Why affiliate marketing is a growing opportunity for advertisers

A report finds over 80% of advertisers are devoting at least 10% of their marketing budgets to the strategy

Affiliate marketing is a growing opportunity for advertisers, but is it right for you? 

A new report finds that the perception around affiliate marketing is shifting — and advertisers and publishers alike are seeing new value in the strategy. 

To better understand the state of affiliate marketing, Rakuten Marketing commissioned Forrester Consulting to conduct research on Networks Help Drive Affiliate Marketing Into the Mainstream” report, which found that the market for affiliate marketing is expected to increase from $4.2 billion in 2015 to $6.8 billion in 2020.

The report found:

• A high level of interest in affiliate programs: More than 80% of advertisers and 84% of publishers surveyed ran an affiliate program, and more than 80% of advertisers devoted 10% of their marketing budget to affiliate marketing.


• Affiliate marketing was part of the entire buying process: 83% of surveyed marketers targeted consumer during the discovery and awareness phase, 79% during conversion or purchase, and 79% used affiliate marketing to create ongoing customer engagement.


• Marketers are measuring the success of affiliate programs: 80% of surveyed marketers tracked desktop and mobile sales, 66% tracked catalog-driven sales, and 57% tracked brick-and-mortar sales.


• Advertisers use affiliate marketing to develop relationships: 83% use affiliate network dashboards to recruit partners and 79% attend event hosted by affiliate networks. More than half of publishers use network-provided platforms to manage affiliate efforts.

“The way consumers discover and take in information has shifted drastically over the years, while their level of sophistication and expectation toward advertisements has increased,” Adam Weiss, general manager and senior vice president of Rakuten Affiliate Network, told Marketing Dive in an interview. “Presenting content that drives real value in a trustworthy way can be a significant challenge for brands and content creators, but this challenge can be solved with a smart affiliate marketing strategy.”

Affiliate programs are becoming part of content marketing

Content marketing is a key component of any digital marketing strategy, and affiliate programs are one way marketers are meeting the challenge of creating content that drives real value for customers and delivering it in a trustworthy way. A large part of this is the perception of affiliate programs getting away from direct response and couponing, and being seen more as a way that advertisers can get information out to consumers in a relevant environment.

In the report, an unnamed vice president of sales at a U.S. online publisher explained the new mindset toward affiliate programs: “The biggest positive change I’ve seen has been the change of perception around affiliate, from spammy, bottom-feeder sites to ones like ours, where we’re focused on a great user experience. Two years ago, a CMO wouldn’t go to his board and say, ‘We’re doing great in affiliate!’ but now they see [it delivering].”

Illustrating the value of the programs, almost 90% of marketers surveyed in the report said that affiliate marketing was important or very important to their overall marketing strategy.

One aspect of affiliate programs that can be attractive for advertisers is that most costs associated with affiliate marketing are paid out on a performance basis, including placement, commissions, network fees, and paid bonuses.

Conclusions 

The Rakuten and Forrester report came away with three takeaways about the state of affiliate marketing:

1. Affiliate marketing is an important tool for both advertisers and publishers. A key reason for this is the rise of content marketing as a major aspect of digital marketing. The value of affiliate programs can be seen in the data point that more than 80% of advertisers and publishers alike are tapping into affiliate marketing. Marketers do so in order to find differentiated marketing content, and publishers to drive ad revenue on their websites.


2. Affiliate networks play an important role in affiliate marketing programs. Affiliate marketing has become more sophisticated and complex, and because of that advertisers and publishers are turning to affiliate networks to manage their programs. Networks help advertisers find new affiliate partners as well as help plan, execute and measure affiliate programs.


3. Improving measurement is important to unlocking affiliate program potential. Although advertisers are using forecasting and marketing mix tools to analyze and optimize affiliate programs, the study found fewer are making use of advanced attribution tools that provide a multi-channel view into the impact of their affiliate programs.

