What Eric Learned From Meeting A Marketing School Fan Live

0:00All right. So we're going to talk about what I learned from meeting a marketing school fan live. And Neil, you can share some experiences too. But I was at an event last week and I was waiting to go to dinner. I was calling an Uber and a guy who he leads an affiliate marketing operation. It's more in the gambling space. He's like, Eric. And then he basically walked up to me like he knew me. And he just started talking like we were best friends. And we ended up going to the same dinner together. And this guy operates a significant operation. We're talking it does 60, 70 million a year, just affiliate gambling, right?

0:34And good for him. And he likes to say that he learned all the marketing stuff he learned initially from us because he comes from a finance background. He's more of like a CFO type. But he was the guy that's funny enough, he was driving marketing throughout his organization, telling them the things that we talk about on the pod to do. And so what I find interesting is that as we're sitting together leaving, it's not so much tooting our own horn, but it's more so like when I meet people in the... I don't know if it's like, oh yeah, I used to listen to your stuff. It's like, I listened to your stuff in the past.

1:04And this is the best because it means that you listened and you want to do. Because a lot of the stuff sometimes will be repeating our philosophies. And most of the times when we see people complaining, it's like, oh, but what have you actually done? What have you actually gone out there and implemented? And this guy implemented and this guy is still a fan, right? And I think that's an example of success with podcasts sometimes, especially if it's a teaching podcast like this. Well, this is a totally side note. But yeah, it's great meeting fans and it's great learning from them as well. Just like you guys learn from us.

1:39I've learned from our fans as well or our listeners. I shouldn't say the word fans, more so listeners. But you want to know what's funny with that guy who's doing affiliate marketing? I think affiliate marketers are going to get crushed by AI. Because check this out. You saw the latest changes to Google search, right? In the videos and their own blog posts about it. It's very specific. Like I'm looking for a bike that can help me commute five miles to work with Hills. And they just give you a list of bikes. And then you can even filter. And it links directly to the e-commerce store. Affiliates are cut out.

2:11Uh-huh. And then it ends up, you can filter just like you would filter on the e-commerce store. Be like, filter the color red and I want an e-bike. But it's more so you do a follow-up question. You'd be like, I want a red bike and I want it to also be an e-bike. And then it'll filter all this stuff for you. Why the heck do you need to read these affiliate articles now? And you know what? This creates a better experience. This is better for companies who are looking to do organic marketing because you're just going to end up having your results there. And it's better for paid because the queries are so in-depth and so long tail, right?

2:43When most people think long tail, they think three, four word characters. I'm talking about people typing in 10 plus word phrases that your conversion rate is going to be much higher because it's very specific on what people are looking for. Heck, you can say, I'm looking for a bike that helps me commute to work. It's a five-mile journey in bad weather, snow, and uphills. And I want the price tag to be under$1 ,000. And it needs to be reliable and red in color. And you're getting so specific and it's just showing you the best ones and reviews and ratings. It's a better version of these affiliate articles that are out there.

3:19I was linking to Good Housekeeping in one of my articles that I was breaking this down. But I think like those affiliate sites are just going to get crushed. Yeah. Hey, and at that point, maybe the affiliate market needs to come back and listen to marketing school. But there's two points here, right? The two points here is when you listen to this pod, go out there and implement and don't complain about. Please don't complain that sometimes we share the same philosophies because we do. It's literally a stream of consciousness and it's how we think. And we'll share reactions. We'll share our thoughts with how things are going in the world.

3:47And we'll share new trends. Maybe sometimes we'll bring on guests. So we'll try to be dynamic there, but we're really counting on you to go out there and implement. That's what's going to make us the happiest. And so what do you do or not? It doesn't really affect us. The other thing is, it makes a lot of sense for you to go out there and create content. Like when you listen to a podcast, our retention rates on this pod are anywhere from 85 to 90 % or so. And that's really high. And so this guy that came up to me, it worked out well because it's like he was instantly friends with me. And so if you can build relationships with people at scale, then that's why a podcast or a YouTube channel makes a lot of sense.

4:20You're doing it for the long term and you're doing it not to have thousands or hundreds of thousands of fans. I think that starts to become hard to manage. But if you have like a hundred solid friends that understand what you're trying to do and they're motivated, I think that's invaluable. Totally agree. Well, that's it for this episode. Thank you guys for listening. We'll see you tomorrow.