Sometimes when you’ve been doing something for so long you forget that certain words mean something to someone and random things make you laugh that other people forget. Unfortunately that is the case with many people in Online Marketing. “The Google” isn’t just something that pops up spammy ads and conspires against you (ok Online Marketers believe that too to a point) tracking is all for the purpose of the NSA and to spy on your life and that all advertising is evil. Here are 18 signs that you’ve been doing online marketing a bit to long. Read this list then put down your computer and get some sun. =0)
18. Calling an emergency because you’ve found “the missing link”, and it doesn’t mean a Yeti. No, it means your email was about to launch and you forgot to put a link on your call to action, your affiliate link is a direct one instead and a post launched or you forgot to add tracking parameters.
17. When someone says cookies, you think tiny bits of tracking information, not delicious confections devoured by friendly blue monsters.
16. Someone yells “back up” when waiting in a line at a concert, event or nightclub and you instantly log onto your cloud or server to ensure it ran or completed. Then you tip the guy for reminding you about backing up your data and information and your friend’s look embarrassed and confused.
15. When someone refers to their CPA and instead of a person with glasses who is good with numbers, you think of either a cost per acquisition on a lead basis or a network of merchants with single product offerings and performance marketers.
14. When you hear a commercial and in the warnings mention that it does not apply to subsidiaries or Affiliates, you instantly think of those people that have access to your brand and drive sales to your company on a revenue sharing basis or that you now have to change your site, copy and remove a merchant.
13. When you’re with your family and someone yells at the kids to share something so you take out your smart phone or tablet and hit the Twitter, Facebook or Pinterest icons.
12. When someone tags you on Facebook to tell you about a huge sale and you check your analytics or log into all of the Affiliate Networks and programs you work with to find out how much the commission you earned was,,,then you feel disappointment that they meant at a store.
11. When you go to the zoo and hear kids screaming about the penguins you used to get excited…now you want to punch them and feed them to sharks and bears.
10. When you heard about Panda’s being endangered you used to feel bad, now you are hoping for total extinction annihilation ummm ignore the last two because we love animals and don’t wish harm on any of them…(fing Pandas and Penguins).
9. You’re wondering why I’m not talking about swatting hummingbirds with a fly swatter…Hummingbird probably didn’t hit your site and you probably didn’t even notice anything, until you heard about the update. BTW, wondering when Hummingbirds would be on this list is also why you’ve been doing online marketing for too long.
8. You used to think of Sugar Rae as a singing group at spring break…now you think of a rock star SEO who you also sort of fear.
7. When you heard viral you thought of H1N1 or a disease. Then you thought of a funny video on YouTube or a list on BuzzFeed or Tumblr. Now you think it is a virus again since it was brought up in a meeting by the CEO/a client/your boss and it is your job to create something and make it go viral. It really is that easy right? Like how you can make a million dollars over night by buying this course.
6. You used to get angry about how much email you received. Now you get angry about how many people don’t open the emails you sent them. (But this is an important message and our company is the only one that matters….please open it, please open it, please…!).
5. A broken shopping cart meant there was a bad wheel so it was hard to move. Now it means you’re up at 2 or 3 in the morning, your company is losing money, your customers are yelling and you have a boss who doesn’t understand that you can’t code and the company that owns the cart software is “working on it”.
4. Traffic used to be a bad thing and you’d avoid it by taking a different route. Now you go right to where you can find the most traffic.
3. You used to think of visitors and be happy to see them for the first couple of hours, then only happy when they left. If they came back after visiting you right after or shortly after, it became worse. Now you can’t wait to have visitors return (especially with their friends and strangers they’ve met) over and over. You also actually hope they stay as long as possible. You even measure the amount of time they stay with you and work hard to figure out a way to keep them even longer and coming back more often.
2. PPV was when you had to spend money to watch something on TV like a singer or an event. Now PPV can be a type adware that can poach your traffic, can steal your money and can modify the way an end user experiences your site by popping ads over it, injecting ads into it that you didn’t place or by recommending other sites via ads that you never agreed to have show on your site.
1. You would have looked at this list and felt bad about hating Pandas and Penguins and now you think it’s funny and want to share this post on Facebook, Twitter and G+.
