Category: Marketing Automation

When I only worked from home occasionally, I would spend all day shifting around in my uncomfortable dining chair. Once work from home (WFH) became an everyday thing, I knew my current setup wouldn’t cut it, so I bought a great office chair.
I didn’t pay the extra money for assembly – a decision I’m convinced furniture companies want you to regret – and three installation attempts later, I have my chair.
Yeah, the backrest is a tiny bit crooked, but it still works as intended, giving me the extra support and comfort I need to do my job. That’s what I imagine corporate sponsorships feel like, minus the crooked part.

When your business needs additional support and resources for events and projects, corporate sponsors can make a huge difference. But it’s not as easy as just reaching out to companies you want to collaborate with.
Find out how a corporate sponsorship works, how to secure one for your next event, and how to write a sponsorship proposal.
While financial support is usually synonymous with sponsorship, that’s not the only way a company can contribute to your event. Here are three main types of sponsors:

A media sponsor will help your event or project gain the publicity needed to attract attendees. The sponsor may invest in ads in the local newspaper, TV commercials, or other marketing efforts to help you gain exposure.

An in-kind sponsor will offer things other than money. Looking for a venue? They may provide that. Need food vendors or prizes? That’s another way they can contribute. They could even help you secure a keynote speaker. This type of sponsor provides the resources you need to accomplish your event goals.

A digital sponsor will assist in the execution of tech-related activities for your event. This can be providing the hosting platform or an app.

So, what’s in it for the sponsors? For one, associating with a company that has a positive brand image can be an effective way for a brand to improve its market perception. It’s also an opportunity to gain more exposure and reach audiences they may not yet have access to.
On the sponsored side, attaching your company to an established brand can also boost your credibility and help you reach more consumers in your market.
Examples of Corporate Sponsorships
1. Essence’s “Dear Black Men” event

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In June 2020, Essence held a virtual summit designed to celebrate the Black community and Black men in particular. The “Dear Black Men” event was sponsored by Bevel, a consumer goods brand whose target audience reflects the event attendees.
The second sponsor was Advancing Black Pathways, JP Morgan Chase & Co.’s fellowship program that centers its work around empowering members of the black community.
Given the topic and the target audience, these sponsors were a great match for this event.
2. A Free Bird, Org

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Storage Mart is a nationwide storage company that’s core values include supporting philanthropic initiatives. A Free Bird is a nonprofit organization helping children battling cancer find joy in the arts.
One thing to note is that A Free Bird has a webpage dedicated to sponsors. In addition to reaching out to sponsors, your company can also proactively set up a page to attract and direct companies interested in supporting you.
3. Victoria Film Commission

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Victoria Film Commission (@visfilmcommission)

Both companies have more in common than just the name “Victoria,” and that’s locality.
The Victoria Film Commission is a nonprofit with a mission to promote Southern Vancouver Island as a film destination.
In a statement, Chateau Victoria Hotel & Suites revealed that supporting local businesses is a part of their mission, given that it is owned and operated by a local.
How To Get Corporate Sponsorship for an Event
1. Plan internally.
Before you reach out to sponsors, there’s a lot of prep work to complete. Start by gathering all the information you’ll need to attract sponsors.
The first is the vision for the event or project: What is the purpose, and what do you want audiences to gain from it?
Say you’re the newest affordable office supply company in the market. You may want to host an event to solidify your brand as a go-to store for office items.
Next, what are the goals of your event? How will you measure success? This is an important factor to consider, as it will inform which sponsor you choose. You’ll want to work with a sponsor with event goals in sync with your own.
What comes after is figuring out your attendees. How many attendees do you expect, and who are they? This is arguably the most important factor for your sponsors, because they’ll want to know if your audience aligns with the persona(s) they’re targeting.
As a furniture company, you may expect professionals between 20 to 30 years of age who have recently entered the workforce and are looking for affordable supplies to stock in their office. A brand that also targets young professionals would be a great sponsor.
If you’re a nonprofit fighting world hunger, for instance, you’ll want to find a company with a mission that includes philanthropic efforts like these.
Another big selling point are your event assets. How are you attracting consumers to your event or project? This could be a well-known speaker, interactive activities, or innovative presentations.
And lastly, based on these factors, what resources are you missing? This will help you determine the type of sponsorship your brand needs so you can draft your proposal using the right language.
2. Build a nurturing workflow.
Getting a sponsor can be a long process that requires a lot of relationship management.
You can’t just send an email to your sponsor and consider it done. It may take a few (or more) conversations to secure an agreement. While that may seem tedious, both parties need to ensure it’s the right fit.
Before you even reach out to your sponsors, build a workflow to streamline the communication process. Here’s an example of the automation you could set up in your CRM:

Reach out to X sponsor and include a link to schedule a call with Y team member. If scheduled, the team member will receive an email with the details of the sponsor and preliminary screening questions.
Send follow-up email in three days if contact has not responded to initial reach out.
After the initial call, send event details over to the sponsor.
Follow-up with X sponsor to ask thoughts on event details if no response after three days.

These are processes you can automate in your CRM platform to facilitate communication between you and potential sponsors.
3. Decide what brands to reach out to.
Now that you’re ready for outreach, decide who is the best fit for your brand.
Don’t know where to start? Look at brands that have already sponsored other businesses in your industry. This creates an easier point of entry. You can also look at your competitors. What type of brands are they collaborating with?
Once you have an idea of who to contact, do some research. Look at the company’s mission and values to see if they align with your own. What about its audience? Is there an intersection between your target audience and theirs? That’s a selling point you’d want to highlight in your sponsorship proposal.
Track the company’s current brand perception – you can leverage this information to convince them why partnering with you would be positive for their image.
You’ll also need to evaluate their local presence. If your sponsor has no presence in your region, they may not be the best fit, as you’ll want your sponsor to bring more exposure to your event.
In addition, be sure to check that the companies you’re considering have sponsorship guidelines. Some brands have strict eligibility rules, and you wouldn’t want to waste your time reaching out if you don’t meet their requirements.
4. Find out what your sponsors are looking for.
Learn everything you can about the company to see if it will be a good fit for your event. This means reaching out to the company and asking questions like:

Who is your target audience?
What are your marketing goals?
What do you look for in a company you sponsor?
How do you measure the success of a relationship with your sponsor?

These questions will help you get to the heart of what your potential sponsors are looking for and write a proposal that speaks directly to that.
5. Prepare your sponsorship proposal.
Your sponsorship proposal can make or break your chance of getting a sponsor. So, you want to take your time tailoring it to each sponsor you’re reaching out to. Every proposal should have:

An overview of your brand
Event details
A breakdown of what you need from the sponsor
Incentives
A personal touch

Let’s dive into each of these points here.
6. Start your sponsor search.
It’s time to reach out – where do you go?
The easiest place to start is online. Websites like SponsorMyEvent are designed specifically to bring brands and sponsors together. You can start there during your initial search to narrow down potential companies.
If you’re going the traditional offline path, use LinkedIn to identify the right employee to call or email. You don’t want to waste any time reaching out to employees who aren’t in a position to discuss the sponsorship.

