Autoresponders on ‘Roids

This post was written by the Web Marketing Ninja—a professional online marketer for a major web brand, who’s sharing his tips undercover here at ProBlogger. Curious? So are we!

Darren has written a lot about how he has evolved his autoresponder sequences on his blogs. But I want to take this a step further and describe how you can turn a good auto responder into a great one.

Step 1: Segment your subscribers when they give you their email addresses

When you ask users to give you their email addresses, you should keep the process as frictionless as possible. If you can, just ask for the address itself. If you really need to, ask for their name so you can personalize messages—but that’s it.

Given you’ve only got one piece of information, how can you segment your audience?

• Segment A: Existing Customer: match the email address to your list of orders and see if the person is an existing customer or not.
• Segment B: Blog Commenter: if you’re requesting people include their email addresses when they post comments, match against that to determine how connected they are to your blog.
• Segment C: Community Member: if your blog includes a forum, chances are you’ll have a record of user email addresses from your forum signup process. Use this to determine if they’re already part of your community.
• Segment D: New Subscriber: this is the bucket for anyone who doesn’t fit into the above segments. These are fresh faces to your blog.

Step 2: Tailor an autoresponder for each segment

You’ll probably follow a similar process to the one Darren created here. However, you should create a sequence that’s specific for each segment. For example, you might welcome a new subscriber by sharing with them some of your most popular posts first. Then, you might send them a copy of your latest newsletter. Finally, you might send them an offer on one of your products. Alternatively, you might simply send an existing customer the content they gave you their email for, as they’re already in your sales cross-sell and up-sell cycle.

As a starting point, try to put yourself in the segment’s shoes, and create a process you’d like to see if you were them.

Step 3: Test and refine each segment’s autoresponder

This is where it gets a little harder and, sometimes, a little confusing. It’s time to refine your autoresponder sequence to find that optimal conversion rate for each segment. Some of the considerations you need to take into your testing could include:

• Sequence of events: e.g. free ebook –> links to popular blog posts –> latest newsletter –> paid ebook
• Email delivery time: during business hours/outside business hours/weekday/weekend
• Delay between emails: one month, one week, one day, one hour
• Email format: HTML, rich text, or plain text
• Email copy: long or short, informational or sales-focused

Warning: when you’re testing, you can easily get out of control creating variations. For example, if you had three different test cases for each of four segments, you’d have 12 tests running simulations. And if they have four emails each, that would be 48 emails you need to write! I’d start with what you think is right, and over time evolve your approach—just like Darren has.

Now unfortunately I’m not sure of any email services offering this level of depth when it comes to allocating people to certain lists based on their customer profiles (if someone knows of one, let me know). So you might need to have something custom-created for you to take an email address, decide what segment the user fits into, and assign that person to the appropriate list. However, a little investment up front can pay huge dividends in ongoing reader-to-customer conversions.

Even if you’re only getting a handful or subscribers each day, putting them through a focused autoresponder program that’s been tailored to them will, without doubt, increase your conversions.

Stay tuned from most posts by the secretive Web Marketing Ninja—a professional online marketer for a major web brand, who’s sharing more of his tips undercover here at ProBlogger over the coming weeks.

Google’s Q3 Numbers Don’t Show a Company in Trouble

Everyone’s favorite pastime these days seems to be predicting the imminent demise of Google. Whether it’s because Bing is becoming a real competitor (to which I say puh-leeze) or that their unbalanced revenue generation with depends so much on search marketing ads or their difficulty with the social side of the web or how they are shuffling executives and losing talent. Those are the majors but the list goes on.

Well, yesterday Google reported its third quarter earnings and it doesn’t appear that this perception is quite aligned with reality.

From the Google Investor blog

“Google had an excellent quarter,” said Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google. “Our core business grew very well, and our newer businesses — particularly display and mobile — continued to show significant momentum. Going forward, we remain committed to aggressive investment in both our people and our products as we pursue an innovation agenda.”

Corporate speak? Sure is but there are numbers to back it up. I highlighted some obvious “look at the increase” stuff but look at the numbers as a whole. It tells a story not often heard in business these days.

Google reported revenues of $7.29 billion in the third quarter of 2010, representing a 23% increase over third quarter 2009 revenues of $5.94 billion.

Google-owned sites generated revenues of $4.83 billion, or 67% of total revenues, in the third quarter of 2010. This represents a 22% increase over third quarter 2009 revenues of $3.96 billion.

Google’s partner sites generated revenues, through AdSense programs, of $2.20 billion, or 30% of total revenues, in the third quarter of 2010. This represents a 22% increase from third quarter 2009 network revenues of $1.80 billion.

Revenues from outside of the United States totaled $3.77 billion, representing 52% of total revenues in the third quarter of 2010, compared to 52% in the second quarter of 2010 and 53% in the third quarter of 2009.

Aggregate paid clicks, which include clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of our AdSense partners, increased approximately 16% over the third quarter of 2009 and increased approximately 4% over the second quarter of 2010.

Average cost-per-click, which includes clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of our AdSense partners, increased approximately 3% over the third quarter of 2009 and increased approximately 2% over the second quarter of 2010.

