AffiliatesNeeded.Com What's New In Affiliate Marketing

Although affiliate marketing has become exceedingly more competitive over the last couple of years, the industry in itself still hasn’t lost its lucrative appeal. The performance based model of affiliate marketing makes this particular channel less risky from a cost perspective for advertisers thus, more merchants are joining.  With thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of affiliate programs out there, as an affiliate, how do you choose the best one(s) to join?

Let me outline the major items to look for when selecting a potentially profitable program to join:

1. Product

First and foremost, pick a product that is of interest to you. There is nothing worse (and nothing that makes you give up faster) than a product you’re not interested in. You have to feel at least a little passionate about the subject and the product you’re promoting since you’re going to be spending a lot of time looking at it and talking about it.

Just as important as your own interest level is other people’s interest in the product. Is there demand for it? You can use Google keyword tool to identify which keywords are being searched for as well as the estimated search volume each word gets on a monthly basis. It also shows you the estimated level of competition for that keyword.  If the competition is high and the search volume is low, then you may want to pass on that product. However, if the search volume is consistently high  and the competition is low, it might be the perfect product to go after.

2. Website

Once you’ve determined the affiliate program has a product you’re interested in, that there is good demand for the product, and that you can compete in the industry, take a good look at the website of the merchant with the affiliate program.

Is it user-friendly and easy to navigate? Does it have clear messages and calls to action? Are the images and the products shown clearly so people know what they are buying?

Also important to note as an affiliate is if the website has any leaks. Leaks are links or paths out of the website that will not generate money for you. This could be links to other non-commissionable websites (rather than the confirmation or checkout page) or even an overly large toll-free number (assuming the affiliate program does not honor pay-per-call through a service like RingRevenue). These are all areas you could lose money and a potential sale because they are leaking good traffic you sent off the site.

Remember, if you’re going to be representing someone’s website, you want to make sure it’s good, reputable and has the potential for strong performance based sales for you.

3. Conversion Rate

There are a few numbers that are extremely important when selecting an affiliate program and conversion rate is at the top of the list. The advertiser you are considering could have a good looking website, a solid brand and offer an extremely high commission; however, if their website does convert, then you will never make any money promoting it.

Conversion is calculated by the number of people who complete a desired action out of 100. So, if one person out of a 100 completes an order on the website, then that website has a 1 percent conversion rate. For eCommerce sites, this is industry average, but that doesn’t mean it’s good. Keeping in mind the price of the product as well as the commission you’re earning, as an affiliate it’s ideal to have a conversion rate over 3 percent in order to turn a profit. Here’s a sample of what you should be doing to figure this out:

Merchant A has a 1 percent conversion rate. They pay 10 percent commission on sales and have an average order value of $100.

This means if you drive 100 visitors to their site, and you make one sale at 10 percent of $100, you make $10.

Now if Merchant B has a 3 percent conversion rate and has the same average order value and same commission payout, you’ll make $30 for sending the same amount of traffic to their site.

In this case, Merchant B is the better program to join.

4. Commission / Payout

The commission or payout for promoting an advertiser is the number that draw the most attention. Often affiliates will automatically join the affiliate programs that have the higher commission payout and skip over the lower ones. This is not always right.

Go back to the example of conversion rates. If Merchant A has a conversion rate of 1 percent and is now paying out 35 percent commission on an average order value of $100, and Merchant B is paying out 10 percent on a $100 Average Order Value (AOV) product and maintains their 3 percent conversion rate, then you’d actually be earning $35 from Merchant A and $30 from Merchant B, in which case it would be better to join Merchant A’s program.

5. Average Order Value (AOV/AOS)

Now here’s where it gets really interesting (and where you can make the most money). You have Merchant A paying out 10 percent commission with an average 1 percent conversion rate and you have Merchant B paying out 12 percent commission with an average 3 percent conversion rate. Based on these numbers right off the bat, most people will join Merchant B. However Merchant A’s AOV is $380 and Merchant B’s AOV is only $100. A product that pays out 10 percent of $380 makes the affiliate $38 per sale whereas a product that pays out 12 percent on a $100 order only makes $12. With Merchant A converting at 1 percent and Merchant B converting at 3 percent, they payouts would be $38 and $36 consecutively. In this case, Merchant A has the program that will earn you more.

6. EPC

Something important to ask  the merchant is what their Earnings Per Click (EPC) is. Some affiliate networks such as ShareASale will report this for you when you’re browsing programs. This shows you on average the earning potential from the program based on the affiliates who are already participating in it (or you can calculate your own personal EPC to figure out if the program is really paying off for you or not). Others like LinkShare do not publicly display this information.

EPC  is calculated by dividing the overall commission generated by the number of clicks.

For example, if you receive a commission of $15 after sending 100 clicks (visitors) to the merchant, divide $15 by 100 = 0.15. This means your EPC is $0.15 per click.

This figure tells you exactly how much you’re earning for each visitor you send to a merchant, so it’s also a very important number to note.

7. Cookie Duration

Another important money earning number to consider  is the length of the affiliate cookie. This tracks that the customer was referred to the merchant website from yours. If the merchant is offering a 30 day cookie, this means that the customer has 30 days to go back to the merchant website to complete their purchase (if they did not already complete the order on the first visit) in order for you to still get commission for that order. If they return to the merchant website after that cookie has expired, you will not get commission for the sale.  So from an affiliate standpoint, the longer the cookie, the better.

8. Tools

Different affiliates like to use different tools, but it’s good when you can find a merchant that offers a good variety of high quality tools and creatives for you to use.  These tools can come in the form of banners, text links, widgets, videos, coupons, datafeeds, search boxes, and more. The point is, make sure the merchant offers something of value that you can use to do your job. If you don’t have any good tools to work with, it makes driving targeted traffic from your site to theirs that much harder.