Corporate Sponsorship Proposal
By including the following elements in your proposal, you will make sure your proposal stands out and get one step closer to securing your sponsors.
1. Brand Overview
When reviewing your proposal, the first thing your sponsor will likely ask is, “Who’s this brand?” This is your opportunity to make a great first impression and WOW your sponsor.
Tell a story about your brand, your mission, your values. You can dive into how your company got started or focus on your company’s recent path. Either way, you want to aim for emotional appeal.
You can get into the nitty-gritty later. This is where you capture their attention and make them want to sponsor you.
2. Event Details
This section is where the meat of your proposal starts.
Describe your event or project. What is the goal, and what does success look like?
Then, cover your attendees. Who is the target audience for this event? Your sponsor will want to know if your event will allow them to reach their key demographic. If not, focus on how your event will help them accomplish the marketing goals they outlined during your initial conversation.
3. Required Resources
When it comes to asking for what you need, don’t beat around the bush.
Describe exactly what resources your team will need from the sponsor and how they will be used.
Let’s say your team has determined that you need a $10,000 contribution for your upcoming event. You’d include that along with a breakdown of the cost allocation, as follows:

Location rental: $2,000
Keynote speakers fees: $5,000
Decor: $1,000
Food vendors: $2,000

If your team needs a non-financial investment, outline what you’ll need and why it’s important for the execution of the event.
4. Incentives
One question potential sponsors may have when reviewing your proposal is, “What’s in it for us?” This is your turn to highlight how they can benefit from working with you.
During your initial research and preliminary contact with the company, you should have learned what the company is looking for. This could be a better brand image or exposure to a target segment. Use your proposal to highlight how this event will help them accomplish their goals.
Many brands can also be incentivized by being included in the event in the follow ways:

Adding their logo to all event marketing collateral
Giving them a designated booth at the event
Offering a presentation slot

5. A Personal Touch
Finally, your proposal won’t be complete without adding a personal element to your presentation that ties right back to the sponsor.
There’s nothing worse than a generic pitch. Make sure to include elements in your proposal that connect you to the sponsor. Whether that’s their market entry story, their values, or their latest initiatives. Include anything that can help close the gap and convince your sponsor you’re meant to work together.
Securing a corporate sponsor requires a lot of planning and strategy. But if done right, not only will you gain a partner for your next event, but you’ll foster a relationship with a brand that can continue to support you in the future.

Determining your audience profile is a critical step in ensuring your campaign is successful.
An audience profile can help you personalize your campaign’s messaging to reach those most likely to convert, and limit the amount of spend you might’ve otherwise wasted on underperforming ads.
Here, we’ll explore the information you need to include in an audience profile, how to write an audience profile, and audience profile examples.
Plus, we’ll dive into a media audience profile and how that type of profile can help you increase the success of your paid ads campaigns.
But first — what is an audience profile, anyway?

What information should I include in an audience profile?
When creating an audience profile, you’ll need to include the following:

Demographic information: This includes personal attributes like geography, age, education, occupation, and income.

Psychographic information: This includes attributes related to personality traits, interests, attitudes or beliefs, and lifestyle.

Goals, challenges, or pain points: For this section, determine your audience’s goals, challenges, or pain points as it relates to your product or service. How can your product or service meet your audience’s needs? What search queries does your audience use to find your product or service? For instance, if you’re selling an 8-week mindfulness program, then your fictional character likely has a big challenge with focusing and finding time to ground himself in the present moment.

Values: What does your target audience value? This includes bigger-picture values and motivators, such as “nature”, “socializing”, “a sense of belonging”, or “autonomy at work”.

Preferred channels: What channel(s) does your audience spend the most time? This could be social channels, such as YouTube or Instagram, or search engines like Google. The preferred channel depends on the type of campaign you’re running. If you’re running a paid advertising campaign, for instance, you’ll want to determine if your audience spends most time on Facebook, Google, or somewhere else.

Preferred content type(s): Once your audience finds your content, what format would they prefer it in? E-books, blog posts, or case studies? Or podcast? Video? Determining the format will help you best serve your audience.

Buying behavior: Is your audience impulsive, or do they need weeks — if not months — before making a purchase? Are they open to your product or service anytime during the year, or only during a certain season? If you sell beach chairs, for instance, your target audience is likely relatively impulsive during the summer months, when a beach chair is most necessary.

It’s important to note — an audience profile is different than a target market, or buyer persona.
A target market includes every single prospective buyer for your product or service. For instance, perhaps you sell software that can be used for different use cases in different industries. In this case, a target market includes the prospects in each industry who could benefit from your product — all with different needs, goals, challenges, and beliefs.
An audience profile, on the other hand, is one fictitious person who you’re targeting with an upcoming campaign.
An audience profile also isn’t a buyer persona. A buyer persona is the final person who will ultimately purchase your product or service, but in many cases, you’ll want to market to anyone who can influence the final buyer. For instance, your audience profile might be a social media manager, even though the buyer persona is a company’s CMO, since she’ll have final sign-off.
Next, let’s dive into how you can write an audience profile.
How to Write an Audience Profile
1. Determine the goal(s) of your upcoming campaign.
Before writing your audience profile, you want to know who you’re targeting with your marketing campaign.
For instance, are you creating high-intent advertisements to target buyers with your products or services? Or, alternatively, are you hoping to increase attendees at an upcoming marketing event?
You’ll make a different audience profile depending on your goals. If you’re hoping to increase sales for your product via a social media advertising campaign, then your audience profile will look similar to your buyer persona.
If, instead, you’re hoping to increase views to your YouTube channel, then your audience profile will look like a fictional character based off your YouTube analytics to determine who enjoys watching your content.
2. Dive deep into analytics.
Once you’ve determined your campaign goal, use data and analytics to create a prototype of your persona.
Start with Google Analytics to explore demographic information related to your website visitors. Take note of age, gender, location, and types of device — additionally, figure out from which channels your audience arrives. Is it typically organic search, a social channel, email, or paid advertising?
You can also use CRM data to further explore what customers convert at the highest rate. For instance, you might use your CRM to determine which industries convert the most, or which pages have the highest conversion rate, to refine your audience profile depending on existing customers’ behavior.
Finally, use channel-specific metrics to fill in the missing pieces. If you’re planning on running a Google ads campaign, you might dive into past high-performing ads and who clicked on those ads.
Alternatively, if you’re running a Facebook campaign, you can use Facebook’s lookalike audience feature to reach people who are similar to your best existing customers.
3. Use qualitative metrics to determine your audience’s biggest challenges.
To fill out the challenges/goals/pain points section of your audience profile, it’s a good idea to take a look at customer reviews or focus group intel to determine the biggest challenges your prospects and customers face.
You can also use keyword research to find high-intent keywords related to your products or services, which might help you determine your audience’s biggest challenges, as well.
For instance, let’s say you’re creating a new advertising campaign related to a social media listening and scheduling tool.
You might first leverage Ahrefs or another keyword explorer tool to determine questions people ask related to a given search query. In this example, I searched “social media tools” to find similar questions related to the search keyword:

I also searched “social media tools” on Google and looked at the People Also Ask feature to dive deeper into questions, pain points, and challenges related to social media tools:

