Marketing Affiliates: Are They Worth The Time?

Rakuten LinkShare released the results of its June 2012 Forrester Consulting study. The study was commissioned to determine the direct and indirect value of affiliate marketing, but its importance reveals compelling data for social media and online advertising as well.

Specially, the report demonstrates why social media and similar marketing efforts cannot be measured like direct response, with definitive paths to product purchases. This is especially interesting because affiliate marketing pays publishers based on direct clicks to the point of purchase.

Key findings about affiliate marketing from Forrester.

• Affiliate marketing spending is on the rise and will keep pace with digital marketing through 2016. Total marketing spending will increase from about $2.5 billion to $4.5 billion in four years.

• Affiliate making channels produce more new-to-file customers and generates incremental customer acquisition. Some brands report 50 percent of the traffic received by affiliate marketers are new buyers.

• Affiliate marketing channels attract consumers that spend more than the average online shopper. The difference is approximately $500 more per year, with average shoppers spending about $1,300 per year. 

• Affiliate marketing channels trigger brand recognition and can close the sale for online shoppers. Online shoppers typically visit four sites before making a purchasing decision. 

• Affiliate promotions have a positive impact on an advertiser's brand reputation and loyalty. Almost half of all consumers report a positive feeling when they see special offers on multi-brand sites and blogs.

"The study reflects how the affiliate marketing industry is strongly aligned with today's value-driven, always connected consumer who typically visits multiple sites before making a purchase," said Scott Allan, senior vice president of global marketing, Rakuten LinkShare. "As interactive marketing budgets grow and evolve, affiliate marketing will continue to be a key, measurable tactic for brands and retailers to attract and acquire new customers."

Considering the crossover as it relates to social media. 

• Investments in digital advertising, online marketing, and social media are continuing to rise whereas other mediums have flattened or demonstrated a loss in the last ten years.

• Third-party introductions and endorsements have become increasingly important to prospects before they consider new products and services as opposed to direct path purchases. 

• Shoppers may visit multiple sources to learn about products and services, even when they already have a connection to the brand, which makes outreach as important as direct communication. 

• Shoppers who visit more than one source for promotions, coupons, and reviews online are much more likely to make a purchase and spend more than people who are dedicated to a channel. 

• While some people question third-party endorsements and agendas, the majority of consumers are unconcerned because they are visiting more than one source of information.  

One of the more interesting aspects of the study is that consumers have a general presumption that brands will offer better deals on multi-brand sites and blogs than they will on their own sites. The study also hints at the influence of review sites frequently visited by consumers. They are nearly four times more likely than average buyers to try a new brand after seeing and receiving a new offer.

The study has been made available online. If you would like to read the study, find it here. The download does require several content fields, including an email address and phone number. 

Branding Online: Do We Need People To Act?

Anytime I read an article with a steep promise it never delivers — How To Be Unforgettable Online — it makes me wonder. Do we want to make every interaction emotional? Is that really the end goal?

The premise isn't new. Advertisers have long maintained that consumers act on emotion more than logic. When the ideology is confined to advertising, it makes sense. An advertisement either generates an impression about a brand or makes the case for a specific call to action.

After repetition (assuming it reaches a viable prospect), the general idea is that you will eventually adopt some notion about the brand (doubly quick if others say the same thing) and test the presumption with a purchase. The point of purchase is also the moment that the brand will sink or swim.

So when I read the article that conveyed branding works much the same way, it made me wonder.

Can branding be boiled down into a series of emotional responses too?

If it can be boiled down in that way, then I think the relationship must be shockingly shallow. In fact, you might equate it to some of those acquaintances you follow on Facebook or Twitter or even offline.

You know the folks — the people you really don't know but are connected with them for any number of reasons. Maybe you met them in a conversation. Maybe you accepted a friend request because of their relation to someone you know. Maybe you thought they were a possible prospect. Maybe you liked their profile or something they did that someone shared. Whatever. They're trial connections.

Does that connection have anything to do with branding? Not really. The brand relationship between you and the connection will likely occur in the days and weeks that follow. It will not be based on your emotional reaction to each interaction, but their overall ability to prove there could be a relationship.

If they don't, you'll likely server the connection in time, doubly fast if they spam you, have polarizing opinions, or don't offer any particular value. It doesn't hurt to do it. There are no tears. You move on.

