Posts Tagged PR
CPA + PR = PR4? | public relations
For those of you not au fait with CPA, it stands for Cost Per Action. Basically if an affiliate sends traffic to an established offer through say a trial or sales promotion, the affiliate receives credit for that action.But how does this all relate to public relations?
Well firstly we need to distinguish the difference between page rank and public relations. Unfortunately the two abbreviations are linked but are different functions. Today I am talking about public relations primarily but good public relations does affect page rank.
Back to CPA then. If you are promoting a product, there are many tools that you can use. Press releases is one of them. Now, I have been sending out press releases since time immemorial, mainly tio newspapers, magazines and radio stations.
I must admit to having been rather cynical about how online PR can help affiliate marketing. After all, it’s not you that has created the product. It’s someone else’s. However the trick is to drive traffic to your websites.
Finding a new story is absolutely essential to this process. Basically no new story, no coverage. many CPA networks all very strict about what you can send out about their products. So firstly don’t make the mistake of sending press releases that have not been approved by your CPA network.
You have two options open to you. Firstly if you feel that there is a strong story related to the product in question, run your idea past your CPA representative. Remember that they are interested in shifting goods too. So they would be happy to work with you on any additional promotion that you can offer. There might be some benefits for example that you have experienced as a result of using the product. E.g. if you have been applying a skin care product and the results are impressive, then you could generate a human interest story as a result of that positive experience of the product.
What do we mean by human interest story? Journalists and readers alike prefer pieces of editorial which they can empathise with. You have seen the weight loss editorials- yesterday I was 20 stone and a virtual recluse, and now I am belle of the ball at 10 stone. that’s a very simple yet effective way of creating that instant relationship with the reader.
Distribution is as equally important is writing a press release. As usual in Internet marketing there are free options and paid for options. Over 40 press release sites with fairly high Google ranking exist. Other Internet marketers have demonstrated through forums that these sites can work if you do have a strong story to sell. No change there then. Simply having a press release online or offline is not a guarantee that it will be read. In addition, they have reported -and this is borne out by my own experience-that some press releases have a longer shelf life than others. Broadly, the stronger the story the longer it will stay in the in the top 10 of the search engines. Why? Because people are reading it and readability means link juice.
Sites like PR Newsire, PR Web and PR Leap are expensive and yet they can afford to be. Each of those sites are highly ranked by Google. So the $149 a throw might not be such a large price to pay if resulting sales can justify the expenditure. This is of course the perennial question in any form of affiliate marketing. If the product is being sold at $29.95, then the simple math would indicate that you would need to sell seven units to make it worth your while, using a paid press release site. My advice would be to begin with the free sites and if these are providing good rankings, stick with them.
In this brief article on how public relations affects SEO, it is not possible to cover all angles but I hope that this has given you a taster of what you can achieve by relating public relations with affiliate marketing.
Why X Factor vs RAM is important
Not Joe McElderry apparently
Let’s get the musical issue out of the way first off because this is clouding the real business involved here. For what it’s worth, I am delighted Rage Against the Machine got to the Christmas No.1 because no one individual, whether answering to the name of Rupert or Simon, should control our tastes and opinions.
Incidentally, I wonder if there will be an X Factor version with a radio edit. Lyrically, “by jove I am not going to buy your tat,thanks all the same” doesn’t sound quite as powerful as “fuck you, we won’t buy what you sell us.”
So what, in a business was actually achieved here? And what lessons can be learned for small businesses?
1) Social media is a viable method of marketing if a strong social message is conveyed skilfully. Regardless of whether Cowell has a financial interest in the Sony artists, RAM the real issue is that social media beat massive TV, radio and press exposure into second place. Incredible!
2) Small businesses, and artists in particular, should be encouraged to use social media as a method of persuasion. This is nothing new. As I pointed out in an earlier post about Glenn Hughes, Nine Inch Nails, Smashing Pumpkins and Radiohead have all had some success creating desire through skilful use of social media.
Phil Jones whom I recommend you follow in Twitter is Sales and Marketing Director for Brother. At a recent M Power conference run by Profile Communications, he gave some examples of small businesses who were actually selling direct from Twitter. NicolaTheFiat, a trader in hand made shirts, was one. Phil himself was another. Oh and while you are at it, why not clue me in too.
Cadburys Wispa was launched as a result of a social media campaign by “fans” of Wispa. Cadburys didn’t dance at the school disco. They simply provided the keys to the hall.
Relevance is the key word here. Imagine that you enter a room full of people at an office party and shout “anyone need a web designer?” Security! People tweet according to how relevance you are to them. Facebook is used by most as a showcase for what important people we we are. Yet if you can harness why people want to know you online and then build on that, you have relationship marketing to its nth degree.
So before wasting energy barking at Simon Cowell’s frequent red herrings, stop and think about the issue you could promote. Remember, this is about selling the sizzle not the steak. What I bought was a download of a song I have heard a thousand times before. What I cherished was the right to challenge the dictatorship of a multi millionaire together with the message RAM eloquently conveyed.
So in 2010 what buzz can you create?
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