Category: Affiliate Marketing Tips

Paid virtual events are the new golden ticket for publishers

One of the only redeeming qualities of virtual events in an otherwise bruised and abused industry that relies on its events business is the immense amount of scale that they can offer— for both publishers and their advertising clients.

But beyond opening doors into new untapped markets, some consumer-facing and business-to-business publishers are monetizing those new attendees directly through ticket sales. This action on its own offers some revenue, though often at a fraction of what is typically charged for in-person events. However, there other commercial plays in the offing.

“There are other added benefits for publishers to have ticketing on their events, beyond the revenue,” said Ben Hindman, CEO of virtual events platform Splash.

For example, a paying audience guarantees a higher turn out rate. Approximately 90% of people who buy a ticket to an event will attend it, while only about 25% of people who register for a free event will actually tune in, said Hindman. And that engagement becomes appealing to some advertisers who want guaranteed high quality lead generation in a challenging economy climate.

Eric Gillin, Condé Nast’s chief business officer of the publisher’s culture division said that early in the pivot to virtual events, advertisers had a propensity to want them to be free in order to get as many eyeballs on their brands as possible. “But what we’ve found is that when you charge money, you get much deeper engagement,” he said. 

For example, this year’s New Yorker Festival beat its 2019 ticket sales by about 30%, said Gillin, which would bring its total tickets sold to close to 26,000. But beyond that, the level of engagement that occurred through rewatching sessions and post-event ticket sales to watch the recordings was exponentially more than the number tickets sold, he said. During the live sessions, the average number of minutes watched for each panel was over 35 minutes.

“People were not tuning in, sampling and bouncing,” he said. And more time on the screen means more chances to engage with a sponsor.

Both Skift’s chief product officer Jason Clampet and MIT Technology Review’s CEO and publisher Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau said that their attendance and engagement on virtual events that had a paid component was significantly higher than free events.

One of Skift’s Global Forums that took place this September was priced at $195 and 95% of the more than 1,200 ticket buyers attended some aspect of the live event. The remaining 5% later accessed the event recording, Clampet said.

Earlier this summer, before adding the ticketing component to its virtual events, Clampet said that the attendance rate of a summit that garnered 5,000 registrations was 50% and of that.

MIT Tech Review’s virtual EmTech Conference nearly doubled its ticket sales from last year to this year, increasing from about 400 to 800 paid attendees, according to Bramson-Boudreau.

“When you charge for any event, you are going to get a lot less drop off and many more people will show up. They have voted with their time and their dollars. They told their bosses that they will take time to attend and used their [time and expense] as well,” said Bramson-Boudreau.

Of course, ticket prices for virtual events are not even close to in-person event equivalents.

Skift’s online Global Forum this past September was priced at $195 — about a 95% decrease over the $2,500 to $3,500 price point for its in-person forum. And MIT Technology Review’s three-day-long virtual EmTech conference happening this month was priced at one-third of an in-person ticket, with its cheapest option running $650 versus the original price of $2,000.

The New Yorker found that it was still able to charge its consumer audience $19 per session or $49 for an all-access pass to its virtual flagship festival, which, last year, was priced between $49 and $79 for a single in-person session or the premiere pass for $899.

Conversely, business-to-business publisher Questex — which has an entire portfolio of conferences and events across several B2B sectors including pharma and hospitality — has been able to keep virtual ticket rates close to on par with in-person rates. Rhiannon James, president of life science, healthcare and technology at Questex, said that her team is able to charge virtual attendees about 75% of the in-person ticket cost for some of its niche market events.

James said she also sees that people who pay have a higher propensity of tuning in and that even if they are not watching live, they consistently go to the event hubs and partner content sites to access white papers, presentations and other materials that are included in their purchase. 

“By charging, you provide really high quality leads to sponsors,” said James. And while it may be a couple hundred top-tier leads, those leads are exponentially more likely to make a purchase from a sponsor than 2,000 regular leads that trickle in and out during an event, or don’t tune in at all.

This indication of an engaged and high quality audience that comes from being a paying customer can also level up advertising deals, and “the amount that they can charge for sponsorships far exceeds the ticket revenue,” Hindman said.

Bramson-Boudreau added that most of the sponsorships on Tech Review’s virtual events take place on its paid events versus free versions and because of that, her team uses its free event offers as a chance to play around with new content areas and learn about how audiences respond.

Moreover, free events have a lot of what she calls “dabblers” or people who might be fans of the brand, but are not the decision makers and budget holders at their companies. “Dabblers are harder for the advertiser to convert,” she said.

And ticket pricing is one way of figuring out more about a new audience member, Hindman said. A person paying for a $49 ticket over a $19 ticket, for instance, might indicate that they are more inclined to spend more on things that are of interest to them, which is valuable information to share with sponsors. 

“Heading into it, [advertisers] were of the mind that free is better than paid, and I think now we have a really compelling story that showcases how big a paid event can be and what impact it can have,” said Gillin. “You need the right audience and approach, but it can punch above its weight in a real way.” 

The post Paid virtual events are the new golden ticket for publishers appeared first on Digiday.

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Affiliate Marketing on a Small Budget: 5 Strategies to Stretch Your Dollar

Having an endless budget to spend on testing campaigns and traffic sources is every affiliate’s dream.

However, as a beginner, you’re likely to have a small budget with a specific number in mind that you don’t want to go over.

Even if you’re an experienced veteran, there’s several factors that could put you in a position where you don’t want to pump a ton of your money into campaigns at the moment.

