Now is the time to start thinking about Q4 and the upcoming holiday season. It’s amazing when you think that there are so many businesses that are sustained for the entire year just on sales from these 3 short months. There is so much planning and thought that goes into this holiday and it’s tough to say what will come out on top sales-wise out of all of the ideas. It’s usually the one you never expect to succeed. That’s why we plan to have as many product offerings as possible to in order to cover the breadth of products out there this holiday season.

With the high gas prices and stagnant economy, the online market is in luck. It’s predicted that more consumers than last year will go online to shop in order to save money any way they can. That’s where we come into play to service that need. Too bad I don’t have a little crystal ball that could tell me what the latest holiday trend will be before anyone else knows! Since I don’t have one, please contact me if you have a great holiday product that we can promote or send your affiliate managers any offer ideas. Let’s make this upcoming holiday season a success for our advertisers, publishers and AKMG!

Some people are thinking about back to school, some are looking forward to the long Labor Day weekend and others have politics on their mind. Not me. I’m just trying to figure out how to possibly attend all of the upcoming marketing trade shows. September, October and November are full of great shows that really help to solidify existing relationships and open doors to new ones. We really value the importance of face-to-face meetings and know that they go a long way in establishing a long term client relationship. So the AKMG team will be on a whirlwind tour attending several marketing trade shows this fall.

Please contact us if you plan on attending any of these marketing trade shows so we can be sure to meet.

Brand Activation Summit - NYC
Ad Tech London
DMA 08 - Las Vegas
Ad Tech NY

I hope we cross paths and can get some business going!

With the current economic state, all marketers are being held accountable for their budget and need to prove a clear return-on-investment (ROI). Each project needs to be justified in this tight market and rightfully so. The days of just spending money to spend it are over. In comes performance based marketing and only having to pay for a sale or lead and not the media space.

Savvy marketers just need to choose the right ad network (AKMG, of course) and can then basically make the network an extension of their marketing team. We handle everything as far as dealing with publishers, paying them monthly, determining ways to optimize the campaign, etc. And the best part, the marketer only pays once a sale or lead has been generated. In addition, the network & affiliates bear most of the risk by investing in a team, in the technology & infrastructure to make the promotion of the campaigns possible. Of course choosing the right partner is the key because if not, the marketer may be at risk if the network they use isn’t committed to protecting the marketer’s brand. Also, I don’t know many other businesses that can claim they earn money while they are sleeping but that is possible in our world. Affiliates never stop and they work 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.

In summary, here are the advantages of performance based marketing for a marketer.

1) Able to easily justify your ROI when you only pay for sales or leads and not the media space
2) Access to affiliates who work around the clock promoting your product or service
3) Advertiser has less risk because the network & affiliates invest in making the campaign a success

In summary, implementing a smart performance based marketing strategy will increase your ROI and make your life a lot easier when having to justify what you spent on online marketing and why you spent it. So here’s to making money while you sleep!

Many people have written about the benefits of email marketing over the years and there are many myths about email marketing. But one thing most people can agree on is that email marketing is an extremely cost-effective marketing tool. Email marketing is immediate, targeted and easy to do! Compared to other marketing methods, it is very simple & inexpensive as there is minimal production work needed or additional materials or postage expenses. It is also very effective in terms of being able to reach existing and potential customers instead of waiting for them to come to you.

With more people visiting a website, advertiser’s can expect more sales and loyal customers. If that isn’t enough, email marketing is also so effective that it can be used to turn people with minimal interest in your product or services into prospects, turn prospects into customers and turn customers in repeat customers. It is very important to constantly maintain contact with your consumer base and develop relationships with them over time. That is the way to truly retain loyalty.

In summary, here are the benefits of email marketing and why it works:

1. Outperforms all the direct marketing channels from an ROI perspective
2. Cost effective marketing tool
3. An unobtrusive method to reach potential consumers & develop loyalty
4. Compel consumers to make purchases which increases sales conversions
5. Generate repeat sales
6. Upsell and cross-sell products
7. Support offline media & brand recognition
8. Immediate & easy marketing method

If you’re still not sold on email marketing, call me and I’d be more than happy to give you concrete examples of how effective this marketing method really is. We’ve have so many success stories with email marketing at AKMG.

There are people that think quantity is much more important than quality, whether it be from a personal or business perspective. From a personal perspective, some people feel comfort if they know “everyone” in their area and can walk through their town and say hello to most people that the see. It’s a false sense of security but it makes that type of person who craves comfort, feel better. I’m the exact opposite. Sure I know a lot of people but I have a small inner circle that I trust and consider to be true friends. I prefer to keep it that way. I’d rather have 3 people that I know I can call for whatever reason and they’ll be there for me, rather that having a full address book with no true friend to call for a favor.

In business, there are marketers & business owners who believe that having more consumers who visit your website or store equates with more revenue. Again I’m on the opposite of the spectrum here too. For example, you can have 1,000 unqualified consumers visit your site because they are looking for a deal and only a handful actually purchase anything. Or you can have 100 qualified consumers visit your site and 50% of them purchase something. Option 2 is a much better scenario in my opinion since this group of people weren’t just looking for a deal so they’ll most likely be more long term, loyal, repeat purchasers.

