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Jeffrey Sage is the Director of Marketing for Burstabit Media, Inc. Sage has an MBA in Marketing and an MBA in Business Management, more than 25 years marketing experience and more than 15 years of business management experience -- with 10 plus years in executive level management.

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Get a 4:1 Payoff at Pricey Trade Shows

Written on
August 25th 2008
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by Jeffrey Sage  |
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affiliate11.jpgADOTAS — Now that you have created your landing page and set up the legal registration of your new affiliate marketing company, you are ready for the money to come flooding in. Think again: there are steps that need to be followed first (covered here in parts 1 and 2). In the article, I’ll present you with Parts 3 and 4 of a four-part series.

Part 3: Trade shows 

If you have an accountant in your company, the conversation about spending money to go to a trade show might go something like this: the sales department needs to go the XYZ trade show in any town, USA and the bill is going to be around $20,000. We had a great time last year; we ate at this restaurant, stayed in this hotel, and went to these extra events. We need to be at this trade show!!!!! The accountant looks at you and says that it is not in the budget. You only gave the accountant the dollar info and what you did, thus the answer is we do not have the money. If you went to the accountant with this all of the facts of the ROI, the conversation might sound like this.

The sales department needs to go the XYZ trade show in any town, USA and the bill is going to be around $20,000. Not only is the trade show going to cost $20,000 we also want to take a few clients out for an extra event which will cost $5,000 bring the total to $25,000. Now before you say no, here is some information you need to consider. During the last show at this location, over 5,000 people attended the show. We ended up having over 150 leads from the show, which turned into 10 new partners, which have been with us since the show. Those partners have produced over $100,000 in revenue to our company in the last year. Thus spending a mere $25,000 for the sales department to be at this show will have a 4 to 1 payoff. The accountant will look at the numbers, write the check then, and wish you a great trip.

Now, the question is what trade show should your company have a booth. In the affiliate marketing industry there are several trade shows that allow you to have the exposure that is needed. There is Affiliate Summit, Ad-Tech, and Leads-Con. All of these have shows both in the West Coast and East Coast, and some have International shows as well. Some of the shows run as much as $15,000 for a booth. Sometimes it’s best to attend larger shows, to maximize dollar value to attendees.

Trade shows have proven to be one of the most effective ways to allow affiliate-marketing companies to gain access to the decision makers. There have been studies done in several trade magazines, and trade show publications about the types of people that attend trade shows as attendees rather than having a booth. Over 77% of the attendees have some kind of buying power, 63% of those are looking to buy at the show. There are 79% of the attendees will be a new contact for your business, yes there is some exception to this number in example Coke, or Nike. The attendees will tell six-plus other people about their experience if it was good or better, and will tell 20 people if the experience was not good. For the affiliate marketing company if the trade show has 5,000 attendees at a previous show, then the promoters should have around the same number or more at the next one. The question to you as an affiliate marketing company is how many of these 5,000 people would you like to tell your story to and have as a partner to your company.

Branding

The next step in allowing your affiliate company to grow is to have a brand that is recognized across the industry. This process will not happen overnight unless a huge amount of money is spent to get the branding done. The most effective way to have a trusted brand and one that is recognizable across the industry is to establish your company as an expert, attend the trade shows, and be able to market your company. Having a brand that will set your company apart will allow other aspects of your business to grow, for example word of mouth and a referral program.

Part 4: Running on the correct platform
Quality
Does quality matter when you need a tracking platform to help you run your affiliate marketing company? Ask the companies who are no longer in business due to inaccurate tracking, they will tell you that it does make the difference between becoming successful and shutting the doors. Looking at the avenues that you can travel to have a tracking platform is like looking at a map of the United States. There are many ways to get from San Francisco to New York City, some better and faster than others, but in the end hundreds of ways to make the journey. There are not as many tracking platforms as there are roads, but there are still choices to be made.
One of the indicators that a platform has a high quality is the retention rate of the partners who are using the platform. You cannot look at only the testimonials of the companies; those testimonials are usually biased for that certain company. The real way to get the numbers for the retention is to do you research. LinkTrust claims that there is a 95.7% retention rate, while Direct Track claims that there is over 85% retention rate. Direct Track has been on the block longer than LinkTrust, and has a larger customer base. This could be the sole factor in the difference in numbers.

Customer service
Customer service is a huge issue in any company. There have been some very large companies in the world who, have over the years have felt the impact about not having the best customer service. There are also companies who clients will go out of their way to become a permanent client of that company, and one of the reasons is the customer service. There are also companies who do not care what the customer service is like, since there are no other competitors in that industry, example your gas or power companies. Customer service is one of the reasons affiliate-marketing company will choose a platform over another platform.
In the world of affiliate marketing, companies and people talk between each other. There is also a very high turnover rate within affiliate-marketing companies. With these facts, it is important to have a platform that has a higher level of customer service. A few companies have become advocates for the platforms that they use, and have spoken with a loud voice about the customer service that they receive. Some of those companies are Get Ads, Blink Ads, Niche Marketers, and Traffic Venue.

Applications

LinkTrust is in the process of releasing a new version of their software titled version 6.0. In this software release, one of the major changes that will take place is the ability to have a tiered payout for the affiliates who use the platform. Direct Track already has a tiered payout program in their platform, the issue is that it is outdated and they are not spending the time or money to upgrade the platform at this time.

Other services
There are other issues that must be looked at when deciding which platform is going to be the best for your company, one of them being what other services are included in the cost of the license. Is your invoice going to change with every small contact with the tracking platform company, or are their services part of the original contract. One of the reasons that Get Ads, Blink Ads, Niche Marketers, and Traffic Venue are advocates for their platform is the constancy of the invoices. Most companies do not like surprises when it comes to the invoice.

Study hard and make sure that you do your research to find the best tracking platform for your company. I wish you the best in business. Remember luck does not happen it is planned for.



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Reader Comments.

great, $100k in revenue for a $25k cost. question is, how much profit? maybe this sample company has only a 10% gross margin???

Posted by dave | 12:23 pm on October 1, 2008.

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