The Compelling Case for Affiliate Marketing

There are benefits, challenges and even a bright future for leveraging the power of affiliate marketing to engage with consumers.

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DIB Funding, Inc. takes first step in building the digital economy around DIBCOIN by launching its ...

“I am proud to announce that the foundation of DIB Nation has been completed and we are launching our affiliate marketing program,” stated Adam …

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Launch: DIB Funding, Inc. takes first step in building the digital economy around DIBCOIN ...

“I am proud to announce that the foundation of DIB Nation has been completed and we are launching our affiliate marketing program,” stated Adam …

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Affiliate Account Executive

This is an exciting opportunity for someone looking to get their foot in the door of the fast paced and exciting digital marketing world.

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How to Travel Like a Millionaire? Ask the Points Guy

Credit-card companies also pay him now, via affiliate marketing—he gets a nominal fee when someone clicks through his Web site to apply for a card, …

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How Content Can Succeed By Making Enemies - Whiteboard Friday

Posted by randfish

Getting readers on board with your ideas isn’t the only way to achieve content success. Sometimes, stirring up a little controversy and earning a few rivals can work incredibly well — but there’s certainly a right and a wrong way to do it. Rand details how to use the power of making enemies work to your advantage in today’s Whiteboard Friday.

Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!

Video Transcription

Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Today, we’re going to chat about something a little interesting — how content can succeed by making enemies. I know you’re thinking to yourself, “Wait a minute, I thought my job was to make friends with my content.” Yes, and one of the best ways to make close friends is to make enemies too.

So, in my opinion, I think that companies and businesses, programs, organizations of all kinds, efforts of all kinds tend to do really well when they get people on their side. So if I’m trying to create a movement or I’m trying to get people to believe in what I’m doing, I need to have positions, data, stories, and content that can bring people to my site. One of the best ways to do that is actually to think about it in opposition to something else, basically try and figure out how you can earn some enemies.

A few examples of content that makes enemies & allies

I’ll give you a few examples, because I think that will help add some context here. I did a little bit of research. My share data is from BuzzSumo, and my link data here is from Ahrefs. But for example, this piece called “There Are Now Twice as Many Solar Jobs as Coal Jobs in the US,” this is essentially just data-driven content, but it clearly makes friends and enemies. It makes enemies with sort of this classic, old-school Americana belief set around how important coal jobs are, and it creates, through the enemy that it builds around that, simply by sharing data, it also creates allies, people who are on the side of this story, who want to share it and amplify it and have it reach its potential and reach more people.

Same is true here. So this is a story called “Yoga Is a Good Alternative to Physical Therapy.” Clearly, it did extremely well, tens of thousands of shares and thousands of links, lots of ranking keywords for it. But it creates some enemies. Physical therapists are not going to be thrilled that this is the case. Despite the research behind it, this is frustrating for many of those folks. So you’ve created friends, allies, people who are yoga practitioners and yoga instructors. You’ve also created enemies, potentially those folks who don’t believe that this might be the case despite what the research might show.

Third one, “The 50 Most Powerful Public Relations Firms in America,” I think this was actually from The Observer. So they’re writing in the UK, but they managed to rank for lots and lots of keywords around “best PR firms” and all those sorts of things. They have thousands of shares, thousands of links. I mean 11,000 links, that’s darn impressive for a story of this nature. And they’ve created enemies. They’ve created enemies of all the people who are not in the 50 most powerful, who feel that they should be, and they’ve created allies of the people who are in there. They’ve also created some allies and enemies deeper inside the story, which you can check out.

“Replace Your Lawn with These Superior Alternatives,” well, guess what? You have now created some enemies in the lawn care world and in the lawn supply world and in the passionate communities, very passionate communities, especially here in the United States, around people who sort of believe that homes should have lawns and nothing else, grass lawns in this case. This piece didn’t do that well in terms of shares, but did phenomenally well in terms of links. This was on Lifehacker, and it ranks for all sorts of things, 11,000+ links.

Before you create, ask yourself: Who will help amplify this, and why?

So you can see that these might not be things that you naturally think of as earning enemies. But when you’re creating content, if you can go through this exercise, I have this rule, that I’ve talked about many times over the years, for content success, especially content amplification success. That is before you ever create something, before you brainstorm the idea, come up with the title, come up with the content, before you do that, ask yourself: Who will help amplify this and why? Why will they help?

One of the great things about framing things in terms of who are my allies, the people on my side, and who are the enemies I’m going to create is that the “who” becomes much more clear. The people who support your ideas, your ethics, or your position, your logic, your data and want to help amplify that, those are people who are potential amplifiers. The people, the detractors, the enemies that you’re going to build help you often to identify that group.

The “why” becomes much more clear too. The existence of that common enemy, the chance to show that you have support and beliefs in people, that’s a powerful catalyst for that amplification, for the behavior you’re attempting to drive in your community and your content consumers. I’ve found that thinking about it this way often gets content creators and SEOs in the right frame of mind to build stuff that can do really well.

Some dos and don'ts

Do… backup content with data

A few dos and don'ts if you’re pursuing this path of content generation and ideation. Do back up as much as you can with facts and data, not just opinion. That should be relatively obvious, but it can be dangerous in this kind of world, as you go down this path, to not do that.

Do… convey a world view

I do suggest that you try and convey a world view, not necessarily if you’re thinking on the political spectrum of like from all the way left to all the way right or those kinds of things. I think it’s okay to convey a world view around it, but I would urge you to provide multiple angles of appeal.

So if you’re saying, “Hey, you should replace your lawn with these superior alternatives,” don’t make it purely that it’s about conservation and ecological health. You can also make it about financial responsibility. You can also make it about the ease with which you can care for these lawns versus other ones. So now it becomes something that appeals across a broader range of the spectrum.

Same thing with something like solar jobs versus coal jobs. If you can get it to be economically focused and you can give it a capitalist bent, you can potentially appeal to multiple ends of the ideological spectrum with that world view.

Do… collect input from notable parties

Third, I would urge you to get inputs from notable folks before you create and publish this content, especially if the issue that you’re talking about is going to be culturally or socially or politically charged. Some of these fit into that. Yoga probably not so much, but potentially the solar jobs/coal jobs one, that might be something to run the actual content that you’ve created by some folks who are in the energy space so that they can help you along those lines, potentially the energy and the political space if you can.

Don’t… be provocative just to be provocative

Some don'ts. I do not urge you and I’m not suggesting that you should create provocative content purely to be provocative. Instead, I’m urging you to think about the content that you create and how you angle it using this framing of mind rather than saying, “Okay, what could we say that would really piss people off?” That’s not what I’m urging you to do. I’m urging you to say, “How can we take things that we already have, beliefs and positions, data, stories, whatever content and how do we angle them in such a way that we think about who are the enemies, who are the allies, how do we get that buy-in, how do we get that amplification?”

Don’t… choose indefensible positions

Second, I would not choose enemies or positions that you can’t defend against. So, for example, if you were considering a path that you think might get you into a world of litigious danger, you should probably stay away from that. Likewise, if your positions are relatively indefensible and you’ve talked to some folks in the field and done the dues and they’re like, “I don’t know about that,” you might not want to pursue it.

Don’t… give up on the first try

Third, do not give up if your first attempts in this sort of framing don’t work. You should expect that you will have to, just like any other form of content, practice, iterate, and do this multiple times before you have success.

Don’t… be unprofessional

Don’t be unprofessional when you do this type of content. It can be a little bit tempting when you’re framing things in terms of, “How do I make enemies out of this?” to get on the attack. That is not necessary. I think that actually content that builds enemies does so even better when it does it from a non-attack vector mode.

Don’t… sweat the Haterade

Don’t forget that if you’re getting some Haterade for the content you create, a lot of people when they start drinking the Haterade online, they run. They think, “Okay, we’ve done something wrong.” That’s actually not the case. In my experience, that means you’re doing something right. You’re building something special. People don’t tend to fight against and argue against ideas and people and organizations for no reason. They do so because they’re a threat.

If you’ve created a threat to your enemies, you have also generally created something special for your allies and the people on your side. That means you’re doing something right. In Moz’s early days, I can tell you, back when we were called SEOmoz, for years and years and years we got all sorts of hate, and it was actually a pretty good sign that we were doing something right, that we were building something special.

So I look forward to your comments. I’d love to see any examples of stuff that you have as well, and we’ll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.