But now think of the people you do know. Maybe they are family or long-time friends. And maybe they don't always live up to your expectations either: soliciting an argument, sharing something inappropriate, or even spamming you with all sorts of nonsense that you never expected.

Even so, it might not be as easy to sever the ties. Why? Because unlike the other folks who solicited an action from you, you have a relationship with them that transcends any action. The sum of that relationship generally trumps the emotion they might generate with any statement or share.

Brands need to stop thinking short term and start thinking long term. 

Did you ever visit the Aol front page? Most of its news stories are teased in a way to generate an emotional response and action much like the authors of How To Be Unforgettable Online subscribe.

The one-line quips promise you something important, shocking, surprising, unbelievable, dangerous, and fantastic. Spend some time there and you will eventually find one article that will tug at you to click the link. When you do, there is an 80 percent chance that the tease doesn't match the draw.

So the question becomes ... how many times will you click those links for less than was promised?

If you are like most people, you will dump the page for a better source of news. And therein lies the takeaway. Branding is much more than generating high exposure and an emotional tug to get people to act. It's about developing a relationship strong enough to survive the hiccups, bumps, and other stuff that happens along the way. It's not all that different than a real relationship. Don't get dumped.

Hanging Shingles: Public Relations As A Practice

You can define it, but it doesn't mean you can regulate the practice. That is what the public relations industry is learning the hard way. The industry doubts its credibility, but the problem is credulity.

Anybody can start a public relations firm tomorrow. There is no license. There is no mandatory accreditation. There is no oversight. In my city, some politicians have adopted the title in the past (a few who later served jail time) in order to make it all the more murky on why exactly someone paid them consultation fees. And when bad things like that happen, most will quickly turn a blind eye.

In fact, even when firms attempt to police their own, other public relations vets will fret that negative public relations stories hurt the industry as a whole. They say the bad apples don't change, but everyone remembers the industry stories. And then beyond that, there are some bad apples that the industry exempts because of their size, contracts, or connections.

The public relations industry is at the heart of its own calamities. 

The root of the problem is simple. The practice calls for generalists, but fills itself with specialists.

Right. In attempting to own media relations, social media, strategic communication, publicity campaigns (an offshoot of advertising), event planing, and so on, the industry has forced itself to gobble up tactical work instead of promoting more strategic tenets.

Never mind that it is easy to tell who is who. It's all the objectives they set. Ergo, how many column inches or blog posts that a company earns in a month is a publicity measure. What is the public perception of the company in relation to its competition among specific publics, on the other hand, is strategic.

Recognize the difference? One might impact sales like direct marketing (maybe). The other acts as a bolster or booster for anything else done. It's also significantly harder to measure, which is a thorn in the side of specialists who act like generalists in order to grab up more of the monthly marketing budget.

No wonder so many firms are focused on pushing stories. It's tactical. It's immediate. It's sort of measurable, even if most measures seldom consider the path to fulfillment. And since social media is frequently treated the same way, many will say it fits right in with likes, comments, and whatnots.

How public relations could heal itself if it were up to the challenge. 

I'm not very big on the idea of government intervention or regulation or degrees or mandatory accreditations. Those have to remain elective. Besides, government involvement would brush up against the First Amendment in the United States and comparable government contracts elsewhere.

So that means it is up to the industry, which must go beyond whatever short and punchy definition it is peddling. It has to outline precisely how any adopted definition applies to the practice. And then it has to have a majority of firms agree to it all.

If that can be done, and I doubt it can, it has to pressure all those who don't adopt the practice to stop stealing the public relations moniker and start embracing the endless number of specializations like social media, publicity, media relations, guru, etc.

If they don't on their own, then the remedy is publicity designed to shake off the pretenders. There is no other way around it. The industry has to out the bad and elevate the good (even if good examples of public relations are often invisible).

And for those who fear too many posts, articles, and finger points might damage the industry? They miss the point. After all, call outs ought not be public relations, but rather those firms that aren't in public relations. Get it? It's not about good public relations vs. bad public relations. It's about public relations vs. something other than public relations, including bad behavior or ignorance.