9. Reversal Rates

A program’s reversal rate tells you the percentage of orders that were either canceled, returned or un-commissioned. This is an extremely important number because everything else listed above could be great, but if they have an 80 percent reversal rate, that means that 80 percent of the orders affiliates sent them were not credited for some reason or another.

When you see high reversal rates, beware! Your work will go mostly unpaid and your time and money will likely go down the drain. Just keep in mind  a slow conversion rate is normal for most programs, and it’s important to realize that sometimes orders are canceled  or returned. It’s part of the buying process that affiliates need to be aware of.

If you happen to have an unexpectedly high reversal rate where there wasn’t one before, it’s a good idea to ask your affiliate manager why the rate is suddenly so high. If they cannot give a good reason or the reason seems fishy, it may be time to switch up their links for a competing site that does honor honest and legitimate affiliate payouts.

10. Competition

It’s a good idea to consider how competitive the industry is for that particular product or service, and it’s equally important to keep an eye on what the competition is doing. Many merchants have multiple competitors with programs trying to recruit top affiliates as well. They may have higher payouts, they may have better conversions. Many of them are listed in different networks or even have their own in-house programs.

It’s smart to see what the competition is doing. Consider the brand creditability and recognition of these other merchants. It’s possible that a merchant with a lower payout and lower average order value does more volume, in which case it might make sense to join their program.

Keep in mind that if a product or brand has a lot of competition, it’s going to be more difficult to get a market share in those sales because more affiliates will be participating in the program and other merchants will all be competing for the same traffic. This means in order to get targeted traffic to your site and your merchant’s so you can earn your commission, your personal marketing strategies need to be better than the other affiliates and merchants in the vertical.

A lot of affiliates have to call on various marketing efforts in order to get the traffic they need to make a living in affiliate marketing. This could include, but is not  limited to: SEO, PPC, email marketing, social media (such as Facebook or Twitter), video marketing, podcasts, newsletters, joint ventures, and so on.  The best thing to do is find a niche that interests you, then find a niche within that niche and own it in every way you possibly can. Doing your keyword research at the beginning of the process as mentioned before will help you determine if it’s something you’re willing to fight for.

11. Terms of Service

Something a lot of affiliates overlook and click “I agree” just for the sake of not having to read it, are the program terms of service, otherwise known as the program’s terms and conditions. This is very important to read because each program has different terms.

The terms generally outline how you can market your affiliate links, how they can be placed, keywords you can and cannot use, whether you can link to their website using direct search or if you can promote their program via search at all, software you can and cannot use, and so on. If you don’t read the terms of service, then you might find that you won’t get credit for anything you’ve been doing  after you’ve already invested a ton of time and money setting up the merchant links and marketing their brand.

12. Support

The final major thing to note when selecting a good affiliate program to join is whether they have a dedicated affiliate manager. Obviously, it’s best to have an experienced affiliate manager running the program, or even an outsourced program manager (OPM); however, it’s better to have even a new affiliate manager available to answer all your questions, than to not have a dedicated person at all.

Things to look for in a good affiliate manager: their ability to be reached by phone, email or chat, their response time in getting back to you, their experience and understanding of how affiliate marketing works, a keen understanding of their program TOS, their ability to guide you in the right direction when you have questions, and their ability to quickly get you the tools you need in order to help you do the job of making you both money.

The best way to test this out is either call or email them and see who responds and how quickly they respond.

As an affiliate, with so many programs  to chose from, following this list will quickly help you narrow down your search to only the best, most profit potential programs for your future success.

Although affiliate marketing has become exceedingly more competitive over the last couple of years, the industry in itself still hasn’t lost its lucrative appeal. The performance based model of affiliate marketing makes this particular channel less risky from a cost perspective for advertisers thus, more merchants are joining.  With thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of affiliate programs out there, as an affiliate, how do you choose the best one(s) to join?

Let me outline the major items to look for when selecting a potentially profitable program to join:

1. Product

First and foremost, pick a product that is of interest to you. There is nothing worse (and nothing that makes you give up faster) than a product you’re not interested in. You have to feel at least a little passionate about the subject and the product you’re promoting since you’re going to be spending a lot of time looking at it and talking about it.

Just as important as your own interest level is other people’s interest in the product. Is there demand for it? You can use Google keyword tool to identify which keywords are being searched for as well as the estimated search volume each word gets on a monthly basis. It also shows you the estimated level of competition for that keyword.  If the competition is high and the search volume is low, then you may want to pass on that product. However, if the search volume is consistently high  and the competition is low, it might be the perfect product to go after.

2. Website

Once you’ve determined the affiliate program has a product you’re interested in, that there is good demand for the product, and that you can compete in the industry, take a good look at the website of the merchant with the affiliate program.

Is it user-friendly and easy to navigate? Does it have clear messages and calls to action? Are the images and the products shown clearly so people know what they are buying?

Also important to note as an affiliate is if the website has any leaks. Leaks are links or paths out of the website that will not generate money for you. This could be links to other non-commissionable websites (rather than the confirmation or checkout page) or even an overly large toll-free number (assuming the affiliate program does not honor pay-per-call through a service like RingRevenue). These are all areas you could lose money and a potential sale because they are leaking good traffic you sent off the site.

Remember, if you’re going to be representing someone’s website, you want to make sure it’s good, reputable and has the potential for strong performance based sales for you.

3. Conversion Rate

There are a few numbers that are extremely important when selecting an affiliate program and conversion rate is at the top of the list. The advertiser you are considering could have a good looking website, a solid brand and offer an extremely high commission; however, if their website does convert, then you will never make any money promoting it.