Video transcription by Speechpad.com

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Shopify joins forces with BuzzFeed to increase merchant visibility

Affiliate marketing is one of the older business models on the Internet. Company A has an online store and needs more shoppers, so it looks to …

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3 Awesome SEO Tools for Your eCommerce Business

Doing SEO for your eCommerce business can be tough if you don’t have the right tools. After trying a multitude of tools, I found that there are three that …

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BET Networks Announces New Leadership Team, Michael D. Armstrong Named General Manager

Armstrong first joined the Viacom in 1998 and held a variety sales and affiliate marketing roles for brands including MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon, Comedy …

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Master mind group ' affiliate marketing " million dollar campaign.

Hello Bay Area I am an internet marketer since 2010 and I like to invite like minded professionals to join our Internet marketing master mind group for …

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The Secret Online Shopping Trend That Customers Love (Retailers, Too)

In an effort to ease those doubts, provide a better experience and increase revenues, companies are trending toward the use of affiliate marketing …

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Breakout Gaming to launch casino at Amsterdam Affiliate Conference

Affiliates registered with the Breakout Affiliates program, which is managed using the affiliate software of Income Access, Paysafe Group’s marketing …

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Online Marketing: Things to Know

With online marketing, the world is your market and people want to learn … content marketing, pay-per-click, email marketing, and affiliate marketing.

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Here's How Amazon Gets You to Buy More Stuff

If you have a website, look for affiliate marketing programs with products that you can endorse and that make sense for your customers. Either way …

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10 Product Page Split Tests To Increase Your Ecommerce Conversions

In order to execute a successful pay-per-click (PPC) marketing campaign, a significant amount of split testing is typically involved.

With Facebook ads, for example, you need to test the image, value proposition, call-to-action, headline, body text and audience for each ad. Because of the infinite number of combinations available to test, it often takes some trial and error before you get an ad that has a high click-through-rate (CTR) with a low cost-per-click (CPC).

Even once you’re able to send prospective buyers to your website, you’re still not home free. Next, you need to test a number of things on your product page before you can achieve a good conversion rate.

Did you know only 22% of businesses are actually satisfied with their conversion rates?

In fact, 85% of marketers are now focusing on conversion rate optimization. If you aren’t meticulously split testing your product pages, then you’re leaving money on the table.

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to split testing. What works for one business may have disastrous results for another.

Bearing that in mind, here are some of the product page split tests that you can conduct to improve your eCommerce conversions.

1. Add-to-cart button colors

Your add-to-cart button should be the focal point of your landing page. If people don’t notice it, for whatever reason, this will negatively impact your conversions.

Much has been written about the ideal color for add-to-cart buttons, and there are no definitive answers. One point of view is that you should choose a color for your button that dramatically contrasts with the rest of your branding in order to stand out. But there is no conclusive evidence that this works.

In a study of 50 leading eCommerce brands, 32% used orange add-to-cart buttons while 24% used blue. There wasn’t a consensus about what worked best because every company is different.

However, it’s worth your time to split test several different colors for your business. In an eCommerce split test performed by Receptional, a click rate increase of 344% was achieved by changing the store’s add-to-cart buttons from orange to purple.

2. Pricing displays

The way you present your pricing information is incredibly important. You can test the results of tiered pricing vs. straight pricing in a split test.

With straight pricing, you simply display the price of the product. With tiered pricing, you offer prospects the appearance of options (even though most will elect the middle choice in a tier).

Variant A (below) represents straight pricing.

Variant B, from web host iPage, represents tiered pricing.

In addition, think carefully about whether your pricing information is displayed prominently enough on your product page.

Royal Discount, an eCommerce company that offers discounted computer software from recognized manufacturers, uses a business model dependent on competitive pricing.

The company hypothesized that pricing information on product pages may not have been sufficiently emphasized and was harming conversions.

It added a crossed out Manufacturer’s Suggested Price, next to the display pricing, which boosted conversions slightly. Next, it ran a split test for 30+ days where sales prices were displayed in bold, and in a larger font size (compared to the control landing page).

The new landing page improved conversions by 36.54%, increasing the company’s revenue by 10.21%.

3. Free shipping

In addition to split testing your pricing displays, you may want to experiment with increasing your product prices and offering free shipping to compensate for that. Unexpected shipping charges at the checkout are the number one cause of abandoned carts so this also helps solve that problem.

Customers will be more inclined to purchase if they think they’re benefitting from free shipping, even if they’re actually paying you exactly the same amount of money.

After all, it doesn’t matter to you whether you receive $15 for a product and $5 for shipping, as opposed to $20 for a product and $0 for shipping. What matters is increasing the number of conversions on you product page – so be sure to split test different shipping options.

NuFace, a manufacturer of skincare products, experimented with placing a ‘FREE SHIPPING OVER $75’ banner prominently on its online store. This test resulted in a 90% increase in orders, as well as a 7.32% increase in average order value.

In other words, the free shipping offer enticed people to buy additional products at the store.

4. Social proof elements

It’s universally acknowledged that having social proof elements, such as customer reviews and testimonials, on a product page is a good thing. If you’ve just arrived at an unknown company’s website via a Facebook ad, it’s unlikely you’ll purchase from them unless they’ve won over your trust.

According to a study by Nielsen, 92% of people will trust a recommendation from someone that they know and 70% of people will trust a recommendation from someone that they don’t know if they’re exposed to factors that build trust.

Posting testimonials, reviews and possibly even celebrity endorsements on your product page will help to alleviate anxiety and increase conversions.

FigLeaves, a retailer of women’s clothing, improved conversions by 35% after adding customer reviews to the site.

Test whether reviews improve your conversions. If you get a positive result, also test where your reviews are positioned on your product page.

A range of star ratings also help to build trust, unlike an abundance of sugarcoated 5-star reviews with no signs of negativity. In the real world, no company is flawless and consumers understand this. They expect to see minor criticisms.

Vegan Horizon, a manufacturer of cruelty-free, non-leather accessories, improved conversions by 9.8% after installing Sales Pop – a Shopify app that displays pop-ups of recent customer purchases for social proof purposes.

You may also want to split test Facebook comment screenshots as a form of social proof. Check out this screenshot of a product page by Frontline Gadgets advertising a tactical watch.

With so many links and positive comments posted on a reputable social media platform, this simple screenshot demonstrates authenticity and trust.

5. Security badges

Falling victim to online fraud is a legitimate concern for today’s consumers. If someone is going to enter their credit card details at your checkout page, they need to feel safe and secure in doing so.

In a study on cart abandonment, 13% of shoppers stated that security concerns were an issue for them. One of the best ways to deliver a firm sense of security is by featuring a trust badge on your product and/or checkout page.

Symantec, formerly known as VeriSign, is one of the most well-renowned Internet security companies. Its distinctive trust badge is highly recognizable.

By incorporating this trust badge on a request-a-quote landing page, Blue Fountain Media increased their conversions by 42%.

You can also test a money back guarantee (if appropriate) on your landing page, since this alleviates consumer anxiety about buying a defective or misrepresented product.

6. FAQs

If you’re using Facebook ads to send traffic to your product page, carefully consider the comments you receive beneath the ads. If people are asking the same questions time and time again, provide answers to them on your product page.

Cover the features of your product in your FAQs, as well as any potential shipping and delivery queries. The more detailed information you can convey, the more people will feel secure in making a purchase.

Although building a FAQ section can be tedious, it’s definitely worth the effort. If you use Inspectlet to watch how visitors interact with your landing page, you might be pleasantly surprised to see how much time they spend browsing your FAQs.

While not an eCommerce brand, non-profit organization Kiva improved its conversion rate by 11.5% as a result of featuring FAQs on the company’s donation page.

7. Payment options

In a study of online shopping, 28% of shoppers revealed that they abandoned purchases when their preferred method of payment was unavailable. Since 57% of shoppers use their credit/debit cards while another 29% use a digital wallet such as PayPal, you can retain most customers by offering both options.

If you’re using Shopify, register a PayPal business account and enable PayPal checkouts on your store. The process is very straightforward and can dramatically improve your conversion rate.

Additionally, you can allow visitors to check out via PayPal without registering a Paypal account. Check out the following guide for doing so.

8. Live chat

If you’re driving a sizeable amount of traffic to your product page but your conversion rate is poor, you might want to consider integrating a live chat feature on your site. Research indicates that visitors invited to chat are 6.3 times more likely to become customers than those who don’t chat.

