Performance Marketing Glossary.

The Six Vital Variables of Performance Marketing: Testing Markets, Products, Prices, Offers, Media/Materials, Creative Approaches.

There are basically six major factors which affect the viability of any performance marketing operation, and it is important that you accept from the outset that each of them is variable, and you must test …

Strategic Thinking: Best Methods for Making Performance or Direct Marketing Viable.

In marketing we tend to use the analogies of war. We talk about objectives and targets, about campaigns, overcoming consumer resistance and about mailing shots and the instruments of persuasion. Just as weapons have changed greatly …

The Mathematics of Direct Sales and Performance Marketing Profitability: How to Make One-Shot and Subscription-Based Products and Services Viable.

Before you even begin to think about the detailed techniques of performance marketing and selling your product or service directly – the market, the design of the material, the method of order fulfillment – you …

The Principles and Techniques for Testing Media, Markets, Products, Offers, Creative, and Seasonality: The Short Guide.

Performance marketing is a science and I know of a few instances where a hit-or-miss approach made anyone a fortune. Countless companies have gone under, thinking that direct response advertising, large-scale Facebook, Google Ads, direct …

Strategic Marketing Audit – 93 Self-Appraisal Questions to Improve Your B2B or B2C Marketing Program.

Far too many, both large and small, B2C or B2B businesses of all descriptions, still view "marketing" primarily as selling. The performance marketing industry may as well be the culprit as most of the performance marketers …

B2B Performance Marketing Guide: How to Convince (& Convert) All the Decision-Makers in Each Target Organization.

Whether you are sending thousands of emails or mass-produced print mailing pieces at one time, or one-by-one personalized communications, your business-to-business marketing efforts will be much more effective if you take the time - up …

Creating Effective Online and Print Follow-Ups for Your B2B Sales Leads: 15 Performance Marketing Tips to… Follow.

By now, you should be on a lot of different lists. When you request information on a product or service you are interested in, you generally get put on a list. Similarly, when you buy, …

Writing Ecommerce Copy: The Comprehensive Copywriting Guide.

While copy is often secondary to the illustrations in a general ecommerce store, it plays a vital role. It is like the salesperson’s “close”. The basic role of performance marketing copy in an ecommerce store is …

How to Increase Conversions by Using Negatives and Understatements (Instead of Benefits) in Your Copy: The Short Guide.

Every copywriter is rightfully concerned with telling future buyers all the positive benefits of the promoted products. Benefits sell - but wait a minute! A business-to-business marketer wants solid, qualified leads from his advertising and other performance-based …

12 Techniques to Make Your Performance Marketing Copy Generate Long Term Customers.

A direct response copywriter must recognize one essential fact before writing anything: normally, you are not in a one-shot business. (Unless you are. There are plenty of B2C one-shot businesses that bring hefty profits for …

7 Key Performance Marketing Considerations Before Your Copywriter Starts to Write.

Art attracts, enhances, and creates desire, but performance marketing copy sells. And that brings us to several basic concepts of getting ready for direct response copywriting. Far too many performance marketing managers are mostly concerned with …

How a Small or Medium Company Can Stand Out in a World of Bigger Competitors: Repeatable Uniqueness Model.

The small to mid-size business often produces the same quality product or service as the larger firm, but has a smaller promotion budget and less recognition by potential buyers. Combating this is an ongoing necessity …

How to Add Ecommerce Channel to Your Existing Business: A Guide to Senior Management Strategy Session.

After sizing up the competition and assessing the potential strength of your product line in the world of ecommerce… well, it is time to call a meeting with the people at your company who wear …

Evaluating an Ecommerce Startup: Is an Online Store a Viable Business Option for You?

The consumers everywhere are coming to accept ecommerce as a common means of shopping, rather than an exceptional one. This growing acceptance is making ecommerce more powerful and more competitive than ever before. As a …

How to Create (and Manage) Successful Art and Copy for Your Ecommerce Site and Its Winning Promotions: The Comprehensive Guide.

Ecommerce design is, in many ways, similar to retail store design. The moment you walk into a store you get some pretty specific ideas about merchandise quality, uniqueness, and pricing. The cues are sometimes subtle, …

How to Test: Products, Offers, Creative, and Traffic Sources – The Ecommerce Guide.

This article is intended to help you identify and understand the specific elements that can and should be tested when developing your ecommerce site and its promotional campaigns. Since ecommerce sites are far more complicated …

What to Sell Online: The Guide to Developing Master Merchandising Strategy for Your Ecommerce Site.

Whether it’s a $20,000 fur scarf, a high-end gaming PC, a superbly crafted tool, or an Oxford cloth shirt, the key to success in performance marketing is offering the right products to your customers. While it …

How to Avoid 13 Pitfalls in Direct Response & Performance Marketing Campaigns.