Conversion is calculated by the number of people who complete a desired action out of 100. So, if one person out of a 100 completes an order on the website, then that website has a 1 percent conversion rate. For eCommerce sites, this is industry average, but that doesn’t mean it’s good. Keeping in mind the price of the product as well as the commission you’re earning, as an affiliate it’s ideal to have a conversion rate over 3 percent in order to turn a profit. Here’s a sample of what you should be doing to figure this out:

Merchant A has a 1 percent conversion rate. They pay 10 percent commission on sales and have an average order value of $100.

This means if you drive 100 visitors to their site, and you make one sale at 10 percent of $100, you make $10.

Now if Merchant B has a 3 percent conversion rate and has the same average order value and same commission payout, you’ll make $30 for sending the same amount of traffic to their site.

In this case, Merchant B is the better program to join.

4. Commission / Payout

The commission or payout for promoting an advertiser is the number that draw the most attention. Often affiliates will automatically join the affiliate programs that have the higher commission payout and skip over the lower ones. This is not always right.

Go back to the example of conversion rates. If Merchant A has a conversion rate of 1 percent and is now paying out 35 percent commission on an average order value of $100, and Merchant B is paying out 10 percent on a $100 Average Order Value (AOV) product and maintains their 3 percent conversion rate, then you’d actually be earning $35 from Merchant A and $30 from Merchant B, in which case it would be better to join Merchant A’s program.

5. Average Order Value (AOV/AOS)

Now here’s where it gets really interesting (and where you can make the most money). You have Merchant A paying out 10 percent commission with an average 1 percent conversion rate and you have Merchant B paying out 12 percent commission with an average 3 percent conversion rate. Based on these numbers right off the bat, most people will join Merchant B. However Merchant A’s AOV is $380 and Merchant B’s AOV is only $100. A product that pays out 10 percent of $380 makes the affiliate $38 per sale whereas a product that pays out 12 percent on a $100 order only makes $12. With Merchant A converting at 1 percent and Merchant B converting at 3 percent, they payouts would be $38 and $36 consecutively. In this case, Merchant A has the program that will earn you more.

6. EPC

Something important to ask  the merchant is what their Earnings Per Click (EPC) is. Some affiliate networks such as ShareASale will report this for you when you’re browsing programs. This shows you on average the earning potential from the program based on the affiliates who are already participating in it (or you can calculate your own personal EPC to figure out if the program is really paying off for you or not). Others like LinkShare do not publicly display this information.

EPC  is calculated by dividing the overall commission generated by the number of clicks.

For example, if you receive a commission of $15 after sending 100 clicks (visitors) to the merchant, divide $15 by 100 = 0.15. This means your EPC is $0.15 per click.

This figure tells you exactly how much you’re earning for each visitor you send to a merchant, so it’s also a very important number to note.

7. Cookie Duration

Another important money earning number to consider  is the length of the affiliate cookie. This tracks that the customer was referred to the merchant website from yours. If the merchant is offering a 30 day cookie, this means that the customer has 30 days to go back to the merchant website to complete their purchase (if they did not already complete the order on the first visit) in order for you to still get commission for that order. If they return to the merchant website after that cookie has expired, you will not get commission for the sale.  So from an affiliate standpoint, the longer the cookie, the better.

8. Tools

Different affiliates like to use different tools, but it’s good when you can find a merchant that offers a good variety of high quality tools and creatives for you to use.  These tools can come in the form of banners, text links, widgets, videos, coupons, datafeeds, search boxes, and more. The point is, make sure the merchant offers something of value that you can use to do your job. If you don’t have any good tools to work with, it makes driving targeted traffic from your site to theirs that much harder.

9. Reversal Rates

A program’s reversal rate tells you the percentage of orders that were either canceled, returned or un-commissioned. This is an extremely important number because everything else listed above could be great, but if they have an 80 percent reversal rate, that means that 80 percent of the orders affiliates sent them were not credited for some reason or another.

When you see high reversal rates, beware! Your work will go mostly unpaid and your time and money will likely go down the drain. Just keep in mind  a slow conversion rate is normal for most programs, and it’s important to realize that sometimes orders are canceled  or returned. It’s part of the buying process that affiliates need to be aware of.

If you happen to have an unexpectedly high reversal rate where there wasn’t one before, it’s a good idea to ask your affiliate manager why the rate is suddenly so high. If they cannot give a good reason or the reason seems fishy, it may be time to switch up their links for a competing site that does honor honest and legitimate affiliate payouts.

10. Competition

It’s a good idea to consider how competitive the industry is for that particular product or service, and it’s equally important to keep an eye on what the competition is doing. Many merchants have multiple competitors with programs trying to recruit top affiliates as well. They may have higher payouts, they may have better conversions. Many of them are listed in different networks or even have their own in-house programs.

It’s smart to see what the competition is doing. Consider the brand creditability and recognition of these other merchants. It’s possible that a merchant with a lower payout and lower average order value does more volume, in which case it might make sense to join their program.

Keep in mind that if a product or brand has a lot of competition, it’s going to be more difficult to get a market share in those sales because more affiliates will be participating in the program and other merchants will all be competing for the same traffic. This means in order to get targeted traffic to your site and your merchant’s so you can earn your commission, your personal marketing strategies need to be better than the other affiliates and merchants in the vertical.

A lot of affiliates have to call on various marketing efforts in order to get the traffic they need to make a living in affiliate marketing. This could include, but is not  limited to: SEO, PPC, email marketing, social media (such as Facebook or Twitter), video marketing, podcasts, newsletters, joint ventures, and so on.  The best thing to do is find a niche that interests you, then find a niche within that niche and own it in every way you possibly can. Doing your keyword research at the beginning of the process as mentioned before will help you determine if it’s something you’re willing to fight for.