Similar to FAQs, live chat can help alleviate fear and build trust. Plus, live chat is far more personal – it allows you to answer any specific queries as well as inject some humanity into your brand, which ultimately boosts conversions.

Live chat can also be extremely great at reviving abandoned carts. By inviting these individuals to speak with you in real-time, you get feedback as to why they haven’t gone through with the purchase. Then you can (hopefully) make the necessary adjustments to get them to convert.

Split test whether live chat works for you. If you don’t notice an increase in conversions with live chat enabled, don’t pursue it, as it can eat up a lot of time.

9. Video

Visual content, particularly video, is essential if you want to engage consumers in this distraction-ridden age of information. In fact, a study by Microsoft shows that the average person now has a shorter attention span than a goldfish.

A video is a sensory-rich medium that allows you to convey your message effectively and engagingly.

A store selling paintball equipment, Paintball Online, integrated videos on more than 5,000 product pages. The result was that pages which included videos were viewed for two minutes on average whereas pages without videos were viewed for only 35 seconds.

There are many talented freelancers on UpWork who can put together an inexpensive whiteboard explainer video to showcase your product.

Put a video on your product page and test whether it improves conversions.

10. Scarcity and urgency elements

You need to encourage consumers to purchase your product from the moment they arrive at your landing page – otherwise, they might procrastinate and plan to return to the page later. You can run a retargeting campaign to re-engage former visitors to your site, but you’ll spend less money on ads if they convert the first time.

By using urgent language and conveying the scarcity of your product, visitors will be encouraged to convert then and there.

One of the easiest ways to inject urgency into your product page is with a countdown timer. If you’re using Shopify, try installing the Hurrify app and testing the results.

Marcus Taylor says on Conversion XL that he achieved an incredible conversion rate boost from 3.5% to 10% by putting urgency and scarcity elements on his landing page. The new landing page featured a countdown timer and a counter of products currently sold (which leveraged social proof).

Taylor split tested both landing pages simultaneously and logged the results.

Here is Variation A of the landing page:

And here is the high-performing Variation B:

If someone believes that your product is in limited supply (and there are social proof elements that suggest the demand is high) your conversion rate is likely to increase.

Summing up

While we might have only covered the tip of the iceberg, I hope this post has shown you how valuable – and I would say necessary – using product page split tests is to improve your eCommerce conversions.

Can you think of any other product page split tests that can help improve your conversion rate? Please let me know in the comments below.

Guest Author: Aaron Agius is an experienced search, content and social marketer. He has worked with some of the world’s largest and most recognized brands, including Salesforce, Coca-Cola, Target and others, to build their online presence. See more from Aaron at Louder Online, his blog, Facebook, Twitter, Google+and LinkedIn.

The post 10 Product Page Split Tests To Increase Your Ecommerce Conversions appeared first on Jeffbullas’s Blog.

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Business concept: Affiliate Marketing with optical glass

Business concept: Affiliate Marketing with optical glass. By Maksim Kabakou. Business concept: Affiliate Marketing with optical glass. Licensed.

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Rebranded Gambling.com targets affiliate dominance

The affiliate marketing specialist recently changed its holding company name from KAX Media to better represent its legacy domain Gambling.com …

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SuperBet Romania launches NetRefer affiliate platform for new market expansion

Leading Romanian bookmaker SuperBet (SuperBet.ro) is set to launch its affiliate program in partnership with NetRefer player acquisition software.

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Recruiting interviewees: Identifying the needs for a new Affiliate Marketing Tool.

We, while being a start-up company, envisage to provide a new Affiliate Marketing Services to the Affiliate Managers. We are looking for participants …

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Affiliate Marketing Consultant

Our client is seeking an Affiliate Marketing Consultant in which you would work with one or more affiliates and reward them for each visitor or customer …

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Rakuten Marketing Snags Programmatic Pioneer Neal Richter As CTO

Although affiliate marketing has long been the foundation of Rakuten Marketing’s business, the next opportunity lies in moving up the funnel into video …

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MozCon: Why You Should Attend & How to Get the Most Out of It

Posted by ronell-smith

MozCon 2013 (left to right): Greg Gifford, Nathan Bylof, Nathan Hammer, Susan Wenograd, and myself

I remember my first MozCon like it was yesterday.

It’s the place where I would hear the quote that would forever change the arc of my career.

“The world is freaking complicated, so let me start with everything I don’t know,” said Google’s Avinash Kaushik, during the Q&A, after speaking at MozCon 2013. “Nine hundred years from now, I will fix what’s broken today. …Get good at what you do.”

Though I didn’t know it at the the time, those were words I needed to hear, and that would lead me to make some career decisions I desperately needed to make. Decisions I never would have made if I hadn’t chosen to attend MozCon, the Super Bowl of marketing events (in my opinion).

Walking into the large (gigantic) room for the first time felt like being on the Space Mountain ride at Disneyland. I hurriedly raced to the front to find a seat so I could take in all of the action.

Once settled in, I sat back and enjoyed the music as lights danced along the walls.

Who wouldn’t want to be here? I thought.

Once the show started and Rand walked out, I was immediately sold: The decision to attend MozCon was the right one. By the end of the show, I would be saying it was one of the best career decisions I could have made.

But I almost missed it.

How and why MozCon?

I discovered MozCon like most of you: while reading the Moz blog, which I had been perusing since 2010, when I started building a website for an online, members-only newsletter.

One of my friends, an executive at a large company, had recently shared with me that online marketing was blistering hot.

“If you’re focusing your energy anywhere else, Ronell, you’re making a mistake,” he said. “We just hired a digital marketing manager, and we’re paying her more than $90,000.”

Those words served as an imprimatur for me to eagerly study and read SEO blogs and set up Twitter lists to follow prominent SEO authors.

Learning SEO was far less fun than applying it to the website I was in the process of helping to build.

In the years that followed, I continued reading the blog while making steps to meet members of the community, both locally and online.

One of the first people I met in the Moz SEO community was Greg Gifford, who agreed to meet me for lunch after I reached out to him via DM on Twitter.

He mentioned MozCon, which at the time wasn’t on my radar. (As a bonus, he said if I attended, he’d introduce me to Ruth Burr, who I’d been following on Twitter, and was a hyooge fan of.)

I started doing some investigating, wondering if it was an event I should invest in.

Also, during this same period, I was getting my content strategy sea legs and had reached out to Jon Colman, who was nice enough to mentor me. He also recommended that I attend MozCon, not the least because content strategy and UX superstar Karen McGrane was speaking.

I was officially sold.

That night, I put a plan into action:

• Signed up for Moz Pro to get the MozCon discount
• Bought a ticket to the show
• Purchased airline and hotel tickets through Priceline

Then I used to following weeks to devise a plan to help me get everything I could out of the show.

The conference of all conferences

Honestly, I didn’t expect to be blow away by MozCon.

For seven of the 10 previous years, I edited a magazine that helped finance a trade show that hosted tens of thousands of people, from all over the world.

Nothing could top that, I thought. I was wrong.

The show, the lights, the people — and the single-track focus — blew me away. Right away.

I remember Richard Baxter was the first speaker up that first morning.

By the time he was done sharing strategies for effective outreach, I was thinking, “I’ve already recouped my expense. I don’t plan to ever miss this show again.”

And I haven’t.

So important did MozCon become to me after that first show, that I began to plan summer travel around it.

How could one event become that important?

Five key reasons:

• Content
• People & relationships
• Personal & career development

I’ll explore each in detail since I think they each help make my point about the value of MozCon. (Also, if you haven’t read it already, check out Rand’s post, The Case For & Against Attending Marketing Conferences, which also touches on the value of these events.)

#1 - Content

You expect me to say the content you’ll be privy to at MozCon is the best you’ll hear anywhere.

Yeah, but…

The show hand-picks only the best speakers. But these same speakers present elsewhere, too, right?

What I mean by “content” is that the information you glean holistically from the show can help marketers from all areas of the business better do their work.

For example, when I came to my first MozCon, I had a handful of clients who’d reached out to me for PR, media relations, branding, and content work.

But I was starting to get calls and emails for this thing called “content marketing,” of which I was only vaguely familiar.