The report offered marketers a final thought on the state of affiliate marketing: “Affiliate marketing, once regarded more as a tool to drive consumers to the purchase event, is now viewed as a powerful channel for consumer discovery that leads to brand engagement and incremental sales at compelling ROIs. Advertisers are increasingly relying on the affiliate channel to broaden their brand exposure with relevant context. More publishers are taking the opportunity to complement their revenue with advertiser support that delights their readers.”

---

Top Image Credit: Fotolia

Why affiliate marketing is a growing opportunity for advertisers

What's Old Is New Again: Why Affiliate Marketing Is Growing

As the year comes to a close, I can’t help but think about all of the changes that have taken place over the past 12 months in our industry — things like the shift toward online to offine, and the list goes on.

There’s no doubt that 2015 has been the most innovative and interesting year of my career. The conversations and top headlines have really helped me home in on what it is that I enjoy so much about my job and the marketing channel I’ve worked in for 12 years.

It’s also led me to share my definition of what affiliate marketing really means, why it’s growing and how I believe it should be viewed. There are some consistent themes that resonate with both e-commerce companies and consumers, all at a seemingly perfect time when marketers are looking for a more organic way to drive sales.

Original, Native Content

The content on affiliate sites is the original native content. With affiliate marketing, products, brands and promotions are seamlessly embedded into the editorial content on a publisher site.

As I like to say, it’s content marketing before content marketing was a thing.

For advertisers, it’s a no-brainer: Each has a network of publisher partners all promoting the brand, sale and/or product which, at the most basic level, is beautiful, native advertising that acts as brand awareness — and at best, reaches an entirely new customer base while driving incremental revenue. Win-win!

Community

The great thing about publishers in our space is that they create their own unique audience of loyal consumers who trust them and their opinions. I’m not just talking about loyalty sites either — bloggers, coupon sites and editorial news outlets all have their own communities that play a part in the ecosystem.

What’s really happening here is you have brand advocates that produce content based on their experience with your products or service or who are looking to promote a product or a deal and essentially act as trusted third-party validators for brands. Publishers are influencers that can reach new and existing customers with their native content to attract their loyal community to a brand.

Publishers provide value and influence through their communities, regardless of the size. Trust drives action, and affiliate marketing provides the platform in which it all comes together.

Social Influence

Social media has changed the speed at which people receive and consume information. Through social media and other online publications, affiliate publishers can ensure the right message gets to the right person at the right time by leveraging the following they have.

When advertisers have specific goals or objectives for particular products, brands or promotions, they have the ability, through the relationships with affiliate publishers to leverage that community of users, to quickly get reach and influence at scale.

I believe this is a unique value proposition that affiliate publishers bring to our ecosystem.

This doesn’t come at the cost of the publisher’s integrity or fear of losing readers based on misleading or disruptive advertising. Publishers can maintain a balanced approach of the ads and products that are meaningful to their consumers as they maintain the control of where, when and how they want to advertise their partners.

Partnerships

As we all know, affiliate marketing is predicated on relationships and partnerships. It’s an ecosystem, and all parties are equally dependent on each other to achieve success.

It’s the only digital marketing channel that’s reliant on actual relationships established between parties with a mutually beneficial goal.

The most successful programs are based on the right strategy and a strong, effective relationship. Publishers understand the importance of creating long-term, productive partnerships with their advertiser partners, while advertisers recognize that these publishers provide the opportunity to reach new and loyal customers.

Data

What good are any of these other themes if it’s impossible to measure success? Affiliate marketing programs provide a 360-degree view of an entire campaign.

The data offers both advertisers and publishers ways to identify top partners, assess placement strategies and analyze consumer behavior. Essentially, it’s the layer that supports the platform and enhances the offering.

Because of the cost per action (CPA) model, there are no questions analyzing the ROI from the advertiser’s side — views, impressions, and even clicks aren’t the benchmarks of success. Brands are able to see exactly how much revenue they’ve made and commissions they paid out in a single report.

Further, there’s a new angle on data and a shift happening in our industry. Data is not just about measuring your program, but leveraging it to inform promotions and create the right experience for the right user at the right time on the right site.

