CPC Affiliate Marketing: It’s a Lot Like Good Ol’ Store Keeping
0 Comments Published by elias May 7th, 2008 in Online.The term sounds quite sophisticated. It is. And it’s nice to see people puzzled not knowing what the hell this is. But after you cut through the CTR, impressions, clicks, ad copy, and the technical issues, you end up like a traditional merchant in front of a salesman (been there before - the salesman that is). You would be evaluating each product, how much sales it might generate and how much profit margin it can get you. This is how it is in CPC affiliate marketing. You have to start thinking like a store keeper, except without the store, and without the merchandise, and the good news is, you only pay for sending people to the store. If you succeed in sending the right pople, you can start earning commissions on that.
I never thought of myself becoming a store keeper or merchant, but this was a strange discovery for me.
But this seems like a great store. There are no cases to deal with, and you can shift products, brands, or even industries, within seconds. You can also sell a wide range of unrelated items in your online conglomorate.
The fun part for me is in figuring out the right keywords, and testing different ad texts and seeing how they affect users’ behavior. It is really fascinating every time I think about it; here I am (wherever I am, logged in my account) thinking about what attract people more. At several other points in the world, there are people searching for certain keywords, I somehow manage to get a part of them, to be directed to my products, and buy it. They come and go, get their products shipped while I’m somewhere else doing somethig else.
I like this store!
The Good Customer, and the Not-So-Good One
0 Comments Published by elias April 30th, 2008 in The Customer.How do I classify my customers / clients? An interesting question that always arises in discussions of segmenting our client base. Whether it is types of customers, or good and bad ones, there is always a problem of drawing that “fine line”. We usually know that we have clients who pay more than others, and we know that we should therefore treat them differently, but “how do we draw the line?” could become a tricky question. I prefer getting the answer from the clients collectively. I would like an approach that fits to my special case, and can be used over and over without having rigid lines differentiating between “good” and “bad” clients.
This is a simple technique where you just plot your clients on a graph, draw a line, and that’s it!
First create a list of all your clients, and next to each one the average purchases they make, and rank them from the highest to the lowest.
Then, plot the results on a graph, and you will end up with a “long tail“. Draw a line to separate the head and the tail, and you get a fairly good segmentation between good and bad customers.
The important thing about this technique is that it is flexible and scalable to any business, and to any number of clients. It can also be used for any time range. Also, you get rid of rigid classifications (a good customer is someone who buys more than $1,000/month). This way of classifying could become ridiculous in six months, since your business can grow and your clients’ purchases also.
This classifications doesn’t look at amounts, it looks at the relative positioning of your clients according to their performance with your business.
I was watching a documentary about the sun and space and started drifting in the different thoughts that the program evoked in me. While imagining what was happening “out there” in space, I realized that I visually represent it in my mind, and I know that it is not just visual. I know that these are just impressions that happen on our eyes. The sounds the phenomena create (and they are quite noisy) are reverberations of the medium they are in, and what we call sound is just the impression left on our minds. So, to be able to start understanding these phenomena, I realized there should be other ways to “imagine” them.
When you talk about your customer, what do you imagine? Do you imagine a person buying your product, or do you just have a conceptual thing in your mind, or is it just a number?
What is the best way to imagine the customer you are targeting and communicating with?
The method I prefer is recreating and living the experience that person goes through when they are encountered with my message or experiencing a product I’m involved in. This is actually a personal passion of living as vividly as possible the experiences of other people, and understanding them as fully as possible. But I also think this is a sound business strategy, since you really need to understand that person you are motivating to have a good experience with your product.
This is of course different from imagining what you would do when in your customer’s place. This is totally different. I also don’t think it is a good thing, to imagine how you would react, since this throws the exercise off balance. I think we need to develop enough empathy to be able to somehow re-experience what our end users are going through with our products, and how they are reacting to them.
If “Location, Location, Location” is the mantra in the real estate world, I’m starting to believe that it should also be the mantra of cross functional teams as well. After a heated debate over whether or not location is important in producing quality work, I decided to watch.
Then I traveled to our office in another country.
