Affiliate Summit East 2011: How to Pitch Your Company #ASE11
Session Description: Candid advice for exhibitors representing their company at the Affiliate Summit conference. On the panel were:
- Tricia Meyer, Owner, Sunshine Rewards (Moderator)
- Robert Adler, President, The Link Builders
- Ad Hustler, Chief Hustler, Ad Hustler, LLC
- Kim Rowley, Owner, Key Internet Marketing, Inc.
I have to admit that this session came off unlike what I thought I was in for. What I expected was tips to hone your pitch when talking to people. What I got was a newcomers’ guide to attending conferences. While there’s definitely a lot of value in that, especially for, well, newcomers, there wasn’t a ton of value in it for me. However, I did pick up some “best practices” that I’ll definitely be sharing with folks that are new to trade shows and nervous about representing their companies well!
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- Don’t look straight at a person’s name tag for their name, just ask for it. Don’t devalue a person based on what their badge says their role is – people wear many hats in this industry.
- Business is supposed to be personal to a point.
- Don’t look over people’s shoulders to see who else there is to talk to (it’s rude!).
- Don’t judge people based on what they’re wearing. Never think the way they dress equates to how much money they can make.
- CPA networks rely on a gender bias going towards men. Ladies can drive leads too.
- Don’t assume people are in a role they’re not.
- Highest price, best offers…most of your CPA networks claiming these things are full of it. Only one network can have THE highest price or THE best offers, so you’re all just lying. Develop a relationship with the affiliate – the rest is nonsense.
- Have a unique pitch. What is it about your company that’s different from your competitors?
- Name one thing that will make you walk past a booth?
- Booth babes. They don’t know anything about your company and it looks pathetic. You’re not going to attract real performers that way. As Ad Hustler said, your hot chick isn’t going to entice them because they can probably afford a hotter one!
- When people working at the booth look disinterested in being there. Potential partners need to see your excitement!
- Aggressive sales mentality. It doesn’t work in affiliate marketing. These panelists said they’d avoid a booth if they saw the staff trapping other attendees.
- Knowledge is the best sales tool. Everyone at Affiliate Summit is a sales person when you think about it. Make us interested.
- Don’t spam. If you add a person to a list after a short conversation with them, it’s a big turn off. A follow up email, however, is good; if you don’t follow up within a week, people will forget about you.
- Be memorable, in a good way.
- Have you had bad booth experiences?
- Don’t snipe people as they walk by your booth with the lead scanner gun.
- Tell someone what you do quickly – be respectful of people’s time and busy schedules during a conference.
- Anecdote: Tricia was trapped in a conversation in a booth for almost 10 minutes and couldn’t get away. The personal eventually admitted that they wanted to practice their pitch on her!
- Good booth experiences?
- If someone is an expert at whatever it is they do, it gives a person confidence that they’re the best person to work with. Be the expert.
- Listen to what the other person is saying about their company. You can brainstorm together.
- Just don’t lie.
- What do you NOT want to hear at Affiliate Summit?
- I can get you higher payouts!
- We have the best offers!
Points brought up during the Q&A
If you’re confident in what you do, you can afford to be a little annoying.- Some of the best opportunities to pitch your company can be the least obvious.
- How do you quickly explain affiliate marketing?
- You’re the guy in the duck outfit outside the pizza place trying to get people to come in and order.
- What you put in is what you get out.
- Is there a tension of working with both affiliates and other vendors?
- Affiliates expect it, as long as you’re not wasting the other vendors time they’ll be open to partnerships.
- What are the best opportunities for networking?
- Meals and cocktail hours. Just start a conversation with someone.
- Let people know that they can refer people to you if they think there’s a good fit.
- Cab lines, heck any line where people are probably from the conference.
- Don’t pitch people you don’t know – wait until they ask what you do. Wait until someone asks for your card.
- Hang around and talk to speakers after sessions.
- Give free stuff to bloggers.
- How do you pitch when you have multiple hats on?
- Start with everything.
- Come up with something memorable (e.g. I’m a hustler).
Affiliate Summit East 2011: Wil Reynolds Keynote #ASE11
Wil Reynolds knocked it out of the park once again speaking at Affiliate Summit East 2011. Not just the most requested session, but as a keynote speaker! It was the only keynote I attended this time around, and well worth it!
Bullet Point Review!
- We fall in love with the things that are easy.
