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Day: September 25, 2015
3 Questions to Start Your Affiliate Marketing Program
Unless your business has been operating under a rock rather than in the online world, you have likely already seen affiliate marketing cropping up around the Internet, and for good reason. Successful affiliate marketing plans can increase sales and brand awareness with relatively low upfront cost.
The system is actually rather simple, with affiliates guiding consumers to the company’s website for certain products or purchases. When done correctly, the increase in sales can be notable.
Before diving headfirst into the world of affiliate sales, your business needs a solid program with expectations for all parties clearly laid out. Still new to affiliate marketing? Answer these questions first:
- Will I pay per sale, click or lead? Is your business’s main goal to bring visitors to your website (click), to purchase a specific product (sale) or to purchase any number of other products on the website (lead)? This objective needs to be known before you can determine how to compensate affiliates.
- Do my affiliates have the tools they need? An established following on a blog or website and an Internet connection will not cut it here. In order to get any clicks on a provided link, affiliates need polished copy, high-quality images and sometimes even a sample product that they can demonstrate to their followers.
- How will this fit in with other marketing tools? In general, affiliate marketing should not replace other marketing avenues. Instead, use it as a complementary tool to already established forms of marketing, such as targeted ads, newsletters and social media accounts.
These base questions can help begin to shape a successful affiliate marketing strategy. While this is far from everything that needs to be addressed, answers to these basic questions can serve as the frame while the rest of the program is constructed.
How the Mini-Goal Can Help Productivity
Creating goals is a long-used technique to help bolster business and personal productivity, but even this age-old tool can backfire. When faced with a nearly impossible or unattainable goal, most people will either back away immediately or fail somewhere along the road. Keeping goals focused on what’s possible is just as important as setting them in the first place.
If you’ve struggled to make the goals that you have set for yourself, make sure that you have not created unrealistic expectations of yourself. Here are some points to remember when creating goals:
Create milestones, not speed bumps. Establishing several short-term or mini-goals along the way to a larger objective is exceptionally helpful for keeping up pace and momentum, but the term “mini-goal” means just what it sounds like — these goals should be much smaller. Need to bring in a certain number of customers by a previously date? Mini-goals focusing on target marketing and product improvement or development will contribute toward the overall objective, and can be met along the way.
Go ahead, reward yourself. Most people have moved beyond the motivation of a star sticker on a chart, so focus on what you would really enjoy. Did you hit a certain number for product sales? Send out for coffee. Finally replied to your emails in a timely manner? Watch the next episode of your favorite show. Even though they are contributing toward a greater objective, adding incentive to each mini-goal can keep everyone moving.
Sure, big, hefty goals might give the perception of productivity, but in reality they can end up working people into a panic. Instead, focusing on smaller steps toward more moderate goals can increase the chances of actually reaching them.