Traffic - Building and Managing the Flow - Week 12

Exercises

1) Find an article on affiliate marketing (for example search
http://www.iabuk.net ) What is the difference between affiliate marketing and PPC (Pay per click) marketing and what are the advantages and disadvantages of both?
Affiliate Marketing is an Internet-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate's marketing efforts. Pay per click (PPC) is an Internet advertising model used on websites, in which advertisers pay their host only when their ad is clicked. PPC involves "focusing on keywords and phrases that are relevant to a company's target market. Then, when a consumer types a matching keyword into a search engine, or visits a website that has content relevant to that keyphrase, the company's advertisements are displayed." (http://www.yourwsiadvantage.com/pay-per-click-marketing.aspx)
Affiliate marketingAdvantages
* One of the biggest benefits of affiliate marketing, is you can work from home and the work is minimal
* Easy way to create additional income for both merchants and websites
* Increase brand exposure
* If done correctly, knowing customer needs and desires can create a knowing of market trends which can help future sales in the sense that the website knows how to market products more effectively next time
* Merchants can gain more customers without spending valuable time in searching for them

Disadvantages
* High commission costs
* Brand may be misinterpretated
* Increase search engine costs
* Fraud - Link hijackers have been known to get paid instead of the merchant hacking into sites
* There are also false advertising, unlawful use of trade names, logos, or brands

Pay per Click
Advantages
* Instant Traffic - Pay per click advertising can provide instant traffic to your website
* Control & Flexibility - Pay per click advertising offers you greater control and flexibility than regular search engines
Simple to develop
No need to change website
Large range advertisers (search engines)

Disadvantages
* One main disadvantage to using this advertising has a lot to do with your market. If you are not trying to appeal to a niche group, this could have you in direct competition with a few hundred other marketers for select keywords
* taking the time to learn all the complexities involved with it
* Can become a bidding war
* Visiters may be competitors or people playing pranks
* Can be costly over long term
* Can be subject to fraud

2) How is CRM relevant to affiliate marketing?
CRM and affiliate marketing would seemingly be a perfect match. So much of what affiliate marketing handles is customer-driven, it only makes sense for the affiliate marketer to want the customer base to be satisfied. The result is a customer who feels valued. The relationship between affiliate marketing and customer relationship marketing can be said to be one where one party acts as a means to attract the consumer and the other helps to improve retention and brand loyalty.

3) Where does viral marketing fit into this mix? For an example check out the 'Obama girl'. Who/what is the purpose of the Obama girl. Find your own links for this one!
Viral marketing "refers to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_marketing). Viral marketing fits into this mix because it is using pre-existing social netowrks to increase the awareness of their brands.
The purpose of the obama girl is to raise awareness to Barrack Obama's presedential campaign. The way the video was done appealed to the younger generation who took notice. I also think she may have had an ulteria motive, such as trying to make it in hollywood by riding on the back of a popular canditate for the presidency. I think this is evidence in the fact she continued to make another video with her friends and another girl who was a supporter of McCain.

5) Methods used to improve search engine ranking include
Frequency of occurrence in body copy
Number of inbound links
Inclusion in directories such as dmoz
Title HTML Tag
Meta tags
Hidden graphic text
What is dmoz? Read about dmoxz in wikipedia. What seach engines use dmox? I have a personal online book business called OZRURAL. Is it listed in dmoz?

The Open Directory Project (ODP), also known as Dmoz is a multilingual open content directory of World Wide Web links owned by Netscape that is constructed and maintained by a community of volunteer editors. ODP uses a hierarchical ontology scheme for organizing site listings. Listings on a similar topic are grouped into categories, which can then include smaller categories. ODP data powers the core directory services for many of the Web's largest search engines and portals, including Netscape Search, AOL Search, Google, and Alexa. Yes OZRURAL is listed on Dmoz.