Using Soft Incentives to Generate Leads
In the previous post, we highlighted an approach by affiliates to both promote a service where the creation of an unrelated jump page was necessary to have the ad listed. Were the affiliate or even the company themselves to send traffic directly to their landing page, the cost per click that Google would set would as a minimum would make it cost prohibitive for them to spend. If for example, you have a target cost per action of $1.50 (the case with the email submit campaigns), you can’t buy a $5 click. As a result, those wanting to promote certain campaigns get creative in order to buy more affordable clicks. For the free ipod offers, it can mean using “Polls” to buy traffic on keywords unrelated to the ultimate campaign. The ultimate promotion is a free (ipod, gift card, camera, etc.), but the pages have to do with users opinions on pop-culture. Without such a tactic, the free offer couldn’t ever appear directly on keywords relating to Harry Potter or Twighlight.
Distilled, the affiliate tactic used for the incentive promotion ads involves creative ways to a) buy traffic on keywords not directly relevant to the core business and b) pay less for traffic than they would if they tried to bid directly.
