Context is critically important. One of the first lessons we learn is the importance of context – there is a time and place for every message.  Anyone caught passing a note to the cute girl in the front row in first grade and facing the embarrassment of having the note read aloud by your teacher can relate.  Mitt forgot that he was not only in front of millions of potential voters, but an army of social media pundits eager to pounce on any mistake.

For those of us who live on the internet, realize anything we post becomes part of the permanent record.  When running a promotion or committing anything to writing, think about the impact of your words in various contexts – from the front page of the New York Times to being rebroadcast by your least favorite political talk show host.  You can never assume a sentence will always be placed in context.

Consumers interpret moments in unexpected ways.  After the bet comment, the debate hall had moved on to the next question.  If you read the wire service or newspaper coverage that evening, the bet was not even mentioned.  But by Sunday morning it was the most talked about moment of the debate.

Again, when you make your living with words in public places, you have to think beyond your perspective before you post.  One of the most important lessons I am learning these days is the impact of culture on perception.  Take two people from different regions with different backgrounds, and they can see a message two totally different ways.  You know your audience, but you must also continually educate yourself on cultural impact on marketing.  Know your dominant culture, and experiment with writing in the voice of other cultures.  Work at reducing your risk of misinterpretation.

Don’t over commit.  (Or is it co-Mitt?).  Mitt was convinced he was right and Perry was wrong.  The bet proved he stood behind his opinion.  Naming any amount of money was unnecessary. Mitt is working to build a reputation as the trustworthy candidate, the non-fire bomb thrower.  He is working hard to make his word means something.  So he should have just offered Perry a bet.  Extend his hand to show he’s putting his word behind it.  Naming an amount of money, no matter the amount, was not required.

The risk to marketing people is over commitment.  To confuse truth with spin.  To go from selling the sizzle on your steak, to selling the sizzle on someone else’s steak.  And every time you cross that line, you run a risk.  In my career, I’ve learned to work hard to promote my product or service, squeeze every benefit and advantage out of the copy, but don’t overreach.  It seems to always cost more than $10,000.

This was a post by Rj.

Why do you drive the kind of car you drive?  Why did you select a particular type of computer?  Something in your experience, even if it was as simple as reading a recommendation, prompted you to make one choice over another.

Apple is one of the all time great brands, built around excellent design and an “it just works” brand promise.  I am always amazed when I walk into one of their retail stores – how many places are you told to “stand over there and wait” until we can take your money?  And the funny thing is, I do it!

The reason is its brand has great value.  I am willing to pay extra for a Mac, when HP makes good windows laptops at two-thirds the price. Starbucks and McDonalds both make good coffee, but where would you be more likely to invite a new client or a first date to join you?  Again, the value of the brand is worth more than the simple product delivered.

And that is the value experience you want to create with your brand.  With all of the sites on the web, you want to have a brand that communicates value and quality.  You want the reader to trust you, You want to become a “must see” site in a world of me-too.  Brand value doesn’t happen by accident – it takes work, but the reward is usually more – traffic, value, ad revenue, or whatever goal you are looking to achieve.

In establishing a brand, first you need to define what makes you unique.  Here at www.dailyconversions.com, Brian has built a great brand based on clear advice and information on affiliate and internet marketing.  He does not try to sell you anything, rather he seeks to improve your business through solid information and partnerships with quality affiliate networks.  What do you want to stand for?  Why will readers visit your site?  Start by trying to write a brief brand statement – think about how you explain what you do to someone on an elevator in 30 seconds or less.  Then review the statement and ask what makes it unique.

Think about the brands that are important to you.  Honda. American Express. Disney. Google. Each brand defines not only the company but also an experience, which is what you want to deliver.  Keep honing your written statement until it is clear and focused on who and what you aspire to be.  It doesn’t have to be who you are today, but must be something that you can become in a reasonable period of time. Then use that vision as a filter on all of your interactions – posts, advertising, and offers to your readers.  Give them brand consistency and they will continually return to benefit from its value.

Next time by RJ – Sustaining Brand Trust.

Having a tough time scaling up your affiliate campaign to the next level?

I’ve brought affiliate campaigns from dollars to thousands of dollars per day and can teach you to do the same. I have the tools, contacts and know-how to get you scaled up. If you’re a serious affiliate or want to be a serious affiliate, I’d be willing to work with you.

