Bob’s Weekly Reading Picks
2019.6.30 volume 25
Content
1.2019 Affiliate Marketing Market Size
2.150k Small Business Website Teardown 2019
3.Boomers, Gen X, Gen Y, and Gen Z Explained
4.The New World of Customer Acquisition
5.50+ Social Media Sites You Need to Know in 2019
6. Take Your Business Global with Facebook x Kickstarter Crowdfunding Playbook
7.Affiliate Marketing Trends: 37 Experts Share Their Thoughts On The Future Of Affiliate Marketing
1.2019 Affiliate Marketing Market Size
For US
Total Ad Spend 2019 – $238.63B
Digital Ad Spend 2019 -$129.34B
Mobile Ad Spend 2019 -87.06B
Global Affiliate Industry Value -15B
–Influencer marketing – 10B by 2020
US Affiliate Mktg Spend -$6.8 B
Affiliate Mktg portions of total e-commerce sales -16%
1 in 7 dollars impacted by affiliates
Related: Global Ad Spending 2019 by eMarkter
2. 150k Small Business Website Teardown 2019
Key Findings
- Nearly 2% of small business websites are marked no index. Blame Squarespace.
- 25% of all small business websites are missing an H1 tag.
- Sites that mention the BBB outrank those that without a mention by a median 18%.
- Yelp appears in the top five search results for 92% of Google web queries that consist of a city and business category.
- Businesses with 4 or more stars on Google My Business outrank those with less than 4 stars by a median 11%.
- Novelty stat: sites that mention faith outrank those that don’t mention faith by a median 12%.
3. Boomers, Gen X, Gen Y, and Gen Z Explained
As of 2019, the breakdown by age looks like this:
- Baby Boomers: Baby boomers were born between 1944 and 1964. They’re current between 55-75 years old (76 million in U.S.)
- Gen X: Gen X was born between 1965 – 1979 and are currently between 40-54 years old (82 million people in U.S.)
- Gen Y: Gen Y, or Millennials, were born between 1980 and 1994. They are currently between 25-39 years old.
- Gen Y.1 = 25-29 years old (31 million people in U.S.)
- Gen Y.2 = 29-39 (42 million people in U.S.)
- Gen Z: Gen Z is the newest generation to be named and were born between 1995 and 2015. They are currently between 4-24 years old (nearly 74 million in U.S.)
4. The New World of Customer Acquisition
Content Marketing
SEO
Email Marketing
Copy Writing
Social Media Marketing
Analytics
- information and insights
- blogs
- tools
5. 50+ Social Media Sites You Need to Know in 2019
#1: Facebook
#2: Instagram
#3: Twitter
#4: Tumblr
#5: LinkedIn
#6: WhatsApp
#7: Snapchat
#8: Pinterest
#9: Reddit
#10: YouTube
#11: Mix (news aggregator)
#12: Tagged (friendship and dating)
#13: Nextdoor ( private dedicated neighborhoods)
#14: Deviantart (artists and art enthusiasts)
#15: Quora
#16: Meetup (local groups to meet up)
#17: ReverbNation ( musicians)
#18: Flixster (film)
#19: Goodreads (books)
#20: Twitch (game stream)
#21: CaringBridge (health journey)
#22: Wattpad (readers and writers)
#23: Viadeo (business owners and entrepreneurs)
#24: Crunchyroll (anime enthusiasts)
#25: Skyrock (FR-music, sports, and film blogs)
#26: VK (RU)
#27: MyHeritage (family histories)
#28: LiveJournal (blog based)
#29: Classmates (ex-classmates and school alumni)
#30: SoundCloud (music sharing)
#31: Bubbly (voice based)
#32: Flickr (photo sharing)
#33: We Heart It (image based)
#34: Influenster (product review and discovery platform)
#35: FilmAffinity (film)
#36: Open Diary (virtual diary)
#37: Yelp (review)
#38: CollegeHumor (humor)
#39: Gaia Online (anime-themed)
#40: MocoSpace (chat)
#41: CouchSurfing (travelers)
#42: Funny or Die (humor based)
#43: italki （language-learning ）
#44: eToro （social trading platform）
#45: XING (career-oriented)
#45: MeetMe (discover new people)
#46: Ravelry (knitting and crocheting)
#47: Care2 (activists)
#48: YY (CN-video)
#49: Vero
#50: Medium (content publishing)
#51: GIPHY (GIFs)
#52: Tribe (brand)
Addition: Top Social Networks in China
Wechat, QQ, Weibo, Douying, Douban…
6. Take Your Business Global with Facebook x Kickstarter Crowdfunding Playbook
Crossing Borders with Crowdfunding
1) Drive reach and generate interest across the three stages of crowdfunding
| Pre-Launch | Launch | Post Launch |
|---|---|---|
| Generate brand awareness by gathering leads | Scale up efficiently to increase reach and drive conversion by precise targeting and optimization tools | Focus on remarketing, keeping the community engaged and maximizing customers’ lifetime value |
2)Understand the elements influencing ad auction
Among which the controllable variables are where we can come in and put more efforts to make a difference. It’s important to make sure your creatives are high quality and relevant to your targeting audience to win a bid.