- This is the 12th affiliate summit Wil’s speaking at.
- Sick of shortcut tactics that win.
- Find .edu clubs on topics that you could sponsor.
- Intitle search.
- Google is matching synonyms so sometimes you don’t have to do as much work as you think
- Believe in the power of 1. What are you doing to turn 10 to 10,000?
- What value do you add?
- Google will eventually figure it out.
- Rel=author (once you get to a certain level, Google starts putting your picture by articles).
- 30-40% of searches are related to brands.
- If you’re being un-followed en masse, you screwed up. Invest your time & find out why.
- Underutilized assets: badges, giveaways, social.
- Invest in assets.
- Find .edus or k.12 that list scholarships – make one!
- Strong connections are always valuable.
- Little tidbit: Press 4 in Google Voice to record. Pay Speech Pad $1 per minute to transcribe and use that as your content!
Wil was goodly enough to utilize the power of the SEER Interactive Blog and his twitter following and posted all the links he mentioned in his keynote here: Affiliate Summit Keynote Links.
Read Moread:tech San Francisco: Why HTML5 Matters
Session Description: The way consumers interact with the Web is changing. The impetus for this change is twofold—the appearance of a variety of new devices and increasing broadband penetration—both of which let you deliver richer content in a variety of new ways. The needs of the Web consumer have shifted dramatically in the last decade, especially within the past year. Much of that change comes from the new HTML5 spec that we all hear about, but not everyone quite understands. However, HTML5 has tremendous advantages for marketers as it represents the largest shift in Web standards in the last 15 years. HTML5 enables a richer experience for mobile, video and a myriad of other channels that can help revolutionize your marketing strategies. Adam Broitman, Partner and Ringleader of Circ.us, will do a deep dive into the numerous marketing and advertising implications of HMTL5 and the various things you need to know to prepare yourself for the next generation of the Web.
This session took place Wednesday, April 13, 2011. The speakers:
- Adam Broitman, Partner and Ringleader of Circ.us
This session blew me away! Having taught myself HTML years ago, this got me super jazzed and excited to start learning HTML5 and getting some more tools in my toolbox.
Bullet Point Review!
- Why HTML5 Matters.
- Standards are safe.
- Consumers are familiar with standards.
- Web standards can save you money.
- Web standard content is easier to find in Google.
- Broadband growth 2001-2009 ^ 63.5%.
- 31.5% YoY growth total video streams.
- YouTube 8.4 billion total streams, 2:23 average time on site.
- Some current browsers don’t support this new web interaction.
- The way we use the Internet had changed, but the nature of HTML hasn’t.
- The app will not save us.
- We need standards, not 1000s of app stores.
- Kind of a bridge.
- People have to spend more money for all platforms and it slows things down.
- The future of the web? (AOL) unable to grow within the walled garden, had to open up.
- 20% of people use a free app the next day after download, only 5% after 30 days.
- HTML5 is a set of standards.
- HTML5 is the new.. HTML.
- Important elements:
- The canvas.
- More creative things can be done.
- Geolocation.
- You don’t need to build a specific app to access the gps info.
- Browser now becomes location aware.
- Audio & video.
- <video>…</video>
- It’s not perfect… Yet.
- Miro video converter.
- Local storage.
- Google got rid of Gears in favor of HTML5.
- Drag & drop.
- Forms.
- Input types.
- New semantics.
- More meta tags actually describe content & make it more easily found in searches.
- It’s still the wild west of html5 compliant web browsers.
- Html5test.com to see if your browser is compliant.
ad:tech San Francisco: Advanced Affiliate Optimization
Session Description: Affiliate marketing best practices are not “one size fits all.” Optimization tactics that work for online retailers could prove disastrous for subscription marketers (and vice versa). This session examines popular affiliate strategies from both the retail and subscription marketing perspectives to identify how both types of marketers can grow sales/subs, manage quality, protect their brand and ultimately get the most from this channel. Learn from Peter Figueredo’s, Co-Founder and Brainstorm Chaser of Netx, 11 years of experience running successful affiliate and search campaigns for large retail and subscription advertisers.
This session took place Wednesday, April 13, 2011. The speakers:
- Peter Figueredo, Founding Partner and Brainstorm Chaser, Netx (Moderator)
- Vinny Lingham, CEO, Yola.com
And you thought I was done posing about ad:tech? Pshaw! I really enjoyed this session because it gave me great actionable items to help improve and better understand the For Me To Coupon leads program I manage!
