(note: this is an adaptation of my Marketing degree thesis and as such you may have seen a similar post somewhere else since I used it in a couple boards)

When dealing with marketing research and niches, we’ll always find ourselves in a point where applied research requires optimization to make the most out of our marketing budget(s). This point can be planned in advance (ie if we’re setting goals by time frames) or may surge out of necessity (ie, we notice our marketing efforts aren’t working as expected).

Now, if you’re worried this post may be something heavy and tiresome, don’t worry,  I won’t go into deep technical stuff nor research methodology. Instead, I’ll try to explain this in an as simple as possible way, by providing easy to understand examples and then some ideas on how to implement these techniques in a really easy way.

To start, let’s go with what I called the The Sniper and the Machine Gun models. In this scenario, we have two soldiers trying to reach their targets. One of them has a high precision sniper rifle, and the other has a machine gun. At this point I’m pretty sure you’re figuring out what will be this about, but let’s have a look at it:

The Sniper Model

This is the Sniper Model. Our sniper is using few bullets (money/resources) to make a sale by researching the proper way to get an easy target. Thus, the full line goes straight to the heart of the target (or, in other words, make a sale). Now, you’ll see the blue dotted lines that goes to the “body” of the target, “injuring” him, which may lead the target to “survive” (meaning he won’t buy because of a weak call to action or unrelated motives) or maybe he will “die” because of his injuries (meaning that he may NOT buy at that exact time, but may be buying sooner than later).

To add to that, our shooting range has 3 zones: niche targeting, media delivery (proper or wrong choice of media and marketing materials) and competition, and it’s easy to see our bullet will be farther from the target as the zones become bigger. The more accurate and restricted our “zones” are, the less loss in accuracy.

Let’s get the metaphor out of the picture and straight to business:  If we define our niche in an accurate way, our target will be closer to become an effective sale since we’ll have less dispersion. Once we start adding more factors, the dispersion ratio will have a compound rate increase.

Before continuing, let me add something that I know most of you hate to guts, but it’s very easy to use and extremely useful and needed in marketing and economics research: the Compound Interest Function. It’s as simple as this:
Value   =   IV (1  +  R / t)^Yt

where IV=Initial Value , R=Interest Rate , t= times of occurrence per year (every month would be 12) and Y=number of years.

In the graphic above, I’ve used a reasonable deviation of 3.4%, which comes out from the difference between total sales per campaign minus impulse buying multiplied by dispersion factors. So in this simple graphic, with only 3 dispersion factors, we could notice that around 30-35% of our budget is being 100% effective (leads to a sale) while the remaining budget has a 33% of chances of convert to a sale at a later time. Again, this is a very simplified model, you may find out that working with real numbers adds an exponential value of difficulty *

The Machine Gun Model

So we got to the dreaded “machine gun” model. Here, our soldier will use a really high number of bullets to get the same results than the sniper. Take a look at the graphic below:

Here we can see that the amount of resources used to achieve the same results increases in an exponential rate. In the basic example, we have a 360 degrees market with 8 targets, so, to our machine gun soldier it will take 45 bullets to get a 100% target (sale). In other words, the budget will increase 45 times for 100% effective sales. You’ll also notice that brand awareness is a little higher in this model, and that’s why companies going for wide range branding won’t care much about niche refining (this is a very common usage in mainstream marketing, however, in my humble opinion it’s a waste of energy and resources in online adult marketing).

In short, it’s common sense to use the Sniper Model. However, most people uses the Machine Gun Model. Why? Well, because unless you’re part of a certain community or a very knowledgeable person about a certain market niche, the sniper model requires a lot of specialization and the use of every single resource available to refine data. Of course, data research is the most important one, but technology usage, smart design elements, competition status research, innovation, economics and so on are factors to keep in mind. As an example, I honestly doubt any designer could compete with me in certain niches (ie pornstars, glamour and some fetishes) when it comes to results. But, what if I need to do a design for an amateur mature site? Well, 99.99% of designers will say “Yes, I can do that” and come with the same cookie cutter design, just changing the subject. We all know it’s like that, and I can’t blame anyone on that, there’s not a lot of work for designers, and at the same time, some site owners aren’t well informed on the subject as well, so it all comes to a vicious circle.

However, information is power, and I’ve the knowledge to make things different, so why not use it? I’ve seen/heard many times the usual mottos “marketing is useless”, “you don’t need a designer to do a site, do it yourself because you know the niche better” (I gotta admit this is the funniest one, out of tens of thousands of adult webmasters I can count with my hands the number of people capable of doing this with decent results), “I’ve been doing this for years” (yet most old adult companies are closing doors) and so on and so on. And so on. I won’t say anyone is wrong, to each his/her own. However, if everybody else is failing, why keep following the path of failure?

So yes, information is power, and although it’s very uncommon to see someone providing secrets to competition, well, here here are some useful techniques.

