michael jenkins – Andrew Wee | Blogging | Affiliate Marketing | Social Traffic Generation | Internet Marketing

Affiliate Video Marketing Strategies From Affiliate Summit West 2009

Andrew Wee — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 04:50:59 +0000

One of the standout sessions from Affiliate Summit West 2008 was the video marketing panel comprising AskTheBuilder’s Tim Carter, Wine Library TV’s Gary Vaynerchuk, Metacafe’s Brian McCarthy and Buy.com’s Melissa Salas moderating.

Buy.com’s director of affiliate marketing Melissa Salas

This year’s session similarly featured a panel of experienced marketers and service providers using video as one of their key strategies, they included Buy.com’s Melissa Salas, Qoof’s Jonathan Stefansky, Market Leverage CEO Michael Jenkins and Marty Fawnkey moderating.

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From the affiliate perspective, video and podcasts continue to be an underused media for content on landing pages, sales pages. The fact that 90% of affiliates don’t use them means that embedding audio or video content will make your pages more unique to leads. And it is simpler than it looks.

Gary Vanerchuk who delivered the Affiliate Summit keynote address had this as one of the major takeaways – when it comes to marketing yourself or your brand – be authentic (especially applicable to video). If you knock over a wineglass during your video presentation, so be it. Holding yourself up to broadcast TV or satelitte TV standard can and will be a frustrating experience.

On the other hand, staging videos and being found out can put a serious dent to your credibility.

Rich media like audio and video is probably best served in small chunks, especially in 2-3 minute pieces as mentioned by Melissa Salas, from extensive testing on Buy.tv.

Additionally, affiliates can leverage on tools from the likes of Qoof and ToldYa! which Buy.com is working with to embed affiliate links within Buy.com videos that they re-publish on their websites.

Additionally, I’d suggest looking at solutions like BubblePly which works with major video networks and posts an overlay over your videos and lets you embed affiliate links within the video.

Here’s an example of a video that Shawn Collins created for ASW07:

Similarly, affiliate network Market Leverage has gone down a similar route with it’s MLTV weekly broadcast, viewers can access a Tivo-like interface to access segments like “Where’s ML”, rather than drag their mouse randomly across the program timeline.

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In my view, some of the issues for affiliates leveraging video will be:

Interesting content: being able to brainstorm and come up with interesting content on a consistent basis like iJustine or Lisa Nova will require a conscious effort to “think video” as a key part of your strategy, rather than something you just tack on.
Intuitive design and concept: Successful video often focus more on the entertain aspect, more than the teach or sell angle. I bet many viewers tune in to GaryV to see what he’s going to do next, the wine appreciation naturally develops as you watch more episodes.
Caution: Some effort involved: While text blogging and content creation require little effort, an effective video strategy will require some effort in storyboarding, setting up the set, shooting the video and post production. On the other hand, if you’re one of a handful of marketers in the space and using it effectively, you have a headstart on the rest of the pack.

Johnathan Stefansky had some great tips from his “Ask the Experts” session on using video effectively. Some points:

Shelf life: A video which remains popular a year later can be considered to have an exceptional shelf life.

Call to Action: if you don’t have one in the video, you’re merely being entertaining

Limited analytics for video: Still fairly limited and restricted to mainly hot zones, data like geo location, time stamping, etc are fairly limited.
Positioning: Video location “above the fold” will have a higher response rate, compared to below the fold
Get to the message quickly: In a split test for wedding favor videos, a direct “zoom-in, zoom-out”, voiceover, information packed video, outperformed a QVC style walkthrough 7-minute long video. Take the audience into consideration – the average viewer was a wedding favor buyer who viewed 6-7 videos before making a decision, so getting to the point was important in this case.
The video indexing black hole: Flash technology (the majority of web video is encoded in this format) is a black hole to Google and is difficult to get it indexed effectively. Meta data like video titles, descriptions and tags are important when labelling your video.
The CDN factor: The Content Delivery Network (CDN) that your video is delivered across does affect the user experience. Akami seems to lead the field when it comes to video streaming

For more video strategies, check out: Friday Podcast: Video Strategies With Melissa Salas

Affiliate Summit West 2009 In Pics and Words (Part 1)

Andrew Wee — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 04:26:20 +0000

Shawn Collins and Missy Ward have consistently put on a great Affiliate Summit since I first started going to them in 2006. This year was no different and if you’re an affiliate, consultant or network, the show serves as a great opportunity to network and get a pulse on the trends in the industry.