Bullet Point Review!
- Retail Programs
- Product focused
- Paradox of choice
- New customers
- Short term ROI
- Minimize returns
- Subscription/Service Programs
- Service focused
- Fear of commitment
- Wants qualified customers
- Long term ROI
- Minimize churn
- Advanced Techniques for Retail
- Product driven: Shopping comparison, coupon, loyalty (Peter suggested brands create orphan coupon page to rank higher than affiliates on brand + coupon).
- Paradox of choice: feed optimization, advanced creative.
- New customers: new customer bounty, recruit new & growing affiliates.
- Short term ROI: offers to increase AOV, only pay more to get more (don’t just give higher commissions, negotiate what kind of placement you’re getting).
- Minimize returns: commissions on shipped, reverse returns.
- Advanced Techniques for Subscription
- Service focused: review sites, vertical content sites, blogs.
- Fear of commitment: affiliate education (one sheets, webinars, networking, etc), consumer education.
- Qualified customers: manage consumer incentives, clear consumer messaging (you know the lifetime value, so you can offer a higher bounty).
- Long term ROI: sites with a loyal user base, track retention by affiliate.
- Minimize churn: retention based commissions, retention rate bonus.
- Key takeaways
- Retail: optimize your feed.
- Subscription: optimize on retention.
- Subscription: educate your affiliates.
- Yola Case Study
- Focus on purchasing actions, not sign ups.
- Run promos for multiple year subscriptions.
- Test different discounts on promos.
- Keep promos fresh by varying messaging & theme, keep discounts constant.
- Align creatives with affiliate pay our structure.
Points brought up during the Q&A
- Drive engagement with top tier affiliates. Look at the research. Look at how they prefer to be engaged & engage them that way.
- Do you provide materials an influencing person can take to a meeting to convince the decision maker? One sheet, stats, other educational materials.
ad:tech San Francisco: Affiliate Marketing – The Big Challenges
Session Description: As the affiliate marketing industry grows, it continues to encounter challenges on multiple fronts. One front burner issue for brands and advertisers remains affiliate legislation. From New York to California to Texas, the nuances of tax collection in each state are still being worked out and, in many cases, litigated. With this vital issue still in flux, what are brands and marketers doing to move forward? How can advertisers keep track of the state-by-state laws, and how can they develop strategies for today and for the future? Trademark legislation is also a key issue for affiliate marketing and we’ll explore how brands walk the fine line between protecting their brand and getting wider exposure. Finally, we’ll tackle how affiliate legislation in various states will impact all online retailers.
This session took place Wednesday, April 13, 2011. The speakers:
- Carolyn Tang Kmet, Director of Affiliate Marketing, Groupon (Moderator)
- Angel Djambazov, OPM, KEEN Footwear
- Rebecca Madigan, Executive Director, Performance Marketing Association
- Brian Looney, Senior Director of Business Development, CitizenHawk, Inc.
- Seana Montgomery, Senior Paralegal, McAfee
Impression comment
Bullet Point Review!
- Affiliate marketing has become a legitimate marketing channel.
- Ad Tax, aka Amazon Tax
- Lots of spin going on from the pro side.
- No physical presence – not required to collect sales tax.
- Reality is that there’s no money involved
- What does it mean for merchants?
- If you have an affiliate program in states where this passes, you must now collect sales tax for all purchases made into the state, Or
- Terminate affiliates (obviously the feared option).
- What happens when it passes?
- 25-35% loss of income to affiliates.
- Lay offs, downsizing, some companies may close entirely.
- People move out-of-state.
- Income tax decreases.
- Legislation has been beaten back 25 times.
- Passed in 5 states.
- 8 states in play in 2011.
- Brand Protection is Important.
- Typosquatting relies on typos in URLs.
- Bad spelling is as prevalent as the common cold.
- Typing too fast, fat fingers, old keyboards that stick, small keyboards on mobile devices.
- More than 20% of all Internet traffic is typed in.
- 15-30% of the time the URLs are misspelled.
- Companies often classify this as a legal issue instead of a marketing or traffic issue.
- Defending yourself against a typosquatter is expensive when you get lawyers involved.
- URDP – uniform domain name dispute resolution policy.
- Trademark infringement considered anything confusingly similar. Typos don’t count but content does. $1500 to file a complaint in court.