In Summary

Over my 12 years working in the industry, I’ve witnessed plenty of advancements and innovative publishers, but these core concepts remain. And that’s why this channel isn’t going anywhere and will continue to grow.

---

Some opinions expressed in this article may be those of a guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.

---

About The Author

Adam Weiss is the General Manager for Rakuten Affiliate Network (formerly LinkShare), and is responsible for the overall strategic direction and technology roadmap of the North American affiliate business. He also focuses on new business development, partnership optimization and Publisher account management. Adam has held multiple roles within Rakuten Affiliate Network, having joined the company in 2003. Prior to that time, he held publisher-facing positions at About.com and 24/7 Media.

(Some images used under license from Shutterstock.com.)

What"s Old Is New Again: Why Affiliate Marketing Is Growing

DotCom Secrets: The Underground Playbook for Growing Your Company Online

If you are currently struggling with getting traffic to your website, or converting that traffic when it shows up, you may think you’ve got a traffic or conversion problem. In Russell Brunson’s experience, after working with thousands of businesses, he has found that’s rarely the case. Low traffic and weak conversion numbers are just symptoms of a much greater problem, a problem that’s a little harder to see (that’s the bad news), but a lot easier to fix (that’s the good news). DotComSecrets will give you the marketing funnels and the sales scripts you need to be able to turn on a flood of new leads into your business.

visit the website

DotCom Secrets: The Underground Playbook for Growing Your Company Online

StreamSend Shares 8 Steps to Build Sales with Growing Success of Video Email Marketing

New Email Marketing Automation & Integration Guide Outlines Full Process

Sacramento, California (PRWEB) August 31, 2015

StreamSend, the email marketing service provider, shares advice and a free white paper to help businesses use video to build customer relations and sales with their email marketing strategy. Video Email Marketing is an important part of StreamSend’s Email Marketing Automation & Integration Guide, which teaches integration and automation tactics that lift conversions and boost ROI.

“Video Email Marketing offers a return 280% higher than traditional direct mail.”
-Gartner Research

“In today’s cluttered digital landscape, it’s extremely difficult to capture the consumer’s attention,” said Dan Forootan, president of StreamSend Email Marketing. “Incorporating video into email marketing is one of the most potent ways to increase email engagement, breaking through that clutter and demanding attention. Here are some tips for getting started.”

1.    Video Length:
Shorter is better. Keep videos under 60 seconds.

2.    Content:
Make sure videos resonate with your audience and is relevant to your product or service.

3.    Format:
Use a format that supports both web and mobile video. Smartphones and tablets are too common to ignore. Video should play in both HTML5 and Flash.

4.    Email Design:
Design emails so that video is the primary focus and is positioned above the fold — up to 400 pixels wide. The message should concisely state “what’s in it for them” and why they should watch the segment.

5.    Lead Generation:
Consider adding a URL to the video to create immediate engagement and take viewers to the landing page. Or add a form right on to the video which viewers can use to subscribe directly to the mailing list.

6.    Subject Line:
Subject line copy should include the word “video” and tie into the segment’s subject matter.

7.    Landing Page:
Design a landing page to create continuity. Keep the audience close; don’t send them to YouTube.

8.    Tracking:
Be sure to track open rates, play rates, shares, etc., and compare them to traditional email campaigns.

Find out how to put video and all of the power of email marketing to work for your business, read StreamSend’s Agency Email Marketing Guide at http://www.streamsend.com/SSPR-EIAGuide2015

StreamSend
StreamSend offers an easy-to-use, affordable and reliable email marketing service designed to help businesses maximize the reach of their marketing budget when sending an email newsletter or using Social Media. StreamSend offers a number of industry-leading standard pricing plans, private-label and affiliate programs and hands-on personal client service. Started in 1998, StreamSend is a leader in Email Marketing.