It would have to happen. Somebody would need to tell those firms (and maybe their clients) that while they might think what they do is public relations, what they really do is practice media relations and publicity or irresponsible and criminal behavior (however the shoe may fit).

Do you think that will ever happen? Probably not in my lifetime or yours, if ever. Public relations doesn't want it. There isn't even enough rope; but I do think we're due for more enlightenment.

Getting Twitter: Now What?

There are hundreds of articles that describe how to use Twitter right and thousands that tell people how to do it wrong. One of the newest ways from Buddy Media, statistically, is both right and wrong.

It's right if your company fits the paradigm. It's wrong if your company doesn't. Most companies don't.

That doesn't mean that new study, which tracked 320 top Twitter handles for two months, isn't worthwhile. It can be, but not in the way most people think. It can help you ask better questions.

Reading the takeaways from the Buddy Media study.

• Tweet on the days heaviest for your industry.
• Use Twitter between 7 a.m. and 8 p.m., Facebook between 8 p.m. and 7 a.m.
• Tweet four times per day or less; traction tends to drop off with more tweets.
• Type less than 100 character per Tweet, making it more likely to be shared.
• Links and photos tend to receive more Tweets than straight connect.
• Include hashtags, but never more than two hashtags at a time.

• Use "Retweet" or "RT" as a prompt for retweets. Spell out retweet for increased retweets. 

Asking the right takeaways from the Buddy Media study. 

• Do you know when your followers are online? 

• Do you know what social networks they use?

• What is the optimal number of tweets for you? What are the exceptions (e.g., chat sessions)?

• Are you leaving enough room for people to share your tweets with a comment?

• Are your links to high value content or are they all promotional in nature? What about pictures?

• Are your hashtags well thought out? Did you remember to drop them during one-on-one chats?

• Have you prioritized comments you hope are retweeted? Each degree means something different.

There are hundreds more questions to consider, one in particular. 

What are you trying to do on Twitter? Most small business people usually have one or two answers. They want followers (but don't know why). They want more "awareness" about their brand (but don't know who). 

Most of the time, they want these things because it looks good to gather followers, retweets, etc. But that isn't enough, not really. Every aspect of social media is an opportunity to forward your company's mission or another objective revolving around the mission of your company.

More than anything else, that is what the best brands do online. Southwest Airlines tries to be friendly. Nike tries to tie everything outdoors to your feet. Coca-Cola tries to spread connectivity and happiness. Wal-Mart likes to talk about sales. Ford likes to promote automative technology as an industry leader.

As long as your brand is working toward its mission on social networks, with a healthy respect about adding value, the rest will almost take care of itself. But once you start seeing some traction with your campaign, you can start to refine it — picking the time of day or days when it seems to work its best.

Eventually, unless your mission is out of whack with your message, people will follow, share, engage, and (yes) possibly buy things from you too. Just don't put those things first. People can see through it.

Breaking News: Dewey Still Beats Truman

The famously inaccurate banner, Dewey Defeats Truman, lives again as CNN is the first to break the news on the Supreme Court health care story. It was the first outlet to have a story at the ready.

Unfortunately for CNN, it was the wrong news. It was corrected only after 5-10 minutes of commentary on its television programming and thousands of people were prompted to read the headline: "Mandate struck down." Some even received news prompts on their mobile devices, feeling a pang of elation or disgust depending on where they stood on the issue.

But whatever they felt was replaced by a momentary lapse of reason and confusion. Whether they believed the headline or not, they were about to discover it was wrong. And in the weeks that follow, they might consider the broader ramifications of what this means beyond a chuckle.

Accuracy is the first rule of journalism and it just doesn't exist.

Eyeballs matter more, even when the news is reported wrong. In fact, it seems very unlikely the person responsible will be fired. They are likely to get a raise. The traffic, links, and mentions drove more traffic and attention to CNN, not less. And most people will forget about it, much like most don't even know who Dewey might have been.


In fact, technically, the media is calling the Supreme Court decision upheld. However, it wasn't upheld on the grounds the government had argued for. The government cannot may you buy a product you do not want or need. It can, however, tax you for not buying that product or service. Go figure.

This isn't the only time CNN or news organizations have been wrong about their interpretations. Jeffrey Toobin, CNN senior legal analyst, originally surmised it would be a 8-1 decision in favor of the bill. Linda Greenhouse with the New York Times aggressively argued the position that the mandate did not exceed Congressional powers.

