Complete Web Marketing List Omits Affiliate Marketing
I realize much of corporate America and many traditional marketing experts do not understand or appreciate affiliate marketing. However you would think that since almost every top brand eTailer has an affiliate program, affiliate marketing would at least count as ONE of the online marketing channels?
When a Sr Analyst at Forrester publishes the Complete List of the Many Forms of Web Marketing 2 years in a row and does not feature affiliate marketing as a form of web marketing and when he mentions the word affiliate, mis-categorizes it as “branding,” you know we have a lot of work ahead of us.
A Complete List of the Many Forms of Web Marketing for 2008 and the 2007 version, which was one of the top viewed posts of 07, does not even feature affiliate marketing. SEO, SEM, Email Marketing, Contextual and every other type of online marketing is featured but not AM. The only time it’s mentioned, it’s lumped in with unrelated marketing methods under “branding”.
C) Sponsorship and /Cross branding/Affiliate
This is a method of promoting your brand with the right audience in which the property is rewarded for integrating your brand.
Affiliates are NOT rewarded for flashing your brand! Affiliate Marketing is NOT a branding vehicle and should not be used that way, unless merchants want to start paying affiliates for impressions. Affiliate Marketing is a direct SALES channel or in some cases a lead generation channel.
The sad thing is that this post has had 59 replies with many top marketing folks praising how complete the list is and saying everything is covered and there is nothing to add. I suppose if your primary focus is not the affiliate marketing industry, it could be easy to miss the omission. But our industry IS my focus, so I’ll be heading over to add my 2 cents as soon as I publish this.
#1 Evelyn wrote on Friday, January 4th, 2008:
You go Linda!
I can’t believe how big an area can be (Affiliate Marketing) and yet be left out of such a supposed “all inclusive” document. Maybe they consider Affiliate Marketing to be the same as Internet Marketing (although, then why mention it under Branding?) - who knows! I can’t wait to go over and read your “slap” of them
#2 Linda Buquet wrote on Friday, January 4th, 2008:
Hi Evelyn,
Yep some companies do MILLIONS a month in affiliate marketing, so pretty odd it was totally skipped. I won’t slap them though, I’ll be nice!
#3 (In)Complete List of the Many Forms of Web Marketing for 2008 | Affiliate Marketing Blog by Shawn Collins wrote on Friday, January 4th, 2008:
[…] post, “Complete Web Marketing List Omits Affiliate Marketing,” points out how Mr. Owyang composed an exhaustive, but not exhaustive enough, list detailing […]
#4 Jeremiah Owyang wrote on Friday, January 4th, 2008:
I love feedback, in fact, becomes it helps me (and exhaustive lists) to improve!
Linda, I sent you an email asking you for your definition, let’s collaborate. Let’s improve this, and then you can update this post showing it’s added.
It was left off the list only be oversight, not intentionally.
#5 Linda Buquet wrote on Friday, January 4th, 2008:
Hi Jeremiah, thanks so much for responding and wanting to collaborate.
Hope you realize that my concern was not just your list. Affiliate marketing is often overlooked by the traditional marketing community. The branding thing is touchy because many merchants DO use affiliates for branding which is really unfair, because affiliates don’t make a dime for showing off a brand. They need conversions, sales and then merchants that will actually pay them for their efforts.
Off to check my email. Looking forward to working with you to better define affiliate marketing for your list and your readers.
Thanks again for stopping by. It’s very much appreciated!
#6 Jason G. wrote on Friday, January 4th, 2008:
I think the less know, the better = more lucrative. Keep adoption/competition as low as possible.
#7 Recognizing the Affiliate Family wrote on Friday, January 4th, 2008:
[…] Linda and Shawn were up in arms that Affiliate Marketing didn’t receive it’s own sub bullet in the recently published The Many Forms of Web Marketing for 2008. I don’t blame them, this is a core form of marketing that they’ve built their business on, so it deserves it’s own bullet as it’s unique from advertising. Affiliate marketing is really about working with partners to help market or even sell your products. Think of how authors often put the Amazon widget on their blog to sell their book –in hopes they get a small residual. […]
#8 Linda Buquet wrote on Friday, January 4th, 2008:
In the post above at Jeremiah’s blog, you’ll see he added affiliate marketing to his list. Here is what I told him over there.
Hi Jeremiah, thanks for adding affiliate marketing, we appreciate it. I hope the email I sent about your request for a definition was helpful. In attempting to answer your 3 questions I ended up writing a book (sorry). I’ll probably end up turning that into a post about all this, since it contained some important info and stats.
Thanks again!
Linda
#9 Affiliate Fortune Cookies » Blog Archive » What Is Affiliate Marketing? wrote on Friday, January 4th, 2008:
[…] TV: Search Engine Land - Smartest Guys on the Web Ignorant of Affiliate Marketing: ReveNews - Omission of Affiliate Marketing in Marketing List: 5 Star Affiliate Marketing Blogs - Good conference tips: […]