GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 42 - October 2018

to change behavior, a leader in a mar- ketplace does not necessarily have to be the best. If they create a perception of being the best, that’s OK, because what is truth to somebody is based on perception. Just think of livescore.com. 5 The Law of Focus The most powerful concept in marketing is owning a word in the prospect’s mind. If I say “AskGamblers,” you might say “casino reviews.” I say “freebets.com,” and you might say “free bets.” If I say “livescore.com,” you might say “live scores.” You get the idea. If you’re a smaller affiliate, you can own a phrase if you focus on a very specific segment. That’s why building a brand around “enhanced odds free bets” made a lot of sense in many ways. So, how do you own a phrase? A good place to start is with your domain name. One of the great things about the do- main ecosystem today is all the new top-level domains. Somewhere among the hundreds of new TLDs will be some excellent domains that absolutely focus on the market you’re interested in. Of course, there are cheesy hyphenated domain names you should steer clear of, but if you’re able to find a solid domain name without hyphens on a relevant new TLD, to me that’s a good place to go. One other point: Google doesn’t care what TLD you use as long as it’s not a country-specific one. 6 The Law of Exclusivity It’s fruitless to try to take over a word that is already owned by a competitor. Once people have an association in their mind, that association will persist unless there is a huge reason to change. In other words, you’re not going to own “free bets” in the mind of the consumer if you have just another thin affiliate website. This whole law of exclusivity arcs back to the Law of Category. In other words, find your micro-niche and build out from there. One example is “fruit ma- chine casino bonus.” It’s a micro-niche, and the guy who dominates it makes a nice living. 7 The Law of the Ladder Marketing strategy depends on your position in the market. If you’re dominant in a market, you’re going to behave differently than No. 2 or No. 3. Not everyone wants to use the No. 1 affiliate in a key phrase territory. Not everyone is going to go to AskGamblers, but a majority will. Instead, some people are happy to go elsewhere, maybe because these sites satisfy users in different ways. May- be these other sites are specialists, or have better casino bonus listings, or whatever. Google rankings for medium- to large-volume search key phrases are a proxy for what people want the most. It makes sense for Google to always rank what users want in the organic search results, because it makes Google satis- fying for those users. There is always a reason some people will not go with the dominant brand in any market category. Work out that reason, and use it to your advantage. 8 The Law of Duality In the long run, every market becomes a two-horse race. Earlier we talked about the Law of Cat- egory, where it’s very difficult to usurp the winner. In most ecosystems, you end 25 G P W A t i m e s . o r g Once you’ve got your own little niche , you can build a brand and build resistance to other brands coming in on your territory.