Starting next week, expect issues to come more timely and consistently.

There is a lot to cover, so let’s jump in!

Friends of the Pod

Podcast listening growth continues: Mobile app usage up 60% since January 2018, study finds — Marketing Land

marketingland.com

The majority (60%) of listeners surveyed said they looked up a service or product after hearing it advertised on a podcast, and 25% reported that they ended up making the purchase.

Social & Search

Study Claims Instagram Engagement Has Been in Decline Since May — Search Engine Journal — www.searchenginejournal.com

According to the study, brands are suffering from this decline in engagement as well as individual influencers.

Fashion influencers went from a maximum engagement rate of 4.3% on February 17 to a minimum of 2.4% on June 20

That represents a 44% decline in engagement, meaning influencers were reportedly hit harder than brands.

E-commerce ad spend on search and social product ads keeps growing — Search Engine Land

searchengineland.com

E-commerce advertisers spent 39% of their search budgets on Shopping campaigns and 37% of their social budgets on product ads in the third quarter of the year, according to new Kenshoo data.

EMarketer: Amazon search ads will cut into Google’s market share | Marketing Dive — www.marketingdive.com

Amazon’s revenue from search ads will jump 65% to $11.7 billion by 2021 as the e-commerce giant takes a bigger slice of Google’s market share in the U.S., eMarketer said in a forecast shared with Marketing Dive. Google’s share will slip to about 71% by 2021 from 73% this year as internet users turn to Amazon to start product searches, boosting its share of U.S. search ad revenue to 16% from 13% for the comparable periods.

Amazon is the only company whose share of the U.S. search market will grow over the next few years, having already surpassed Microsoft to be the second-biggest ad platform for search.

Of course, YouTube remains the second largest search engine, but their ads fall into a different category than search.

Also, note the episerver.com article below that looks specifically at trends in the apparel industry, which differ from this trend.

Fighting Instagram’s $1.3 Billion Problem — Fake Followers | WIRED — www.wired.com

Has the influencer bubble burst?

The fake followers would fit in anywhere: padding out an obscure microinfluencer’s ranks, creating the illusion of customers for a would-be T-shirt seller, skulking among legions of real fans on celebrity accounts like Ellen DeGeneres’. A report by cybersecurity firm Cheq projects that these fake fans will cost brands $1.3 billion in 2019 alone. In the influencer economy, you’re paid in part for the size of your audience, which means that, if an influencer’s account is swarming with fake followers, brands are paying extra to reach people who don’t exist.

Agencies and would-be sponsors know they’re being scammed, and are growing more vigilant. “In the last few years, we’ve started holding influencers accountable in their contracts,” says Gabrielle Vogt, senior manager of digital talent at influencer marketing agency HelloSociety. “They have to agree that they haven’t participated in comment pods, botting, or purchasing fake followers.” Let’s break down these forms of fakery. “Comment pods” (or “engagement pods”) are groups of influencers who agree to like and comment on each other’s posts to artificially drive up engagement and improve their algorithmic performance. “Botting” is using automated fake accounts — bots — to bolster an audience, à la the Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency. In their contemporary form, “fake followers” are often real people, just not always the person they say they are, and, of course, not someone who is an actual fan (and hence, potential customer).

Holiday Recap

Holiday Online Shopping Trends 2019: Retailers Win with Customer Centricity — www.episerver.com

This report from Episerver provided some great insight on the upcoming holiday season, including:

Of the gifts online shoppers will buy this year, 42 percent expect to purchase all or most of them via Amazon. However, the majority (47 percent) will buy few or none of their gifts via Amazon. Retailers can compete by offering personalized, customer-centric experiences.

And…

When it comes to apparel shopping, more consumers turn to a brand or retailer’s website (43 percent) than Google (29 percent) or Amazon (30 percent).

PwC: 54% of consumers to shop online for the holidays | Retail Dive — www.retaildive.com

The long march to mobile continues:

While 36% of the Greatest Generation and Baby Boomer shoppers plan to shop online via their personal computers, 22% of Gen X shoppers will shop via their personal computers, and 21% of millennials and Gen Z consumers will do the same. Eighteen percent of Gen X shoppers will shop on their mobile phones, and 22% of millennials and 19% of Gen Z consumers will do the same.

And as we have discussed before, offline retail is far from dead. But mediocre retail is wearing a DNR bracelet.

But the in-store shopping experience isn’t dead among younger shoppers. PwC’s research also found that 60% of young shoppers will go out of their way for a superior shopping experience.