11. Terms of Service

Something a lot of affiliates overlook and click “I agree” just for the sake of not having to read it, are the program terms of service, otherwise known as the program’s terms and conditions. This is very important to read because each program has different terms.

The terms generally outline how you can market your affiliate links, how they can be placed, keywords you can and cannot use, whether you can link to their website using direct search or if you can promote their program via search at all, software you can and cannot use, and so on. If you don’t read the terms of service, then you might find that you won’t get credit for anything you’ve been doing  after you’ve already invested a ton of time and money setting up the merchant links and marketing their brand.

12. Support

The final major thing to note when selecting a good affiliate program to join is whether they have a dedicated affiliate manager. Obviously, it’s best to have an experienced affiliate manager running the program, or even an outsourced program manager (OPM); however, it’s better to have even a new affiliate manager available to answer all your questions, than to not have a dedicated person at all.

Things to look for in a good affiliate manager: their ability to be reached by phone, email or chat, their response time in getting back to you, their experience and understanding of how affiliate marketing works, a keen understanding of their program TOS, their ability to guide you in the right direction when you have questions, and their ability to quickly get you the tools you need in order to help you do the job of making you both money.

The best way to test this out is either call or email them and see who responds and how quickly they respond.

As an affiliate, with so many programs  to chose from, following this list will quickly help you narrow down your search to only the best, most profit potential programs for your future success.

Is cutting-and-pasting social media “best practices” the path toward better, tangible results?  Or should we instead use good, proven processes that “work” — applying them within our context to create more sales and happier customers?  Let’s take a quick, critical look at why chasing best practices might be a waste of valuable time.

The whole idea of a best practice implies an absolute — that there is something better than everything else out there.  But in life there aren’t many “for sure” things.  Especially in a business world where how things are done is always shifting.  Nor are absolutes very practical.

For instance, let’s say you asked a trusted, respected peer, “How can I use social media to create more leads and sales?” they’d be foolish to suggest, “Just read Jeff’s blog.”  Or any book or blog for that matter!  Just the same, it would be disingenuous of them to say, “You should apply (aka. mimic) a case study” within a given book or blog.

Here’s what I’m proposing: Those process that are effective should be borrowed from.  These are where the gold lies.  Because social media marketing processes themselves are good idea-generators.  But when presented in the forms of a “best practice” they’re almost never a full solution.  Not practically speaking.

Fly high: Making social produce outcomes

For instance, the United States Air Force’s public affairs office has a simple yet effective social media decision-making system that serves their strategic needs.  Believe it or not, the Air Force offers a good example of an organization your business might borrow basic concepts from.

The Air Force employs 33,000 communicators.  Their mission is to use social media tools to discover, analyze and respond to comments about the Air Force.  And to do so in ways that support its overall mission.  In particular, they support recruitment of airmen and airwomen through use of new digital tools.  And they do this through a well-designed system.

The Air Force’s process is focused on creating and responding to purposeful conversations about itself within social media.  It’s looking at (and selectively participating in) dialogues with outcomes in mind.  Of course, they’re dabbling in all the usual tools like blogs, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and across a variety of internal networks like The Pentagon Channel.   So let’s take a look at the purposeful business processes below.  How might you apply them (individually) in ways to improve social media outcomes at your office?

Discover, analyze, respond

The Air Force is using a discover-analyze-respond method.

First, it’s discovering. An inter-disciplinary team finds and organizes what other entities and people are publicly saying about the Air Force. They monitor discussions mentioning the Air Force across the Web using a variety of tools including free ones like Google Alerts.  Big corporations like Dell and PepsiCo (Gatorade) are setting up similar “command centers” that monitor various listening posts across the social Web.

The Air Force is also analyzing.  Team members constantly evaluate each of the discovered dialogues against qualifiers like validity and authenticity. They ask themselves questions like, “Is this a real person making the comment or question?” and if so, what’s that person’s credibility? “Does this person’s opinion matter in the grand scheme?” Decisions are made using a yes-no decision-tree style road map.

For instance, if a discussion or comment is discovered that portrays the organization in a negative light or presents information in an un-balanced fashion decisions are made to “monitor only” (no response but notify headquarters) or “fix the facts/restoration.” If the comment or discussion reflects positively and is balanced a choice is called for. That is, to concur publicly or simply let the post stand. These decisions are made based on pre-defined criteria.

And, of course, the Air Force is responding: Appropriate team members respond in a predetermined manner.  All based on “rules of engagement” that the Air Force has committed to as an organization.

Borrowing processes, not copying practices

Of course, this example by no means suggests running your organization like the U.S. Military.  In fact, I present it with the opposite in mind.  Might all of the Air Force’s processes apply to your competitive, product/service, customer or market context?  Sure.  In some cases.  But cutting-and-pasting these ideas “into your business” might do more harm than good.  Try applying the processes — discovering, analyzing and responding.

The Air Force is providing a very practical group of processes.  All with public relations in mind.  Ultimately, their goal is finding ways to improve recruitment of military personnel.  And that’s a very specific goal.  Sure, it may seem a lot like acquiring customers but it may not be at the “trench level.”

And the Air Force developed all the sub-processes within this system (PDF) through a learning process – not by copying a best practice.  Similar to how you might define a purpose-driven social media process on your own.  Learn.  Iterate.  Improve.

Without a doubt, the Air Force borrowed successful processes from others.  And you too can borrow from the Air Force — apply the broader processes within your business context.  But be careful about copying them in full.

