Learn Blogging & Affiliate Marketing with Rosalind Gardner
I get pitched several times a day, every day, by writers and SEO ‘specialists' who want to “help me improve the visibility” of my various blogs.
Granted, with thousands of visitors per day, I wasn't aware that my blogs had a problem with visibility, but OK, I'll bite to see what they are offering.:-)
Sadly (for them), I ditch their pitch for one (or many) very obvious reasons 99.9% of the time. Here are just a few of the reasons their pitches fail: [Read more…]
Business is easy to think about but hard to run. It’s like a marathon and it’ll take a lot more from you than just the intention, the thought, and the execution. If you are planning to sell your goods online, there’s a lot more to it than just an idea, sourcing (or manufacturing) products, and making a profit. Is it really that easy? Or is it tough and competitive enough to discourage you even before you begin?
To start with, you have the basics to cover. As Mark Hayes points out on the Shopify blog, you have due diligence to find the perfect product to base your business on. Mark has quick examples to help you figure out your potential market size, the nature of your competition, ways to source the products, finding target customers, and setting pricing strategies.
Matt Winn of Volusion also has a comprehensive guide to help you sell your products online. But all that is a part of just “figuring things out.†The hustle, however, is a lot harder than it seems…
No matter what product you choose to sell, you need faith and absolute confidence in your products. If you were an authorized reseller or a premium reseller for Apple products and recommended accessories, you wouldn’t have a lack of confidence for sure. Instead, if you’re selling products that you make on your own or if you’re a reseller of less popular brands, it just gets harder to be honest and straightforward.
That, however, is not the only ingredient of the secret sauce. You’d have to know your products inside out before you can try explaining them to customers. Being a “product expert†gives you the additional advantage of being able to emphasize all the features and benefits of your product and even cross-sell or upsell other products.
For instance, your product descriptions could include suggestions that customers wouldn’t know unless you tell them.
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Obviously, you know a lot more about your products than your customers do (despite tons of information about products online).
Just be honest, upfront and vocal.
If you have a retail establishment with an ecommerce website, you can’t expect your customers to visit your store and then wait for them to go back home so that they can visit your online store to buy. If they made up their mind to make that purchase, the best time to allow them to buy is now. For this to happen, there needs to be a “bridge.â€
Customers walking in could touch, feel, try, and muse over your products. When they are ready to buy, you could bring the web to them. Using real world ecommerce integrated POS solutions, small businesses can build those bridges to help sell quickly and seamlessly. You can sell both online and offline with a simple iPad app, while being able to track inventory and purchases, and allowing customers to pay with multiple options.
Waiting for your customers to go back only so that they can connect to your store is disastrous for your business.
So, this customer walks into your store (or visits your ecommerce store). She surfs for a while. She browses through your products, adds a few to the shopping cart, and finally checks out (hopefully). But then, what else is happening? You see, making a purchase is an exciting thing to do: Most shoppers love the fact that that product they just bought is going to be theirs! This is an emotion that’s worth investing in for businesses.
Have social media buttons placed strategically at the time of checkout. Allow your customers to brag about their purchase. Open gateways for them to recommend products to friends and let the world know about their buy.
None of this is going to happen with the sharing gates closed. You have to facilitate these interactions and social engagements. Are you going to do it right?
Don’t get fixated on any one kind of digital marketing channel. For instance, don’t obsess about SEO, which includes stuffing product descriptions with keywords and links. One “keyword†in the product description (most likely the brand name) that piques customers’ interest is more than sufficient.
Focus on strategic content that does a lot more than manipulate the search engines. Work with your engagement strategy and brand conversation management on social media using tools such as Buffer for Business or HootSuite. Aim to please and persuade your visitors (rather than search bots) because income traffic won’t mean a thing if you can’t convert.
Work on the digital marketing channels that work best for you. Blogging works well, and so does creating and sharing parallel content such as slide decks, product videos, and tutorials. You can even have a self-managed community around your brand or products using a tool such as GetSatisfaction.
You can’t work with “perceived†feedback. While you can think of suitable upgrades on enhancements for your products, nothing works better than your own customers giving you criticism, advice or tips for improvement.
