5 Things I Learnt at the A4U Expo
Just a quick post (about time!) to say what a good time I had at the A4U Expo on the 14th and 15th of October. I’d originally not planned to go having been snowed under with work but team DGM enticed me with a free ticket and after a bit of cajoling from Helen, Cat, Jess and Kev I simply couldn’t say no! So here are the main 5 things I’m taking away from the Expo.
- Matt Wood and the team at Existem do a cracking job
Fantastic organisation from start to finish and Matt was omnipresent as he seemed to be in every seminar, bar and exhibition making sure everything was running smoothly. In fact I was surprised he wasn’t in the gents offering me a hand towel and some aftershave to “freshen up”.
- I Just read that back and it maybe sounds a bit iffy - I mean the guys in toilets in nightclubs and bars who offer you aftershave etc etc - maybe it’s just Northampton?!!! - Free Bars lead to a lot of drunk affiliates!
Thanks to Affiliate Future, the Artists formerly known as buy.at, DGM and everyone else who put their hand in their pocket to ensure that affiliates got as drunk as possible. There were a number of casualties and fortunately for me the only major issue I had was remembering what floor I was on in the hotel (oh and losing my train ticket). Being a shy and retiring type I’m never that keen on “networking” but once a few beers had slipped down it was great to meet lots of new people in the industry - and not just people trying to sell something to you! - Try seminars on subjects you don’t have a great knowledge of.
On day 1 I stuck to mainly SEO type seminars and was left a little disappointed as they obviously need to target a level of learning that won’t put off the newbies. I’m not saying I’m a specialist by any means but a lot of the topics covered was information / techniques I’m already aware of - that’s not to say they weren’t good, there was still the odd nugget of information that made them worthwhile for me. On day 2 however, I made the conscious decision to view a wider breadth of seminars and was please I did as I really enjoyed the seminars on PR, Voucher Codes, Million Dollar Blogging Strategies and Meet the Super Affiliates. - Leaving the office for a few days (with hangover time) means you end up working all weekend!
Coming back to a stack of emails from existing projects plus all the new contacts from the expo means I have only just had time to start writing my blog post, I also have a stack of content updates to do as well as watch the Cobblers (hopefully) beat Yeovil, Utd (hopefully) beat West Brom and update the Wombles website with last weeks match report! - Meeting your hero’s leaves you a quivering wreck!
Thanks to Grant and Surge at Stream 20 for inviting me to the Sky VIP Room at the closing party where we got to watch England win 3 - 1 (I missed all goals bar 1!) with some Soccer celebs Chris Kamara and Matt Le Tissier. It was a great opportunity to bombard footballers with questions they’ve probably heard a million times before but they handled it with humility and really were great guys.
Close But No Cigar for Venturian Media at the Buy.at Affiliate Football Tournament
As the sun rose over a quiet corner of East London, honest campaigners from across the country were applying dubbin and saying their prayers before embarking on the annual holy pilgrimage to the hallowed turf of the Buy.at Affiliate Football Tournament.
Differing body shapes, fitness levels and footballing skills were banded together in the name of office brotherhood, with 14 teams vying for the crown which Venturian Media comfortably won in 2007. Unfortunately for us this season’s tournament saw teams enter who looked like they could actually play football, as opposed to just looking like one on legs so we knew it would be an altogether tougher proposition to retain the title!
The sun washed over the field of battle, with teams forced to call on every last ounce of gladiatorial courage and skill necessary to triumph in the heat of the unflinching conflict to unfold. The crowd were soon baying for blood and search engine optimization (not necessarily in that order) after being whipped into a heaving mass of Magners and breathless enthusiasm by the pom-pom wielding cheerleaders.
After the captains were thoroughly pumped in the debriefing room, teams were allocated their tiny arenas of torture, where for the next 3 hours they would try and outwit, nutmeg and smash each other into submission via the wooden hoardings and well placed elbows. Current champions Venturian Media struggled through the “Group of Death” after winning two matches comfortably, whilst also losing two matches uncomfortably! Last years finalists Buy.at also looked in good nick with the tournaments largest squad, whilst The Telegraph appeared to have a team of actual footballers as apposed to affiliates. Not looking quite so good were the bright orange budget price shirted CKNet, led by Rob ‘rugby tackle’ Beresford.
