Posts Tagged ‘Marketing’
Affiliate Marketing Coaching: Improve Your AdWords CTR
Good affiliate marketing coaching should always be a combination of motivation, broad learning, and concrete tips that you can put into action right away. To that end, I wanted to pass along a quick tip that has served me extremely well over the years that I’ve been using Google AdWords to promote products.
As you probably know, click-through rate (or CTR) is an important factor in your cost per click, your quality score, and the overall success of your campaign. In most cases, a higher click-through rate is a good thing. The one exception would be if your high CTR comes at the expense of relevance or pre-qualification. Obviously, if your product is a paid product in a sea of free items, you will find that your click-through rate drops off when you include the price in your ad. In those cases, it’s usually smarter to keep the click-through rate lower to ensure that you’re only getting those viewers who might actually be willing to pay for your product. Sure, you may be a great copywriter, but it’s not easy to get people to pay for something when they’re thinking “free”.
So that example aside, let’s talk about how we can get a higher CTR for qualified viewers. Adding the keywords to your ad text helps, since Google highlights the keywords in ad copy. However, most people know about that and already do this. Bidding higher also helps, but we can’t all afford to do that.
Something you can do very easily, though, is to use an unusual symbol. This makes your ad stand out a bit more, thus increasing the number of people who read and click on your ad over the competition. You can use dollar signs, trademark symbols, copyright symbols, and almost anything else you can slip past the AdWords reviewers.
Do you have any other tips for improving the CTR of your AdWords ads? Feel free to share in the comments!
Internet Marketing Ideas: Go Independent
When it comes to internet marketing ideas, going independent is one that more affiliates should act on. If you’re like most affiliates, you probably have accounts with half a dozen or more affiliate networks. Unfortunately, everywhere you turn, you see tons of competition. By going independent, though, you can avoid a lot of that.
So what do I mean by going independent? Instead of going to networks like CJ and Azoogle, just leave them alone for a while. Instead, seek out programs that are run in-house. Often, you can find offers and products with little to no competition from other affiliates.
The main issue with going to independent affiliate programs is security. You have to be able to trust that your leads will be tracked and that you will actually get paid. The tracking part is pretty simple in most cases – just place a trial order and return it later once you’ve gotten confirmation that it tracked.
Trusting that you’ll get paid is a little harder, but affiliate marketing always involves a leap of faith. Even merchants on big networks can fail to make payments, so don’t think you’re any safer in those situations than going direct with the merchant. There are a few things you can do to make it less risky, though.
- Research the company. Have they been around a while? Are there a lot of complaints showing up in the search engine rankings? Do they seem responsive?
- Make them build up trust. Don’t sign up for a new program and immediately send $20k of traffic to their offer. Until they have built up trust, don’t send any more traffic than you can afford to lose.
- Trust your gut. If they seem shady, they probably are.
Have you ever tried using an independent affiliate program? Share your experiences in the comments!
Targeting a Demographic
Marketing is one aspect of business that is often overlooked in the early stages. As an entrepreneur, you’re probably in the process of creating a business model, selecting a product or service to sell and hiring full-time or part-time employees. But in order to build a serious client base, you’ll need to get the word out about your company. By becoming an internet marketing program, you can achieve that goal.
Online marketing is not so drastically different from what has come before. The future success of your business should provide all the incentive you need to get started. You should begin by targeting the specific demographic where you believe your product or service will be particularly successful. This might be a geographic area, an age group or even a group of people who share similar interests. Tailor your marketing strategy to appeal to your base.
Working with Affiliates
We all recognize that there’s plenty of money to be made on the Internet. It seems that everyday you hear about a new entrepreneur turning a simple, practical idea into a veritable goldmine. But the odds of your coming up with a revolutionary new idea that sets the Internet afire is relatively low. Most startup ventures get ahead by partnering with affiliate sites.
There’s an old saying that you’re undoubtedly familiar with: If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Logic dictates that setting up a completely independent online business entity is infinitely more difficult than using a proven money making system. Affiliates do most of the work for you—which is one of the reasons that an affiliate marketing program is so attractive . They provide the inventory and knowledge necessary to make a business plan work. Most of your efforts can then be directed toward marketing.