Affiliate Marketing Fanatics 49: Interviewing Stephanie Lichtenstein, Lisa Picarille, & Lisa Riolo
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Affiliate Marketing Fanatics – A couple of hyper-caffeinated affiliate marketers (Mike Buechele) and (Trisha Lyn Fawver) talk about all things Affiliate Marketing. From blogging to branding, social media to search, video and more!
Presenting the last in our series of interviews with speakers at Affiliate Summit West 2011, coming up next week at the Wynn Casino in Las Vegas. This time, we talk to Stephanie Lichtenstein, Lisa Picarille, & Lisa Riolo about their panel “Profit from Trendspotting”. Fourth panelist Scott Jangro was unable to join us, but we reference him plenty! In in this episode we discuss:
- The panelists include Scott Jangro of Mech Media, Stephanie Lichtenstein of Micro Media Marketing, Lisa Picarille of MyContentPro.com, & Lisa Riolo of Impact Radius.
- Lisa Picarille is the brain child of the panel, having spoken on trend spotting before at previous conferences.
- Stephanie will be discussing some different techniques to spot trends in the marketplace & pop culture.
- They’ll review the types of trends and how to spot them & how to make money!
- Check out http://bit.ly/dO0cxE for a live example of how the new question asking technology works.
- Reach out on Twitter to them: @jangro, @lisap, @lisariolo, & @microsteph or find their brands on Twitter if you’re interested in doing business with them: @MyContentPro1, @ImpactRadius, & @MicroMediaMktg
Want to catch up with us & ask questions for the next show? Find us on Twitter: @AMF_Podcast, @MikeBuechele & @TrishaLyn. Like us on Facebook! You can also ask Trisha questions through FormSpring.me. Or leave us a comment!
Special thanks to GeekCast.fm for hosting Affiliate Marketing Fanatics.
Read MoreSessions I Want to See at Affiliate Summit East 2010
Have you ever looked at the schedule for a conference and wondered, “How did these sessions get picked?” I know I have. The conference I go to the most, Affiliate Summit, has always had a closed-door process for putting together their agenda from their speaker proposals. Yesterday I told you about how Affiliate Summit has opened up voting for the panels that will be on the agenda for Affiliate Summit East 2010, and implored you to vote for the Podcasting 101 panel I hope to sit on. Today, I’m going to share the love and tell you about the other panels I voted for and hope to see on the agenda.
Any long-term readers of my blog know that one of my favorite things to do is to attend conferences, take copious amounts of notes, and share them here with you. I learn a lot in these sessions, and feel it’s practically my responsibility to pass on that learning to everyone else. Granted, it’s not the same as attending the sessions at the conferences yourself, but it’s close. I vote for 15 panels out of 117 up for voting on the Affiliate Summit Slinkset site.
Bear with me, with 15 panels to explain my vote for, this is going to be a long post. Here’s the ones I voted for, and why.
- Beyond Business Cards: Move beyond passing out stacks of business cards and adding legions of Twitter followers to promote your business. 11 steps to forging relationships to yield results beyond leads and self-promotions. Speakers: Jen Goode, Au-Co Mai, Lisa Picarille, Lisa Riolo, & Karen Garcia. Why This Got My Vote: There are a lot of people in the industry that will tell you that the core of affiliate marketing is building relationships, and I agree. Not enough people will give you advice or actionable items on how to build these all-important relationships though. I know almost all the speakers on the panel, and they’re fantastic at networking and building lasting relationships, so I have no doubt that their 11 actions are going to be dynamite.
- Bloggers Successfully Connecting with Audiences and Advertisers: Advice and tips for bloggers to increase their success in connect with audiences and at the same time making them more appealing to advertisers and increase revenue. Speakers: Murray Newlands, Kristopher B. Jones, Drew Bennett, Tim Jones, & Eric Schechter. Why This Got My Vote: Honestly, this is more a chance for vindication. At the last summit, these same speakers appeared on the Monetizing Blogs for Affiliate Marketing and SEO panel (sub John Carcutt for Eric) and I was let down by the ho-hum content. It took them 30 minutes to even mention the word “monetize”, and it seemed less focused on monetizing and SEO and more focused on general “how to start blogging. I know that the panelists, being bloggers themselves, were all very interested in getting feedback, so I’m really hoping that they take the feedback from the last time and refocus and deliver a really kick-ass panel this time around.