We have the same posture at AKMG regarding the affiliates & advertisers that we’ll work with. We’d rather work with the best of breed in each vertical rather than just working with everyone to say we work with a lot of people. After all, quality is much more important than quantity.

I find myself in awe of those people that somehow are always able to come up with the next big thing, so much sooner the rest. I wonder how they’re able to do that so effortlessly. I think anyone in the Internet business is ahead of the curve already; but then there are those that lead the pack. Those are the ones that amaze me. I had a conversation with an advertiser today about this very topic. He was telling me about his biggest competitor who always seem to know the fads before the rest & is able to get a head start on everyone. You can’t help but respect him for that and my advertiser couldn’t help but agree.

I often try to figure out ways to come up with new & interesting ideas to get ahead and be THAT person. I analyze all marketing that I see, no matter the format - TV, billboards, radio - it doesn’t really matter where it’s coming from. It’s funny what you see when you leave the online silo (not that I do that very often!). If only there was really enough time in the day to daydream about this. If I had the time…I might actually come up with the “next big thing”.

The team we have put together at AKMG is always looking for the next big thing.  The first step in finding such a revolutionary idea and implementing it for profits is to have the right frame of mind to NOTICE the next big thing when it presents itself.  That is what separates us, not just from other performance based networks, but from other business professionals.

I spent a lot of time thinking about what makes AKMG stand out from the rest this past week. Luckily for me it wasn’t that difficult of an exercise. I always told myself that I would never do “sales” since I’m not a good liar. I’ve said that for years. So I’ve stayed away from sales or business development, whatever you want to call it, until the idea of creating a network came about. It was very clear from day one that I would be able to do business development and never have to lie. What a novel concept…knowing that I’m honestly representing AKMG when I talk about our capabilities makes my job a lot easier.

Of course I’m not going to spell out what makes us different and give away secrets right on our website. But for those of you “in the know” understand what I’m talking about! For those advertisers that want to be in the know, just email me and I’ll fill you in! Just know that I won’t tell you one thing and deliver the complete opposite…as I said above, I can’t lie!

It seems like time moves so much slower during the summer months and everything & everyone are just at their own relaxed pace. Weekends seem longer…lunches turn into all day affairs and floating in the pool is your day’s physical activity. It’s a great time of the year all around. Who doesn’t love sunshine and summer vacations?! Life, though, doesn’t seem slower over here in the affiliate marketing world. It feels as busy and hectic as ever which is a good thing. Weekend summer days wouldn’t be as enjoyable without the hustle and bustle of the work week.

We’ve all been working hard around here at AKMG and are continually adding new exclusive offers, new publishers and further solidifying relationships. We are continuing to see great success with our brand name lead gen campaigns and continuity programs so people out there really are still spending online (in between pool time, of course)! So publishers, be sure to log in frequently to AKMG to see the latest and greatest campaigns we’re running (contact your affiliate manager with any questions). Advertisers, don’t miss out on high quality traffic from the AKMG pubs. Contact me today to get things set up.

Enjoy the upcoming weekend!

I spend most of my day evaluating various offers and landing pages. So I’ve developed a bit of a keen eye in terms of what to look for on web pages and what works. The whole purpose of a landing page is to quickly “sell” someone on your product or service. People online, more than other mediums, only give a landing page an instant to check it out and make a decision either to fill out the form/purchase something or click over to another web page. So you’ve got to make the page that consumers see the best it can possibly be in order to catch their attention in that first instant.

Here are some general helpful tips…these might seem obvious but so many of the pages that I come across do the exact opposite:

1) Keep the design simple and uncluttered
2) Have a clear call-to-action
3) Keep as much pertinent info above the fold
4) Put the data form field on the right hand side of the page - people’s eyes naturally start reading from the left and gradually move to the right side
5) Have a kick butt offer that people want!

If you want to learn more about effective landing page optimization, I recommend the “Landing Page Optimization” book by Tim Ash. We consider Tim a friend of AKMG and the foremost leader in the field. Don’t be a cheapo….go get the book

Having multiple email partners is a topic that has been coming up a lot in the past few weeks with my advertisers and potential new advertisers. While I understand the logic that having a ton of email partners equals the maximum number of leads, there is the other side to that school of thought. As an example, just because you have 20 emails partners, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll hit your capacity or goal each month in terms of volume. Some of our most successful campaigns were when we were the only email partner and were able to greatly exceed their monthly sales goals.

It makes sense if you think of it from a publisher’s perspective. There are many networks out there and they are all hounding the publishers on a daily basis to run their “fantastic” offers. But if a mailer logs into a bunch of networks and sees the same campaign over and over again, the offer loses its appeal. Mailers are looking for offers that are unique and different from the status quo so that they can give their audience something special…leading to higher conversions and more money! If an offer is everywhere, it means it is already saturated in the marketplace and people have most likely come across at it some point so fewer people will convert. If this was another kind of marketing, that might not be a bad thing but we’re PERFORMANCE BASED MARKETING. So conversions are all we really care about!

Let’s keep the unique offers with limited distribution rolling onto AKMG and we’ll all be much happier! We’ll even forget this debate about which is better: multiple or limited email partners.