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Presently and to the real advantage of e-commerce business owners, there is huge shift in consumer behavior. More and more people are purcha...

Sunday, October 21, 2018

7 Big Affiliate Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

Online work station with a computer and a white mug of creamy beverage.
 Yeah, you too can easily get involved if you want to make money from Affiliate Marketing. Many people get involved just to make money. The real reason they easily fall prey to online scammers. Everyone involved gets to make some mistakes along the line but if you manage to avoid these here mistakes, you stand a very good chance of long term success in the business.


 

01. Taking on Too Many Programs
 
Many Affiliate programs online habitually offer several variants. It is always a big mistake to get involved in all of them because of that reason. Experts advise, “Never join any and every affiliate program you came across.”  It pays to choose your affiliate programs wisely to avoid overloading yourself and overburdening your efforts.

 02. Not Enough Testing

 
 It is a mistake not to fully check out and test every affiliate program you want to get involved in. Always put yourself in the shoes of your customers. What you won’t like, it is pointless promoting it to others. Leading customers to promotions that can jam up their email boxes with thousands of mails is a real put off. Testing well enough before promoting is one great way around such a problem.

03. Not Enough Tracking

The ability to track your customers and sales is a very smart marketing technique. In Affiliate Marketing, making any commission is cool, but knowing where and how you made that commission is what makes you a better marketer. Doing so allows you to grow and scale your campaigns — as opposed to working blindly. It helps your ads budget too. Not tracking your sales enough is a no no.

04. Selling Instead of Helping

My mentor once told me never to present myself to prospects as trying to sell them something. It pays to offer help to solving a problem instead of attempting to sell. Yes, the word “marketing” is part of the phrase Affiliate Marketing, but for the most part, the real job of an affiliate is not to sell. His job is to lead people on to places where their problems can be solved. The selling job is better left to the sales page our affiliate links lead the reader to. Attempting to sell always instead of offering help first is one huge Affiliate Marketing mistake.



 

05. Making False Claims

Never make false claims about any Affiliate Marketing program. Excessive hyping too is not good. With the internet, people get to find the truth fairly easily and you can lose credibility real quick. Perhaps you’ve seen this before, ad lines such as “How I Made $1000 Dollars in one day” followed by a link to an affiliate site. Not everybody gets to make a grand so easily if ever. People always get out fast when they see through any falsehood and that easily taints your credibility as a marketer.

06. Not Comparing Enough

Experience shows that one of the best converting tactics to sell affiliate products online is to find a credible way to compare the “main” product with two or more similar products then leave the buying decision to the customer. When people are in buying mode for a physical product, they tend to have their options narrowed down to 2 or 3 and need help making the choice that is best for them. Giving options for comparison helps that decision. Not giving that option is a bad marketing decision. Here is why. Comparison web pages are not only very popular and helpful for readers; they are also very profitable for the marketer.

07. Allowing Distractions

Just like it sounds, distraction leads to wasted efforts and dissipation of energy in the wrong direction. It should be avoided. Sometimes, a marketer may already be working on something, all of a sudden, something looking great just pops up to attract attention. Deciding to just check it out could lead you off to go chasing some new idea to make money taking you off track completely. Such distractions should be avoided if you are already working on a project with good prospects. Truth be told, one completed and profitable campaign is worth so much more than 20 almost half-finished campaigns or projects. The real reason distractions should always be identified and pointedly ignored to allow full attention to the business already at hand.



Thursday, October 18, 2018

Why Your Small Business Needs Digital Marketing

Two persons working from white notesheets with two computers and pens on the table.
 No matter the size of your business, to reach out quickly and efficiently to customers, you need digital marketing. That is because, digital marketing is one great way to enhance or increase the branding of your product in digital technologies on the internet along with smartphones and screening devices. You need digital marketing to boost or advertise your products/services in the electronic world by using different platforms on the internet.  It is one very good platform to connect with customers as well as for the company to sell its products and services. Digital marketing is getting increasingly popular among many small businesses nowadays. For that reason, the future of digital marketing is very bright. It is one good and very reliable platform new businesses can depend on to show their products and services to their target markets. The ease and convenience of operations in digital marketing in another boost since it makes uploading of pictures and videos, writing blogs and offering online services very easy chores to carry out daily if you know what you are doing.



If you run a small business, just push it out there via digital media marketing and the business will get the following advantages amongst others:

Faster and Better than Traditional marketing

No doubt digital marketing is faster and easier than the traditional option to market your products and services. It is also more convenient to use by way of banners and e-cards.  It is more advantageous than traditional billboards and more physical stuff which are costlier to install and maintain. It gets out the message faster, better and wider via the internet than traditional methods.

Narrows Gap in Communication

Operationally, digital marketing helps to bridge communication gap which usually exists between customers and organizations. With the use of the internet, you can quickly bridge communication gaps thereby making it easier and more reliable for the both; customer and company to engage positively. Internet has greatly enabled the rise of the smart consumer. Through social media channels, rating and review boards, and forums, consumers are now able to connect with other consumers easily. That connectivity empowers them to give their approval or disapproval of a product or service thereby influencing and directing the buying decisions of potential customers. Digital marketing enables consumers to easily connect directly with organizations and vice versa. By keeping in touch with customers through follow-up emails, personalized offers, and thank you letters, organizations now build relationships and establish a sense of community around their brands fairly easily. That helps to build good businesses no doubt.

Helps Boost Company Visibility

 
To enhance real visibility for your business, you need digital marketing. An increase in visibility on the internet market automatically helps to boost sales through technology. An organization can be visible to a large number of individuals through different social media platforms. Many of such platforms can promote your business even for free. Setting up a strong presence on the Internet through a website, a blog, paid marketing and web-based social networking is good for business.




Enables more Detailed Marketing Research

 
You can’t operate a business in isolation and expect to make it good. It pays to know what your competitors are up and what they are doing. Same goes for customers particularly customer behavior. Information is king and research on the internet is faster and more reliable for any business. With the touch of a button, the Internet makes available to you, a wealth of resource portals and tools that allow marketers to more accurately gather data on consumers and track their activities and preferences. Google is one good source and a sure bet for these resources and tools.

Highly Cost-Effective

The bottomline always matters when it comes to marketing. To compete favorably, any small business with an eye on profits needs to push up more money and other resources to market their products/services. Digital marketing easily helps such businesses with more resources to boost the business up and engage more customers even on a very cheap budget. Depending on what you want, you can choose your budget plans and make strategies to market your product with cost-effectiveness dictating the pace.

Better Returns on Investments

 
Aha!! Everyone who is in business always wants good returns on their investments. Easy and smart use of Google and other social media websites are another great opportunity for good returns on investment because they are largely free to use. You also have cheap access to tools for choosing your own location where you can engage the relevant peoples to which you want to market your services or products. A good use of web analytics helps many business owners to know whether their websites are providing optimal ROI. With that information, they can conveniently allocate their budgets efficiently by deciding on the investments to plan on every day. Very smart no doubt if you also have an eye on your own company’s ROI.