The information I learned from the speakers (and the informal conversations between speakers and after the show), made it possible for me to take on content marketing clients and, six months later, head content marketing for one of the most successful digital strategy agencies in Dallas/Fort Worth.

There really is something for everyone at MozCon.

#2 - People & relationships

Most of the folks I talk to on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis are folks I met at one of the last four MozCons.

For example, I met Susan E. Wenograd at MozCon 2013, where we shared a seat next to one another for the entire event. She’s been one of my closest friends ever since.

MozCon 2015: I’m chastising Damon Gochneaur for trying to sell me some links — I’m kidding, Google.

The folks seated beside you or roaming the halls during the event are some of the sharpest and most accomplished you’ll meet anywhere.

They are also some of the most helpful and genuine.

I felt this during my first event; I learned the truth of this sentiment in the weeks, months, and years that have followed.

Whether you’re as green as I was, or an advanced T-shaped marketer with a decade of experience behind you, the event will be fun, exciting, and full of new tips, tactics, and strategies you can immediately put to use.

#3 - Personal & career development

I know most people make decisions about attending events based on the cost and the known value — that is, based on previous similar events, how much they are likely to earn, either in a new job, new work, or additional responsibilities.

That’s the wrong way to look at MozCon, or any event.

Let’s keep it real for a moment: No matter who you are, where you work, what you do, or how much you enjoy your work, you’re are ALWAYS in the process of getting fired or (hopefully) changing jobs.

You should (must) be attending events to keep yourself relevant, visible, and on top of your game, whether that’s in paid media, content, social media, SEO, email marketing, etc.

That’s why the “Is it worth it?” argument is not beneficial at all.

I cannot tell you how many times, over the last four years, when I’ve been stuck on a content strategy, SEO or web design issue and been able to reach out to someone I would never have met were it not for MozCon.

For example, every time I share the benefits of Paid Social with a local business owner, I feel I should cut Kane Jamison (met at MozCon 2014) a check.

So, go to MozCon, not because you can see the tangible benefits (you cannot know those); go to MozCon because your career and your personal development will be nourished by it far beyond any financial reward.

Now you know how I feel and what I’ve gleaned from MozCon, you’re probably saying, “Yeah, but how can I be certain to get the most out of the event?”

I’m glad you asked.

How you can get the most out of MozCon

First, start following and interacting with Twitter and Facebook groups to find folks attending MozCon.

Dive in and ask questions, answer questions, or set up a get-together during the event.

Next, during the event, follow the #mozcon Twitter hashtag, making note of folks who are tweeting info from the event. Pay close attention to not simply the info, but also what they are gleaning and how they plan to use the event for their work.

If you find a few folks sharing info germane to your work or experiences, it wouldn’t hurt to retweet them and, maybe later during the show, send a group text asking to get together during the pub crawl or maybe join up for breakfast.

Then, once the show is over, continue to follow folks on social media, in addition to reading (and leaving comments on) their blogs, sending them “Great meeting you. Let’s stay in touch” emails, and looking for other opportunities to stay in their orbit, including meeting up at future events.

Many of the folks I initially met at MozCon have become friends I see throughout the year at other events.

But, wait!

I mentioned nothing about how to get the most out of the event itself.

Well, I have a different philosophy than most folks: Instead of writing copious notes and trying to capture every word from each speaker, I think of and jot down a theme for each talk while the speaker is still presenting. Along with that theme, I’ll include some notes that encapsulate the main nuggets of the talk and that will help me remember it later.

For example, Dr. Pete’s 2016 talk, You Can’t Type a Concept: Why Keywords Still Matter, spurred me to redouble my focus (and my learning with regard to content and SEO) on search intent, on-page SEO, and knowing the audience’s needs as well as possible.

Then, once the show is over, I create a theme to encapsulate the entire event by asking myself three questions:

1. What did I learn that I can apply right away?
2. What can I create and share that’ll make me more valuable to teammates, clients or prospective clients?
3. How does this information make me better at [X]?

For the 2013 show, my answers were…

1. I don’t need to know everything about SEO to begin to take on SEO-related work, which I was initially reluctant to do.
2. Content that highlights my in-depth knowledge of the types of content that resonates with audiences I’d researched/was familiar with.
3. It makes me more aware of how how search, social, and content fit together.

After hearing Avinash’s quote, I had the theme in my head, for me and for the handful of brands I was consulting at the time: “You won’t win by running the competition’s race; make them chase you.”

MozCon 2013: Avinash Kaushik of Google

This meant I helped them think beyond content, social media, and SEO, and instead had them focus on creating the best content experience possible, which would help them more easily accomplish their goals.

I’ve repeated the process each year since, including in 2016, when I doubled-down on Featured Snippets after seeing Taking the Top Spot: How to Earn More Featured Snippets, by Rob Bucci.

You can do the same.

It all begins with attending the show and being willing to step outside your comfort zone.

What say you?

Are you MozCon bound?

Count me in!

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don’t have time to hunt down but want to read!

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How To Connect With Millennials Using Content Marketing

Millennials are a major market segment for brands around the world. With more than $600 billion in buying power in the United States alone, individuals born between 1982 and 2004 have become major players in the global economy.

As a marketer, it can be challenging to reach millennials. They watch less traditional TV than the previous generation, and avoid advertisements like the plague.

So if you can’t pay to put your brand in front of them, how can you tap into their buying potential?

Well, unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’re aware of how quickly content marketing has become a dominant force in brand engagement. It’s interesting that this form of reaching and engaging audiences has exploded just as the Millennial Generation began maturing, a correlation that I’d argue is no coincidence.

In fact, it’s my belief that the rise of content marketing has been directly influenced by the impact that Millennials have had on the world we live in.

Content marketing discards the old-school approach to marketing, which favored constant brand bombardment and cheap psychological trickery to influence people’s purchasing behavior. Millennials have a nose for that sort of marketing – 99% of them state that traditional ads don’t influence their purchasing behavior!

Image Source: The McCarthy Group

Millennials don’t, as a general rule, see advertising as trustworthy. Content marketing is therefore an effective way for brands to overcome the stigma of advertising through providing useful, actionable information that guides Millennials towards a purchase.

To reach Millennials with your brand messages, content must be a focal point of your marketing strategy. However, you’ll find that reaching such a sizeable audience with content is not as simple as posting daily blog posts.

In my work with brands around the world, I’ve found that there are four key pillars to engaging with Millennials through content marketing.

1. Have a specific audience in mind

Millennials interact online more than any generation before them. They’re comfortable with their digital identities and value communication over exposure. This means that they’re a deeply personal demographic that expects brands to connect with them on a more granular level than ‘consumer’.

Therefore you’ve got to focus your audience targeting more than ever if you hope to move the needle with Millennials. You need to aggressively segment your audiences far beyond the year in which they were born.

At Risr Marketing, we create multiple personas when we’re targeting millennials based on their online activity, education, hobbies and socio-economic background. This allows us to craft content that feels personal to everyone we’re pursuing.

As a general rule of thumb, the specificity of your targeting should be limited only by your budget and time. The more you focus on specific identifiable traits, the more success you’ll find with Millennials.

The image above was used in an ad for a dental workshop in Australia. Note that the copy targets a profession, a geographic location, and a proficiency level (‘No Orthodontic Experience Necessary’). This type of targeting will make your content more effective than if the ad above were simply targeted at all dentists.

2. Offer transparency and value

I’ve already mentioned how wary Millennials are of traditional advertising. When we asked Millennials to describe advertising in a single word, they overwhelmingly answered ‘fake’.

Millennials prioritize authenticity and transparency, and expect every interaction with a brand to deliver value to them in some form. When you craft your Millennial-focused content marketing strategy, understand that ‘being real’ isn’t just a goal, it’s a requirement.

To achieve this, you need to transform your brand into one that feels authentic and human. Your content should center on that identity, and always focus on delivering value to your audience in one of two ways:

1. Entertainment
2. Information

Note that neither of these forms of value have much to do with money. That’s because Millennials are far less budget-focused than older generations, and are more willing to swear loyalty to or aversion for brands based on how they perceive them.

If you want Millennials to latch onto your brand, ‘be real’ with them and offer them a brand that they can identify with.

3. Understand the ‘WIIFM’ attitude

Millennials are often called the ‘distracted’ or ‘short attention span’ generation. There’s more content out there than anyone can reasonably be expected to wade through, so it’s not really surprising that it’s hard to keep the attention of digital ‘natives’.

