17th Post
Posted 4th March 2009 at 03:36 PM by Zale
I am trying out the QUOTE stuff - I hope I get it right
(I wish there was a preview function)
Steven - Thank you for your time and effort in answering my postings.
T202Steven wrote: wrote: This helps get rid of the clutter. So for example - my franchise is a Curves - its for women only. The primary market is women for 45-55. However, the Curves facility is fantastic for any woman. But we know who and what our sweet spot is. So my marketing is for the sweet spot - I don't waste time or $$$ on people who are not my target market.
I don't know if this is a real campaign or an example but in this case, I would do two things from just what you said if I were you...
The first is to use mediums such as Facebook and Myspace as they're made more for targeting demographic rather than keywords such as sex and age.
A little confusion here - this is getting to be a large post - so I should qualify something.
I was only explaining the market for Curves franchises and how I look at marketing.
Understanding who your market is for a product is basic marketing 101. The better you know who they are and what motivates them will help in headlines, copy writing and everything else. I actually write it out, reread it, and add to it as I go along.
The keywords that generates the clicks - tells me if my understanding of the people is correct or not.
(1) If they are clicking on things that are not consistent with what I would expect - that tells me I don't know what they want.
(2) If keywords are getting great impressions - but I am not getting clicks - that means I don't understand my market well enough.
FYI:
1) I have lots of keywords beyond I expect of my market place - this is so I can totally test by assumptions.
2) For my particular campaign - I have not set any Sex or age parameters. With Google Adwords - age and sex is only available in the content network and I have totally turned of content.
As you say later in your EXCELLENT response, test, test, test. So that is what I am doing. In fact, I am reducing the amount variables, so that I am totally aware of what I am testing.
So right now I am only testing what it takes to make a Direct Campaign work.
1) Keywords
2) Ad content
3) The offer
I have concluded that the last campaign didn't work because of the offer. I learned what Ad content and keywords generates clicks. I was not able to learn what keywords/ads generates sales since I didn't have any. The total lack of response from the affiliate managers told me that the problem may be on the offer side.
Therefore, I running the same campaign keywords and have improved the ads based on the successful ads.
T202Steven wrote:
wrote: a) Broad vs. Exact - I have both in each of my keywords.
Everything is base on personal preference and I don't believe in there being a right or wrong way of approaching affiliate marketing, only a better or worse way. Personally during "testing", I always run broad and not exact. Doing exact while testing could prove to be a bad move if you lose keywords that you could potentially have gotten. I prefer to run exact after testing is done as it makes much more sense. Of course for bidding purposes doing exact would make sense during testing but I don't concern myself with those things, to each his own.
I ran both Broad and Exact for the above reasons. The broad gives me all the variations - the exact is to tell me if that phrase by itself converts.
T202Steven wrote:
wrote: 3) My budget - since I have turned off the content market - I am not even reaching my new daily budget of $20. I realize that this is reflecting the limits on time and cities.
This is obviously dependent on your keywords, the volume of your keywords and the traffic they get and also the time and place you are targetting. I would expand not to mention $20/day is really hard to get good data.
I am getting some data. Once I get some sales, I will increase my purchase - What I have avoided by setting the times is data from people who are not my target market.
If I know the kinds of purchasers of my product aren't up in the middle of the night - then why should I advertise then? For example - single young men cruise the internet at night - fathers who drive their kids to school in the morning are not going to be up. (YES - there are some - sometimes - but the vast majority don't)
T202Steven wrote:
I also want to note that keep in mind affiliate marketing is like any other business. There are three primary building blocks that make up the foundation.
They are...
1. Traffic
2. Conversion
3. Retention (most other businesses) or Scaling (Affiliate Marketing)
Looking at it this way, you can see where you need to focus your attention to improve each step...
1. Traffic. You can improve this by working on keywords (in terms of PPC) and ad copy. This determines everything as a click is considered traffic and no click = no traffic. These two factors are what you work on to beat #1 whether you are converting or not.
2. Conversion. once you got the traffic, its time to convert. Looking at this, the two most dependent factor that converts is your ad copy and its relavancy to the landing page/offer page.
3. Finally, scaling. And this can be done in a multitude of ways.
I hope that looking at it like this will help you better understand and strategize.
This is all good stuff. I am still at step 2. Conversion. I am getting traffic to the sites - but no conversion.
The advertiser claimed a $30.00 EPC (based on a 100 clicks). I go no sales with 300 clicks. Therefore and after analysis of the keywords - that generated the clicks - I should have had at least one sale.
I have done this kind of marketing before - I firmly believe I should have gotten at least one sale.
The ad copy was written so that it was clear what the click was about. You would not have clicked on the ad copy unless you wanted to buy the product.
In the end - I think I chose a dud offering.
On the up side - I now know how to create a ppc campaign, I know how to read traffic levels and adjust my pricing.
Bottom Line:
I have relaunched the campaign with a different offer.
With this offer I have sent the affiliate manager an e-mail and received a response and support with in an hour. I am comfortable that they are honest and providing a good product and supporting me (the affiliate).