Just For Fun

Founders of Successful Tech Companies Are Mostly Middle-Aged — The New York Times — www.nytimes.com

After stripping identifying information, the government provided the researchers with a data set including 2.7 million business founders. The researchers calculated that the founders’ average age was 42. And for the founders of the 0.1 percent fastest-growing firms, the average age was 45. Firms that were successful enough to have an initial public offering or be acquired by a larger company showed the same pattern: Their founders were generally middle-aged.

Netflix ships milestone 5 billionth disc — CNET — www.cnet.com

Netflix still ships a million discs each week. 🤯

Every week I summarize the most important stories, trends, & commentary in #eCommerce marketing — and deliver them directly to your inbox. Don’t let ‘busy’ be the enemy of ‘informed’. Subscribe today!

Amazon is no longer what it seems. And brands that are not paying attention will soon learn that the hard way.

By Rob Bettis

In the early 2000’s, I had a first row seat as dozens of e-commerce retailers began their slow but certain decent into irrelevance. I wrote about that experience in a previous post).

In short, Amazon exposed the reality that most e-commerce retailers were peddling commodities — identical products that were available from so many indistinguishable retailers they could only be distinguished by price. Amazon was built to sell commodities, so like a boa constrictor it wrapped itself around the competition and began to squeeze.

Since that time, new trends have emerged. Many retailers have taken the, “If you can’t beat ’em, join ‘em” approach. And many brands (and retailers) are even relying on Amazon for a significant percentage of their online sales.

Amazon is the self-proclaimed ‘everything store.’ More and more online shoppers are starting their search on Amazon. And Amazon Prime is a mainstay of wealthy American households.

82% of households with $112,000+ incomes subscribe to Amazon Prime.

Despite the ‘Marketplace’ branding of their platform, if they are still a marketplace, it is a corrupt one. Amazon is no longer in the business of democratizing retail. Outsourcing the hard work of building an online brand to Amazon is a naïve and deadly move.

Amazon no longer provides a neutral platform for retailers. What once was a may-the-best-man-win, free-market digital shopping center, is now tainted. But to take a deeper dive, let’s look at six other realities to brands selling on Amazon in 2018:

1. Amazon isn’t selling for you anymore, they are selling against you.

In recent months, Amazon has been aggressively rolling out white-labeled brands that compete in some of the biggest online product categories. Analysts estimate between 70–100 brands in total.

These are not just generic brands, a la Amazon Basics. These are full fledge brands targeted at very specific market segments. For example, their new furniture line Rivet has a striking resemblance to West Elm. Similarly, Stone & Beam was dropped right between Joanna Gaines’ Magnolia Home line and Pottery Barn.

If you are farming fertile ground in Amazon’s “marketplace”, don’t be surprised if the competition heats up soon. Amazon spokespeople told the New York Times its:

…overarching goal is to provide customers a wide range of products and brands.

It doesn’t sound like this trend will stop anytime soon. 🚩

2. Amazon’s brands increasingly receive favoritism.

Not only is Amazon officially competing with your product, they are also stacking the odds against you. Stores having their own brands is not a new concept. Target (Up & Up and Market Pantry), Publix (Greenwise), and Walmart (Equate and Great Value) have been offering competing brands in their stores for decades. But when was the last time you saw an end-cap of Great Value products at Walmart? You don’t. Retail brands, many of whom pay good money for prime shelf position, wouldn’t stand for it.

So why do brands allow it to happen online?

Amazon has recently started plugging their own brands all over the place — most notably through search filters and advertising. We also see favoritism play out via “Best Seller” and “Amazon’s Choice” badges, as well as the bent shown towards Prime products through events like today’s Prime Day. Additionally, several of Amazon’s private-label products can only be purchased by Prime customers. 🚩

3. You are opening your books to your competition.

In a world where data is king, brands partnering with Amazon are voluntarily abdicating their thrones — to their competition, no less.

For years, the great hope of online retailers has been data — personalization and specificity in the sales funnel that cannot be matched by Amazon due to its scale. However, by outsourcing sales to Amazon, brands are giving up access to data and, instead, providing their competitor unfettered access to invaluable information including customers’ conversion paths.

The value of this data cannot be overstated. Although Google knows what folks are interested in and Facebook knows who they are, Amazon knows how they shop and what they buy.

NBC New’s Claire Atkinson put it this way:

For advertisers, the short-term opportunity that Amazon offers is offset by the realization that they could be providing the company with the data and market power it needs to eventually run them out of business.