Many brands find it hard to stand out. The vastness of the entertainment and information available online today means that Millennials have a very strong What’s In It For Me (WIFFM) mindset that you’ll need to address when crafting your content.

When you create content for Millennials, always start by identifying the value your content delivers. Then make certain that what you’re offering is something that a Millennial audience will desire.

Once you’ve identified the value you’re delivering, focus on crafting your content in a manner which surfaces or transfers that value as quickly as possible. Blog posts over a thousand words long are great for SEO, but an infographic accompanied by a bulleted list of key points is far more likely to be well-received by Millennials with their short attention spans.

4. Take advantage of social amplification

Millennials are more social than any generation ever before them. They have a strong desire to be informed, and to be the first to share new information.

As a marketer, you should always be aware of how the right content can drive exposure in the hands of a Millennial audience – an audience that is more than twice as likely to share branded content than any other demographic if they feel it’s clever and unique.

When creating content for Millennials, consider how they’ll feel about being associated with it. Will it make them feel influential? Will it entertain their friends? Is it ‘original’ or ‘quirky’ enough to warrant sharing? Checking these boxes off will help you tap into an audience that, via sharing, can vastly amplify your brand’s reach.

Image Source: Media Insight Project

Understanding how social sharing affects your content’s reach and trustworthiness is key to reaching a Millennial audience. Content marketing is an entirely different ball game to traditional advertising. For the demographic that now makes up a majority of the United States’ workforce, authentic content is far more important than a snazzy logo or a discount.

Summary

When you consider how your brand can leverage content marketing to engage a Millennial audience, keep the points in this post in mind. Doing so will help you reach and engage an audience whose spending power will only grow as we move into the future.

Millennials are an extraordinary marketing target, a new breed of consumers who have – in my opinion – changed the way we consume information, products and services. By using content marketing to get them in your corner, you will rapidly increase your business profits.

How do you target Millennials with your content marketing? Let me know in the comments.

Guest Author: Rob Boston is the Founder and President of Risr Marketing, a full-service digital marketing agency. Rob’s passion for brand marketing and engagement is surpassed only by his love of board games.

The post How To Connect With Millennials Using Content Marketing appeared first on Jeffbullas’s Blog.

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Important Affiliate Marketing KPIs, for Mid-year Review

Affiliate marketing KPIs are different than overall ecommerce metrics. Company leaders will likely monitor the typical top-line numbers, such as return …

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Publisher data, brand partnerships and AI: takeaways from The Drum's performance marketing ...

But if one thing was apparent at The Drum’s recent Performance Marketing … is probably the most sophisticated when you look at affiliate marketing.

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Google Likely to Appeal $2.7 Billion Fine For 'Abusing its Dominance'

Jules Bazley, VP-commercial development, Europe at affiliate marketing company CJ Affiliate said, “The ruling questions the independence of …

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How To Make Your Passion Profitable

At the minimum, just sharing your knowledge and teaching people about your passions can be monetized by having a website with affiliate marketing …

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Senior Specialist Affiliate Projects eCommerce

Fully support and drive Western European growth of the direct online business for adidas & Reebok through the Affiliate Marketing & Comparison …

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wehkamp Chooses Performance Horizon to Manage Partner and Affiliate Marketing Programme

LONDON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Performance Horizon, provider of the market-leading enterprise SaaS platform for scaling partnerships was selected …

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Digital Marketing Expert Evan Weber Launches Complimentary Affiliate Marketing Course to Help ...

Affiliate Marketing Expert Evan Weber, CEO and Founder of Affiliate Marketing Agency Experience Advertising, Inc., has released his free affiliate …

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10 Things You Must Know Before Cold-Pitching Big Publications

It goes without saying that getting something published on a big site like Entrepreneur can be massive for your brand and business.

It can open doors you didn’t know previously existed, boost your brand awareness and give you some serious SEO traction.

But how do you make that happen? What steps should you follow?

In this article, I’ve laid out the 10-step process that has helped me get published on Entrepreneur, Huffington Post, The Next Web, Elite Daily and many more.

It’s not a short process, but it does work.

Here is an infographic I created that summarizes this process for the visual learners:

Infographic co-produced by Venngage Infographics and X3 Digital.

1. Have a track record

One of the first things editors are going to look at is whether you can actually write. They receive literally hundreds of submissions and most of them are from rubbish writers. If you want to get their attention, they need to know that you’re a good writer.

How exactly can you do that? By showing off your track record.

Have you written for any well-established publications already? Ideally, they will be related to the niche you’re pitching. If you’re pitching to Shopify, for instance, it helps to demonstrate that you’ve written about website builders and eCommerce before.

Even if you haven’t written for any major websites, make sure your pitch includes a list of your qualifications and links to any content you have had published online. I’d recommend having at least 3-5 strong published posts before pitching to a large website.

If you have absolutely nothing published online, don’t despair! You have two options:

1. Bring other value to the pitch. This might be social share numbers, hard-to-get interviews that you can obtain or industry connections you have. Don’t pitch just for the sake of pitching. If you can’t show a valuable track record, then quickly explain your history, and how your perspective and experience means you can add value to the publication’s audience.
2. Start your own blog. If you don’t have any live posts anywhere, you’re going to need to create a website and start publishing some high-quality pieces. Then pitch to smaller sites with the pieces you’ve written on your blog to showcase your ability. After you’ve guest posted on smaller sites, you can climb the ladder higher to bigger sites like Entrepreneur.

2. Build strong relationships

It can dramatically increase your odds of getting published on a popular website if you cultivate relationships with their editors or contributors.

How do you build relationships? Here are a few simple ways:

• Engage with them on social media
• Repost their top social media content
• Comment on their blog posts
• Backlink to them in your blog posts
• Genuinely read their content

The goal is to make them aware of who you are and establish yourself in their circle of contacts. Building trust is key here.

After using the above tactics for a while, consider reaching out to them personally via email. If they’re an editor, send a professional email asking them if they are open to pitches. If they’re a contributor, ask them how they got started and if they can share the contact info of an editor.

On Neil Patel’s podcast, Marketing School, Neil suggests that building relationships with authors by providing advice that could help them with their own career is a valuable tactic. Did the writer make a small typo somewhere? Do you have a few pieces of content research that they might find useful? Let them know.

By going out of your way to help someone else, you stand a better chance of being noticed and appreciated as a result of your action.

3. Email people, avoid forms

Many websites or publications will ask you to fill out a contact form or Google form. This is okay when it comes to getting the attention of smaller sites, but I’d advise against doing it for larger publications.

The reply rate is nearly non-existent, and the success rate is even lower. Hundreds of emails pour in through these contact forms – making it extremely likely that yours will get buried under an avalanche of enquiries.

Personally, I make a point to never email ‘admin’, ‘hello’ or ‘support’. I always email a person. The odds of getting a response are astronomically higher if you contact an actual person. And not just any person, but the right person.

If you wish to contribute to a publication, the job titles you’re looking for are Editor, Contributing Editor, Managing Editor, Assistant Editor or Associate Editor. Check out the publication’s masthead, About page, team page or LinkedIn profile to find these people’s names and titles.

It’s easy to find email addresses using web tools like MailTester, Rapportive or FindAnyEmail.

Whatever you do, don’t start your email with ‘to whom it may concern’. Show that you’ve done your research or the editor will immediately hit the delete button. Acknowledge that they’re busy, tell them about your track record and the value you could add to their publication.

Pitching is selling, so act like it. You need to convince the editor that you’ll add some serious value to the lives of their readers. Don’t be wishy-washy about this. Keep your email short, sweet and concise.

Place a solid call to action at the end. Specifically, ask the editor to get back to you. Put some healthy psychological pressure on them to respond.

Here’s an example of how this looks in an email:

It’s not perfect, but it gets to the point, it’s personalized and it shows a good track record of writing for established publications.

4. Follow up like a pro

Becoming a contributor to large publications is like playing chess, not checkers. You’re in it for the long game, so be prepared to nurture your initial email with numerous follow ups.

I get hundreds of pitch emails a week for my web design agency publication, many of which contain an impersonal, low-quality pitch, then they never attempt to pitch or follow up again. This is not the way to get published.

I followed up with literally dozens of editorial contacts at Entrepreneur for at least five months before finally making my way through lots of forwarding and replies, to the appropriate editor.

You can follow up like a pro by automating your email workflow.

