Leadscon Las Vegas 2010
Today was the start of Leadcon 2010 in Las Vegas. The show is again being held this year at the Mirage, but this time with some 2000 attendees. For the individuals that attended last year, you know this a well-organized and very well represented show. Although I personally was not intending on attending the show, solely due to a very busy travel schedule, I simply could not pass it up.
Having only had the opportunity to attend one session this afternoon, I was reminded why the show is a must attend event. The content is extremely relevant and the presenters, experienced and highly knowledgeable. The conversations that take place in the halls and during the show also seem to be at another level in comparison to many shows.
Attendees overall, have a higher level of understanding and are more senior. This all equates to a much better use of my time and those of my employees attending. This is the type of show that continues to push the industry forward attracting top-notch established advertisers looking to improve and/or take their business online.
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Online Marketing Strategy: The Power of Freebies
Always a fan of infomercials since I was a little kid, and fascinated as an adult at just how large the infomercial industry is. The “As Seen on TV” vertical has always been large and has significantly expanded in recent years. This expansion has been turbocharged due to the recession, and larger brand advertisers pulled back from their media buying, particularly on traditional platforms such as television. As these larger and more traditional advertisers pulled back, in came the infomercials whose advertisers were more than happy to take their place pay much lower rates for primetime television spots that typically would be way out of reach.
Take a look at products such as Sham-wow or Magic Jack. These are now household names, brought to us predominately through infomercials which have driven users into store and online to make impulsive buys. Being as impulsive as mass consumers are, this has and continues to be the perfect environment for the vertical.
You can’t walk into a Wal-Mart, Target or Bed Bath & Beyond without seeing infomercial products in displays in the walkways or on shelves. You get the point, infomercials are huge, but why are they so profitable?
The user is generally presented with only one product and then the marketing strategy kicks in. They are bombarded with messaging such as, “but wait if you order now you can get a second product for free” AND a freebie of some sort which costs the marketer virtually nothing. The second product for free automatically makes the consumer feel that it is a great deal, but now you throw in a freebie and hook the user, the $9.95 for S&H doesn’t even resonate with users. This is all very profitable.
The freebie is often times the deal-closer in the direct-response world of infomercials, but it doesn’t just have to be limited to just infomercials. If you look at holiday shopping studies and what users value most when making a decision, it is free shipping.
Take online dating, users are often presented with a purchase wall that can have numerous membership or subscription options. Generally there are three options. Option 1, which is a one month membership for say $29.99; Option 2 which is a three month membership for $69.99 (a savings of $19.98) BUT with a three month date guarantee where if users can not find a date in three months, they get three for free; and option 3 a six month membership for $139.99 (a savings of $39.95).
Based on the average churn of a paying online dating member (about three or four months) option 2 is what a typical online dating organization would want to push and feature. The freebie of “get three months for free” not only removes doubt from the users mind and eases the decision to put in their credit card, but it is also a win-win for the online dating advertiser based on their particular business model.
As an online marketer, think of high margin products or services based on your unique business that you know will resonate well and be valued by your users and test it out. If you don’t know what this is, tell your users and market based on the perception of value that you create. For B2B marketing, White Papers have long been offered as a Freebie for basic users information that is used for lead generation. Car manufactures offer Freebies to get you in the doors. At end of the day, the freebie can be a very powerful psychological tool to remove doubt and increase conversion.
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2010 Affiliate Summit West (late) Re-cap
The 2010 Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas took place last week and was again a great success. I arrived in Las Vegas on Saturday night after flying in from Toronto and did what any rational person would do on a Saturday night after a Four-plus hour flight and a three hour time difference, I checked into my hotel dropped off my bags and when out!
On Sunday, the best part of the show took place, The Meet Market. AzoogleAds, my employer was again the Diamond sponsor and we had the table at the front of the room when attendees first walked into the show. The Meet Market began at noon and right away it was busy well until closing time at 6pm. The Meet Market has always been what I consider the most productive and important aspect of the show, particularly when it comes to new business. Even when I was an advertiser, before returning to AzoogleAds (Epic Advertising) I also always felt the Meet Market was the best part of the show outside of meetings.