Combined with your qualitative, customer-focused research, you’ll be able to uncover the biggest challenges of your audience, and how you should tailor your campaign to target those pain points.  
4. Collect psychographic data using Google Trends or influencers in the industry.
If you work for a B2C company, consider consuming content from top influencers in a given industry to determine psychographic data for your audience profile.
For instance, if you’re selling fitness gear, take a look at the social profiles and blog posts of top fitness influencers. What do they care about? What do they value? What activities do they do in a given day? These characteristics can help you round-out your audience profile.
If you’re working for a B2B company, you might read industry case studies, reports, or join webinars to determine the interests, values, and behaviors of your target persona within a given industry.
An example of this might be reading “2020 Trends in Sales Management” if you’re hoping to target sales managers at your target companies.
Ready to get started creating your own audience profiles? Let’s take a look at two examples you can use for inspiration before you create your own.
Audience Profile Examples
1. B2B Audience Profile Example: Marketing Maria

2. B2C Audience Profile Example: Athletic Andy

Media Audience Profile
Media planning and buying can’t happen without an audience profile.
For instance, media buying — buying campaign or advertising space on various channels, or sharing targeted campaigns and ads — can’t happen without media planning.
And media planning, at its core, is “determining how, when, where, and why your business shares media content with your audience. The process includes deciding what media will be shared on what channels to boost reach, engagements, conversions, ROI, and more.”
Ultimately, then, both media planning and media buying need pre-defined audiences to be successful. If you haven’t taken the time to create an audience profile before purchasing ad space, you risk wasting money and resources on audiences who ultimately won’t convert anyway.
An audience profile can affect where you place your advertisements. Once you’ve created an audience profile, for instance, you might find your audience persona spends most of her time on LinkedIn. LinkedIn advertising solutions, then, can help you best reach your target audience.
An audience profile also influences the design of your ad. You’ll want to design ad copy around your audience’s interests, pain points, and preferences — something you can only do once you’ve created an audience profile.
For instance, The Economist might’ve created an audience profile and determined their audience likes education and knowledge, but doesn’t like getting bogged down with too much negativity, particularly from news outlets. As a result, a simple tagline, “Brighter days ahead”, helps attract and convert the right audience through their ads.

Ultimately, your audience profile is a vital foundation for ensuring you’re effectively attracting and converting those best-suited for your brand.
However, an audience profile can vary depending on each individual campaign — so feel free to keep this post bookmarked for the next time you need to alter your audience profile for a new advertising or marketing campaign.

Do you remember the last time you signed up for a webinar? Were you on the edge of your seat waiting in anticipation for the event?
If you’re like me, it’s more likely that you signed up and attended the first ten minutes, and then started flipping through emails or answering Slacks. Or, worse — you signed up for the event and totally forgot about it.
Let’s be honest: most webinars aren’t great. They’re certainly not inducing Netflix cliff-hanger levels of anticipation and excitement.
But they’re also an effective form of lead generation, nurturing, and sales enablement. In fact, if you do webinars right, you can attract new prospects to your business, establish your brand as a thought leader in the industry, and increase business revenue.
This article will cover the biggest mistakes to avoid if you want to build a world-class webinar program.
Here, I’ve included some lessons based off my own experience launching and revamping the webinar program at CXL, as well as insights and quotes from other successful marketers.
Let’s dive into the top nine webinar mistakes — and what to do, instead.

1. Your webinar isn’t valuable.
People will forgive a bad slide deck design.
They’ll forgive a webinar hosted at an inconvenient day or time. They might not notice if you don’t introduce your speakers properly — and you can even get away with forgetting to send a link to the recording afterwards.
But if you’re not providing value, you can’t possibly succeed with your webinar.
There’s simply no point in hosting a webinar if it’s not delivering something useful, or entertaining.
What is value? That’s tough to answer universally. The best way to determine if your webinars are valuable is through qualitative feedback and quantitative proof.
On the quantitative side, are your webinars growing in attendance over time? If not, while there could be other reasons (such as lazy marketing), it’s often because interest and trust is waning in your content. Ideally, you want not only new attendees, but repeat attendees. That’s how good your content should be.
Qualitatively, if you’re not getting any emails thanking you for your amazing content, that’s cause for concern. At least one person should be raving about the content by the end of the presentation.
If you’re not hitting that level of sentiment and response, it’s time to go back to the drawing board and make sure you actually have something worth saying. You can collect feedback deliberately as well, using a survey like NPS or CSAT.
Examples of valueless content include:

Pure sales pitches
Basic, superficial information
Misaligned content (i.e. the substance doesn’t match the title of the webinar)
Boring, long-winded presentations
No actionable takeaways for your attendees

What to Do Instead
A good rule of thumb for me is to ask, “Would people pay for this?” If the answer is no, then I don’t want to publish or promote it.
Granted, the webinar is going to be free. But the point is you want it to be good enough that people say to themselves, “How is this free? It’s amazing.”
If you’re not creating value, your webinars won’t deliver the results you’re looking for.
2. Your webinar is too sales-y.
Your webinar should not be one big sales pitch. If it is, you’re doing it wrong.
This is a poor way to interact with an audience, but it’s still remarkably prevalent.
According to Virginia Zacharaki, Marketing Communications Associate at Moosend: “One of the main keys of a webinar is to raise awareness for a brand, feature, or technique using valuable content.”

“The sales-y tone of your speaker can lead to the audience’s loss of interest, whereas focusing on finding actual solutions and giving insights makes you a trusted expert.”

“It is only logical that awareness enhances the consideration stage of decision-making and moves the prospect further along the buyer’s journey.”
In other words, people sign up for webinars to learn things — not to receive a hard sales pitch from a vendor.

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Granted, you can, and should, use webinars as an opportunity to increase sales. You just want to make sure you’re leading with unique value first.
What to Do Instead
When I began designing webinars to promote CXL Institute, I made sure the content was product-relevant, but not a product pitch. Since CXL Institute sold expert-led courses, this was a relatively easy transition  — we simply asked those same experts to lead our webinars.

