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Is this still a viable option as an online business?
The War Against Affiliate Marketing Continues
By Susan Payton – October 21, 2011
If you’re an affiliate marketer, it seems to keep getting harder to run your business, thanks to companies that don’t want to support affiliate marketers.
This is also bad news for small businesses that would like to create or already offer an affiliate program to help sell their products. If it’s harder for your affiliates to do business, you may find that sales channel more …
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Painless answers to burning questions
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Fill out your profile. Head over to the “profile” page followed by the “my surveys” tab. In My Surveys we’ll ask you to fill out a few quick data forms (shouldn’t take more than 2 to 3 minutes. That’s it…you’ve made your contribution to what’s going to be the premiere resource for small business data.
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This is a guest post from Gary Barzel. Gary is the manager of business development for FastUpFront, FastUpFront offers small business loan alternatives based on future sales.
In an ideal world, as you ramp up your marketing activity, you’d see an accompanying increase in revenues which would clearly justify any increase to your marketing budget. But many times, even where significant effort was made, marketing can be a hit or miss predicament. To be effective, promoting your business’ products and/or services is a flexible process that involves frequent consideration and evaluation in order to keep up with changing attitudes and trends, weed out the productive efforts from the unproductive ones, and refine those strategies that are already paying off.
But in the cash-strapped world that many small business owners are operating in, knowing how to balance marketing expenses with a tight operating budget can be a challenge. So how can you tell if that killer marketing idea is sustainable? Here are three vital points to consider:
1. Setting up a marketing budget. While there is no set rule for what percentage of revenues you should dedicate to your marketing activity, you still need to make sure that you will have enough cash flow to keep your business operations going. In some cases, it may even be appropriate to borrow money to pay for your marketing plans. It really depends on the kind of business you are running as well as how long the business has been in operation and what your expected payback is. A newer business, for example, may have to spend more marketing dollars at the beginning to get its name out.
And a final point… make sure you budget for your time as well. Time is money after all, and some marketing initiatives may be bigger draws on this precious commodity than others.
2. Prioritize your marketing goals. Whether you plan on hiring a marketing consultant or taking a DIY approach to promoting your business, you need to decide early on what your marketing goals will be. You also need to determine how realistic these goals are given your business’ setup and the amount of resources you are dedicating to each marketing strategy.
These benchmarks which include things like amount of traffic to your business or website, the number of customer inquiries, the sales conversion rate, and a count of repeat customers, can help to keep your marketing efforts focused. If something that you are doing isn’t bringing you closer to your goals, then it’s time to stop and re-evaluate the initiative.
3. Set up systems to evaluate ROI. ROI, or return on investment, is a term in finance that refers to the actual payback an individual or group receives from any given investment of resources. While it may be hard to put a concrete value on some kinds of marketing activity, such as sponsoring a local event, almost any initiative can be attached to some kind of measurement- even if it is anecdotal. You need to ensure that the resources you are putting in, are giving your business something adequate in return.
In short, the most important takeaway from all of the above, is that you need to be monitoring your marketing efforts with an eye towards seeing which ones are bringing your business more brand recognition among your target market and ultimately an increase in revenues. Without these processes in place, you might as well as be throwing your time and money in the wind.
I’m blown away by the speed at which online media changes.
Yesterday I participated in a Blog Carnival. Basically this is how bloggers build traffic and comments to their sites when they first get started. It used to be very popular “back in the day” — which was about five or six years ago. CAN YOU EVEN BELIEVE THAT?
“Back then” all the big names were having these blog carnivals. Those people have grown their brand and their readership lists and are now “over” the whole blog carnival thing. But there are millions of newbies out there who have yet to understand the power and the fun of blog carnivals.
Did I say that blog carnivals help you build traffic and readership for your blog or site? I’m saying it again if I didn’t. I’m not sure why the people I interact with don’t talk or do blog carnivals so much, but it’s still a powerful tool — especially if you’re new to the online marketing world.
Here’s an updated primer on blog carnivals
- Have a blog. It helps to have a blog, otherwise, why bother.
- Participate in a blog carnival. Check out www.blogcarnival.com. It’s a great place to start learning about carnivals and participating in one. Don’t try to host one until you’ve participated.
