Is SEO Marketing?
- Thread starter danke
- Start date
It doesn't matter if you have a physical product, the dictionary definition includes services, which'd include brokerage.
Just because it's sensible to diversify, doesn't mean that not doing so isn't marketing.
If someone buys a single share of a company, does that mean they haven't invested in stocks?
ncmedia is a God in this game. You should all take notice when he posts. He just dropped some great words of wisdom here.
Thanks homey that's... quite the compliment.
A few things that help me as a vendor.
Random ::
* There are scripts that can turn your affiliates links into actual backlinks not just redirects with a cookie drop.
* There are scripts that allow you to give your affiliates alternate pages, discount pages, keyword specific pages to help them with their keys/adgroups.
* When you suddenly hit, and don't know why - throw your business plan out the window (you'll have to), you didn't prepare for getting 10x bigger than you hoped you would, everything becomes more reactive and less proactive - big dog on a leash and the leash is close to breaking at all times.
* Never compete with your affiliates, prove the model, prove your backend, do some good testing and document all your splits/keys/blueprints for your affiliates to follow and pull your campaigns once you have a handful converting - your business is now about them and not you - you will benefit from the side effect of a powerful daily routine of helping others get rich by doing SEO (and 1001 other things) for you.
* Create way the fuck more support and marketing material than your affiliates will ever need - but don't stray too far away from what worked in your tests. I've seen vendors dilute their profitable campaigns by getting too creative and alienating their initial buzz from good marketing.
* Prepare for misrepresentation and turning your cheek vs. banning idiots that mess with your brand, monies, or profitable affiliates. You're a boss and have an army that gets to join with no barrier unless you set one manually - you'll see affiliates do shit you never thought possible, always borderline legal/illegal, you literally have to protect your biggest earners and they WILL get fucked with, and come to you for some type of support.
Don't be greedy and don't be shortsighted, these people are committing time and effort into your brand, for free, and leaving behind a fucking amazing path of great marketing for you, forever, that's gold platinum and kryptonite all in one in this game - loyal long term big spender/resources allocators to your money funnel, and they love you because they are getting rich with your opportunity.
* SEO is important for everyone, but it's but a small part of the game when you take it at its literal term (search engine optimization) < There's so much more to search these days, so much more to randomness, lil' profitable pockets that don't rely on keys as much as other social/tech factors, there's so much more to do nowadays to get eyeballs and wallets to your media/content.
* I have an offer that is software, for mac/pc/online - and I don't have a mobile ap yet, probably won't as technology and sizes are catching up quick to what I need in order for it to run on devices.. anyway, I have affiliates doing the most creative shit I've seen with mobile marketing to my desktop ap, knowing their audience has desktops/laptops/are enthusiasts of my niche and some bank quite hard in a very untraditional way. Exploiting corners of the web that are new to you will happen a lot when looking at your logs and seeing what worldwide creativity does as they play in your money box.
* Somehow my affs also figured out the most profitable countries/demo's much better than I could have as well (we have sales and awareness in over 220 countries), and I see constant proof of foreign campaigns in other languages and again - pockets I'd never explore but they are indeed profitable.
A lot of what I'm writing does and does not involve SEO, however I think at the end of the day - your SEO is not that important, not nearly as important as your content or your offering, because THAT in itself is what should be getting people traffic, not tricking out a platform.
When done right, you don't need to worry about SEO as much as marketshare, because what you created is THAT GOOD and it's getting buzz, getting cloned/duplicated, and getting natural SEO, and having affiliates fight like fuck for a piece. SEO is for traffic - but traffic is in abundance if you know where to look or know how to let others look for you. Or you know how to continue to refine your offer/content to appeal to a broader audience and more pockets.
/braind dump
SEO is the internet equivalent of earning the best spot to put your flyer on the school bulletin board.
Marketing is what's on the flyer.
Marketing is what's on the flyer.