It happens that the affiliate manager is the supplier of the product.
(I wish there was a preview function)
Steven - Thank you for your time and effort in answering my postings.
T202Steven wrote: wrote: This helps get rid of the clutter. So for example - my franchise is a Curves - its for women only. The primary market is women for 45-55. However, the Curves facility is fantastic for any woman. But we know who and what our sweet spot is. So my marketing is for the sweet spot - I don't waste time or $$$ on people who are not my target market.
I don't know if this is a real campaign or an example but in this case, I would do two things from just what you said if I were you...
The first is to use mediums such as Facebook and Myspace as they're made more for targeting demographic rather than keywords such as sex and age.
A little confusion here - this is getting to be a large post - so I should qualify something.
I was only explaining the market for Curves franchises and how I look at marketing.
Understanding who your market is for a product is basic marketing 101. The better you know who they are and what motivates them will help in headlines, copy writing and everything else. I actually write it out, reread it, and add to it as I go along.
The keywords that generates the clicks - tells me if my understanding of the people is correct or not.
(1) If they are clicking on things that are not consistent with what I would expect - that tells me I don't know what they want.
(2) If keywords are getting great impressions - but I am not getting clicks - that means I don't understand my market well enough.
FYI:
1) I have lots of keywords beyond I expect of my market place - this is so I can totally test by assumptions.
2) For my particular campaign - I have not set any Sex or age parameters. With Google Adwords - age and sex is only available in the content network and I have totally turned of content.
As you say later in your EXCELLENT response, test, test, test. So that is what I am doing. In fact, I am reducing the amount variables, so that I am totally aware of what I am testing.
So right now I am only testing what it takes to make a Direct Campaign work.
1) Keywords
2) Ad content
3) The offer
I have concluded that the last campaign didn't work because of the offer. I learned what Ad content and keywords generates clicks. I was not able to learn what keywords/ads generates sales since I didn't have any. The total lack of response from the affiliate managers told me that the problem may be on the offer side.
Therefore, I running the same campaign keywords and have improved the ads based on the successful ads.
T202Steven wrote:
wrote: a) Broad vs. Exact - I have both in each of my keywords.
Everything is base on personal preference and I don't believe in there being a right or wrong way of approaching affiliate marketing, only a better or worse way. Personally during "testing", I always run broad and not exact. Doing exact while testing could prove to be a bad move if you lose keywords that you could potentially have gotten. I prefer to run exact after testing is done as it makes much more sense. Of course for bidding purposes doing exact would make sense during testing but I don't concern myself with those things, to each his own.
I ran both Broad and Exact for the above reasons. The broad gives me all the variations - the exact is to tell me if that phrase by itself converts.
T202Steven wrote:
wrote: 3) My budget - since I have turned off the content market - I am not even reaching my new daily budget of $20. I realize that this is reflecting the limits on time and cities.
This is obviously dependent on your keywords, the volume of your keywords and the traffic they get and also the time and place you are targetting. I would expand not to mention $20/day is really hard to get good data.
I am getting some data. Once I get some sales, I will increase my purchase - What I have avoided by setting the times is data from people who are not my target market.
If I know the kinds of purchasers of my product aren't up in the middle of the night - then why should I advertise then? For example - single young men cruise the internet at night - fathers who drive their kids to school in the morning are not going to be up. (YES - there are some - sometimes - but the vast majority don't)
T202Steven wrote:
I also want to note that keep in mind affiliate marketing is like any other business. There are three primary building blocks that make up the foundation.
They are...
1. Traffic
2. Conversion
3. Retention (most other businesses) or Scaling (Affiliate Marketing)
Looking at it this way, you can see where you need to focus your attention to improve each step...
1. Traffic. You can improve this by working on keywords (in terms of PPC) and ad copy. This determines everything as a click is considered traffic and no click = no traffic. These two factors are what you work on to beat #1 whether you are converting or not.
2. Conversion. once you got the traffic, its time to convert. Looking at this, the two most dependent factor that converts is your ad copy and its relavancy to the landing page/offer page.
3. Finally, scaling. And this can be done in a multitude of ways.
I hope that looking at it like this will help you better understand and strategize.
This is all good stuff. I am still at step 2. Conversion. I am getting traffic to the sites - but no conversion.
The advertiser claimed a $30.00 EPC (based on a 100 clicks). I go no sales with 300 clicks. Therefore and after analysis of the keywords - that generated the clicks - I should have had at least one sale.
I have done this kind of marketing before - I firmly believe I should have gotten at least one sale.
The ad copy was written so that it was clear what the click was about. You would not have clicked on the ad copy unless you wanted to buy the product.
In the end - I think I chose a dud offering.
On the up side - I now know how to create a ppc campaign, I know how to read traffic levels and adjust my pricing.
Bottom Line:
I have relaunched the campaign with a different offer.
With this offer I have sent the affiliate manager an e-mail and received a response and support with in an hour. I am comfortable that they are honest and providing a good product and supporting me (the affiliate).
It happens that the affiliate manager is the supplier of the product.
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