Then again, you’ll need a way to make it happen. Start by building simple input forms or questionnaires using Google Forms, Wufoo, or SurveyMonkey. You can also gain precious insights into user behavior by taking advantage of tools such as Qualaroo for surveying visitors while they’re browsing specific sections of your site and Olark for engaging them in a live chat.
Product improvement, if there has to be such a thing, ought to be quick and responsive.
Of course, all of this work is recurring. There’s no such thing as set it and forget it. It takes years of continuous work before you get anywhere close to your goals. It’s doable but difficult. Are you up for it?
Businesses are a result of meticulous planning, flawless execution, and an unflinching commitment to results.
You can’t do with anything less.
Guest post contributed by Heather Smith.
If you do not know what the four P’s of marketing are – you are not alone.
There are many people who do not understand the basic relationship that makes up successful marketing. The four P’s were originally created as a marketing mix. Having a marketing mix is often fundamental when forming a product or brand's unique selling point i.e. the unique quality that makes a product different from its competitors.
The term marketing mix was originally created in an article written by Neil Borden called “The Concept of the Marketing Mix.†He became aware of the term after he heard about if from an acquaintance, James Culliton, who in 1948 designated the role of the marketing manager as a mixer of ingredients.
Getting to the point, a proper marketing mix allows your product or brand to achieve the highest sales and recognition it possibly can. Like having a balanced meal makes you as healthy as possible, having a balanced marketing mix helps to make your product or brand as profitable as possible.
The four P's that make up the marketing mix are: price, product, promotion, and place.
The price is the amount of money a customer pays for the product or service. The price is very significant as it governs the company's profit and therefore existence. Modifying the price has an intense impact on the marketing strategy and, contingent on the price elasticity of the product, it will frequently affect the demand and sales as well. The price that the marketer sets should balance the other elements of the marketing mix.
The product is the simplest idea. It is an item or service that fulfills what a consumer needs or wants. Your product can literally be anything, even an idea. You must have a concrete grasp on what the product is, however, before you can successfully market it.
Promotion can be all of the methods of communication that a marketer may use to deliver information to various people about the product. Promotion is made up of things like: advertising, public relations, personal selling, viral and word-of-mouth, and sales promotion. Promotion is essentially how you get the word out about your product or service.
Place is all about providing the product at a location which is convenient for consumers to access. Today, that is frequently online. Place also has a lot to do with distribution, or getting the product to the customer. Several approaches such as intensive distribution, selective distribution, exclusive distribution and franchising can be applied by the marketer to match the other parts of the marketing mix.
The four P’s can help you become a better marketer by understanding the simplified balance of marketing products or services. Once you have a good understanding of these four aspects, you can have more success in marketing your products or services.
Today's post is by Alan Bechtold of Ink-U-Bator Mastermind, one of my VERY favorite people in Internet marketing and publishing… cause he's someone who truly CARES about your success AND shares fantastic advice. 🙂
There’s one key to a never-ending supply of fresh, targeted traffic and revenue most affiliate marketers never talk about – even top experts. Maybe it’s because the subject is sometimes seen as politically incorrect. Perhaps it’s because some consider it outright offensive. Still, it’s tough to escape the basic logic of this time-tested technique.
It’s sad so many people are so prudish about it. If more people knew about it, they’d see the success in their lives they richly deserve. Perhaps the social stigma would finally lift, if it was discussed more openly. Maybe we could finally spread the word about this simple, life-altering concept, far and wide, changing even more lives.
What’s the fact so many people avoid discussing in public?
It’s this: people will always follow you in growing numbers directly proportional to the body of work you’ve produced.
I’m often confused by the general reluctance to discuss it. People seem more than willing to avoid acknowledging the existence of this fact at almost any cost. They’ll spend weeks building elaborate SEO campaigns and pay thousands for the latest Click Bank traffic “tricks†course to keep from having to consider the almost inevitable impact applying this simple principle would have on their lives.
I think it’s the “work†part of “body of work†most people are too embarrassed to discuss. Even worse, “body of work†implies work you do more than once.
Oh, no!