- Trademark Bidding in Affiliate Marketing: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of trademark bidding in affiliate marketing. An in-depth look at the impact trademark bidding has on all players in the affiliate space. Speakers: Paul Schroader, Justin Bowen, Chuck Hamrick, John W. Dozier, & David Naffziger. Why This Got My Vote: This is a seriously confusing area in the PPC arena, and any light that can be shed on it is always good for affiliates. As well, David has a great product with Brand Verity to help, and a lot of insight to be shared. Not the sexiest topic, but an important one.
- Connecting Your Community: Online/Off Social Good: There are opportunities for affiliates and advertisers to support great causes, both online and off to foster a larger online community. This panel will look at examples in social media that helped. Speakers: Dina Riccobono, Sloane Barrent, & Bruce Wang. Why This Got My Vote: So much emphasis in affiliate marketing is about ME, and how can I make a fortune, but people should remember that there’s a world out there that can also benefit from your support. I’m interested in people learning more from Dina and the panel on how they can successfully integrate their work and marketing efforts into also benefiting great causes and making the world a better place.
- Affiliate Program Case Studies: Strategies and Practices: Discussion of what it takes for a retailer to get their affiliate channel to the next level. Merchant case studies reveal and illustrate strategies and practices that attract and keep affiliates. Speakers: Melanie Seery, Madeleine McGregor, Adam Riemer, & Kimberly Salvino. Why This Got My Vote: Case studies are always great, because they show real results. It’s more than just hypothetical tactics, it’s proof positive. All of the speakers are very knowledgeable and represent various angles of a merchant program that really works, from the network, affiliate, and affiliate managers.
- Creating a Stronger, Balanced Affiliate-Merchant Agreement: Can we have a stronger, fairer Affiliate-Merchant Terms of Service agreement to better protect affiliates and merchants? Discussion of the current inadequacies and challenges in creating a better TOS. Speakers: Melanie Seery, Brian Littleon, Adam Riemer, & Kimberly Salvino. Why This Got My Vote: Well, honestly it almost didn’t. This panel has the same panelists as the last one I voted for, except for the substitution of Brian for Madeline. Affiliate Summit has a policy of not allowing people to speak on more than one panel, so theoretically once the advisory board makes the final agenda, one of these panels won’t be on it. But, this is just as valuable as the case studies panel. Many merchants don’t have a good TOS, so any help they can get is helpful!
- Search Marketing Campaign Review: Attendees will apply to have their site and campaigns reviewed before the conference. Our panel of experts, one each in SEO, Link Building, PPC, Social, and Affiliate will choose 4-5 companies. Speakers: Kate Morris, Joanna Lord, Scott Polk, Kristy Bolsinger, Jane Copeland, Carolyn Shelby. Why This Got My Vote: I’m a big fan of interactive panels, and real-life examples. This panel will allow for real-time, off the cuff analysis and can be incredibly helpful to everyone in attendance. My first affiliate summit, I attended a site review similar to this kind of clinic-approach panel and volunteered up the site of the company I worked for at the time. It was an eye opener! In the interest of full disclosure, I briefly worked with Kate Morris during our time at New Edge Media, and I know Kate to be really good at explaining how things can be changed for the better in a constructive way, which is what people need for public critiques!
- Seven Deadly Sins of Affiliate Marketing 2010: A fast paced multi-media presentation on affiliate danger zones focusing on the latest FTC enforcement priorities and initiatives and plaintiffs’ targets infused with useful tips and humor. Speaker: Bennet Kelley. Why This Got My Vote: With a title like that, how could you NOT vote for it! Actually, I’ve seen Bennet speak before and he’s incredibly knowledgeable and makes sometimes boring topics like law, enforcement, and the FTC actually interesting and relevant. I feel very strongly that it’s in every affiliate’s best interest to know what their limitations are legally with their marketing efforts, so this is important.
