Many affiliates have wondered if search engine marketing will continue to grow or if search has become an exhausted, time-consuming, risky way to promote an advertiser. Today at SES:NY I sat in on the Orion Panel “The state of search: maturing marketing place or poised for more growth,” which consisted of search engine professionals. Many agreed that there are many areas of search that have potential to grow and develop, however it all depends on how innovative we can be as marketers. They referred to a heavy reliance on traditional media and other forms of offline advertising to drive people back to search. The panel stressed how important it was for internet marketers to look towards television advertising to find trends to use in keywords. And the road splits two ways. Television can also use search as an advertising experiment to see how their message resonates online before launching. Advertisers can look to search as an immediate online survey for their brand or service and give them the proper direction to lead with. With a hurting economy, advertisers and affiliates are getting smarter and going beyond conversion to maximize their ROI. The search audience is also becoming more sophisticated and they are using better keywords. The panel emphasized how there are pools of new words to bid on that have never been touched and that Google is now working on making these categories more accessible. Their panel left the audience very hopeful that the SEM industry was not going anywhere; in fact it’s always evolving.

Speaking of innovation, I also got a chance to check out the Facebook workshop on “Harnessing the social graph.” Many affiliates have taken advantage of advertising on Facebook and have come away with a quick profit. So how do they do it? Here are some tips on how to best optimize your affiliate campaign in order to drive high conversions.

1. Creative Best Practices – Most Facebook users are engaged with what’s going on in the space, so it’s imperative to make your creatives stand out.

2. Writing a Relevant Ad – Make sure your ad copy matches your audience and objective.
3. Creating multiple ads – It’s important to understand what ad formula works for you, so try testing your creatives and change one variable.

4. Refreshing Your Creative – Building brand awareness generates demand over time so make sure your audience is seeing something new every time they login.

5. Metrics for Optimization – Analyze your results. What has the highest CTR?

Connecting the two panels together, I sat in on “Dealing with affiliates: a roadmap to success” to end my second day at SES. What I took from this discussion and I cannot stress it enough, is the importance of open communication, especially in the affiliate marketing space. I think paid search and affiliates marinate well together and if the right specs are shared, the possibilities are endless.