How Advertisers Can Get The Most From Their Publishers

Getting the perfect mix of volume and quality of leads from publishers can be like tightrope walking over the Niagara Falls. However there are many out there in the trenches of the performance marketing space that are pulling this off like a world class performer.

Outlined in this article are some of the main ways that advertisers connect with world-class publishers to develop long, strong and prosperous relationships.

Landscape

Having a super strong sense of how the landscape is changing is a massive competitive advantage in lead generation. When new formats and growths of traffic spring up being the first to connect with them can be a major source of being first choice to where leads will go once they start monetising. This really just comes down to being self-aware and knowing what has been happening in the past and projecting the possible realities to where it could be going in the future.

Referral

If you already have strong relationships with good publishers one of the finest sources of other publishers is their own network. They say that great minds think alike, and that you are the average of the 5 people that you have hung out with over the past five years, well if you have a strong publisher base currently you can amplify this by setting up a referral scheme based on this.

Conferences

Although old school, conferences are a massive source of high quality publishers. People buy from people and there is no replica for building huge amounts of trust than getting in front of potential publishers face to face. In an industry where many people are cutting corners trust is solidified with a personal touch.

As with other themes if you can tap into conferences that are not the usual spot, where advertisers are not fighting for the traffic with others can be a great source of undiscovered traffic.

Joint Ventures

Becoming a partner in business with your potential publishers is a great way to attract the ones with quality and scale. By setting up joint venture partnerships and putting some skin in the game, advertisers can develop unique partnerships that at first glance may not have seemed so obvious.

Chris Sacca told the story of how Google leveraged this strategy by joining up with Mozilla in installing it’s Google toolbars. This was a deal that became a $300million dollar yearly revenue stream for them and put their ‘non-profit’ policy into question.

Working With Quality and guiding them to scale

If you currently have publishers that have unique market angles and can drive traffic in the specific area, then sometimes just a little bit of education around how to scale horizontally or vertically given to the publisher can create a massive flood of quality leads. Many publishers don’t see the 15 ways that they could increase lead volumes and sometimes just a helping hand by experts in the field can turn small objects that have a huge impact.

Analysis of Vertical Validity and Response

Analysing which leads are performing and tracking down the location from which they originate is a huge benefit to advertisers. John Wanamaker famously said that ‘Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half’ however he wasn’t alive for the in depth tracking and reporting features that databowl boasts.

When you can analyse which data sources are providing the most value to your bottom line then it becomes magnitudes easier to know where to focus your efforts on helping to scale up.

Building publisher bases to send you traffic is not a blind man’s game. But it can yield huge benefits if you know how to dance the traffic landscape. Following these points of where the publishers hang and how to develop relationships with them can add extra zeros to your bottom line.