Branding

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How to Attract Affiliates To Your Internet Marketing Program

Published July 26, 2010 | By ">

If you want to rely on others to help market your website and increase sales, an affiliate program is a way to go. An affiliate program is the perfect partnership, as everyone involved makes money. Depending on your business or what you sell, you provide affiliates with coded links or banners or sales page templates. Their website visitors click on the links. If a sale is made, you make money, but so does your affiliate. Once again, this is literally the perfect partnership.

Although it is relatively easy to find affiliates for your program, as most consider affiliate programs an easy way to make money, there is some work required on your part. There are thousands of affiliate programs online. You need to sell yourself; convince your readers that your program is the best there is. How can do you do this? What steps can you take?

Making your affiliate program website easy to find. Whether you are handling your own affiliate program or letting a third-party hosting company do it, make sure all interested applicants can find your website. Use the internet to market. Post links on work-at-home forums, home based job listing websites, online classified ads, and so forth. The first step in getting affiliates for your program is to get them to your website. Next, comes to selling part. How do you get your readers to join your affiliate program?

By going into detail. Never assume that all want-to-be home-based workers know what affiliate programs are. Right away, people will see that you only earn a percentage from each sale. Those unfamiliar with affiliate programs will automatically assume the opportunity is a scam, but it isn’t. Provide as much detail as possible. Explain how the process works, how money is made, the steps affiliates need to take to make money, and go into great detail describing the product, service, or company affiliates will be promoting.

By having support available and making it known. State you or another company representative will be available to take complaints, questions, and suggestions via phone or email. Assure your applicants that they will not be left alone to make money. You will help get them stated by provided detailed step-by-step guides and additional support. After all, you benefit from their success as a paid affiliate too.

By having testimonials. This includes for both the affiliate program and the company as a whole. Get testimonials from current affiliates stating it easy to and fun to make money. Next, people want to know they are promoting a good product, service, or company. Have testimonials from customers. For example, if you sell handmade baby clothes ask a parent to review their recent purchase. Most will do so anyways, but consider giving all reviewers a moneysaving coupon for their next purchase. Not only do you get a solid review, but a repeat customer!

By having a good commission rate. There are thousands of affiliate programs online. Many choose an affiliate program based on the product, service, or company. They want to stand behind something they can believe in. On the other hand, most are focused just on money. They want to earn the most. A high commission rate is likely to attract customers, but always consider your bottom line. Everyone needs to get paid, all expenses must be account for and you still need to turn a profit.

By making it easy to get payment. Affiliate programs have varying payouts. Some make their affiliates wait until they reach $100 and others get paid at only $10. Whichever you choose, make sure your affiliates don’t have to wait long. It may take new affiliates 6 months or more to earn $100. Yes, it will get easier and quicker overtime, but they may not stick around long enough to see.

In short, you need to sell yourself. You are already selling products or services online, but you need to sell yourself again. You need to convince all visitors to your affiliate program website that your program is the best way to make money online and from home. Use the above mentioned tips to do so.

Creating Successful Advertisements

Published July 16, 2010 | By ">

Many small businesses don’t get the success they want from advertising due to the availability of very little resources. These results are due to a lack of good ideas for improvements. Whether the ads are put in a local newspaper or are printed in a famous periodical or posted on a website, the money invested should gain the desired outcome. There are some common mistakes small businesses and professional service providers do when designing and posting the advertisement, which leads to the failure of the advertisement.

Bigger is better is believed in by many. That’s exactly what some of the small firms think when they want to advertise their product. They think bigger and select sites where they must invest a lot of money, but do not reach their targeted market. Like if a company specializes in designing diet plans and wants to help out people who had disappointing results from their individual diet plans, and the company chooses to advertise on a marketing website instead of running the advertisement on a health site, obviously not many of the dieters will notice the advertisement and the ad doesn’t get the desired attention.

So the point is to come up with the best campaign, which will increase the probability of the ad getting viewed by the right customers and persuade them to buy the product or sign up for the service you are providing. Marketing research can be carried out on your niche and your target audience can be narrowed down. Once getting the list of websites meant for the customers you are targeting, find out how many visitors they have and the cost they ask for posting the ad. Special deals are offered by them from time to time and can only be found by watchful eye.

It is estimated that everyday people are subjected to around three thousand commercial advertisements. That is a huge number and if someone desires to be noticed, he should certainly be different. Not only the services and product sold should be unique in the market, so should be the advertisement. For example, if a business selling mattresses says, “We sell mattresses”, it will not make a statement and will be passed off as any other mattress advertisement. But if they say, “Our mattresses are of the finest quality”, it will make the advertisement stand out in the crowd. Other catch lines are “Are you suffering from back pain? Then you must try our mattresses ”, are more specific and will catch the fancy of the people who are suffering from back pain for a long time. The advertisement should also focus on the uniqueness of the product and how it is better compared to a competitors’ product.

Focusing on the problems of the customers and giving a solution for them, is what a customer demands. A customer does not buy a product; he buys benefits in the form of a product. The real value of the product should be realized and a clear picture of it should be presented to the customer so he will be able to relate his situation to the product. If the advertisement doesn’t specify the solution it can provide, the customers will never know of it. So focusing on the customers problem is what some advertisements miss.

