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AGENCY
Find and close clients: 10X hacks?
Struggling to find clients for your agency biz? Or are you just looking for more customers to scale it up?
Christos Efthymiou shared a strategy to grow your customer base, using Google, LinkedIn and some Grant Cardone hacks…Let’s see how it goes:
- First, you need a Facebook Pixel Helper installed. Once that’s done, go to Google and type “(niche) in (city)”.
- Click on the first 3 advertised results and check if they have a FB Pixel installed. If they are spending money on Google, then it means they are more likely to spend on other advertising platforms too. And if they don’t have an FB Pixel installed, they might need your skills, right?
- On their website, look for the name and the contact details of the founder or owner.
- Find this business on LinkedIn. Send notes to their employees that deal with advertising. Keep in mind that the note has to be personalized and not a hard-selling one. Do this for all the three businesses.
- Click on the links that have “Top 10 (niche)”.
- Follow the same process: Look for the FB Pixel, find their contact and message them.
- Create an Excel file with all the businesses you found. Names, surnames, emails, phone numbers, if you have already contacted them and the status.
- Send them an email to schedule a call.
- For the call, Christos suggests following this process for which he took inspiration from Grant Cardone:
- Nice warm greeting.
- Try to understand your prospects’ pain points.
- Present your idea, but don’t sell.
- Try to close.
- Reciprocation.
- Final close.
- Agreement.
If you want to pitch harder, you can offer a bonus consultation or a trial, especially if you’re new in the game and have no testimonials.
So that’s about it. It’s simple, but it’s smart.
Hitting businesses that already spend money on Google Ads is a great strategy. If they already spend their hard earned cash on Google, they’ll be more inclined to spend on FB advertising too.
If you can’t find their emails or can’t reach them on LinkedIn, you can still contact them through their FB Page if they have one. Or, if you’re hungry enough, you can pay them a visit right at their office.
However, we can’t assure that the Grant Cardone template will help you 10X… Good luck!
SOCIAL MEDIA
Social media automation in under 2 hours per week
Remember the last hack we shared about generating 150M+ traffic on complete automation? That post understandably received a great response. So, if that worked, you are totally gonna love another cool automation hack that Vadim shared in the same FB group here.
This hack helps you automate all your social media posting in just 2 hours per week. The tools you will need to set this up are: An RSS Feed, Zapier and Buffer.
Here’s how you can go about it:
- Find the best source of images relevant for your niche. It could be Instagram, Shutterstock, Flickr or anything else.
- Create Zapier and Buffer accounts and connect your social platforms.
- Create a new Zap: RSS + Buffer
- Inside Buffer Profile select your social account.
- For Buffer Text, select the description of the image.
- For Buffer Photo URL, select the image.
- Press save.
Result: Zapier will automatically generate new posts in the Buffer queue using new images from the RSS. You might need to review it once a week to delete any inappropriate content or to change the text but apart from that it’s a fully automated system.
PS: You can use Instagram as a source of images using: Queryfeed.net
You can use Flickr RSS as a source of images using this link.
Replace “watercolor” with your own search tag.
This automation hack should allow you to post more frequently, squeeze a bit more traffic juice from your social media platforms, and save you valuable time in the process. If you face any issues with the above set up Vadim is more than happy to help you out. Catch him on the post above!
Facebook’s war against fake accounts
Last week didn’t end well for some Chinese companies. In fact, in its hunt for businesses that sell fake accounts, likes and followers, FB sued four companies and three people based in China.
These Chinese companies advertised and created fake accounts over the last two years, marketed them for sale on six websites and sold them in huge quantities.
The companies’ business wasn’t limited to FB and Instagram either. Fake accounts were also created and sold on Amazon, Apple, Google, LinkedIn and Twitter.
It’s unclear how big their entire network was, but the operations had to be pretty big to attract the attention necessary for a Facebook crackdown.
Earlier this year, New York attorney general’s office declared that “selling fake social media engagement and using stolen identities to engage in online activity is illegal,”
And Facebook is making huge efforts in catching and disabling fake accounts. In 2018, 2.1B inauthentic accounts were disabled.
Now, the world’s largest social network is seeking a court order to permanently block the Chinese companies accused.
