Archive

Archive for the ‘Affiliate Marketing’ Category

Why Savvy Marketers Establish Affiliate Relationships with Bloggers

June 20th, 2014

Having in-house bloggers on your marketing team can keep your content flowing, but there are limits to the audience they can reach.

One way to solve this challenge, according to Carolyn Kmet, Chief Marketing Officer, All Inclusive Marketing, is strategically recruiting third-party bloggers outside of your team to help deliver the right mix of credibility and content that can reach new audiences.

At this year’s Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition (IRCE) in Chicago, MarketingSherpa hosted the event’s official Media Center. Our team of reporters interviewed marketers from across a variety of business verticals to learn insights on what works in ecommerce marketing.

As Carolyn explained to Allison Banko, Reporter, MECLABS, third-party bloggers can deliver additional exposure opportunities for your brand.

“Bloggers can position brands beyond traditional reach,” Carolyn explained.

 

According to the MarketingSherpa E-commerce Benchmark Study, less than 40% of all companies surveyed utilize affiliate marketing as a traffic driver to an ecommerce site. Using bloggers as affiliates can help with driving traffic from audiences outside of your reach.

The trick is, as Carolyn explained, is to build relationships with bloggers and offer them content opportunities that make exposing your brand to their audience worthwhile.

To do that, she often recruits third-party bloggers outside of her team as affiliates and helps them access industry thought leaders for interviews that would be difficult, if not impossible, to obtain otherwise.

The affiliates create content from those interviews to share with their respective audiences.

“There’s a lot of transparency, Carolyn said. “It gives them fresh content for their audiences.”

Read more…

B2B Marketing: On Occam’s razor and value propositions

September 30th, 2010

If you’re in B2B marketing, chances are you have a complex sale. And I’m not just talking about your sales process. I mean the communication involved to make the sale itself happen – starting with the value proposition. Does it clearly answer this question, “What value does your company provide to your customers?”

Sometimes, the problem with marketers is that we think like marketers. We add powerful marketing words to everything we write – “New!” “Easy!” “ShamWow!” We want to include every possible feature and function (with no small prodding from product development). We also want to cast a wide net to gain market share with every possible audience segment.

The result can be long and confusing. Because we marketers aren’t really trying to make this complexity any clearer, we’re trying to make it more compelling. But what if, instead of thinking like a marketer, we thought like scientists?

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.” – Albert Einstein

Scientists, unlike marketers, are actually trying to understand something – usually something of breathtaking complexity. As Occam’s razor loosely states, “…the simplest explanation is usually the correct one.”

Now, there are a few caveats here. If you’ve ever read anything from a scientist, you certainly know that the writing itself isn’t simple and clear. But this heuristic does help keep scientists focused when delving into theoretical models.

Just what the heck does your company do?

With this in mind, take another look at your value proposition. And remember that all-important word – value.

Hey, I have a background as a copywriter. So no one appreciates clever wordplay more than yours truly.  But as a communications consultant to B2B companies, I’ve also encountered far too many companies that didn’t clearly demonstrate what they do…and certainly not why anyone should part with scarce budget dollars to acquire it.

Crafting a value proposition is tough, and this blog post alone won’t help you do it – but if you can clearly communicate with your audience, at the very least you’re off to a good start.

MarketingSherpa B2B Marketing Summit ‘10

Looking for more B2B marketing strategies and techniques? At the upcoming MarketingSherpa B2B Summits in San Francisco and Boston, attendees will gain in-depth knowledge from the top of the funnel to the bottom line. But not just from the people here at MECLABS.

MarketingSherpa is fortunate to have a large community of experienced marketers who frequently share their expertise. B2B Summit attendees will listen to a variety of case studies presented by their B2B marketing peers.

PLUS: If you’re attending, you can share the lessons you learn with your peers by sending us your key takeaways for our Summit Wrap-up Report. If you have something good to say, we’ll quote you in the article.

Connect with Affiliates 2.0

October 24th, 2008

Relationships are important when you’re an affiliate manager. The more you know about affiliates on a personal level, the more you’ll know about how they sell your product.

Trisha Lyn Fawver, Director of Affiliate Marketing, New Edge Media, connects with her affiliates on social media sites. It adds to the number of channels that affiliates can reach her and facilitates the flow of ideas, she says.

Read more…