“Our brains, contrary to what most people think, have been designed to learn much more from lessons learned… from what didn’t work; from conflicts; from situations that were everything but successful; from what would force us to re-think what we’ve just done and do it better, trying harder next time around,” says Luis Suarez, an IBM knowledge management consultant and blogger.

Indeed, what Suarez is getting at here is that it can actually be easier (more fun, rewarding?) to learn rather than struggle to copy-and-paste practices.

He goes on to note how concepts feeding into a best practice suggest static, fixed, unbeatable, perfect.  Yet those characteristics are not what learning is about.  Acquiring knowledge is dynamic, flexible, modifiable, flowing –- a continuous learning experience.  Its very nature is imperfect, according to Suarez.

Learn to love learning again

Of course, there are very successful businesses selling access to huge libraries of case studies.  They often call some of them best practices.  And that’s fine.  I even recommend you subscribe to a few.  But the good people at companies like eConsultancy, MarketingSherpa/Marketing Experiments and MarketingProfs will tell you the same.  There’s no silver bullet.  Success is earned, not copied.

Suarez prefers to use the term “good practice.”  Because, “There is always room for improvement.  Always!  And that’s exactly where best practices fail to deliver time and time again.”

It’s common.  It’s understandable.  It’s human nature.  But it’s foolish to look for one, singular “right answer” that’s better than all the rest.  Seeking out best practices won’t serve your business very well.  Because the means to understand “what’s right” for your business involves discovery and iterative improvement.  Learning.  No shortcuts.
That’s why successful businesses are borrowing effective processes from remarkable companies who share them.  And applying them within their own context to thrive.

Go get em!

Pubcon South in Austin is a bit smaller than the Vegas show, well, a lot smaller but that doesn’t mean any less valuable.   In fact, because of the size you not only get 1 on 1 interactions with some of the smartest people in the Search, Social and Affiliate industries, but you get to learn a lot more.  The networking is a lot more meaningful because you aren’t overwhelmed with thousands of people shoved in a room and you are able to have your own space.  It is by far one of the best shows I have been to to be able to not only network, but also to learn a ton of information. I live blogged 4 sessions today on AdamRiemer.me and will be doing some more tomorrow, but here is the recap and some of the best takeaways from the show.

Keynote Speech by Jeffrey Eisenberg, co-author of “Waiting For Your Cat to Bark?”:

Transparency is no longer your choice with social media.  Instead it is out there because you have employees and customers talking about you.  Being authentic and able to engage your audience is your choice and how you go about it can mean success or failure.  Amazon, for example could be considered the first ever social media site because instead of just uploading a catalog of a million books and products, they let the users and shoppers build the content and give ratings.  Those ratings and user generated content built it up and created one of the first social atmospheres and social shopping experiences.

Think about social media like email.  Why do people unfriend you on Facebook?  Because you keep posting things that aren’t about them or interesting to them.  You constantly invite them to the same games which they don’t care about.  Remember this with your company and brand.  If you spam them with ads and things just about you, they may get bored and unlike your fan page and possibly leave your group.  It is like when you over-email your lists, they eventually unsubscribe and you lose one of your best ROI resources and the loyalty of your customers.

Session 2,  Reputation Management:

There were a ton of great points brought up, but the one I found most interesting was a way to deal with sites like RipOffReport.  Apparently if you have bad reviews and you sue the authors of the page, even if it is suing Jon Doe or Jane Doe, Google will remove that page from their indexes if you can show you are taking it to court.  That is amazingly valuable to fend off these types of sites.  I haven’t ever tried this but apparently it may work.

Session 3,  Social Media Customer Service Management:

There were some great points brought up and IBM shared some internal data.  There was so much to take away from this, but the thing I liked most about this session was that the speakers had shared a ton of tools that you can use to monitor social media as well as respond and manage it from a customer service standpoint.  Geotwt.com, GoMockingbird, CrashPlan and tons of others were given.  It was a great place to learn what you can use to monitor, respond and track your customer service within social media.

Session 4,  SEO for Ecommerce Sites:

This was an amazing session about SEO 101 with some great ways to optimize as well as other terms to think about.  The session covered adding in modifiers like buy, order, discount, etc… to your copy for long tail, but the thing I liked most was to measure all keywords that drive at least two sales.  Then place them into buckets with equal value amounts.

Each bucket will continue to have more keywords and more longtail as you go down since the first bucket has your highest volume and highest sales keywords.  If for some reason you are being penalized or someone has spammed their way to knock you out of your first bucket, don’t worry because the other buckets are worth 4 times that amount.  There are a lot more keywords to have to go after, but they are also a lot less competitive and easier to optimize for.  You have to plan to lose your first bucket but keep your income strong with your other ones.  The other ones are driving 80 percent of your SEO revenue so make sure to work on them when bucket 1 is hurting so you still have money coming in.

This show has taught me more in a day than I could have learned from reading blogs for a year.  Combined with Affiliate Summit, I don’t think anyone would ever need any training on SEO, SEM, Conversion Rate Optimization, Affiliate Marketing and Social media again.  The two shows have the smartest speakers from all sides of the white hat and black hat fences as well as people who are ready to share a ton of information with you.  I cannot wait for tomorrow and will be live blogging the show on AdamRiemer.me as well as giving a recap here on ReveNews again at night.

Marketers pride themselves on their ability to break down an audience into specific groups and target them with a customized message. It’s this very ability comedian Bill Hicks (below) righteously attacked when he said that advertisers and marketers should kill themselves (NSFW).

As long as there’s been advertising, there’s been a constant tug-of-war between marketers and their audiences. Hicks sharply refers to marketers as “Satan’s little helpers” and “Ruiners of all things good.” However, there’s nothing that says as consumers we must buy what we see in advertisements. Yet we still get pulled in, often by the desire to match the lifestyles and even attitudes that we see in ads.