Traffic Acquisition Costs, the portion of revenues shared with Google’s partners, increased to $1.81 billion in the third quarter of 2010, compared to TAC of $1.56 billion in the third quarter of 2009. TAC as a percentage of advertising revenues was 26% in the third quarter of 2010, compared to 27% in the third quarter of 2009.

Other cost of revenues, which is comprised primarily of data center operational expenses, amortization of intangible assets, content acquisition costs as well as credit card processing charges, increased to $747 million, or 10% of revenues, in the third quarter of 2010, compared to $667 million, or 11% of revenues, in the third quarter of 2009.

Net cash provided by operating activities in the third quarter of 2010 totaled $2.89 billion, compared to $2.73 billion in the third quarter of 2009. In the third quarter of 2010, capital expenditures were $757 million, the majority of which was related to IT infrastructure investments, including data centers, servers, and networking equipment. Free cash flow, an alternative non-GAAP measure of liquidity, is defined as net cash provided by operating activities less capital expenditures. In the third quarter of 2010, free cash flow was $2.13 billion.

Ok, so let’s review. Increases in revenue across the board with total with a year over year increase of 23% for the quarter in a time when the economy is arguably getting worse and not better. Enough said because their core business is still strong and there is no real competitive threat in the foreseeable future. The only way this gets dinged is if people search less and that’s not going to happen.

Greg Stirling reports from Search Engine Land

Google’s Jonathan Rosenberg disclosed the following revenue numbers:

$2.5 billion in display (non-text) and $1 billion in mobile ad revenues. Google’s CFO said there was some small overlap in these numbers (i.e., AdMob).

The New York Times reported

“Where’s the next multibillion-dollar business after search?” said Jonathan Rosenberg, senior vice president of product management at Google, on the call. “There’s your answer. It’s display and it’s already here.” About mobile, he said, “Clearly this is the future of search and the Internet.”

Looks like Google is serious about this one since they are actually advertising it in traditional channels.

So for all of the talk of Google’s stumbles and weaknesses there is no real evidence that there is trouble….yet. There is always the chance for Google to become completely complacent, fat and happy thus letting their lead slip through their hands. I just don’t see it. With the lack of real competition in search they only need to stay awake at the wheel to keep that lead in place. They do that pretty well. Yes, they could stand to be more innovative but innovation can also be taking place in other areas outside of the core search business.

Then there’s Android. MG Siegler does a god job of examining this part of Google’s present and future over at TechCrunch. Here’s a snippet

Schmidt called Android “probably the largest single platform play in the market today.” And going forward, he thinks that’s only going to increase as more and more people buy smartphones. At the same time, “in the open source approach, that means we give the software away, which is always paradoxical. People say, well how do you make money from that?,” Schmidt was quick to jump to.

“The evidence we have is that people who use Android search twice as much as everything else,” Schmidt continued. “So, clearly, there is more revenue associated with those searches.”

Oh and lastly, while the following number is not going to impact overall unemployment numbers at least Google is doing something that others are using the economy as an excuse to not to: they are hiring.

“Simply put, we’re on this growth agenda at full throttle,” said Patrick Pichette, Google’s chief financial officer.

Google hired 1,526 people in the quarter, which included the postgraduation hiring months, bringing the total number of employees to 23,331.

So while I am not a Google apologist because they, like all other companies, are far from perfect, it’s real difficult to sit here and grouse about their troubles, issues and apparent fall from grace. I’m not seeing that. Are you? And if you are is it because of your distaste for all things Google or are you basing it on reality? If it’s reality then please explain because I must be missing something.

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Interview: Philip Shapiro

Philip Shapiro is a young, successful entrepreneur, and the owner of the quickly growing and highly reputable CPA network, CPATrend. He is also a senior in college and is studying Political Science and Philosophy. He has an undying passion for running businesses and ultimately, affiliate marketing.

Tell us a little background info about yourself. Where are you from? How old are you? How long have you been working in this industry?
My name is Philip Shapiro. I’m 21 years old and from New York. I’ve been an internet entrepreneur since I was 13 years old, and evolved my marketing savvy into successfully starting and running the affiliate network, CPATrend. I have been in the affiliate marketing industry for approximately 4 years, and I have loved every second of it.

What accomplishments so far are you the most proud of?
Perhaps my greatest accomplishment in my life has been developing a CPA network, with such incredible competition in the industry, into a successful, rapidly growing, reputable network. I’ve pulled countless 20 hour days working on CPATrend, and the hard work and dedication that I have put into the network has been showing incredible results. So I’m extremely proud of what the network has been able to accomplish in only 9 months!

How did you come to learn about this industry? Why did you choose this career? When did you first realize the full potential in affiliate marketing? When did you first “hit the big time?”
I learned about this industry when I stumbled upon the rights to an affiliate marketing eBook. I hadn’t known much about affiliate marketing, but I knew about internet marketing. I read the eBook that I purchased the rights to and was intrigued by it (and it’s 75 pages of content!). I then proceeded to creating an affiliate program at paydotcom, which was a complete bust for me. I’m glad that I failed with it, because it opened my eyes to the real possibilities of the affiliate marketing industry. Researching the industry at this time was what really helped me realize the incredible potential of affiliate marketing. I eventually became a PPC marketer and had great success with Adwords running campaigns in the Acai Berry craze. Additionally, I was pulling in about $30k per month with YPN during their beta period. Ah the good ole days! That was short lasting though, so I decided I needed to do something that would not be seasonal, or one time hits. I chose to start a CPA network, as I’ve worked with so many networks in my time, and was never ultimately pleased with any one in particular (though there are so many great networks, each has its flaws). So I decided to do what most entrepreneurs do, find something that works and make it better.