Seriously, when it comes to information publishing, the more you’re “out there,†the more people will find you naturally. A growing body of work accomplishes this every time. Without tricks. Without having to work endless variations of systems designed to trick the search engines that always seem to get shut down just about the same time you finally get them all set up and running.
Every time you add a new information release to what you already offer, people who got what you last released will be there, eagerly waiting for its release. They’ll be your best customers for whatever you release next and they cost nothing to reach with the news that there’s something new to buy.
Each new release also acts like a magnet, pulling in new people from word of mouth and the natural buzz something brand new seems to carry with it. When people discover your newest release and like it, they’ll start looking for other things from you.
This increases the sales of your previous releases. The bigger your body of work, the more impressed they are and the more inclined to make more than one purchase they become. This creates an undeniably proven exponential effect that continues growing even long after you stop feeding new releases into the mix.
It’s really not all that hard to do. You just have to shake off any natural aversion you have to the concept of building a body of work and start putting it together now.
Think about publishing outside of your Website or newsletter more often, to get this rolling. Look through all your past published work. If you’ve been online for a few months, you’ve already got enough blog posts or Website or newsletter updates to gather and publish in a good book, with just a bit of editing.
Select a sub-topic that’s currently hot with your audience, then gather up all the related posts and comments that relate to it. Add some updates and maybe a bit of running commentary of your own, to bring things up-to-date. Possibly provide the “story†behind the topic and even behind-the-scenes stories about how the entire discussion unfolded – what you were doing as it happened, how you felt, responses you considered posting, but didn’t.
Call some of the people who contributed to the conversation and interview them. Transcribe it and include it. Add photos of them and you.
Ask your blog or website visitors to contribute their stories on a selected topic. If you can, offer a prize for the best submission. Prizes aren’t necessary, in most cases, but they do tend to turn up the heat on participation. Still, people love will love knowing they could see their names in a book, electronic or otherwise. They always will. A lot of people will happily contribute just for the satisfaction of getting published.
You’ll build more rapport with your current audience with this sort of interaction, and you’ll get your next book built for you!
Set a goal to get something published expressly for distribution outside of your current in-house online media at least every three months. Every two months, if you can do it.
You can always sell or give away what you publish on your blog or Website, too. You probably currently do. However, today’s e-reader market (Kindle, Nook, iPad, etc.) is now so easy to reach with your published works, there’s no reason not to also make your work available on them, too. After all, they represent a ready-made potential audience of millions who could discover you and want more from you as soon as they see what you have to offer now. All you have to do to reach them is set up some accounts, follow some simple formatting instructions and publish.
I know it sounds tough. It does require some consistent effort for a while. But, the effort is honestly easy and fun. And there are dozens more ways to quickly put together information products that e-reader users will love.
Even better — e-reader book buyers are showing a marked preference for shorter works. This is excellent for all of us! It’s much easier to quickly produce 24- 48-page books, and the more you release, the faster to your body of work grows.
Just focus on quality and value. Always over-deliver. Give people $10 worth of information for free, to generate leads with links inside. Offer $50 worth of information value for $5. Remember that the value of the information you’re providing, especially in the e-reader market, isn’t based on padded page counts. Focus on quality, regardless of the resulting number of pages and you’ll build an ongoing flow of traffic and revenue that grows exponentially over time.
It’s virtually a can’t-miss system, proven over decades of constant testing. Your body of work has the power to put you in the diver’s seat of the rest of your life. The small amount of work (pardon my use of the word, right out in the open and everything), over a short period of time, is a tiny sacrifice in return for the huge rewards it so surely will bring.
Comments, questions or suggestions? Please leave a comment below!
Cheers,
Everyone makes mistakes. Customers know this. How you handle those mistakes is the deciding factor on whether the customer will forgive you and come back, tell their friends about the experience, or heaven forbid, post negative remarks on the Internet about you.
So when should you admit to making a mistake? If you catch the mistake yourself, your best defense is to contact the customer with a resolution before they contact you and ask for one. That puts you in their mind as someone who is attentive to their needs, caring and honest about their experience with you.
Case in point: In early January I went in for what was supposed to be a simple hernia operation, but something went wrong. Apparently there was more damage on the inside than what appeared on the surface. After 6 grueling days of therapy and recovery, I was released from the hospital.
