Strategic Communications for Affiliate Success with Vlad Ghilien

Speaking of of people feeling uncomfortable, I don't know. I think that it has to do with some with a mental approach to pressure cuz feeling uncomfortable is is a kind of pressure, right? But once you realize that pretty much all pressure is good for you in your life cuz you get to overcome it and then learn something and succeed in things you weren't even expecting yourself to succeed.

is I've just achieved another level. Achievement unlocked. unlocked. unlocked. >> I'm John Wright and you're listening to AffiliateBI, the business intelligence and affiliate marketing podcast brought to you by Snapstrong. Welcome to the AffiliateBI podcast. Today we're chatting with Vlad the Lad Guen, who's a strategic communications consultant and someone I'm starting to work with as we speak, and I really appreciate the help. Vlad, welcome to the show.

the show. >> Hey, John. Thanks for having me on the show. really stoked about it. Excited. >> Yeah. So, I'm just going to give a bit of a foreshadowing about what we're going to talk about. And I every once in a while I like having guests on the show that aren't directly involved in affiliate marketing, but they've got a skill set that I believe actually applies direct to affiliate marketing.

And we were just chatting about this on just before getting started on recording. So, what is your take on what affiliates should be doing? Like you must see affiliate sites like all day long and go, "Wow." Like even though you're a communications consultant, you're probably going to work on the B2B side and the SEO side, there must be a massive opportunity for affiliate marketing here. marketing here.

>> Yeah, I would say I wouldn't want to talk about what affiliate marketers should be doing. I would rather first focus on what they shouldn't be doing. And this is mindlessly scaling the content that they're putting out cuz at the end of the day most affiliate yeah like 95% of affiliate marketers right they're earning by reselling stuff advertising stuff to their respective audiences and getting commission from purchases right and instead of building like a legitimate brand they build these I don't know just one day websites

let's call it that way let's call it that that are like that are just like churn and burn and yet they they just don't last long enough to establish a brand a trusted brand and they end up just doing this mindless keyword stuffing topical authority thing which sounds very trendy and something that they think everyone does but they don't think about whatever they're doing as a brand and this this really doesn't help.

>> Okay. So would you say that topical authority is important but the way most people are applying it is the wrong way where it's needs to be topical authority with like quality basically it's look just don't do your spray and pray and okay here's our five pages and we're done it's build the brand with topical >> absolutely it has to be 100% mindful it has to be properly researched properly written properly delivered and yeah like you mentioned it's all communication right so the way you present

yourself your brand to of your respective audience leads to the way the audience will perceive you. And if it's just something that's either way all over the place, all over the internet, just won't see the value in it and they will just skip and go to another website, just keep on looking for whatever clicks their mind. Yeah, it's a weird topic because I'm going through this current situation where just been talking with a bunch of investors and they're like they think we are this but we

know we actually have way more advanced stuff and we're like why do they think that we already know what the answer is? It's because they go on the website and they're like, "According to what the website is, you do this or we think you do this." And so I think this is probably a common problem that with maybe even affiliate marketers. They think their site is the best or it doesn't need any polish.

And then of course when you actually ask a few people, it's what do you think about this? It's almost night and day of what the actual audience is perceiving to be. >> Absolutely true. Absolutely true. Because in my situation, yeah, that was a frustrating realization, but it was one that is I know I need to fix this. This is really important. So, it's like we have a lot of advanced tools and we went through this, we went over this last week, and it's like we have

advanced tools, but we're not loud enough on the website. We don't articulate the value of what these things do. And once we realize that, we're like, okay, I had my whole summer set. It wasn't just a redesign of the website. It was also a focus and maybe a shift in positioning. So maybe I just want to get your straight up take on positioning like how does this apply to you know it like B2B SEO content marketing and affiliate sites >> that's really tightly related associated with

one another like the way you present yourself and the way you position yourself. For example, I had a client who is a like really nice SEO agency and they're providing high quality services. They were initially doing it within just their local market within their country and they decided to expand. They translated their website to to English using CHP or some other LLMs. And I don't know how it all sounded and looked in their native language, but in when they translated it to English, it was just

it wasn't just hitting the mark. It was just like looking very generic. It's like you can have you can find hundreds of other SEO agencies doing and saying not just doing but saying the same thing. So what I did with them was completely reshape the this approach and content as is to properly deliver and explain why they why their clients need them in particular. not why they're great, not why they're good at what they do, but why those people need them in particular.