Before long, I was asked by a colleague about a certain product we are working on. We decided to have a ten minute meeting out in the sun and talk about it. I shared some simple facts about that product, and I was very happy to know the next day that this gave him a good edge in his offering to the client, and the order more than doubled just because of that addition! The same day, we shared another product with another colleague, and with one simple recommendation, we were able to eliminate a lot of frustration about that product with a very small modification. These same colleagues were able to assist me in some partnerships I was trying to make, and we decided on several steps to get these things done.
I became a believer.
Had I not traveled on this trip, would we have not been able to “get our jobs done”. Yes we would. But it’s not about just getting the work done. It’s about jumping to new places, and levels. It’s about creating a harmony in the team, that would almost automate the process of innovation and creation. It’s about being in a vibrant group that is more like an orchestra than a “business unit”.
I am just remembering the way “friendships” were formed during my college years. They were based on a very simple and pure criterion: whether or not you attended the same elective classes together! We used to become close friends, share intimate information with each other, and they become special people in our lives. Of course much of this expires when the course ends and we acquire new friends.
An important psychological factor in this is that people start to view the world in a similar manner when they spend enough time with each other. A closer look shows that we start to adopt the positions of the people we work / live with, in the same place. My reasoning is that although there are logical reasons that push us to think similarly with close people, there is another hidden reason why we tend to take similar positions. We don’t want to break whatever harmony there is, and we find it difficult to reject these people when they are expressing strong emotions. Of course, this is an investment we do, so that eventually we are given the chance to freely express our feelings.
Imagine what can happen when people with opposing points of view (sales and production or marketing and finance) sit together and start seeing the world from a similar perspective, and start sympathizing with one another! You get harmony. You get great results.
After getting my hands over my new computer, I was engaged in my typical childish excitement, that I always had whenever I got something new in my life. I would wake up feeling that there is a certain addition to my life, and that I’m surprisingly just a bit happier that day. What makes this more interesting, are the five minutes of meaningless happiness that I feel trying to remember why I’m happy in the first place. And I become happier when I remember what that “something” is.
So I started wondering how far this computer can take me, and how far I can take it. Can it give my life a new boost, in terms of productivity and speed? How different would my life be after I start using it?
And so I started thinking about this new gift. Some other questions popped up in my mind also; do the products that I work on provoke similar questions in the minds of end users? Scary! Do they anticipate the changes that we make as intensely and as happily as I was anticipating the features of my new computer? Scarier!
Other scary questions also started crawling into my mind, “Do people who work with me have these anticipations about working with me?” Very scary! “Do they think that working with me is an “addition” to their work and life?”
It’s can really get fun to ask yourself these questions and move away from the stupid daily mundane questions and wonderings. Just for a change. It’s also a healthy approach. Try it!
I want this year to be about what I want, after all these are my resolutions. Last year, although I experienced an unexpected shift in direction in my work, was a stable year in general, preparing for the jump I started in work in the last two months. Since this is also confirmed by my horoscope for 2008, I’d like to believe that this will be the year of the jump. Thus, I am following eight main points this year, to transcend the linear and dance in the exponential.
One: Don’t wait, let them wait. As self-helpish as this might sound, it is just a positive approach to be taken. The more you wait, the more you are telling them to make decisions on your behalf. As a “waiter” by nature, i was very surprised to discover that when I clearly show my intentions, people can (and many times want to) accommodate to my decisions. This is regarding daily stuff. When it comes to decisions for long term and “big” stuff, they just tend to back off! So… go for it!
Two: As I am finally believing in the natural tendency of things to atrophy, and also starting to believe that the antidote to this is pure and simple intentions directed by the inner forces of our nature, I shall intend, more frequently, purely, and decidedly. At the same time, I shall keep my ability to be flexible in the process.
Three: Get to know a thousand people! It is very invigorating for me to meet new people and discover certain things about them. It just satisfies me to explore people. The thing stopping me is usually the inertia to which I surrender. I will not fight this inertia, but I will embrace the daily adventure of taking the initial steps of starting the talk.
Four: Go for the best. Being, doing, thinking, dreaming, and living with the best. No more mediocrity.
Five: One new thing. Totally new, one of those typical things that I usually engage in, every now and then. Let’s just anticipate what it is going to be this year.
Six: Read and write. Much more effectively, often, and artistically. It always surprises me when I come back to see what I have written. It’s not about good or bad, it’s about the difference in perspective gained by having crystallized some random thoughts into text, and then coming back to see how they have evolved.