The draw for the quarters saw last years finalist Buy.at and Venturian Media thrown together again, a mouth watering prospect for the expectant crowd. Last years final turned into quite a tasty affair, but with Browny now plying his trade at Brilliant Mediaand Venturian Media’s Hulk Hogan now starring in his own MTV series, the fireworks that were expected were never properly lit.
With stakes high the atmosphere was cranked up a notch by the baying mob on the sidelines, who not only shook their pom-pom’s with fury, but also spewed vicious anti Venturian Media songs (something along the lines of “you’re not very good, cha cha cha”). Luckily for the local constabulary, Venturian Media went about their business with the utmost professionalism and ran out 3-0 winners to subdue the possible riot waiting to happen. This defeat was also seen as a great moral victory for Buy.at, who lost last years tight knit meeting of the teams 6-0.
The semi finals saw 3 teams from the ‘group of death’ qualify; meaning Venturian Media had to face comfortable group victors AOL again. This passionate affair was all about grit and determination, with both teams going for the jugular from the first to last whistle. Challenges were flying in, though all fair and above board, and both keepers had plenty of work to do. In the end, Venturian Media veteran tea maker and footballing stalwart Ali McDermott stepped out of defence to roll back the years with 2 classic strikes, putting AOL to the sword and setting up a final with the impressive team from the Telegraph.
A very dishevelled looking Venturian Media team limped onto the field with defence in mind against a surprisingly fresh looking Telegraph team. This plan was ended abruptly after the referee awarded a dubious twice taken free kick to allow the Telegraph to take the lead. This led to a war of words with the official, ending with goalkeeper and office dogsbody Stuart McDermott being sent from the field of play. Silly scenes from the youngster - maybe he should have waited til we got knocked out before he started drinking?!
The 4 man Venturian Media defensive “Wall” crumbled like its Berlin counterpart, with the Telegraph adding 3 more goals in a game as one sided as last years final. Thankfully the bar was fully stocked and ready to rock to ease everyone’s aches and sprains into the evening’s festivities. These included the heavy consumption of blue drinks, people handing in their notice and then retracting it, and the obligatory hiding of food in people’s shoes.
Full marks once again to Laura and the team ar Buy.at for arranging such a well organised football tournament, and thanks to Christian and Ben from DGM for helping to get us to the final and also for filling in for the ridiculously unfit Neil!
The Free Branding Benefits Via Complementary Search
A recent study commissioned by Google and undertaken by Enquiro Research and Ipsos Mori in the UK has indicated that advertisers can expect a boost in brand recall over their competitors by as much as 76% when they appear prominently in both paid and organic search results. Brand awareness can be as much as 30% higher and relative brand affinity up to 17% greater.
Obviously Google have a vested interest given that they are seeking to promote search as a viable brand channel in order to attract more of the lucrative brand budgets from FMCG and luxury goods advertisers but even sceptics must agree that the evidence is pretty compelling. Similar Google commissioned studies in France and Germany have also mirrored these results giving weight to the argument that saturation of the SERPS brings quantifiable branding benefits.
As specialists in performance based search marketing we are often asked by our network partners to provide proposals to their advertisers as to how we can demonstrate additional value above and beyond the incremental sales delivered through our complementary SEM. Obviously each advertiser is different and there are many factors which will influence our suggested strategy but one benefit which we always try to highlight is the additional branding that complementary ads give.
These studies raise the important question as to how much greater the brand awareness, recall and affinity for advertisers who not only have representation through organic and / or paid listings but also work with affiliates such as ourselves to co-ordinate and saturate the search space. Equally, many advertisers will often not have a dual presence in both organic and paid results and sometimes neither on key generic search terms. This means that affiliates who provide them with complementary branded ads with dedicated exposure in ad copy make the branding benefits to the advertiser especially relevant and important.
Complementary search activity from affiliates who are presently rewarded only on direct response actions is currently a free means for advertisers to increase their overall exposure in the SERP’s and reinforce their brand and product proposition. Additionally, organic listings are less easy to manipulate to ensure the desired brand message or product is being advertised effectively with relevant copy and a strong call to action making complementary paid ads an even more powerful tool for communication and branding due to the greater degree of control over accuracy and prominence.
