XBIZ World is pleased to present “Execs of 2016: The Year in Review” — a special showcase of the thoughts and strategies of 2016’s most influential and motivational leaders as they offer their take on the year’s top trends.
Each of the executives we spoke to is among the finalist nominees for the Online Industry edition of the 2017 XBIZ Exec Awards.
Our blog is packed with useful information, including industry news, statistics, reports, digital marketing trends, how to use our new product releases, and our latest platform upgrades to help clients generate higher revenues and achieve a better ROI. -Giles Hirst, ExoClick
The following question about the year in review was asked to those running for the Marketing Executive of the Year Award:
XBIZ: How did you maximize your marketing this year?
Adam Scheuer
Business Development Director, Metart Network
“I’m a believer in building strong relationships with our partners. My approach is through daily outreach and face-to-face meetings to intimately understand the underpinnings of their business and together create synergistic marketing initiatives. When you couple this with MetArt’s comprehensive business model, a fantastic product, and a company culture that believes in setting new trends to stay relevant, you push boundaries and create opportunities for all parties.”
Courtney Rudolph
Social Media Manager, Friendfinder Networks
“This year I’ve focused heavily on Cams.com, working closely with our product team to bring a number of projects to life, including the implementation of some exciting interactive features. These improvements have helped increase conversions not just for our internal campaigns, but for our affiliates as well. I have also spearheaded our social media marketing strategy, having worked with some talented individuals to help boost our presence. I’ve also trained our Cams.com models to drive traffic to their pages by building a strong social media presence of their own.”
Denise Kraft
Owner, Naughty PR
“In 2016, we continued to maximize our clients’ marketing reach through event marketing, social media, and networking. I am a firm believer in event marketing; whether that is B2C or B2B, it’s important to put yourself, your talent and products out physically in front of potential and existing consumers. In this online, highly competitive industry, it’s more crucial than ever before to develop personal connections and give consumers the opportunity to meet talent and touch products first-hand.”
Giles Hirst
Marketing and Communications Manager, ExoClick
“This year we carried out a lot of content marketing with regular columns and features in XBIZ, with tips for advertisers and publishers, as well as re-launching our corporate website and new blog. Our blog is packed with useful information, including industry news, statistics, reports, digital marketing trends, how to use our new product releases, and our latest platform upgrades to help clients generate higher revenues and achieve a better ROI. This year we have seen a 65 percent increase in our blog traffic.”
Jo Merlone
CEO, KiwiSourcing
“Working within the field of marketing and promotions, you’re required to think outside the box and present new and intuitive ways in which to expose the brand, product or service within the means of the allocated budget assigned. Thankfully, I am blessed with the companies that I work with as we’ve built a relationship over the years to where they now provide me with the necessary support and encouragement for me to explore new ways in which to target their desired audience without constant approval being needed. Such confidence and trust in my efforts from my clients has helped me maximize my marketing in 2016. In addition, continually seeking cost effective promotional products, being involved with design concepts and development of advertisements from start to finish and coming up with off-the-wall last minute ideas to strike interest, such as cardboard masks of affil4you Managing Director Joey Gabra, have all contributed to maximizing my marketing. Marketing doesn’t have to be extravagant or high-priced as anyone with money can produce that. Instead, marketing should be original, interesting and capture the attention of your audience, which I believe I often deliver, which is why I’m still employed.”
Kelly Shibari
CEO, The PRSM Group
“We’ve certainly reached out to even more mainstream media outlets this year, to increase the visibility of our clients’ products to a wider audience. By going outside of the boundaries of media outlets who only consider adult products to be strictly ‘novelty,’ or ‘weird news,’ we have been able to help clients establish more legitimacy for their products to the worldwide consumer audience. A lot of media outlets have been changing their hiring model to employing freelance writers over staff, so continuing our relationships with individual writers as well as media outlets have been extremely crucial to making sure our clients receive as many mentions and coverage as possible. We have also brokered deals with production companies, directors, and performers to use our clients’ products in their films and scenes, which has also increased visibility to adult entertainment consumers. By trying to integrate pleasure products with mainstream methods, we’ve seen very positive results, and we intend to expand in that direction in 2017. We are also working on new campaigns, while keeping in mind potential changes the recent election might be bringing to our LGBTQ clients and their products’ visibility.”
Kimi Evans
Affiliate Manager, Flirt4free
“Personally, this year’s marketing efforts were focused on continuously tailoring ads to stay relevant and fully taking advantage of new browser development and capabilities. I also concentrated more time on analyzing user join paths to create higher converting funnels.”
Debora Xavier
Marketing and Optimization, Vendo Services
“‘The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.’ That’s a Peter Drucker quote we’ve been thinking about a lot in 2016. We want to know our clients and understand them better, so we’ve been having different conversations than in the past. We get to know what’s important to them, what really matters. It changes over time. Earlier in 2016, it was risk, for some of them, because of the Visa rule change. Now most of our clients focus on optimizing revenue in a highly competitive market. That knowledge and understanding of our clients affects how we develop our service. It is a constant conversation and we’re constantly iterating. It moves us closer to our goal: a service that sells itself.”
Ross Allan
Advertising Manager, Trafficforce/Pimproll
“In 2016, we felt the way to really increase our marketing presence was via social media advertising. We set out at the beginning of the year with a goal to have Traffic Force run consistent ads to reach out to potential new clients and let them know we are still here and growing. Each conference we attend, we start a Facebook ad campaign to alert clients that we will be present, and offer ways they can meet with us such as stopping by at meet markets or visiting us at our exhibit. It brought us a whole new audience and clients who previously had not heard about us. Our second goal for 2016 was to break away from attending our usual conferences and take a chance on new markets. As a result, we have seen our presence in Asia grow a lot, especially in China where we now work with many local companies, bringing them a traffic source they didn’t know existed before this year. We also have our platform translated into Chinese to make life easier for those clients to navigate their way through the ad buying process.”
Vadim
Head of Marketing, Clickadu
“We concentrated our marketing at Clickadu on attending various industry shows. The ones we did not manage to attend, we sponsored to make our presence felt. This was a great way for generating leads while making personal connections, which is vital for a relatively young company such as Clickadu. Not only did this approach make Clickadu a very well known brand, but it was great fun as well!”