You say you were successful with offline business in your teen years. What kinds of businesses were these and where did you learn to run them?
When I was 18, and a freshman in college, I formed an offline scrap metal business with my brother and a friend. I no longer work with my brother as I had way too much on my plate with school and internet marketing (and left the company after 2 years), but he turned it into a multi-million dollar corporation in an incredibly short period of time. This is also a very cut-throat industry, so there have been obstacles in the way. You ask, where did I learn to run businesses like this? That’s a difficult question for me to answer. Entrepreneurship has always come naturally to me. I’ve never been able to work for anybody, and only had one job working for somebody when I was 15 years old (for 2 months). There are 2 types of people, those who work for somebody, and those who work for themselves. Everything I look at, I see the business message behind it. It’s this mindset, necessary research, and a lot of effort that has given me the power to run several successful businesses.

How did you achieve success at such a young age?
I got lucky I guess! That, or I work myself incredibly hard and neglect other aspects of life. There are times that I’ve turned down going out with friends, going to parties, movies, etc. because I wanted to work on my business. I think that as a young person with so many different activities that can be done, especially in New York, the mindset and desire to develop long term success is what truly inspired me to kick so many things into action at my age. I have dreams of my future, and the only way to get there is to work myself until I reach my goals. Otherwise, if one sits back idly, nothing happens for you. So keeping goals in mind and trying to achieve them is really what has given me the success I’ve enjoyed.

How have you been able to quickly gain a good reputation for CPATrend?
I think it’s fairly simple to answer this question. I’ve worked with networks that have great offers, but bad support. Networks with great support, but bad offers. Networks that feel and seem legitimate, but withhold payments. After a while, I realized that I could do a better job by combining every positive aspect from each network that I’ve worked with and implement them into mine. CPATrend offers its affiliates top quality offers, not thousands of poor converting offers. We pay our affiliates on time, every time, but usually early as my affiliates can vouch for. I can certainly say that the support I provide is second to none as well. I spend countless hours every single day giving support via phone, AIM/Y!M/MSN, and email. I love dealing with affiliates and treat every affiliate as an individual with individual needs. CPATrend is a human company. I run it in a way that it breaths, and isn’t mechanical like some other networks can be at times.

What do you think it takes to be successful as an affiliate?
To be a successful affiliate, you really have to have drive and dedication in you. At times, it can be incredibly tedious to develop a successful campaign, but the best affiliates know that after that time and tedious effort, you’ll be able to sit back and just watch the money roll in day after day. Split testing is essential to successful campaigns. Find the demographics that work for a particular offer. Doing demographic research before hand can save you a lot of money on split testing. Also, I’d recommend finding a traffic source that you’re best at, and sticking with it for offers that convert well with that traffic source. Don’t overextend yourself, and realize when a campaign isn’t being profitable for you and shut it down.

What do you think more affiliates need to understand about the network side of things?
This is a great question. As an affiliate in the past, I had no idea the tremendous amounts of work networks must put into developing relationships with advertisers and their affiliates. There is a crazy amount of paper work that is always being done, and there’s really never a moment of absolute calmness when running a network. It’s also not known to all affiliates that networks often take huge risks in paying out their affiliates before receive payments from advertisers. It requires a lot of financial backing to really run a successful network, and a mentality that the high risk will eventually be future profits.

What have been your biggest failures and frustrations as an affiliate and now as a network owner?
As an affiliate, my biggest failures and frustrations all stem from the same thing. At times, I’ve accidentally set campaigns to a very high CPC bid, and simply went to sleep. When I woke up the next day, I’ve seen thousands of dollars spent, and no conversions. So I suppose recklessness at times developed some of the greatest failures I’ve had. As a network owner, the biggest frustration for me is when an advertiser pays late. I’ve developed some great relationships with our advertisers, but I’m extremely anal in terms of payments. I pay out my affiliates on time or early, every time, so for that ethic not to be returned to me by advertisers, I get extremely frustrated.

What is the single toughest problem you've had to face, and how did you get through it?
When CPATrend was first launched, our approval process wasn’t the strongest. We let in several affiliates who should not have been accepted and they drove lots of poor quality leads to our advertisers. After one month of these poor quality leads, we were shut down by many of our advertisers. It was this moment that I made a change. I purged the network of all poor quality/fraudulent affiliates. I paid out all of our affiliates (including those that caused the problems for me), and terminated every account that was suspicious or driving poor quality leads. I then completely changed our approval process and completely tightened up the network. We now reject a large majority of applications, and only approve quality affiliates, which our advertisers now have been ecstatic about. We fought through the initial losses, and battled our way back to becoming a successful network, with a great reputation.

