Yes yes – I know I am late to the party with the Old Spice Buzz, but I must say first hand that Old Spice’s most recent, world famous, marketing campaign is by far the best advertising I have ever seen. From all angles, they successfully bridged the gap between television and social media marketing…raising the bar to a whole new level.

So what did they do that makes them so special? Well, let’s go over the Old Spice Marketing timeline and take an in depth look at how they won the hearts of millions of people all over the world.

The Beginning:

It ALL started Super Bowl weekend – with these 2 commercials:

Their are 3 very important aspects about these videos:

1.) It’s the same actor (Isaiah Mustafa) in each video, essentially branding him as a mascot for the company.

2.) The script itself is extremely funny.

3.) Isaiah Mustafa is actually a funny person and a great actor.

At this point, Old Spice just has a few good commercials they are advertising heavily, giving a good chuckle, which leads to the next point in the timeline.

The start of the buzz:

In early March, Isaiah Mustafa was featured on the Ellen DeGeneres show. During the show, Mustafa gains personal and company recognition by using his charm and swagger to win over the audience. Not only is this great for Mustafa’s career, but this is completely free advertising for Old Spice, on one of the most popular shows on television. Mustafa went on to appear on several other talk shows after this.

Capitalizing on Social Media:

This is truly where Old Spice separated themselves from having a great campaign, to taking the world by storm. At the beginning of July, they launched a Youtube campaign – responding to tweets coming to the Old Spice Twitter account. In these videos, Mustafa personally replies to tweets in his Old Spice commercial form, ranging from marriage proposals, to personal shout outs. An example of a few are below:

These responses, are not only funny, but also creates a huge connection between consumers and the company. The opportunity to have “THE” Old Spice spokesperson take the time out of his day to talk to YOU gives users that special feeling of “The Old Spice Guy is the man!”, and most likely makes a person’s day. Once word got out that Old Spice was doing this, the viralbility of these videos literally exploded with millions of views a day. TONS of tweets, followers, comments and praise all came with it. And yes, all for much cheaper than the cost of a TV commercial.

Spread of the Buzz

Perhaps the MOST valuable part of all of this is the community reaction to the videos. There have been thousands of parody videos popping up on Youtube modeling after the Old Spice commercials. A great example of this was done by the BYU Marketing department trying to advertise their library usage.

This is all FREE marketing. Millions upon millions of views for free. Yes, it may be done in a joking manner, but everyone knows what company the videos are a parody of, and more importantly, it imprints the brand into a consumer’s brain.

Final thoughts:

Old Spice does an incredible job at building a connection with their consumers. We have recently seen how much social media has helped the careers of celebrities such as Ashton Kutcher and Chad Ocho Cinco. What’s even more interesting is that what Old Spice did is not all too hard to replicate. Companies who reach out to their target market, and create a type of personalization between the company and consumer will simply be more liked in general. I personally WANT to see Old Spice succeed after seeing their efforts to reach out to their consumers. My personal opinion is that body wash is body wash. It’s basically the same thing regardless of companies, and all runs for around the same price. When I am at the store picking out my soap, it really doesn’t make a difference to me what kind I get, and I simply rely on my personal bias to make my purchase decision. Being said, next time I’m at the store, I’m sure you can guess which soap I’m going to chose

I want to thank you all for your amazing feedback and bug finding. We are actively fixing every single bug we find as they come in. We are also in the process of developing a HUGE feature list that we have yet to make public. These are all the most requested features suggested by our users. I think that they will take our interface to an entirely new level.

Note to pending users: We are letting people in as we feel would be most beneficial to the userbase. I’ve been trying to respond to each individual email, however this weekend I received 172 emails requesting account approval, so I figured I’d throw up a quick note on the blog just in case I couldn’t get back to you all.  I will be enabling a few hundred more accounts early this week.

To create an account and take part in the Bevo Media Beta check out http://beta.bevomedia.com. We are looking to have the interface in an open beta stage within the very immediate future!

Click here to find out more information regarding Bevo Media.

Thanks to good old Facebook, I couldn’t help but realize that the Syracuse graduation was this past week (my undergrad). This caused me to reflect a bit, based on my time from when I graduated school to where I am now. I will say that my life now is probably the polar opposite from college… for better or for worse. As a disclaimer, this post is based off my own experiences in both the business and social worlds, which may have been very different than other people’s experiences…based on how I see the world.