The last thing missing in most of the advertisement is motivation for the customers. If the advertiser has designed the ad and the customer has read the it, all efforts and the money invested will be wasted if he doesn’t get up and do something about it. It shouldn’t be assumed that the customer knows what to do; instead the advertisement should influence the mind of the customer and should tell him what to do. A call of action is the final job of the advertisement. It should be a call for information (by subscribing to your mailing list), or visiting your website to learn more or even visiting the online store directly to make their purchase. Your message should sound confident and be clear as to what steps the reader should take next.

Getting a Buzz On

Published March 29, 2010 | By ">

Viral marketing has matured a bit over the years. There seems to have been a shift to the web of not just being seen by agencies and brands as another tick box for any ad campaign, which is significant enough, but now being the medium where a campaign is launched to create a buzz before it hits TV and print. This is buzz marketing.

Even before a movie is released there are trailers, reviews and downloads all over the web, which is seen as the pre-launch buzz-generation activity even before the theater trailers and movie and print ads are launched. Pepsi, Budweiser and numerous other name brands have Facebook fan pages. Red Bull and others have videos on YouTube and a multitude of other video sharing sites. Believe me… Big business “gets it”.

Why? Because buzz marketing works! It can work for small and start-up businesses, as well. The planning stage of a viral campaign will set out the objectives and develop the viral theme for the buzz. These objectives are developed using three core components that are vital to any viral campaign and businesses of any size can use them. They are:

1. The creative material: the viral agent that embodies the message you want to spread in a digital format (image, video, text, audio or any combination of them). The trick is to put together material that people will be eager to share with their family and friends. And guess what? People are much more eager to share “advertainment” than an advertisement.

2. Seeding: Distributing and placing the buzz agent online in places that provide the greatest potential spread. Direct viral material downloads or links on specialist viral third-party web sites like Youtube, Twitter and Facebook in order to create brand awareness and spread the buzz before the viewers get to the campaign destination site.

3. Tracking: Measuring the spread of the buzz marketing campaign to provide accountability and prove success. It is absolutely vital that you know what is or is not working so you can put more resources towards what is doing you the most good. The only way to get that information is to track the results of your seeding.

Lessons have been learned, trends have been developed and there is definitely some science involved in creating a buzz successfully. The buzz marketing technique is here to stay and, if used strategically, it can make a huge difference in your viral campaigns and to the success of your e-business.

Don’t Buy the Bonus Hype!

Published March 2, 2010 | By ">

Alot of hype and advertising is floating around concerning giving bonuses as a way of enticing people to buy through your link. Some of the biggest is for the My Best Bonus Offer membership site. There are many reasons why this site is not your best solution for offering those bonuses. And there are even reasons why you may not even need a bonuses to outperform someone who is offering them.

While it is true that many of the gurus do use this tactic and it can be a deciding factor in whether a customer buys or not; there are still other ways to increase your conversion rates. The best way to increase your conversions is to build a good strong relationship with your marketing list. If you consistently give your list valuable free content, they are going to respect your opinions on other products related to your niche. If you have their respect, many will buy from you on your word alone.

I get tons of great, entertaining, free stuff from Frank Kern and have learned a lot from him over the years by just being a member of his list. I get loads of e-mail from marketers every day, most of which I do not read… I always look at an e-mail from Frank. He has my utmost respect.

An e-mail I received from him a couple of years ago regarding a huge launch didn’t do anything to hurt that respect. Basically, what he told his 100K+ member list was… I know you’ve seen a lot of hype for this new product and people are offering huge bonuses for you to buy it. Don’t buy it from me! (He included his affiliate link in that statement) This other marketer (I don’t recall who it was) has the best bonuses out there for this product.

OK… You are probaly thinking: “This guy is giving away huge commissions!” Well, yes and no. I can guarantee that several of his list members bought from his link. Of the ones who bought from the other guy; Frank earned himself a ton of credibility for being upright and honest about his bonuses. Plus, he probably hooked a few people who weren’t going to buy it, as well!

About My Best Bonus Offer… I don’t have an affiliate link for the site. Personally its not something that interests me and this is why:

If you have a ton of people giving away the same bonuses, it diminishes the power of that bonus
Your bonus should further enhance your credibility in your niche so it should be a product with your name on it
You can find the same items from any number of membership sites and put together your own bonus package
Credibility with your list will take you a lot further with them than any bonus you can give them

So, there you have it. Build good credibility with your list. Be honest in everything you do. If you are going to offer a bonus, make it something that will increase your status as an expert in your niche. Don’t be offering the same boring, mundane bonuses as everyone else. Be yourself… It will take you farther than you could have ever dreamed.

Posted in Branding, List Building | Tagged bonus offer, bonuses, my best bonus offer | 22 Comments

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How to Attract Affiliates To Your Internet Marketing Program

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Creating Successful Advertisements

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Getting a Buzz On

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Don’t Buy the Bonus Hype!

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