Is there anything that you don’t like to do, that you just hate working on?
I hate paper work. I’m not the type of person who will just sign something and fax it around. Every IO or contract that comes my way, I read in it’s entirety, red line it, and sign it. I deal with tons of these in any given week, and I just absolutely hate it. They’re very long and repetitive (when dealing with many per week), but they are an essential part of running an affiliate network. Once the paperwork is over, the rest is quite enjoyable for me.

What is the future of marketing?
The future of affiliate marketing is a bright one. Affiliate marketing is expanding every day, and it will never slow down. Why? Because there is a constant need by companies with products to have passive income. It’s so much easier for these companies to let others sell their products or attain leads for them, by paying out a percentage of the profits. Affiliate marketing is only growing stronger as our generation evolves into one that is computer savvy. As time goes on, more and more people will be doing all of their shopping online, and affiliate marketers will enjoy greater success from this.

What niche has worked best for you?
We’re having great success with the eCigarette niche, gaming niche, dating niche, and BizOpp niche.

Which methods of promotion do you favor?
I personally favor PPC/FB marketing. I’ve been a PPC guy for quite a while and have a hard time straying away from it. I also recommend media buys, contextual, and email marketing to all affiliate marketers! Huge profits to be made via most marketing methods, especially these.

How have you made those promotion methods successful?
Split testing has been the most essential part of my success with PPC and FB marketing. Additionally, demographic research is really a great thing to do when you have the access to target specific demographics like you do with Facebook marketing.

What have you been up to recently? What projects are you working on?
I have been solely running CPATrend and spending all of my time on it. It’s my passion, what I love doing, and I don’t see me taking on any other projects any time soon.

Do you think anything particular in your past prepared you for this industry? Your education? Jobs you’ve held before?
Honestly, I hated account and economics. I’m currently a senior in college, and am taking Political Science and Philosophy. I find both very interesting, but they haven’t helped shape myself in order to prepare for the industry. If anything, my business helps shape my politics. However, running many businesses for a big portion of my lifetime, and doing lots of research has helped prepare me for the industry.

What are your greatest strengths?
I believe my greatest strength is my work ethic. I work hard, and don’t give up on myself. When starting CPATrend, many people told me I would not be able to compete with the big name networks, but I believe(d) in myself and 9 months later, I am competing with the big boys. It’s just a matter of patience and putting in the work to be successful. Statistically, most new CPA networks simply fail quickly. Fortunately, CPATrend does not fall into that same category.

What are your greatest weaknesses?
I believe my greatest weakness is that I move too quickly. I jump into things from time to time without doing all of the research necessary. I’ve run some terrible campaigns in the past and this was because of rushing into them. However, when I do the appropriate research and put huge effort into something, it tends to work out.

What motivates you?
I’m a very modest person. I don’t walk around with jewelry, watches, and money dangling out of my pockets. I’m just an average 21 year old and I don’t try to live about that. I enjoy my life, and my success does not change who I am, and I won't let it. What motivates me isn’t money necessarily. I believe money comes with persistence and hard work. However, my main motivation is success. I absolutely love the feeling of waking up to see the sleepless days paying off. Nothing feels better than when people don’t believe in you, and you can prove them wrong.

What is the best advice you’ve been given and try to apply to your life?
Don’t overextend yourself. Stay within yourself. There have been times I’ve wanted to overextend myself, in terms of investing. I’m always looking for long-term profitability, even at my age, because I know what my future goals are, and I try to make them come to fruition as soon as possible. However, sometimes it’s best to just take things slow, one step at a time.

Who has impacted you most in your career, and how?
My family has been a great support of what I do, even though a lot of them don’t necessarily have a solid grasp of what exactly I do. My brother has been a really big part of my success, as we’re both young entrepreneurs who have stepped into our respective niches and are standing out in them.

What kinds of people do you have difficulties working with? Any good stories?
I simply don’t like people who are overly arrogant. We do not get along. I’ve had the pleasure of dealing with thousands of people in the past 9 months. I have mostly only good things to say about the people I’ve dealt with. But there’s always the few who don’t make things very pleasant for you, no matter how hard you try to be respectful and professional with them.

What are some of your long-term goals? How much is enough? If money was no object, what would you be doing?
My long term goals are to establish a large, successful CPA network and to really love what I’m doing. So far, I absolutely love running CPATrend, and I can’t picture anything ruining that enjoyment for me. This is the business I’d like to run for the rest of my life, and if I do so, I know that I’ll truly enjoy my life. In terms of money, I don’t think there’s a clear distinction on how much is enough. My goals are to live happily and comfortably, not to burn money for fun. I want to be charitable with my money, and give back to those who have given so much to me. The more I make, the more I can do this. If money was not an object, I wouldn’t change a thing. I absolutely love running CPATrend, and wouldn’t want to do anything else.

Where do you want to be ten years from now?
I know it sounds redundant, but I want to be in the same position I am now, running CPATrend. It’d also be nice to have a family at that point, but who knows what the next 10 years has to offer me.

How do you like to spend your free time? What doe work-life balance mean to you?
In my free time, I play the guitar, hang out with friends, party a bit. I really live the life of the average 21 year old, but I just work online, as opposed to the rest of my friends. Work-life balance is important to me. I am usually so busy working, but I always make time for the people that are in my life.

