Toledo: Fried Pickles and Paprikas

First stop on the ShareASale RoadShow was Toledo, Ohio, where I had the great pleasure of meeting up with Scott Campbell (@scotch) and Shannon Weidermann (@marketingelf).  We chatted shop over fried pickles, paprikas and hot dogs at Tony Packo’s on Front Street.

Shannon brought up a really fun point…as affiliate marketers, we tend to be on the leading edge of new technologies and approaches.  Because affiliates (in most cases) don’t have to answer to corporate bosses, they can move faster and try more options than a larger firm.  On the downside though, sometimes our non-affiliate friends and family have no idea what we’re talking about.  “Twitter?  Really?  Why would anyone care what you’re doing?”

Conversation also trended toward consumer behavior and how it relates to seasonality.  For example, everyone always wonders why stores start merchandising for Christmas in July.  You know why?  It’s because it sells.  If consumers never bought Christmas lights in July, stores would never stock them in July.  The store makes its merchandising decisions based on past consumer behavior.  Plus, and this was really neat, more Christmas lights are sold on sunny days than on dreary days…because people don’t want to scramble up and down ladders stringing lights in the rain.  Which all goes to say, right now is probably a good time to start thinking about what you’re going to do for this upcoming holiday season.  In fact, if you want to get those Christmas lights in front of your visitors, go check out the HolidayLEDs.com affiliate program.  They just joined ShareASale last week, and I bet they’ll do really well. Headed to Cleveland tomorrow, definitely looking forward to seeing who shows up there! :)