Seven: On the seventh day, God rested. Enjoy this year much more than the last one. In new ways, and with more interesting people.
Eight: The last one is about the very special unique stuff that I have, which is usually hidden under two million layers of decadent psychological and intellectual algorithms. Knowing that when left alone, these things can perform wonders, I am to just set them free.
Happy new year! Happy interesting year.
How a Bit More Content Means Much More Website Traffic
1 Comment Published by elias October 30th, 2007 in General.Let’s explore whether or not we can get more website traffic by adding more content to our website. I’ll try to make it scientific and later we will tackle the issue from a human perspective.
Create in your imagination a world with the following characteristics:
- The internet has only two sites: 123marketing.com and ABCmarketing.com.
- Pages indexed on search engines are two hundred pages, split in half between these two sites.
- Each page talks about on of the only two topics; marketing or advertising.
- All pages are ranked equally on search engines, meaning they have the same degree of optimization, and therefore, they are all equally likely to show up as the first search result for their respective keywords.
- 123 has 80 pages about marketing and 20 about advertising. On the other hand ABC has 20 pages about marketing and 80 pages about advertising.
The table below hopefully simplifies the whole story:
Marketing Advertising Totals:
123marketing 80 20 100
ABCmarketing 20 80 100
Totals: 100 100 200
As we assumed above since all pages are ranked and optimized equally, they are all equally likely to show up on search results and assuming the first result will always be clicked on, we can say that for the query “marketing” 123marketing.com has a 80% chance of getting that visitor, while ABCmarketing.com has a 20% chance. The same applies to the query “advertising” with the opposite results.
We can now easily see that for every 1000 queries of “marketing” 123marketing.com will be very happy that day, while ABCmarketing.com will feel a bit frustrated. This means that, with all factors held equal, the more pages you have about a certain topic or keyword the more likely you are to get traffic from search engines.
Another way of looking at is by considering that all the pages that contain the keywords you are writing about, are competing with you on that same visitor. The more pages you have about a certain topic (the bigger market share you have of that little universe) the easier it will be for you to get visitors.
That was simple math. Let’s take a human look on the issue, and take a more realistic approach where not all pages are ranked equally, and many webmasters are trying to manipulate the search results. We will also consider that an intelligent human being is searching and she knows what she needs really useful information that will help her in her work or life in general.
First of all, there are many variations of one keyword, and it can be combined with a lot of other words, to form phrases. This means that people will not only be searching for “marketing”, they will search for “internet marketing”, “advertising and marketing”, “radio marketing” etc…
If you have 100 different articles about marketing, then you will qualify to satisfying 100 different people when they are searching. Each will be satisfied differently because they will probably have a certain aspect of marketing in their minds. Remember, the longer the keyword, the more the searcher knows what they are looking for, the happier they will be to find an article just about that niche of the subject.
What about the smart SEOs that can get to the top of the search results of a hot keyword? They will sure get tons of traffic!
But, if they lead users to a site that contains 3-4 pages about a certain query, those users will finish reading those pages, still be hungry for more and never come back. They will keep searching until they find a site that really has enough content to cater for a huge number of search queries, and a huge number of people.
Why does a bit more content mean a lot more traffic?
Simply because pages have more than one keyword in them, and because people search for keywords, and combinations of them.
You will be getting traffic for people searching for the article’s main topic, and for all the related topics in that article.
One last reminder. Search engines are becoming much more efficient and accurate in directing you to the best available site. So, if you are like me, by the time you figure out how to manipulate your way to the top of search results that “algorithm” will have improved and you will be thrown away from the arena.
My simple advice: just try to be useful, write about it, and they will come.
Today, while I was trying to decide which channel to watch on TV, I came across a choice of 1273 different options. Funnily, I wanted to explore them. Discovering that I was on the middle of the list, I decided to go to the top of the list, and start with the letter “A”. It wasn’t long before I discovered how absurd this decision was since there was no logic in the arrangement of channels, and the alphabetical order had nothing to with my preferences.
Although my decision was indeed absurd, it was the only logical thing to do. There is no other classification through which the viewer can make their choice.
A famous study outlines how bad it is to give consumers a lot of choices. They are more likely to buy when given few choices, and they are more likely to be satisfied with their choice. Of course choosing from six choices is much easier, safer, and more comfortable than choosing from 24 or 30.