If you could go back to being 18, what different career choices would you make?
None. When I was 18, I started that offline business previously mentioned. This was a huge success and helped finance my CPA network!

Do you have a Twitter account or Facebook “Like” page?
I have a twitter account for CPATrend, which you can follow us on. I’m not too active in terms of twitter, but I certainly plan to become much more in the near future.

Blog World Expo Kicks Off in Las Vegas

I’m now in Las Vegas for BlogWorld, onc of my favorite conferences. Unlike regular affiliate marketing based conferences, BlogWorld is cool because it brings together such a diverse group of people. Bloggers, marketers, media companies and even some celebrities. The high end companies that BlogWorld brings together every year is quite amazing… just a few of the top sponsors this year include Ford, Kodak, Sony, Southwest Airlines, Pepsi, YouTube, Coors Light and so many more.

A great improvement BlogWorld made this year, was to hold the conference at the Mandalay Bay Conference Center instead of the Las Vegas Conference center. This is a great change because attendees can stay at the actual hotel of the event, instead of having to walk or get a taxi to the Las Vegas Convention Center.

That’s not all… BlogWorld is only in it’s first few hours of starting and they continue to impress. Another change to the venue was the addition of lunch vouchers. How many times have you been to a conference and the lunch venue was just crap? It does happen a lot. BlogWorld took their game to another level this year and provided $20 lunch vouchers to the Mandalay Bay food court and a few resturants around the hotel.

So far this year’s BlogWorld is off to a great start! Tomorrow morning at 11am I will be on a 60 min Q&A Panel with John Chow, ShoeMoney, Jonathan Volk and DK. If you are here in Las Vegas, be sure to stop by and say hello!

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Not Your Father’s CRM…This One’s Social!

We have been hearing a lot about the idea of Social CRM or sCRM as the next big wave in the customer relationship lifecycle. As more and more of us move our interactions not only with each other, but with brands to the online arena, many brands are scrambling to put in place the people and processes required to engage with today’s social customer.

I recently read that the social customer is the one who owns the relationship, and that it is the job of the brand to earn the customer’s trust. While this may not seem like a far departure from traditional customer relationship management (CRM), the process of managing, massaging and nurturing these relationships has shifted dramatically.

So what is Social CRM and how does it differ from Traditional CRM?

SearchCRM.com defines CRM as follows: “CRM (customer relationship management) is an information industry term for methodologies, software, and usually Internet capabilities that help an enterprise manage customer relationships in an organized way.”

Where I think traditional CRM fails is that it is too focused on the technology. Email is usually at its core and the focus is mainly on a one-way push of information, with the overarching goal being to grow the customer’s profile information. Engagement is limited or virtually non-existent, and today’s savvy customer has all but grown numb to canned-SPAM and advertising, which traditional CRM can at times mirror.

On the other side, Brent Leary, co-founder of CRM Essentials, defines Social CRM as “…all about people and community.  It’s about how your company intends to participate in the ongoing conversations taking place in the industry.  How you embrace non-traditional influential people like popular industry bloggers, and social sites on the Web frequented by your audience.”

While the overall goals of traditional and social CRM are similar-find, attract, and win new clients while retaining current relationships-where I feel the two differ the most is with this idea of “participation.” Social CRM should look to empower the customer, amplify the conversation, create everyday engagement between the brand and the customer, and provide remarkable experiences that will move the customer beyond the purchase, to becoming an advocate for the brand.

We believe that social CRM is a strategic discipline that requires engaging not only the customer, but influencers in a collaborative way to drive both advocacy and lifetime customer revenue.  It is more than a type of technology, or a set of communication channels - it is a fundamental recognition that (in a connected world), growth and profitability are dependent on nurturing a long-term relationship with one’s best (and best-connected) customers.

So what are the key components of Social CRM?

• Listening: Understanding what customers, prospects and influencers are talking about in relation to your product, service or brand is ABSOLUTELY VITAL. Using listening tools and dashboards to uncover “talkable,” important topics will not only help find, attract, win and retain customers, but will also help detect and issue or crisis before it becomes one.

• Customer Influence Mapping: Influencer mapping ensures that you are engaging the right people to meet your business objectives and helps to develop a roster of partners and potential brand ambassadors.

• Engagement Planning: in order to create real and sustained word of mouth, brands must create “remarkable” experiences and content coupled with everyday engagement. This will not only help to create a steady and valuable drumbeat of customer stimulation, but drives them into some level of purchase or purchase consideration and to openly share word of mouth (advocacy) that drives their social graph into both your traditional and social CRM systems.

• Measurement: One of the keys to succeeding in social CRM is experimentation and iteration. Brands will succeed by trying lots of things. But they need a reliable measurement model to know if they are winning or losing on any given day.

At the end of the day, social CRM is all about creating engagement. It is about obtaining insights from your customers and influencers that will make their experience with your brand better. It is about creating a more direct way of talking and engaging with your customers with the goal of developing long-term relationships and building ambassadors for your brand.

So what have you done to create everyday engagement and remarkable experiences for your social customer? As a social customer, what are some good experiences that you have had with brands?