So, this positioning is it sounds like it's not a big deal. It's not a big difference, but it actually is. Cuz this way you you get to show your audience this is what you're missing. This is what you're missing. And it's not about us, it's about you and your needs. So, yeah, this is a major thing and that a lot of personal and corporate brands miss out at this point.

And would you say that this ties in with especially on the B2B side that this is why case studies and testimonials are important because what you just said is we're trying to talk not about ourselves but we're trying to have that user relate where going how do we solve your problems rather than how do we sell you and obviously when it comes to solving your problems like what's a case study case study is like an indirect way of selling but it's actually more focused on the

user. Yeah, absolutely. Case studies. Speaking of case studies, it's all it's a it's one of the most effective ways to show why your service, not just why, but how your service or product is good in this particular industry, in this particular for this particular need, for this particular problem or issue issue solving. And if you get to on board someone from outside your corporate structure, outside of your company and business to take a look at your stuff, to test it out, and then to do a

case study with your stuff, it's like you basically launch the what's the word? Forgot. No, you just launched this effect of people talking about you. I I just forgot the term, but I guess I guess guess guess >> like social proof. >> Yes, social proof. And uh yeah, yeah, yeah, >> there's another >> let's stop with social proof. >> Yeah, there's another one that just >> it's swirling somewhere in my head, but I can't catch it.

>> Okay, that makes sense. And what about video? One thing I rarely see in affiliate marketing sites is video. And I think maybe we actually are seeing the trend of it, but I think the people that have followed the advice of, you know, there's nothing wrong with the advice, but it's the guys like Matt Diggity and Gil Breton from Authority Hacker and Matt Diggity's collection of sites, they were all basically going, "Here's your content." Now, those guys obviously use video to sell what they're doing.

And they weren't really telling they they were telling some people, it's go use video to amplify it. But do you just think of video is like the missing link out of everything? And is this going to be like the future of content? It will not be the future of content content. It's the reality of content today. And if you take not just Medigi, Gail Breton, authority hacker for example, there's this guy such guy as Julian Goldie who is all over the place today who's got I

don't remember how many thousands of subscribers on his YouTube channel and he uses this videos and most of them are Loom videos. Surprisingly, he doesn't even need to spend like a lot of time or money to set a great studio up. He's just recording simple Loom videos explaining stuff. And he uses this as a lead generating tool. And it works. You just have to find this particular segment of not just the audience but of what makes you special for your audience, why they need to listen

to you, why they need to watch your videos, what you can help them with. And this is what he found. And right now, if you go to his YouTube channel, you'll see that each of his videos, like even the simplest ones, they get thousands of views, tens and hundreds thousands of views because video is a powerful tool. And Steven Connor formerly of white press and endorsely says we're all people are emotional animals, right?

And when you see another person talking about something that's important to you, especially business and moneywise, you get to associate this person with a particular brand or product or service and then it just creates like this avalanche effect over time. So yeah, video is absolutely the reality of today's content and regretted not many people, not enough business owners, not enough affiliates are using this powerful tool. powerful tool.

powerful tool. >> Yeah. And I always say one of the reasons why people don't do enough of it is because they're just straight up uncomfortable going, "Okay, I'm going to record a video." And then they're like, "It's not perfect." And then they're like, "Oh, I need to spend thousands of dollars on podcast equipment. Don't like the way my voice sounds." And just like every excuse, it's I don't blame people for avoiding it.

But I think that's just basically the superpower. You know, if you're willing to be uncomfortable, whether you're an introvert or extrovert, it doesn't really matter. It's like you got to start somewhere. And all those people we look up to, it's Yeah. They all have videos from years ago and yeah, their first videos weren't very impressive. Unless you're Julian Goldie where you just basically do videos and they're like just don't need to change anything.

They're perfect. >> Yeah. Yeah. True. And speaking of of people feeling uncomfortable, I don't know. I think that it has to do with some with a mental approach to pressure because feeling uncomfortable is is a kind of pressure, right? But once you realize that pretty much all pressure is good for you in your life cuz you get to overcome it and then learn something and succeed in things you weren't even expecting yourself to succeed.

is I've just achieved another level. Achievement unlocked. unlocked. unlocked. >> Yeah, it's in some cases it feels like a video game for me. I'm probably doing maybe extra than what I need to do, but I love what I'm doing. This podcast once a week and then every Thursday I publish a newsletter and I just basically I I it's not reinventing the wheel. It's just learning from some of the greats that we've talked to.

