Increasing
your sales
After you have found a marketing
method that work for your business
and you are slowly starting to see
revenues, it’s time for phase
#2 – taking your business to
the next level. In this chapter,
you will learn how to reach more
customers and increase revenues.
Reaching your clients
There are two type of marketing
available on the Internet. Passive
and active marketing. You should
consider both and decide which
path best suits your product.
Passive marketing is letting
your customer find you using
techniques such as search engines,
banners and offline ads. In
this way, your consumer is searching
for you. And he is focused on
your type of product or service.
Active marketing is the type
of aggressive marketing that
brings your service or product
to the potential doorstep of
your client. “The advertiser
finds the client before the
client finds the advertiser.”
Active marketing includes: Email
campaigns, and various advertising
platforms. (For example: ICQ Hotbar or Cydoor). In active
marketing, the user does not
search for a service or a product,
but he will gladly purchase
it if he comes across it.
In examining which advertising
campaign is best suitable, it
is important to note that active
marketing bears a very low conversion
ratio (usually 0.2% click through – the number of
clicks divided by the number
of impressions).
In this chapter we will discuss
some typical Internet techniques
to reach more users, generate
more traffic and increase your
sales.
Affiliate programs
Affiliate programs are the
marketing method in which other
vendors drive traffic to your
web site and earn money from
sharing your revenues. Over
the last few years, this program
has became very popular and generates
large amounts of money.
You can choose two
options of engaging in an affiliate
program
1. Set
up your own affiliate program
2. Use
one of the affiliate networks
The main advantage of using
a network is that when you use
an affiliate network, you will gain
access to a list of the network
affiliates, making it easy
to approach them and advertise
your program. Using an affiliate
network will also cut down any
maintenance costs related to
managing and monitoring affiliates
traffic, as most of the affiliate
networks offer control panels
for managing affiliates.
Why affiliate programs
are more
complex than they sound
and what can I do to make them
work?
Affiliate programs provide
a revenue sharing model, the
network provides the traffic,
and you split the profit with
your affiliate. Sounds good?
In reality, the situation is
much more complex. There are
thousands of affiliate programs
and millions of publishers.
It should be noticed that the revenue
sharing model over the Internet
tend to fail because of lack
of obligation from the affiliate
point of view. Most of the times,
the affiliates tend to generate
very low traffic to a web site,
resulting in a "no sales" scenario.
In order to execute a successful
affiliate program
1. You
must work very hard to register
and promote your affiliate program.
This is a “never ending” mission
--
trying to search for all the webmaster
forums over the Internet and
inviting them to join your affiliate program.
Consider attending a webmaster
convention; it is one of the
best places to attract affiliates.
2.
Expect a low conversion rate,
and don’t quit. If you manage
to promote your affiliate program,
you will see an increase in
traffic. But note, most of the
traffic resulting from affiliates
(In most of the affiliates' cases),
is not considered to be high
quality traffic, since they
are not necessarily your potential
market. You can expect a very
low conversion rate. A low conversion
rate is better than poor traffic!
3.
Try to find affiliates in your line of business;
if you are trying to promote a new
software, try to find affiliates
that specialize in software. This will insure more targeted
traffic to your web site and
better conversion ratios.
Payment from your affiliate
There are many types of payment
schemes; these are the three main
types:
1. Pay
per click
2. Pay
per lead
3. Pay
per sale
It is very simple to use
the first two. The “pay per
sale” tends to be more complicated
when using software trials.
Combinations of the three are
also acceptable. It is
also very common to give multi-tiered incentives such as extra
credit for each affiliate who
brings a new affiliate to the
program.
In case of a pay per click/hit
scheme the minimum commission
that you can expect is $0.5
to $0.10 per click. For pay per sale, a good commission rate
would be 15% to 50%. Some companies
even offer lifetime commissions,
but as most of them are based
on cookie identification, they
may not work out well.
 Most
tracking systems that monitor
the referral from an affiliate
to your site are not 100%
accurate. In 75% of the cases,
most of the referred customers
can be identified, but in 25% of
the cases, it is not possible to
determine who the affiliate
responsible for the customer
was.
For
further information on Increasing
your Sales
Back
|