Advertisers that spend money to display their products on Amazon’s search page give up data about their customers in return for sales, but those same marketers are also helping Amazon build a better mousetrap by learning more about customer intent.

Just imagine, a shopper buys your gourmet coffee through Amazon. Amazon knows when they bought it and what other brands they considered along the way. Amazon also knows that the average coffee buyer from that region places a repeat purchase on their platform every 30 days. A month later, that buyer begins to see ads for coffee. Is it your brand appearing in the ad? Perhaps. Or perhaps Amazon has a white-label brand they want to push instead. Or perhaps a competing brand has better margins or better inventory. Perhaps your brand is nowhere to be seen. 🚩

4. You are still in a race to the bottom.

I have counseled several brands who are attempting to sell their product on Amazon, but who are being undercut on price by retail no-names. Ignoring the value of buying direct from the manufacturer, if a customer buys on Amazon, the merchant is chosen by algorithm.

Price, inventory, and seller performance metrics all factor into which retailer wins the ‘Buy Box’. The notion of prestige pricing is widely unwelcome in the Amazon ecosystem. This gives fly-by-night retailers a competitive edge with their counterfeit products and illegitimate reviews — both of which are easy to implement when you do not have a brand reputation to manage.

All of these factors encourage a race to the bottom, both in terms of price and quality, which is great for consumers…until it becomes terrible. 🚩

5. There is a growing cost to hitting bottom.

It’s never a good thing to trust the middle man on the internet.

Remember when brands were pouring significant resources into growing their Facebook fans? Before long, Facebook updated their algorithm so a small percentage of fans were able to see brand posts unless, of course, the brand wanted to pay to ‘boost’ the posts. Suddenly that valuable asset transformed from a one-time cost to a subscription model. You are welcome to communicate to “your” fans as long as you pay every step of the way.

Amazon is notoriously known for cutting out the middle man. However, they have become the ultimate middle man themselves.

I’m talking about advertising.

In the first quarter of 2018, Amazon reported revenue for its “other” segment, which is primarily advertising, rose 139%, to $2 billion.

Retailers shouldn’t only be worried about encroaching white-label products, but also getting Facebook’d. It is reasonable to expect the not-too-distant future of selling on Amazon will include not only a race to the bottom in terms of price & quality and the significant transition fee structure, but also the need to pay for your product to be found in the first place.

If you don’t believe me, just consider the media conglomerate Amazon is building. Amazon’s sales team is currently selling ads on the homepage of Amazon Fire tablets, Kindle e-readers and their movie database site, IMDB.com. Of course, there is also their television streaming platform Prime Video, which provides a very traditional channel for advertising monetization.

Amazon is also primed (pun intended) to bring advertising to their recent acquisition, Twitch, a popular online service for watching and streaming digital video broadcasts. Lest we forget Alexa, Amazon’s voice assistant that dominates its market. Although there is not currently advertising through Alexia, it’s coming. And in the meantime, as a sign of things to come, Amazon is already favoring Amazon brands in Alexa’s e-commerce capabilities. 🚩

6. You are commoditizing your brand.

According to a study by Jumpshot, brands with the largest market shares on Amazon are barely edging out their competitors. In other words, brands competing on Amazon have no market share advantages. The differentiation between brands’ market share on Amazon and off suggests Amazon shoppers have no brand loyalty. This is a huge problem for brands, who are increasingly relying on Amazon as a sales channel.

In short, retailers may be getting sales, but they are not getting customers. Retailers are not building their brand. They are building Amazon’s brand for them. The customers do not belong to the brand. They belong to Amazon. 🚩

For these reasons, I am concerned for brands leveraging Amazon has a key partner in their online retail initiatives. On the jungle floor of the internet, too many retailers are sitting by, docile, as Amazon once again wraps around them and begins to squeeze.

Rob Bettis is an independent digital marketer helping boutique eCommerce brands build bigger, better businesses online with PPC media.

Every week he summarizes the most important stories, trends, & commentary in eCommerce marketing — and delivers them directly to your inbox.

Don’t let ‘busy’ be the enemy of ‘informed’. Subscribe today!

This post was originally published at robbettis.com.

As freelancers, we walk a lonely road. And much like the person stranded in the desert for whom a mirage appears, we too can believe things that just aren’t true. These are the 3 biggest lies that have held me back in my career as an independent worker.

Good Customer Service Requires Doing Things Outside Of My Expertise

One of the biggest traps for us as freelancers — and most small businesses for that matter — is stretching outside of our area of expertise to satisfy a client.