While this makes sense, the validity of these findings loose their power when faced with the virtual world of, not only more, but infinite choice.
This is demonstrated thoroughly in The Long Tail, which shows how infinite choice leads to more sales, and more satisfaction, if and only if coupled with a mechanism of filtering and ranking.
Amazon was taken as an example in which customers are faced with literally millions of products, but they have the power to filter according to their taste, they can read other people’s reviews, and they can see the best sellers in the tiniest of categories.
If you want to present your customers with a decision tree, make sure they are faced with a limited number of choices in each stage, and make it easier to navigate through your store, website, or company.
Keeping in mind the streets we drive in could be a good metaphor. Although there are a million different possible way to go to a certain place, you only have three or four choice to choose from on each crossroads. This is how you should plan your website navigation and make use of the infinite choice presented to your users.
Google Website Optimizer: The Butterfly Effect of Advertising
2 Comments Published by elias September 1st, 2007 in General.
This movie, which popularizes a concept in Chaos Theory clearly shows how making a small change in a key event in a person’s life makes a huge tangible difference in the lives of other around them. It makes me think about how fragile the perception of communications by consumers can be, and how delicate changes can get you huge results (good or bad) in your advertising.
David Ogilvy,in Ogilvy on Advertising
Google allows you to use several ads and they can automatically optimize them for you. That is, their system will show the better performing ads more often. This way you don’t have to worry about months of research to finding the best copy. You put the different copies you have, and people tell you which ones they find appealing.
Now with their Website Optimizer, you can do the same for your website! If you have a page that is designed to convince visitors to take certain actions, this landing page has several elements in it usually. You definitely have a header, probably a picture, and text to explain what the product / service is. 
If you are not sure, which header is the most attractive and persuasive for your visitors, you can put several headers, and they will rotate, until you feel confident that there is a certain pattern that attracts people to one particular text. The same can be done for the other elements of the page. Moreover, the Optimizer also tells you which combination of text, header and picture is the best. Grokdotcom has some useful resources about this product.
The movie seemed too good to be true, especially with the new features, and many people would love to have the access to change the destiny in different ways. In the advertising world, this is not a dream, but a real wish that can now be achieved through Website Optimizer.
Website Navigation: You Lead the Way
1 Comment Published by elias September 1st, 2007 in General, Online, web 2.0.
Imagine you have a sports club, and from experience, you know that people come to do mainly two things; either to play, or to watch sports.
So you make it a policy that every visitor be greeted on the door, before entering the club, and they should be asked the golden question, “Would you like to PLAY or to WATCH sports today?”
The first visitor says that he wants to play. He is taken to the playing area, and asked a more specific question, “What type of sports do you prefer to play? Group or individual sports?” According to the answer he is then taken to the relevant place. After that suppose they choose to play basketball, you can then take them to the next game you have on schedule.
Then, and only then, will this customer be really happy to know what basketball shoes, balls shirts etc. you have to sell or rent! After you knew what he really wants, and after he clearly saw that he can participate in his favorite sport. The freezing water you give him during the game is worth thousands because it would be really well-timed and in need.
The second visitor that day answers your golden question with, “I would like to WATCH.” You then lead them to the places from which she can watch her favorite sport. You ask a more detailed question such as, “Would you prefer to watch from the restaurant, the terrace, or directly from the court?” According to that answer you lead her to the most suitable place from which she likes to watch. Then, and only then will she really appreciate your presenting her with the menu. She was asked what she would like to do, connected with herself, decided the type and location of the watching experience, and is totally ready for what relevant things you want to sell her.
This is the power of proper targeting, and guiding the visitor to the place they really want to be in at this moment.
The same process should be done by the website. On each page, there should be two, or a maximum of three big buttons that clearly show the available choices to the user. A news site should probably have three buttons for example: Read, Write, and Discuss news. This is particularly relevant to sites with dynamic, and huge amounts of content. The user is typically faced with tens of links, from which they have to choose. You, as the website owner should categorize all these links and put each of them in one of the three predefined choices when they enter your home page, or any other page. The following page should give the user some further choices regarding their preferences, and then they can enjoy endless browsing when they find the type of content / activity they want.