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AOL Gets Hyperactive in Hyperlocal

Aol. has made some waves in the local Internet scene in the past year or so. With the proclamations of hiring hundreds of ‘real’ journalists (not sure where that stands, anyone at Aol. care to comment?) and the plan to have Patch.com be the hyperlocal site/blog of choice in hundreds of new locations (updates please?) Aol. is taking a real run at the local Internet marketing scene.

In an attempt to add to this effort (or confuse it since I can’t tell the difference at this point) the Aol. content machine has resuscitated an old Aol. property “City’s Best”.

paidContent.org tells us

As AOL prepares to “quintuple” the number of hyperlocal blogs in its Patch network, the company is bringing back its City’s Best lifestyle and dining guide across 25 metro areas. The original City’s Best was introduced under the old regime at AOL over a decade ago, but the company abandoned it two years ago.

Given AOL’s desire to dominate local, it can’t rely solely on Patch for ad revenues and audience share. It also has to take aim at the current leaders in the space such as Yelp and CitySearch as well as the more narrowly targeted e-newsletters Thrillist and Comcast’s Daily Candy. Among the 25 cities featured in theCity’s Best network are Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis, and Washington, DC.

I get that the local market is diverse and needs a multi-pronged approach to dominate it but when any company starts to try to be all things to all people and to take on all comers competitively we know how that usually ends.

City’s Best supposedly has apps for the iPhone and Android but a search of both markets yielded nothing for me.

So how do you use local? I have been doing some “on the spot” market research as of late and it appears that along with discovery of new places the most important function of local reviews etc is to back up or confirm referrals from real friends etc. Is there room for as many local review sites as there are travel sites? Is it confusing to figure out which is the best and most reliable? Do you care?

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The Ultimate Guide to Affiliate Espionage

Being able to spy on your competitors and capitalize on opportunities that are backed up with research and data, can really help you to make lots of money online. There are a number of tactics and tools you can use to help you better understand opportunities, your competitors and how they are going about marketing products.

Try out some of these strategies when researching the next big product you are going to promote and to find techniques used by the pros.

Spying on Competitor Adwords Campaigns

Wouldn't it be nice if you could spy on what keywords your competitors and other affiliates are bidding on? Having that information can help you identify which keywords are more valuable. If you notice that someone is only bidding on a small group of keywords and they have been running for a while, you can make an assumption that they have done their homework and found the keywords that are leading to sales.

This tactic allows you to let others spend the money on testing lots of keywords to find out what works. Once they have their campaigns dialed in, you can take those keywords and create your own ad campaign. You can also get an idea for what type of budget the other competitors have to see if you can even compete in a particular niche.

Here are a number of tools to help you with this:

Keyword Spy

Probably the most in-depth tool, it has a database that is updated daily of your competitors and their keywords they are bidding on. See data like how much competitors are spending, and find profitable keyword/ad copy combination's. It comes with a price tag, but the data is well worth it if you are a hardcore marketer.

SEM Rush

This tool will break down by organic and paid keywords for the domain you specify and their competitors. It also pulls unique ads that the domain is using in their PPC campaigns. This tool has free and paid options, however you can gather a ton of usual data by using the free version.

SpyFu

SpyFu gives you some awesome intelligence data to help find keywords that your competitors are bidding on. This tool gives you estimates on the advertisers Daily Budget, Average Ad Position, Daily Organic Traffic and Paid vs Organic Clicks Per Day.

iSpionage

This is probably the best tool for finding a competitors ad copy and destination URL. They do a great job of showing you all of the different ad variations and where the ad points to. You can also gather similar data like Top Keywords that the competitor is bidding on, estimated Ad Budget and other competitors in the space.

I should say that all of this data should be taken with a grain of salt. It is best to use multiple keyword tools to gather comprehensive intelligence and data on your competitors.

Create Bonus Offers if They Purchase Through You

What happens when there are 100 affiliates all promoting the exact same product? Odds are the affiliates probably have a lot of the same e-mail subscribers on their list. So if a subscriber is looking to purchase that product, how will they determine which affiliate will get the commission?

It may come down to who is offering the best bonus incentives. A great example that you may have seen, were the bonuses ShoeMoney was giving away for the launch of the AffiliateDotCom product. This is what he was giving away if you purchased the AffiliateDotCom product through Jeremy's affiliate link...

• Random CRAZY bonus - 25 random people who purchase through our link will receive iPads loaded with every video in the ShoeMoney System 2.0. We will ship them anywhere in the world. ($999 value)
• SMS 2.0 DVD+Home Study Guide - Everyone will get the entire ShoeMoney System 2.0 DVD (14 full quality dvd's) + 197 page home study guide sent to their doorstep (anywhere in the world). This is yours to keep even if you get a refund on the affiliatedotcom program for whatever reason. ($597 value)
• Behind the Scenes DVD - Everyone will get the ShoeMoney "Behind The Scenes" DVD sent to their doorstep. This is a DVD where I pull back the curtain on my biggest successes (and failures). Want to know how I built membership site that brought in over 5m a year in revenue? Want to know how I built my own advertising network that made over 1m per month by the 3rd month in business and sold the entire company only after 4 months after launching? What about building a blog that brings in over 1 million dollars a year and the secret to monetizing it? Its all in this special behind the scenes DVD. ($499 value)
• ShoeMoney Special one day workshop - If we sell over 200 total units we will hold a special 1 day workshop for all people who purchased through our link. This event will be 100% free for you to attend. I have never had an event that was less than $5,000.00 a person before. ($5,000.00 value).