We are looking for someone to do all of the things you offer, plus [insert the blank].

Somehow clients combine a need for two distinct services.

We need new copy written for our website…and for you to also design some infographics each month.

Or…

We need you to add some features to our Wordpress website…and move all of our email from Exchange to G Suite.

Or…

We need you to take some headshots for our company…and make a team page on our website to host the photos.

Our inner monologue starts pushing us to agree…even though our gut knows better.

If I say ‘no’, they will find someone else who will do it.

Fast forward a few months and our relationship with that client has soured. The great work we have provided (within our trade) has been overshadowed by our inability to execute on the other thing. Or perhaps we did a terrible job pricing the other service and we are both losing money and doing something we hate. We are struggling to stay afloat and kicking ourselves for believing the lie.

I Should Charge Less.

As freelancers, the worst negotiation happens between our ears the night before the proposal is due. We beat ourselves down on price before we get to the negotiation table.

And once it comes time to present, or to start the real negotiations, we have already communicated we don’t value our own work and we are not confident in the value we bring.

Regardless how the proposal goes, we have already lost the negotiation.

They Need Someone Better Than Me.

Imposter syndrome is alive and well in the freelance world. We find a hot prospect and as we unpack the project with them, we start to doubt if we have what it takes.

Maybe I won’t be able to hit the style they are seeking. Maybe our personalities won’t jive. Maybe they need someone with more experience. Maybe they need someone better than me.

I think this lie undermines freelancers of all experience levels. The best advice I can give is this — it’s not your place to make that call. It’s the client’s decision. If they think you are good enough, so should you. If you are honest with them and they choose you, be confident. They chose you!

If you are an independent worker (or aspiring to be), I would encourage to you sign up for the Unfederated newsletter. It is my weekly publication of great content just like this post. It is packed full of wisdom & encouragement for independent folks just like us.

My wife is a Realtor. Over the years, she has met many aspiring Realtors who ask her about her career:

Can you be a successful Realtor working part-time?

I love my wife’s response.

Real estate isn’t a part-time job and it’s not a full-time job. It’s an all-the-time job.

The same can be said about being a freelancer. Without the luxury of a staff back at the office, I find myself working from so many random places.

Staying productive on the road is a serious challenge and a challenge independent workers must solve.

Last week, I was traveling with one of my clients. Subsequently, I wanted to take a moment and review the tools I use to stay productive on the go.

Hardware

• I recently bought an iPad Pro (10.5) that has been a phenomenal addition to my tool box. Because it has a cellular card, I am no longer constrained by internet. I can work from my car while my wife drives or use it for client meetings, without the awkwardness of asking for the guest wifi password — which no one seems to know.
• If I need to be productive from a public space, like a coffee shop, my Bose QuietComfort 35 headphones are invaluable. They provide excellent noise canceling, which I need to keep my easily-distracted-self focused.
• There is nothing worse that having to fight over empty outlets at the airport or cafe. That’s why I carry an Anker PowerCore 20100 portable charger in my bag. It can charge seven iPhones or one iPad Pro in a single charge. So it packs enough power to get all of my devices back to 💯.

Software

• Life on the road often means lots of public wifi. To keep your private data private, you need a trustworthy and fast VPN service. Our family uses Encrypt.me (iOS & Mac) and it has been a wonderful solution for many years.
• If you are working from a laptop and need iOS-level controls over which apps are gobbling up your precious data, look no further than Trip Mode. It is even great for slow WIFI. Trip Mode can do think like prevent Dropbox syncing from gobbling your bandwidth while you try to triage your inbox.
• While on the road, I often find myself working at abnormal times. However, to keep my client communication professional and timely, I use Newton (iOS & Mac) to schedule emails to send later. It’s a great way to space out communications to buy yourself time or to make sure you respond in the necessary timeframe — without taking attention away from your travel.
• Traveling is the best time to get caught up on podcasts. If you are still using the default Podcast app, you are missing out. Overcast is the best podcast player out there.
• I can’t tell you how many times Waze has saved me from serious delays on the roadways. It’s a free app and a no-brainer for any significant road trip.

Other

• To comfortably and securely tote my work station around the country, I use the GORUCK GR1 backpack. They are a badass company that makes badass products. My bag has been my daily-driver for 6 years and it still looks brand new.
• It’s a complete dad device, but if you have some driving to do, I would recommend investing in a car mount for your phone. There are dozens of options, but I use this one from Abaolux. It fits my car’s dash layout well and provides me with great screen visibility without having to take my eyes off the road — making it the perfect partner with Waze.