Performance marketing is not for the faint-hearted or those firms, including non-profits, who like to take big leaps without looking. Let me outline potential disasters awaiting the inexperienced or untested performance marketing ideas. Probably the first …

Performance Marketing Checklist #7: Evaluating Your Copy.

You did it! You have completed the greatest copywriting masterpiece of all time. You are overjoyed with the landing page, the letter, the video sales letter script, or the print ad. You are delighted with …

How to Create Direct Response Radio Ads and Make Them Pay: The Guide for 2021 and Beyond (Including Examples and a Swipe File).

Radio listeners are incredibly receptive to direct response tactics. On the one hand, radio commercials are remarkably effective, inexpensive, and simple to create. On the other hand, radio is one of the most underutilized and …

Performance Marketing Checklist #6: Direct Response Product Planning.

Before you embark on a performance marketing program, you need to know what the benefits of your product are, who will purchase the product (the target market), where to reach prospective customers, how many there …

Finding Product Niches & Ecommerce Product Ideas Worth Testing: How to Plan, Design a Test and Forecast Sales.

New product testing is a critical part of any successful business, B2B or B2C, which requires new products and niches for its business model to function. Whether you are an ecommerce looking for winning new …

Winning Customer Acquisition Methods Most Performance Marketers… Ignore.

Nothing is more important to the success of an ecommerce or any “mail order” operation than new customer acquisition. Both online and offline companies simply could not exist without a steady flow of new buyers …

Research for Performance Marketers: How to Increase the Chance Your Next A/B Test Wins.

This article attempts to answer an age-old question among performance marketers and direct marketing experts - "Why conduct market or marketing research when we can test the actual idea out in the real world?" - …

How to Differentiate Your Ecommerce Site: Setting Your Plan to Carve Out a Niche That Sets You Apart From the Competition.

In my opinion, the single most important word in the ecommerce industry is “uniqueness.” This is not to suggest being different merely for the sake of being different, but carefully planning and creating a special …

How to Exponentially Grow Your Ecommerce Store: Two Simple Strategies to Follow (The Short Guide).

Short- and longer-term planning have become commonplace for large corporations. But for the busy sole proprietor or the manager of a profit center in a large corporation proficient in performance marketing methodologies, planning can seem …

4 Growth Strategies for Every Business Using Performance Marketing Methods.

Success stories about the ability of performance marketing companies to grow rapidly abound. A few companies have been able to sustain a compounded growth rate of 30% to 50% per year. More important, many companies …

How to Put the Recency – Frequency – Monetary Formula to Work: The Case of Decreasing Costs of Telemarketing, Direct Mail, SMS Text Campaigns and More.

The RFM formula, described in the following article, is your best tool to optimize all your performance marketing campaigns which involve using your customer or prospect database and tactics that cost money per each contact …

How to Plan Your B2B Marketing Activities – The Guide to a Structured, Calendar Approach.

Managing a successful B2B marketing program requires a planned, system-based approach if you wish to achieve your goals month by month, year by year. At the same time the multitude of available marketing tactics, sales …

Performance Marketing Strategies for B2B Complex and Non-Complex Sales: The How-To Guide With Examples.

Strategies are the use of plans and methods needed to achieve a specific program objective. Direct sale strategies have a single goal - to make a straight sale with no support from the sales staff. …

Explaining Performance Marketing Tools: Profit and Loss Statement (P&L), Contribution to Profit, Back-End Analysis, and More (The Short Guide).

Performance marketing, direct marketing or "direct response advertising" are frequently referred to as a "disciplined," "measurable" methods of marketing. The reason for this is that, in a well planned and executed marketing effort, the cost …

The Comprehensive Guide to Building an In-House Performance Marketing Department vs. Outsourcing – Assessing the B2B Company’s Make or Buy Decision.

As performance marketing has developed over time, it has become a succession of specialized but integrated functions. And business-to-business marketers who run comprehensive performance marketing programs use all these basic functions: plans and strategies, concepts, …

The Short Guide to Financial Planning and Budgeting in a B2B Performance Marketing Organization.

Managing a performance marketing business function requires highly honed management skills: short- and long-term planning, organization, direction, and control and measurement of the work effort to ensure that your objectives get accomplished. What you, the …

Telemarketing in Ecommerce: The “Forgotten” Secret to Larger Baskets and Customer Satisfaction (The Quick Guide).

In the past years, telemarketing has become a – forgotten and then rediscovered – key element in the ecommerce business. The telemarketing professional not only may take orders (which would not happen otherwise) and help …

The Strategic Guide to Testing and Effectiveness Measurement in B2B Performance Marketing (Beyond Counting Conversions and Simple A/B Tests).