Devil’s Advocate

So what if the problem isn’t with marketers? What if consumers (that would be you and me) are complicit? When you buy a product you’re endorsing a culture, a way of life.

Apple does an amazing of selling its culture, thanks especially to Steve Jobs. We have a very human response to the idea that buying Apple’s products makes us different in a good way. We also have the very human blind spot of ignoring that a lot of people who think they’re different self-identify as a group every time they put on those white ear buds. Apple specifically made the ear buds stand out even though the primary product remains hidden in a pocket. It wanted anyone watching to immediately identify that “different” person as owning an iPod/iPhone without actually seeing the real product.

For all the stated angst against marketers and advertising, we’ve becoming walking billboards for the brands we adopt. In our pursuit of individuality we set ourselves up to self-identify with different groups based on our buying behavior. And advertising does a fantastic job of reaching into our innermost thoughts and connecting with who we believe we are, whether that matches with reality or not.

We can’t blame this ability solely on the spooky ability of marketers to target their audience. In many instances we’re willing participants in what’s becoming the largest, ongoing case study of consumer behavior: social media.

One-to-One Marketing

Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms have made one-to-one marketing a reality. Any marketer can quickly and easily scan the feeds of these platforms, identify who already uses their products, and refine messaging that reinforces their connection to a brand. Hicks’ rant reflects an earlier time when marketers broke us down into niches. Now we’re doing it for them.

Marketers get the added benefit of seeing the role their particular product plays in a consumer’s lifestyle. In many instances marketers don’t even pay for this information. We’re broadcasting what we do far and wide to anyone who’s willing to listen. So what if marketers are the exact opposite of “Satan’s little helpers?”

What if marketers have found a model that actually benefits consumers? We’ve heard the latest campaigns referred to as permission-based versus interruption marketing. In theory, we’re ignoring the interruptions, but when they’ve gotten our permission, how do you complain?

What exactly do we expect marketers to do? Follow the motto “Don’t be evil,” like Google espouses? You can see how well that’s working. We’re giving marketers an information bonanza that allows for targeted, personalized content that’s relevant to how we say we want to live our lives. Isn’t that exactly what we want in an immediate gratification society? Who wants to waste time sorting through varied ads that may or may not have value?

Stereotypes Exist for a Reason

In the last U.S. presidential election, according to the New York Times people who drank Evian water were more likely to buy a Volkswagen. If they bought a VW, they were more likely to have a college degree. If they had a degree, they were more likely vote for Obama. However, if individuals bought Fiji water, then they were more likely to buy a Ford. If they bought a Ford, they were more likely to have a trade job. If they had a trade job, they probably would vote for McCain.

People are self-identifying every time they make a purchase. Without any direct interference from marketers, consumers are creating easily identifiable groups to target. Even though our ego-centric country focuses on the power of the individual, we still end up in categories that share specific traits, values, and aspirations. This grouping doesn’t prevent us from trying to shake things up and change the label, but it’s rare that we avoid moving into yet another different category with a different culture as an attempt to be different.

Our Behavior Informs What We See

Marketers as a general rule aren’t stupid, so why would they ignore the volumes of data we publish every single day, hour, and minute? If we still persist in defining marketers as the bad guy, then at minimum, we’re willing accomplices. Isn’t it time we stopped getting upset for being called on it?

Why are we so busy selling executive leaders on the value of social media’s marketing prowess? We forget that the most effective way to get noticed, if not promoted, is when we prove the value of social media first and then ask for permission.  Let’s put an end to the glut of “Top X Ways to Sell Social Media to Your Boss” articles. You don’t need “executive buy in” to prove the value of your strategy. It’s a myth that’s delaying your successful use of social marketing.

#1: You Don’t Need To

Practically speaking, you don’t need to have everybody supporting your strategy to move forward. What you do need are guts, resources, and a plan. At the risk of dating myself, think Rambo.

Now I’m not suggesting you run out there like a social media maniac. I’m saying you need a plan.  Sure, Rambo had some issues with his past. He acted a bit radically, and it seemed erratic. In the end he always had a bold plan.

For instance, let’s say a marketing pro named Albert is working at a small service business. He’s selling rafting expeditions focused on adventure travel. Albert decides to begin a content marketing campaign. He starts using a blog. On one side of his content (in the sidebar), he makes clear calls-to-action.  Here, he deftly uses a sweepstakes to take the pulse of adventure-seeking leads.

The sweepstakes is his ethical bribe to gain access to potential customers’ state-of-need for what he sells. He simply asks the prospect to identify themselves (e.g., email) and select when they’re looking to travel (e.g., immediately, in 2-3 months, later this year, or never).

Albert’s plan is good, and he nets eight leads within three months. Three of his leads convert to bookings service contracts. In other words, Albert generated measurable results with his plan.

Albert then walks into his boss’s office.  Brent, the boss of this travel business, doesn’t care for social media. He believes it’s a waste of time, so he banned Facebook at the office. But Albert arrives with a smile.

“Brent, I’ve got some good news,” says Albert.  “I started a new lead generation program 90 days ago, and it generated more leads than our other programs, considering the costs involved and the outcome.  I netted eight good leads and got three bookings. The best part is I’m seeing measurable signs that I’ve barely scratched the surface on the potential of this plan.”

Brent looks up from his desk, “Tell me more.”

“I boot-strapped the whole thing,” says Albert. ” I invested a lot of my personal time after hours and at home on weekends. I also created a ‘free trip’ give-away promotion without getting permission from you. That’s the bad news.”