Safe (and productive) travels!

If you are an independent worker (or aspiring to be), I would encourage to you sign up for the Unfederated newsletter. It is my weekly publication of great content just like this post. It is packed full of wisdom & encouragement for independent folks just like us.

Suddenly, your web traffic and revenue were booming.

Before long, all of the other apparel designers were doing the same thing. Your web traffic and revenue normalized due to the increased competition.

Over time, the focus of your SEO efforts became less & less general and more & more specific.

`designer jeans`

`maternity designer jeans`

`maternity designer boyfriend jeans`

With each step towards specificity, you were aiming your target at a smaller segment of the overall search volume. But businesses could have a larger market share of that smaller segment — so it was worth it.

In the SEO industry, we call very specific keywords ‘long tail keywords’. Why?

With each passing day, small businesses move further and further down the curve. Retailers like Amazon, Target, & Walmart, with their enormous SEO teams and advertising budgets, gobble up all of the general traffic. But the long tail of the curve remains the Wild Wild West of internet traffic.

What does this have to do with freelancing? I’m glad you asked!

The trades we practice, the markets we occupy continue to become hyper-segmented. As businesses aim further out on the curve, they aim their focus at smaller targets.

Businesses are forming not just around selling mattresses, but selling mattresses to folks who want to buy one online.

…not around shaving products, but shaving products designed specifically for minorities.

…not just around selling coffee, but coffee grown specifically for brewing in an AeroPress.

This trend is continuing at a rapid pace. And this is a problem for small and medium-sized businesses and an opportunity for independents.

Freelancers are built for hyper-segmented markets. For many of us, we only need a handful of clients to sustain our business, so we can aim our focus way down the curve — in segments that are too small to sustain larger businesses who would require a much larger segment to justify their larger team and larger overhead.

Imagine a business environment where you only compete with other independents. That’s what we are talking about.

All of this to say, don’t be afraid to narrow your focus. More so, don’t be afraid to focus your business on a long tail segment.

Ride the wave.

You could become the foremost expert in your trade for that small segment of clients — creating incredibly loyal clients and making yourself irreplaceable.

Win-Win!

If you are an independent worker (or aspiring to be), I would encourage to you sign up for the Unfederated newsletter. It is my weekly publication of great content just like this post. It is packed full of wisdom & encouragement for independent folks just like us.

One of The Biggest Lessons I Learned In Transitioning To Full-Time Freelance

Moving from hectic, disorganized, and fast-paced work environments, my first year of full-time freelancing was full of adjustments.

I started building my client base before leaving my full-time gig. So when I took the step to full-time freelance, I had a firm foundation but also had some capacity.

The free time made my skin crawl. I felt like I wasn’t busy enough — like I was failing somehow. However, I was hitting all of my revenue goals. It was a dichotomy that took me a minute to reconcile.

In reality, I learned that much of what I had been doing during my ten years of corporate life was `fake work`. Things like:

1. Parkinson’s law says “work expands to fill the time available for its completion.” In an office setting, if you can finish your work early, bully for you! But politically, you still can’t leave until 5:15. So you make a 5-minute task take 15, or a 1-hour task take 2. Maybe not consciously, but you create overhead because there is no benefit to being efficient. You are not permitted to be caught up. At best, the benefit is getting to do more work. Neat…
2. Offices have managers, and if they are not micromanagers, there are parts of your work they do not intimately know. Subsequently, you must have meetings — time spent solely duplicating information. If you are fortunate, you may also be duplicating knowledge. But regardless, there is no additional output. Just more overhead.
3. In many of the career stops I have made, the hardest part of my job happened between my desk and the door to the office. The clients and the services we provided were easy. All of my time and mental energy went to cutting through bureaucracy, massaging the egos, catching up the laggards, and obtaining the permission of disconnected managers. Again, all of this time was spent without any additional output (or revenue) to show for it. #fakework

Now that I am a freelancer, I am free from the drivers of fake work. My work is work in its purest form.

Now, if I finish work early, I spend time with my wife and daughter.

Now, I only have external meetings, and I wrangle them all into one day per week. I am left with hours of uninterrupted time each week, allowing me to complete my work more efficiently.

Now, the marketplace is the only permission I need. The successes are my own, as are the failures. But because I can fail so much quicker, I can get to my successes sooner.

Most days I only work from 9:30–3:30. I still occasionally worry that is not enough, but those moments are fewer and fewer. As it turns out, when you cut out all of the fake work, you have a lot more time for real work — and more time for real life.