For the original version on PRWeb visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2015/08/prweb12929983.htm

StreamSend Shares 8 Steps to Build Sales with Growing Success of Video Email Marketing

Case Study: Emma Swaps Its SMTP Infrastructure for PowerMTA to Handle Growing Mail Volume

Over the years, email service provider Emma has experienced 35% annual growth in email volume from its new and existing clients. Emma’s services include email automation, audience segmentation, mobile email marketing, and integration with CRM solutions, eCommerce platforms, and social networks. Emma has developed an innovative Event-Driven Architecture (EDA) with sophisticated messaging features — from data-driven insights, to email automation — rapidly and without service interruptions. The EDA architecture gives marketers real-time insights, allowing them to personalize each customer’s experience.

The Challenge

A major obstacle that drove Emma to consider PowerMTA was an expected forthcoming collision between mail volumes that had risen to 375M messages/ month, and its 10-year-old, home-grown PHP-based system. The technology had reached the end of its scalability, being cumbersome to configure, and lacking deployment features and sophisticated delivery controls. Emma urgently needed a better solution to manage the growing volume, one that would include the capacity to add smarthooks at minimal cost.

Key features of the old system were either missing or difficult to use, such as retry back-offs, rate limiting, DKIM, and the ability to react proactively to SMTP reply responses. As the company grew, it would be expensive, awkward, and risky to scale the aging technology — it was clearly time for a replacement.

Solution

Emma now uses PowerMTA to manage its increasing mail volume efficiently, with a minimal investment while allowing it to scale its business exponentially, without bottlenecks or unreasonable expense.

Emma’s system administrators were drawn to PowerMTA’s flexible logging schematics, as well as its easy-to-configure VirtualMTA pools, ability to configure retry and total time in queue, and the ability to send large volumes of mail using modest hardware.

Emma’s digital messaging volume currently averages 1.5M hourly, 12M daily, and 375M monthly, expected to double in the relative near-term, consistent with industry forecasts.

Discover PowerMTA™

Port25’s flagship product, PowerMTA™, has a global footprint with more than 4,500 installations in over 51 countries.  Visit the Port25 Solutions, Inc. website for a full-featured trial evaluation copy of PowerMTA.

About Port25

Port25, A Message Systems Company, provides highly focused email delivery software that addresses the ever-expanding needs of client communications and digital messaging apps. Port25’s flagship product, PowerMTA™, has a global footprint, with over 4,000 installations in more than 51 countries. (Learn More)

Related topics: Email

Case Study: Emma Swaps Its SMTP Infrastructure for PowerMTA to Handle Growing Mail Volume

Local Search Group Digital Marketing Adds New Business Expert to Growing Online Marketing Team

Online marketing company Local Search Group proudly announces the hiring of Raquel Longley, Vice-President of Business Development and Special Events.

Houston, TX (PRWEB) April 18, 2015

Prior to her work with Local Search Group, she successfully grew Sirius XM’s portfolio in the B2B and B2C space. Later she developed keen business insight as the principal of Time Talent Agency. She brings a unique blend of skill sets to Local Search Group’s online marketing team that will make her an immediate contributor to the company’s new business acquisition plans.

Longley has long supported Local Search Group’s efforts with the Houston Auto Show, Texas Auto Jobs and the DFW Auto Show in Dallas. She’s also been a mainstay with local businesses such as The Marque, Landmark Houston Hospitality Group and the Houston Young Professionals community.  Her entrepreneurial spirit, proven track record and brand management abilities will go a long way toward supporting Local Search Group’s ongoing efforts to provide innovate marketing insights to their current and future digital marketing clients.

“Raquel is one of the most connected people in Houston and will fill a needed new business development role for our company,” says Local Search Group President and Founder Jim Flint.  “Additionally her existing event experience will help our existing clients take their business to the next level.”

For the original version on PRWeb visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2015/04/prweb12630806.htm

Local Search Group Digital Marketing Adds New Business Expert to Growing Online Marketing Team

SEO Lead Generation - A Growing List Of New Strategies & Tips

It doesn’t matter if you are just starting out as an SEO consultant or if you are already an established agency looking to grow – leads are the holy grail for the growth of any business. There are dozens of strategies, tricks and tools that can help you identify new leads for your SEO consulting business.