So it seems that selling fake accounts isn’t a sustainable business anymore… Facebook have been developing powerful AI tools to track down these inauthentic behaviours too, so if you’re creating fake accounts to get new Business Managers… Facebook will come for you.
SPONSORED
Welcome to the Media500 Show! Choose your affiliate manager!
Don’t get fooled by their innocent faces because they just hide affiliate marketing beasts that only deal with the best offers. Affiliate marketing managers that go above and beyond to solve an affiliate’s issues, because they focus on deep partnerships.
If you have a problem, they can probably help you find a solution. Or find an affiliate partner they work with that has a solution. Their bread and butter is crypto so they know all sides of it. From offers to traffic to everything else in between.
Let’s introduce the stars of this Media500 Show, shall we? Starting from left to right from this picture. Handsome devils, aren’t they?
David – He keeps it simple. And he likes the simple things… High ROI, converting crypto offers and the occasional chat at an industry conference. Whether you are having a good or bad day, he’ll be the same partner to push you forward with all that
Connect to David by clicking here!
Moti – People mistake him for Lewis Hamilton. Because he answers message so fast and because he kinda looks like him with sunglasses. Just like Lewis, he is a champ, but not in F1. He’s a champ in affiliate marketing.
Get him as your sparring partner here!
Benjamin – Keeps an ear on the ground for everything that goes on in this industry. FB groups, parties, meetups, conferences, you name it, he’s there! He’s the Head of PR for Media500… And when he’s not at an industry event, he usually works from the beach. So, he enjoys long Skype chats on the beach, fancy campaigns and high ROI.
Contact him if you want to partner with Media500!
Ilan – He can stare right into your soul. So much so that he’ll know what offers you desire before you tell him. But don’t worry, he won’t be upset if you bypass his superpower and just ask him for offers you want. And of course, he uses this superpower to gather info from everyone else in the business.
Get him as your Media500 sidekick right here!
AMAZON
FTC crackdown on fake reviews: $12.8M in fines
Buyers rely on product reviews to make purchasing decisions on e-commerce sites. Meanwhile, sellers rely on fake reviews to influence those buying decisions, right? Ehm…
Well, it’s not a secret anymore that many sellers have done that in the past and some continue to do so. However, a diet supplement brand on Amazon has been busted by Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for purchasing fake reviews for its weight-loss products.
The FTC said in its complaint against Cure Encapsulations that the company paid Amazon Verified Reviews to generate 5-star ratings in an effort to deceive the consumer public.
As per FTC proposed court order:
- Cure Encapsulations can no longer misrepresent the benefits of its product.
- The brand has to notify its previous buyers about the FTC’s allegations.
- The brand has to notify Amazon that it had bought fake reviews and identify the fake reviews themselves to Amazon.
- A judgment of $12.8M “suspended upon payment of $50k to the Commission and the payment of certain unpaid income tax obligations.”
Well, the fake reviews provider Amazon Verified Reviews has previously been sued by Amazon itself in 2016, along with several other fake review vendors. But it looks like this bad apple has returned to business as usual.
It claims that it’s ‘only a platform that links reviewers to business owners.’ In reality, it provides reviews of a certain review length will be posted along with a 4 or 5 star rating for a fee.
Interesting Facts:
- As per Fakespot, a 3rd party review analysis company, fraudulent reviews dominate certain product categories. The company found that 61 percent of review content in the electronics category was fake. The number was 63 percent for beauty and 64 percent for supplements.
- As per a 2017 BrightLocal survey, nearly 80 percent of people said they had encountered fake reviews online.
Zoom In
Don’t be fooled into thinking that this is an Amazon specific problem either. Fake reviews are an issue on Google’s platform as well, and given how much buyers rely on them for making purchasing decisions, many sellers continue to purchase such reviews.
It’s important to note that Amazon and Google bear no liability for fake reviews on their platforms, hence they have limited incentive to crack down. However, this FTC settlement could be the beginning of the new enforcement front against such review fraud.
New Insta updates for Live videos and local businesses
All social media platforms seem to be locked in a race to roll out more and more updates to please their users. This week Instagram rolled out 2 new updates – One helps you add more context to your Instagram Live videos, while the other lets local businesses showcase their profiles to their audience more effectively. Let’s get to it:
New Title option for LIVE videos
First spotted by Matt from TheNextWeb, a new title option appears on the pre-launch screen while going Live on Instagram. It prompts you to ‘add a title for your viewers’, hence allowing you to add more context for your viewers.