If you are an independent worker (or aspiring to be), I would encourage to you sign up for the Unfederated newsletter. It is a monthly publication and packed full of wisdom & encouragement for freelancing folks just like us.

Originally published at RobBettis.com on January 31, 2018.

As it relates to workflows, there are two types of freelancers.

There is the ‘set it and forget it’ freelancer, who set up their internal processes when they first began and have not changed anything since.

Then there is ‘the tinkerer.’ These freelancers are constantly testing a new & improved system for everything. They can quickly lose 4 hours of productivity on any given weekday, totally overhauling a workflow in the name of increasing productivity.

Ironic, huh?

In reality, neither approach is ideal.

As freelancers, it is essential for us to protect our productive hours. However, we must also leverage our agility as a competitive advantage — utilizing the latest technologies and SAAS tools to keep us lean and focused on the value we provide.

For these reasons, I set aside time at the end of each year as a season to reassess, improve, and solidify my workflows. As a tinkerer, it ensures I have an opportunity to test new solutions once per year — and only once per year — both protecting my productivity & keeping my workflows as efficient as reasonably possible. As a ‘set it and forget it’, it allows you to periodically put my finger on the pulse of the tools available to you — ensuring you remain lean & mean.

Plus, the new year is the perfect time to assess changes, because you can implement them on January 1st. Your accountant will thank you, and your tax preparation will be much easier (and likely cheaper) when you are not combining invoicing & time-tracking data from four different systems — not that I have ever been guilty of that. 🤥

As you reassess your workflows this new year, let me know what changes you are making in the comments below.

If you are an independent worker (or aspiring to be), I would encourage to you sign up for the Unfederated newsletter. It is a monthly publication and packed full of wisdom & encouragement for folks just like us.

One Thing Every Freelancer Should Do This Week was originally published in UnfederatedLife on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Sunday evening, October 1st, shots rang out above concert-goers, as Stephen Paddock fired down from his 32nd-floor Mandalay Bay hotel room. Before overtaken by police, the shooter would be responsible for the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history.

I awoke that Monday morning as I do most mornings, to the playful cries of our one-year-old daughter. As I laid in bed, gathering my bearings, I flipped through my phone to prepare for the day. This morning was different.

My feed was full of panicked and then (thankfully) affirming posts from my sister-in-law and brother-in-law, who were attending a country music festival in Las Vegas. They escaped, physically unharmed. I woke my wife to convey the news. Whenever you begin a story by proclaiming, “Everyone is okay, but…”, you know something has gone horribly wrong.

As terrifying as it was, the shooting in Las Vegas had all of the flash of a TV drama — the Las Vegas strip, a heavily-armed shooter bunkered in his hotel room, the festival crowd, the lights, the cameras, and the sirens. Throw in Nicolas Cage and a few explosions, and you have yourself a plot for a feature film. It’s no wonder news outlets swarmed like stink on shit, to maximize the coverage and (with all due respect to the victims) ratings of the horrific event.

Along with the news coverage, a firestorm of outrage towards gun-control laws, lobbyists, special interest groups, and politicians has erupted. How could they let this happen? How could they let this happen again?

(As a gun owning, Southern Republican, allow me to be clear: we need a better system. We need better screening for gun purchases. We need better mental health services. We need, as a society, to stop glamorizing violence. And anyone, Republican or not, who disagrees needs to get their head out of their ass. I happily took the classes, passed the tests, and paid the fees for my handgun carry permit. If those hurdles were ten times harder but eliminated events like last week’s shooting, that is fine with me. 100 percent.)

But with all of this said — and with absolutely no disrespect to those killed, injured, and emotionally scarred by Stephen Paddock — I am writing to tell you about another tragedy. There is another clear and present danger to Americans — one that is by some measures twenty times more deadly and has not seen news coverage like Las Vegas in 20 years.

In December, a day after playing golf with some friends, my father visited a walk-in clinic because he was having trouble breathing. He was soon admitted to his local hospital with pneumonia. After he did not respond to the pneumonia treatements, doctors performed a scope. The scope lead to the discovery of a lump in his lung. The following weeks were a blitz of hospitals, doctors, tests, and treatments.

As almost every doctor visited his hospital room, they asked the same routine questions — one of which I will never forget:

Sir, are you a smoker?

I used to be.

When did you quit?

On [insert date he was admitted to the hospital].

In the end, it was too late. In less than six weeks from the initial diagnosis, at 65 years young, my dad was gone.

