The Incentive Marketing Game
I made the biggest mistake on Tuesday, sending out an email early morning right after a three day weekend. (For many, a four day weekend). For anyone who has been in the industry long enough, they all know that you never send out a newsletter like that – no one reads or responds to it. This morning however, I am going to try to send a newsletter out a little later and hope for more results.
This morning, I wanted to talk a little about the incentive marketing game, which still has a significant impact on revenue generation of almost every company in the marketplace. We’ve even come up with a word that my spell-check hates, called incentivization, which is the process where you provide rewards for filling out offers, signing up for a service or some other pay-per-action type service. Incentive based advertising is probably one of the most hated, yet needed systems in the industry and perhaps its time for a frank discussion.
Despite all the issues with incentivization, I would gather over $2 Billion of “results” (if not more) are created based on incentivize companies in the US. Companies like TheUseful, ModernAds, Webclients buy millions of dollars of registrations to their “Free IPOD” type sites a week, and that is only a part of the incentivization game. Social Gold, Content Password Incent, all generate significant income and push traffic and thus money around and into the industry. Netflix, Disney DVD, GameFly, New York Times and tons of other educational, car finders, insurance companies generate significant leads and sales from these sites. In fact, many “brand” companies either are directly involved, in the revenue path of these programs benefiting enormously financially from the online incentize system.
In the next weeks I plan to introduce specifically the incentive models that are out there, with the real hope that brand agencies take note of these models and start looking at these as possible solutions. While there is always some concern that incentivizes drive junk traffic, there are always solutions and metric based analysis that work around these issues and create real programs that generate revenue, sales and brand exposure. Agencies and brands need to pay attention and take as much as they can – I assure you that if you read what I am writing (and perhaps email me with questions) you will learn methods that many of your brands will appreciate long term.
Quick explanation today: Incentivizes can bring traffic and then you, through back end methods can convert them into customers. While perhaps a free IPOD offer is not the best solution for your company, social gold might just work for extensive reach for a brand. Let’s say that you are GM motors and you want to reach tons of people on Facebook. Instead of following what some brand-social-media-expert says on “making friends” on facebook and wasting your budget, work with a direct response expert to reward people on social games for visiting your site. When they come to your site, make the action viewing a video about a new car and then filling out a survey on the back end about the car. A well-weighted survey that asks questions like “Do you prefer black or red plush leather seats in the car…” will then engage the consumer and create brand awareness. The reward is bringing the consumer to the site to answer questions and watch the video, you then turn them into an interested customer.
Despite writing about mainly DR and Affiliate marketing, we have a significant brand audience on IndustryPace – which means some agencies are paying attention and trying to learn how to engage consumers beyond boring banners. I’d like to engage some of those media-buyers and media-supervisors to actually email me with questions and more importantly, to talk about their clients.
Also, if you have suggestions on how brands can workwith your company, send me an email and I’ll consider publishing it as a column also. Let’s be honest – in ten years, the agencies that survive will be those that listen to the DR world (and read my columns) and those that don’t make the changes will be gone. Let’s start helping them move in the right direction.
?
3 Responses to “The Incentive Marketing Game”
Leave a Reply
(C) 2010 Pace Lattin. It is the policy of this blogger to not edit or remove any content and comments, unless it is specifically attacking a protected group or irrelevant to the conversation, such as a spam. These are the OPINIONS of the respective writers, posters, commentators. All DCMA Notices shoudl be sent to pace@pacelattin.com
I agree that incent traffic is something brands should be looking at to bust out of the "boring banners" online marketing syndrome. That and emerging media opportunities (TV-CPA, mobile, API strategies, etc.). But I think incent traffic, because it has a higher percentage of junk and fraud in it, is generally better for "branding" campaigns, such in the example you provided. As such, it should be compared with other types of branding strategies to determine if the ROI is acceptable.
Running DR campaigns on incent sites is dangerous — not that it can’t be done successfully. But enter the game with caution!
Incentive marketing is so widespread, from buy one get one free everywhere, to a local radio station giving away an Ipod to 1 person who friends their facebook account.
Its time to allow the industry to accept whatever way they can get the traffic, and then concentrate on converting them to being profitable. The ones that do that WIN!
Your thoughts on the promotion of adult material like online gambling through the different options ?