- Innovate! New Exciting Applications of Affiliate Marketing: Affiliate marketing is increasingly used in new web start-ups, services and applications. Discover the most exciting new ideas that are helping to grow and highlight affiliate marketing industry. Speaker: Joe Stepniewski. Why This Got My Vote: Affiliates are some of the most creative and innovative marketers out there, online or off. I love to hear what crazy things affiliates are coming up with and what tools and tricks are out there. Working for a vendor of an affiliate tool myself now, I’m excited to see what kind of innovation is out there that might compliment the For Me To Coupon service.
- Feed Powered Affiliate Marketing: A review of how product feeds are playing an ever-increasing role in online marketing and how they can be successfully deployed in affiliate marketing. Using real case studies and examples. Speakers: Lee Brignell-Cash & Robert Durkin. Why This Got My Vote: Again, considering I work with data feeds every day now, I’m interested in the creative things affiliates are doing with various types of data feeds. A lot of affiliates are concerned with how to best optimize their time and marketing efforts, yet not enough use data feeds to help automate their sites. Hopefully more sessions like this can bring data feeds to more affiliates.
- The New Frontier for Infomercials: Affiliate Marketing!: Marketers behind the Snuggie know the power of TV to drive online sales. They have big budgets and are more focused than ever on driving online sales. Discover more about this giant opportunity. Speakers: Rebecca Madigan, Peter Bordes, & Ron C. Pruett, Jr. Why This Got My Vote: I admit it, I have a fascination with informercials and TV pitchmen. So I’m fascinated to see how they’re going to tie this in with affiliate marketing. I’m a bit surprised that someone from Impact Radius isn’t involved in this, given their big focus on integrating traditional media with affiliate offers, but my intrigue has been piqued nonetheless!
- Successful Multiple Network Strategies for Merchants: The arguments for and against launching performance marketing programs in multiple networks–and how to make the strategy you do select successful. Speakers: Lisa Riolo & Durk Price. Why This Got My Vote: I’ve yet to see a merchant that really leverages multiple networks right. Most seem to just throw their program up onto as many networks as possible with no real strategy at all, so I’m exited to see what tips can be shared for these merchants to really leverage multiple networks instead of just casting their nets as wide as possible.
- Demystifying Online Attribution: Real answers on how to track a customer’s searches through all phases of the buying cycle, how to measure cross channel assists, and how to avoid the dangers of only last click attribution. Speakers: Don Batsford & Jonathan Treiber. Why This Got My Vote: A lot of affiliates (and even some merchants) know the basics of cookies and how affiliate links are tracked, but when you start talking to them about click attribution, how to separate affiliate traffic from PPC traffic from organic traffic, eyes start to glaze over. Hopefully this session, aimed mostly at merchants/advertisers, will help new affiliate merchants understand how to better differentiate their traffic sources and become more aware of how tracking really works.
- Conquering The Mega Niches for Mega Profits: Very few affiliate marketers dare to enter the most competitive and profitable niches. They follow the general advice of focusing on the small opportunities. Speaker: Hamlet Batista. Why This Got My Vote: It’s always encouraging for a super affiliate to come to the conference and share some of their secret sauce with smaller affiliates hoping to really crack some opportunities. I’ve met Hamlet and I know he’s been incredibly successful in large niches (hello Viagra!), and he’s a good speaker as well – just the right mix of informative and motivational for those smaller affiliates looking for hope!
- Are You Kidding Me? Merchant Mistakes: Going over common Merchant Mistakes and why they are bad. Limiting to 100 Affiliates, Not participating in forums, Being on AutoApprove, etc. Speaker: Adam Riemer. Why This Got My Vote: I love Adam on a personal level – he’s a riot to chat with and is super passionate about the industry to boot. So this session promises to at least be entertaining. As well, as a self-taught (former) affiliate manager, I’m always interested to hear other affiliate managers’ opinions on the dos & don’ts of managing merchant programs. Unfortunately, as Adam is listed as a panelist on two other potential panels, as I mentioned before he can only speak on one, so I’m torn as to which I’d rather see him on!
