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Earlier this blog series, we discussed effective text and image creatives and how to use them to most efficiently promote products and services. In this post we’re going to look at monitoring the efficiency of your campaigns and some strategies for going about it.

At Share Results, we believe strongly that relationships are the basis for effective affiliate marketing programs. Strong bonds between affiliates and merchants are the foundation for any effective affiliate marketing program. With this in mind, we’ve created an affiliate marketing software solutionthat not only enhances transparency between the two entities, but also allows them to work together closely by using in-depth tracking and reporting features that monitor how well your creatives are performing.

In order for affiliates to be successful, the merchants whose products they are promoting must provide effective creatives to their affiliates. Knowing which creatives are going to be most successful requires some information:

1. The number of impressions must be tracked. How many viewers saw the page where this ad was located? Knowing how your traffic got there, and who they are is also a big part of this equation. It’s very important to understand who your visitors are. Did they get there via a search engine result, or were they recommended by someone else’s site? These differences should play a part in directing your campaigns.
2. Then, the click through rate must be examined. How many people who saw the ad clicked on it and went to the landing page (the page where the item can be purchased?
3. And lastly, the conversion rate: how many people who clicked through to the landing page actually made purchases?

If an ad is getting a high volume of impressions, but very few clicks, then there are several questions that you can ask. It could be that the ad’s placement on the page needs to be adjusted.  And it could be that the ad itself, be it a text or image creative, needs to be reworked.

Ask Yourself

Are you reaching the consumers you want to reach? Is this the right page for this ad? Does that ad have a strong call to action?

Use rotating ads with different images and text to test these until you find the one that works best.

If your ads are attaining a decent amount of clicks per impressions, but visitors are not converting into sales, then it is up to the merchant to look at the efficacy of the landing page. Also, it could be that the creative is misleading in some way, or has not effectively targeted the individuals who are most likely to convert into a sale upon arrival at the purchase page. There are many variables, so it is worth trying many different tactics to reach potential purchasers, and follow the results closely.

Merchants have the ability to see which affiliates are sending traffic to these landing pages, plus their URL, by using the ACID report in Share Results. With this information, they can discover the top performers and what kind of website works best for their product or service.

A great way to achieve success in this area is to constantly be testing and refining your campaigns as well as the creatives you are using to run them. Using a software system that can track all of this information for you will put you miles ahead of your competitors who may not be armed with the same information that you have at your fingertips. Merchants and affiliates must work together to ensure the success of affiliate marketing programs and the reports available in the Share Results software solution help them to do exactly that.

Once again—and there is no way we can stress this enough—always be testing your creatives.

A better understanding of how your creatives are performing = the ability to tailor campaigns based on top performing creatives = the ability to make more money from your affiliate marketing campaigns.

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You may, from time to time see us refer to “creatives” on this blog. Enough people have asked us, “What are creatives?” that we have decided to launch a four-part series on what creatives are and how you can use them to help you build your business.

When we refer to a creative, we are talking about any advertising method by which you attempt to reach consumers. For example, the text in a PPC ad can be considered a creative, as could a Flash banner advertisement. Some creatives – mostly image creatives – are available directly from merchants, while others will be created by affiliates, or even a third party.

Essentially, anything that you do to market goods and services that requires imagination, artistry, innovation, and inspiration is a creative.  Everybody uses creatives in different ways, but they all fall into two basic categories: text and images.

In the first part of our series, we’ll look at text creatives and how they can help you reach your audience. We’ll talk about the importance of powerful PPC ads, and solid, relevant copywriting. We’ll also explore how SEO fits into the big picture, and how it can be used within your text creatives to reach your target audience.

In the next part, we’ll look at image creatives. We’ll explore what makes a successful image creative, where to place them on your website to get the best results, and some things to avoid.

And in the final part of the series, we’ll take a good, hard look at the value of monitoring your creatives and how tracking them can help improve your business. We’ll investigate how to use the Share Results software to help you get more information on what creatives are working for you, and how you can enhance your strategies in order to improve your conversion rates.

Come back tomorrow to read all about text creatives, and how to use them effectively. And be sure to get in on the conversation by leaving a comment or by sending us an email to let us know if you have any further questions.

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Ever heard of Hotwired.com? Do you recall navigating a Time Inc. site called Pathfinder? Remember a company called MCI?

If any of those things ring a bell, then you might look back fondly on October 27, 1994. That’s when the first banner ad was created. Adman Frank D’Angelo was in on that historic moment, and he shares his perspective in a fascinating piece in Ad Age.

As with many advances in marketing, the birth of the banner ad really started because of an industry leader’s vision – in this case, Ed Atzt, then chairman of mega-brander Procter & Gamble. At a May 1994 industry speech, Atzt implored his colleagues to jump on the new media bandwagon. Frank D’Angelo’s boss, an ad agency head, was in the audience. He brought Ed Atzt’s challenge back to his agency, which happened to have MCI, then a rising telecommunications company, as a client. (MCI would later become WorldCom – but we won’t go there.)

MCI, says D’Angelo, was a perfect fit for this “new” online advertising. After all, one of the company’s employees was Vinton Cerf, the acknowledged “father of the Internet.” But D’Angelo makes it clear what a bold move it was for an advertiser to agree to a banner ad on Hotwired.com, a spin-off of WIRED and the first commercial digital magazine.

“Keep in mind,” says D’Angelo, “this was 1994; the first graphical web browser, Mosaic, was less than a year old (soon to be replaced by Netscape Explorer), and Web access? Purely dial-up, 24.4kps if you were lucky, meaning these ads took a while to load. The online U.S. population? Two million, if that.”

Still, MCI and five other advertisers took a crack at admittedly clunky banner ads. Read the rest of D’Angelo’s story to discover what happened.

Fifteen years later, banner ads may be under siege, but they are still very much a part of the web advertising landscape. D’Angelo says “no other development since has advanced advertising measurement, effectiveness and accountability than the display banner.”

The larger issue today, however, is the continuing quest for optimal measurement. In that context, D’Angelo references a recent report from eMarketer, “Online Brand Management: Connecting the Dots,” that is worthy of consideration.

The report discusses a huge challenge: Are advertisers getting their money’s worth from display ads and other branding-oriented ads? The report asks: “Do [advertisers] have the right metrics, and are they able to connect the dots, both within online platforms and between online and offline media?”

Needless to say, there are no easy answers, but the report offers valuable insight into where we are and where we need to go in terms of measuring advertising effectiveness. One of the quotes from Carrie Frolich, managing director, digital, for Mediaedge:cia, sets the tone for the report’s findings:

Remember why you’re advertising. You are not advertising for clicks or [gross rating points]. What you’re advertising for is to sell me stuff or change perception, and that’s what we need to be measuring against.

As we look back on the past fifteen years, and look forward to the next fifteen, we should always keep that in mind. No matter what technological advances come along, no matter how wonderful the creative might be, no matter where the ads are placed – the objective of advertising, both online and offline, should always be to have a measurable impact. Let’s not forget it.

More here:
Fifteen Years and Counting

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