• This streamlines sending repeated emails, typing the same text multiple times, and any other task that you will do repeatedly.
• For email automation, you can usually integrate tools with a Gmail Chrome extension. There are several high-quality options like The Top Inbox, Streak and Hiver.
• For repeated text, tools like TextExpander are fantastic.

Marketing thought leader Ryan Stewart has said that he saved himself hundreds of hours by automating most of his email tasks. Speaking of the thousands of email requests his agency gets per year, he notes:

We’ve managed to automate lead qualification, follow ups and appointment scheduling to the point where all I have to do is wake up and check my calendar for appointments. It’s amazing.

You can achieve the same ease of mind by automating your editor outreach efforts.

5. Bond on a human level

Listen, editors are real people with real emotions. When you start sending out a lot of pitch emails, it’s easy to forget this. You might be tempted to think of editors as just another email contact, but it’s important to remember that there are real people on the other end of your outreach email.

Digital marketing thought leader and CEO of Ignite Visibility, John Lincoln, writes frequently for large publications including Search Engine Land, Inc. and Entrepreneur. When Lincoln recently keynoted at a PRWeb event in Huntington Beach, he discussed the long-term value of bonding on a human level.

Lincoln recommends the following:

These are all great ways to personalize your relationship with the people that you’re pitching to. Just don’t forget to treat everyone with respect in your emails. Address them by their name. Thank them for their time. Be respectful of their position and acknowledge that they must receive loads of these emails.

This allows them to see that you’re not just mass spamming a bunch of editors.

6. Don’t submit garbage

This is huge. If you get a chance to submit a post, take it seriously. You have one, maybe two chances max to gain the editor’s good opinion.

Make sure your content is well-researched and high-quality, that it fits the guidelines, will be interesting to the target demographic and address appropriate topics.

If you submit a garbage post, you will never get another chance to write for the publication again. They can’t afford to waste their time with bad writers.

7. Be ready to revise

And don’t be offended when you are asked to rework your submission. There is a 99% chance that this will happen. It doesn’t mean the editor in question doesn’t like it. They just want it to be as good as possible.

Whatever you do, don’t push back against this. This is a surefire way to get blacklisted from their contributor list.

Thank them for their feedback and make timely revisions. Don’t ask questions about why certain style guidelines are in place. Don’t protest that your original edit was better.

Even if they want to cut a piece you slaved over down by 2,000 words, grit your teeth and don’t whine about it. Being adaptable and open-minded is much more likeable than being inflexible and pedantic.

8. Express gratitude

This one is hugely underrated. People rarely make time to go out of their way and show their appreciation for anyone, especially editors. When my first post on Entrepreneur was published following five months of back-and-forth emails and numerous revisions, I emailed this to my editor:

Simple, straightforward and effective. The modern version of a thank-you card.

Expressing gratitude will go a long way towards building a genuine relationship and connection with people, not just building a contacts book. In the long run, this is far more valuable to both you and the editor anyway. It opens the door for future posts and can even help you forge valuable business connections.

You don’t need to fawn, just acknowledge that they were invested in the piece, too.

9. Be prepared for rejection

Rejection is inevitable. It may not be Entrepreneur, but sooner or later, the person you contact at a website or publication will turn you down – or simply not respond to your numerous emails.

Don’t let it stop you in your tracks. Be insanely committed to your goals, regroup and keep moving forward.

Tim Ferriss had his book The 4-Hour Workweek rejected a staggering 26 times before it was published and became a massive bestseller, and we all know the story of how J. K. Rowling experienced loads of rejections before Harry Potter was published.

Rejection is simply part of writing for public consumption. Don’t let it phase you.

When you do get rejected, turn your attention to another editor.

Think of it as a numbers game.

It takes hustle and thick skin, but you will prevail.

10. Be generous

It’s easy to get caught up in the me-first culture we seem to be living in.

If you’re lucky enough to get the chance to write frequently for a large publication, treat the opportunity with care. Focus less on what you can get out of the post, and more so on how to create value for the publication’s audience.

Share the work with other talented people in your niche. Try to help the thought leaders you respect. Even selfishly, this works better in the long term.

Building a strong network of people who know, like and trust you is far more valuable than any set of incoming links will ever be.

If you’re generous toward others, they’ll be generous in return.

In summary

I’m not going to lie: getting published on a large site like Entrepreneur can take a ton of work, but it’s worth it. It allows you to reach a larger audience online and it establishes you as an author. This grows your brand.

It can generate valuable incoming links for SEO purposes and all the hard work strengthens you as a person.

Trust me, with the above 10-step process, you’ll be on your way.

Guest Author: Alex Jasin is the founder and CEO of X3 Digital, a Google Certified digital marketing, and design agency, where he helps businesses grow through paid search, search engine optimization, web development, mobile apps, content marketing and branding. Alex is also the founder and the CEO of Metapress, a fast-growing publication where visitors can learn new skills, gain inspiration and discover more about what interests them. Alex’s writing can be found on Entrepreneur, The Huffington Post, SUCCESS, The Next Web, Business.com and other leading publications. Connect with Alex Jasin on Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn.

The post 10 Things You Must Know Before Cold-Pitching Big Publications appeared first on Jeffbullas’s Blog.

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Breaking News: CySEC Demands That Brokers Supervise Their Affiliates

CySec has plans to add to their website a list of affiliate partners who have been reported to be less than ethical in their marketing approach.

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Romania's SuperBet partners NetRefer for affiliate programme launch

NetRefer’s Unified Performance Marketing platform will be used to manage the online and offline affiliate marketing activities of the operator, which is …

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Affiliate Marketing

Seeking highly motivated individuals to advertise our business on their social media sites and with individuals. Commission is 100 percent of personal …

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6 CRO Mistakes You Might Be Making (And How to Fix Them)

Posted by lkolowich

You just ran what you thought was a really promising conversion test. In an effort to raise the number of visitors that convert into demo requests on your product pages, you test an attractive new redesign on one of your pages using a good ol’ A/B test. Half of the people who visit that page see the original product page design, and half see the new, attractive design.

You run the test for an entire month, and as you expected, conversions are up — from 2% to 10%. Boy, do you feel great! You take these results to your boss and advise that, based on your findings, all product pages should be moved over to your redesign. She gives you the go-ahead.

But when you roll out the new design, you notice the number of demo requests goes down. You wonder if it’s seasonality, so you wait a few more months. That’s when you start to notice MRR is decreasing, too. What gives?

Turns out, you didn’t test that page long enough for results to be statistically significant. Because that product page only saw 50 views per day, you would’ve needed to wait until over 150,000 people viewed the page before you could achieve a 95% confidence level — which would take over eight years to accomplish. Because you failed to calculate those numbers correctly, your company is losing business.

A risky business

Miscalculating sample size is just one of the many CRO mistakes marketers make in the CRO space. It’s easy for marketers to trick themselves into thinking they’re improving their marketing, when in fact, they’re leading their business down a dangerous path by basing tests on incomplete research, small sample sizes, and so on.

But remember: The primary goal of CRO is to find the truth. Basing a critical decision on faulty assumptions and tests lacking statistical significance won’t get you there.

To help save you time and overcome that steep learning curve, here are some of the most common mistakes marketers make with conversion rate optimization. As you test and tweak and fine-tune your marketing, keep these mistakes in mind, and keep learning.

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6 CRO mistakes you might be making

1) You think of CRO as mostly A/B testing.

Equating A/B testing with CRO is like calling a square a rectangle. While A/B testing is a type of CRO, it’s just one tool of many. A/B testing only covers testing a single variable against another to see which performs better, while CRO includes all manner of testing methodologies, all with the goal of leading your website visitors to take a desired action.

If you think you’re “doing CRO” just by A/B testing everything, you’re not being very smart about your testing. There are plenty of occasions where A/B testing isn’t helpful at all — for example, if your sample size isn’t large enough to collect the proper amount of data. Does the webpage you want to test get only a few hundred visits per month? Then it could take months to round up enough traffic to achieve statistical significance.

If you A/B test a page with low traffic and then decide six weeks down the line that you want to stop the test, then that’s your prerogative — but your test results won’t be based on anything scientific.