Under a microscope, this tragedy looks much different than Las Vegas, Orlando, or a softball field near D.C. It does not have the flash. There is no blood in the streets, no unnamed shooter, no potential ties to terrorism, or no climatic ending. There is no press or moving national discourse. Instead, its victims die one-by-one — struggling breath-by-breath — in the solitude of hospital rooms all over the country.

Anticlimactically, of course, I am referring to cigarettes.

But before you click away, hear me out. Cigarettes are responsible for roughly one in every five deaths in the United States annually (via CDC).

What does this have to do with Las Vegas? Its impact is unfathomably larger.

Homicides

• In 2014, 8,124 people were killed due to gun-related homocides (via FBI study, the most recent year of available data).
• In the same year, over 41,000 people were killed as a result of second-hand smoke alone (via CDC).

(5 times more deadly.)

Suicides

• Over 21,000 lives are taken each year through gun-related suicides (via CDC).
• Cigarette smoking is responsible for more than 440,000 (self-inflicted) deaths per year in the United States (via CDC).

(20 times more deadly.)

In short, there are ~30,000 gun deaths (homicides & suicides) per year, compared to ~480,000 smoking-related deaths (first-hand & second-hand) per year . Cigarettes lead to 16 times more deaths than guns.

For additional reference: In the same year, 30,722 people died from alcohol-related causes and 28,647 from overdoses of prescription painkillers and heroin combined (via CDC) — both of which have received significantly more press in recent months.

According to a study cited by the Washington Post:

The study of more than 200,000 people, published this week in BMC medicine, found about 67 percent of smokers perished from smoking-related illness.

67%!

To put that into perspective:

• Roughly 103.3 million Americans either own a gun or live in a house with a gun. Comparing that to the roughly 30,000 gun-related deaths, the comparable percentage would be 0.03%. By this metric, cigarettes are 2,233 times more deadly.
• If we just look at Americans who have handgun carry permits (11.1 million, via CBS), that percentage is 0.37%.

So, What’s The Point?

While all of the outrage surrounding mass shootings is certainly warranted, I (selfishly) wish the outrage surrounding cigarettes was proportionately larger.

When we discuss guns, we speak of the need for greater accountability for those who sell them, greater health services for those who have them, better education for prevention of fatalities, and less cultural glamorization of their place in our world.

Knowing that most smokers start as minors, I wish cigarettes were proportionally more difficult to obtain.

Knowing how prevelant smoking is in public places (especially in the South), I wish those down wind would be proportionally more offended.

Knowing that cigarette companies are increasing the levels of nicotine in their product to keep their customer base committed, I wish this industry was proportionally more regulated.

Knowing that the great tobacco debate has largely fallen by the wayside, I wish we would renew the outcry with proportionally more ferver.

And knowing that a life is a life — that the souls lost to smoking are just a loved as those who take their life with a gun— I wish we would put the ‘they did this to themselves’ stigma behind and confront this multigenerational pandemic with proportionally more purpose, courage, and compassion.

With the release of MacOS 10.13 — High Sierra — Apple has updated Safari to include some technical barriers to tracking cookies. I’ll provide more thoughts on this move in a future post. But for now, I wanted to share 3 quick thoughts I jotted down bank in September 2015, when the iOS ad blocker debate first emerged:

• Ad-blockers failed at a fundamental level in their messaging. Just look at their names: 1Blocker, Blockr, Peace, and NoAds. They should have never positioned themselves as ad-blockers only. If Tivo came out as solely a ‘commercial blocker’, there would have been similar outrage by media companies. What if ad blockers had instead positioned themselves as a tool to speed up the mobile web. Very different.
• I’m surprised I haven’t seen more talk about ‘read it later’ services like Pocket and Instapaper. They have been blocking ads for years — with virtually no outrage. More so, there are so many comparisons between ‘read it later’ services and DVRs. However, these services positioned themselves as more than just ad avoiders. They provide additional value.
• Lastly, regardless of how publishers feel, people want to block ads because ads are annoying. Online ads, with the tracking tools that are available, should be great. They should (and can) deliver so much more value than other traditional advertising mediums — connecting shoppers with cool, personalized products that they want to buy, when they are shopping for them. However, online ads are largely done poorly and technically a wreck (slow-loading 3rd party javascript for days). When was the last time you purchased something online and then saw that company’s remarketing ads for weeks afterwards? That is lazy online marketing and one of many examples of how online ads are done poorly.