The purpose of testing in business-to-business performance marketing is to reduce your risk. Those marketers who use performance marketing campaigns in volume must attain preset sales goals from their online and offline direct response efforts …

The Guide to Choosing and Merchandising Products That Sell [Ecommerce Series].

One of the greatest challenges facing ecommerce marketers is finding fresh, interesting merchandise to include in each promotional campaign. If that challenge is not enough, you as the merchant must also look for special “hooks” …

Developing, Choosing and Testing Effective Traffic Sources: The Strategic Guide [Ecommerce Series].

Without a good traffic source, your ecommerce site will never reach all the customers who wish to buy your merchandise. The art of choosing a profitable traffic source, and the scientific methods used to refine …

The Guide to Niche Ecommerce Copy, Photos & Obvious (But Forgotten) Tactics That Increase Sales [Ecommerce Series].

The creative development of an ecommerce site, including copy, graphics and layout, gives each ecommerce store its own unique personality. Every detail of your site’s creative work should fit with the image you want to …

How to Create a B2B Direct Mail Package That Sells / Converts / Achieves Objectives: The Guide for 2021 and Beyond.

While this article is not about why you should use direct mail in your B2B venture, just bear in mind the direct mail is, contrary to the popular bielief, one of the most cost-effective ways …

Starting Your Niche Ecommerce Site or Just How to Begin Selling Your Products Online [Ecommerce Series].

Running a profitable ecommerce is as tough a chore as anybody in any business faces. You have to be a brilliant merchant, a tough buyer, and an accounting genius. More than that, you have to …

15 Things I Have Learned Consulting and Working with Harvard Business Review: The Applied Creativity in a B2B Performance Marketing Organization

According to a classic direct marketing rule the relative value of the target audience, offer, and creative aspects to the total marketing effort is 40 percent, 40 percent, and 20 percent, respectively. While all three …

How to Beat the Odds and Win at the Ecommerce Game: The Simple Steps to Take If Your Online Store is Failing.

Everyone, it seems, wants to get into the ecommerce business. Big companies, small companies, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, get-rich-quick dreamers and your aunt whom everyone has told, “You have such great gift ideas, you should start …

B2B Lead Generation and Direct Sales Ideas, Value Propositions, Offers & Content That Bring Conversions: The Comprehensive Guide.

Most experienced business-to-business performance marketing practitioners consider "the offer" just as important to a successful promotion as the prospect list targeted which complies with the 40/40/20 classic rule. Stated simply, a direct response offer is …

B2B Market Segmentation: The Secret of Highly Efficient Performance Marketing Programs For Business-to-Business Ventures.

The prime goal of any performance marketing program is to reach potential profitable markets. If you do not reach the right markets, the program will fail, regardless of how persuasive your copy or how attractive …

15 Things to Consider Before Starting Your Ecommerce Business.

While ecommerce marketing has elements of both retail selling and performance marketing, there are important differences that you need to understand when you set out to create a successful ecommerce venture. First of all, ecommerce …

The (Quite) Definitive Guide to B2B Lead Generation & Outbound Marketing: A Simple Model to Implement In a B2B Company of Any Size.

Marketing B2B products was relatively inexpensive in the past while costs for data processing were out of reach for all but the largest companies. Now, the picture has been reversed, with marketing and selling costs …

How to Create Self-Qualifying B2B Lead Generation Offers and Get Sales Leads That Your Sales People Will Love: The Rare Guide Which Does Not Overcomplicate the Subject.

This guide will help you develop leadgen offers that will generate high response rates and the best qualified sales leads your sales force has ever experienced. While the guide is geared toward B2B industry, the …

The Ultra-Short Guide to Writing Short Copy.

Short copy is never written. It is rewritten as short copy. That is, the method is to write your message out in as much detail and as great a length as you wish - in …

How to Manage Your Performance Marketing Program: The Simple Rules to Avoid Disasters and Unnecessary Risk.

Every organization, program, or task has a goal. And that is simply a statement or identification of the result sought - what we want or need to accomplish. For planning and control purposes it is …

How to Slash Your Advertising Costs And Increase Number of Orders – Both At the Same Time.

This blog post is directed primarily to the general marketer who is looking for practical, proven ways to: Reduce risksCut costsImprove performance, andGet more value for the dollar. Small-budget considerations are highlighted throughout the article in an …

The Short Guide to Lead Generation Ads & Valuable Free Gifts: How to Make Them Work Both Online & Offline.

Lead generation (a.k.a. inquiry advertising) is simply advertising designed solely to elicit leads (inquiries) from individuals. These inquiries then become sales leads, in the case of those enterprises where each such inquiry is to be …

Performance Marketing Testing Framework: The Most & Least Important Elements to A/B Test.

