at attribution to track the sales to the correct channels.
• Feel free to launch new products with affiliate marketing; it has worked in the past when done right.
• What are some practical takeaways?
  • Continue to optimized
  • Work on attribution
  • Look at marketing channels as a holistic portfolio.
  • Focus on better, fewer networks and don’t spread your program too think.

The Q&A portion wasn’t so much a traditional Q&A as it was a case study like discussion.  The panel really wanted to help with real examples, and only one gentleman in consumer finance was willing to ask for assistance.

Commission Junction University Registration Open

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

That’s right, registration is now open for 2009’s Commission Junction University, September 15-17 in Santa Barbara, CA.  This network-hosted event is a prime opportunity to meet your colleagues in the affiliate marketing space and to network with affiliate managers and affiliates.  I attended last year’s CJU and had a great time meeting some great people.

Early bird registration is open through June 30th, giving you $100 off the $995 price tag.  In this economy, saving anything is better than nothing so book early!  Once again, CJ will be hosting the event at the beautiful Fess Parker’s Double Tree, right there on the ocean.  The view is simply stunning, I have to admit.  And while staying at the Fess Parker might not be in your reasonable budget, be sure to stay nearby and don’t make the mistake I did last year.  I figured staying at a lower cost motel just 7 miles away would be okay, and in terms of the motel it was fine, but the cab ride to the Fess Parker was a painful $25.  So staying nearby will definitely help your sanity and pocket book!

I believe I’ll be in attendance, though I don’t want to make any plans just yet.  After last year’s plane issues (flying from OAK to LAX to SBA, then from SBA to PHX to OAK) I think I might take the opportunity to drive down this time.  Hope to see you there!

My ad:tech San Francisco Experience

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

So ad:tech has come and gone, and for my first experience at ad:tech is was pretty good.  The first day I spent most of my time connecting with some industry friends in the very cool Affiliate Summit sponsored Beer Garden.  I was surprised how much it looked like the conceptual drawing that Shawn Collins had posted on his blog when he first announced the beer garden.

For those faithful listeners of Affiliate Thing, you’ll be happy to know that there were no snuggies involved.  Unfortunately that first day I didn’t make it to any sessions, but I did take a quick glance at the exhibit hall.  I think this might be the first time I’ve seen two floors of exhibit hall.  Can you tell I’m not an old hat at ad:tech?

That evening I joined some affiliate marketing folks at AT&T Park for a Giants vs. Padres game.  Shawn was quite perturbed that he could not get a signal on his AT&T serviced cell phone at AT&T Park.  I can’t say that I blame him.  There were some great moments in the game, including the closest I’ve ever seen two runners together when rounding the bases.  The Giants won and our seats were pretty good.  Luckily it was a nice balmy night and I didn’t need a jacket, but I did get blisters on my feet walking from Moscone Center to the park in bad dress shoes.  Nonetheless, I have to send a big thanks to Shawn for the game invite!

The second day I was able to attend some sessions, notes from which will appear here next week.  They were hit and miss… I got a lot out of some of them and almost nothing from others, except for some entertainment value.

That evening I had a nice dinner with the folks from eBay, Linda Woods of PartnerCentric, Shawn Collins from Affiliate Summit, Peter Bordes of Media Trust, and a couple folks from Red Anchor Media.  We had a nice discussion on quality in Affiliate Marketing.  I was honored to be invited and had a terrific time.  Any fellow creme brulee fans will be pleased to hear about the lovely Butterscotch variation at Anchor & Hope on Minna in San Francisco!

I didn’t make it over for the 3rd day of ad:tech, but overall it was a good experience and I’m looking forward to attending more in the future and getting some more done once I’m more firmly established with my new clients and with Paulson Management Group.