I would like to present results of our marketing survey that we started in February. Survey participants - Our products and services are targeted for small to mid size merchants, so we can expect most of the survey participants will be from this group.

Marketing methods
Merchants were able to check several methods of advertising. It's not a surprise that the most widely used marketing method are Pay-Per-Click campaigns on Google AdWords, Yahoo, and similar. The second most widely used method of marketing is having own affiliate program, closely followed by Opt-in newsletters, Link exchanges, Article and PR submissions.

Most successful marketing methods
Merchants gave the same amount of votes to Pay-Per-Click and Affiliate program when they had to decide what is their most successful marketing method.
It shows the strength of having own affiliate program, when it is run professionally.

Interesting is that there are quite many people out there whose most successful marketing methods are Opt-in Newsletters, Article and Press Release submissions, which means methods that are usually free of cost.

If we consider the top two marketing methods from our survey, each of them has its strengths and weaknesses.
Affiliate program is generally the most effective marketing method, because you (usually) pay commissions only for referred sales.
However, it is only up to your affiliates if they are able to deliver any visitor.

Pay-Per-Click campaigns on the other side are able to bring lots of visitors in a short time, however effectivity of PPC campaign depends on conversion ratio of your website.
You can easily spend lot of money on clicks without any result in sales.

The goal of a webmaster should be to improve the weak points of both methods:
For Pay-Per-Click campaigns your goal should be to increase the effectivity of the campaign. Effectivity in this meaning is only another word for conversion ratio between clicks and sales.
For example, if only 1 visitor from 100 will buy your product, your conversion ratio is 1%.
Your goal should be to improve your conversion ratio - turn bigger percentage of your visitors to your customers.

For Affiliate program the main goal should be to find good (or "super") affiliates who bring more targeted visitors, who can put visitors into "pre-sell" mood and send them to your website for a final purchase.

There are differences in effectivity between affiliates too. Some affiliate can send you thousands of visitors vithout ever turning one visitor to customer.
The ways of looking for super affiliates, educating and training your affiliates to sell more and earn more for them and for yourself is beyond scope of this article. I plan to release few more articles in the future with some advices, you will be able to see them on our website.

When voting for second most successful marketing method, most of people were not able to decide. The rest of results can be seen in the graph.

In the second part of survey, visitors had to rank their experience with affiliate marketing and management of affiliate program.

Majority of the participants ranked themselves as beginners in affiliate marketing.
Considering this result, it could be little surprising that the vast majority of merchants want to manage their affiliate program by themselves.
The conclusion for us as developers of affiliate software should be:

• increase the ease of use of our products
• make the affiliate management more systematic in a sense that it will lead the affiliate managers on the "right" track
• possibly also introduce some training programs or experience sharing for both affiliate managers and affiliates

Affiliate program is the second most used marketing method,
the most used marketing method is Pay-Per-Click campaigns, affiliate programs are followed by Opt-in newsletters, Link exchanges, Article and PR submissions.

Affiliate program and Pay-Per-Click campaigns were voted as the two most successful marketing methods
by majority of merchants. The rest of merchants voted for Opt-in newsletters, natural search, link exchanges, article and pr submissions.

Most of visitors and potential customers are beginners in affiliate marketing,
and they want to manage their programs by themselves.
This means affiliate software should be as easy-to-use as possible, it should bring some system into the work of affiliate manager.
There is also potential for education and training of both affiliate managers and affiliates.