The Meet Market seems to attract a different caliber of attendees, predominantly those that are more serious about their business. While many people stayed out all night on Saturday, and where too exhausted to get up for this event on Sunday or who where not playing the tables and wagering on the NFL games, this event was all about business. Those that attended and have attended this event know what I mean. I have always and will always require my employees to be at this event from start to finish.
On Monday, I spent most of my day in meetings, but did have a few hours at the AzoogleAds booth between Noon and Five. The show floor had a nice level of energy with many motivated individuals making the rounds in an effort to expand their business. There were a lot of booths, with many smaller or micro-booths in the back of the show this year, I believe this was new. I personally like the idea of having smaller micro-show booths for never or companies that were not looking to have as much of a presence. This was a great idea from Shawn and Missy who run the event.
Monday evening before meetings over dinner, I went to the Meetup202 event sponsored by Bloosky. The event was well-managed and offered strong opportunities for further networking and business development. In fact I picked up a new advertiser in the Elevator to the event, and that’s how it works at these
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iDate 2010 Miami Online Dating Conference
Today is the official start to iDate 2010 in South Beach, Miami. Outside of the fact that this event takes place in the middle of the winter in a higher attractive location, this is the best (and only) online dating event in the industry. I have been booth a speaker and attendee for the past four years and I always look forward to these events.
For Three days, the online dating industry gets together to discuss ideas, generate new business and to network with fellow colleagues. I have had the pleasure of attending this event as a sales executive and a marketing executive and I still am able to garner new business during each event.
The online dating business is highly competitive, yet it is very vast and offers great opportunity for innovative and progressive companies. I have worked with dozens and dozens of online dating companies in various stages from start-up to managing the marketing for the most trafficked and largest online dating site and they are all different and unique. Like online dating sites, I have also worked with affiliates and portals that promote online dating sites, many of which also attend this event. If you are serious about your online dating business, this is the event to attend. If you can not attend, there are two blogs in particular that you should be following for updates Online Personals Watch and Online Dating Insider.
During this years conference that gets underway today, I look forward to hearing and meeting with new and existing dating sites and affiliates to see how they are expanding and growing the industry.
Some of the biggest trends in 2010 continue to be innovative ways to attract users through Facebook, Myyspace and other large social networking sites; monetizing new and existing users through relevant and wanted email; optimizing the lead acquisition model to be more cost effective; monetizing existing paying and non-paying users; up-selling non paying users (free sites) or “basic” users from paying sites; and of course retention.
Of particular personal interest is also the pay-wall, where users are presented with options to purchase a subscription to an online dating site (or up-sold). The Pay-walls in the industry show significant opportunity for improvement. Also of personal interest are organizations re-marketing efforts and how they can more effectively up-sell free or basic users into more profitable subscription plans.
This year, online dating advertisers in particular need to focus on acquiring users for less and ensuring that they are effectively monetizing all users. This is particularly important as the space becomes more and more competitive and LTV’s for paying sites continue to be squeezed by free dating sites, predominantly Plentyoffish.com.
I will be do my best to update or at least re-cap the conference shortly.
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How to Effectively Test Your PPC Ads
Have you ever wondered what some of the effective techniques are out there to test your PPC search ads? There is a great presentation that I came across by Jonathan Mendez that I have included below titled, Ad Testing: Research & Findings. I particularly value what Jonathan has to say being that he was the Founder & Chief Strategy Officer of Offermatica’s service unit, OTTO Digital.
If your organization uses search, of if you yourself are interested in search marketing this will give you a very solid foundation. Like everything done online, it is all about testing and continuous improvement of conversion – you can always improve.
Perhaps the most interesting concept from the presentation for me was the L9 array concept. An L9 array in this example is used to cover all combination’s of two parameters with three levels each. The idea is to produce a high quality product at a low cost, more information can be found here.