It was worth the 20 hour plane ride each way, and despite the somewhat hefty tax expense, the benefits far outweighed the time and resources to get there.

This is a first in a series of posts, more to come.

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Pre-Affiliate Summit

Getting to the summit is a good idea, especially with some flights being delayed and having a chance to do some chillaxing before the event. I did some shopping at the premium outlets outlet mall and met up that night with Kim Rowley and Jon Levine.

At most conferences and seminars, I usually learn more from talking to other affiliates about their sites and projects, compared to the formal sessions (unless it’s a brand new area/topic for me).

So we went for drinks and it was interesting to hear about how the program that Jon is managing was put together.

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Day 1: Sun 11 Jan

I was pleasantly suprised outside the conference rooms by Shawn Collins who danced a welcome jig:

I’d post a video, but the group we were with was too ticked to fire up our flip cams.

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And shortly after, pickup artist Mystery showed up with his entourage and soon a small crowd gathered around him:

I had a chance to check out the “Mysteryplex” AKA “Project Hollywood” mentioned in Neil Strauss’ bestseller “The Game” in Hollywood later in the week. (in a future post).

In many ways, successful pickup has a lot in common with successful affiliate marketing – you need to make the offer attractive, you need to match the approach with your target’s demographic, and you need an attractive “call to action”. The showmanship doesn’t hurt either.

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Later that evening, affiliate network Market Leverage hosted a blogger dinner at Switch at the Encore by Wynn.

(Left to right): David Brim (Izea, back to camera), Market Leverage founder and CEO Michael Jenkins, Ms Danielle, Nate Whitehill (Unique Blog Designs).

Michael also announced the launch of Market Leverage’s Greenlinks – a series of video help videos, at the dinner.

Aside from the great seafood we had, it was also a good opportunity to get insight into Market Leverage’s operations from Mike Kelly (ML’s first affiliate manager) and Jen Fluker (ML’s second affiliate manager).

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Meeting Steph

Undoubtedly, one of the advantages of attending Affiliate Summit is being able to meet networks and get a feel for the affiliate managers you’ll be working with. Meeting them in person also means you have a high chance of being accepted into their network.

I’d been talking to Stephanie Lichtenstein from Andy Rodriguez Consulting over twitter and it was a pleasure to meet her in person. In fact, I swept her off her feet:

Steph, me and Billy Kay Knoblach

Here is a video Steph put up on youtube (it’s received positive feedback from the twitter community)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acybZGnU8sw[/youtube]

Steph’s definitely got an edge when it comes to relationship building with affiliates and social marketers can take a page out of her book.

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Affiliate Triathlon

What I like about the Affiliate Summits is how Shawn and Missy combine fun activities with fund-raising for worthwhile causes. This year’s charity: the National Breast Cancer Foundation.

Some of the “competitiors” were dressed to kill too.

ShareASales CEO Brian Littleton in his 80s Miami Vice (LA Gear?) get up

The ladies from the set of Kill Bill 3: Affiliate Ninjas. Or possibly the ShareASale team (Jessica Sander, Sarah Beeskow, Carolyn Tang).

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Some key takeways:

Video Marketing will continue to be grow this year, with merchants like Buy.com integrating solutions from Qoof and ToldYa! into their affiliate platforms. Buy.com’s Melissa Salas, Qoof’s Michael Stefansky and Market Leverage’s Mike Jenkins gave some good insights during their panel which smart affiliates will be able to utilize in their campaigns.

PPC Pay per click marketing: continues to be a red hot topic with numerous sessions during the seminar track devoted to tracking, optimizing and automating the process. As PPC usage becomes more sophisticated, tools like Wes Mahler’s Tracking202 lower the barrier of entry for new affiliates.

Boutique CPA Networks: A number of “boutique” style CPA networks are rewriting the rules of affiliate marketing. While some affiliate manager are of the “I am here just to tell you the best offers and negotiate payouts for you” mindset, smaller, agile networks like Convert2Media (helmed by Ralph “Ruck” Ruckman) and Ads4Dough (helmed by Jason “Smaxor” Akatiff) are rewriting the rules of what a network is, by going the extra mile to provide guidance to new and experienced affiliates. The fact that the networks are run by top affiliates well versed in white hat and black hat traffic and affiliate tactics also means that they can provide useful and relevant advice.