Albert had a plan. Yes, he took some risks, and things could have gone wrong. More often than not smart bosses will realize their reluctance to explore social media comes from a lack of practical experience with it. Show them initiative and measurable results. You’ll often find their reluctance will evaporate.

#2: Winners Don’t Ask for Permission to Succeed

Why would we wait around for permission to be successful? Think about it in a practical sense. The tools we have at our disposal beg us to take action, often by making a low risk bet, but you also can’t be afraid of failing. The key question to ask is whether you’re confident what you want to do can happen without shipwrecking your brand or business.

For decades, traditional marketers have been taught to plan carefully. We’re told that we must get it right because it’s too expensive to change later. Now we can do in hours what previously took days. One can see if something is working or not relatively soon. We can stop doing more of what doesn’t work and try something new faster than ever before.

In essence, we can develop a plan, experiment with it, and improve it. IBM’s Mike Moran (now at Converseon) wrote a book on the subject called Do it Wrong Quickly: How The Web Changes The Old Marketing Rules.  His main thesis focuses on the reality that we no longer need to ask for permission to succeed. Because the tools we have to work with are dramatically improved and built for faster learning we can fail, pick up the pieces, and try again. Practicing these steps fosters innovation and, yes, more frequent success.

#3: Waiting Costs You Sales

Maybe you’re not waiting. Maybe you’re planning. Everything’s lined up and ready to go. You have a few case studies that back up your point, highlighting best practices that you’ll try to emulate. You’re planning on making your case to someone at some point.

Reality check. You’re waiting. You’re not doing. You’re missing out on leads and sales.  I recently read an article that claimed that the “selling” of upper management was the hard work. Really? In my opinion the hard work is making social media sell not convincing people to allow you to do what you’ve been hired to do!

You don’t need to convince upper management to support your foray into social media marketing. Winners don’t ask for permission to succeed, and waiting is costing you sales. Could waiting be putting your job at risk? It’s time to start doing.

Banks have a problem. In fact, it’s the same issue tormenting most service-based businesses.  Increasingly, customers need help making complex decisions, and banks have the expertise to guide them. However, their target market does not habitually turn to them for advice. From managing finances during a divorce to applying for a small business loan, most of us don’t think about banks as trusted advisers.

“The problem is breadth,” says Stewart Rose, CEO of Truebridge Financial Marketing. ”Banks are seen too narrowly, as the place to go for deposits and loans… a place to go to transact.”

Most of us view banks as places to make routine transactions. We rarely look to banks to get advice on pressing personal or business needs. We turn to personal relationships, professional financial advisers or a variety of online resources like BankRate.com. Many service providers have this same problem.

A Unique Solution

Financial services companies are leading the service industry and taking action. They aren’t sitting around debating how to measure ROI of social media and mobile apps. If you’re a service-based marketer it makes sense to follow their lead.

Banking is a tough business. In spite of increased regulation and skeptical customers, exceptional banks are increasing what they call “share-of-wallet” or the percentage of a customer’s expenses that the bank’s products/services have earned. At the same time they’re boosting referrals and leads, too, by applying the idea of being useful.

Smart banks are using social media and mobile to listen to customers. They’re also making product benefits tangible when and where customers display a need for them. They’re finding ways to take action on what customers are telling them through their behavior. Most remarkably, they’re finding new ways to prompt customers to do what they’re quite inclined to do anyway: buying more products or services like retirement, business banking, or college savings products.

Take Spain’s BBVA Bank, for instance. They’re proving that “being useful” to customers will make mobile applications pay real dividends.

BBVA’s Useful Media

While most banks are trying to convince customers to view them differently in social and mobile spaces, innovators like BBVA are busy showing them. Success with “useful media” is all about changing behavior, not viewpoints.

Spain’s BBVA, one of the world’s largest retail banks, is offering its customers Tú cuentas (“you count”). A personal finance tool, Tú cuentas offers the usual back functionality of a web and mobile app. But it goes further than transfers and balance checking. It allows customers  to manage their personal finances better. Tú cuentas offers analysis tools so customers can better understand and improve their own spending and savings habits.

The “Just for Me” feature uses collective intelligence to offer a selection of personalized suggestions.  The bank is acting more like a financial planner.

BBVA’s mobile app also provides free content that teaches customers practical things like how to prepare your finances in case of divorce, apply for a small business grant or plan for retirement. It also offers “Amazon-like” suggestions, all based on customers’ preference settings, specific financial objectives, and actual behavior.

In other words, it’s usefulness is driven by how customers interact with the application, their bank accounts, and other financial institutions.

In return for offering customers personalized suggestions on financial and non-financial products, the mobile application helps BBVA’s banking staff better understand individual customers’ evolving needs.

The mobile application is useful for BBVA and its customers. It’s what customers need: answers to their most pressing financial questions. It’s what BBVA needs: a way to coach customers toward products that can best serve their evolving needs.

Why It Works

BBVA is using mobile technology to offer relevant, practical information that serves the need of the customer and the bank. This “useful media” works because it’s functioning within the ever-changing lives of its customers. BBVA isn’t just “entering the conversation” or “buzzing” or building “social graphs.”  It’s being useful and serving its own interests and those of its customers.

Next Steps

The “big opportunity” for banks and other service-based businesses is to answer skeptical, angry consumers with:

• Utilities that foster trust and reliability that can be experienced
• Free services that leverage existing strengths like critical thinking, and market or risk interpretation
• Contextually relevant information in place of memorable or entertaining ads
• Better customer service or self service

While your competitors are busy “humanizing” themselves with social media and mobile tools you can be qualitatively improving customers’ lives with them. You can help customers lead themselves “down the sales funnel” toward your products and services. And you can do it by being useful to customers.
Take action.  Don’t focus on the technical aspects of mobile applications.  First, ask yourself and/or your social team:

• Can a mobile application help us improve our ability to be more relevant to customers, more often?
• How can we start being useful in ways that translate customers’ evolving needs?
• When are we in the best position to “consultatively sell” with customers off the Web?
• How can we replicate that context online, guiding customers toward answers that connect with our services?

