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November 19, 2007
"Fill in the Blank" is Dead
By Brandon Perry, Affiliate Manager
CPA Empire
How many times have we heard these dire words said in connection to some aspect of the internet? When the first dotcom bubble burst back in 2001, people actually said “the internet is dead.” Since then, we have heard that email, banners, paid content, and a host of other industry practices were dead. But, do things really die in this industry, or do they change and evolve in new ways that we can’t always predict? We can certainly debate this idea about many activities that have been declared DOA. However, we can safely say that one marketing initiative once declared dead by many in the industry is very much alive. A few years ago email marketing was certainly seen as being on its last legs. Many marketers were so discouraged by their results that they decided to abandon the medium entirely.
As we all know today, email marketing is thriving, with marketers finding tremendous success with this medium. Where many people saw only insurmountable challenges, others saw opportunity and found ways to get their emails delivered, opened, and responded to.
It wasn’t long ago that the search marketing industry was turned on its ear by algorithm changes made by various search engines. Sites that came up on the first page in search results one day seemed to disappear the next. Similarly to email, there were those who decided that the new environment was to difficult to navigate so they moved on to other marketing methods, rather than try to learn how to work within the new search landscape. While others took the changes as a wake-up call to get their web pages more organized, cleaner, and more content oriented, realizing that they are providing information to the internet and not just buying traffic for their campaigns. A few months after the new algorithms went into effect I, noticed search campaigns being geared more towards the pre-sale of an offer and web pages being more informative on the products they marketed.
Lately, I have been hearing that one field entries, including zip and email submit offers may be the next practice that is declared dead. These types of campaigns have been around for some time, going through their own cycles of being saturated at some points, and fresh at others. They have performed well for both search and email marketers, but have generated the most response in the incentive industry. Today, we may be seeing some saturation with these campaigns, but that’s not to say that they are dead.
As with some of the other marketing practices that have been declared dead, innovation is the key to keeping these kinds of offers effective. In looking at the number of affiliates who are marketing these offers effectively, I notice that many of them are not using incentivized sites or email. Instead, they are thinking outside the traditional box and finding new ways to market these offers successfully.
The next time you hear that some marketing tactic is dead or dying, look at it as a potential opportunity. When many marketers start walking away from a medium, those who persevere and find ways to overcome the challenges may just find even more success in the new environment
“Change has a considerable psychological impact on the human mind. To the fearful it is threatening because it means that things may get worse. To the hopeful it is encouraging because things may get better. To the confident it is inspiring because the challenge exists to make things better.” King Whitney Jr.
Posted by Tom at November 19, 2007 02:20 AM