Guest Blog by: Jeff Flowers

Advertising is everywhere.

The average American is exposed to more than 3,000 ad messages each day. In fact, we see more ads in one year than a person living 50 years ago would see in an entire lifetime. Everyone is vying for our attention these days. Have you seen the ads in the bottom of golf holes? TV ads at the gas pump? Ads in bathroom stalls?

How can a consumer expect to sift through this clutter to determine what products and services he should buy? Who can he trust to give him unbiased input?

Today’s consumers are relying on advice from trusted sources for recommendations and referrals. This is the power of affinity marketing.

How do you know that the offer for cell phone service that is being extended to you by your employer is the best deal out there? If you are like most consumers, you think “it must be a good, legitimate deal or my company would not be offering it to me as a benefit”.

The same influence can be found within trade associations, professional groups, unions and other organizations. As a marketer, the challenge is to “influence the influencer.”

Almost every consumer belongs to at least one affinity group. Whether it is the company he works for, his church, his bowling team or his professional association, he belongs to some kind of organization. And that organization has some level of influence over his purchases.

The key to affinity group marketing is to position your offering as a group benefit.

Benefits can be as simple as offering a member discount. Everyone likes to save money and everyone understands discounts.

Another type of offer is a “value-added” benefit. This type of offer is limited only by the marketer’s creativity. Value-added offers include “gift with purchase”, “exclusive sales”, upgrades and other perks. Consumers like to feel special and any offer that gets them past “the velvet rope” will be received well.

The important thing to remember is that you must offer legitimate value that the member can understand and appreciate.

Find out what groups your customers and prospects belong to and integrate your products and services into their member benefit programs. And then, take care of the members…and they will take care of you.

For more information visit The Perks Company.

Must read on affiliate marketing’s real value in the sales chain during these tough economic times from Scott Jangro (aka Jerry Maguire).

Be warned… this is not a cheerleading piece.

The Year Affiliates Saved Christmas, Really? | Jangro.com: “As affiliate marketing gets a larger and larger percentage of retail sales, and taps more and more into ‘already had’ customers, it becomes devalued. For the health of this industry and channel, these things need to be understood and addressed.”

Way to go, Jangro.

Say what you’d like about Microsoft Cashback, but they seem to be getting the numbers right…

Microsoft Cashback: The Traffic Needle Is Still Stuck, But The Ads Are Rolling In: “Microsoft is reporting that according to Comscore, Live Search referred 12% of all commercial transactions across the web - a number that is much smaller than Google’s referral share, but one that is also significantly larger than Live Search’s market share, which hovered around 9% during the same period. This makes the Live Search user base very appealing to advertisers, as it shows that they’re more likely to purchase goods than their Google counterparts.”

I’m still not sold on the long term veracity of the program since Microsoft faces two serious challenges to Cashback if it is going to be seen as a reliable income stream: 1) affiliates doing this are smarter, more nimble and will eat into Cashback’s market share little by little every month 2) this won’t get (or sustain) the “Oprah crowd” that makes cashback sites successful because the lack of a community and/or branding for that purpose (I’m not being a Microsoft hater… just saying).

Still, the numbers are impressive. Glad to see Microsoft using Jellyfish for it’s potential and perhaps this will spur more companies into investigating the direct response space as the economy continues to stumble around like a stoned hippy at a Grateful Dead show.

Last week, Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis announced the search/discovery startup was cutting 10% of its staff (or 6 people) as the economic downturn continues to cause nervousness in Silicon Valley.

It looks as if Mahalo is searching around for revenue channels to accompany the $20 million raised in venture capital funding.

While playing with the new Mahalo interface I noticed that there is now a Mahalo loyalty program that seems to be based on visits alone…

The text on that page reads:

“We track the number of pages people view and reward our most loyal visitors with prizes. We don’t track the specific pages people view.

The number of pages you’ve viewed is right below the search box in the upper right corner of the Mahalo homepage.

If you’d like to opt out of this program, click here.”

While this seems like a novel idea in the Valley, affiliate-minded companies such as UPromise, eBates, Cashbaq, Fatwallet, Microsoft’s JellyFish, iGive, ValueClick’s MeziMedia, etc have been in the loyalty space for years and have come close to perfecting (or at least experimenting enough to find a profitable margin) the loyalty paradigm.

Rather than basing the Mahalo Loyalty program solely on such an easily manipulated metric as visits or pageviews, Calacanis and Co would be wise to look at what these affiliates have done and how the combination of pageviews plus action committed produces a much better result than just pageviews.

Even Microsoft seems to be “getting it” with their Cashback platform (which is actually doing well according to the analytical sites). Of course, Microsoft and the loyalty affiliates rely upon a conversion of a purchase or subscription for success, but Mahalo could very well find paydirt by leveraging a loyalty program composed of its massive amount of content with a developing loyal user base and affiliate programs.

We’ll see how they develop things.

Mahalo Loyalty Program - Mahalo