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There are only 27 days left actually…
For you to get entries into our giveaway!
If you haven’t heard of it yet – we’ve put together 5 outstanding marketers to meet with one of you for an evening of good food, drinks and networking in Bangkok, on December 3rd, before Affiliate World Asia.
Who are the five?
- Kelly Sheffield, CEO of New Odyssey Media
- Depesh Mandalia, CEO of SM Commerce
- Van Oakes, CMO of DieselSellerz
- Paul Jeyapal, CEO of SynapseMedia Group
- Andrew Payne, Founder of AffiliateSuccess.com
That’s not all.
The winner also gets:
- An AWA 2018 ticket – obviously!
- 3 months of AdPlexity for free
- 3 months of ThriveTracker with 66% off
- 2 invitations to Affiliate Business Club’s event in Bangkok
We also have a nice bonus added – refer someone using your unique link from the giveaway page here and you will get 25 more entries!
By the way – We’ll have a few more bonuses during the giveaway, so make sure you drag this email to your inbox if we’re not already there. That way, you don’t miss our emails!
Facebook can target you with data you didn’t even list on your profile
A paper published by researchers at Northeastern University and Princeton University gives insights into how ad targeting works on Facebook.
Facebook is sharing personally identifying information that you never submitted with its advertisers. It is confirmed it does use phone numbers that users provided for security purposes to also target them with ads.
But even if you haven’t given your phone number to Facebook advertisers can use your phone number to target you.
How is that even possible? If you gave your number to a friend who’s also on the social network and has it saved in their address book (which Facebook has access to), then it can be associated with your profile.
Yesterday we quoted David Marcus, Vice President of Messaging Products at Facebook, saying “Facebook is truly the only company that’s singularly about people”.
And we can’t agree more – Facebook truly cares about people, because people are its product. So, the more you know about your product, the better your product becomes!
A step-by-step guide for FB retargeting by Charles Ngo
Years ago traffic was cheap. You spent a few hundred dollars and your ads received tons of traffic. Sadly this changed and nowadays it is important to tweak all the little details in your campaigns to run them profitably.
One basic but very important part of that is retargeting. Charles Ngo dedicated his latest blog post to that topic.
For most of our readers, it’s probably just useful to have all the info about retargeting in one place, so we won’t go into detail now. If you are not familiar with it we highly recommend checking out the full post.
Charles shows the different methods of retargeting, like retargeting with the Facebook pixel or retargeting people who engaged with your ads.
The most useful advice in his post are his tips for successful retargeting:
- Retarget with a special offer: Give a discount, offer free shipping.
- Retarget by audience segment: i.e. separate campaigns for men and women with different angles, copy or landing page design
- Retarget with new creatives: Show the “same” ad to the same people with new creatives
- Retarget in Messenger: A lot of people use Messenger more than Facebook itself, try to retarget them there.
In a time where CPM and CPC are on the rise, it is important to keep your retargeting up to date. So it’s always worth it to keep an eye on retargeting campaigns of others and also don’t be shy to constantly test new ideas and angles yourself.
PSYCHOLOGY
How to deal with the “emotions roller coaster” that being an entrepreneur is?
You know those pseudo-self-help articles on the internet that go “Struggling with anxiety and low energy levels? Just avoid things that stress you!” as if you can just quit your job and go live on a tropical island sipping juice out of a coconut?
Wait, some of you are reading this from a tropical island, with a coconut on the side of your laptop? OK, maybe this is more for those still on their journey 😉 So our point is…
We kind of find those articles as helpful as going around telling strangers to smile. Here are some things from our personal experiences that might be able to make your bad days a little less bad.
1. Meditate.
If you’re nervous, feeling jittery, or just can’t focus on your task, take a few minutes to consciously calm your body and mind. Assume a comfortable position, close your eyes, and focus on your breathing.
Try to clear your mind from thoughts, we’ve found that counting while you breathe makes that easier (e.g breathing in for 3 counts and out for 4 counts). Anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes (or even more if you feel like it) can make an immediate difference in your day. If you’re interested, Headspace is a great app for simple, guided meditations!
2. Get enough sleep.
Yes, yes, it sounds trivial and you probably know this, but adults needing far less sleep than kids is a myth, and sometimes we need a reminder.
If possible, do not try to stay up all night to do something, but instead go to sleep when you get tired and continue with a fresh mind in the morning.
If you have trouble falling asleep, try drinking a calming tea such as lavender or valerian before going to bed.
If you’ve been having nightmares more than usual for some reason, try to isolate what might subconsciously stress you out and address that matter – Facebook banning ad accounts is an oddly specific reason for you guys, right?