It would be really interesting to see the results of a similar study which looks as the effect of multiple paid search listings for a single brand both in conjunction with organic listings or without. If Google would like to fund the study we’d be happy to oblige!
Venturian Media Buy.at Football Title Hopes Hit
The eagerly awaited buy.at football tournament kicks off in London town on Friday with current holders Venturian Media’s players dropping like flies! Last seasons goalkeeper and the tournaments oldest player is missing due to work commitments and key midfielder Stuart “Mad Dog” McDermott got injured in a 7 a’side encounter on Monday which will rule him out for up to 4 weeks (although he reliably tells me his drinking arm will still be fully operational!).
Last years tournament was well organised, a great laugh and importantly the football was played in (mostly!) good spirit and we are looking forward to meeting a few old friends. Check out some of the action below taken from Fraser’s excellent affiliate blog.
A brief run down on the lads that have managed to make up this years team :
Neil “Nasal” McDermott
Will be looking to build on last years performance as injured goal hanger extraordinaire (although hopefully without the injury). He is a Director at VM and head of all web builds and UK relationship management.
Alister “Slinky” McDermott
Upset he didn’t win player of the tournament, this self professed arrogant sod “starred” in Brits Behind Bars (well for the 15 minutes he could take in prison) with current Big Brother loser Mario. A cultured defender and big unit to boot, he is head copywriter based out of our UK office.
Chris “Pinchy” Pinches
Rumours that Chris was hired purely on his footballing abilities have so far proved unfounded. This beast of a man never stops running and will be praying it doesn’t go to penalties with his record! A top graphic designer who is involved heavily in the branding of our websites.
Ben “Sloppy” Cockburn
DGM’s very own head of something technical, Ben was a late call up to the squad but he will be keen to get one over on the DGM heavy CK Net team. We’ve been reliably informed (by himself) that he is fit and can play in a number of positions which will prove very useful as the tournament progresses.
Murray Gascoyne
Another late call up due to the injury to Mad Dog, he is in mainly for his willingness to drive to London and his ability to hold the midfield, and his own in the bar.
Special Guest
Venturian Media have booked a special star guest who (surprisingly for someone in affiliate marketing) used to work for DGM. With his hectic social life, whether he turns up or not is a different matter!
Money-AU Australian Finance Site Accepted by Google News
One of our first big builds for the Australian market was the finance site money-au.com.au which features the leading finance providers that run affiliate programes and enables users to, amongst other things compare credit cards and also check out the latest finance news which we publish 4 times a day during the working week.
Great news for us and our writing partners Adfero is that we have been accepted as a source by Google news which means our content is now syndicated to Google’s global readership. So you can now see our articles published next to some real big hitters such as the Times, and in the example below, the Calgary Herald.
It’s great news for us as our site can now be judged as an authority site and this will hopefully mean increased repeat visitors and somewhere down the line more people using our site to purchase finance products.
Twenty Twenty Cricket Courtesy of Npower and Affiliate Window
Sunday saw the Northampton Steelbacks and Glamorgan Dragons go head to head in 20 / 20 (not the teen drink) cricket action and we were lucky enough to get a pair of free tickets courtesy of official sponsors npower which we thankfully received from the guys at Affiliate Window (cheers Owen).
Talking of windows, we were actually stood under the one which was smashed by a huge hit by Glamorgan’s Herschelle Gibbs, who scored 98 off just 45 balls. Luckily our stunned expressions were caught by the Sky Sports News team, which made me spit my tea out at breakfast the following day!
A big crowd caught a spectacular game in beautiful weather with Northampton posting an imposing score of 207, with opening pair Rob White and Niall O’Brien putting on 103 without loss. Glamorgan came out of the traps slowly with both openers Robert Croft and David Hemp both falling in the same over. Herschelle Gibbs then entered the fray but his Herculean effort was not enough to overcome Northampton’s massive total, with Steelbacks South African all rounder Andrew Hall taking 5-29.
Our first taste of 20/20 cricket was an excellent day out. There’s a real mixture of supporters attending, from the very young to the very old, and the action is constant and absolutely spectacular. You see more fours and sixes in 5 overs than you sometimes see in a 5 day test, and I for one can’t wait to go back and sample more of the same, not to mention the Tetleys and Magners!