Two weeks later on my follow up visit, I asked the surgeon why the incision was 8 inches instead of 2. He said “I messed up”. I asked him to repeat it, which he did, then smiled. That was supposed to tell me he was kidding, but instead left me thinking he was just trying to diffuse the situation.
There was no explanation though, for the huge bump and numbness on my leg, which has spread to cover the entire thigh. What happens in the operating room when you are sedated? TV shows like “Grey's Anatomy” show that apparently a lot goes on in there. But my leg? The operation was on my stomach. Was I thrown like a bean bag? Only the surgical team knows for sure and nobody is talking. Did you really think they would admit anything?
I only went back to that surgeon after the first round because he is the only one my doctor recommended, even after I asked for someone else. Will I ever go back? No way! I will find another on my own.
How does that fit in with your own business? Your customers will seek alternative sources and vendors if you screw up so bad that their situation is not resolved. Making jokes about the mistake only makes the situation worse.
Customers remember 2 things:
1) That you either did well
2) Remember that you messed up
When you mess up without fixing it, your customers will tell 7 times more people than those they would when you made things right. They not only will never come back, but recommend others do not use your services either.
Is your site ready for Christmas shoppers?An Accenture survey forecasts that folks will be shopping for Christmas earlier this year, with 69 percent planning to complete the bulk of their holiday shopping by Dec. 7th. Too, consumers are more deal-oriented than ever before, with 25% of them expecting at least 50 percent discounts before they buy.
According to a Gallup survey, the Christmas spending forecast is down slightly this year, with consumers planning to spend $740 on gifts compared to $801 as per surveys taken at the same time last year.
With more merchants competing for fewer dollars, the deals are going to be phenomenal. In fact, merchants have already started to lower their prices to get a leg up on the competition.
Sears launched a campaign on October 31st, called “Black Friday Now” with deep discounts happening every Saturday from now until Christmas.
Saturdays???
‘Black Friday', which falls on the day after American Thanksgiving (November 27th) is the first day of the Christmas season and is usually the busiest shopping day of the year… offline.
‘Cyber Monday' is the Monday after Thanksgiving. The term was first used by Shop.org, whose research showed that 77% of online retailers reported a significant increase in sales on that day.
So what does that tell us?
That we'd better plan to get our affiliate sites and PPC campaigns ready for the Christmas shopping rush earlier than ever. I've noticed that folks are talking about Black Friday / Cyber Monday deals on consumer sites already. In fact,
So, although the big Christmas shopping days are still almost a month away, you need to get your site and PPC campaigns ramped up now.
Keep these suggestions in mind as you prepare your site for the 2009 holiday season – and you'll thank me for your increased conversions this year! 🙂
Comments, questions or suggestions? Please leave a comment below!
Cheers,
Although I sell millions of dollars of products for my affiliated merchant partners each and every year, I still don't consider what I do as ‘selling'.
Quite frankly, I hate being sold to and can only imagine that you feel the same about the steady barrage of product pitches that you see on sites and in your email.
The point to remember is that your customers are put off by the hype they see too much of every day.
Therefore, make it your job to advise, recommend and endorse products rather than try to ‘sell' them.
The first step is to start from a friendly perspective by getting to know who your site visitors are and what they need and want through polls, surveys or direct request.
Next, prove that you understand and have empathy for their concerns by echoing their frustrations. Share a personal story of your own experience with a similar problem and tell them how you were able to solve that problem with the product you are about to endorse.
Above all, be honest. No product is perfect, so a 100% positive product endorsement will be met with skepticism and resistance by your readers. So, be sure to point out any minor shortfalls and limitations. Alternatively, consider comparing and contrasting two different products to give your visitors a variety of options from which to choose.
Finally, close your endorsement with an enthusiastic reminder of your thumbs up rating and a recommendation to buy the product.
In a nutshell, take that salesman's hat off and start talking to your visitors the same way you would tell a friend about a product that you really like.
That's how to sell without selling.
*** This article is a modified version of the original which first appeared in Chitika's Blog Bash – 30 Days, 30 Expert Bloggers.
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