It seems pretty clear now that both were wrong. The decision was 5-4 and the the Supreme Court was pointed in saying that the mandate could not be tied to the commerce clause. While the decision still expands the power of government, especially the power held by the Internal Revenue Service (the bureau charged with collecting the fees) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (the bureau that eventually decides what health care you will get).

The problem with the reporting, of course, was the result of reading the first few pages of the decision rather than reading the entire opinion before reporting it. The reporting of speculation, on the other hand, was simply a case of people using the news to support a particular position or idea a.k.a. affirmation media that delivers exactly what people want to hear while swaying others too.

The media has to get a handle on what it wants to be. 

Nowadays, business owners and executives would be better off reading social media sentiment analysis than relying on the news to make decisions. The reason is simple enough. Without objective reporting, you can never be sure of the facts or how people will react to the various biased stories.

I don't mean the single error by CNN and other news outlets. I mean everything leading up to it and everything that will follow. The mistaken headline and knee jerk reaction is just a symptom of a greater problem. When the media can no longer be trusted to tell the truth or get it right, it fails to be relevant.

What this country needs now, perhaps more than ever, is a media outlet that restores objective journalism as its central idea. It might even be the right time, given the existing media outlets people turn to the most are failing to separate what constitutes news and what constitutes political opinion or two sets of talking heads.

Or, borrowing from a different example I shared several years ago, we need reporters who will do the hard work. Instead of talking to two people to get their opinions on whether or not a flag flapping in the wind is loud, we need a reporter to go to the location and report on the truth of it. It's loud. It's not loud.

Who knows? Maybe objective reporting could gain a foothold again once people become wary of sensitized stories and hearing what they want to hear at the expense of the truth. Or maybe not.

Reading Reviews: Do You Trust The Data?

Most marketers know that more and more people are influenced by product reviews, but did you ever wonder who is responsible for setting any downward trends? According to one study, it could be millennials.

Millennials (defined by the study as ages 18 to 34) give more 1-star and 2-star reviews than any other generation, with those in Ireland being among the most critical. Gen Y contributes the most 3-star reviews.

The study also reveals a little more than that. Incidentally, however, boomers (defined by the study as ages 47-65) still contribute the majority of opinions — 45 percent of them online. Boomers are also slightly more positive. And so are parents, regardless of which generation they belong to.

Can generational disposition or other factors alter perception?

Maybe. And if it does, it might explain why some restaurant owners I know have asked me about Yelp. They say Yelp tends to be the most critical. According to Quantcast, the site also happens to skew toward millennials. Is there a correlation? Or are the stiffer reviews the result of the community?

It's a good question that marketers will have to take into account. In general, review communities tend to be all over the map in how they share opinions. If you visit iTunes, for example, you might notice movies have very little middle ground. Most ratings come in at 1 or 5.

Music is different. It generally skews positive. App ratings are also different. Among paid apps, 5-star reviews and 1-star reviews are generally written by people who still haven't learned to reset their iPads if the app keeps crashing. App reviews are largely unreliable.

Even more telling is that iTunes book reviews are frequently rated lower than those on Amazon, but without as much explanation. Goodreads tends to stack up more 5-star reviews than other book review sites.

This isn't necessarily new. Entertainment Weekly frequently publishes roundups of critics' movie reviews, along with online sites like Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes. Even though it pulls from the same sources, Rotten Tomatoes tends to be more critical.

But what stands out for me even more is that there are always one or two reviewers who separate themselves from the pack. Sometimes it makes you wonder if they watched the same movie as the rest of them. And other times you realize that even professional reviewers have no comparable standard for measurement; a bias for particular studios, actors, and genres; and sometimes a desire to be noticed that affects their commentaries.

All reviews need to be vetted before they become meaningful measures. 

Along with the study that suggests millennials are more critical, another bazaarvoice study suggests millennials are more likely to trust the opinions of strangers. In fact, more than half of them trust user-generated content and reviews more than friends and family and many won't complete a transaction before reading reviews.

For business, this means positive customer engagement is even more important. It means establishing better protocols to address erroneous criticism while vetting valid points and making changes. And it means that being a social business is more critical than most think.