The topic of affiliate network migration is at the top of the agenda for a lot of advertisers these days. Whether a transition is driven by the urgency around the closing of the Google Affiliate Network, or you've bandied about the idea of switching networks for some time, moving to a new network requires thoughtful, strategic planning. Otherwise, you may find yourself hopping across different networks while you disrupt your brand, sales and publisher relationships. Below are five key considerations when it comes to selecting a new network followed by a seven-step migration plan. 5 Questio [...]

Related Topics: Affiliate Marketing | Channel: Content Marketing | Content Marketing Column

When it comes to social media marketing, many brands and organizations have staked claim to various hashtags. Yet by their nature, hashtags can't be owned. They can’t be wordmarked or copyrighted, either. The reality is that many hashtags are started organically, not by brands themselves but by their customers. Hashtags were once the sole domain of Twitter. Over the years, other social properties began incorporating them as well. Google Plus and Instagram recognize them. Earlier this year, LinkedIn started using them. And soon, they'll become part of Facebook as well. Hashtag Bombs Are S [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Social Media Marketing | Social Media Marketing Column | Social Media Marketing: Hashtags | Twitter | Twitter: Marketing

Our goal as savvy email marketers is to look beyond the lure of the one-time conversion and strive to build an ongoing relationship between consumers and our brands. Why is this goal so important? Because it’s been proven through many a marketing study that engaged customers become loyal customers and loyal customers are the most valuable segment in any list or database. This type of highly engaged, loyal customer typically has higher overall lifetime value than the casual consumer. They’re also more likely to be an evangelist, introducing new customers to your brand in a very personal [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Email Marketing | Email Marketing | Email Marketing Column

[caption id="attachment_37768" align="alignright" width="300"] Image via Shutterstock[/caption] Often, you want to look at your metrics over a longer time period than usual in order to identify long-term trends. This is especially true if your metrics are "jagged" and move around a lot. You have two choices: You could use a larger time period. If you usually watch daily metrics, switch to weekly. Or monthly. Or quarterly. This will smooth out your data and will also smooth out directional trends emerging from your data right at the time when you want to catch such changes. You could u [...]

Related Topics: Analytics | Analytics & Marketing Column | Channel: Analytics | Statistics: General

Disclaimer:  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real businesses, living or dead, is purely coincidental. Failure is a key part of success, or at least an important step on the road to becoming successful. When the still-young search industry witnesses a failure of any kind, it seems to revel in exploiting the collapse for personal gain, personal indulgence and the ability to say, "I told you so." Without getting into names and details that will only initiate more drama and, dare I say, schadenfreude, I've noticed an overabundance of loony behavi [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Internet Marketing Industry | Search Marketing | Search Marketing Column

What's the biggest obstacle to effective content marketing? Surveys consistently reveal that enterprises -- large and small -- feel that creating enough content is the biggest problem. But, I'm not sure that quantity is the real issue here. The problem is quality. In other words, does the content that's already getting created actually perform the intended function? Quality online content marketing gets people to perform an action. Whether that's social sharing, joining an email list, contacting a sales rep, or making an online purchase, people have to be persuaded to do something [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content Marketing | Content Marketing | Content Marketing Column

This week, Google will have its 6th annual developer conference, Google I/O, where the theme will be "Innovation in the Open." Mobile Search, in particular, looks to be a focus in this year, and we can already pick up some pre-conference clues that indicate where the search giant is headed. Unfortunately, we won't hear from SEO guru Matt Cutts this year at I/O. He formerly presented a session on SEO at Google I/O each year, but that ended in 2010 -- which was also the last year I personally attended the conference. This year, Danny Sullivan, Greg Sterling, & Matt McGee will be co [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile Marketing | Google: Google I/O | Mobile Marketing | Mobile Marketing Column

In the paid search world, ad rank and average cost per click (CPC) are determined by three factors: your own bid (max CPC), your competitors’ bids, and a numeric representation of ad relevance known as quality score. This quality score acts as a modifier, making it possible for an ad with higher “quality” to outrank a competitor’s ad at a lower bid. While the relationship between bids is straightforward to understand, quality score is much more opaque, being affected by many factors such as click-through rate (CTR), keyword and ad copy relevance, quality of landing page, etc. Man [...]

Related Topics: Analytics & Marketing Column | Channel: Analytics | Google | Google: Search | Search Marketing

I hadn't seen my old high school pal in about 20 years. As we sat at a bar overlooking Grand Central Station in New York, he told me that he, too, was in social media -- something involving sentiment analysis. “Oh, sure,” I said, “many social media tools use sentiment analysis -- and it’s always a big topic at digital marketing conferences.” “No,” he said, “we analyze Twitter for changes in sentiment that might affect stock price. Then computer trading can kick in for transactions that might only be fractions of a penny per share.” Twitter As An Economic Predic [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Social Media Marketing | Social Media Marketing Column | Twitter

Testing should be at the core of your email marketing program. Not only does it help you understand the impact you’re making, but it gives you a much fuller understanding about your customers’ behavior and preferences. It not only tells you where you've been, but where you should (and shouldn't) go with your campaigns. A/B testing is the simplest, most straightforward testing method available. Most of you probably understand what A/B testing entails, but for those who don’t: A/B test is a process through which you provide different versions of an email to statistically significant [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Email Marketing | Email Marketing | Email Marketing Column