To make small budget affiliate marketing work, you simply need to alter your promotion strategies.

We’ve determined five ways to do just that.

You’ll notice that most of our below recommended strategies follow a trend of attempting to reduce competition with other affiliates. That’s because this is a tried and true way to make affiliate marketing work with a reduced budget.

If you’re trying to buy traffic or target users that large, big-budget affiliates are already buying and targeting, you’re naturally going to have to spend a lot of money to compete.

The following strategies will allow you to avoid that competition while still reaching users who are hungry for the product or service you’re promoting.

1. Narrow Your Niche 

Finding a niche and then shrinking its appeal is one way to combat over-saturation. It increases the cost efficiency of your budget by decreasing competition with other affiliates, many with larger budgets than yourself.

Where there is less competition, there’s usually less spending on keywords, ad space, etc.

To accomplish this, choose a popular niche and start thinking of how you can break it down into sub-niches.

Here’s an example.

Fitness: This is a long-standing lucrative vertical but one that’s saturated and highly competitive. There are already countless active ads focusing on weight-loss or a general active lifestyle backed by significant spending.  

To stretch your budget, create ads that focus on smaller fitness communities like bodybuilding, cross-fitters and even users following particular diets like paleo or intermittent fasting.

The product or service you’re promoting doesn’t need to be specific to those sub-niches as long it still relates to fitness. Just make sure your campaign angle, ad copy, and landing page fill in any gaps that exist between the content of the offer and the sub-niche. (Eg. Why people on a paleo diet should purchase this fitness program.)

2. Target Smaller demographics

The goal here is to discover users that are being missed by broad, large-budget targeting.

It’s similar to the sub-niche strategy we discussed above except you’re applying it specifically to demographics.

To do this, you’ll need to spend some time brainstorming creative angles for a campaign. In doing so, it will lead you to more unique users and hopefully untapped leads.      

Let’s say you’ve found a credit score campaign at MaxBounty that you’d like to promote.  

Just advertising to female credit card users will stretch you too thin.

Instead, you could target younger users in their 20s who are shopping for their first new vehicle. They may be so caught up in finding their dream car that they’ve forgotten how they’ll need a great credit score to finance. You can be the one to refresh their memory.

Dead set on a diet campaign? You could think outside the box by targeting middle-aged grooms who don’t want to look out-of-shape in comparison to their beautiful brides on their wedding day.

By narrowing your demographic, you can reach people who have the same level of interest in what you’re promoting but at a lower cost than a wider audience.

3. Select the Right Campaigns

When working with a small budget, it’s important to choose campaigns that are likely to cost you less to test and promote.

It’s also wise to choose campaigns that have a broad appeal. This usually means avoiding cost-per-sale campaigns with high rates.

CPS campaigns are more likely to be high risk/high reward. They also tend to require more budget for testing to determine what’s working and what isn’t.

With a cost-per-lead campaign with a lower rate, you have a greater chance of capturing leads which you can then use to assess your strategy, traffic source, creatives, etc.

Surveys, sweepstakes, and email submit campaigns are just a few great options for smaller budget affiliates for the reasons mentioned above.

We’ll discuss later how you can narrow the niche during your promotion, but the campaigns itself should appeal to a wide range of users.

4. Promote Campaigns in Less Popular Countries 

One of the most common ways to stretch a small budget in affiliate marketing is to avoid promoting campaigns in the most popular English-speaking countries.

Highly populated English-speaking countries like the US and the UK are the top choice for many affiliates. That’s because they offer wide reach while eliminating the need to translate creatives to another language.   

By putting in some extra work, you can find less competitive leads in countries like Sweden, Norway, Brazil, and South Africa to name a few.

However, we don’t recommend just using a service to translate your campaign (ad copy, LP, etc.) to another language and promoting the campaign. This strategy can yield poor results.

Different countries simply have different preferences.

You won’t find the same potato chip flavours in the UK as you will in North America. Residents in those countries prefer tastes that are ingrained in the culture of that region.  

You need to take the same approach when shifting campaign angles to different countries.

Take some time and think of ways you can alter your creatives to be more appealing in other geos. This could be as simple as changing your ad image and landing page headline to something that represents the culture of that country.

5. Utilize Less Competitive Traffic Sources 

In 2020 there are more traffic sources available to affiliates than ever before. From dozens of social platforms like Instagram and Snapchat to countless traffic networks like Taboola and Propeller Ads.

A simple way to save some cash is to avoid the top-tier premium traffic sources that cost the most money.

For example, let’s say you’re planning on using search traffic for your campaign.

You likely view Google Ads as the search alpha dog, and for good reason. Their platform simply offers unprecedented volume and reach.

However, their biggest competitor, Bing Ads shouldn’t just be viewed as a runner-up. In fact, they’re actually superior to Google Ads in several ways:

  • Easier to target an older demographic
  • Reaches users with a higher average household income
  • Cheaper cost-per-click

That last one is likely the most important if you’re on a tight budget.

Where Bing lacks in overall reach compared to Google it makes up for it in cost.

Bing’s average cost-per-click is 60% lower than Google’s.

Bing Ads is not just a substitute. It’s an alternative that can provide great results at a fraction of the cost.

With traffic platforms, you can save a lot of money by choosing the proverbial Pepsi over Coke. Most of the time the conversions will taste just as sweet.  

The post Affiliate Marketing on a Small Budget: 5 Strategies to Stretch Your Dollar appeared first on MaxBounty Blog.

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