We chose to construct the webinars to be completely tactical. There were no slides — only screen shares. I didn’t do a lengthy introduction of the speaker. Instead, they dove in and provided their valuable insights.
We only pitched their upcoming course at the end of the webinar by offering a 20% discount to attendees.
It’s okay to pitch a product, but you’ll want to do so in a way that blends educational content with a subtle product nudge.
A framework I like to use for this is “Product-Led Content.” 
You want to design your content (and webinars) to center around a problem that your product or service solves, and weave your product throughout genuinely instructional content. This way, your solution is an obvious consideration, but the audience still gets value even if they aren’t interested in your product.
3. You’re marketing your webinar to the wrong audience.
How you construct a webinar is important — and so is the audience to whom you promote it.
How you approach your audience targeting depends on your company and webinar goals. For instance, if you’re using your webinars for customer education, then you’ll want to target your webinars to, well … customers.
In many cases, though, webinars are used as a lead generation tool to attract new customers to your product or service. In this case, many of the same general marketing best practices (customer research, buyer personas, customer journey mapping, and segmentation) apply.
Andriy Zapisotskyi, Growth Manager at Mailtrap, puts it like this: “Pay attention to where you distribute your webinar and focus only on your target audience. Irrelevant audiences may harm your email list, and an email with the invitation to the webinar will end up in the spam folder instead. Warm-up and validate every signed-up lead to improve email deliverability.”
Beyond the simple hit to your attendance rate and open rate, if you market to the wrong audience, you’ll find it hard to generate sales and ROI from your program.
What to Do Instead
First, take a step back and ask yourself where you’ll be promoting your webinar and how you’ll get attendees. When I host webinars, my team and I promote them on our Twitter and LinkedIn profiles, on our co-hosts’ social media channels, and through our email lists. It’s a limited audience, but the point is to slowly build trust and repeat attendees over time.
Many companies do paid advertising to get webinar attendees. In this case, you need to ask yourself if you’re truly attracting the right attendees.
This can be deduced quantitatively. If you’re getting sign-ups but no attendees, something is misaligned. Similarly, if you’re getting attendance, but your attendees aren’t becoming leads, you need to change your approach.
4. You’re not making your webinar engaging and interactive.
If you’ve ever learned a second language, you know that immersion and interaction is more effective than passive consumption.
When you participate, you get to make mistakes or learn lessons in real-time. You get instant feedback, and you also use different parts of the brain when you trigger active participation.
Most webinars are one-sided. The attendees sign up and passively listen to the presentation (or, more likely, check their emails or scroll Instagram).
If you can disrupt that, you can drive greater engagement, learning, and retention. All of this helps to build trust, and yes, increase sales and ROI from your program.
What to Do Instead
The easiest way to trigger participation is to ask people to introduce themselves and where they’re from at the start of the webinar.
I also like to give homework before the webinar, and a summary quiz after it’s over. This ensures attendees will come prepared and excited to the webinar, and they’ll also retain knowledge when it’s over.
Chris Schelzi, Head of Growth at AppSumo, gives this sage advice: “Ask for what you want! Many people hosting webinars are demoralized by the lack of engagement — but so few people ask for it.”
“I recommend, at the beginning of the webinar, starting with a few simple engagement questions for the audience: ‘Where are you joining us from today?’ ‘What’s the #1 thing you’re looking to get out of this session?’ etc. These questions will prime the audience to use the chat.
“Additionally, make sure to do this throughout the presentation. Don’t be afraid of pausing while you wait for people to respond. A few seconds can feel like a few minutes, but people love to see and hear you interacting live with their questions.”
5. You’re ignoring the holistic marketing system.
A webinar doesn’t exist in isolation.
Instead, you want to look at a webinar as being one piece to the larger puzzle of your entire marketing strategy.
Where does your webinar fall in your customer journey? Is it top of the funnel — and if so, what steps will follow this webinar to push the prospect further down the funnel? Or is it bottom of the funnel, in which case, what touchpoints preceded this one?
Mapping this stuff out is uncommon but absolutely essential. Similar to how you ensure there are CTAs on your blog posts, it’s critical you use your webinar as an opportunity to move prospects further along the funnel.
What to Do Instead
This tip is less tactical, and more strategic. The number one thing I would do is map out your customer journey and define which webinars fit in at which stages of the journey.

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Adam Enfroy, blogger at AdamEnfroy.com, gives this advice: “Did you warm up your leads via consistent emails? Did you ask them to join a VIP list to prove they will take action? Are you matching the webinar offer to what your readers actually want?”
“While there are a lot of tips and tricks to running an effective webinar, don’t forget that everything you do leading up to the webinar is just as important.”
6. You’re pursuing too many goals with one webinar.
One single webinar cannot possibly serve every business or marketing need you have. Webinars can be used for onboarding, customer education, support, lead generation, and lead nurturing — but not all at once.
This same principle applies to many areas of marketing. For instance, you can write a blog post that serves one or two purposes, but it shouldn’t seek to serve all audiences at once.
Juliana Nicholson, Principal Campaigns Manager at HubSpot, gives this advice: “It’s tempting to try to use one webinar for every part of your flywheel. Marketers want the biggest audience exposure possible, a tool for reps to use in their sales process, and a way to delight customers. This is hard to pull off.”

“Unless you are putting on a multifaceted event, I recommend marketers focus on one goal at a time, and let that drive their strategy from start-to-finish, rather than attempting to boil the ocean.”

What to Do Instead
Reverse engineer a webinar, starting with your goals. What’s your KPI — new leads, total customers attending, increased NPS of attendees, or something else? Narrow the scope.
Choose one of these goals and construct your webinar with that purpose in mind.
7. You’re not acknowledging the realities and limitations of the format.
Despite your best intentions, you have to realize that a webinar is a webinar.
It’s not a live workshop, and people’s attention will be scattered. You can do your best to keep people engaged through interactivity and high-value content, but you still have to acknowledge that most people will do the video equivalent of “skimming.”
Shane Hedge, co-founder and CEO of Air, calls this the importance of “script-to-screen alignment.” Essentially, it means highlighting the important stuff and making your presentation “skimmable.”
Here’s his advice: “A webinar is not an in-person meeting. It’s not a standalone video. The audience likely has multiple tabs open and may only pay attention during key moments where the content draws them in.”
What to Do Instead
Summarize your presentation before you begin and after you finish with key points. Draw people in periodically with engaging questions and interactive workshop moments. Include multimedia and screen-sharing instead of just sharing slide-after-slide.
And make sure to send an email recapping the main points and linking to further resources.

8. Your webinar is poor-quality, or you don’t have adequate equipment.
If you’re serious about webinars, you’ll want to boost the quality of the presentation. This comes in three forms:

Video quality
Audio quality
Presentation quality

To start, presentation quality is the easiest to upgrade with little extra investment. Either work with a designer to spruce up your slides or use a platform like beautiful.ai to design them. Then, make sure your slides are publicly accessible to the webinar audience.
Video quality is the toughest to improve. For starters, make sure your webinar software is solid. I personally like Zoom, but there are other alternatives you can consider.
Here’s an article on how to run webinars with HubSpot to help you with the tactical specifics.
Finally, almost all quality complaints will inevitably be about the audio. If you’re going to invest in equipment, I recommend a good microphone (the Blue Yeti is popular). Any good USB microphone will be better than the default option on your laptop.
What to Do Instead
Don’t skimp on quality, especially when it comes to audio and the details of your presentation.
Poor video quality — at least to a point — can be forgiven (remember, many people are going to be checking email in-between slides).
Get a good microphone and invest in a designer for your presentations.
The latter also helps if you want to publish the slides afterwards on a platform like Slides by HubSpot.
9. You don’t follow-up with your attendees.
Finally, a common mistake companies make is put all this effort into a webinar — creating it, finding partners, writing copy, designing a landing page, promoting or advertising it, and delivering it — and then skimping on the follow-up.
First off, most people who sign up for a webinar won’t attend. That’s just the nature of the game.
But even those who do attend likely want to get a recording of the presentation. That’s the bare minimum, but many companies fail to deliver that.
What to Do Instead
The magic is in the follow-up. Very few people will be ready to buy your product or services immediately after one webinar.
It’s vital you schedule a nurturing sequence to execute immediately after the webinar is complete. The first email should be a recap with resources, notes, and a recording of the presentation. The second and third can be education or promotional, depending on the stage of the funnel at which you’re delivering the webinar.
No matter what, don’t make your webinar be the last touchpoint. You’ll get much higher ROI if you think carefully about the follow-up.
Webinars don’t have to be boring. In fact, they can be fun, valuable, and tremendously effective. Some marketing programs have been built on the backs of webinars.
While this article covered nine discrete tips to creating better webinars, at the heart of it all is good judgement and keeping in mind the value you’re providing. If you do that, the minutia won’t matter as much.