A/B testing is a great place to start with your CRO education, but it’s important to educate yourself on many different testing methodologies so you aren’t restricting yourself. For example, if you want to see a major lift in conversions on a webpage in only a few weeks, try making multiple, radical changes instead of testing one variable at a time. Take Weather.com, for example: They changed many different variables on one of their landing pages all at once, including the page design, headline, navigation, and more. The result? A whopping 225% increase in conversions.

2) You don’t provide context for your conversion rates.

When you read that line about the 225% lift in conversions on Weather.com, did you wonder what I meant by “conversions?”

If you did, then you’re thinking like a CRO.

Conversion rates can measure any number of things: purchases, leads, prospects, subscribers, users — it all depends on the goal of the page. Just saying “we saw a huge increase in conversions” doesn’t mean much if you don’t provide people with what the conversion means. In the case of Weather.com, I was referring specifically to trial subscriptions: Weather.com saw a 225% increase in trial subscriptions on that page. Now the meaning of that conversion rate increase is a lot more clear.

But even stating the metric isn’t telling the whole story. When exactly was that test run? Different days of the week and of the month can yield very different conversion rates.

For that reason, even if your test achieves 98% significance after three days, you still need to run that test for the rest of the full week because of how different conversion rate can be on different days. Same goes for months: Don’t run a test during the holiday-heavy month of December and expect the results to be the same as if you’d run it for the month of March. Seasonality will affect your conversion rate.

Other things that can have a major impact on conversion rate? Device type is one. Visitors might be willing to fill out that longer form on desktop, but are mobile visitors converting at the same rate? Better investigate. Channel is another: Be wary of reporting “average” conversion rates. If some channels have much higher conversion rates than others, you should consider treating the channels differently.

Finally, remember that conversion rate isn’t the most important metric for your business. It’s important that your conversions are leading to revenue for the company. If you made your product free, I’ll bet your conversion rates would skyrocket — but you wouldn’t be making any money, would you? Conversion rate doesn’t always tell you whether your business is doing better than it was. Be careful that you aren’t thinking of conversions in a vacuum so you don’t steer off-course.

3) You don’t really understand the statistics.

One of the biggest mistakes I made when I first started learning CRO was thinking I could rely on what I remembered from my college statistics courses to run conversion tests. Just because you’re running experiments does not make you a scientist.

Statistics is the backbone of CRO, and if you don’t understand it inside and out, then you won’t be able to run proper tests and could seriously derail your marketing efforts.

What if you stop your test too early because you didn’t wait to achieve 98% statistical significance? After all, isn’t 90% good enough?

No, and here’s why: Think of statistical significance like placing a bet. Are you really willing to bet on 90% odds on your test results? Running a test to 90% significance and then declaring a winner is like saying, “I’m 90% sure this is the right design and I’m willing to bet everything on it.” It’s just not good enough.

If you’re in need of a statistics refresh, don’t panic. It’ll take discipline and practice, but it’ll make you into a much better marketer — and it’ll make your testing methodology much, much tighter. Start by reading this Moz post by Craig Bradford, which covers sample size, statistical significance, confidence intervals, and percentage change.

4) You don’t experiment on pages or campaigns that are already doing well.

Just because something is doing well doesn’t mean you should just leave it be. Often, it’s these marketing assets that have the highest potential to perform even better when optimized. Some of our biggest CRO wins here at HubSpot have come from assets that were already performing well.

I’ll give you two examples.

The first comes from a project run by Pam Vaughan on HubSpot’s web strategy team, called “historical optimization.” The project involved updating and republishing old blog posts to generate more traffic and leads.

But this didn’t mean updating just any old blog posts; it meant updating the blog posts that were already the most influential in generating traffic and leads. In her attribution analysis, Pam made two surprising discoveries:

• 76% of our monthly blog views came from "old” posts (in other words, posts published prior to that month).
• 92% of our monthly blog leads also came from “old” posts.

Why? Because these were the blog posts that had slowly built up search authority and were ranking on search engines like Google. They were generating a ton of organic traffic month after month after month.

The goal of the project, then, was to figure out: a) how to get more leads from our high-traffic but low-converting blog posts; and b) how to get more traffic to our high-converting posts. By optimizing these already high-performing posts for traffic and conversions, we more than doubled the number of monthly leads generated by the old posts we’ve optimized.

Another example? In the last few weeks, Nick Barrasso from our marketing acquisition team did a leads audit of our blog. He discovered that some of our best-performing blog posts for traffic were actually leading readers to some of our worst-performing offers.

To give a lead conversion lift to 50 of these high-traffic, low-converting posts, Nick conducted a test in which he replaced each post’s primary call-to-action with a call-to-action leading visitors to an offer that was most tightly aligned with the post’s topic and had the highest submission rate. After one week, these posts generated 100% more leads than average.

The bottom line is this: Don’t focus solely on optimizing marketing assets that need the most work. Many times, you’ll find that the lowest-hanging fruit are pages that are already performing well for traffic and/or leads and, when optimized even further, can result in much bigger lifts.

5) You base your CRO tests on tactics instead of research.

When it comes to CRO, process is everything. Remove your ego and assumptions from the equation, stop relying on individual tactics to optimize your marketing, and instead take a systematic approach to CRO.

Your CRO process should always start with research. In fact, conducting research should be the step you spend the most time on. Why? Because the research and analysis you do in this step will lead you to the problems — and it’s only when you know where the problems lie that you can come up with a hypothesis for overcoming them.

Remember that test I just talked about that doubled leads for 50 top HubSpot blog posts in a week? Nick didn’t just wake up one day and realize our high-traffic blog posts might be leading to low-performing offers. He discovered this only by doing hours and hours of research into our lead gen strategy from the blog.

Paddy Moogan wrote a great post on Moz on where to look for data in the research stage. What does your sales process look like, for example? Have you ever reviewed the full funnel? “Try to find where the most common drop-off points are and take a deeper dive into why,” he suggests.

Here’s an (oversimplified) overview of what a CRO process should look like:

• Step 1: Do your research.

• Step 2: Form and validate your hypothesis.

• Step 3: Establish your control, and create a treatment.

• Step 4: Conduct the experiment.

• Step 5: Analyze your experiment data.

• Step 6: Conduct a follow-up experiment.

As you go through these steps, be sure you’re recording your hypothesis, test methodology, success criteria, and analysis in a replicable way. My team at HubSpot uses the template below, which was inspired by content from Brian Balfour’s online Reforge Growth programs. We’ve created an editable version in Google Sheets here that you can copy and customize yourself.

Don’t forget the last step in the process: Conduct a follow-up experiment. What can you refine for your next test? How can you make improvements?

6) You give up after a “failed” test.

One of the most important pieces of advice I’ve ever gotten around CRO is this: “A test doesn’t ‘fail’ unless something breaks. You either get the result you want, or you learned something.”

It came from Sam Woods, a growth marketer, CRO, and copywriter at HubSpot, after I used the word “fail” a few too many times after months of unsuccessful tests on a single landing page.

What he taught me was a major part of the CRO mindset: Don’t give up after the first test. (Or the second, or the third.) Instead, approach every test systematically and objectively, putting aside your previous assumptions and any hope that the results would swing one way or the other.

As Peep Laja said, “Genuine CROs are always willing to change their minds.” Learn from tests that didn’t go the way you expected, use them to tweak your hypothesis, and then iterate, iterate, iterate.

I hope this list has inspired you to double down on your CRO skills and take a more systematic approach to your experiments. Mastering conversion rate optimization comes with a steep learning curve — and there’s really no cutting corners. You can save a whole lot of time (and money) by avoiding the mistakes I outlined above.

Have you ever made any of these CRO mistakes? Do you have any CRO mistakes to add to the list? Tell us about your experiences and ideas in the comments.

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10 Ways To Build Powerful Connections With Influencers

Are you fed up with being ignored by influential people in your niche?

Does every email you send seem to be fall into the darkest depths of the digital ether?

Do you find yourself hopefully checking your email inbox anyway, patiently waiting for that magic reply?

Well, unless the email monster is back again, it looks like you could use some help building connections with influencers.

The biggest problem I see in this area is people who go in cold.

How would you like it if some random person came to your door and started telling you their life story?

But if you already knew a bit about the person, you might be more tempted to listen. Let’s say you’d actually read their content and seen their name around.

This would make you more likely to become a part of their community and more disposed to build a relationship.

After all, friends like to help friends!

And in that spirit, I’m going to share with you my top ten ways to build powerful connections with influential bloggers in your niche.

