Browsing Category: "Marketing"
Make Your Affiliate Program Stand Out
How can you differentiate yourself from all the others trying to sell the same thing? It’s really very simple yet something that I’ve seen very few people do.
Trick to Apply
It’s a simple 2-step process. First, you absolutely must be marketing your affiliate or associate program from your own website. Do not under any circumstances try and market or advertise the self-replicated affiliate page you were given when you signed up.
Now here’s the trick to making your offer stand out. And again, I’m assuming you have taken the initiative to setup some type of web page to market your affiliate or associate program. All you have to do is offer something unique for anyone who buys the product or service your affiliate program offers. Think about it. Offer free banner creation, or, do you design web pages? If so, offer a free 3 page web site.
Do you get the idea?
Whatever you are marketing, offer something as a bonus. The customer sees this as something few if any others selling the same thing are offering. The list could be endless as to what you offer. It can be as simple as free reports, or a great ebook. Maybe you’ve been given reprint and resell rights to several products. Instead of trying to sell them, offer them as a freebie if you think it will help get the sale for the affiliate or associate program you are marketing.
Use your own judgment and base what you give away on the commission you get from making a sale. You don’t want to give away $200 in services if you are only making a
$25 profit on your affiliate sale.
Try and make whatever you use as your free bonus offer something of real value. Don’t just use the same old worn out reports that have been floating around the web for years.
Conclude
The bottom line; If you are marketing an associate or affiliate program, and are not getting the sales you were expecting, it is never too late to try something that can jump start your sales. Unless you can make your offer stand out, you are more than likely to be one of many not earning any money with the program you have joined. Think differently. You don’t have to be one of thousands.
Are You a Salesman Or a Marketer?
Do you see the difference?
I’m willing to bet that a lot of you are salesman and didn’t even know it. There’s nothing wrong with being a salesman but it is a lot more difficult to sell something that you want people to buy than it is to sell something to people that they actually want.
The salesman finds his product, and tries to sell it. He rarely tests his product or takes any time to find out if the people are actually interested. The salesman usually starts’ selling his product with great expectations often unknowingly his fate is already determined as there may not be much of a demand for what he or she is selling.
The marketer tests his product first, he asks his customers what they want, then gives it to them. It is very easy to do. How? One of the easiest ways is to simply ask your customers. Put a form on one of your web sites and ask the visitors what new products or services they are looking for. What products would they buy? What products they need. You’d be surprised how easy it is to fill a void in the marketplace. Use a survey, a poll, there are countless different methods to find out what the people want and need.
Conclude
So it comes down to a simple question. Do you want to be a salesman or a marketer? Understanding the difference is the first step in making that decision. The answer seems pretty obvious doesn’t it?
Credibility Is Your Best Weapon
It can be the single biggest factor in determining the long-term success of your online business yet so few people able to establish credibility with their business. It’s very simple to do. Simply place a bio of yourself or your company on the main page of your website. You don’t have to give out too much personal information but just enough to make the customer feel comfortable purchasing from you.
Below is my friend’s story as he describes:
Here is a real world example of how credibility can drive massive amounts of traffic to your web site. I sell a certain software product online that is fairly competitive. There are a lot of sites that sell this product. One day I noticed I was receiving about 450 hits per hour to the site.
I checked my logs and saw that all the traffic was coming from one mainstream media site. It seems this site had reviewed the software I was selling and used my item out of the thousands available as a reference for the product. I emailed the author of the article and asked her why she chose my site and she said it was easy. I was the ONLY site selling this product that provided full contact information and a bio. They could reach me by phone, email, and regular mail. It created credibility. All the other sites provided nothing more than an email address and in some cases not even that.
I ended up getting over 20,000 hits in one week, about 10,000 the second week, and about 5000 the third week, and this was not counting the regular traffic. This resulted in a LOT of sales. Credibility can be so powerful that I can’t understand why more people don’t give their business the same chance. My cost: ZERO
Conclude
You must have got the idea now that sometimes not just the product information but your approach to your website information can help you make money.