As consumers, our inboxes are filled with emails from eCommerce brands we’ve previously purchased from. Emails include various promotions, sales, and new products, all aimed at garnering interest and revenue. If you’re anything like us, some emails quickly get the “unsubscribe” heave-ho, while others bring us joy and anticipation. Why is that? What sets the…
The post Top-Notch Email Examples from 6 Shoe Brands appeared first on Benchmarkemail.

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What are some ways to get a good look at the Pardot and Salesforce setups and data for a new company? I’m looking for big picture info. Thanks!
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Long gone are the days of dial-up internet when web pages loaded line by line.
Today’s internet users expect an instant response, with 93% of people leaving a website because it didn’t load properly. No one wastes time on a poor experience.
To elevate the online experience, Google released Core Web Vitals — a set of metrics to help site owners measure the speed, responsiveness, and visual stability of their pages.
The Core Web Vitals report gives you insight into page performance, so you can improve your site experience and let the Google bots know it’s worthy of a high search ranking.

But why does speed and user experience matter for your business?

If page load time increases from 1 second to 3 seconds, bounce rate increases 32%.

If page load time increases from 1 second to 6 seconds, bounce rate increases by 106%. (Google)

A high bounce rate hurts your bottom line. Potential customers will simply jump to a competing site if yours is slow to load.
But if you learn what metrics to hit and start to improve your pages, Google will reward you with better rankings — and you’ll create a more enjoyable experience for potential customers.
To do so, you need to understand the metrics that make up the Core Web Vitals:

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) measures the loading performance of a page. It considers the amount of time it takes to load the largest piece of content (typically a video, image, or text block) from when a user requests the URL. Google recommends sites keep LCP under 2.5 seconds for 75% of their page loads.

First Input Delay (FID) measures the interactivity of a page. It’s the time between an action (think, clicking a button or a link) to when a browser responds to that action. The FID measurement comes from whatever element is clicked first, turning the page from a static to interactive. Responsiveness is crucial to making a good first impression with visitors by showing your site is reliable and running smoothly. Google recommends sites keep FID under 100 milliseconds for 75% of page loads.

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) measures all of the layout shifts that occur across a page. It’s scored from zero (no shifting) to a positive number (more shifting). Common causes of shifting are dropdown banner ads, buttons that appear, or images that cause a text block to move. These all contribute to a negative user experience, which is why it’s important to reduce the shifts that happen across your site. Google recommends sites aim for a CLS score of 0.1 or less.

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By analyzing millions of pages, Google found that users are 24% less likely to abandon loading pages when a site meets the above requirements. If you’re itching for more details, check out the research behind Defining the Core Web Vitals metric thresholds.
How to Improve Core Web Vitals
First thing’s first, you need baseline metrics for your site. Walk through these steps to learn your starting point:

Plug your URL into Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool.
Click ‘Analyze.’
Check your performance. The labels “Poor,” “Needs improvement,” and “Good” are given to your URL on both mobile and desktop. Toggle between the two in the upper left-hand corner of the page.

Here’s what it looks like when I ran an analysis on HubSpot.

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You can see the desktop version performs better than mobile, which is common. In a study of five million pages, Backlinko found that the average web page takes 87.84% longer to load on mobile versus desktop. A few major factors that affected speed: the type of CMS, CDNs and hosting, and page weight.
If your URL doesn’t have enough data for a specific Core Web Vitals metric, you won’t see that metric appear on the report. Once your URL has enough data, your page status will reflect the metric that performs the worst.
Fixing Issues in Core Web Vitals
It will take work to improve the performance of your pages, but you can begin tackling issues with a step-by-step approach.

Prioritize issues by label: Tackle everything labeled “Poor” first. Then, choose your work based on the large-scale issues that affect the highest number of URLs or the most important URLs. Next comes issues with the “Needs Improvement” label.

Make a list: Create a prioritized work list for the team that will be updating the site. Include these common page fixes for reference:

Reduce page size to less than 500KB.
Limit each page to 50 resources for optimum mobile performance.
Consider optimizing your page for fast loading using AMP.

3. Share common fixes: Each Core Web Vitals metric has a dozen ways to improve the threshold. Below, I’ve outlined the basic reasons for a “Poor” status and how each can be fixed.
Improving LCP is affected by slow server response times, client-side rendering, render-blocking JavaScript and CSS, and slow resource load times. You can aim to improve LCD by optimizing each of the following site elements:

Apply instant loading with the PRPL pattern
Critical Rendering Path
CSS
Images
Web Fonts
JavaScript

Improving FID is all about measuring how fast your site responds to user actions. Here, you want to fix any bad first experiences people have on a page. To see how to improve your FID threshold and check how users interact with your site, you can run a performance audit with Chrome’s Lighthouse tool. You can also try the following tweaks to boost your score.

Reduce the impact of third-party code
Reduce JavaScript execution time
Minimize main thread work
Keep request counts low and transfer sizes small
Improving CLS and reducing unexpected shifts comes down to following a handful of best practices. Say goodbye to jumpy banners and those accidental ad clicks.

Include size attributes or CSS aspect ratio boxes for images and videos. These numbers tell the browser how much space to allocate for the page element while it’s loading, which prevents shifts as elements become visible.

Don’t add content above existing content. The only exception is if it’s in response to a user action where a shift is expected.

Provide context for transitions. All animations and transitions within a layout need to have context and continuity if you’re moving users from one part of the page to another.

When you think a specific issue is fixed, you can check if your thresholds have improved on the Search Console Core Web Vitals report. Click “Start Tracking” to launch a 28-day validation session that monitors your site for any signs of the issue. If it doesn’t pop up during that time, consider it fixed.
Like all ranking factors, the devil is in the details. If you’re a developer or techie hungry for more information on optimizing the Core Web Vitals, take a look at Google’s guides to optimizing LCP, FID, or CSL.
Timeline for Core Web Vitals Ranking
Core Web Vitals will be included in Google Search ranking beginning May 2021. They originally announced plans for the update in May 2020 but pushed off the release due to the global impact of COVID-19.
And, as Dave Brong, CTO of WebMechanix, points out, “Core Web Vitals is the ‘web 3.0’ that our generation of SEO and web development experts are facing.”

“By shifting focus away from flimsy server-level metrics and more to the user experience (UX), Google is paving the way for a better accessible web in the future.” 

