‘Your PR strategy will fall flat without affiliate marketing’ Vicki Day

Vicki Day, author of the fashion, lifestyle and food blog MrsD-Daily, addressed some of the UK’s leading PR and communications professionals at Cision’s latest webinar last Tuesday on ‘Why PR’s Need To Change Their Approach Towards Bloggers.’

Vicki began by giving us an overview of her professional background in retail and why ‘when the world turned digital,’ it made sense for her to start her own blog: ‘On my blog, I’m a cyber sales assistant.’

And right she is. Unlike most other bloggers that wear and share everything from the shade of their lipstick to the length of their skirt, Vicki’s site is indeed a straight talking buying guide to the brands she is affiliated with. ‘99% of the links on my blog are cookied,’ she admits as she went on to discuss why affiliate marketing is the future of marketing. Citing examples and statistics, Vicki explained how consumers are more likely to view products online than spend £2-3 on a fashion magazine to find the same thing. She went on to warn PRs that if they don’t embrace affiliate marketing, their strategy would ‘fall flat.’

Vicki compared sponsored posts to affiliate links, sharing the pros and cons and concluded: ‘Affiliate lets you track everything from a click to a sale – with sponsored posts no body gains any insight into anything.’

On a lighter note, Vicki dug out some horror stories of PRs who clearly got on the wrong side of the ‘pitch.’ Apart from sharing some valuable insight on how ‘not’ to approach bloggers, she also advised why PRs would do better in discussing ideas with bloggers first.

‘Don’t come to me with your set ideas. I love PRs that say ‘this is my client and this is what we would like to promote – what can you do with it?’”

As one attendee said: ‘The advice was great – helps to know (first hand) how bloggers prefer to be approached and pitched to.’

And I think we can all agree with @NimSingh’s tweet:

Thanks to @mrsd_daily for a very engaging talk today and to @CisionUK for hosting.^NS

— Nim Singh (@canadanim) October 21, 2014

If you missed the live broadcast, you can still  listen to the webinar! Request a recording here.

Photo Courtesy of Mike Licht on Flickr