Point #1: DON’T FALL INTO THE AMERICAN TRAP! American society, as we know it, instills this SICK trap into the education system making 99% of the world destined for mediocrity. When you were growing up, everyone always said to you,  ”You can do whatever you want with your life! The sky is the limit etc. etc.” Then, suddenly, you get to college and all you think about, and general advice you receive, revolve around, “being good enough to get an entry level job.” Or worse, “Just find SOMETHING, some job….anything!” Whatever happened to those hopes and dreams?

So often in college, students stress about grades so they can “get a good job with a high paying salary”. Unfortunately, anyway you look at it, 99.999% of undergrads are going to have a horrible paying, entry level job coming out of college. The mindset: “I just need a few years and I’ll have enough money to do my own thing, to pursue my DREAM.” Well, guess what? In a few years, you will be getting a raise, and your mindset will then shift to, “I can’t quit now, I’ve worked my ass off to get this promotion, I’ll keep going for just another 2 year or so.” By this time, you’re already 27-28 years of age, likely have a whole life setup, with friends, family, girlfriend/boyfriend, and dare I say a child?… Yes, actual responsibility. The problem with these responsibilities is that they require monetary support. At this point, it makes NO sense to quit your job, as you are risking ruining people’s lives. You keep moving up the “corporate chain” and next thing you know, you’re 50 years old, your life is 70% over, and you’ve been bossed around pretty much your entire life. Another DISCLAIMER: Your goal might very well be to “climb the corporate ladder and be a ‘big boss” someday. This post still applies to you because to actually stand out in your profession, you will have to make an aggressive move sooner or later. You’ll have to do something that veers off the “path of mediocrity.”

Anyway, this, my friends, is the American Trap. I worked very hard (maybe “I worked very smart” is a more appropriate phrase) to ensure that I do not fall into this trap. Once you fall into it, it requires an extremely risky move to get out of. So do yourself a favor, recognize it, and avoid as much as humanly possible. This brings me to my next point, which is KEY to avoiding ‘it.”

Point #2: WORK ON BUILDING YOUR VALUE DURING YOUR FREE TIME: This where I feel I had my biggest realization. All throughout high school and college, I used my free time perfecting an internet marketing hobby. This hobby lead to me being pretty damn good at search marketing, which lead into money, and ultimately led into bootstrapping Bevo Media, which is now my life. Keyword: [MY LIFE]. Not answering to anybody but myself. In the meantime, everyone in college who used their free time to play video games, play the guitar, and do whatever else college kids with too much time on their hands do, are now pissed off at the world because they have to start at the bottom of totem pole. If those students would have just used that free time to develop a skill extremely well, they could have used that skill as leverage and experience going into the work force. This leads into point #3.

Point #3: YOUR VALUE IS DEFINED BY YOUR EXPERIENCE. The reason why first year graduates get paid such a low salary is because, as bad as it sounds, that’s basically what you are worth in the profession. 90% of what you need to know, you learn on the actual job. College is beneficial for the most basic aspects of your job, however, the true value of college is throwing a kid out there on their own and seeing if they can *make it through alive* with all sorts of obstacles thrown their way. Anyone who’s been through college knows that the vast majority of students study the day before the exam, take the test from mere memorization, then forget everything the next day. The only way you truly understand the concepts of your profession is to experience it firsthand.  Obviously, someone who has been doing the same job for 9 years is more valuable to a company than some new college graduate who has only proven that they have good interview skills. This is why developing a useful skill during your free time can be so powerful (Point #2).

Point #4: YOU’RE NOT ENTITLED TO ANYTHING. As horrible as it may sound, aside from your family and really close friends, nobody really cares about you or your feelings until you’ve accomplished something in life. There are 7 BILLION people in this world. Yes, BILLION, and you are just a single one of them. Realize this, and see it as a challenge.  Make it a point to be better than everyone else. Don’t accept mediocrity.  So many kids these days think that they are magically going to become rich but don’t even take the time to map out how these “dreams” of theirs can become a reality. NEWSFLASH: You need a game plan and unbelievable determination to achieve your goals. It’s easy to just “keep going” in life, but if you really want to make something of yourself, explode forward, get off your ass, stop complaining and actually DO SOMETHING to make people care.

Point #5: REFLECTION IS KEY: The only experience in life that is truly harmful is one that you haven’t learned something from. It doesn’t matter if it’s a good or bad experience; make it a point to reflect on how you felt during the experience and what you learned from it. You will begin to correlate those experiences with a similar situation in the future. You will find that this will give you a much better idea of how to handle yourself. This is called maturity, and in the long run, you will find yourself much better off because of it.