I heartily encourage you to click on the links and vote for these sessions as well. Just click the blue arrow to the left of the session titles to vote. You will have to register for an account, but it’s a great opportunity to get the most out of your money when attending Affiliate Summit. If you haven’t already done so, register for Affiliate Summit today. I will have a pass to give away at the end of this month so stay tuned for contest details!
Affiliate Marketing Fanatics 19: It’s a Search Tool!
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Affiliate Marketing Fanatics – A couple of hyper-caffeinated affiliate marketers (Mike Buechele) and (Trisha Lyn Fawver) talk about all things Affiliate Marketing. From blogging to branding, social media to search, video and more!
In this all-too-RARE episode, we reunite and make lots of fun of ourselves for being inconsistent in our scheduling and shows. We discuss some things that are kind of old and some things that are brand-spanking new. It happens. Incidentally, I realize I said the name Richard Attenborough when we were joking around and I was trying to reference those classic nature shows from our childhood with the stoic British actor describing gazelles running across the Serengeti. Not sure what the actor’s name actually was, but I know now that it wasn’t Sir Attenborough. Oh well, despite that, episode 19 comes in at a cheetah like speed of 39 minutes.
Also, I just fixed the audio problem where it cut off about 33 minutes in. Sorry, should be all good now! In this episode we discuss:
- My new gig with For Me To Coupon.
- The Advertising Tax hits Colorado. Read more about it here:
- Fox 31 KDVR News: Online sales tax bill moves through House
- Examiner.com: Are state representatives going to put work-at-home moms out of business overnight? (by Jen Goode!)
- Performance Marketing Association: Colorado House Passes Bill that Threatens to Devastate Affiliates (by Lisa Picarille!)
- The launch of Impact Radius – more of an exchange than a network.
- Seesmic Look. Seriously, what is this? We decided – it’s a search tool!
- 1938 Media starts 1938 Business & teams up with some heavy hitters to produce this year’s Audience Conference.
- Loren Feldman and Affiliate Summit Team Up
- Shout outs went to the losers of the Affiliate of the Year Pinnacle Award, Kim Rowley and Eric Nagel!
Want to catch up with us & ask questions for the next show? Find us on Twitter: @MikeBuechele & @TrishaLyn. Or leave us a comment!
Read MoreInterview with Lisa Riolo of Impact Radius
A new kind of affiliate network was launched just a couple weeks ago – Impact Radius. They boast themselves as the first multi-channel performance marketing platform. Impact Radius links performance advertising to TV, radio, print and online distribution channels—delivering to advertisers and media partners opportunities for growth and profit. I’m happy to present you with an interview with one of the founders, Lisa Riolo.
What is the Twitter (~140 Character) Definition of Impact Radius?
Well, I’m going to cheat a little and send back-to-back tweets from @impactradius
- We’re the first multi-channel performance advertising platform. Emphasis on multi-channel.
- We feature an open directory for discovering partners, electronic insertion orders, comprehensive tracking, reporting and payout processing.
Are all the founders of Impact Radius from your days at Commission Junction?
Yes, we all met there in the early days. We’ve all worked for other companies or pursued other ventures in-between then and now.
Those other experiences apart provided tremendous value because it gave us all expanded perspectives. It’s like when everyone in a band goes off and does solo projects and experiments with new rhythms and different instruments. Later, the band reunites with transformed creativity and a familiar, but fresh sound.
How do you feel this will impact the industry in the short term? Long term?
We see the convergence of traditional and online media as a huge opportunity. Almost immediately, new partnerships that bridge traditional channels to online and vice-versa started forming. Relationships like these, before Impact Radius, were challenging. This makes us a catalyst for growth for the industry as a whole.
Do you foresee any hurdles since the nomenclature of performance marketing terms usually mean different things in different aspects of marketing?
One of the greatest opportunities about building this business was the chance to start with a completely clean slate. We re-visited everything about performance advertising. We asked questions like: What is fundamental to the relationships and what could benefit from a new approach? What business processes are counter to the way people actually work together? And even—is this the best descriptor to use?
So, yes, with respect to nomenclature, we have introduced changes that should minimize confusion and help bridge the differences in a way that creates opportunity. Let me give you an example: We don’t call “affiliates” Affiliates. We don’t call “affiliates” Publishers either. We say: Media Partners—which works for Internet marketers, broadcast TV networks, print publications etc.
