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Looking back. And looking forward!
For some of us, the beginning of a new week means an annoying start. Thinking about the tasks to crush in the days ahead.
For others, it just means a drunk headache after a weekend of parties.
Here at WHAT THE AFF, Monday is about two things: strong coffee and latest updates.
While we sip that coffee, let’s have a look at what happened under the reign of Mark, because it’s been a busy weekend for Facebook related news.
ManyChat new integration: More conversions, lower CPA.
OK, we start with an update from a company that’s not Facebook, ManyChat. Their promise is more conversions and a lower CPA. Huh? Everyone’s dream.
What are we talking about?
Dynamic Targeting. How can this lower your cost-per-conversion?
Let’s say a subscriber named Jack signs up for a discount through ManyChat.
With Dynamic Targeting, ManyChat will communicate to Facebook that Jack signed up. Then it will dynamically update your Custom Audiences and Lookalikes.
As more people subscribe, your ads will be more in tune. Cause you’re telling the algo to find more people like Jack and the other subscribers, dynamically. Thus, the name Dynamic Targeting.
However, there is more from ManyChat. An FB Ads integration to help you simplify your job.
From quizzes to giveaways, interactive forms to coupon code redemptions, to webinar signup, ManyChat lets you interact with your audience without clunky copy-paste of JSON code!
Staying in the Facebook zone, there is an update about that reporting issue.
Remember that Ads Manager reporting bug last week?
Costs were rolling, but conversions were stuck? There’s good news: you didn’t waste money.
Depesh Mandalia shared updates from the Facebook team, and what came out is:
- The problem was due to an error in the database. But it’s fully resolved now.
- All the data is now caught up. And available in the Ads Manager.
- The performance wasn’t affected.
The last one is important. Buuuut, we do our work based on data. If the data is incorrect, the decisions are wrong.
So, we are happy that conversions weren’t lost. But what about people panicking and pausing campaigns? In other words, making wrong decisions based on the wrong data?
We can blame as much as we want, but as Depesh said: We are on borrowed land with Facebook Ads and the landlord sets the rules. If you don’t like it, you leave.
In other FB News…
- They’re building “Facebook LOL”. No kidding. A place to share low-quality memes. It’s kind of a desperation move to get teens more involved in Facebook.
- They’re also launching a petition feature called Community Actions. It’s for political petitions only, at least for now. Something like Change.org.
- FB employees have been busted leaving 5-star reviews on Amazon for Facebook’s Portal. Talk about hypocrisy and coordinated inauthentic behaviour.
- US regulators want to make an example out of Facebook and serve it with a record-breaking fine over data privacy protection. There have been rumours about stuff like this since Zuck’s US Congress hearing… Maybe it will come true soon!
- One of Mark Zuckerberg’s early mentors hates what Facebook has become. And is cashing in on that sentiment with his book!
AFFILIATE MARKETING
3 Simple Strategies To 3X the Value of Every Lead from Ryan Deiss.
Ryan Deiss was one of the keynote speakers at Affiliate Summit West a couple of weeks ago. The theme was fairly familiar – traffic is more expensive, what do you do? In other words, things are getting harder. Like we said, common theme.
That said, it’s getting harder for everyone and there are ways to keep up. In classic WHAT THE AFF fashion, we go through the 55-minutes speech to get you the actual tips without the fluff.
To begin with, Ryan has 3 main points he goes through, that show why it’s getting harder:
- Traffic costs have gotten up by an average of 29% in 2017 from 2016.
- Organic reach is almost non-existent. In 2011, it was 26% average reach for a post. In 2017, it was 0.5% – not a typo!
- Conversion rates as a whole are also down, with an average LP conversion rate being 2.35%.
Before you go ahead and say “Those are not my stats!”, well, those are averages taken across all niches. What matters is whether or not you are doing better than 2+ years ago and whether or not you are growing. If so, well done! For those who need more to improve, we’ve summarised Ryan’s actionable advice.
Fixing high traffic costs.
Segmentation. That’s the answer. You have to segment your audience so you can offer more attention to the high-value customer.
The key is to do it without lowering your conversion rates at the beginning of the funnel. A simple tip from Ryan is to use binary questions and not many.
When using a complex form, CVR halved. If you can use just one, Ryan saw no change in CVR. So, test but reduce friction as much as possible for completing a form… It’s just common sense!
Some tools that help you segment and identify high-value customers:
- Clearbit, helps with shortening the forms and quickly adding the data to a CRM.
- Bucket.io, helps with creating forms.
- Tapcast, helps with mapping out your audience for social media buys.
We haven’t tested any of them so we can’t give a personal recommendation but hey, they’re probably worth checking out.
Fixing lower engagement.
Create the content people want. Sounds vague so let’s be more specific. Answer people’s questions and be exact about it.
The best blog content these days, according to Ryan, is simply the one that answers very specific questions. Yes, as a marketer you know many things simply depend but the way to get traffic is to give definitive answers to common questions.
No idea what questions? Check out Quora, BuzzSumo or AnswerThePublic. You can get the questions most common to your niche… And you can even get the answer! There, just like that you now have your content ready.
A small tip here, if your audience is there, try LinkedIn video. Select 10 questions, answer each of them in a LinkedIn video of 2 to 3 minutes and post it. LinkedIn gives priority to videos way more than your average post these days.
Of course, our tip is to also repurpose that content into all forms for all platforms.
