Speak Up Affiliate Marketers and Charge the Designers

Today as I’m preparing a new launch of affiliate offers, I took another look into the navigation funnel of the offer design.

(see ad – click ad – land on offer and start the lead generation) well in this case I have an offer that adds another step in between land on offer and start lead generation. The added step is a total waste for the end user, and would cut my conversion rate by (in my head) 30%.

Now, this is when you make a decision to call out the affiliate, and suggest a review of the offer lead design or sit back in a dark corner and take the 30% drop in conversions due to a worthless step for the user.

This may not be new information for the seasoned affiliate marketer, yet for the new guy or gal around the block… feel comfortable in calling out the affiliate offers that you think need to be altered and I will assure you that they will listen and take action.

This information will only lead to a positive effect for all teams involved, you the affiliate marketer making the cash from the lead, then the advertiser that values the user’s information which will lead to continue business with the affiliate company that provides high conversions.

I recommend Azoogle as a company that will listen.

Reaching the Hispanic Market with Search

Whether you are a U.S. Hispanic advertising agency, a busines owner, an entrepreneur, a web master or a consultant, the opportunities to educate this new multilingual and multicultural search engine marketing opportunity are here in a big way.

Considering the following:

2002 Hispanics officially became the largest minority in the U.S

The $700 billion spending in 2006 is to reach $1 trillion by 2010

70% of the market has a home computer connected to hi-speed

Start Your Hispanic Search Engine Marketing Plan:

Research will be the key to marketing to this rising market.

New market = new strategies, don’t just layer your mainstream campaign model on top.

Keywords need to be well thought about in both english and spanish

Please, take the time to write your site in spanish, hire someone who can translate your current site.

Spanish keywords are very cheap for now! and have high traffic and great CTR.

Invest in the right people, time, money and technology to take your plan of action to the next level

You will need atleast 12 months to review true metrics, in order to apply real measurements

To be continued…

Choosing Domain Extensions – .com? .net? .biz? ..

Is a .com better then a .net or an .info or is owning a .info smart?

One of the largest advantages of securing a .com over the many other extensions is that users have adopted the .com out of habit when using type in traffic. Users assume that you have a.com extension, so… you could be losing out on a lot of type in traffic and if you do not control the .com version of your domain, then I would return to the drawing board and brainstorm a new domain.

You may say right….. I’m sticking to my guns, well… Go ahead and watch your other .com domain steal all your hard earned traffic.

Search engines will give equal weight to your .net, .info .biz so on… just as a .com, just that the information given previously is the disadvantage of not having capturing the .com of your domain.

For our global clients, we address having your extensWhat are the benefits of having a .com?What are the benefits of having a .com?ion in the same country i.e. if your located in the UK you would want to try to capture a .co.uk extension or if you’re in China using a .cn is beneficial while also hosting your site in the specific country will aid in securing additional country specific visitors.

When users search online the engines will ping data bases within the specific country. This is the advantage of hosting your site in the country specific, since engines aren’t going to ping initially, information across the pond but rather internally.

Now for .org, and .edu you have to be a non-profit outfit or an educational institution to use these domain extensions. What benefits can they bring if you can’t purchase them, well… they are terrific links from 

Constratus Search

Target Your Keywords

One thing is critical when developing a PPC campaign, choice of keywords.
You have three main categories of keywords to think about

1. Navigational

2. Informational

3. Transactional

Navigational keywords are defined by when a user is searching for a specific web site and use queries such as “dmv” or “john hopkins”

Informational keywords are defined by when a user searching for an answer to their question or to understand a new subject, such as “what is jump roping” or “are bananas harmful”

Transactional keywords are defined by when a user is actively engaged and is usually going to take action, quires such as “t mobile dash activation” or “iron man contest form”

Each set of keywords should be used in a campaign, to fully take advantage of the searchers intent. You should have a clear message when deciding the specific keywords and then associate them with the correct landing page that will support a higher conversion rate when a user clicks your ad.
Cheers!

-B

Constratus

Is it Click or Impression Fraud?

Like usual, I view my stats for a given campaign running every morning, and today was just another day until… I compared my stats. Today after running the same campaign and dropping the CPC by $0.40 my traffic grew overnight from 400,000k to 4.2 Million? Strange… yes.

What’s even more peculiar is that all the users came for a visit between 3am – 6am all from content network sites… and from the same IP ah ha. One way to inflate impression or produce click fraud is to conceal your IP’s and keep under the radar, but this guy must have been a rookie.

So make a long story short, same date last week I had 300 clicks, 400k impressions with 60% CPA conversions – today same day with a lower CPC I have 4,300 clicks, 4.2 Million Impressions 10% CPA conversions. Is it click fraud or impression fraud well perhaps and I will take the next step (digging into my web metrics) to find additional reasons to have a chat with Google.

If you need help identifying if you’re a victim of click or impression fraud, please send an email, I’ll take a look. Anyone is search has heard of pepperjam another great search firm that had recent issues with yahoo marketing and click fraud.
-B

Constratus

The Big Three

So.. I’m going to rant about my passion for the big three, FYI the big three for me is Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing (PPC) and Web Analytics. I work for a well known web and mobile interactive firm called Constratus (www.constratus.com) and I’m responsible for what was mentioned before for our clients.

The industry has been making headlines for the last two years in leaps and bounds, I’m here to rant about what is going on in our industry and what I’m up to… so enjoy, if not email me and complain.
- B

Constratus