The objective of this article is to comprehensively cover all the strategies and tools to find new SEO leads. But in case it doesn’t cover a trick or strategy you personally use, feel free to comment or message me and I shall add your trick or tool to the list.

Let’s get started

Freelancing Marketplaces

Recommended for YouWebcast: Zero to Millions: The Secrets Behind Building a Business and Growing a Digital Audience

This is the first place you should start. Freelance marketplaces like Freelancer.com, Odesk, and Elance have hundreds of small and large businesses seek bids for their SEO projects. It gives you are a ready list of businesses who are ready to spend money NOW to improve their search engine profile.

There are, however, a couple of downsides to this – for one, depending on where you live, you may find that the rivals bidding for the same projects are grossly undercutting you. That is expected considering that Asian and East European bidders often price themselves lower than American bidders.

Also, such marketplaces have ratings and reviews for providers which are often an influential factor among buyers. As a new user, you may face the prospect of being rejected due to zero reviews.

Trick to success : Do not bid on each and every project. Instead, identify websites that you think you can win, and write a personalized note that is probably much more detailed and actionable than other bidders out there. If the project owner has provided a link to their website or has specified the industry/location, make a thorough analysis of the industry or website and make a grand pitch on why you are the best person to do the job. The conversion rate for such bids are vastly higher than using a cookie-cutter bidding template for all projects.

Classified Listings

Classifieds are another place to seek out businesses looking for an SEO consultant. Craigslist is the first thing that comes to mind. Depending on your market, the other popular classified listing websites are Gumtree, Olx and Kijiji.

Trick to success : For Craigslist, use an aggregator like SearchTempest to get SEO job postings from multiple cities and locations on one page. This is an easier way to look up new job postings from the classified service.

LeadJoint

There are different categories of businesses seeking SEO consulting. The first category is of new websites that want to set up a search engine presence. The other category is that of businesses that are already established and ranking on top, but have dropped out of the first page due to various reasons, including penalty.

LeadJoint caters to this second category of businesses. The service monitors thousands of Google keywords for changes in search rankings and digs out potential SEO leads – these are websites that have dropped out of the first page of Google for their major keywords and are hence potentially looking for an SEO consultant.

Trick to success : LeadJoint provides its subscribers the ability to monitor 2000 of their own keywords. Use this quota to add keywords pertaining to local businesses from your town or suburb. Businesses that post on Craigslist or Freelancer websites often have dozens of bids from other SEO agencies. By narrowing down the LeadJoint list to businesses in your local suburb, you can aim for fewer competition and thus a vastly higher conversion rate.

Partnerships

This is by far one of the most effective channels to get new businesses referred to you on a consistent basis. Web designers, developers, copywriters and social media marketing agencies work with clients who may regularly need help with search engine optimization as well. Reach out to such businesses in your city or state and propose a referral commission for every business they send your way. One thing to keep in mind is that such agencies work with clients with drastically different budgets and resource requirements. So it is always a good idea to partner with an agency who deal with the kind of customers that you can cater to with your level of expertise and bandwidth.

Trick to success : Emailing such complimentary business services is a good start. However, a better way to do it is to attend local events and meetups of these various industry segments and networking with them. Since this is a win-win partnership, the web designers and development agencies should be as keen as you are to partner up.

Advertisers

When you are starting out with your SEO consultancy, it may seem like anybody who is not ranking on the first page of Google for their keywords would be a hot candiate for consulting. But that is not the case. A lot of business owners are happy growing organically through word of mouth referrals. Others are interested in new growth opportunities as long as it is free. Very few business owners actively seek to grow bigger and one of the avenues they seek to achieve this is advertising. People advertising on Adwords or YellowPages are already spending money to acquire new customers. This segement of business owners is more likely to listen to your SEO pitch compared to someone who hasn’t spent a dime on getting new customers.

Trick to success : Tools like ISearchFrom help you quickly view Adwords advertisers for various keywords from different geographies. For instance, if you are from NYC and want to know the advertisers for the keyword ‘roofing contractors’ in Los Angeles, you can do so in a couple of clicks. This helps you instantly build a list of leads you can reach out to.