- You’re not filing against the domain name, you’re filing against the domain owners.
- Turn trademark enforcement into a profit center.
- Laws are international, but more enforceable on .com & .net.
- Marketing channels are business tools. Each should be employed for a specific purpose.
- You’re obligated to police your brand – your trademark can get canceled if you don’t prove you’re actively policing infringements.
- Learning from KEEN Footwear.
- Be sure your affiliates understand what affiliate marketing is.
- Affiliate publisher joined, tried selling his own brand of shoes thinking affiliate meant an endorsement similarly to the definition of “affiliate” in the TV world. Eventually showed up at the corporate offices demanding Keen CEO do more to leverage their partnership in trying to sell is shoe related product.
- Not all publishers understand what the channel is. Educate them.
- Be sure to clearly define all legal aspects.
- 20% of your affiliates are driving the majority of the revenue.
- What can you do to measure impact of amazon tax:
- Monitor legislation in states crucial to your success.
- Join the PMA to help.
- Stay informed through geekcast.fm, ReveNews.com, PMA blog.
- Create a contingency plans with a different payment or advertising model to not loose these valuable partners.
- Garbage can bills popping up including more junk trying to get out-of-state retailers to collect sales tax. Just says “don’t do business in our state”.
ad:tech San Francisco: Affiliate Marketing Innovations for Brands and Advertisers
Session Description: Affiliate marketers are the most adept at harnessing new technologies in their marketing efforts. As a result, the industry has evolved faster than most marketing channels. During the past decade, affiliate marketing has grown from basic text links and banner ads to geo-targeted mobile campaigns and social media swarms. In this session, we’ll delve into how brands can leverage their affiliate channel to multiply reach and the number of consumer touch points. What market factors have driven the rapid growth so far in affiliate marketing? Has the increase been consumer-driven or technology-driven? And what sort of changes will come next? Join us as we find out.
This session took place Wednesday, April 13, 2011. The speakers:
- Carolyn Tang Kmet, Director of Affiliate Marketing, Groupon (Moderator)
- J.J. McCarthy, Sr. Manager Internet Marketing, eBay
- Alicia Navarro, Co-Founder & CEO, Skimlinks
This was a great session. It gave some insight on the beginnings of Affiliate Marketing that even I didn’t know. It was also chock full of interesting tidbits and insight gained from eBay & Skimlinks’ experiences.
Bullet Point Review!
- Affiliate marketing really started in 1886 with Avon ladies.
- People didn’t realize sites were interactive at the dawn of the internet.
- Consumers are responsive to free and discounted offer.
- Approving of animation.
- Consumers lost interest in flashy stuff, needed to find relevance.
- Groupon basing the ads not on the content, but the consumers location.
- Consumers felt their privacy invaded by contextual ads.
- Key to delivering content is relevance to individual consumer.
- Recognize where services are needed.
- RFID helped Walmart improved out of stock by 16% and improved restock efficiency by 60%.
- Staples reduced out of stock by 21%.
- Harrahs used RFID in chips – knew where to send cocktail waitresses or pit bosses according to the concentration of where the chips were located on the casino floor.
- Market fragmentation: broadcast to the individual instead of to the masses.
- Groupon has added incentives for users to share deals via Facebook and Twitter.
- Affiliate marketing has become device agnostic.
- We’re constantly wired.
- Convergence used go just be a phone, but now it’s a PDA, camera, Internet, television, & more.
- eBay been actively marketing in affiliate space since 2000.
- eBay partner network launched 2008.
- >100k websites actively driving traffic.
- Unlike all other marketing channels, success in affiliate marketing is predicated on competing for affiliates mind share & loyalty.
- Success is a function of reputation, ease of use, & earnings f(ree).
- Invest significantly in reputation.
- Being successful isn’t always about tech innovation, it’s also about cultural innovation.
- QCP: quality click pricing. Volume isn’t a proxy for value. Would rather have quality. De-averages the CPC.
- Build world class tools.
- Do-it-Yourself Affiliate Marketing is more costly than the revenue.
- Integrate with the affiliate networks.
- Apply to individual merchant programs.
- Create deep link syntax.
- Hard code into site.
- Maintain links.
- Access multiple reporting interfaces.
- Optimize.
- Publishers don’t think of themselves as marketers, so appeal to them with that angle.
- Perhaps affiliate marketing should be affiliate linkage.
- The closer funnel (converto.com)
