Believe it or not, the most effective marketing strategies are often the least understood. This article will consider the seven most popular selling strategies starting with what I consider to be the most effective and ending with the least effective strategy.
You will either sell someone else's products or you will sell your own. When you are selling your own products you have a big advantage, you are in total control.
The advantage of selling other people's products is that you have little to no risk. Nothing ventured - nothing gained.
Either way you can still have control of which marketing methods to use. I'll mention the most popular methods below.
Associate & Affiliate Programs
The best way to advertise your product or service is through recruiting other people's resources into your marketing efforts. Nothing else compares with the raw power of the associate or affiliate program. In addition, they are the least costly way to acquire new customers in the shortest period of time.
Affiliate programs work because you only pay for results; you get free access to other people's time, efforts and advertising. It's more profitable because your commissions are paid out of your profits; if nothing is sold you have no commissions to pay.
Affiliate programs are often referred to as "Performance Based Marketing". You pay ONLY for results, not impressions or click-troughs, but actual SALES. Zero out of pocket expenses! It just doesn't get any better.
The only downside of running an associate program is that you need to invest in web-based tracking software to automate tracking of sales and commissions.
Visit the following website to learn more about how you can setup and manage your own affiliate program. You will sell more of your products & services with this approach, and your affiliates are often your ideal customers.
http://www.smithfam.com/url/assoctrac.html
The best information on selling the products of others is available in the following ebook.
Winning the Affiliate Game by Declan Dunn
< http://activemarketplace.com/w.cgi?winning-10464 >
Your Personal Recommendation
It goes without saying that, if you are respected in a specific area, whatever you recommend will carry more weight. Many people abuse the power of a personal recommendation so the less you give it out, the more weight it will carry.
When I find a great product or service I often take the time to say thanks. I later discovered that people actually follow-up and check out testimonials before buying a product or service. In fact, giving and getting testimonials is in itself an excellent linking strategy. It cannot only help establish credibility for others and for their products; it can actually help establish your own credibility.
Newsletter Ads
Ads in Newsletters and ezines are a great ways to attract customers. The key is to target your ad and ezine as precisely as possible. You want your offer to go to qualified people already shopping for your product and who can afford to buy it.
Nobody wins when an ad doesn't sell. Ad prices are usually geared to the targeted sales expectation. Newsletter & ezine ads are the most cost effective for bigger ticket items. I keep my ad prices as low as possible because it encourages repeat business.
For example: if you bought a $50 ad that went to 5000 subscribers and your profit was $1 for each sale you would need 50 total sales, or 10 sales per thousand to break even. On the other hand, if your product had a profit of $10 you would only need 5 sales to break even. It's usually a whole lot easier to make five sales than 50 sales.
When you list a URL in a newsletter ad, put a question mark followed by a code to your URL so you can check your results to determine if your ad is profitable. Here is an example from a classified ad in this week's newsletter
<http://www.gumball-tracker.com/?smith>
Your browser will ignore the question mark and everything after it but your server logs will list each code as if it was a separate URL. Using this method you can tell which ads and publications offer the best results. You can also ask prospects to reply to an your ad with a special Id number, or use a unique email account address to track each ad. Test your ad several times before running a big promotion or ad blitz.
Opt-In Email
You do have a house list don't you? If not, you need to start building one right away. Start by keeping a list of your customers. The easiest sale you can make is almost always to someone you have already established a trusting relationship, this is especially true online.
Build several small-specialized lists and only mail to your own lists, then only when you have something new or important to share. If you hard sell to your opt-in lists they will opt out.
I personally don't usually use "opt-in" lists for commercial mailings often. Frankly I am concerned about how commercial messages are often regarded. Remember, it's not an opt-in list anymore as soon as someone complains.
The best form of opt-in mailing list is a regular newsletter or ezine. They work great because:
- Newsletters are 100% "opt-in" and subscriber based
- You can publish some commercial content
- You can offer classified ads to pay for your efforts
- Newsletters help build your credibility
People's interests change, so always provide an easy method for people to get off your list. You might notice at the very end of this newsletter I provide a simple way people can be added or removed *AND* (this is important) I include the email address on my list.
I use AY Mail. It's a great low-cost program to do personalized opt-in emailing.
< http://www.aysoft.com/ >
Getting & Giving Links
Getting people to link to your website is a great way to earn traffic, but again there is a downside. Usually when people link to your website, there needs to be some benefit to the party offering the link.
People usually offer links to websites that are content rich; ones that are not in direct competition with them. People usually offer links to your free content you spend so much time developing but not to any product or service you are selling.
Finding websites to link to yours is hard, time-consuming work. If you have a content rich website, it's worth the effort spent to *GET* others to link to you. On the other hand, providing links to other websites or exchanging links usually isn't usually in your best interests. Whenever you provide a link to others you are offering your visitors the opportunity to leave your website.
It's hard enough to acquire a visitor; you don't want to send them away if you can help it. Manage your off-site links carefully. Don't waste your traffic linking to websites that are already getting plenty of traffic of their own. For example, don't link to Netscape or Microsoft, they don't need your link and they won't link to you.
If you run a website with a graphics theme, you might want to offer a link to companies that offer great graphics resources or to companies that sell products like Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro, especially if you can earn a commission if they buy the product.
Banner Ads
Banner ads work sometimes, but they work much better for the person selling you the banner.
Considering that most web-surfers have learned to ignore banners, their effectiveness has been in doubt for some time now.
If you want to use banners as a part of your overall marketing program, try to find someone who will only charge you for the number of hits or banner clicks you get, not for the number of times your banner is displayed. Better yet, find someone who will charge only for the sales you make. Most affiliate programs will supply you with banners to put on your website but almost any other method will yield better results.
Banner co-ops are another way to market with banners. Usually you host a banner for someone else. When you display their banner twice, they display yours on someone else's website once. The co-op sells the second banner display to third party advertiser. Banner co-ops depend on you to help them sell banner displays to their paying customers. But why trade 2 banner display opportunities for one.
You would think that choosing a banner co-op that offers targeted exchanges would be better, but think again. Lets say you are selling widgets. You display two banners on your website for your competition's widget in exchange for displaying one banner for your widget. Am I missing something?
Banners slow down loading time and send your visitors elsewhere. Use them only sparingly.
Unsolicited Email - Spam
I mention this method because it appears to be the cheapest way to get your message out. Many people use unsolicited email because, on the surface, it would appear to be the cheapest way to go. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
If you employ targeted, unsolicited commercial email, you might make a few sales, but in the long run you will damage you reputation. If you are selling someone else's product, you will not only hurt your reputation, you will damage their reputation in the process.
Sure, you will see a ton of Spam telling you that bulk email pays. Its true bulk email pays; it pays off for the people selling you a list or bulk mailing services, not for you.
Even so called "opt-in" lists don't pay off. People "opt-in" your mailing list to receive information in a specific area of interest, usually- *NOT* to receive commercial email.
Click Here to Email Bob Smith
