Charlie Cook's MArketing for Success Insider's Club

 

The Top Experts Reveal Small Business Marketing Strategies
That Get Results In This Economy

How to Mint Money with Affiliate Marketing

By Eric Garner   |   October 17, 2010

Your Step-by-step plan to making money as an affiliate marketer
If you know how affiliate marketing works, you’ll know that to earn money from your referred sales, people need to click on the affiliate ID links in your site, blog, and emails. That puts a cookie on their computer, and any time they go back to the merchant’s site and buy, you will be credited with the sale and earn money.
Once your cookie is in place, the next thing you’ve got to do is to get your visitors to return to your merchant and buy their products. Lots and lots of them. There’s only one way to do that: Create an internet marketing plan and implement it with skill and persistence.
Here’s a step by step plan to starting your Affiliate Marketing Program and marketing it to keep those profits rolling in.
When you set up your affiliate marketing program:
1. know your unique affiliate id number
2. know how to insert your id number into any of the links you get from your merchant
3. get to know how the affiliate scheme works in detail
4. become an expert on your merchants’ products
5. bookmark the affiliate site so you can regularly log in and check how you’re doing.
6. read the Terms of Use on the affiliate site so you know how the scheme works
7. get a Paypal account so you can be paid commission
8. test the affiliate scheme by purchasing something at next-to-nothing cost
9. find out what banners, ads and text links you can use
10. take time to plan your marketing strategy
11. write out your Internet marketing plan covering the five main kinds of Internet marketing: email marketing; article marketing; social marketing; viral marketing; and advertising marketing.
I’ll be writing more about how to manage and market your Affiliate Marketing program day-to-day in the weeks ahead. Stay tuned!

If you know how affiliate marketing works, you’ll know that to earn money from your referred sales, people need to click on the affiliate ID links in your site, blog, and emails. That puts a cookie on their computer, and any time they go back to the merchant’s site and buy, you will be credited with the sale and earn money.

Once your cookie is in place, the next thing you’ve got to do is to get your visitors to return to your merchant and buy their products. Lots and lots of them. Read More »

How To Supercharge Your Email Marketing With Autoresponders

By Michael Katz   |   October 16, 2010

Why your Autoresponder is your best small business marketing tool
Social media, Facebook, Twitter — what’s the most effective, least expensive way to market your business or service? One of  the easiest and the most effective marketing tools you can use is already right there in your e-mail toolbox. It’s your Autoresponder.
What is an Autoresponder, anyway?
An autoresponder is simply a message sent automatically in response to an e-mail received or a web form filled in.  You’re probably familiar with one already: the autoresponder vacation message. You write it before you leave, and while you’re gone, anyone who sends you an e-mail gets your prewritten message sent back to them.
Here in E-Newsletter Land, the most important autoresponder is the “Welcome Message,” a message sent immediately to anyone who signs up to our e-mail subscriber list. The Welcome Message is one of the most important tools in our autoresponder: It’s an opportunity to welcome new readers as they take that first step onto our list.
Make sure your welcome e-mail includes:
• An explicit thank you for subscribing to your email list
• A recap of what they can look forward to receiving every week
• The name, title and — if you want to get fancy — handwritten signature of an actual human being within your organization
• An invitation to send feedback
• An unsubscribe link (commercial e-mail marketing services, like Constant Contact, require this for legal reasons)
Simply put, the point of a welcome message is to offer a hearty electronic handshake to your new friends.
Whatever you do, don’t simply send the uncustomized, default welcome letter that your e-mail marketing vendor provides. Give this all-important first message the same care in voice, content and design that you give the newsletter itself.
In my case, for example, I’ve now got it set up so that after the initial and immediate welcome letter, new readers receive:
On Day 2, an e-mail that points them to my newsletter archive
On Day 16, an e-mail that points them to my page of additional free resources
On Day 45, an e-mail that demands cash. Ha, ha! I’m kidding. It’s an e-mail that asks how I’m doing and what else they’d like to see in the newsletter.
Bottom Line: New subscribers are like rich acquaintances. When they introduce themselves, welcome them with open arms, show them around, and pay them special attention in that first month or two of the relationship. Your autoresponder keeps in touch for you, so you can turn that first meeting into a profitable long-term business relationship.