Some real life techniques

Marketing Effectiveness Research

First define a budget, no matter how small it is as long as you can do something with it, you can grow it later. Isolate this marketing action by using specific custom campaigns so data isn’t contaminated. Now, choose 2 to 4 marketing models (ie banners, text links, galleries, different traffic sources, same marketing materials with different selling claims/colors and/or any combination of these) on a strict time frame, for example 1 month. Try to keep traffic levels to be consistent throughout the whole time frame, for example, if you buy 90,000 hits try to make those hits come at 3000 per day.

After the time frame ends, you’ll have some amount of data, including traffic (one column per each source), CTR, sales, time frame and so on. Using Excel, input all the data per day (1 row per day) including amount of traffic, amount of traffic to sponsors (or to join page if you have a paysite), amount of sales and a last column should include cost of traffic (if you didn’t buy traffic, use the average value from traffic providers for the same kind of traffic you have). Make a graph with this data so you can see the results at first sight. Do this for each marketing model.

Now, if you kept the traffic flow at the same level, the last column should give you a somehow flat line, but chances are you’ll see several hills and valleys in the other columns. Quite possibly, you’ll see differences depending on day of the week and day of the month. So now, let’s go to data analysis:

a) first thing first, subtract  your initial budget from the total amount of money derived from that campaign. If you get a negative number or a little positive value… well, you’re doing everything wrong, so time to rethink your strategy.

b) take your total number of sales and divide it by 30 (or any time frame you decided to go with) to get the average sales per day. Add it as a new column to your graph, repeating the same value on each row. Now you’ll have a flat line. Check out every spot where the value is above the line, and try to find something in common. For example: are those spots on weekends? at start of month? coming from some traffic source? is there a daytime/nighttime difference? (most probably, yes). Again, do it for each marketing model.

c) now compare the marketing models themselves and you’ll see a lot of information that will help you to diagnose which are your strengths and weaknesses.  Thus, you may end with something like “best results came from Tour A with TGP traffic on Wed around 6PM and 3 AM with geo IP US-DE-UK”

so in this example, it’s very easy to see that all tour versions converts better on Wed to Fri  of Week 1, between 6PM and 6 AM (day/4 means we have divided the day in 4 equal parts, but you can do it with 3, 4, 6, 8, etc. I like 6 myself), with geo IP us-de-uk. We also see tour A converts great on TGP, while tour B seems to be built for SE. Let’s say our original budget was $3000 using 3 tours and 3 different traffic sources all equally divided, thus we invested (or wasted) $66.66 per sale, and common sense tells us to divide our budget in a more efficient way since most traffic fell out of effective range. Now it will look something like this:

Model 1: Tour A, TGP traffic, 3 days a week (Wed to Fri), first week of the month, 6 hours a day (6PM to 12PM), US-UK traffic

Budget explanation: when we started, we had 3 marketing models with $0.463 per hour per traffic source investment ($1000 divided by 30 days divided by 24 hours divided by 3 traffic sources).  Now we’re weeding out 2 traffic sources, 4 days, 3 weeks, 18 hours and we realize that each sale in this targeted model would cost us only $8.33 . See the maths below:

0.463 (hourly investment) x 1 (traffic source) x 3 (days) x 1 (week) x 6 (hours)

so Model 1 real cost per sale is 12.49% of what it was.**

Model 2: Tour B,  SE traffic, 4 days a week (Wed to Mon), first week of the month, 12 hours a day (6PM to 6AM), DE-UK traffic

Now we’re weeding out 2 traffic sources, 3 days, 3 weeks, 12 hours and we realize that each sale in this targeted model would cost us only $22.22 (33.33% of what it really was) . See the maths below:

0.463 (hourly investment) x 1 (traffic source) x 4 (days) x 1 (week) x 12 (hours)

Therefore, although we could use a budget redistribution of $1875 for Model 1 and $1330 for Model 2 (or $1750 and $1250 for budget correction ), we still don’t have a tendency, so we’ll give tour C another oportunity, only that the budget will look more or less like this:

Model 1: $1700

Model 2: $850

Model 3:$450

After this time frame, we repeat the analysis, only that instead we’ll add a “previous time frame growth” column (in %): anything over 0 will tell you we’re on the right path. Any negative number will require further adjustments. Either way, in no more than 5 or 6 months you’ll probably have a defined tendency and a pretty targeted niche

Next Week: Our Sniper Tumbles! (and even more techniques) Updated: New post is on!

