At imwave, we work hard to build win-win long-term relationships with our partners. We have found the best way to do this is through clear communications with our partners up-front and throughout our marketing engagement.
Marketing engagements with imwave typically go through 3 phases, initial test, expansion, and optimization:
Initial Test Phase
We typically consider the initial test phase an interview process. We are proving to our new partner that we can drive incrementally profitable traffic to their sites without increasing the costs of their own internal search marketing efforts. At the same time, we are testing how well a new partner’s site will convert the traffic we send to them to make sure we can be profitable.
Expansion Phase
Once imwave has proven that our marketing efforts drive profitable incremental sales for our partners and that we can be profitable marketing the new partner, the next phase is building out and launching a large-scale search marketing campaign.
Optimization Phase
After the initial launch of a large-scale search engine marketing campaign, we utilize our Bidminer technology to measure the effectiveness of each keyword and set the optimal keyword bid price on each keyword to meet our sales and profitability targets.
New Partnership Guidelines
We are very selective when choosing to work with new clients and typically look for companies who we feel are interested in building long-term win-win marketing partnerships. Although not written in stone, the following guidelines have proven successful over time:
1- Use of Company’s URL in Search Ads
We are creating search campaigns on behalf of our partners; we typically don’t drive PPC search traffic to our own web sites. Therefore, to follow search engine guidelines, the display URL we use in our ad copy has to match the page that the customer lands on when they click the ad.
2- Use of the Company’s Name in Ad Copy
Along the same line, we are creating ads to drive traffic and sales to our clients, so being able to use the company name in the ad copy is important for providing a good customer experience and driving traffic that converts.
3- Limited Keyword Restrictions
We fully understand and support the fact that clients might want to put some restrictions on bidding on certain keywords. We ask that new potential clients be willing to have an open and frank conversation with us about these restrictions, so that we can fully understand the goals and mutually agree on guidelines up-front so there are no misunderstandings down the road.