Weekly Picks

Weekly Reading Picks| Volume 46

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Bob’s Weekly Reading Picks

2019.11.24 volume 46

Content

  1. Affiliate Program Marketing Guide: How to Spread the Word About Yours
  2. An inside view on Singles’ Day 2019 and China’s e-commerce landscape
  3. The Definitive Guide To SEO In 2020
  4. Better Content Through NLP (Natural Language Processing) – Whiteboard Friday
  5. Brand bidding & PPC optimization: Reducing your competition
  6. Big Tech takes aim at the low-profit retail-banking industry
  7. Google Wants to Do Business With the Military—Many of Its Employees Don’t

1. Affiliate Program Marketing Guide: How to Spread the Word About Yours

1)Dedicated Page or Website for Your Affiliate Program

  • Program description and calls to action
  • Program agreement
  • Answers to frequently asked questions
  • Creatives
  • Affiliate blog
  • Contact page

2)Emailing Former and Existing Customers and Advocates

3)Announcing Your Affiliate Program Launch on Your Blog

4)Posting on Social Media Pages and/or Profiles

5)Order Confirmation Page and Follow-up Emails

6)Submitting Program Details to Affiliate Program Directories

7)Posting About Your Program on Affiliate Forums

8)Discussing the Program in Social Media Groups

9)Publishing Press Releases

10)Mentioning it in Blog Posts Targeting Potential Publishers

11)Affiliate Networks (and the Tools and Opportunities They Offer)

12)Attending Affiliate Events

13)Partnering with Other Merchants for Cross-Promotion

14)Employing Paid Ads

15)Rewarding Affiliate Referrals

2. An inside view on Singles’ Day 2019 and China’s e-commerce landscape

Alibaba Group

Alibaba.com is the proposition that the company originates from. It is China’s biggest wholesale marketplace and is primarily used by other businesses, merchants and retailers for B2B trading. 

AliExpress is another marketplace but this one is B2C focused, providing customers with a space where they can buy directly from manufacturers and retailers around the world.

Taobao is the world’s biggest e-commerce site and another marketplace that focuses more on smaller traders and SMEs. This focus means that it is largely made up of C2C or consumer-to-consumer transactions.

Tmall was originally sat within Taobao, but subsequently spun out into its own independent property. The platform provides both local Chinese brands and international ones with an online space where they can set up storefronts in which Chinese shoppers can buy their goods.

In addition to these four major e-commerce platforms, Alibaba’s reach extends into a variety of other sectors and industries including finance (Ant Financial), logistics (Cainiao Network), cloud computing (Alibaba Cloud) and numerous other areas.

3. The Definitive Guide To SEO In 2020

CHAPTER 1: Domain Authority 2.0 (E-A-T)

CHAPTER 2: The Rise of Visual Search

CHAPTER 3: Video Continues to Surge

CHAPTER 4: Voice Search Optimization

CHAPTER 5: Optimize for Featured Snippets

CHAPTER 6: Master Search Intent

CHAPTER 7: Combat Decreasing CTRs

CHAPTER 8: Backlinks Are Still Key

4. Better Content Through NLP (Natural Language Processing) – Whiteboard Friday

5. Brand bidding & PPC optimization: Reducing your competition

Keyword Development

  • Brand + product name (“Burton snowboard”).
  • Brand + review (“Burton Snowboard review”).
  • Brand + discount (“Burton discount”).
  • Brand + sale (“Burton sale”).
  • Brand long tail (“used Burton Process Flying V Snowboard 2016 157W”).
  • Brand + website (“www.Burton,” “Burton.com” or “Burton website”).

Who are your partners?

  • Affiliates. 
  • Resellers. 
  • Partners. Travel services (such as hotels) work through online travel agencies like Priceline or Expedia.
  • Franchisees or Dealers. A franchisee (or dealer) relationship is a brick-and-mortar concept commonly found in automotive or education, where there is a physical, in-market store. In these arrangements, the dealer has certain marketing rights restricted to a geographic boundary.
  • Online Retailers. We don’t usually think of retailers as “partners” or “affiliates,” but in fact they are if the brand holder is a manufacturer. Manufacturers sell through retailers and can benefit from the page ownership strategies discussed here.

6. Big Tech takes aim at the low-profit retail-banking industry

  • Amazon introduced a credit card for underbanked shoppers in June;
  • Apple launched its own credit card in August.
  • Facebook announced a new payments system on November 12th (its mooted cryptocurrency, Libra, however, has lost many of its backers and will face stiff regulatory scrutiny).
  • The next day Google said it would start offering current (checking) accounts in America in 2020.

 That is why the giants have turned to banks to do the tedious bits. Apple’s card is issued by Goldman Sachs, and Amazon’s ones by Chase, Synchrony and American Express. Google’s accounts are backed by Citi and a banking union.

7. Google Wants to Do Business With the Military—Many of Its Employees Don’t

There was a time when Google might have worn its unpopularity in Washington as a badge of honor. But the company is hitting middle age now, with $140 billion in annual revenue and a desire to expand into new lines of business. That’s made military contracts enticing to Google’s leadership, which sees defense work as an important stepping stone to more business in the $200 billion market for cloud services. Google’s more idealistic employees are alarmed by this and see the company drifting from its old “don’t be evil” ethos.

The New Military Industrial Complex

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