How is this helpful?
- It allows marketers to form a narrative around their Live videos.
- It shows Instagram’s desire to push Live content as more authoritative content stream.
- It allows more people to watch your Live stream. Especially those who catch up at a later time.
- It’s also another way for your content to be discovered under the “Relevant” content section. Instagram will use the description in a similar way it uses hashtags to uncover related material.
- Higher brand recall.
In-App Local Business Profile Pages
Are you a local business? Do you have local biz among your clients? Now you can add more information to your Instagram Business profile, making it look more like the local business pages in the Google local knowledge panel.
As per the update, first spotted by Raj Nijjar, more information about local businesses shows up when users search for a location and tap on the “View Information” button.
How is this helpful?
- It allows you to add more business information such as business address, hours, contact information, and website.
- Just like Google My Business listings, there is also an option to “Claim” the business page if you have access to the FB business page associated with it.
Both of these above updates are yet to be officially announced by Instagram. However, the screenshots in the tweets above show that users have started seeing them and will be rolled out to everyone sooner or later. And where did you hear about these updates first? That’s right! *wink*
QUORA
Quora update: Bulk Ad creation
After those bunch of posts we shared about Quora, maybe you have finally decided that it’s worth buying some ads there, right? And by now, you’re probably looking to scale, yes?
Perfect, because we’ve got some more fresh news! In fact, the question-and-answer website introduced the ability to bulk edit and bulk create ads within the Quora Ads Manager.
Oh yes! Now you’ll be able to create and edit ads in bulk:
- Bulk ad creation: You can save time creating ads and uploading them in bulk using an Excel spreadsheet or CSV.
- Bulk ad editor: You can update multiple Quora Ads at the same time. You can make text changes to your ads by simply downloading your ads into a spreadsheet, making changes offline, and then uploading the updated spreadsheet back into your Quora Ads account.
Zoom In
Keep in mind that this new feature is available only for Quora Text Ads. You can’t create and edit Image Ads in bulk… yet.
Still, as far as Text Ads are concerned you can quickly create and edit multiple ads variations in minutes, make the necessary testing and see what works the best for your audience. All this adds up to plenty of time saved!
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things affiliates like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
When’s the last time you told a friend about us?
Last week? Well, today’s the start of another week. And we’ve put together some cool prizes if you share the Crew’s newsletter with your friends in the industry.
Here’s what we’ve got for you…
Refer 5 readers: Access to WHAT THE AFF Insiders Facebook Group. The group is live and people like Paul Jey, IAmAttila, Nate Lind and Depesh Mandalia are already involved.
Discussions are already ongoing on the future of nutra after Mastercard’s change in policy, Facebook’s lawsuit featured above and Pinterest’s possible expansion into the German market.
Refer 10 readers: We’ll send you a stickers pack. Brand your laptop, phone or whatever you want with the WTAFF logo.
Refer 25 readers: Premium T-shirt. Great for your poolside hangouts or just for sending a message that you have over 25 friends. Even your Mom will now see you are popular!
Refer 50 readers: Custom WHAT THE AFF Magazine cover. We’ll create a custom magazine cover for you, print it, frame it and send it to you. This is one of a kind and personalized just for you. Hang it in your home or office and show off about how many people you know!
Refer 150 readers: Surprise Box. We’ll ask you a few questions and build you a surprise box. You might get one thing, you might get 100. You might love it, or you might hate it. We hope it’s the first option but it will be a surprise for both of us!
Refer 250 readers: Conference tickets! A free pass to any Affiliate Summit or Affiliate World Conferences event. You choose, and we’ll get you the ticket.
Refer 1,000 readers: All expenses paid weekend trip to Vienna. You’re our hero so we want to meet you. We’ll get you to Vienna for the weekend to hang out with us, enjoy the city and get to know some of The Crew. Obviously, you can stay longer if you want. We’ll cover flights and the weekend.
To get your unique referral link, click on the image below, confirm your email, then start sharing! Yeah, it’s a bit annoying to confirm your email after reading this, we know. But we have to set up double-opt-in…
You know how it is with referrals, right? We want legit people who are truly interested *wink*.
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