*if you’re interested in going deep further into statistical analysis and research, you should use Variance or Standard Deviation to measure the dispersion values

** according to the table, you may say that I’m leaving out the 19 sales, however in this example we’re working on time frame trends and the cost isn’t per sale, but for the best hour spot

We’re happy to announce the launching of our new project Body . After a few months of working on it, developing and adding many bells and whistles, we finally came to the final stages. The site uses an extremely customized WPMU+BP backend that integrates Mechbunny’s tube script, XML and AHAH tools and a lot of custom scripting. The results are outstanding and the first test are announcing we’re facing a ground breaking milestone in adult: The first Adult Social Media community.

As yo may imagine, we designed everything on it, but we also are in charge of marketing, development, content creation and every single aspect of it. And this is just one of the many projects we’re working on our own where we take over all aspects of the business, and quite frankly, as big as it sounds, this one isn’t the bigger we’re working on!

Hope you like it, any comments are more than appreciated!

Some people asked me about it due to some chit chat between webmasters in Las Vegas. And the short answer is:

Maybe. At least as you know it.

We’re on the verge of great changes happening very soon, so be sure to check this site the next following days/weeks. For now, we’ll be finishing the already committed projects for our adult website design area, and from there we’ll see how we work things out with the new crew. However, if we feel we can’t provide our usual level of satisfaction, we’d rather close business to new clients to concentrate only on the marketing side of our company and a few mega projects we’re working on. This being said, we’ll continue accepting mainstream design projects.

We think our expertise and results have grown to a level where it would be quite unfair for our clients not to be able to provide the same or even better service, and share our expertise at the ridiculously low prices w’re charging.  At the same time it would be unfair for new clients not to provide them with the best possible service as well. Due to our geometric growth, we’re close to that point. As a matter of fact, we’re working extra hours right now and hiring more people to help us.

This is a time for well thought steps. I’m sure we’ll make the correct decision, one that may leave further clients out of the scoop, but will satisfy our existing clients. Which, as we’re at it, are the biggest companies in adult internet business.

For those of you wondering or anyone who has any doubt, you know how to contact us. We won’t let anyone down. We’re just growing too fast for what I feel we can handle without adding a bunch of highly trained personnel. For that, you’d be thankful, it will be on your own benefit

I’m a fan of late 50s and all the 60s design, especially Japanese and German design from those years, so I’m always looking for nice design pieces. While this is an adult oriented site, what better than old, vintage, awesome adult related design? It might be cheesy, it might be corny, it might be “camp”, but I’m sure most of you will notice how cool is this stuff. Keep in mind that at that time you really had to know how to design, no computers, nowhere to steal get inspiration from, just pencils, brushes, glue and scissors. At most, some Letraset sheets! (I started designing like that, so I know what I’m talking about )

before anyone says something, there are some 70s and 80s movie posters as well, just wanted to include them because they are really cool!

Anyway, take a look at these amazing vintage porn posters! (sources: Scanner, LiveJournal, Moon Karma Zero)

SEE MODERN AND VINTAGE PORN MOVIES!

More old movies resources:

Caballero Classics

Classic Vivid

Legend Movies

Pleasure Classics

Pornstars Classics

Vintage Divas

It’s common knowledge for everybody that online sales are taking a hit, conversions are up to 50 times worse and traffic is being affected by new players in the business. Some people may deny it, while a few lucky ones may see better results (although still worse conversions).

This goes for those that are being affected in any or other way, and want to do something proactive about it.

The online adult business was always known as an easy one, with quick cash and lots of money to be made. It’s big yet, the money is there, but it’s not an easy one anymore.

Companies are falling down. Big, small, medium. We can see it every single day. The ones that survive the storm might get stronger than ever. However, many webmasters will fall down and disappear, whether they’re independent webmasters or big companies, everybody could be a victim.

While many actors in adult business are innovating and looking for solutions, there’s a huge mass of webmasters that aren’t willing to risk and will just wait to become trend followers, an approach that might be correct in certain circumstances. But in these harsh times, even trend followers will be taking a risk, since the level of marketing and technological innovation required to succeed nowadays is quite high.

On top of the described situation, it’s easy to realize the adult business paradigm has changed and the already known business models are not correct anymore.

Therefore, most people will need easy to manage solutions to improve their businesses at a low cost, making use of every possible tool available to achieve the best results within an ever-changing context.

And here’s where we can help.

We’ve many options to improve your sites on the following items while taking advantage of the new paradigms and business models that are proven to succeed in today’s online business:

Marketing Enhanced Design

Simply and short: everybody knows our design’s conversions are second to none. There are reasons to that, it’s not a coincidence. We invite you to discover it.

Differential Approach

As said above, the known business models have lost a lot of their effectivity. We can mantain your sites as they are right now while adding new features, or simply revamp them to make the most out of it.

Enhanced Retention Rate / Rebilling

You might be interested in reading our retention rate post where we explain this in detail. Our proposal is extremely simple: we’ll grow your retention rate. Granted. And on top of that, we can tell you how to maximize the monetization of your site. Remember: a new customer is hard (and expensive) to get. Losing customers is extremely easy.