Other Promotional Campaigns

Advertising is not the only way businesses seek to grow. A number of local small business owners run promotional campaigns, give out fliers, discount vouchers and market themselves on websites like Groupon – all of these indicate a business owners’ mindset that is open to seeking growth opportunities.

Reaching out to these businesses with an SEO proposal that will seek to fetch them better returns than their current marketing campaigns can potentially bring you new clients to your SEO business.

Trick to success : There is no doubt that such businesses have a great potential for conversion. However, when you reach out to them, context is key. A plain-vanilla email that pitches your SEO agency would be deleted as quick as any other spam. Instead, if you call them and talk to them about their Groupon or flier campaign, understand the costs involved and then pitch your SEO campaign as a more effective yet cheaper alternative, then you are more likely to convert.

Lead Magnet

Lead magnets are essentially “products” that you give away in order to get new leads for your business. In the case of SEO consulting, your target prospects are mostly business owners or marketing managers looking for advice on ranking on Google. You can target these prospects through giveaways like a free ebook on SEO tips or build an online tool to audit their websites. Make sure to capture emails of your website visitors who want to access these lead magnets so that you can reach out to them with a proposal. MySiteAuditor has a paid service to embed a site audit tool on your website that you can use to capture new SEO leads.

Trick to success : There are entire books written on this topic that it is not possible to explain all the tricks to success here in one step. However, in short, content marketing is key to success here. Find interesting topics that people like to talk about in your industry and write blogs or reports on these topics. With proper distribution across online social media and discussion boards, you can aim for traffic to your blogs. Provide lead magnets like useful Excel tools, research reports or PDF ebooks to this visiting audience to gather leads that you can reach out to.

Affiliate Program

An affiliate program is basically an arrangement where you pay a commission to an intermediate for referring new customers. This can either be your existing customers or a complete third party who has the means to reach out to your target audience. If you are already an established agency, the right way to launch this program is to introduce it to your existing customers. Most agencies regularly receive word of mouth referrals from their existing clientele. By monetarily rewarding your clients for referring new customers, you can convert your goodwill into a financial gain.

Having said that, affiliate programs, if not managed properly, can result in spam and frauds. Be sure who you are recruiting as affiliates for your business.

Trick to success : Affiliate management is a lot of work. To start with, only provide your customers with unique referral codes so that it will incentivize them for word of mouth references. Open it up to the public or a third party affiliate network only when you have sufficient resources to handle the mess that comes with affiliate marketing management.

This article originally appeared on the LeadJoint blog.

Author: Anand Srinivasan

Anand Srinivasan is the founder of View full profile ›

SEO Lead Generation - A Growing List Of New Strategies & Tips

SEO Lead Generation - A Growing List Of New Strategies & Tips

It doesn’t matter if you are just starting out as an SEO consultant or if you are already an established agency looking to grow – leads are the holy grail for the growth of any business. There are dozens of strategies, tricks and tools that can help you identify new leads for your SEO consulting business.

The objective of this article is to comprehensively cover all the strategies and tools to find new SEO leads. But in case it doesn’t cover a trick or strategy you personally use, feel free to comment or message me and I shall add your trick or tool to the list.

Let’s get started

Freelancing Marketplaces

Recommended for YouWebcast: Zero to Millions: The Secrets Behind Building a Business and Growing a Digital Audience

This is the first place you should start. Freelance marketplaces like Freelancer.com, Odesk, and Elance have hundreds of small and large businesses seek bids for their SEO projects. It gives you are a ready list of businesses who are ready to spend money NOW to improve their search engine profile.

There are, however, a couple of downsides to this – for one, depending on where you live, you may find that the rivals bidding for the same projects are grossly undercutting you. That is expected considering that Asian and East European bidders often price themselves lower than American bidders.

Also, such marketplaces have ratings and reviews for providers which are often an influential factor among buyers. As a new user, you may face the prospect of being rejected due to zero reviews.