3)Choose the right marketing objective
The marketing objective will guide the system and determine what kind of audience your ads will be delivered to, the size of audience, ad performance and ad costs.
4)Leverage Facebook’s people-based marketing strategies
Which allows precise targeting, cross-device tracking, online and offline connection and real business results measurement that can help maximize your crowdfunding campaign result.
5)Three helpful tools for crowdfunding and going global
| Cross-Border Insights Finder | Worldwide Targeting and Lookalike Audience | Dynamic Language Optimization |
|---|---|---|
| Compare data across countries to explore cross-border business opportunities. | Find potential customers similar to your current quality customers worldwide | Dynamically show ads in the right language for the audience reached to increase ad performance |
Achieving your Crowdfunding goals on Kickstarter
- Prototype & Manufacturing
- Telling Your Product Story
- Building a Community
Pre-launch community
Press & Blogs
Kickstarter’s Community
Digital Advertising
Planning your crowdfunding campaign for success
1) Good and sufficient pre-launch preparation – the bedrock of success
| 83% | 7,000 | 70% |
|---|---|---|
| 83% of projects that have raised over $100K spent more than two months preparing for launch | The average list size is 7,000 for project successfully raised $100K+ and should be relevant emails | 70% hired external support before launch and raised $90,000 more on average than those who didn’t |
2) Pre-launch planning and execution checklist
| Timeline | Goals | Budgets and Returns | Positioning | Personas | Main Markets |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Develop a timeline with execution plans across different stages | List your goals and strategies used to achieve them | Determine your budget, how you are going to use them and the KPIs for result measurement | Identify the key selling points of your products and where it fits in the marketplace | Test which group of customers are interested in your product to identify key segment of your audience | Focus on the main markets that you would like to explore to test market receptivity and potential efficiently |
3) Social media is an important traffic source
More than 20% of all the traffic that Kickstarter gets is from social channels, which are mostly Facebook and Instagram.
4) Live Campaign Checklist
Identify your KPIs and keep tracking your ads’ performance is important, but so is everything else.
Winning your Supply Chain
- Estimate product shipping cost at the very beginning
- Figure out your taxation strategy early on
- Packaging also matters
- Build trust with backers through Floship Certified Logistics Plan
7. Affiliate Marketing Trends: 37 Experts Share Their Thoughts On The Future Of Affiliate Marketing
(BozNotes: a little bit outdated)
“The affiliate formula is always the same – find out what people need or desire (pain points) and put the solution in front of them.”
” One trend I see is video playing a larger role in affiliate marketing,”
“Email marketing. I think it’s been proven and tested that email is the best converting and retention method that affiliate marketers use.”
“Instead of your standard niche Amazon affiliate site, why not take a more holistic view of the visitors?”
“Affiliate marketing is always going to be here (in one form or another) and it’s always going to make money as long as you continue to focus on the value provided and user experience.”
“Nothing is more important than to build relationships with other influential marketers.”
……