Who do you feel this is a sure sell to? (i.e. Who are your primary demographic?)
The performance advertising industry, meaning the advertisers, the media partners, the agencies and services, and even the networks.
I know that answer sounds like we’re flying in the face of conventional wisdom—trying to do ‘everything’ for ‘everybody.’ We’re not, though, doing everything for everybody. We are a technology platform designed specifically for performance advertising. But we’re not also an agency and also a broker and also direct response product owners. We designed Impact Radius to serve the needs of many business models, including the one’s I just listed, as they manage their performance advertising efforts.
How does this integrate with the existing affiliate technologies out there?
Technology companies and solution providers alike can promote their services in our directory and interface with our technology platform through Web Services.
What are the questions you get asked the most about Impact Radius from affiliates? From merchants? From agencies?
How do I sign-up? Seriously.
There really isn’t a strong argument against doing some level of business with us. Even if it’s just to manage a few relationships on the platform or promote your services in the directory…
How about questions from the networks?
The initial response is congratulatory and supportive. Then comes the question: Should I consider you a competitor?
Our answer is: Not necessarily. Aspects of our functionality may overlap—but aspects may also be complementary. For example, a CPA network could promote their offers in our directory and use platform features like the electronic insertion orders or payout systems to efficiently manage certain relationships. Or, an affiliate network could refer one of their customers to Impact Radius to start managing their “offline” advertising on a performance basis.
The idea is to fuel performance advertising growth exponentially.
Lisa Riolo is an active, dedicated member of the performance advertising community and remains committed to its further growth and achievement. Prior to co-founding Impact Radius, Lisa consulted with high-growth businesses to develop online marketing programs and scale operations. Lisa’s previous experience includes serving as senior vice president of business development at Commission Junction, where she played an instrumental role in growing company revenue, and managerial roles at Peet’s Coffee & Tea and Bank of America.
Lisa holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Claremont McKenna College.
Read MoreDay 3 of Affiliate Summit West 2010
Tuesday January 19th
The final day of Affiliate Summit started bright and early with the Pinnacle Awards scheduled before the last day’s keynote by Brian Clark. This was a change for the conference agenda, which usually puts the Pinnacle Awards in the afternoon after other sessions. I like the change because it gets the awards out of the way, and didn’t interfere with any other sessions or independent parties planned in the evening. I seem to remember last year that some of the award winners had to jet quickly after the awards to get to a charity poker tournament, among other places.
The winners have been blogged all over, but here’s a quick recap just in case this is the only blog you read (unlikely): Affiliate of the Year – Nicholas Koscianski. Affiliate Manager of the Year – Matt McWilliams. Exceptional Merchant – eBay Partner Network. Affiliate Marketing Advocate – Angel Djambazov. Best Bloggger – Jeremy Schoemaker. Affiliate Marketing Legend – Scott Jangro.
Next up was Brian Clark’s keynote. He admitted at the beginning that it was his first keynote, so I guess he did pretty well all things considered. Of course, I have a whole post devoted to the keynote that I’ll go into later.
Once again, I intended to go into more sessions on Tuesday, but got sidetracked with all the networking possibilities. As well, I was given a demo of a new affiliate network of sorts, Impact Radius. It gives merchants and affiliates a way to also reach out and work with more traditional media partners. I had an opportunity to interview one of the founders, Lisa Riolo, about the launch of the new network, which will also be another blog post coming up soon.
I made it a point to get to Jim Kukral’s session How To Get Motivated For Success!, which I’ll of course be posting a recap for. It was a great kick in the pants to get going with projects that have been stalled for awhile. I know Eric Nagel wrote an entire post about Jim’s kick in the ass.
While in Jim’s session, I heard via Twitter that Daniel M. Clark of Geek Dads Weekly was invited to speak on the GeekCast.fm Live panel. I was bummed since I wanted to participate with that panel/group like I did at Affiliate Summit East 2009, but happy for Daniel. I went into the session for a moment, but left in favor of running back up to my room for a few things. As I understand, the session was some industry talk followed up with a lot of “how to podcast” type questions, so it looks like I personally didn’t miss much information that I didn’t already know.