I remember having an interview with Steve Toth and he said that when he was starting his his SEO notebook newsletter. He said one of his friends or mentors said you need to make sure this happens every week otherwise it's just it's not going to go anywhere. It's going to die and eventually you're not going to do it. And I think he's what approaching six years of doing that newsletter and the stuff he puts in there.

It's it's insane high quality stuff. Yeah, I've copied a couple things from him and yeah I've sent you some of our my newsletters to say okay I want you to critique them and go how can I make them better and critique them. I think when it comes to all this stuff, there's no limit of what you can do. I think all the stuff that we do can always be made better.

And I think this is where maybe a lot of people fall apart is that they're like, "Oh, I want to do two sites." Every time I hear an affiliate go, I want to do two sites. I'm like, "Just stop." It's I don't want you to have two YouTube channels and two groups of social media accounts where you're going to do them not well at all. Pick one and do it.

Amazing. >> Just stay consistent. Keep showing up. Just do your thing. Yeah. And let's take a step back where we talking about eat and we're saying like it seems like Google's kind of doing this thing where they're putting people through the meat grinder going you need to be quality. So it's all the little details matter. It's not just having a good-looking site but it's having a site that says okay it's authority.

It's trustworthy. There's a personal or company brand. And you told me that eat was always around. What do you say about eat today? It's same as important as it as was previously. It's just that because of the emergence of CH GBD and other LLMs, other AI tools, people at some point started just massively scaling websites and content and they just created this just created like this huge I don't know let's call it content bubble.

So at some point Google just decided that we got to put a stop to this because it's just too much and we need to provide users with quality things. And speaking of that, what I believe here is that each affiliate marketer, whatever industry they're in, they should perceive their project, what whether it's one site, two, five, or 10 sides, each of these sites, they should perceive it should be perceived as a as a real business, not just some one day project.

Because this is what Google's trying to do, right? Let's say let's say you've invented a you decided to I don't know create a I don't know some super high quality electric car. You will not just neglect just some of the most important things in it. You will take care of every single detail in this car. You will make sure it works properly. You make sure you'll make sure it looks stunningly.

You'll make sure it feels comfortable. You'll make sure it's marketed properly. Yeah, this is what it's what is happening right now. And I'm not saying that that Google just cares about the audiences and they want to create this healthy ecosystem. Of course, the first thing the corporation cares about is their pockets. Okay? But this is what happen. This is what's happening right now in this entire ecosystem.

And whether you want or do not want to, you still need to adapt to this situation to survive and to to thrive eventually. And let's pivot to an obvious SEO topic, which is digital PR. And I've been fascinated with digital PR for a long time. I've seen people grow affiliate sites using it, but doing it in a cheap way. So you go to PR.com and you just buy an article and you create it.

You get a link and it works. And in some cases, some of those pages have actually ranked really well. But I do personally think that there's been a bigger shift in quality. You look at a guy like Fury Kazone with a search intelligence. He's just >> like in a couple years that whole company just blew up like in insanely. And anyone that I know is doing digital PR, even if it's on like a scale, it's they're doing well.

And then of course you've got your white presses, your press, these companies are just printing money. So what do you think about people in not just doing digital PR but also taking that same quality mentality and going okay yeah rather than do 10 watered down digital PRs let's try to do like one knock it out of the park. >> Yeah absolutely this is the way to go.

This is we get back to the same quality topic and social proof as well cuz when you I don't know when you post or buy or do a digital PR article let's say right material you get to be pub your brand your your name gets to be published and shown to audience to audiences on a very trusted resource on a very highly trusted website or online newspaper.

So yeah, this is definitely a way to go because it's still this part of the same thing. Quality, social proof, and yeah, trust eventually. >> No, I agree. So I wrote down a personal note because we're doing a little bit of work together and it's like I I did a couple articles that I wrote myself and I published some of them in Times of Malta magazine or Times of Malta website and one of them actually did pretty well.