Fixing conversion rates.
Alright, so this one is not as easy and won’t apply to absolutely all businesses. Still, many can benefit from it.
The answer is a proper chatbot. Hear us out… Or well, hear Ryan out. Build a chatbot that can properly pre-qualify and segment your visitors, then have a human being step in when the time is right.
The trick is to have the proper questions setup for the bot to gather valuable information about any visitor and then deciding on the proper step where a human should step in. 3 tips for the bot:
- Start with the same answerable question idea, like in the forms. Don’t just say “Hey, I’m here!”, ask something like “Are you a new marketer, a small business owner or an agency?” – have the answers clickable of course.
- Don’t just slap the bot on the home page at every visit. Put it in strategic places of the funnel that show more intent than the average person or show it only on return visits to the home page.
- Have a human step in after a sequence of 4-5 questions that lead your visitor to say they need your service or product. Sure, not everyone will get there, but once someone says “I am interested in learning how to hire marketers”, and you can help… You get where this is going right?
Some example questions that Ryan and the team at DigitalMarketer use.
- What brought you here today?
- What do you know about us?
- What are your top priorities?
- Want some help with that?
All these questions have 2-3 options that you can click to answer. Don’t make it too hard to give an answer!
Once the visitor says they need help with that, the human steps in. And they go back to get more info on what the top priorities are for the customer. In other words, they make the connection between the conversation, with the bot and the new convo happening.
So that was our summary. We think that if you do have a business looking for the long term, you should definitely check out the talk in full, and perhaps look more in-depth at the chatbot example.
Specifically for this, there are many tips that won’t apply universally and you have to understand what perspective these solutions came from. They might not be right for every business.
SEARCH
Bing Ads will serve all Yahoo! search ads in new Microsoft-Verizon Media deal.
Microsoft and Verizon have joined hands in a strategic deal to strengthen the Search partnership. Which means Yahoo Search inventory will now be available through Bing Ads platform.
As a result, Microsoft’s Bing Ads will be the exclusive search advertising platform for Verizon Media properties, including Yahoo and AOL.
What benefits will it bring?
- You will now have a single global platform to create search advertising campaigns that reach audiences across the Bing, Yahoo, and AOL networks.
- It eliminates any share of Yahoo search inventory Google previously may have had. It includes ad space on Aol.com, Yahoo.com, AOL Mail, Yahoo Mail, Huffington Post, TechCrunch and other Verizon-owned properties. Yes, AOL is still around!
- Expect 10-15% higher click and conversion volumes.
- Deep audience targeting and optimization capabilities powered by the Microsoft Graph, which includes LinkedIn data, and Microsoft AI.
How will this affect Native Advertising?
- Oath Ad platforms (Yahoo Gemini) will have exclusive third-party access to the new native ad inventory on MSN.
- The Microsoft Audience Network for native ads will gain access to inventory on Verizon Media properties as well as new MSN placements called End of Article Block and Gallery Interstitial.
- Native ad performance from Verizon Media properties will be reported in the Bing Ads UI as syndication traffic.
Moving through the Transition:
- Monitor your Bing Ad campaign budgets closely to ensure they are ready for these potential increases in click volume.
- You can continue with your Oath Ad campaigns to avoid losing traffic.
- Also, in the meantime, start running parallel campaigns in Bing Ads to absorb the traffic and ad spend shifts.
E-COMMERCE
Kiip partners with Purchase Decision Network.
We have another ad partnership to delight the e-commerce store owners.
Mobile advertising network Kiip has partnered with Purchase Decision Network (PDN) to make shopping list data directly available to the advertisers on its ad platform.
While shopping lists are the purest form of shopping intent, this data on PDNs network was previously limited.
This is the first time this valuable intent data will be available to an outside ad network.
PDN uses anonymized shopping list data from a network of its participating apps for iOS and Android, such as AllRecipes, Our Groceries, BuyMeAPie, Scan2List and Shopper. Shoppers give consent for their data to be utilized when they download the free apps.
How is this helpful?
- PDN network has over 50M monthly shoppers and more than 140M shopping trips per month.
- Shoppers can be profiled specifically by what they buy in store, rather than what the data says they will ‘probably’ be interested in.
- The ability for advertisers to target segments — such as users buying children-related items like baby food, or shoppers who purchase gluten-free products.
- Similar to FB, advertisers will also be able to create LLAs for finding new buyers of a product
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- True White System – Single Step (US) – $3.32 EPC
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Hit up the affiliate management team via Skype to get your unique links today and make sure you mention WHAT THE AFF for expedited approval.
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They also have exclusive Crypto offers, Sweeps and much more they’d love to work with you on. You won’t be disappointed!
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things affiliates like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
Wanna take the stairway to heaven?
Today, we wanted to give you a glimpse of the after-effects of being around the Internet all the time, chasing the latest news updates for you guys.
So, how do we Internet-detox ourselves once we are done curating the stories for you?
Here’s what The Crew likes to do in their non-existent spare time.
It’s a hike in the Austrian Alps, taking us directly to the summit of Gosaukamm mountain range.
But it’s not like your regular hike. We used a sky-high ladder that acts as a bridge between two mountains here in Austria. A ladder, yup that’s right!
It’s kinda new-age-stone-man thing but an enriching experience, we must say!
Would this be up high on your places to visit?
We got an affiliate travel package link and a cool offer going on, so do let us know 😉
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