The evening ended with a fail on the part of the Rio. A BlogUp mixer was planned at the VooDoo Lounge, which was official and everything, not just 100 people crashing the lounge for a mixer. Unfortunately, it was raining and since the lounge has an indoor and an outdoor area, the lounge ended up double booked with another much larger group of people. So we tried cramming into the bar at the steakhouse for awhile, overwhelming the poor bartender on duty. Finally, the Rio moved the charade down to the iBar and served complimentary champagne as a mea culpa.
I stayed for awhile, the it was on to another Las Vegas tradition – the buffet! A large group of us went to the Carnival World Buffet at the Rio, one of my favorite buffets ever. Then again, I haven’t been to many. It was good times and good food with good people – one of my favorite activities! After dinner, I went and hung out with Heather Smith & Julie Vazquez, who were still at the iBar. Had a very pleasant last night of Affiliate Summit West 2010!
Read MoreASE09 Session: Profitable Performance Marketing: More Money for You
Session Description: Presenting actionable items for 7 main topics, including social media, negotiating, points of sale opportunities, content that pulls, partnerships, prioritization, and the expense of inefficiency. The panel consisted of:
- Lisa Riolo, Consultant, LisaRiolo.com (Twitter @lisariolo) (Moderator)
- Jason Oates, VP Media Services, Datran Media
- Durk Price, President, eAccountable OPM LLC
- Chuck Hamrick, Affiliate Manager, AffiliateCrew.com
This session was a perfect mix of business 101 and affiliate marketing. I think a lot of affiliates get into this thinking they’re going to get rich quick and don’t really consider that they’re really creating a business. So this little business intro and how it applies to performance marketing was a nice session.
Bullet Point Review!
- Top line thinkers focus on revenue, whereas bottom line thinkers focus on profit.
- You might think you can, but you can’t do it all. Learn to delegate.
- Develop tools and methodologies to do more with less.
- Think long term and potentially sacrifice short term gains.
- You should be spending less than 50% of your time putting out fires.
- Prioritization
- 1st Priority -> High growth & unknown costs
- 2nd Priority -> Highly profitable growth
- 3rd Priority -> Profitable with limited growth
- 4th Priority -> Undetermined growth and costs
- Coupons are one of the best performing verticals.
- Affiliate marketing is not a brand meter.
- 6-12 month curve; don’t expect overnight results or a 90 day ROI.
- Everything is negotiable; evaluate other programs.
- It doesn’t hurt to ask but remember it’s a business relationship.
- Make sure to negotiate with 2-3 partners at once – and that they know you’re exploring other options.
- Be data driven and use data to your advantage.
- Find someone that’s going to vouch for the vendor you’re negotiating with and ask for referrals.
- Be more available and transparent.
- Three uses of email
- Acquisition
- Retention
- Monetization
- Many people using feedback loops and opening dialog in order to improve.
- Find ESP that will work on a performance basis – they will help you weed out non-responders.
- Synchronize your email expertise.
- Use employees in the smartest way possible for maximum operational efficiency.
- You need metrics before you negotiate either internally or externally.
- Points of Sale
- Up-selling
- Add-on Products and Services
- Continuity Programs
- 2nd Sale and Renewals
- Providing valuable, free content is a good way to capture emails to market to.
- To decrease unsubscribers, offer other subscriber options with different frequencies or options.
- Positions 3-5 on the SERPs are the secret sauce of SEO.
- Calling a customer to confirm a sale will encourage return business.
- Know key metrics – average order value, conversion rates, lifetime order value (that one is tricky).
- You can’t just be an OPM, you have to be a consultant.
- Doing more targeting is effective.
- A monthly affiliate newsletter isn’t that effective.
- Just keep the parasites out.
Overall I got a lot out of this, and I hope others did too. I wished the panelists had had a bit more fun with the topic to liven things up, but I understand there’s only so much you can spice up such a dry topic. Here’s the presentation, though this is clearly an older version since Karen White didn’t end up making it and Durk & Chuck stepped in:
Read More