1. Get an introduction from a mutual connection

How many people do you know in your industry?

Are you part of any groups that are focused on your niche?

Take stock of all the people you know in a professional capacity and see if they share a connection with an influencer you are trying to get in contact with.

Being introduced is the easiest and most ‘organic’ way to get noticed.

Imagine being at a party with a friend where you know nobody. You might feel pretty awkward, but you can rely on the fact that people will start smiling at and talking to you because you have a mutual connection.

Think of digital marketing as one big party where using your existing network to meet new people is key.

When you are introduced to someone, you get a perfect opportunity to let your personality shine.

Don’t be shy – ask people who already know you in your industry for an introduction to the people you want to connect with.

2. Use blog comments to gain their attention

If you have exhausted all your connections but no dice, try going directly to the source.

By this, of course, I mean the influencers’ blog. This is where they spend the majority of their time online. This is where they go to develop content, answer questions, look at metrics and check out stats.

Pick your favorite blog of theirs and actually read it. I don’t mean skim-read it, I mean read it word for word, start to finish.

Your task is to find a way to add value to the influencer’s blog post using the blog comments.

Can you add an extra insight to the comments?

What tips or experiences can you share?

Answer questions. If this is a guru blogger, then they will struggle to answer all the questions they get asked here. This is where you can sweep in and start answering other bloggers questions in the comments for them.

If you do it in a polite way and add value to the commentary, they will undoubtedly appreciate it.

Plus other people see you as a helpful person. It’s a win-win situation – you get noticed and you also get a little exposure!

3. Get to know them as much as possible

Do you know anything about this person?

Your answer should be yes!

You know they are an influencer in your niche.

You can learn more, though, because most bloggers make it super easy to get to know them on a deeper level.

Check out their About page. What does it tell you about their life?

Check out their social media profiles. Who do they follow? How active are they? How many connections do they have?

Read the stories they tell, and gather as much information about them as you can.

You can even tweet them or comment on their statuses.

Be specific, if you can. Let’s say you notice they are big cat lovers. If you have a cat, you could share a picture of it with them. This will show your personal side but also connect with them on a level outside of their business.

By making the blogger feel like you actually know them and care about them on a number of levels, you stand a much higher chance of being noticed by them. If and when they do reply, your job is to keep the conversation flowing.

Friendly conversations are much easier to remember than formal ones.

4. Share their content on social media

I touched on this above, but it’s worth going into depth as a standalone tactic to connect with an influencer.

It’s a fairly obvious way to try and get on someone’s radar, but most people are very lazy when they do it. It’s easy to add something to Buffer or to click a retweet button, but to really get noticed by your influencer crush, you need to stand out.

How about making a custom infographic for their post, then sharing a summary on social media? Tag them in your post, embed their link and you are good to go.

This sort of action shows the influencer that you care about them and the work they do. It takes a lot more time and thought to create a custom infographic than it does to hit a retweet button.

If you really want to stand out, you could even create a video that summarizes your favorite piece of their content. When you post it on Facebook, just tag them so that they see it, and don’t forget to thank them for creating it in the first place!

Again, this shows more commitment from you. You could run some paid ads with the post too. This will get more traffic for the influencer in question while boosting your exposure and making you appear more helpful!

5. Join their Facebook group or a group they’re a member of

A lot of big blogs have now started creating Facebook groups for their business. Joining one could help you connect with other like-minded people as well as put you right in front of the influencer.

You can help others in the group with the struggles they are facing by providing relevant advice, insights or commentary. Just make sure that you have read the page’s house rules and know what the influencer stands for.

If the blogger asks the group a question, get involved and provide a valuable answer.

Some bloggers will even let you share your own content once in a while.

6. Feature the influencer on your own blog

When you link to somebody’s website, they automatically get pinged on their WordPress comments dashboard. It also supplies them with your link so that they can visit and see how you have linked to them.

Big bloggers might miss these though, so it is best to always follow up with an email.

All you have to do is provide a quote from the influencer and then link back to their blog. Personally, I like to create a custom graphic and add a ‘click to tweet’ button.

A lot of people use outbound linking nowadays, and by putting this extra effort in, you can really stand out.

Just remember that both inbound and outbound links should always add value to your content and for your audience. This tactic should not just be about getting noticed and it shouldn’t affect your audience’s experience.

However, if you are partly doing this to get noticed, it may be beneficial to feature them on a guest post. The blog you are posting on should be more authoritative than your own. This adds more value to the person you are quoting.

They will get more traffic, exposure or credibility from your guest post than they would on your blog at this stage.

I have actually created roundup posts on higher authority sites. This is a perfect way for you to get noticed as you are linking to them with an authoritative link which adds more ranking power for them.

Because it’s a roundup you are pulling in a handful of awesome influencers all at once.

7. Be their assistant on Facebook Live

Facebook Live is a great tool for getting right in front of an influencer because you can interact in real time and they can see your efforts straight away.

The problem is that a guru’s ‘live’ sessions tend to be packed full of fans and other marketers.

So how can you stand out? Is it all luck?

Nope, you can act as a helpful virtual assistant.

Live chats are usually so busy that there is no way one influencer can read all the questions or comments.

This is where you come in.

Get involved in the chat, answer questions and share links that the guru mentions.

Doing this gives you prime exposure, plus if you can keep your pace up, the influencer will be able to see all your hard work in real time.

8. Get noticed during a Twitter chat

Twitter chats are similar to Facebook Live, except that when you answer any question, you should mention the gurus @username.

This is just an added measure to ensure you get noticed by the influencer.

You could download TweetChat, a simple but powerful tool to quickly interact and reply to tweets in the chat. It gives you an added edge so that you can stay with the pace and get maximum exposure.

Use the same approach as you would playing virtual assistant on Facebook Live – be helpful, answer questions and share your own experience.

9. Review their products/services on your blog

Sometimes you don’t need to try hard to get in front of your favorite influencer. If they own a product or service, just buy it.

This changes your relationship in their eyes as you become a customer, and in my experience, customers have a much easier job getting attention from the influencer.

For example, if coaching is the service you purchase, then you are going to be working alongside the influencer directly.

If they offer something else that isn’t coaching, you can review the product or service. Don’t be boring and follow a crappy review template. Go into detail:

• What is it and why did you need it?
• How exactly did you use it?
• What benefits have you gotten from using the tool? Show proof!
• What would you like to be added to the product or range in the future?
• Were there any downsides?
• Can you provide a video walk-through or tutorial?

This type of review offers a lot of value to your audience and to the influencer.

When your post is live, you should share it with your email list first to get some social shares and comments. Then post about it on Facebook, tweet it, add it to LinkedIn or do whatever fits best with your content marketing strategy.

This will give the post some traction.

Once your post has gained a little traction, reach out to the influencer and tell them about your review.

They might actually have got the WordPress Ping about the new link already.

10. Be as helpful as you can

As you can probably see, the biggest takeaway from this post is to show how helpful you are. It doesn’t matter what option you take, just show the influencer that you want to help them and give them value.

When I reach out to people, I usually start with a simple little line… is there anything I can help you with?

This is best left for once you are at the emailing back-and-forth stage because by then they will have an idea of what you can do for them.

If they haven’t seen you write, why would they ask for your help to write a blog post?

If they need SEO help, why should they trust you?

You need to position yourself so that they already know what you are good at.

Wrapping up

It doesn’t have to be a difficult undertaking to get noticed by the movers and shakers in your industry. Sure, you have to stand out amongst the hundreds of other people craving their attention, but there are clear tactics to do so successfully.

Always ask yourself, how can I add value to their lives and enrich this relationship further down the track?

Promote their content and be living social proof that their products/services work. It might take a few days, weeks or months, but eventually, they will take notice of you.

Oh, and once they have noticed you, that doesn’t mean your work is done. You are not giving to receive – you are giving to give more!

Reciprocity will kick in before you know it.

Now, tell me all about your experiences. Do you use influencer marketing for your blog? What struggles have you faced when connecting with influencers?

Guest Author: Joe Elliott is the founder of One Man Wiki, his blog that shares tips to help you kickstart your blog. If you are a new or struggling blogger his tips will show you how to get traction in no time at all. Take his exclusive free course that will show you how to leverage the power of influencers so you can skyrocket your traffic and subscribers.

The post 10 Ways To Build Powerful Connections With Influencers appeared first on Jeffbullas’s Blog.

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