If so, put things in perspective – it’s never the end of the world if that happens.
3. Grounding
Another thing which is mainly for dealing with anxiety attacks but can also be used for general nervousness is grounding, in which you specifically focus on your senses.
Find several things you can hear, things you can see, things you can feel, things you can smell etc. in that exact moment.
Practice this while having a walk in the park and enjoying nature, or on the train, pop in your earphones and read something on your phone – focus on one thing!
4. Watch your diet.
Another trivial thing that everyone knows, but sometimes needs a reminder of. We’re not talking about counting calories, cutting sugar or going vegan here.
It’s about the moment when you go into the kitchen looking for a quick snack and have to choose between some chocolate and an apple.
We’ve found that things like cherry tomatoes make a great snack because they need no preparation and you can eat them while working without getting your hands dirty.
Of course, you can still feel free to indulge in your comfort food when you feel down, but a good strategy is to try to eat something healthy for each time you eat something unhealthy. So, got some chocolate earlier? Time to balance it out with an apple.
Remember, if you’re having serious problems with anxiety, insomnia or the like, talking to a professional is a good idea! Working on mental health and strength is something anyone should do – no shame in professional advice for it.
Why does scarcity work?
The scarcity principle is when there’s a limited supply of goods while there’s a high demand for them, raising the price of said goods until only a certain number of people can afford them.
A large number of businesses use it to increase their sales since if a product appears to be scarce due to a large demand for it, people are more likely to want to buy it while it’s available.
You’ve definitely used it before – advertisements using “limited time offer”, “while stock lasts”, “only X number of items left”, “almost sold out”, and the like.
And you’ve seen it in all those courses there are always selling out, even though they just launched!
They all rely on this principle to make you want to buy their product right now, instead of waiting too long and finding that it’s not available anymore.
It’s not just affiliates who use it…
A few examples of brands using the scarcity principle successfully would be Snapchat, in their 2016-release Snapchat Spectacles – sunglasses with which you can record short videos from your perspective.
They originally weren’t available in stores or online, but only via Snapbots – specialized vending machines that randomly appeared in cities across the US. However, they were only in each city for one day and had a limited supply of Spectacles. So people would line up for hours trying to get their hands on the new gadget before the supply for their city ran out.
A company that became known for their special limited-time offers throughout the years is none other than Starbucks! Special drinks such as the “Unicorn Frappuccino”, a brightly coloured drink, was advertised as only being available for a few days, promptly selling out in many stores on day 1.
Starbucks keeps applying this strategy with their annual seasonal offers, such as Pumpkin Spice Lattes in autumn and the #RedCup campaign in December, where they serve drinks in red cups instead of their standard ones.
Generally, though, the first rule of scarcity is: If you make it sound like there was a large quantity of your product available once, but it’s decreased due to high demand, you’re doing it right.
Do you know what many ads are missing when they try to use scarcity? They rarely make it sound like supply decreased because of the demand. They just start with a limited supply and think that’s enough to make it seem scarce.
Well, you might have the only horse pulled Ferrari, but does anyone want it? Make sure the demand is real, then use the scarcity principle effectively!
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things affiliates like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
What’s the most visited city in the world?
Yep, Bangkok.
And that’s for the 3rd year in a row… We’re not too surprised, the city has something for everyone, and Thailand is an extremely welcoming country.
That’s why it’s called The Land of Smiles.
Bangkok took the first spot with over 20 million visitors. Second place was taken by London with 19.8, and Paris was in third with 17.4.
The WTAFF Crew will be a handful of the 20+ million visitors in Bangkok this year too when we’re heading to AWA. Will we see you there?
WHAT THE AFF… is reading
Here at WHAT THE AFF we enjoy reading books on business, economics, psychology, marketing and the likes.
We basically always have one book we are reading and very little off time. The ones we find very good, we’ll share with you.
Manu is reading Straight To Hell by John LeFevre
“If you don’t already know, John is the man behind the GSElevator social media accounts. He started posting ridiculous things people might have heard at Goldman Sachs.
Well, this book is an extremely entertaining read in the same style – the description Darkly funny, remarkably revealing, and utterly unapologetic fits it perfectly.
It’s probably funnier than any sitcom I’ve ever watched – from billion-dollar deals with Chinese tycoons and Indonesian thugs to his unfriendly encounter with Wayne Rooney to after-hours overindulgence, as he calls it.
The book is certainly deserving of its full name: Straight to Hell: True Tales of Deviance, Debauchery, and Billion-Dollar Deals – I challenge you to read it without bursting in laughter at some point.”
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