My Affiliate Marketing Guide for You Part 6

Posted on by

Welcome back to the Affiliate Marketing Guide. We have now set the foundations in place for your online business and you are ready to go out into the big bad world! But, you still have a couple of things to consider and have a strategy around. You need clarity in order to maximise the opportunity. So, where to next?

  1. Build a list. Stating the obvious but you need to build a list in order to have people that you communicate with and promote products to! So, you will need to set up a squeeze page, which is simply a one page site, which has as its sole objective to collect as many email addresses as it can. You will need to decide on what you are going to offer as a free giveaway in order to entice those who land on your site to give you their personal email address. One word of warning and advice – please respect those who give you their email addresses and never abuse it in any shape or form. They have trusted you with something personal to them and if you break that trust, you are not likely to get it back!
  2. Produce valuable content. Set out your program of activities that ensures you have a continuous stream of content that is valuable to potential subscribers. These activities will include article writing, producing videos, commenting on blogs, social media etc. I know I keep on harping about it in this Affiliate Marketing Guide, and I make no apologies for that, but make sure your content is of value. Put yourself in their position – what advice, information, research or reports would they find of value? When you have answered those questions, then go about pulling them together.
  3. Frequency and content of contact. Now you must decide how often you are going to communicate with your list and how you are going to mix promotional material with pure information giving. There is no magic formula for this, but my view is that it should be around 50/50 for content and about ¾ times a week for frequency. You want your subscribers to open your emails and they will only do that if they know that what you send is of value. They also know that you will be trying to sell them something but they do not want to feel that that is the only reason you send emails out. So, intersperse your promotional material with good content and then you will be perceived of value.

That’s the 3 point advice for today! Come back to the Affiliate Marketing Guide soon for the next 3 points to set you on your way.

Small Business and Social Media

Posted on by

Social Media is a very effective business marketing tool promoting the company and its products. Using social websites as a marketing strategy will give you a great advantage over your competition. It has become an essential marketing tool and is not to be under estimated.

Many small business entrepreneurs think this way of marketing is only meant to be for large companies. The fact is any business investing in Social Marketing can improve customer loyalty and increase the possibility of up selling.

Social websites has become the word of mouth in today’s terms. Many business owners can link a direct increase of sales by using social websites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

According to quantcast.com Facebook is most popular amongst the age group between 18 and 49 in the US.

Having a website is just not enough anymore. Facebook and Twitter has become an excellent resource for people and businesses that are looking for recommendations on anything from local plumbers to medical doctors. These sites have also become a platform discussing experiences and different brands. This is the simplest and easiest way to generate leads or prospects.

Many small businesses do not have time or the expertise to make use of these incredible tools and therefore outsource to companies helping to optimize their existing websites and setup their Social websites. SMO (social media optimization) is just as important as SEO (search engine optimization) as far as Internet marketing is concerned. Using company time posting updates to fan pages and Twitter can be very time-consuming and probably a waste of time if not taking the company goals, resources etc. in consideration. Managing your organization’s social websites is a full-time job and a special skill set. Outsourcing will save you a lot of time and money and leave you to concentrate on your companies main objective.

Local business owners should use every effort guiding prospects to their social websites by offering discounts when clicking the “Like” button for instance. This way you are getting their details legally and now the interaction starts by promoting specials etc. Your customers then become clients and before you know it you have generated leads you probably never would have had. The days are over using the yellow pages and paper adverts. You now are using direct marketing, and you interact with people who are interested in what you have to offer.

The fact is Social Media is the new generation of communication with prospects and clients.