Are you an affiliate network that needs a bigger more stable base of affiliates?

I’ve worked with a who’s who list of top affiliate networks to drastically increase the number of active affiliates making them serious money every month. Some of the networks I’ve worked with have made 5 and 6 figure revenue improvements in less than 3 months. If you are a network that is not afraid of changing what’s needed to get more affiliate stability and make more money, then we could be a good match. If you are an affiliate network that refuses change and likes to play it too safe, we probably won’t be a good match.

Not making as much as you think you should on your Email list?

(Or don’t have an email list?) The problem with email marketing is that it seems simple to people but it is actually extremely complicated and specific. There are many nuances that go into email marketing that can’t be taught via an eBook. We are talking about one of the most basic and traditional forms of human contact outside of face to face conversation. The amount of misinformation out there on email marketing is outrageous and a lot of these “gurus” are re-teaching the same poor information on how you can go from 1% to 1.9% conversion. You can either play those same games as everyone else and get excited for a .9% conversion improvement or you can play with the big boys and get excited about a 29% increase.

A full month of Private Training with Brian

Normally, I charge $250 an hour for private training and consulting. However, I’m offering a package deal because the hourly thing just isn’t beneficial and is way too expensive. You need more than an hour to do anything listed on this page. For the price of 2 hours, I’m giving you access to me via Skype for the entire month. I’m not even setting a time limit. I could be crazy for doing this, because a lot of you are going to take full advantage of me, but I’ve done this a time or two before and I know how to train people effectively. And, I’m only taking a few of you this month, and this isn’t some false scarcity thing, I just don’t want to have 45 people Skyping me everyday.

Training with me is like an elite military bootcamp

I’m not going to stroke your ego, I’m not going to tuck you in at night, but what I am going to do is make sure that you become extremely effective at whatever it is that you’re trying to do, whether it’s something I’ve listed on this page or not. I’m going to be brutally honest and tell you every time you make a mistake and how you can do it better next time. I’m not one of those guys that just tells you that you did it wrong without offering how you can do it better next time. At the end of the month, you’re going to be a changed person and one extremely effective marketing machine. You’re going to be learning how to apply tactics that will take all of your peers years and 10s of thousands in lost revenue to learn.

Don’t train with me unless you’re serious

This is one thing I won’t make an exception on. You have to be serious, have some sort of resources, and not expect me to do it all for you. I’ll train you to have all the success you can handle, and make your wildest business dreams come true, but I’m not going to do it for you. Otherwise, there would be no point in me offering these services if I was going to invest the time to do every little baby step for everyone.

To get started, email brian@dailyconversions.com with info about you or your company

Send an email to brian@dailyconversions.com and let me know your story. What’s worked for you in the past, what hasn’t and what you’re having issues with now. Or, if you just want to get into something new, tell me that too. I want to know as much as I can about your personality, work ethics and things like that so I can make a decision if we are going to be a good match. From here, I will contact you back and tell you what I can or can’t do for you and if I can do something I’ll let you know where the price is going to fall for you for the month of private training.

I’m proud to introduce you guys to BLAM Ads, a very successful Incentive driven affiliate network. I’m posting up this BLAM Ads review because they have recently launched their 3.0 version of their Content Locking Gateway. It’s quite amazing and I wanted to give you a little tour and tell you a little about it.

How can you make money with their content locking gateway and incentive offers?

1) Very easily. In fact, all you have to do is login their backend pictured below and select the offer you want to run over your content and it will generate the code in 2 seconds for you.

2) Configure the settings in the boxes and you now have a template that you can use. Here’s an example of a very basic template that you can setup with BLAM.

3) Slap the code right on your site and that will come up over your content.

How does this make you more money?

The incentive offers that pop up over your site, offer an additional layer of monitization. The content locking, literally ‘locks’ your content until they complete an offer. I find that a lot of people will complete those offers and in turn, it will make your content more valuable – because it seems harder to access.

Pretty simple isn’t it? People are making some serious bank cashing in on this method of monitization. A lot of affiliate marketers in particular are just used to the standard was of making money that they forget (or don’t know) how easy it is to setup a content based site and they used incentivized offers to cash in.

Sign up to BLAM then login to the Content Gateway here: http://gateway.blamads.com/affiliate

Enjoy your increased revenue, you can thank me later