SEO is marketing, same as creating adverisments we could take. But after creating advertisment there is also puttign it livei n television and media buys. Its all part of same tree but on its other levles
1. somebody makes site
2. somebody thinks that good for maketing is the #1 postion
3. somebody tries to make it top#1 with seo
1. somebody makes site
2. somebody thinks that good for maketing is the #1 postion
3. somebody tries to make it top#1 with seo
SEO is a challenging field of its own. It is or can be for the programmer, the copywriter, the sales guy, the social dude, the mathematician etc.
Actually, to be a good SEO you need some of all the above, that's why top SEOs are ballin out of control, because it's much more difficult to be a good SEO (not neccesarily Google optimizer) than a run of the mill ad buyer.
Actually, to be a good SEO you need some of all the above, that's why top SEOs are ballin out of control, because it's much more difficult to be a good SEO (not neccesarily Google optimizer) than a run of the mill ad buyer.
As interesting as I find this scintillating conversation concerning the precise distinction between SEO and marketing...
NCMEDIA CREATED HIS OWN PRODUCT AND NOW HAS A FUCKING ARMY OF 3K+ MARKETERS WORKING TIRELESSLY TO PROMOTE IT FOR HIM USING EVERY. AVAILABLE. CHANNEL.
If you weighed into this thread after he dropped that knowledge and didn't ask him any questions about how he did it, you need to get your head out of your fucking ass.
And on that note, ncmedia, if you wouldn't mind, could you answer a couple of questions?
1. How long did you test out your campaigns before you opened it up to affiliates, and what kinds of traffic did you start out with when you were promoting your product?
2. What affiliate networks did you find were most effective, and how did it take to buy in as an advertiser?
Thanks again for dropping some knowledge.
NCMEDIA CREATED HIS OWN PRODUCT AND NOW HAS A FUCKING ARMY OF 3K+ MARKETERS WORKING TIRELESSLY TO PROMOTE IT FOR HIM USING EVERY. AVAILABLE. CHANNEL.
If you weighed into this thread after he dropped that knowledge and didn't ask him any questions about how he did it, you need to get your head out of your fucking ass.
And on that note, ncmedia, if you wouldn't mind, could you answer a couple of questions?
1. How long did you test out your campaigns before you opened it up to affiliates, and what kinds of traffic did you start out with when you were promoting your product?
2. What affiliate networks did you find were most effective, and how did it take to buy in as an advertiser?
Thanks again for dropping some knowledge.
1. I didn't do as much testing as I would have liked to before bringing it to clickbank - fortunately though it was my 30th or so product so it was enough intel for me to confidently move it from paypal buttons to clickbanks setup within 50 or so sales and 4 different sales pages.
From my sig link ::
This was enough to get affiliates going. Once it was on CB we continued split testing and adding to the offer as much as possible as we grew, we plateau'd a few times as well and... actually I have a full case study of my whole journey with this here > http://www.wickedfire.com/enlightened-members/147755-case-study-versioning-installment-3-a.html - click that and go to my second then first part of the series, I drop a lot of intel of how we handled the split tests and how we integrated our backend, then recurs, then overcame each plateau of growth to set a new bar...
2. I have been at this since 2007, back then I tried CPA, and CPS as an affiliate before making my way into vendor territory - and by then I grew a major fucking hate for the CPA game.
I also consulted a few offers that were being run through a half dozen CPA's in their tests and wanted to convert to CPS and go digital only, which opened my eyes to how fragile the CPA game is. Unless you're a boss already in that game, the advertiser can be fucked easily, so can the aff, so can the network - going in any direction of those three, where as clickbank doesn't have that problem.
And yes, in my 40 or so products to date, I did try the mmo shit in my early days and it's lil' spike money - this is one of the most tricked out clickbank accounts and is not in the mmo niche, and has been a top 100 product (premier/apex) for 2 years now so there's a lot to be said about clickbank being safe for long term whitehat offers (don't let that fool you though, there's tons of shade at CB as well from affiliates to vendors).
Barrier of entry for me, or for CB, is small - $50 to list your product once you figure out your conversion mastered page. I am the designer and audio producer so my costs are minimal - Getting a digital product up can cost you tons or next to nothing depending on what you're doing (ebook vs membership site vs software vs a combo etc.).