Social media and content distribution are often chief tactics included in a content marketing strategy; but, it’s not possible (or recommended) to share your own content 100 percent of the time. As a result, having a content curation and/or aggregation plan might be something to consider as a part of your long-term content marketing strategy. There are many tools available to aid in finding industry-specific quality content that you can share with your audience to continually position your brand as an expert. Additionally, these content pieces can serve as inspiration for future content c [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content Marketing | Content Marketing | Content Marketing Column

Crafting a content strategy for social media is just as important as developing a strategy for what is published on the company blog and website. Social media is one of the main megaphones that a company uses to create its overall online presence, which in turn shapes brand recognition and sentiment. Social media has developed to the point that it is now more than putting a message out online and hoping for the best. Because the users are smarter and have made social media a part of their lives, it is up to companies to make the most out of every post and update they publish. Social med [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Channel: Strategy | Social Media Marketing | Social Media Marketing Column

Author and speaker Nancy Duarte has said that speakers must take their audience on a hero’s journey (YouTube video). In doing so, the speaker doesn’t assume the role of hero – the audience does. The speaker is the hero’s helper. Spokespeople for The Coca-Cola Company announced last year their ambitious goal of doubling the company’s overall revenues by the year 2020 (YouTube video).  How are they to achieve this monumental task, comparable to the doubling of a small country’s GNP? Their answer was storytelling in all of its many forms. In his latest book, What's The Fut [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Social Media Marketing | Social Media Marketing Column

One of the five predictions in my recent 2013 mobile predictions post was that mobile analytics and measurement would get a seat at the "adult table" this year. In particular, one of the areas in which I am seeing tremendous growth is location-based listening and analytics. As more and more companies adapt a listening strategy -- in many cases, using advanced tools like Sysomos and Radian6 (now part of Salesforce.com's MarketingCloud) -- some are starting to look at the possibilities of going deeper. During a recent interview with colleague and co-author of Digital Marketing Analytic [...]

Related Topics: Analytics | Channel: Local | Check-In Services | Facebook: Mobile | Foursquare | Mobile Marketing | Mobile Marketing Column

Email overload and inbox fatigue are all too real. But, we all have an "inner circle" of emails we look forward to reading -- you know, the ones we check our spam folders for when we haven't seen them recently. How can you get your emails into that coveted inner circle and -- better still -- keep them there to increase engagement and deliverability? Let's explore three simple ways to do that, with an outstanding email example for each one. 1. Build Momentum From The Welcome Email(s) The welcome email (or email series) is one of the most undervalued tools in the email marketer's bat uti [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Email Marketing | Email Marketing | Email Marketing Column

Star Wars, "Stairway to Heaven," and the Apple Macintosh -- what do they have in common?  They're creative and cultural works of genius that have shaped and defined generations. We might also think that they're original works born of a lightning-in-a-bottle, "aha!" moment of creation by the lone inventor.  In fact, each one of these is a copy, combination, transformation, or remix of previous works presented as something new. Star Wars was based on Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces, "Stairway to Heaven" pulls its opening from Spirit’s "Taures," and the Macintosh� [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Content Marketing | Content Marketing | Content Marketing Column

The path from clicking a search ad to a conversion -- buying a product, downloading a brochure, locating a store -- is well understood and widely accepted today. Because a search ad relates to an intent expressed by the person doing the search, click-through rate serves as a good proxy for conversion, and cost-per-click (CPC) is a reliable guide for buying search ads. In search, optimizing for clicks is essentially optimizing for conversions because they’re so closely aligned. Online display advertising, however, is a different story. People go to websites for information, entertainment a [...]

Related Topics: Analytics | Analytics & Marketing Column | Channel: Display Advertising | Display Advertising

Content marketing is one of the biggest buzz phrases of the moment, with many people talking about it as if it's a new phenomenon. The fact that The Guinness Book of Records will be 60 years old next year should put paid to that suggestion -- but so, too, should the creative work put out by Nike, which has consistently shown that great marketing is great content. And, they're still doing it now. PHOTOiD is a new mash-up Nike has created that allows you to use an Instagram photo to inspire a pair of personalised Nike iD trainers. It's built in HTML5, is lovely to look at, is intrinsically li [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Social Media Marketing | Social Media Marketing Column

Professional stand-up comedians are known to practice their routines with smaller audiences in preparation for their big shows and HBO specials. They do this in order to find out what works and what doesn't and to hone all the elements of their routine: timing, delivery, wording and so on. That way, when they hit the big stage, they have the confidence that they are delivering an optimized routine. This is not unlike the "lean startup" approach described by Eric Ries in his book, The Lean Startup. In it, he advocates the "build-measure-learn" cycle, which puts experimentation, measurement [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Display Advertising | Display Advertising | Display Advertising Column | Display Advertising: Programmatic Media Buying

Finding images for your WordPress site can be a challenge. Of course, you could take the pictures yourself -- but if you run multiple sites, that could prove exhausting. I have recently started using a WordPress plugin that makes it very easy to find creative commons images and credit them properly right from inside my blog. The plugin is called PhotoDropper -- and I am loving it! PhotoDropper has over 62 million free images that blog owners can access and insert right from their WordPress dashboard. They also have a premium tier that offers more professional photos on a pay-by-the-photo [...]

Related Topics: Affiliate Marketing | Affiliate Marketing Column | Blogging | Channel: Content Marketing