A Parting Thought

Maybe now we can see why small business Goliath, Intuit acquired Mint.com, a very similar financial service. Intuit’s small business customer base can certainly use the same kind of financial and investment recommendations. Mint.com was a struggling business,  but a fabulous application.

Connecting Mint.com to its core products provides Intuit with an immediate way to always stay relevant, in context, and positioned to sell.  Sure, Intuit could be focusing on creating desire, positive sentiment, buzz, attention or aspiration with social and mobile media.  Or it could invest in “useful media” like Mint.com to become useful to existing customers in ways that create leads for its other products. Because Mint.com becomes an automated product recommendation engine, it’s a way to start discovering latent, hidden demand among customers and capturing it.

What’s your “Mint.com?”

Last week, Facebook put-out a 26-page retort to the FTC’s preliminary report on privacy regulation. Unsurprisingly, the document wreaks of economic interests, but it also raises some questions about who should foot the bill for social media.

Through its retorts, Facebook seemed to be appealing to precisely to the kind of concerns that policy makers wrestle with daily. As Fast Company put it, Facebook reminded “the FTC how much social media has done for the government itself, the advancement of democracy, and the growing cottage industry of social software.”

In a nutshell, Facebook pretty much said “Look, we know you have privacy concerns. But social media is a really valuable a tool to (1) you, (2) the principles you stand for, and (3) the economy as a whole. And the easiest way to foot the bill is by selling user data.”

The Rebuttals

Facebook’s most compelling rebuttals addressed the areas of politics, the economy, and technological innovations.

In the political arena, Facebook pointed out how social media media has equipped both government and citizens to enhance democracy. On the governmental side, Facebook noted how social media promotes transparency, “as evidenced by [...] White House Press Secretary’s Twitter feed and the fact that more than 70 federal agencies have Facebook pages.” And on the citizen side, Facebook drew on examples such as Iran, Colombia, Tunisia and Egypt to illustrate how social media is furthering the cause of democracy.

As for economic interests, Facebook argued that social media is a “crucial engine for economic growth and job creation.” Specifically, Facebook pointed to the “Hundreds of thousands of application developers have built businesses on Facebook Platform.” The point being that any significant setback for social media as a whole would have serious economic implications.

Finally, Facebook also pointed to so many unpredictable innovations that could come from social media. As an example, Facebook cited how Caller ID has become a standard feature of calling, but would have never been possible had telephone companies been prevented from sharing callers’ data with the receiving part. Facebook also pointed to how Google Flu Trends out-performs many other outbreak detection tools, and wouldn’t be possible if users had perfect privacy.

Value: Estimated, Perceived, and Gained

Despite the fact that Facebook stand to lose or gain a lot depending on how the FTC decides to regulate the industry, the company does raise some strong points about the value of social media. Specifically, social media can enhance democratic processes, contribute to economic recovery and prosperity, and lead to so many other innovations that may increase our quality of life.

We know that social media is something that we, as a society, should keep exploring.  The question remains: Who should foot the bill for these social tools?

If social media is as valuable to the well-being of democracy as Facebook would have us believe, then perhaps it counts as a democratic right or fundamental infrastructure. Just like freedom of information or the emergency broadcast system, social media might just be valuable enough that it deserves the same protection of any other legal right.

If social media (and the information access it provides) could be counted as a democratic right or entitlement, however, we can’t really leave the private sector to look after it. Rather, it would better fall under the responsibilities of an elected government.

Similarly, if social media is, indeed, a linchpin for economic prosperity, it might again be better addressed by economic policy than by the private sector. After all, if Facebook sank tomorrow, the economic fall-out would be considerable.

In addition to the “hundreds of thousands of developers” who earn a living from Facebook, there would be all the marketers and agencies that would feel the hit in their client portfolios. The economic ripple from those two sectors alone might just enough to cause a social crash big enough to resemble the dot com bubble bursting.

The Inefficiencies of Government Regulation

Of course, handing social media over to the government would backfire for a number of reasons. First, technological innovation tends to be driven by the incentive of private enterprise — not the noblesse oblige of the public sector. Simply put, when an organization is motivated by profit, it’s more likely to attract the right talent and devise strategies that account for scarcity and other real-world, market factors.

Second, bureaucracy and innovation aren’t really compatible. Checks and balances might help keep governments honest. But in a social networking environment, they’d only serve as so much red-tape, making it impossible to respond to sudden changes in technology or the market.

Finally, it seems unlikely that users would have any interest in a government operated social network, or be comfortable giving that much data to Big Brother. After all, the government already has so much other data on us that giving them access to our social data would create too complete of a picture.

An Imperfect Opportunity

Social media is a natural step in the evolution of communication technology. We thrive as a species because we’re social creatures that share information with one another.

Now that social media has shown too much promise and potential as a communication medium, we can’t just put it back in the bag while we figure out the answers to all the questions that social media has raised:

• What are the reasonable limits of personal privacy?
• What social tools should be considered essential?
• How can we afford to pay for the research and development of social tools?

What is clear is that the private sector is much better equipped fulfill the potential of social media.` What isn’t clear is how much leeway it should have with our data as it endeavors to fund the process. As Facebook’s own rebuttals noted, “For Facebook–like most other online service providers–getting this balance right is a matter of survival.”