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AFFILIATE MARKETING
So WHAT THE AFF was The Crew doing at AWA?
We hope you followed our live updates on Instagram. As always, Affiliate World Asia had a mix of good business followed by networking events with plenty of drinks.
This time around, we cannot comment on the speeches much. We had a booth to spread the word about our little newsletter so we didn’t see any of the talks.
Hey, maybe you are reading your first email today, after you saw us there… Did you enjoy the conference? And what’s the first impression we made on you?
OK, so aside from not seeing speeches, it was great to meet some of you. Thanks again for stopping by, saying hello and giving us your feedback! We do have plans for next year. The content should become easier to read, share and in general, we’ll add a little spice to the WHAT THE AFF community. But not too much so don’t worry about any BIG changes.
Another highlight was, of course, winning the go-karting event hosted by Affiliate Business Club! Easy game! Thanks to our friends from ABC for hosting it, here’s to many cool meetups like that one.
OK, so that’s our quick recap of AWA. We need to get our heads back on the weekend and you can expect a more in-depth review next week.
Oh, and by the way, don’t forget the next big conference is coming in hot in early January – Affiliate Summit West. We’ll give you some updates on that one on Monday!
End of day 2, after drinks, The WTAFF Crew tries to do a real-life Poolside Chat… Didn’t work out that well…
Charles Ngo revealing the 22 immutable laws of affiliate marketing
Heard of this guy? You should have – he is one of the most familiar bloggers and affiliates out there. And also someone who enjoys what we do here at WHAT THE AFF. In his latest post, he has something cool for everyone.
Charles started writing a series of articles about “The 22 laws of Affiliate Marketing”. He wrote them for the next generations of affiliates, to keep them aware of the principles that never change in the super-volatile industry.
Enough with baseless talking, let’s go straight to the first seven he shared:
Be the first in the market: Every product has a lifecycle: Introduction Stage, Growth Stage, Maturity stage, Declining stage. If you don’t want to get hurt, you should never enter a declining industry.
A product enters a declining phase for several reasons: burned out audience, too much competition or regulations. When do you want to get into BTC? 2008 or 2018? You got it, right?
The Offer is 75% of the Battle: When testing all the variables of a campaign, there is one of them that will determine 75% of success: The Offer. So focus more on testing as many offers as you can. And once you find the right one, try everything to make it exclusive.
Defend yourself with moats: What happens when you are finally able to find the perfect mix of creative/offer/angle/landing page? The copycat affiliates show up, threatening your ROI. Moats are the competitive advantages that allow you to stay ahead of other affiliates.
You can have different moats: you know the traffic source like the back of your hand, you have relationships with the network or the advertisers, giving you advantages that other affiliates haven’t. Or you have manpower and systems that allow you to test and scale faster than everyone else.
Need for speed: The faster your website loads, the higher the revenue. Speed up your entire funnels!
Whoever experiments the most, wins: Affiliate marketing isn’t a thing you can learn like a school subject just by reading books.
If you want to be the best affiliate, you have to be like Einstein: Always experiment and experiment with everything. That’s the only way to learn affiliate marketing and improve continuously.
Communicate clearly: The better you can communicate your message, the more people will get it. The more people will get it, the more of them will convert! So, make sure that people understand your message!
Smaller Budget? Serve a smaller audience: When your budget isn’t that big, you have to target market segments that big affiliates don’t because they lack volume. So, when you are small, attack small markets!
These are just the first seven ideas. Do you find them really immutable?
Facebook’s bet on live video shopping
Maybe there is a new way to promote affiliate offers! How? Just pitch them!
Are we back to door-to-door sales? No, it’s not that. It’s a new video feature from Facebook that let merchants demonstrate and describe products in a Live Video, giving people the chance to buy directly from it. Right over Facebook.
How? During the video, customers can screenshot something they want to buy and use Messenger to send it to the seller, who can then request payment right through the chat app.
Facebook confirms the new shopping feature is currently in testing, with a limited set of Pages in Thailand, which has been a testbed for shopping features. This test in Thailand is receiving positive feedback so far.
