Gary Vaynerchuk on Social and Mobile in Performance Marketing

Wow. How many of you have heard Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee) speak in person? I hadn’t until yesterday and My God, what an incredible experience. I took some notes from his presentation and recorded the talk to digest it again later, but what really struck me right off the bat was his message about the shift in the way our society communicates and markets. I’ve heard it all before from a million other places – social and mobile are the ways of the future, but for some reason, it didn’t really impact me until my hour with him.

What I took from his talk is the immense opportunity of the affiliate marketing space  coming in social and mobile marketing, more so than in search and coupon affiliates, both of which are currently dominating the industry. I see a light at the end of the tunnel for those feeling stuck by over saturation and push tactics, or affiliate programs dominated by coupon and loyalty sites.

Social and mobile WILL be the future. It might take 3 years to get there – it might take 10, but the bottom line is the shift is already happening and we have to learn as individuals, companies and an industry how to adjust for that change and embrace it. I see many affiliate managers, OPMs and agencies working against their own social media and PR teams. We have to stop that. We have to find a way to make it work together and understand how to merge the synergies of these teams together.

Affiliate marketing has the same opportunity as social and mobile because it incorporates and rewards affiliates using those efforts as much as other channels. Affiliate marketing will not go away – it will continue to grow, however it too will have to be ready to shift from search and daily deal centric to social and mobile centric over the next few years.

Regardless, it will be exciting to see push marketing become pull marketing more and more, where one person on twitter can have more influence than an global corporation with a $100 million marketing budget.

I’m looking forward to reading Gary’s books: Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion and The Thank You Economy and hope to shake his hand again in the near future.

Gary, I know you won’t forget – 5 Years. We’ll keep in touch 😉