Even after years of experience, sometimes selling the same item or kind of item for many years, I still find myself surprised by the results of my campaigns. Often I discover that what worked very …

Performance Marketing Checklist #5: Planning the Performance Marketing Offer, Promotion & Copy.

Several checklists are provided here for you in the form of worksheets and planning guides. But first there let's discuss key considerations in making up a performance marketing offer for your online (Facebook, Google Taboola …

How to Differentiate Your Product, Service Or Business in 8 Easy Ways: The Quick Guide.

Back in elementary school, do you remember trying to be the first one in line to go to the lunchroom, go out for recess, or start a game? Regardless, at some point in your life, …

How To Choose The Winning Product Ideas for Your B2C or B2B Business (And It’s Not About the Obvious Wet Testing or Lean Method).

“Anything that won't sell, I don’t want to invent.’’ - Thomas Edison That idea of Thomas Edison’s is shared by most companies today. It’s the principle behind new product concept testing - trying to evaluate the …

The Quick Guide to Marketing Research For a Company of Any Size.

The Four Ps of marketing are product, price, place, and promotion. If you have the right product costing the right price, available at the right place, and you promote it properly to the right market, …

(Yet Another) Guide to Creating Performance Marketing Offers That Bring Conversions (Includes Some Exercises, Too).

The first step in deciding what the offer is to be is to have a realistic view of what an offer is. Surprisingly few entrepreneurs, whether Amazon sellers, independent ecommerce venture owners or actually anyone …

Performance Marketing Checklist #4: Defining the Demographic & Psychographic Profile of Your Market.

Head to this blog post on Demographics and Psychographics for any necessary explanation before filling out the checklists below. Performance-Marketing-Checklist-4Download Part 1: The Demographic Profile of Your Market Step 1. Make several copies of Part 1 so you …

The Guide to Planning Your Performance-Based Marketing Strategies (Or the Very First Steps Before Doing Just Anything Marketing-Related).

The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) attributes the lack of planning as the single biggest cause of business failures in the United States. It’s simply not true to say if you build a better mousetrap …

Performance Marketing Checklist #3: Defining Performance Marketing Goals.

Often, top management will decide that the company’s products can be sold by direct response / performance marketing methods and will then lay the responsibility for such sales on an existing department. To ensure success, …

The Short Guide to Successful Lead Generation Directed To Your Current Customers Database (So That You Can Sell Your High-Ticket Products or Services).

Opening doors is what lead generation is all about. A lead is a positive response from a potential buyer about a product or service offered in an offline or online ad, a phone call or …

The Short Guide on How to Develop and Select a Product or Service That Will Work With Performance Marketing Strategies.

Everyday we see people drive through dangerous intersections without bothering to look to see if the intersections are clear of oncoming traffic. These persons assume that there is no danger to themselves. Study this blog …

The Short Guide to Building a Successful Performance Marketing Program at Your Company.

A firm belief in and commitment to the idea of performance marketing is essential to the success of any performance marketing program. If you aren’t well armed with facts, you will waste money. An inadequately …

The Non-Designer’s Guide to Online and Offline Performance Marketing Design.

Here are some of the highlights of this exciting and dynamic subject: How changes in visual design can make a significant differences in response rates and affect the quality (either upscale or downscale) of the customer …

The Guide to Strategic A/B Testing: How to Test Everything from Landing Pages to Telemarketing Scripts.

Here are some of the highlights of topics you’ll learn about in this blog post on performance marketing tests: Why you should have a well-defined objective before doing any A/B split-test with your landing pages, Google …

The Guide to Crafting the Performance Marketing Offer Step By Step.

The old joke was: Now you can borrow enough to get completely out of debt! - sign in window of a Chicago loan company This sign makes an offer that is difficult to refuse, particularly if you …

Performance Marketing Checklist #2: Launching a Successful Performance Marketing Program.

Like almost everything in marketing, performance marketing doesn’t come cheap. But when it’s based on a strategic plan that’s been developed with absolute precision it can be impressively, even spectacularly, cost-effective. A successful performance marketing …

The Guide to Performance Marketing Sales Message: How to Write Sales-Generating Copy For Every Online and Offline Medium.

Facebook ads? Email copy? Landing pages for your Google Ads, Taboola or Bing traffic? Free standing inserts? Brochures? E-commerce product descriptions? eBay listings? Amazon or Kindle/KDP book sales copy? Direct mail packages? IVRs producing sales? …

Performance Marketing Checklist #1: Successful Direct Mail Package.

This is a start of a new expert series in a form of easy-to-use performance marketing checklists. Each and every one of them will save you time and boost your marketing effectiveness. They'll enable you …