¡Bienvenido a Barcelona!

I’m in Spain at Affiliate World Europe, Europe’s premier event for affiliate marketers and ecommerce purveyors alike.

This event is held once or twice a year, and because it’s located in one of the coolest cities in the world…

It drew some really talented presenters.

In this video, I’ll give you my top 4 takeaways from A.W.E., including:

• Why entrepreneurs need an offseason

• The best free tool for product research

• How to become a better media buyer

• Two social proof ad campaigns to try

And I’ll share some really important advice for all you media buyers — and bosses of media buyers — who are struggling with spending money.

Enjoy!

Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride

Events are hard. You have to leave your house, leave your work, live out of a hotel room for a week and just totally break your routine.

That’s why I go hard at events: If I go through the trouble of being there, then I want to experience everything I can.

Sure, I could split right after I speak, but I’d be missing out on so many opportunities to learn — and so would my team.

That’s why I try to do as many interviews as I can, see as many presentations as I can and generally soak up as much knowledge and energy during the event as I can to take back home.

Which brings me to my first interview: The M.C. of A.W.E. and the only guy who spoke with every keynote presenter, Philipp Schoeffmann.

Phil’s an entrepreneur himself as well as a father of two, and as soon as we started talking about work-life balance, we hit on a very important topic.

Why High-Performers Need An Offseason

I know there are days when you have to work 10, 12, even 14 hours, but that can’t be your routine if you want to perform at a high level for a long period of time.

Consider the professional athlete: These are world-class performers competing against other world-class performers who are trying to stop them from performing, right?

Well, Phil seems to believe there’s a lesson to be learned from all this, and I happen to believe him.

That lesson is this: Take a break.

Athletes push their limits for a few months, maybe half the year, and then what do they do?

They go enjoy the offseason.

They give their bodies a chance to relax and recharge, because their coaches know that rest is necessary for maximum performance.

The Best Free Tool for Product Research

Next, I talked with Ernest Epps, the man whose content went so viral that A.W.E. flew him out to speak.

This guy knows how to find winning products hiding in the marketplace and get them in front of customers without using Facebook ads.

It was a great conversation for anyone new to ecommerce or looking to expand their product line…

And Ernest’s advice for those people was to keep it simple.

The great thing about ecommerce is that it doesn’t have to be a guessing game. With the right tool you can predict the popularity of a product before you invest your time and money into selling it.

The free tool he recommends for this is called Keywords Everywhere.

It can tell you the search volume for a particular product, how many people are bidding on that product in Google AdWords, and how much they pay per click.

It’s Time to Start Thinking Long Term

But tools aren’t everything, and the best advice that Ernest gave me was to get your mind right.

For him, the biggest difference between starting an ecommerce business 10 years ago vs. today is that today you have to think long term if you want to be successful.

All those get-rich-quick products are gone. Now, people want to do business with meaningful brands they actually care about.

And Ernest and I have this in common: We want to build something of substance and not let some short term cash ruin our chances at long term success.

How to Be a Better Media Buyer

Advertising is always a popular topic at these events, but when Molly Pittman and I took the stage to talk about how to win at media buying, something was different.

It turned out that we weren’t just talking to media buyers — we were talking to media buyers and their bosses.

These folks didn’t just want to build a winning ad, they wanted to build a winning ad…vertiser.

Their priorities were finding out who they should hire, how they should train them, and what were reasonable expectations to have for their results.

These questions led Molly and me to talk about one of the most important skills you need to become a successful media buyer:

A healthy relationship with money.

Successful Media Buyers Aren’t Afraid of Money

Business owners are under a lot of pressure, and being responsible for the entire team’s paychecks takes its toll…

But you can’t let that fear and stress spill out onto your employees or it’s going to affect their work.

Afterall, it’s not their responsibility to run the business — it’s yours — and the last thing you want for whoever’s running your ads is for them to feel afraid of losing money.

Molly has trained hundreds of media buyers, and the first thing she always teaches is money mindset.

Whether it’s coming from you or your boss, if you have a poor relationship with money it needs to be dealt with or you’re going to have a lot of trouble.

This fear of spending money is what stops most brands from being able to scale, especially when you’re spending someone else’s money!

Now for my really important advice:

If you are the business owner, then do your best to support your team.

Make them feel comfortable. Put them through the best trainings and let them know that it’s okay to fail.

Otherwise, you’ll never get their best work and your business will suffer.

Two Social Proof Ad Campaigns

Now that we’ve talked about the importance of mindset when it comes to running ads…

What about the ads themselves?

I ended the event by interviewing Dee Dang, a dangerously smart ads man and founder of Right Hook Digital.

Dee’s advertising play book is huge, and when I asked him to tell me what ad campaign works best for his clients, he gave me two.

The first is something I leverage in my business all the time: using customer testimonials as ads.

There’s almost no limit to the value of a good face-to-camera review from a real customer.

I use them heavily in a lot of my Facebook ads, and if you want to see exactly how then check out my recent blog post: Ezra’s Social Proof Ad Template.

Working with Influencers

The second ad campaign Dee’s clients are finding success with is influencer advertising.

Like Dee, you might think the influencer craze is on its way out, but until it stops being a profitable sales channel he’s going to stick with it.

One of the ways he keeps it a profitable channel is to partner with the influencers, giving them a portion of each sale instead of a set fee.

In other words, they only get paid if the campaign is successful.

And when the influencer allows, Dee recommends you run the ad from the influencer’s account instead of featuring them on the brand’s account.

This allows you to connect with their audience organically, and most influencers don’t mind as long as they can avoid doing any of the backend work.

¡Adios, Affiliate World!

This event was an absolute blast, and if you’re in the affiliate game then I highly recommend you check it out in 2020.

If you’ve never had the chance to travel to Barcelona, let me tell ya… The strawberries alone are worth the trip.

Seriously, wow. The fruit in Spain is out of this world.

And with that — adios!