Users also told Facebook that Live’s interactivity lets customers instantly ask questions and get answers about product specifications and details. A shopping experience warmer than buying from an ad!
Facebook is setting its sights on Craigslist, Etsy and eBay. These e-commerce platforms have failed to keep up with new technologies like video and lack the trust generated by Facebook’s real-name policy and social graph.
Isn’t it a bit ironic that the company with the biggest privacy scandal of the year is still more trusted than others? Oh well…
Do you think that this feature is threatening for us media buyers?
There is no doubt that for people it’s more pleasant to buy from a person than from a landing page. Plus, there is more trust. And if they are able to do that from the comfort of their home, even better!
Obviously, not every business will start marketing through live videos. It looks more like something for small businesses. Those that market on Etsy and eBay. Anyway, who decides what works and what doesn’t is always the same person: the customer!
The beauty of Facebook Attribution
As marketers, we don’t like to assume things, what we love is to rely pretty much on hard facts, otherwise known as data, to build our strategy!
And if we haven’t already stressed you enough about the Facebook attribution tool, here are some things by Jon Loomer that you should know.
The beauty of Facebook Attribution is that it helps you easily compare organic versus paid. It separates out Messenger, Instagram, and Audience Network.
Yet, the biggest advantage of this all-in-one approach is reporting consistency. As we all know by now, Facebook and Google Analytics will never match up. But having one report act as the equalizer can provide a much more accurate sense of the impact of your respective efforts.
Jon Loomer suggests having a look at the Top Sources of your conversions and website registrations, in order to see your line of business and make better decisions.
If you haven’t implemented this tool yet, this guide on how to spot the best sources of traffic and conversions is probably the right point to start!
Start-ups killing it on Instagram – steal their strategies!
It took thirty-eight years before 50 million people gained access to radios. It took television thirteen years to earn an audience that size. It took Instagram a year and a half.
With over 500M active users on Instagram, it can be a game changer for the right business.
It’s free! It’s visual! It’s plausible! It’s where your audience hangs out at!
Here, we will point out a few businesses who crushed it on Instagram, built their loyal audiences and grew their business.
Apartment Therapy, a site about home decor, built over 1.6M genuine followers, just by redesigning existing content, posting teasing content and using Stories feature regularly. Thus, became an inspiration for millennials for interior design and real life decor solutions
MeUndies, a clothing startup, disrupted the way underwear was sold! Just by inspiring confidence and individuality through fun.
Their social media team is very acknowledging towards the audience and promotes a healthy body messaging. They also create funny and unexpected content for Instagram.
Warby Parker, an eyewear business built by 4 friends, struggling with overpriced eyeglasses, built the brand over Instagram by focusing on core social values. They promoted a lifestyle and not the product, engaging with a variety of meaningful influencers globally, creating shout-outs for the brand.
Chumbak, an Indian brand, focused on using its own employees for creating marketing content making the brand likeable, credible and transparent. They also host a variety of contests for the young audience. Thus, building a huge and engaging audience over Instagram
Be original. Be organic with the content. Create teasing and unexpected content. Promote a lifestyle that your brand relates with and not the product. Host contests. Focus on social values. Leverage user-generated-content. Collaborate with meaningful Influencers. Use Stories. Redesign existing content.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things affiliates like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
When you advertise for Samsung but you miss that affiliate life…
If you make creatives yourself, you probably use these two things: stock photos and Photoshop. True? Well, Samsung does the same. Nothing weird so far.
But it becomes fun when you know that they used stock, photoshopped pictures to promote the camera capabilities of the Samsung A8.
Basically, they took photos from Getty Images, edited them and promoted them as a Galaxy A8 shoot! It happened twice: in Malaysia and Brazil.
You can’t trust anybody these days…
A Samsung spokesperson replied, saying that as stated on their website, the image is meant for “demonstration purposes only” to help showcase its product features… What an excuse!
Were they low on budget? We don’t think so. Our idea is that the marketing manager of Samsung was an affiliate in a previous life and just can’t leave old habits.
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