Small BIG things

Business cards have long been the networking tool that kept your business-contact list growing. But for those of us who work online, it seems all interaction with potential clients is done electronically – even faxed documents arrive as .pdf emailed attachments. Have we totally gone paper-less? Or are business cards still needed in the digital age?

Although it may be true that many us interact less with people face to face, business cards are still a great marketing tool for one reason – Networking.

Networking is an essential skill for most business people, but especially for entrepreneurs. The strong association between the entrepreneur as a person and his or her business demands that entrepreneurs get out into the world to create and maintain business relationships.

Regardless of the size of your enterprise, business cards can tell people who you are and what you do. It saves a lot of time and trouble for the other person to jot down your contact info. Although you personally made the initial contact, it’s your business card that may get you the sale later on. And this sales tool easy to carry along.

Need new cards? Head over to Print24 and make your own. They have many different templates to help you create a distinctive one that will long be remembered.

These small pieces of paper are things that one can give out at anytime. Be it in a convention or some work related function or at parties and social gatherings, and can help increase customer traffic. Small things come in small packages but can pay BIG dividends. Get your business cards now!

Go Viral Marketing

So we all understand the concept of ‘going viral’, right’? Remember the “getting the flu” analogy? It all starts with one member of the family getting infected by a friend or a relative. He brings the virus home and pretty soon the entire family gets hit… but not before the ‘carrier’ passes it to others too!

Just like that, viral marketing is leveraging tools to drive traffic to your website and profits. A good way to go viral is with an eProduct. The ebook could be yours or someone elses. If allowed, you can place advertisements strategically in the back of an ebook (under Recommended Resources). These can be ebooks with resell rights (any form that allows the product to be easily passed to another – master resell rights, unrestricted PLR rights, rebranding rights or giveaway rights – more on these in a moment).

But how do your find the ‘carrier’? Obviously a suitable carrier could be a niche-targeted eProduct. Those like-minded individuals, who have a passion for the topic of the ebook, will ingest, and spread it, generating targeted traffic to your sales letter page. Some specific eProduct examples could be:

• Unrestricted PLR ebooks or special reports. The easier it is for people to get their hands on your book, the better the traffic! Do not worry about people altering your ads – people are usually too lazy to alter the book. They will promote your links for you! The most appealing thing about unrestricted PLR is that people can SELL the PLR rights to others making it highly valuable!

• E-books or special reports with Master resell rights. The same applies as unrestricted PLR. Resellers can resell your books, bundle your books together as a package or into a fire sale or offer them as a bonus. You can watch as your books (and your links) fall into the hands of readers all over the world!

• Products with giveaway rights. If you have excellent content, people are more than willing to give away your book to others and the virus spreads. Although it carries less perceived value compared to a ‘paid’ product, nevertheless, it still has it usefulness if your content is good.

You can create as many viral campaigns as you can for your website. Once they are all setup, all you need to do is tweak your sales pages or landing pages to maximize your profits. And who said viruses are bad for you????

Audience Engagement part 1

The key to maximizing your earnings is engaging your readers. Unlike traditional ads where you are paid for impressions or clicks, affiliates are only paid when/if a specific action is performed. The action might be a purchase or signing up for a newsletter, but regardless, you are not paid until you’ve compelled your readers to act.

With that in mind, here are the Top 5 attributes of an engaging affiliate marketing initiative:

1. Know Your Audience
The most successful way to use affiliate programs is to anticipate and meet the needs of your readers. Consider why they are coming to your site. What are you providing that they are looking for? Make sure the affiliate products you are promoting provide a solution to your audience’s problems.

If you are writing about sports, don’t put up affiliate ads for printer toner just because everyone has a printer and those programs have a high payout. The people who are coming to read commentary or get stats for their favorite teams aren’t thinking about those things when they’re on your site.

The more relevant the ads are to your readers, the more likely they will use them.

2. Be Trustworthy
Readers are savvy. They know an affiliate link when they see one. If you break their trust by promoting a product you don’t believe in or take advantage of their visit with too many ads, they will leave and never come back.

It is your repeat visitors that will drive traffic. They are the ones who will give you linkbacks, spread the word, and recommend your site as the go-to place for valuable content. You need to build a relationship based on genuine content.

If your visitors don’t think you’re being honest, they won’t read anything else you have to say.