Trick to success : Do not bid on each and every project. Instead, identify websites that you think you can win, and write a personalized note that is probably much more detailed and actionable than other bidders out there. If the project owner has provided a link to their website or has specified the industry/location, make a thorough analysis of the industry or website and make a grand pitch on why you are the best person to do the job. The conversion rate for such bids are vastly higher than using a cookie-cutter bidding template for all projects.

Classified Listings

Classifieds are another place to seek out businesses looking for an SEO consultant. Craigslist is the first thing that comes to mind. Depending on your market, the other popular classified listing websites are Gumtree, Olx and Kijiji.

Trick to success : For Craigslist, use an aggregator like SearchTempest to get SEO job postings from multiple cities and locations on one page. This is an easier way to look up new job postings from the classified service.

LeadJoint

There are different categories of businesses seeking SEO consulting. The first category is of new websites that want to set up a search engine presence. The other category is that of businesses that are already established and ranking on top, but have dropped out of the first page due to various reasons, including penalty.

LeadJoint caters to this second category of businesses. The service monitors thousands of Google keywords for changes in search rankings and digs out potential SEO leads – these are websites that have dropped out of the first page of Google for their major keywords and are hence potentially looking for an SEO consultant.

Trick to success : LeadJoint provides its subscribers the ability to monitor 2000 of their own keywords. Use this quota to add keywords pertaining to local businesses from your town or suburb. Businesses that post on Craigslist or Freelancer websites often have dozens of bids from other SEO agencies. By narrowing down the LeadJoint list to businesses in your local suburb, you can aim for fewer competition and thus a vastly higher conversion rate.

Partnerships

This is by far one of the most effective channels to get new businesses referred to you on a consistent basis. Web designers, developers, copywriters and social media marketing agencies work with clients who may regularly need help with search engine optimization as well. Reach out to such businesses in your city or state and propose a referral commission for every business they send your way. One thing to keep in mind is that such agencies work with clients with drastically different budgets and resource requirements. So it is always a good idea to partner with an agency who deal with the kind of customers that you can cater to with your level of expertise and bandwidth.

Trick to success : Emailing such complimentary business services is a good start. However, a better way to do it is to attend local events and meetups of these various industry segments and networking with them. Since this is a win-win partnership, the web designers and development agencies should be as keen as you are to partner up.

Advertisers

When you are starting out with your SEO consultancy, it may seem like anybody who is not ranking on the first page of Google for their keywords would be a hot candiate for consulting. But that is not the case. A lot of business owners are happy growing organically through word of mouth referrals. Others are interested in new growth opportunities as long as it is free. Very few business owners actively seek to grow bigger and one of the avenues they seek to achieve this is advertising. People advertising on Adwords or YellowPages are already spending money to acquire new customers. This segement of business owners is more likely to listen to your SEO pitch compared to someone who hasn’t spent a dime on getting new customers.

Trick to success : Tools like ISearchFrom help you quickly view Adwords advertisers for various keywords from different geographies. For instance, if you are from NYC and want to know the advertisers for the keyword ‘roofing contractors’ in Los Angeles, you can do so in a couple of clicks. This helps you instantly build a list of leads you can reach out to.

Other Promotional Campaigns

Advertising is not the only way businesses seek to grow. A number of local small business owners run promotional campaigns, give out fliers, discount vouchers and market themselves on websites like Groupon – all of these indicate a business owners’ mindset that is open to seeking growth opportunities.

Reaching out to these businesses with an SEO proposal that will seek to fetch them better returns than their current marketing campaigns can potentially bring you new clients to your SEO business.

Trick to success : There is no doubt that such businesses have a great potential for conversion. However, when you reach out to them, context is key. A plain-vanilla email that pitches your SEO agency would be deleted as quick as any other spam. Instead, if you call them and talk to them about their Groupon or flier campaign, understand the costs involved and then pitch your SEO campaign as a more effective yet cheaper alternative, then you are more likely to convert.