As you prepare your site for the Core Web Vitals, remember that these are just a part of Google’s existing search signals. Search also considers mobile friendliness, HTTPS security, secure browsing, and intrusive interstitial guidelines.
Part of the Core Web Vitals will include several changes important for site owners:
“The change for non-AMP content to become eligible to appear in the mobile Top Stories feature in Search will also roll out in May 2021. Any page that meets the Google News content policies will be eligible and we will prioritize pages with great page experience, whether implemented using AMP or any other web technology, as we rank the results.” (Google)
Deciding to improve your site’s Core Web Vitals may not seem like a simple task. But by prioritizing the most problematic pages and coordinating with your web team, you can work toward a “Good” label and give everyone visiting your site a great experience.

The look and feel of events changed exponentially after March 2020 as companies moved live events to virtual spaces. But whether your event is online or in-person over the year ahead, event branding is essential to create a memorable experience for attendees.
When I joined Adobe MAX 2020, for example, the virtual event felt as close to an in-person experience as possible. The opportunities to learn from accomplished speakers energized me and made me feel connected to the company.
That’s no surprise, because 91% of people have positive feelings about a brand after joining events. But memorable experiences don’t happen randomly — they’re the result of thoughtful event branding.
Whether you’re planning an upcoming virtual conference or outdoor meet-up, it’s important to consider the branding behind your event. You want to consider your company’s values and essence, yet design a unique, event-only brand that stands out.
To host an event that wows your audience and has a real impact on your business, here’s what to keep in mind. First … well, what is it?

What is event branding?
Like a company brand, event branding is made up of many elements including a logo, website, app, marketing materials, stage design, speakers, sponsors, and event swag.
Some elements are similar to an organization’s brand, but the event brand must stand on its own. Think about how branded events — like Dreamforce, INBOUND, or 29Rooms — are separate yet related to the companies hosting the events. This is possible with a combination of onsite branding (i.e., banners, booths, stage design, and swag) and digital branding (i.e., website, imagery, and marketing).
It’s important to note that event branding is a part of event marketing but requires its own skill sets and strategies.
The key to a well-attended event is to make your branding cohesive and recognizable, because a consistent brand presentation has been seen to increase revenue by 33%. Beyond a thoughtful branding plan, you need to promote the event, create memorable moments for attendees, and know how to gauge success. If you can make all of that happen, you’ll reap the rewards of a well-branded event.
Benefits of Event Branding
Think of the best event you’ve attended. You can likely picture the people you met, the food, the speakers, and even the after-parties. Branding an event shapes how everyone involved—speakers, attendees, employees, and sponsors—remembers the experience.
For example, one session in the Adobe MAX event showed me how to use new features in my Lightroom mobile app. I only learned that skill because Adobe selected speakers who provided value for the audience. They also had a moderator who shared immediate takeaways. And they sent me a follow-up email with the recorded session in case I needed to refresh my memory afterward.
I now follow that particular speaker on Instagram and even renewed my Adobe subscription after joining the event. Yes, I knowingly fell into the flywheel.
The point is, a branded event can help generate leads, build loyalty and credibility, and offer support. Attendees are more willing to buy into your brand promise (and eventually, into your product or service) if you provide a valuable experience.
So, if you do your job well, people will have a good experience — which generates positive emotions — and will become customers or advocates for your brand.
5 Event Branding Ideas
Creating a unique brand that resonates with your audience is about crafting a story that you and your attendees will tell. That’s why successful event branding carries one message throughout every touchpoint. For inspiration on how to tie your event together, look through these examples of well-planned events around the world.

1. Website 
A website is the hub of an event, so it needs to set the stage for the brand. This is the place to share information on the event’s purpose, dates, registration, speakers, sponsors, merchandise, and FAQs.
It should be easy to navigate and make people excited to sign up. This is exactly what the TechCrunch Disrupt website does; It’s straightforward, yet effective. And the no-nonsense branding is aligned with the modern style of innovative tech companies.

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2. Marketing
Every event planner’s nightmare is lackluster attendance. To make sure your event is buzzing, put time into marketing the event with social media posts, emails, and ads. Check out The Ultimate Guide to Event Marketing to dive into the details.
For event branding, ensure your messaging and imagery are cohesive across all channels. You want to give your audience multiple opportunities to learn about, sign up for, and share your event.
The #follow20 Design Festival is a great example of how consistent branding can help people recognize an event both online and in-person.

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3. Design
A solid marketing plan is nothing without consistent design. This includes colors, logos, typography, photography, graphics, swag, posters, and stage design. The studio Hybrid Design perfectly coordinated Pinterest’s Knit Con 2019 through vibrant, thoughtful touches that tied the values and creativity of the Pinterest team together.

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4. Swag
Event swag may seem unnecessary, with virtual events taking over in-person meet-ups. But that’s not entirely true. Promotional Products Association International (PPAI) estimates that promotional products are the most effective form of advertising across all generations, and over 80% of promotional products are used for more than a year.
While branded products have been held under the fire for causing environmental harm, unsustainable swag isn’t the only option these days. Digital gift cards, online workout class passes, free software, and charitable donations are all environmentally responsible giveaways.
The trick is to find swag that suits your brand, so don’t shop for stress balls and stickers if you’re hosting a tech conference. SXSW is a good example of how to choose merch that’s reusable and relevant to the event brand.

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5. Videos
Video marketing has been on the rise for the past few years, and the pandemic pushed the need for video further than ever. Wyzowl found that the pandemic has impacted how much video content 68% of consumers watched online, with 96% reporting an increase.
For event branding, the INBOUND video shown below strikes a balance between sharing event recaps, highlighting speaker sessions, and emphasizing the brand’s values.

Outdoor Event Branding
Outdoor events can be a good alternative to virtual events. This type of event is ideal for networking meet-ups, company picnics, award ceremonies, or festivals. And if you take the proper safety precautions, attendees will feel secure and enjoy the hard work you put into the experience.
There are a few things to consider when planning outdoor event branding. Depending on the season and location, you may need to weather-proof the event. Signs and banners need to stand up to conditions, and people need a place to escape the heat, chill, or rain.
Take advantage of these outdoor quirks to create unique branding moments. Set up plenty of spaces for small groups to gather that have fun opportunities for people to interact with your brand. To keep people socially distanced, consider branded floor decals to mark proper distance or give groups different colored wristbands to encourage people to stay together.
For instance, Seltzerland held successful outdoor events in 2020 thanks to creative thinking and smart branding. Seltzerland organizer Kate Levenstien petitioned to move the events to recently-opened golf courses.
She followed local COVID restrictions, brought dozens of beverage companies on board, ordered swag, and did test runs to check the safety of each space on the course. The result? Nine successful outdoor events across the US during a year of rolling lockdowns.

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As you plan your next event, remember that event branding is more than a logo and company colors. Designing a thoughtful brand for your event will not only ensure it resonates with your company, but it will also make it easier to engage your audience and let everyone leave with valuable information. There’s nothing better for next year’s attendance than a memorable experience everyone wants to share.