So it was focused on SEO and I gaming and then of course what I did was in some cases people learned about this after the fact. I basically said who are people that I trust like I don't do SEO consulting but who would I trust and then I talked about the problems about trust in SEO and you know why people have this disdain for trying to hire an SEO because they're worried there's a bunch of scammers out there.

So you get one scammer and it ruins your appetite for wanting to do a cons work with a consultant. So, I just did a whole name drop of people I trusted and those people really appreciated it. I felt the value I got out of that. Yes, we did get a link going back to Staff Stone, but I felt it was just me trying to be helpful and I think that was probably a positive brand and I think there might be more people doing more of these

things. You see this in social media. It's like you name drop someone and it's James Douly's got a book. It's very easy to take a picture of the book and he appreciates it. But it's another thing to actually do an article where you're talking about just dropping good value and not being just another article. >> Mhm. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. You just So this is the value the type of value I'm talking about in content and the article is content either way.

So you just you don't just shout out some basic principles or even not just basic some advanced principles and just say use the use your position of authority saying that this is why it's important. You're saying like these are great people who have done great work and they have proof of of their work and if you're facing this or that issue these are the people you should go to.

So yeah, this is instant value and you created both for the reader and the people that you mention. Of course, it's got my mental list of sites in my head that I know need some major work and I won't call them out yet because that might make me a couple enemies in the process of you never know if and when someone's going to be listening to this, but yeah, there's some affiliate sites that are just owned by big companies and some of them are public and

you're just going, "What is going on here?" like why is everyone happy with this a as a product and as as like expectation that this is the new level of affiliate marketing? It's there's certain sites I look at, I'm like, I already cons without even checking HFS, I already know the site's tanking, but I know it's going to keep going to a point where it's going to be basically on par with being eliminated.

And I look at the sites that are actually doing well and all the things you mentioned earlier that kind of do a lot better of. They care for each click. They treat it like you're on this page, so we're going to give you this. We're not just going to give you give you give you >> not even the wall of content. It's just we're not going to be like we're not here for Google.

We're here because you came here. or whether it's paid media or Google or something else and we're going to roll out the red carpet and if you're going to give us your email, we're going to have a really good series of emails and try to get to know you, survey you. I get frustrated when I see these sites and just people in positions that they're like, "Yeah, they know better." I'm like, "You do your business and I'll focus on mine." And at the end of the

day, I just know that what we do as a company is we're focused on data and you need data as a starting point of results and the data is there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> So, do you use any tools like like Hot Jar and all that when you're analyzing a site or do you just basically say, you know what, I don't even need those tools. I can see what's wrong just by by freestyling it.

freestyling it. >> Yeah. Yeah. Basically, yes. Yeah. And I'm doing first of all, I'm doing the overall overview of if I'm dealing with a website in particular, let's say. First of all, I'm doing the overview like how well does the copy read does it ch before that and before that before even doing that I spend some time talking to talking to the founder owner the CEO of the company that takes that's in charge of this whole thing of the brand let's say just to get a

better understanding of what they want it to be like the brand like what they want want it to represent what they want to achieve with it I also if possible I also take time to talk to several other team members just to get a feel of their corporate culture and based on these things I then analyze do the overview of the website. Then I go to competitor analysis just to look at what the best of the best in this particular niche industry do just to point

out like what's let's say what's wrong with the copy with positioning with branding not just from my point of view but just like from the market point of view of view of view >> and then based on these things I go back to to putting it all down to a report or analysis or analysis or >> strategy, whatever you want to call it. It's different with different clients.

>> So, yeah, I don't use any extra tools for that. for that. for that. >> Yeah. And even when we were working together, it's I'm going to actually now it's what were some of the things that you think we could do better as a company given that I showed you around and said, "Okay, here's our website. Here's what we want people to know about us, which I don't think the website's conveying.

Here's our newsletters. You obviously know about the podcasts and so what's our report card?" and either be cruel. cruel. >> I don't know. I probably can't be cruel by nature. by nature. But either way, like I said, I told you previously, there's like the overall current version of the website. You've already shared the updated version with me, like the screenshots, the snapshots, and it's a totally different game.