Innovative Marketing Tools

One of the things a successful program needs is innovative marketing tools. Most programs focus their efforts on galleries, which you’ll always need. But there are ways to make them convert better, make them be more original, make them get a better CTR (Click Through Ratio). And once you think outside of the galleries, we can offer sets of marketing tools so innovative your surfers will click like mad.

Social Media and Viral Marketing

Depending on your site and your investing capabilities, we can provide you with solutions to create interest in your site coming from the biggest social media sites. Or, going a step further, even mass media.

Content Protection Techniques

We can tell you how to use content that will be hard to populate on tube sites, how to have unique content people won’t find anywhere else, and how to make the most of it, with really simple and affordable solutions

This is just a tiny part of what we can do. And we do it well. Just contact us using the contact form link and we’ll be happy to discuss your needs. You’ll never regret it.

Just let us be part of your success. Give us the chance to show you what we can do for you. Give yourself the chance to grow

This article I wrote was originally posted at GFY. You can follow the discussion after it, with some very valid and interesting points from other people. Just in case, although I wrote and posted it, this article owns everything to Ed and Agnes, our in-site marketing research consultant and psychologist respectively, I just compiled the information and posted it, nothing else.

After some interesting discussion here, that somehow deviated to a “tube wars” thread, I thought it would be cool to add some pizzazz to the discussion.

Personally, I think, I’m convinced, I vouch and I can swear everything is about RETENTION. See, most people tends to believe the so called “mainstream” marketing rules don’t apply to adult, or if they do, they do it just incidentally. Of course, that is the same like saying people surfing adult sites or buying adult products are not rational human beings in a society with given uses, values and habits and they’re some kind of aliens from outer galaxy instead. This is a perception usually maintained and encouraged by people who has no knowledge on the subject and they’re afraid of losing business, power, whatever.

IMHO, not only mainstream marketing techniques applies to adult: it’s basically the same

So yes, I’ve some idea about what I’m talking about. I’ve a degree in Marketing and was a Marketing Manager for several mainstream companies, including Citibank NA, Deutsche Bank AG and Cinemark Mexico and Argentina. And even when I recognize some differences based in PSYCHOLOGY (question: how many psychologists do you know in adult biz?), I can’t see a single difference when it comes to techniques, research and such. As some people knows, I use to research a lot, work with tendencies data, apply it to design, etc. And frankly, everything is exactly the same, no matter if you want to believe it or not.

Going to the point: one of the basic premises in marketing is “getting new clients is difficult. Losing them is really easy”. Hence, most efforts are put in keeping clients, and there are formulas to set the cost of a new client and the time you’ll need to recover the investment in getting that client (yeah yeah, I know). Anyone that knows the “kitchen” of adult biz knows IN MOST CASES (with some honorable exceptions) it’s the exact opposite to adult business, where efforts are set to get new affiliates and/or members (CLIENTS!) and after that, or even in the same proccess they lose it. A perfect example is the crazy xsells and shady rebillings.

So, most webmasters I talked to are perfectly happy with a 50% retention rate, some of them even BRAG if they get a 50% retention rate. IMHO, that’s obnoxiously low. I’ll show you an example I call the “stalled growth paradox”

Rebilling only 5% more every month shows a notable increase in income

the first example takes 60 sales a month (fixed, no sales loss) and a retention rate of 50%. You’ll see that by month 6 you’ll be stucked in the same numbers. No growth but some marginal centesimal. Of course, it’s worst with less than 50%, although the tendency is maintained.

In the second graph, I’m showing you a 51% exponential retention rate. As you can see, you grow and grow. To make it easier, with just less than 6% constant growth in retention, you’ll double your income by 100% in 11 months. Nice, huh? That’s the beauty of rebilling businesses, and it’s the nature of the game. Many programs are setting for “1 buck today, tomorrow we’ll see”.

So, what does it leaves us with? Well, to avoid loses or stalled growth, you need to increment any of the numbers of the constant, whether it’s sales or retention rate. In a context where sales are going down the hill, your only remedy is to increment conversions at the same rate you lose traffic just to be even, or increment conversions beyond your traffic loss rate. Or, increase the amount of traffic in absolute terms. This will increase costs as well, of course. Depending on many factors, it could be worth it or not. In absolute terms, ie absolute amount of money, big programs will have no big deal with this. However, smaller programs will face losses sooner or later. And both of them will decline any growth ratio they may have.

Now, I won’t show you a graph where sales goes down instead of my fixed rate example or you’ll want to shoot yourself.

In the meanwhile, keeping a member happy is relatively easy and with way lower costs in the short/mid range. Some of them are “adult only” solutions, but most of them already exists in the dreaded “mainstream” marketing.

So yes, the short, easy and rational answer is RETENTION is the key of the game

Feel free to discuss this article and share your thoughts!