Everyone hates advertising in general, but we love advertising in particular. — Cindy Gallop

P.S. I a free-agent digital marketer who provides white-label SEM services to agencies, helping you super-serve your clients. If I can add value (or capacity) to your team, let’s schedule a time to chat.

P.P.S. It would mean the world to me if you would help spread this by clicking 👏🏼. And be the first to know of future posts by following me. 😘

This post was originally published on my blog.

What the Eff?!

If you have managed AdWords accounts for any significant time, you have likely found yourself in this familiar situation — a representative from Google has contacted your client directly, telling them that their account is underperforming and they want to help fix it.

The implication is that the situation is so dire that Google sought them out and called to help.

The Google rep offers a short-term, free service to optimize the account. Your client assumes you are negligent or incompetent. Any trust you have established with the client is suddenly in question. They are pissed they have paid you to underperform, and they gladly accept free help from the AdWords specialist.

Having managed a Google Premier Partner agency for a number of years, I have navigated this situation far too many times. I spoke with our Google Agency reps and anyone else who would listen. The calls kept coming, and my frustration led to an investigation.

• Where were these calls coming from?
• Why was Google undermining the very agency relationships they were attempting to cultivate through other teams?
• How could/should I respond to these situations when they occur?

Here Is The Deal.

After a lot of digging, I have discovered these calls typically come from “Google Offices” in Tempe, Arizona and Ann Arbor, Michigan.

The rep claims to work at Google, and they even have Google email addresses. But they do not work at Google or in a Google office.

They work for an independent agency with whom Google has a contract. The agency has Google employees on site, providing oversight. I suppose that allows them to pretend they all work for Google.

The agency was previously named Direct Alliance. But they have rebranded to Revana. They are headquartered in Tempe and have some presence in Michigan.

Having spoken to several former employees of the Tempe office, they are paid based on the new accounts and new ad spend they generate. So, they are absolutely incentivized to recreate accounts and optimize for spend (vs. results).

It’s SUPER sketch.

Why Would Google Do This?

Honestly? I have no idea.

I suppose I understand why Google would have people cold-calling business owners, looking to scrounge up new AdWords business. However, I do not understand why they would incentivize their sales force to setup poorly-performing (high spend, low results) accounts for clients. I would imagine this leaves a sour taste in the mouths of many business owners.

More so, I can not fathom why Google would allow these folks to call upon accounts that are under the management of certified Google Partners. Google has a whole agency team in their New York office who try to establish fruitful relationships with these agencies. This program largely undermines their purpose and the health of the Google Partner community as a whole.

How Should We Respond?

In the macro…

1. I am sharing this info to help other agencies falling victim to this scheme. If you have additional details to add, please add them in the comments below. I think the more information agencies have, the better they can protect themselves against this predatory program.
2. We can warn our clients. Whether proactively or reactively, I hope this post will serve as an unbiased, third-party account of how this program works. If your client has been spooked by one of these faux-Google employees, perhaps this will help put their worries to rest.
3. If your agency has a dedicated (legit) Google agency rep, share your frustrations with them. If anyone at Google should care about the ill-effects of this program, it is them. The Google Partners program exists to provide legitimacy to AdWords managers around the globe — measuring their experience and performance. Google should be helping these partners, not throwing them under the bus.

In the micro…

1. When this situation occurs, I suggest scheduling a call with both your client and the “Google rep.” Prep the client ahead of time, mentioning your familiarity with the program, the details you know, and your concern with proceeding. Then on the call, casually interview the rep right in front of the client. Ask them which office they are located in. Ask them about their recommendations for the account (before any changes are made). Ask them for expected results — both in terms of clicks/conversions and the impact on the ad spend budget. If you have a good handle on the account, if you prepped your client well, and if your instinct is correct, the situation should resolve itself.
2. In a few select situations, where the client’s trust had been decimated, I made backups (via AdWords Editor) of the client account before the fake Googler optimized it. I watched over their shoulder (see change history), as they proceeded recklessly, unaware of the details of the client’s business. Once “Google” was done with the engagement, I unpacked the account changes with the client — allowing them to transparently see what changes were made and why I had not previously taken that step. In the majority of those situations, we rolled the account back to the backed-up state. In the minority of those situations, we would allow the new account to run for some agreed upon time and then compared the account performance to pre-“optimization” stats. I have never seen this optimization lead to a higher-performing account.

If you have additional information on this program or approaches to protecting your clients, please leave them in the comments below.

Rob Bettis is an independent digital marketer helping boutique eCommerce brands build bigger, better businesses online with PPC media.

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This post was originally published at robbettis.com.