Facebook ads can generate awareness, bring in leads, and convert prospects … but only you can get them approved.
In our 2020 “Not Another State of Marketing Report,” we found that more than one in three marketers listed Facebook ads as their best performer in terms of ROI. That’s a higher ratio than Google Paid Search or Instagram.  
Over 3 million businesses used Facebook’s advertising platform in 2020 and 78% of American consumers say they’ve discovered products on Facebook in the past. Whether you’re already one of them, or if you’re just getting started on Facebook advertising, understanding Facebook’s ad approval process is paramount to success.
Below, we identify the common causes for rejection, what you can do if your ad is rejected, and some best practices to follow to ensure success.

How to Get a Facebook Ad Approved
In theory, Facebook’s approval process is straightforward:

Submit an ad that adheres to Facebook’s advertising guidelines. New and edited ads will both go through the same review process.
Facebook reviews ads using a combination of bots and manual reviewers.
Your ad is either approved or denied. You’ll be notified when the decision is made, and ads that were approved will go live.

However, the review process in step two can seem like a bit of a black box. What points do Facebook’s approval team take into account while doing reviews? How long will this process take? Let’s take a closer look at the review process, and what you can do to ensure your ad makes it through.
How long does Facebook’s ad review process take?
Most ads are reviewed within 24 hours, according to Facebook’s Advertising Policy, and you’ll receive an email or notification with the results of the review. However, it’s not uncommon for ad review to take up to a few days. That’s why it’s important to plan ahead and try to follow the rules.

New ad campaigns tend to get reviewed for longer. However, if you have a long history of publishing ads successfully, you’ll see your review time shorten.
Ads are manually reviewed, so if more people are submitting ads for review, there can be a longer wait time. Expect to wait longer during holiday seasons.
If you’ve submitted an ad to go live as soon as possible, it will be published as soon as the review process is complete and the ad is approved.

Why was my Facebook ad not approved?
There are many reasons why Facebook rejects an ad, including:

Selling products not allowed on Facebook (tobacco, illegal products or services, weapons, etc …).
Making sensational claims, using click-bait, or promoting misinformation.
Ads not following Facebook’s advertising guidelines, such as branding requirements and text restrictions.
Disruptive or low quality content that negatively impacts a Facebook user’s experience.

Fortunately, you don’t need to figure out the reason for the rejection yourself. If your ad is rejected, you can review the reason for the rejection and either request another review or edit your ad to fit within Facebook’s policies. To review your ad status, or request an appeal, head to the Account Quality page in your Facebook account.  
Four Common Reasons for Rejected Facebook Ads
A number of Facebook’s advertising policies can be confusing at first glance. Let’s break down these common reasons for rejections to understand how you can get your ad approved faster.
1. There’s too much text on the image.
Facebook’s ad policy states that your image may not have text over 20% of the area. While it may be tempting to try and fit more information into your image, remember that a picture is worth a thousand words.
Images are more engaging than text-based ads and result in higher click-through rates. Even if it wasn’t a Facebook policy, we’d recommend reducing the amount of text on your ads.
2. Landing pages are not functional.
Your ad copy is not the only thing that matters when it comes to getting your ad approved. Facebook also examines the landing page to which you’re sending people. If the landing page is substantially different from what you’re advertising, you can expect your ad to be rejected.
Resist the temptation to be overly clever and pull a bait-and-switch with your ads (i.e., advertising to lose the dead weight and linking to a divorce attorney’s site). Your landing page URL should also be reflective of the copy on the page.

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Finally, make sure your landing page is functional. If customers have to click through pop-ups to get to the content, or there are dead links on the page, Facebook will potentially deny your ad.
3. Ad copy is overly personal.
Wait, isn’t personalization what customers want? Yes, but only when they have expressly given the permission for their data to be used. When an unknown advertiser (a third party) uses data, it can seem creepy or overreaching.
A study published in Harvard Business Review found that when “unacceptable, third-party sharing had occurred, concerns about privacy outweighed people’s appreciation for ad personalization.” In other words, users don’t feel comfortable when advertisers seem to have access to more personal data than they have directly disclosed with them.
This is one of the reasons Facebook won’t approve ads that directly reference a user’s personal information. According to Facebook’s policies, “ads must not contain content that asserts or implies personal attributes.”
For example, ad copy stating a user’s age or sexual orientation would not be allowed. While you may want to attract single 20-somethings to your hip new bar, you wouldn’t be able to say “Hey single lady! Your 20s are the time to live it up. Visit O-Town Pub tonight!” However, you can still narrow your ad audience to females in their 20s.
Yes, you should still try to direct your advertisements to your target audience. But avoid the “creepy” factor.
4. Facebook’s brand guidelines weren’t followed.
Facebook offers a number of guidelines about how to refer to them. In general, ads should avoid suggesting they are related to Facebook, adding the Facebook logo, or making Facebook branding the main focus of the ad. Additionally;

Don’t pluralize Facebook or abbreviate it as “FB”.
Don’t use the “f” or Facebook logos in place of the word “Facebook” in ad copy.
Don’t change Facebook’s brand colors, even for animation purposes.

Four Best Practices for Facebook Ads
Creating an ad that will perform well goes a long way to creating an ad that will get approved. Facebook wants its users to have a positive experience when interacting with ads.
If users can discover new products and services through Facebook ads, they’ll continue to engage with the platform. Following these best practices for Facebook Ads will ensure a positive experience for your visitors, along with a strong conversion rate.
1. Think visually.
Facebook ads compete for your audience’s attention alongside all the other posts on Facebook: pictures of your friends’ kids, amazing pictures of nature, and tons of pet pictures. How is your ad going to catch the attention of your target customer? It has to be visually appealing.
Check out the below video from Chive, which sells plant pots. The big green plant catches your eye right away, while the motion keeps your attention. This is a great, simple but visually striking advertisement.

2. Have a clear call to action.
What do you want your audience to do next? Should they like your Facebook Page? Download a free template? Sign up for a newsletter? Having a direct call to action will promote more engagement. Tell your customers what to do next, then make it very easy for them to follow through.
According to AdRoll, adding a call-to-action button boosts click-through rate by 2.85 times. The advertisement below is taking advantage of Facebook’s call-to-action buttons by inviting users to sign up for a free virtual event.

3. Keep it relevant.
With Facebook Pixels and extensive ad targeting options available, there is no reason to promote irrelevant content or offers. The best offers are hyper-targeted to your ideal customer, based on their past site activity and their likes. For example, this advertisement for plant propagation decor is very relevant to me, because I’ve purchased from online plant nurseries before.

4. Provide value.
Why should a customer click through to your landing page? Do you have information they need? A product that is going to solve their problems? Or are you offering a deal? Know what value you provide customers, and make it clear in your advertisement.
The below example from an online grocery store offers delicious food, with a 10% discount on the first purchase. That’s worth signing up for.

Get Started with Facebook Ads
Understanding their policies will get your Facebook Ads approved faster and more reliably. Follow the tips above for better results when advertising on Facebook.

A lot of companies have employee referral programs.
The concept is simple: If you refer someone who ends up getting hired, you earn a reward (typically a cash bonus). It’s a win-win – HR gets qualified candidates while employees feel motivated to assist in the search process.
The caveat we often see is that if the employee leaves the company within a certain window, the reward is null and void. Why give out a commission if the company won’t see a return on their investment? This is the same principle behind performance marketing.