Take some time to go through the slides, this is one of those presentations that will get you thinking outside the box.
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Getting Back To Blogging
My last blog post was on October 6th of last year! That is definitely a very long time, and I am going to get back to blogging a few times per week.
Last night I read an interesting article that appeared in the Globe And Mail, “Google, the great disruptor, takes aim … at everything.” Summed up, Google’s ongoing clash with the newspaper industry is discussed as well as the anticipated Mobile disruption that Google’s newly announced Nexus One mobile phone will have on the market.
All very good perspective for a rapidly changing landscape. It will be interesting to see what implications this will have on the online and mobile advertising industry. You know if Google is involved, there will be new opportunity for revenue for marketers, advertisers and publishers alike.
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Working with Online Ad Networks
Being that I work at Epic Advertising and have also been a large customer of other online ad networks, I would like to think I have a firm understanding of the online network space. Today, eMarketer released an article titled, Pros and Cons of Online Ad Networks, which has some very interesting pointers.
eMarketer Pro's of working with Ad Networks
Increased reach is the top appeal for advertisers, followed by flexible payment models such as CPA, CPM and CPC. Rounding out the top three is lowered costs. Reach is definitely attractive to many advertisers, particularly on the brand side.
Flexible payment models, particularly performance based models such as CPA and CPC have gained momentum over the past 16-20 months, particularly with the recession and higher levels of accountability from marketing spend being demanded.
This is all great, but with some 400+ ad networks, who do you work with? There is no simple answer, some networks are definitely better than others. Do your research and look into how long the networks have been around for, who are their executives and ask other colleagues for references. If you need some other pointers, shoot me an email (contact page).
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Looking For Way to Improve Your Lead Generation Efforts?
Every online marketer, particularly in a “great recession” such as ours is looking to to get more from less. Recession or not, there are some best practices that all organizations should follow when it comes to online lead generation. Marketing Sherpa recently released a study (link will expire by mid October 2009) titled, Improve your Lead Gen: 8 Takeaways from the B2B Marketing Summit – although this is tailored to the B2B audience, it is relevant for B2C online marketers.
There are eight main themes to the study:
- Re-engage old leads now!
- You need a map to know where you are
- Your existing content can work harder for you
- Focus on opportunity cost when making budget decisions
- Broaden your conversations within organizations
- Investigate whether you have a relevance gap
- Design systems to help you make sense of all your data
- SEO and PPC are never-ending processes
I am particularly a fan of the first point, re-engaging your old leads. I work with so many organizations that send the same static email to their users when they first become customers and who send the same dull messaging to inactive users. Organizations should try something different, how about a percentage off, or free shipping, perhaps a buy one get one free deal or an incentive with a give-away. It’s all about engaging your users through relevant value-added messaging!
Other pointers that organizations seem to lack are having a road-map of where they current are – accurate statistics are key. Marketers should ask themselves and know (for pay sites) what the average revenue per paying user (ARPPU) by age demo and traffic source. Too many organizations don’t track this. How can you know where you are going, if you do not know where you are?
The relevance gap is also key – organizations need to do more than to assume users are interested in what they are providing. Sites need to pay attention to analytics and click patterns – better yet, actually ask your users what they find engaging. Finally SEO and PPC are in fact a never ending and always changing process. The landscape is constantly evolving, organizations should never be satisfied with their SEO and PPC – you can always do better.
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The Key To Sustainable Paid Search Is Relevancy
If you are looking to succeed in sustainable paid search marketing, you need to create relevant landing pages based on what keywords you are bidding on. This sounds simple, yet many online marketers are still driving most of their paid traffic to only a few landing pages, or worse, to just one. A great example is online dating. Let’s say you have this great online dating site, but you only have one landing page. Are all people looking for the same date? The answer of course is no. Some users may be looking to date an Asian female, others a male African-American. You can not send these users to the same generic landing page and hope to convert them in a cost-effective manner.