3. Be Helpful
Think of affiliate ads as additional resources that complement your content. Give value to your content by making it helpful, useful, and informative.

Don’t put up a list of your favorite books, hoping people will click on the affiliate link, purchase the books (just because you listed them), so you can cash in on a sale. Take some time to write a detailed review, and use affiliate ads to point them in the right direction if they decide to act on your information. That’s what affiliate ads are for. If you write a great review recommending a book and readers buy the book because of it, you should get something for that.

But just throwing out links to products with no rhyme or reason will result in a quick exit by visitors.

4. Be Transparent
Always disclose your affiliations. Your readers will appreciate your honesty, and will feel better about contributing to your earnings. If they sense that you are being less than honest about your affiliations, they are savvy enough to bypass your link and go directly to the vendor just to avoid giving you referral credit.

Honesty and full disclosure is a necessary part to building a loyal reader base. They know they are supporting you by using your referral links. Make them happy and eager to do so.

5. Select Carefully
Take the time to go through all the different options for products or services available through the programs. Put some thought into which products or services your readers may need or like. Also, change the ads around often, try different ones, and use different graphics and text to see which are the most effective.

Hmm, there’s actually more to share here, but I’ll share more in a future post, soon – I promise………

Google Website Optimizer

The first time that I was exposed to this tool was when I was presenting at The System Seminar in 2008. On of my co-faculty members was Tom Leung from Google and he did a presentation on Google Website optimizer. This is a free tool offered by Google that allows you to do A/B split testing and multivariate testing in order to improve conversions. You can test any element on your landing page such as headlines, sub-headings, call to action, images and many other variable. He said something that has stuck with me every since I saw his presentation.

He said, “Bad landing pages are where clicks go to die.” Now if you are buying traffic and you are sending that traffic to bad landing pages, you are essentially paying for clicks that die. Not only is it important to test various ads you create to generate traffic to your CPA offers, it is equally important to test various elements on your landing pages in order to generate more CPA leads.

Although you have little control over the advertiser’s landing page on the CPA network if you are direct linking, you do have the ability to better pre-sell your prospects with your own landing page. To learn how to use Google Website Optimizer, I recommend going through their  website tutorials.

5 Affiliate Marketing Product Mistakes

Many affiliate marketers today are facing the problem of not knowing which particular affiliate products to promote because of the deluge of prodeucts available. Here are 5 mistakes to avoid

1. Focusing on the affiliate program not on the product

It is of vital importance for you to remember that you must market the product, and not the program. Therefore, don’t even for a second forget about the real product you’re selling, even though you might be inclined to dedicate yourself to competing with other well-performing affiliates. Affiliate

We are not saying that competition is not good, you need to stay competitive, but you must also be generous enough to share your information and make use of necessary resources such as certain links and blogs with other affiliates to generate sales not only by yourself, but together.

2. Failing to invest in viable means of advertising

Don’t use the wrong materials. In order to do this, pay attention to the response of your target market and you will definitely be able to tell which specific form of advertising is more appropriate for affiliate marketing. You should take a few steps: invest in well-made endorsements, banners, emails and links.

Some markets respond very well to any of these. However, you must make sure that every advertisement of yours is informative and has viable content that will confer your company’s credibility. This will eventually lead to increased sales from satisfied customers.

3. Ignoring the Search Engine Optimization Process

Ignoring SEO is a common mistake among affiliates. We must not fail to take into consideration that a good content is not necessarily the road to success, for a non-optimized site will never attract potential customers. A good search engine optimization gives you better visibility and if you apply the SEO techniques properly, you will have a more valuable site, with higher chances of attracting customers. Read also an article about Top Major Mistakes in the Search Engine Optimization Process

4. Focusing on the product not on the site

Focusing on the product is a good thing to do when you are trying to succeed in this business, but focusing only on the product, thus placing your site on the second place will bring you difficulties. Therefore, you should always bring something new to your site, improve it as much as you can, for the site will influence whether your product will sell or not.

If you want people to buy from you, then try a different approach from the other affiliates, be creative and innovative with your site. Keep in mind that the product is an added bonus to your customers.

5. Failing to keep up with latest news in the industry of your chosen products

Stay informed – in tune with the market, and stay ahead of the competition.

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