Basically - if you launch an offer, and prove it yourself, and document it yourself (i.e. being your own affiliat of your own product, can you be profitable? prove it), and you have good conversion rates, and big margins (who are we kidding - it's digital, cost of reproduction is zero and delivery is instant, YES you can offer 75% commission, and still make millions yourself by making others rich and attract the best aff's due to those big margins), then you will see affiliates flock to you with very little effort in recruitment.
I've seen a good dozen one hit wonders spike through clickbank into top 5 position and die within 6 months and make their millions, and never be able to repeat it again. I see those that do overlaps of pump/dumps by design to maintain big monies for as long as overlap happen, and I've seen a handful do what I've done, create something that lasts for years, withstands the market shifts, big attacks by competitors, being diluted by having many competitors, and still kick fucking ass having more market share than all competitors combined today.
Having your own product rocks IF you can get past that first barrier, creating something extremely attractive for others to make money from - then prove it - then continue to build onto it to retain your affiliates and make them more and more and more.
1. I didn't do as much testing as I would have liked to before bringing it to clickbank - fortunately though it was my 30th or so product so it was enough intel for me to confidently move it from paypal buttons to clickbanks setup within 50 or so sales and 4 different sales pages.
From my sig link ::
This was enough to get affiliates going. Once it was on CB we continued split testing and adding to the offer as much as possible as we grew, we plateau'd a few times as well and... actually I have a full case study of my whole journey with this here > http://www.wickedfire.com/enlightened-members/147755-case-study-versioning-installment-3-a.html - click that and go to my second then first part of the series, I drop a lot of intel of how we handled the split tests and how we integrated our backend, then recurs, then overcame each plateau of growth to set a new bar...
2. I have been at this since 2007, back then I tried CPA, and CPS as an affiliate before making my way into vendor territory - and by then I grew a major fucking hate for the CPA game.
I also consulted a few offers that were being run through a half dozen CPA's in their tests and wanted to convert to CPS and go digital only, which opened my eyes to how fragile the CPA game is. Unless you're a boss already in that game, the advertiser can be fucked easily, so can the aff, so can the network - going in any direction of those three, where as clickbank doesn't have that problem.
And yes, in my 40 or so products to date, I did try the mmo shit in my early days and it's lil' spike money - this is one of the most tricked out clickbank accounts and is not in the mmo niche, and has been a top 100 product (premier/apex) for 2 years now so there's a lot to be said about clickbank being safe for long term whitehat offers (don't let that fool you though, there's tons of shade at CB as well from affiliates to vendors).
Barrier of entry for me, or for CB, is small - $50 to list your product once you figure out your conversion mastered page. I am the designer and audio producer so my costs are minimal - Getting a digital product up can cost you tons or next to nothing depending on what you're doing (ebook vs membership site vs software vs a combo etc.).
Basically - if you launch an offer, and prove it yourself, and document it yourself (i.e. being your own affiliat of your own product, can you be profitable? prove it), and you have good conversion rates, and big margins (who are we kidding - it's digital, cost of reproduction is zero and delivery is instant, YES you can offer 75% commission, and still make millions yourself by making others rich and attract the best aff's due to those big margins), then you will see affiliates flock to you with very little effort in recruitment.
I've seen a good dozen one hit wonders spike through clickbank into top 5 position and die within 6 months and make their millions, and never be able to repeat it again. I see those that do overlaps of pump/dumps by design to maintain big monies for as long as overlap happen, and I've seen a handful do what I've done, create something that lasts for years, withstands the market shifts, big attacks by competitors, being diluted by having many competitors, and still kick fucking ass having more market share than all competitors combined today.
Having your own product rocks IF you can get past that first barrier, creating something extremely attractive for others to make money from.
+rep. Thanks for sharing this.
Not sure I agree, I'd say both are marketing. What's on the flyer is harder to do really well, but just because say, launching an international TV ad campaign is harder than doing some conversion optimisation for an affiliate site, doesn't mean the latter isn't marketing.
Reading through those old threads now, ncmedia. I think they comprise the most useful and inspiring case study I've read on WF to date. Thanks a ton.
And if you had to outsmart and outwork hundreds of other people gunning for the same bulletin board spot.