I am adamant in my belief that your life is a culmination of a few vital, life defining moments that ultimately leads to your destiny (destiny, by the way, is self-constructed.) Everything leads to your goals and your dreams. Each day is just a step forward. Graduation is one of those life defining moments. Do NOT just go with the flow. Take the time and develop your goals. After you have these goals, develop your plan. Finally, revolve your WHOLE LIFE around this plan, and strive for that euphoric moment of achievement.

Azoogle has accommodated me time and again, whether it’s going to the Playboy Mansion, World Series tickets, a Kindle, or showing a good time. Azoogle has hooked me the heck up!

For those of you who don’t already know, Azoogle is having another Party at the Playboy Mansion this upcoming August. As an attendee last year, I can definitely say that it is worth working for! You can see more information about the party here. PS: Notice the posterboy in the video

http://themansion2010.com/

Everything is back and ready in its entirety. A Lesson to everyone out there: Don’t host your sites on crappy shared hosting, I sure know I wont be doing that again

It’s a big week over here in the Bevo office. The platform has been under intense beta testing, with some big news coming early next week that we decided to keep quiet until the last minute. Stay tuned and thanks to all eager beta testers

-RB

Local Lead Gen is a great business to get into, especially for internet marketers. With the skill set of affiliate marketing, and the unsaturated local markets, local lead gen is a great way to build a solid business that can be sustained and consistent (lack of consistency is often the problem with affiliate marketing).

I have been doing local lead gen for a while now, and have some solid clients. It’s a great gig. You bring people leads, they pay you for leads, they convert the leads and everybody wins.

However, it seems that local lead gen has become a sort of trend in the internet marketing industry. This is great, because there are plenty of local markets to go around for everybody. But, there is one common misconception and that is that local lead gen is easy. Local Lead Gen is not easy! There are a few things everybody thinking about getting into local lead gen should know.

1. Find Clients: Finding clients is not as easy as walking into a local business and saying, “hey, I’m an internet marketer and you can use my help.” Finding clients is probably the hardest part of the process. You need to convince them that you can deliver leads, and then, once those leads are delivered, they need to know that the leads are good. This brings me to my next point.

2. Determine what constitutes a lead: In affiliate marketing, you are paid per action. You, and your potential client, will need to decide what constitutes an action. Do you they want a phone call? Do they just want someone to request more information? Do they want to make the sale and then pay you a percentage? This is another tricky aspect of local lead gen.

3. Make sure you deliver good leads: Typically, in order to get a good client to understand your value, you will need to bring them some good leads right off the bat. This can be tricky. It’s hard to prove to a business that the leads they bought from you are leads that convert into sales for them, especially since you will most likely not be in control of completing the sale. They might blame you even though it was them who botched the conversion. Remember, it’s not like affiliate marketing. There is no network to eat the cost if the company isn’t satisfied with there leads.

4. Track your leads: It is of the utmost importance that you track your leads efficiently. There are tons of ways to do this. At this point, most companies have websites. You will have to decide if you want to use their website, which can lead to you needing to rely on whoever manages the website to make changes, put in pixels or anything else you request, or, you can create your own sort of landing page. Additionally, you can set up special phone numbers or email addresses that prove the leads came from you. Essentially, what you need to do is figure out a way to ensure that the leads that came from you are accredited to you. Also, you want to put the leads in the best position possible to convert. As I mentioned before, you usually aren’t in control of the conversion but the better you make the chance of that conversion, the more money you will get out of the company.

Every company wants costumers. All you need to do is convince them that you can deliver. It’s easier said than done, trust me. The internet is still foreign to most local business owners, and they will most likely not understand exactly what it is you are doing. But with Facebooks new ad rules, Adwords love/hate relationship with affiliates, and the end of rebills…local lead gen is a great way to build a good business that is scalable and consistent.

The biggest problem newbies experience, is that after spending hours developing a solid landing page, getting a keyword list, finding the best offers, and coming up with a solid ad variation – they run their campaign, blow through their money without a single lead to show for it. They then quit on their campaign as they haven’t even sniffed a positive result from hours of effort. This happens to almost everyone – so don’t worry! The following is a list of key points that all newbies should strive to attain, and to know when their campaign really wasn’t a waste of time:

1.) Make sure you have a good niche! How can you expect to get hundreds of leads a day when you don’t even know if there is that many people looking to buy your product? Sure you can be the first to exploit a niche, but leave that to the big guys. If you are just starting out, you don’t need to make things any harder than they have to be.