Lead Magnet

Lead magnets are essentially “products” that you give away in order to get new leads for your business. In the case of SEO consulting, your target prospects are mostly business owners or marketing managers looking for advice on ranking on Google. You can target these prospects through giveaways like a free ebook on SEO tips or build an online tool to audit their websites. Make sure to capture emails of your website visitors who want to access these lead magnets so that you can reach out to them with a proposal. MySiteAuditor has a paid service to embed a site audit tool on your website that you can use to capture new SEO leads.

Trick to success : There are entire books written on this topic that it is not possible to explain all the tricks to success here in one step. However, in short, content marketing is key to success here. Find interesting topics that people like to talk about in your industry and write blogs or reports on these topics. With proper distribution across online social media and discussion boards, you can aim for traffic to your blogs. Provide lead magnets like useful Excel tools, research reports or PDF ebooks to this visiting audience to gather leads that you can reach out to.

Affiliate Program

An affiliate program is basically an arrangement where you pay a commission to an intermediate for referring new customers. This can either be your existing customers or a complete third party who has the means to reach out to your target audience. If you are already an established agency, the right way to launch this program is to introduce it to your existing customers. Most agencies regularly receive word of mouth referrals from their existing clientele. By monetarily rewarding your clients for referring new customers, you can convert your goodwill into a financial gain.

Having said that, affiliate programs, if not managed properly, can result in spam and frauds. Be sure who you are recruiting as affiliates for your business.

Trick to success : Affiliate management is a lot of work. To start with, only provide your customers with unique referral codes so that it will incentivize them for word of mouth references. Open it up to the public or a third party affiliate network only when you have sufficient resources to handle the mess that comes with affiliate marketing management.

This article originally appeared on the LeadJoint blog.

Author: Anand Srinivasan

Anand Srinivasan is the founder of LeadJoint, an online SEO business development tool. He also works as a digital media consultant where he advises a number of small and medium sized companies. He has worked for a number of popular internet startups in the past. … View full profile ›

SEO Lead Generation - A Growing List Of New Strategies & Tips

Web.com reports growing revenues in 2014, but still a net loss

Revenues were up for Web.com in 2014, but the company still reported a net loss.

The Jacksonville-based online marketing company took in revenues of almost $544 million last year, up from $492 million in 2013, according to SEC filings posted Thursday evening.

Overall, the company had a net loss of $12.4 million, which was an improvement over the loss of $65.7 million in 2013.

Web.com hasn’t reported a net profit since 2009, when it made $2.6 million with $102 million in revenue. Its net income dove over the next several years until hitting a nadir with a loss of $122 million in 2012.

The company’s revenues have risen every year since it went public as Website Pros Inc. in 2005, except for a dip between 2008 and 2009, from $117 million to $102 million.

In a conference call Thursday afternoon, CEO David L. Brown said the company has put in place a new bundled pricing model in an effort to keep customers using the website.

“We believe the steps we have taken will ultimately return retention rates to their previous levels,” Brown said in the call.

The company had almost 3.3 million subscribers on its website at the end of last year, up from 3.1 million in 2013 and slightly more than 3 million in 2012, according to SEC filings.

Its average revenue per user was $14.07 in the fourth quarter of 2014, down from $14.71 during that quarter in 2013 and $14.33 in 2012.

On Monday, Web.com added two directors to its board as part of a deal with its largest shareholder, Okumus Fund Management Ltd. The deal places limits on the shareholder’s power, such as barring it from trying to remove directors and influencing other shareholders. The deal runs out before the company’s 2016 shareholder meeting.

Okumus bought 480,000 shares in the company in November. That same month, the company bought back 10.8 million of its shares, Brown said in the conference call.

Brown also said that the company plans to modify its website developing services to allow customers to get guidance from Web.com employees through email and phone calls.

“This is an area we’ve just begun exploring,” he said.

The company’s stock price rose following the release of its earnings report, from $15.93 a share Thursday afternoon to $18.43 Friday morning.

But its shares have been in decline over the past year, dropping from $36.61 in February 2014.

Richard Webner: 904-359-4370

Web.com reports growing revenues in 2014, but still a net loss