As you can see, his bonuses were just as valuable, if not more valuable than the actual product itself. However to ShoeMoney or any affiliate for that matter, they can give away these bonuses because they know how much they are going to make off the commission if you buy through them. It's a win, win for everybody. Basically it becomes a game of which affiliate will offer the best bonuses.

Rank Organically Before a Product Launches

If you are aware of a product that will be coming out a few months down the road, you may want to figure out a way that you can leverage the upcoming influx of searches in the search engines.

Here is what you do:

1. Find a Product to Promote (preferably one that is hyped or is guaranteed to get lots of promotion)
2. Sign-up to become an Affiliate
3. Grab any and all promotional materials
4. Register a similar domain name (ex: product+review.com or buy+product.com)
5. Start adding content and building links
6. Get ranked organically for that product search and drive traffic
7. Make money through your affiliate linksor adsense

Acting Fast on Breaking News and Upcoming Events

This is very similar to the previous method, but is slightly different. What you do is wait for breaking news to hit, then you be the first to setup a website that caters to that piece of news.

A great example is when Sarah Palin was picked as John McCain's running mate. Nobody really knew who Sarah Palin was, so people started Googling Sarah Palin to find out more information about her. If you have a website that has adsense or an inciting CPA offer, you can make a lot of money from that huge spike in traffic.

Checking Up on the Leading Affiliates

I am always trying to do research to see what the leading affiliate marketers are trying to market. Odds are that if you can find the products and techniques they are using to market affiliate products, then they are making money. So how can you find affiliate websites or landing pages that they have created?

Here's How:

• Run a reverse IP lookup on an affiliate marketers website/blog
• Run a reverse IP lookup on a landing page or website an affiliate mentions in a video or their blog

Tip: I would recommend this Reverse IP Lookup tool.

• Try running a IP History lookup on their website/blog/landing page to see what other servers the domain was hosted on previously
• Then run a reverse IP lookup on the previous IP(s)

Tip: I would recommend this IP History tool.

Once you have done this process, if the affiliate has not paid for private registration, you will be able to see what other URLs are on the same server. You can then begin to see what products they are promoting and how they are going about marketing those products.

About the Author

Mark is the creator of the popular SEO blog StayOnSearch and president of Search Creatively, a full-service Internet Marketing Company located in Raleigh, North Carolina. Sign-Up for his free 10 week Internet Marketing course.

Follow Mark on Twitter

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How To Use Inception Marketing on Your Blog

This guest post is by Tommy Walker, Online Marketing Strategist and owner of Tommy.ismy.name.

Have you seen Inception yet? For those who haven’t, all you need to know is that it follows a team of thieves who access dreams in order to steal information for their clients. The term “inception” refers to the notion that information can be implanted in, rather than taken from, a person. An idea can be planted so that it feels organic to the dreamer, and when he or she wakes up, the person will take certain actions without questioning his own motives.

A similar concept can be used with the advertising that supports your blog. We’re all familiar with the 10,000 hour rule, but if you had a way to skip over it, and use advertising in a way that let you wake up a week or two from now with more devoted readers than you have today, would you be willing to make the effort?

Enter: social networks

“An elegant solution for keeping track of reality.” – Adriane

For a long time, the targeting process for advertisements was limited to basic parameters: age, gender, location, and context. Now, we have social networks. What used to be the outer limits of a consumer profile now constitute the baseline of information most people consider “safe” to share online.

And, thanks to social networks, many more will share specific likes and dislikes, their employment history, educational background, and more. All of this can be pieced together into a audience profile that has real dimension to it.

Gathering information from Facebook ads

“If we are gonna perform Inception then we need imagination.” – Eames

There’s something special about Facebook ads. Before you jump ship or question whether Facebook is appropriate for your blog, consider this fact:

There are over 500 million people on Facebook.

The total of the populations of the United States, Australia, Canada and Russia combined is only slightly above that figure. How many readers would you need to consider your blog successful? I’m pretty sure you could find at least a few thousand people who are interested in what you have to say—provided you’re willing to make the investment to locate them.

In order to use the Facebook ad platform to its full potential, you need to understand the differences between Facebook ads and search ads.

The most notable difference is the targeting techniques these ads use. The strength of Facebook’s ad platform comes from its ability to target users via the “Likes & Interests” section of a user profile. Search ads are targeted to the information a user is actively searching for in a given moment.

So, for example, I see Facebook ads for the Golden Girls box set because Facebook knows from my profile that I’m a fan of the Golden Girls. (Just … don’t tell anyone, ok?) Google or Bing will show me ads for the same thing—but only if I ask for them by performing a search on those terms.