2.) Find the leads! Regardless if you spent $100 or $1000 on your campaign, if you haven’t generated any leads – then all you know is that atleast ONE variable within your keywords, landing page, offers, ad variations, bid price, and ad position combination does NOT work. You need to distinguish what variables need adjustments and which doesn’t, and the only way to do this is to compare results between what is working. The problem is that if you don’t have any leads to use with your data – it’ll be very hard to make adjustments because in essence – you have no idea what is working. The first step in the right direction is to FIND as many leads as you can, and try to optimize your efforts to more leads in that realm. This is why it’s important to make sure you are promoting a hot niche. You KNOW the leads are out there… Go find them!

3.) Don’t give up – I can’t stress this enough. The only real money you lose is when you don’t learn from your mistakes. Keep grinding until you’ve tried every combination of keywords, ad variations, landing page, offers, position and bid price as you can.

The big thing ALL newbies should know, is that if you just keep at it, you will hit your campaign! Even if it takes 20 swings until you hit, that hit will be ever so sweet. Once you hit your first campaign, everything starts to make alot more sense in your mind, and your experience starts to kick in. Affiliate marketing is like developing an extra muscle in your brain. It’s tough at first, but once you get the hang of it – it becomes much easier to hit more campaigns. Enjoy the ride!

When mentoring publishers, I am often asked what is the biggest difference between when I started, and where I am at now. The answer, although seems quite simple, is actually what I believe is the key to success in this industry. I’ve been doing online marketing for quite some time (started in 2001) in all the different aspects of internet marketing and became really serious about search marketing specifically about 4 years ago. Below are some points based on my personal reflection between me now and then:

1.) Start campaigns with $1000 to spend, not $100! When I was starting off, I did the common mistake of depositing $100 into my Adwords account, and seeing where that got me. After I blew through the money in an hour, I would freak out and call my campaign a failure. This is HARDLY the case. There is a TON of trial and error in campaigns, especially when starting off. One ad group may get creamed and lose $80, while your other ad group may get a ton of leads for $20. The important thing to realize is that your statistics are worthless unless you have enough data to prove they do or do not work. 20 clicks and no conversions on an offer that pays $50 a lead does NOT mean it’s a failure. What happens if 2 clicks in a row convert? All the sudden your “failed” campaign is a huge success. It is important to make sure your keywords have atleast 70-100 clicks each before you make any decisions. In most cases, this will require more than $100 for your campaign to figure out. I’d say closer to $1000. Once I started depositing more money into my Adwords accounts, I started finding that MOST of my campaigns were actually having some sort of avenue to profitability. I found my converting keywords/ad variation combinations and scaled my traffic. This was only possible because I had put the proper amount of money into trial and error.

2.) If you’re not a designer, don’t create your own landing pages! There’s nothing wrong with admitting that a professional landing page designer is better at designing landing pages than you. Realize this, and accept it. A solid landing page increases your chances at success substantially. If you are truly serious about trying to succeed at online marketing, do it the right way. Spend the $100 and get your page done by someone who knows what they are doing. It could be the difference between your campaign hitting, or missing.

3.) Develop a healthy disregard for money. Don’t stress over a loss. Look at the situation similar to a college education. You are paying to learn. Be sure to reflect on every swing at a campaign, and develop a conclusion from your attempt. Document what you learn. The only way you really lose money, is if you don’t learn something new.

4.) Scale like CRAZY!!! If you find a particular keyword or niche that is working, SCALE! Do not hold anything back. Go after every single engine, every single language possible. Examine new traffic sources. You need to milk every cent of profit from you findings. You will find yourself in regret for not doing this when your niche dies down. Don’t leave a cent left on the table!

5.) Track your results thoroughly! This is the main reason why I made Bevo Media. I always found it a pain to track my results thoroughly, however it is of the utmost importance. I mean much more than tracking your keywords too. You should track your landing page and ad variations thoroughly. I built Bevo Media based on my needs as an affiliate marketer, and once I started tracking my results thoroughly with it, I found it much easier to draw conclusions about the aspects of my campaign that were successful, and optimized from there.

6.) DO NOT GIVE UP! A full time affiliate marketer, may as well be considered a full time ‘trial and error’ expert. 90% of the game is trial and error. Just keep trying different combination of keywords, landing pages, offers and ad variations. You are bound to hit eventually. Use your resources, such as your affiliate managers to let you know what niche is hot at the time. If you have a niche that is proven to be converting extremely well at the moment, then you know it’s working for somebody. It’s just the matter of figuring out the right combination within you campaign!

These are all points that have cost me both time and money to realize, and feel all newbies can get a jump start to success from my sharing. Do yourself a favor and take these points seriously. Don’t cut corners. Affiliate marketing is a dream job, but it’s still a job. Strive to be the best, but you need to earn it first. Lazy people do NOT succeed in life, no matter what the situation is. So work hard and celebrate after!

-RB

Enjoy!