I will not touch it right now, but considering the current website, yeah, there's the overall design looks looks and feel clunky. let's say not not intuitive enough if we're speaking of user experience user interface the copy doesn't really convey the purpose the value the vision it's yeah we're an affiliate marketing platform we're aggregating stuff for you that you can analyze and do this and that but then for example if I was an affiliate per se I wouldn't really understand why I why should I use stats

drone instead of someone else. Yeah, the pricing reasoning as well, not really clear. That's speaking about the website like the there's the there's the entire positioning and content delivery. It misses the mark. It doesn't hit the mark with why affiliates should use stats. And yeah, you have a great YouTube channel, you have a lot of awesome conversations on podcasts and you got to leverage it. I don't know, maybe put in some some budget into ads or other means of promotion on YouTube, not ads in particular,

just to generate this subscriber traction cuz cuz even if you don't get target your target audience, but you get subscribers, when your target audience sees that your channel has, let's say, a couple of tens of thousand subscribers, they won't care if it's your target audience or not. They will think, "This is a trusted channel. I should check it out. These are the main things that I can remember recall right now.

>> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Those are amazing. I remember when you wrote that down, I was like, you know what? You're spot on. Like our YouTube channel, I think we might have 400 plus subscribers, which is not bad for organic and just not even trying hard. But I think you're right. If we want to try to present that, we are we've been around for years.

It's we don't need 2 million, but have like thousands of subscribers would be a big deal. And actually, I just wrote another note for our LinkedIn newsletter, the one I do personally. We actually have a pretty good base, but yeah, it would look more powerful. It's not just even more powerful. Like, why not take that base of 2,800 that we have today and why can't we just accelerate it to be like 5 to 10K, which is it's not just 5 to 10K.

It's also using ads to target the people we want to target and having more of the audience we want to have anyways. And I think you're right. I think for that would be minimal effort for I mean for the communication things that we are doing that's those two things are definitely part of it. Those are our shining stars and I think we should probably a little bit of ad spend would probably cost minimal but have you know a major impact.

>> Yep. Yep. Definitely. And once you get this additional exposure, you will just you will simply not need to care about it anymore because it would be just doing the work for you. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Yeah, I hear you. All right. So, we're going to finish this off with the last question is what do you see of the future of affiliate marketing as it intersects with business intelligence?

Let's say the lazy in the bad sense lazy affiliate marketers will will gradually just wayne off and either give up on doing businesses and sell whatever they have or move to other business ventures. Those that are smart and those who realize what's happening, who are ready to adapt, who don't mind pressure, they will eventually thrive. thrive because they will adapt to new search situations. They will boost up their branding quality.

They will I don't know I can see let's say some I can see how some affiliates will give birth to other businesses out of their affiliate endeavors just because of focusing on quality and proper branding. It will not go away. it will transform. Probably the longest surviving ones will be the those who deal with high ticket items cuz I know several cases even now who weren't even bothered by Chad GPD by AI content and Google updates that that had caught like millions of websites.

They're still out there. they're still making their money and they don't care about anything because they're focusing on quality because they have to sell these high ticket items. So, this is what's going to happen with affiliate marketing, at least to my understanding. Maybe I'm missing missing out on something. I'm not saying I'm like the the highest truth here, but >> it might be actually on point because you know that Niles Z, he just uh released his book, what is the payout mafia?

And his philosophy was the same. It's like there's less affiliates, but the ones that are there, they're just eating everything up because they're the ones doing the extra effort. They're doing the quality. It's pretty much everything you just said in this whole recording. recording. >> Awesome. Good to know. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> All right. So, Vlad, thank you so much for doing this. I want to pass it back to you.

How can people get a hold of you? you? you? >> You can find me on LinkedIn by my name, Vladimir Guillian. Just make sure to not write my last name like like it sounds in Spanish. write it the way it's written in Romanian. G h i l i n like the way you see it on screen. You can also find me on Facebook, but if you go to Facebook, you'll have to write my last name in Spanish.

>> Perfect. We'll have a we'll have the links in the show notes. We'll make it easier for people. >> Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, it was pleasure being here and always a pleasure talking to you. >> Thanks for the recording and once again, thanks for the help in the background. I knew we needed some communication help and your first report was Yep. It's not pretty, but we got some work to do.

I appreciate it. appreciate it. >> I'm glad to help. >> Thank you for tuning in to the AffiliateBI podcast. I'd like to take this time to ask for a small favor to leave a rating and review wherever you listen to your podcast. That helps us expand our reach to rank higher in podcast directories and reach more listeners.