The beauty of Facebook ads lies in the quality of the information you receive in the reporting data generated when someone clicks on your Facebook ad. Unlike a search ad’s reporting data, Facebook’s reports provide access to detailed demographic data plus a Responder Profile report, which details the nitty-gritty of the common interests of the people clicking on your ad.

The end result

“Dreams feel real while we’re in them. It’s only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange.” – Cobb

Bloggers can create an Inception-like effect using Facebook advertising. We can use the ad reporting data to create the illusion that our blog or our website is, and always has been, beloved by its audience.

We start the process of inception by using the Responder Profile. This profile will vary from ad to ad but is typically similar to this:

The Responder Profile is your toolbox when it comes to learning how to approach your users. Review this data, learn to love it, and wring the life out of it by incorporating it into all the techniques you use on your blog.

For example, let’s imagine you have a blog about home improvement and hope to monetize it, but you need to build your readership. You have some basic audience demographic information to get you started, and you decide to target an ad that includes keywords like, “home improvement,” “decorating,” “construction,” and “home repairs.”

Your ads start running on Facebook, and two weeks later, your Responder Profile tells you that people who include those keywords in their profile, and clicked on your ad, also tend to share interests you never even thought of. Facebook’s report lets you know that 60% of the people who like “construction” also like “Uncle Fred’s Light Beer.”

Suddenly, Uncle Fred’s Light Beer has some power to it. Perhaps you can use that as a targeting parameter: if Uncle Fred’s is what connects Group A to Group B, then Group B may like your blog, too. You can study Uncle Fred’s marketing techniques and apply them to your own campaigns.

Furthermore, you might decide that Uncle Fred’s should probably be mentioned somewhere in your blog content—probably with the same level of humor, or using the same language, that your intended readership uses.

I used this technique recently on a page I was running for a client. After I saw my first Responder Profile, I realized that my initial approach to the target audience was likely bordering on offensive: it was a little too young-sounding. I also noticed that many of our users shared the Bible as their favorite book, and had a penchant for the Blue-Collar Comedy series.

As I interacted with the community over the next few days, I took on a more at-home tone. and made sure that the content I provided had a sense of humor (sometimes at the expense of usefulness). Our interaction rates went through the roof. The more I knew about these users, the easier it was to approach them on their own wavelength. This, in turn, helped me learn even more about what we needed to be offering our customer base.

Ultimately, you can use Facebook’s Responder Profiles to take on a virtual version of your own client’s personalities. The effect is that your blog’s visitors will feel at home communicating candidly with you, following your work, and buying from you, without ever questioning why they feel so comfortable.

And when people like you that much, they become brand advocates. It only takes a few of them to spread the word about your site among the people they know—and beyond.

“You mustn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling.” – Eames

Tommy is an Online Marketing Strategist and owner of Tommy.ismy.name. He is about to release Hack The Social Network, the ultimate guide to Facebook Marketing, and is currently developing a “mind hacking” course.

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Staying Motivated While Running Your Own Business

Working online, especially on your own is a job in itself when it comes to staying motivated and going in the right direction. So much so that recently procrastination has played a huge role in my day to day schedule. I’ve had a short break from affiliate marketing whilst working on something else, now that’s in the beta stages I want to pick up where I left off getting various campaign ideas off the ground.

That’s the first problem, I have so many ideas I want to actually do I never seem to move forward. I’m a big fan of a notepad and sticky notes, if you could see my desk you would have to wade through paper just to get to the keyboard to begin work. Don’t get me wrong you should write down all of your ideas down so that you can keep on working fluently but the main issue I’m having is starting a campaign and then having a ‘aha’ moment for another that probably would do better – instead of sticking to the half complete campaign I just switch to the next. Before you know it your still making no income and never given yourself the chance to.

A solution I’ve just started using which is working (and simple) is to write each idea down on paper as a to-do list – pick one and just grind until it’s complete and up and running but put the list out of sight in a draw or wherever until you are ready to get onto the next thing. Often when you have completed something you will have to wait for it to get approved on whatever traffic source you have chosen so you can begin on the next to save just sitting at your computer doing nothing. I guess my problem was the fact I could constantly see it on my desk so I was never 100% focused on the task I was working on.

Everybody’s different so you will have to find the balance between having too much on your plate and just sitting around doing nothing. I’ve yet to find the perfect number out myself as I’m concentrating on PPV a little more so I can bang campaigns up fairly quickly depending on how I’m approaching it and should be able to manage a fair few at the same time.

When it comes to motivation you have to find what makes you tick, whether it’s to quit your 9-5, get a new car or just pay off your mortgage each month. Be sure to write down your goals and have them visible for a constant reminder. I’ve only just been able to say no to my mates when they want to go for a game of pool or have a drink – I’ve got my mind set and I’m not stopping until I reach it.

I highly recommend taking frequent breaks, even if it’s just to read a blog or something to take your mind off what you’re working on briefly. It gets to a point where all I think about is work, even when I’m done for the day and trying to get to sleep. I often find myself jumping out of bed to jot some notes down for the morning – keep a notepad close by at all times you never know when you will have a burst of inspiration.

What are some of your methods for staying motivated and not getting lost in new ideas and unfinished tasks?

This guest post was written by Richard Bonner, a successful affiliate marketer and blogger at RichardBonner.net.

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