AWE 2019 will commence very soon. Lots of affiliates, partners and the industry representatives are now packing their suitcases to spend a few days under Barcelona’s sun looking for new partners and communicating with the existing ones. Some will try to secure a private offer, while others will do their best to attract a top affiliate to their affiliate program or negotiate an agreement on cooperation or on ad sales.
In February, we were visited by Uliana Moreva, Head of Affbank, who told us how to get the most out of your conference experience and return home with a bunch of new partners and colleagues rather than a terrible hangover and a pile of random business cards.
We have selected a number of recommendations from the podcast that will prove to be useful if used wisely.
The first and probably the most important advice would be to think through your strategy: what are you going to do, who you are going to communicate with and what you can offer to a particular person.
Compile a list of people and companies who are going to visit a conference and who you would like to cooperate with. Take the trouble to find out where they are accommodated to be able to find them promptly and without effort.
Get as much information as possible on each company you are going to meet. What the company is doing, its strengths and weaknesses, what its competition is. You should also develop a unique strategy of interaction for each company and think about what you can offer to them and what you get from them, then each meeting is highly likely to be successful and effective.
If you want to meet somebody tete-a-tete, take the trouble to arrange the time and place beforehand. In this case, you won’t have to waste your time on looking for your interlocutor in a crowd.
Take notes! Each new acquaintance at a conference is unique, and therefore it is important you jot down what you have agreed upon with a particular person and what terms you have negotiated. You can make notes on pretty much everything: on business cards, in a notebook, on your phone. Just make notes, that’s the key thing.
Another useful advice: take selfies.
Sometimes even if you have jotted everything down in your notebook, you can face a hard time trying to recall who this person actually is. If you take a look at a selfie, you will immediately remember what you have agreed upon with this person and who he or she is.
Put the right information on your business card. Don’t be just an affiliate manager, be an affiliate manager working with particular verticals or traffic types. Don’t be just an affiliate, be a Russian affiliate driving Facebook traffic to gambling offers. This will make it easier both for you and for your would-be business partners to figure out who is who and how you can help each other.
Don’t engage in excessive drinking. Preferably don’t drink at all. To have a productive time at a conference, you need to be fresh and willing to do business. There can be no freshness and willingness to work if you are suffering from a hangover.
Reports. Of course, they can be useful, but, as we all know, nobody will share their know-hows with you. The industry is not as large as it seems to be.
If you are a beginner affiliate who strives to wrap his head around a certain subject, then reports can be valuable for you. However, they are not worth taking the time for seasoned affiliate marketers specializing in a certain niche.
Yet another important piece of advice: know your information. Try to know everything about everyone involved in the industry. For instance, as a rule, network owners are willing to tell you about their new projects or offers, whereas account managers are unlikely to tell you anything of interest regarding their future plans but will rather besiege you with questions and get all the information they can from you. Remember that people want you to tell them something and are not always willing to share information with you.
A life hack: communicate with media guys, they know everything about everyone, or pretty much everything. Who works with who, who owns a particular project and who is in bad terms with who. They can share with you a lot of relevant information.
We hope that these recommendations will help you to get the most out of your conference experience. Don’t forget to take your business cards and notebooks with you. See you at the conference!
If you want to reach new GEOs and audiences, maybe it is all waiting for you on Telegram? We’ve prepared some material about Telegram audiences. What are the messenger’s users like this year? How old they are, what they do, and what they are interested in!