Let’s assume your cost per lead (CPL) goal is to attain new users for $4.00 a lead and that you want to scale as much as possible. Perhaps the Asian users have the highest retention or lifetime value on your site. You would want to build out a few different landing pages. For example, you could use creatives with a female Asian user with black hair in her 20s, a female Asian users with black hair in her 30s, one in her 40s, and one in her 50s. You would then want to build out the same pattern but with male pictures. Finally you would want to build out another theme, but with Asian couples. This would give you 12 landing pages, all targeted towards Asian users.
If you want to focus on niche markets, you could consider building landing pages for gay Asian users as well as lesbian Asian users. Examples would include a landing page with large-breasted Asian women and small-breasted Asian women, heavyset Asian couples, and heavy male Asian users etc…The possibilities are endless. Targeting by users locations using geo-ip software is a great way to create relevancy. You would track all of these users based on their LTV’s, as they would all be different.
This is just a brief example of how detailed you can get with your acquisition efforts. The more niche you get, the more difficult it usually it is to scale, but it can also be highly profitable as a means to acquire new users. It is important to test different variations of different elements on the landing pages as well or use Multi-Variant-Testing.
A relevant landing page also needs to be well designed. MarketingSherpa has some great pointers:
• Clear headline
• Compelling copy
• Careful use of search keywords
• Minimal navigation
• Minimum number of fields on the form
• Urgent call to action on button o Image use
Keep in mind, you will also always have to optimize your landing pages as they can always be improved, and leads or sales can always be attained for less!
This Asian online dating example can easily be incorporated into other online businesses such as insurance, education or auto quotes. The possibilities are endless.
Related
Custom Landing Pages for PPC: 4 Steps to 88% More Leads, Lower Costs
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Online Sales To Increase Almost 200 Percent Between 2008 and 2012
I was reading an article a few days ago titled, In the Future, Your Kids Won’t Shop the Way You Do by David Wiesenfeld of Nielsen that caught my attention. After all, I am a father of a six-year old boy that understands just how powerful sites like Google and YouTube are. My son also already understands that many of the goods in stores can be purchased through sites like Amazon.com at a significant discount, especially his books that he enjoys so much.
In the future, your children will likely conduct the majority of their shopping online. While online shopping accounts for a modest percentage of today’s sales, it is growing rapidly – Nielsen estimates that online CPG sales alone increased 25-30% between 2004 and 2008. And there are compelling reasons to believe that growth will continue, as overall online sales are projected to increase almost 200 percent between 2008 and 2012.
200 percent is a huge increase, especially given the time frame of just four years. If you’re a visual person, take a look at the below chart.
Per Nielsen, there are three main shopping dimensions; Convenience, Choice, and Value. I would argue there is also a fourth dimension – instant gratification. We increasingly live in a consumer driven economy. Look at the growth in celebrity endorsements and beauty products in particular (offline and online). All of these products are marketed around instant gratification, it’s all about NOW, NOW, NOW. Consumers want to look like this person NOW, they want to have longer eyelashes NOW, they want find that special someone to date online NOW.
Our children (not mine of course) are also spoiled, we provide them at times too often with what they want NOW. As a marketer, you have to recognize this trend and market effectively towards it. This includes, strong calls to action, reinforced value propositions throughout the buying cycle and keeping the sales process simple, don’t distract your users till you get that credit card processed, then up-sell and cross-sell.
While it is true that our children in the future will not shop the way we do, they will have many of the same, if not more of the same impulsive instant gratification manifestations that have driven us so far into debt.
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MarcPorcelli Twitter
- Leadscon Las Vegas 2010 http://ff.im/gsI4d
- Online Marketing Strategy: The Power of Freebies http://ff.im/f2RKT
- 2010 Affiliate Summit West (late) Re-cap http://ff.im/eZ9xt
- iDate 2010 Miami Online Dating Conferance http://ff.im/eXbev
- How to Effectively Test Your PPC Ads http://ff.im/efiXp
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