Let’s dive into how performance marketing works, its benefits, and the tools you can use to implement it in your strategy.
With a traditional ad campaign approach, there’s no guarantee you will get a return on your investment. Once your ad launches, you can only monitor its performance and make adjustments.
The better and quicker you are at identifying areas for improvement, the better your chances of maximizing your return on ad spend (ROAS). But even seasoned media buyers can have unsuccessful campaigns if there’s misalignment between the campaign and the target audience.
Performance marketing places the power back into advertisers’ hands. Because you’ll only be paying when your goals are met, you accomplish three things:

Your campaign is less risky
There’s a guaranteed return on investment (ROI)
You have better control over your ad spend

Is affiliate marketing the same as performance marketing?
Short answer: yes and no.
Think of affiliate marketing as a subset of performance marketing. The terms are often used interchangeably. However, performance marketing has grown to cover more than just affiliates over the years.
It also comprises campaigns that use pay-per-click (PPC) models, such as paid search.
How Performance Marketing Works
There are three key players needed to execute a performance marketing strategy:

A publisher or an affiliate partner
A conversion goal
A commission rate

You, as the advertiser, will seek out an affiliate partner, which can be an influencer or publisher.
You must then outline your conversion goals. Let’s say your marketing objective for the quarter is to gain 10,000 leads. You can instruct your partner to direct traffic to your landing page and they will only earn a commission once a user has filled out the form.
Your next question might be, “How do advertisers know which users come from which affiliate?” Advertisers typically give each partner a specific link or code to track who is responsible for that conversion goal.
For instance, if I was an influencer and I partnered with Brandon Blackwood, I would share a 10% discount code “MARTINA10” with my followers to use at checkout when purchasing an item from the brand. Every time someone used my code to purchase, I would get a percentage of the sale.
Today, performance marketing is most popular with influencers, as studies show consumers trust influencers more than brands.
Before influencers, there were online publishers, and they are still big players in performance marketing. If you search “Top Performance Marketing Tools” on Google and land on a listicle, there’s a chance one of these tools may be an affiliate link.
How can you know for sure? Well, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) now requires affiliate partners to disclose their partnerships to consumers. On Instagram, you’ll see the “paid partnership” tag, like this:

On websites and YouTube video descriptions, you’ll see affiliate disclosures, like this:
How To Create a Performance Marketing Strategy
1. Define your goals.
With any digital marketing campaign, establishing your objectives is key.
What do you want to accomplish? It may be general brand awareness, sales for your new product line, more leads, or something else.
Let’s go back to the world where I’m an influencer. Let’s say Brandon Blackwood just came out with a new product. Their marketing goal is to raise awareness of the new product and drive traffic to its product page to generate sales. In this case, their key metrics would be website clicks and unique sales.
Once you define your goals, you can develop your ad strategy and determine which metrics to track.
2. Identify your partners.
Now that you know what you want to achieve, start looking at online publishers and social media influencers whose audiences align with your own.
Identifying the right partners will require extensive research but it’s arguably the most important step.
Imagine working with a partner whose audience has no interest in your brand or product. Although they may interact at some level, they likely won’t convert.
And while you may not lose money, given that they would need to perform a particular action, it would be a waste of your time and resources.
After identifying who you want to work with, reach out to them to see if they would be interested in a partnership. During this step in the process, you’ll discuss your marketing goals, target audience, and commission rates. While some brands have standard rates, others may negotiate.
3. Generate and assign IDs.
You have solidified your partnerships. Now it’s time to get your links and codes ready to share with your affiliate(s).
The only way to correctly attribute an action to a particular partner is by assigning a custom ID, code, or UTM parameter.
It’s important to note that while you may do this manually at first, you’ll likely need to rely on a program to automate this process as you scale your business.
Top Performance Marketing Software
There are two main types of performance marketing software: those that focus on connecting advertisers with affiliate partners or publishers and those that monitor performance. Let’s go through some top tools in each category.
Performance Marketing Partnership Tools
1. PartnerStack

If you’re a SaaS company looking to develop a robust partner program, consider PartnerStack.

The platform, ranked in G2’s 2021 top 50 “Products for Sales,” helps brands recruit, onboard, and manage partners.
PartnerStack’s key features include custom forms and email flows to:

Facilitate onboarding.
Set up reward structures that are tailored to each partner.
Develop an automated payment process.

The company offers custom pricing based on the needs and requirements of each business.
2. Partnerize

Want a simple and easy-to-use dashboard to manage your partners? Check out Partnerize.

Their dashboard gives you high-level data that allow you to gather information quickly and make decisions. Beyond that, Partnerize also customizes its features based on the industry, ensuring that every brand will have what they need to succeed in their performance marketing campaigns.
For pricing information, contact Partnerize.
3. TapJoy

TapJoy is designed for brands targeting mobile app users.

The software serves as an intermediary between advertisers and top mobile gaming publishers. Brands can track key conversion goals, like video completion and in-app purchases, and only pay money on the actions that meet their goals.
To learn about TapJoy’s pricing structure, you must contact the company.
Performance Marketing Tracking Tools
1. LeadDyno

One of the biggest struggles of working with affiliates is creating and tracking links and codes for each partner. This is where LeadDyno comes in.

LeadDyno gives brands the tools needed to grow a successful affiliate program. Standout features include:

Automated links and codes for each partner
Option to upload social media-ready content for affiliates to share
A customizable affiliate portal

Pricing starts at $49/month and goes up to $79/month, for access to unlimited affiliates, extensive customer support options, and more. LeadDyno also offers custom pricing for businesses with over 7,500 unique monthly website visitors.
2. AnyTrack.io

With AnyTrack, attribution reporting is easier. You can consolidate data from multiple sources (like Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel) into one platform. From there, you can identify which strategies are working, and which ones require adjustments.

You can start using AnyTrack for free. Premium versions of the software are available, with pricing ranging from $50/month to $300/month.
3. Impact

The Impact tool streamlines the partnership process from initial contact to payout.

Anyone from an ambassador to a sponsor can be added to a brand’s “Partnership Cloud,” with tailored features for each type of partner.
Beyond the Cloud, Impact’s main features include:

Partner search and discovery
Fraud detection
Partner management optimization

Get in touch with Impact to learn more about pricing.
Top Performance Marketing Verticals
Wondering which industries use performance marketing the most? According to a 2018 study by the Performance Marketing Association, advertisers in the retail sector spent the most in performance marketing – accounting for 50% of total spend. The financial sector followed with 35%, then a steep drop off to the travel industry with a 7% spend.
In terms of revenue, the sector with the highest revenue was retail at 73%, followed by travel with 14%. Industries like automotive, healthcare, and telecoms only accounted for 1% of the total performance marketing revenue in 2018.
However, despite having the big spend and highest revenue percentages, the retail industry didn’t offer the best ROAS. According to the report, the travel industry offered the best return with an 18:1 ratio, followed by the entertainment sector with a 15:1 ratio.
Any industry can have success with performance marketing. It’s all about collaborating with the right partners and setting up a robust program to reach your marketing goals.