Social media, Facebook, Twitter — what’s the most effective, least expensive way to market your business or service? One of  the easiest and the most effective email marketing tools you can use is  your Autoresponder. Read More »

Guarantee Increased Sales with This One Simple Step

By Tom Borg   |   October 15, 2010

The simple way to Guarantee increased sales and build repeat business
If you could find a simple, almost cost-free method to increase your purchase rate from 10% to 70%, wouldn’t you jump on it? Well, you already have access to it! It’s your business guarantee. With a strong guarantee in place – one that you back up to the letter – you reassure your customer, make them feel comfortable spending money with you, and increase your sales by 10% or more.
Simply stated, your clients want to be guaranteed that what they purchase from your company is going to provide them with what they want and need. This is nothing less than what you and I would expect, were we to purchase a product or service from someone else.
This expectation is based on a strong instinctual need that Abraham Maslow categorizes in his Hierarchy of Needs as security. We all possess this basic need. When we recognize and openly promote a strong guarantee to our clients, we eliminate their fear of not getting what they paid for.
In his outstanding book Your Secret Wealth, Jay Abraham suggests that our clients will purchase more quickly and more often when we provide and communicate a strong guarantee.  As Jay Abraham explains, most companies typically have a guarantee but it’s not written or even verbalized to their potential clients. The absence of this communication creates doubt and suspicion about the product.
Write up a guarantee you feel comfortable with and try it out. Evaluate it after 30 days, measure the results, then tweak it. The key is to come up with a guarantee that you can uphold to your clients. By doing so, you will improve the quality of what you promise to deliver and increase the expectation of customer satisfaction.
By having and communicating a written guarantee, you reverse the risk of your client’s investment in your product; with it, you can dramatically increase your sales and expand your repeat business.
By Tom Borg ©2010

Want to know which two-three paragraphs are guaranteed to increase your sales by up to 50% or more? It’s not a secret — but all too many businesses let prospects slip away when they forget to use this incredibly powerful tool.

What am I talking about? It’s the proven way to eliminate your prospects worries about taking any  risk when they buy from you. Read More »

7 Reasons to Say No to New Business

By Joan Stewart   |   October 14, 2010

When PR people complain to me about the Customers from Hell, I always try to help.

At some point in the conversation, I’m not surprised to hear them say, “I should have trusted my gut.”

Indeed.

Debbie Bermont, president of Source Communications, a marketing consulting firm, says trusting your gut is one of seven reasons to say no to new business. Read More »

What matters more: “brand values” – or sales?

By Drayton Bird   |   October 13, 2010

Here’s a strange story for you.

A while ago I wrote an e-mail for a firm selling investment advice.

They took forever to get the damn thing out and never told us how it did, but one day sent us an e-mail asking us to adapt it for another firm’s list with whom they had a deal.

But by accident we saw two revealing insights into why so much marketing is bad. Read More »

How to Close More Sales – Without the Sales Pitch

By Charlie Cook   |   October 12, 2010

Is it taking you too long to close the sale? Are you getting the brush off? If so, you’re using the wrong approach.

There is no set amount of time it takes to close a sale, but unless you’re selling something that costs tens of thousands of dollars, you’re not going to make money if you spend hours with each prospect. In most cases, 30 minutes is all you should need to close the sale. Read More »

Speed Up Your Website to Drive More Sales

By Debbie Campbell   |   October 11, 2010

I’ve just started redesigning my business website – it’s been about a year and a half since I last did it. One of the main reasons is that most of my work over the last year has involved WordPress projects. I think it’s high time my own website was built in the content management system I recommend to clients!

As I’m working through the new site, I’m culling content from the old one. Some of the revised verbiage includes text about creating maintainable websites. What does that mean, exactly? Aren’t all websites maintainable? Read More »

Change Your Mindset, Grow Your Business

By Susan Rice Lincoln   |   October 10, 2010

I just got back from Fabienne Fredrickson’s Mindset Retreat in Miami.  I actually never planned on going but after interviewing her for my Wise Women of The Web teleseminar series, her ideas intrigued me so I hopped on the plane.

What a week!  Fabienne devoted 3 days to ‘transforming’ the participants lives.  She covered a whole array of mindset issues-from the importance of thinking big and understanding your Big Why to how to get rid of the ‘gunk’ that is preventing you from being the full success you want to be. Read More »

How to Be Aware of Cultural Needs In Sales

By Tom Hopkins   |   October 9, 2010

If you do business with people from cultural groups different than your own, you would be wise to invest some time understanding their cultures as well as their needs in terms of your products and services.

You may not necessarily be doing business with people in another country, but with those from other countries who have relocated near your place of business. If you want their business, you have to understand their needs on many levels. Read More »

15 Things the Media Hates

By Rick Frishman   |   October 8, 2010

Now that you know what to do in order to solicit a positive response—here’s what to avoid:

1. Not Taking “No” for an Answer
Persistence is an admirable trait, but there comes a point when you must accept defeat. Most people won’t build relationships with insistent callers who phone 500 times after they’re told “No.” When someone says “No,” accept it. Walk away before you destroy a potentially valuable connection.
Read More »

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