Here the YouTube video on the latest update to my video diary, If you prefer reading then there’s a transcription of it below. If you’re watching the video I recommend changing the playback speed to x 1.5, not only does it save time but it also makes me sound better.
Transcrtipt of the video
Hi and welcome to my veranda here in Gambia. Welcome along to my video diary of my exploits in the affiliate marketing world. I’m going to bring you what I’ve been doing the last week and some ideas and plans for next week. We’ve just about recovered from working all night on New Year’s Eve. Caught up on the sleep, so that’s fine.
I think there must still have been some sleep last week. Apparently, I confused a couple of people by saying that I was doing eBay adverts on Facebook, which is obviously an impossibility. I’m doing Facebook leads lead adverts on Facebook, nothing to do with eBay. Although I did eBay in the past, I used to sell our blinds on eBay at one point, quite successfully actually. But it got to the point where there were too many people chasing the same customers and the price just went too depressed and just wasn’t worth it, wasn’t worth the hassle to be honest, so we dropped that some time ago.
Anyway, that’s by the by. This past week, going back to the Facebook lead adverts, is bringing me a steady flow of leads that are going onto our mailing list. However, my email list is not producing the revenue that I would like at the moment. I do realize that these people need to get to know me, to trust me. I believe the failing is in the follow-up process that I’ve put into place, so I’m reviewing that. I’m sure that the leads I’m getting are fairly well targeted. I do actually use broad targeting in the English-speaking countries of the USA, UK, New Zealand, Canada, Australia. It’s pretty broad targeting and I’m relying on Facebook’s machine learning AI to do the targeting for me. It’s an approach that works well in the blind business and the restaurant business. In the blind business, we talk to the leads that come in and in the restaurant business, even though I initially thought it wouldn’t work, it does.
To give you an idea of the advert I’m running for my restaurant here in Gambia, it’s an offer of a free drink when you buy any main meal. That’s pretty broad targeting; it goes to people over 45 who are resident in the Netherlands, the UK, and Belgium. That’s a big audience. The creatives that go with the advert, Facebook is showing them to highly targeted leads through their machine learning AI tools. So, I know that the leads are targeted and so I’ve accepted that my email skills maybe need updating, upgrading. I’m committed this month to doing some training on email writing, email marketing in general, just to sort of bring that up to standard.
Having an excellent follow-up as well as good lead generation put together hopefully should start seeing results. The training I’m doing is by some guy called Paul B, seems pretty clued up. He knows what he’s talking about and I’ve already got some bits out of it like I did a survey mail shot last week. Just six questions that I put together in a Google form, which I’ll be putting some training video on the YouTube channel here in the next week or so.
The other thing I picked up from this was something that I already knew and probably skimmed over a little bit. When I first got started in online marketing about 18 months ago, I took some training from another mentor, Paul O’Mahoney, who said you need to know your customer. Unfortunately, I skimmed over it a little bit. I did some work on it, I’ve got an idea of my customer, but I didn’t really drill it down until everybody keeps saying it. It’s easy if you have offline businesses and you actually see your customer, you know who your customer is. You can talk to them face to face. If you’re online, you’ve got a real person there obviously, but you don’t know them.
So, with the few results I got back from the survey, I sat down for two hours plus, I think it was Thursday afternoon, and really delved deep into putting a profile together of my ideal customer. I used ChatGPT to do this. I actually sat in a local restaurant, had a late breakfast one day, and afterwards, with ChatGPT on my mobile phone, kept asking questions to really delve down into my ideal customer’s characteristics. Even got a name, Mark and Linda, one for each. I’ve got the characteristics, likely hobbies, etc. I use those to picture my ideal customer, which I refer to when I’m doing any marketing emails, any adverts, so that I’m talking to that person, not to a computer screen.
I use those two pictures and the profile of my ideal customer as a reference when I’m crafting marketing emails and adverts, ensuring that I’m speaking directly to that person rather than a generic audience.
This approach has made a significant difference. Now, I know I’m targeting my communications more effectively, and it’s already yielding better engagement. It’s something I wish I had focused on more when I first started. It’s a vital lesson, especially in affiliate or online marketing: get to know your ideal customer and tailor your communications to them.
I’ve also committed to dedicating an hour a day to learning more about email marketing throughout January. By the end of the month, I should have around 30 hours of training under my belt. It might be ambitious with everything else going on, but I’m aiming high. Improving my skills in crafting effective emails is essential, as email marketing is a crucial component of affiliate marketing.
Speaking of emails, I learned from a recent training session with my mentor Dean that a well-built and well-maintained mailing list is paramount. This week, in fact, I’m going to be reviewing my current list, which is about 1,100 subscribers strong. I’ll start removing non-responders or those who haven’t opened an email in the last 90 days. It’s about ensuring the health of my list and focusing on those who are genuinely interested and engaged.
Apart from that, I’ve been using ChatGPT quite a lot. It’s not just for generating responses, but also for helping me outline my social media strategy for a month in advance for three businesses. I then take time to build out these posts before scheduling them on various platforms. I’m currently testing a couple of different post-scheduling software – Viral Dashboard and OnlySocial – to see which works best for me.
This coming week is packed with training and learning. I’ve got a full schedule of Zoom calls with mentors, and more training on the affiliate system and email marketing aspects of my business. It’s a constant learning process, but it’s exciting to see the progress and to apply these new strategies to my businesses.
So, that’s about all I can share for this week. Keep an eye on my YouTube channel for more updates, especially if you’re interested in automating your social media posts. There’s always something new to learn and implement, and I’m looking forward to seeing where these new skills take my businesses in the future.
Who said you can’t teach an old dog new tricks
Woof!