- You troll the blogs in your subject area and find ones you like. You invite them to participate in the carnival. That part is easy. Then it gets a little sticky.
- Find a niche in BlogCarnival.com and submit your article. That’s really all there is to that. In fact the hardest thing will be finding a niche you want to participate in.
- Read the posts. Then you go over to the other posts and read their articles, post comments, etc. It’s a great way to meet people and build relationships
The next thing you’d want to do is look at hosting your own blog carnival. My new friend Tea Silvestre did just that and added some new twists to her #wordcarnival by adding a free converence line so that you can participate even if you’re not at Twitter. I can honestly say I hadn’t thought of that.
It was a smart and cozy group and I was happy to meet some wonderful, creative folks.
Hmmm. Maybe I’ll participate in some more blog carnivals from now on.
This post is part of a “Blog Carnival” that’s being hosted by Tea Silvestre from The Word Chef Blog. The theme of the carnival is “Building Business Relationships” it’s part of a series of posts on the subject from a variety of small business experts.
Building referrals is just as important now as if was in the past. In fact, I think it’s much easier and more cost effective now to develop and build those relationships than it had been in the past. What I think is more difficult is keeping those referral conversations alive and focused.
Social media tools make it infinitely easier to find and connect with people, but because so many social media tools use a “timeline” format you can see and start a conversation one minute and forget about it the next simply because the screen has been refreshed with new conversations and posts. This makes it difficult to move referral and opportunity conversations forward.
Here’s my killer time-saving and stress-reducing recipe for cooking up new business using a social media based referral strategy.
Total Time: About 2 hours to create social media accounts and generate list and about an hour per day managing your system
Yield: Profitable New Opportunities and Customers
Difficulty: Easy Peasy if you stay with it
Ingredients:
- No more than 3 specific marketing goals
- Twitter account – in your name, brand name or company name
- Facebook account
- LinkedIn account
- Try Nimble.com as a tool to integrate your social media conversations and create action items from those conversations
- A list of about 200 names, you can create a list or just go down your email address book and pull the people you think can help you get referrals
Directions:
- Set your marketing goals and objectives. These goals should look like something like this: “Launch a webinar series targeting pet shop owners in March” or “Find 5 market research contacts at big box stores who want to use our online survey tool”. Setting clearly defined marketing goals will guide your social media networking strategies.
- Create a list of 200 referral contacts. Use your email database to create a list of 200 people with whom you want to have referral relationships. Go through that list and label people “friends and family” then “partners” and finally “influencers”. As you are labeling and grouping your contacts, you might get ideas about the ways in which they might be able to help you achieve your goals i.e. “Introduce me to the CEO of company X”. I’d recommend that you write that next to their name while you are thinking about it, it will save you time later.
- Work your LinkedIn Contacts. Go through your list of 200 and find everyone on LinkedIn. If you are not connected to them, connect with them. If they do not have a LinkedIn account, then you will have to manage that relationship via email and face-to-face methods only. As you are doing that, you can send them an email message touching base and asking to schedule a catch-up call to discuss what they’ve been up to and how you can help each other. You can also share what you’ve been up to and what you are looking for – they might respond with a connection or introduction on the spot. Another great idea is to leave an endorsement for people as you check their presence on LinkedIn. Leaving an endorsement for them will prompt them to leave one for you and to get in touch with you to catch up. It’s a wonderful surprise and great “gift” to receive.
- Search Twitter for conversations around your goals. Notice what the conversations are and who is having the conversations. Create a Twitter list of the people labeled “Networking” or maybe even around your goals such as “market research” (to use our previous example). Take 15 minutes a day to monitor the conversations on that Twitter list and engage in conversations with those people. Follow their links, re-tweet their content, comment on their links and articles. Of course, don’t forget to search for your list of 200 on Twitter and add them to your Twitter list. This way you are tracking their conversations as well.
- Use Facebook to Network with Friends and Family. Many businesses are hip to creating Facebook Fan pages, but your personal page may be more powerful as a networking tool. I recommend posting pictures of what you are up to around your business and sharing with friends and family. A friend of mine is in the promotional items business and often takes pictures of creative T-shirts and other items at trade shows that he things are very effective. It tells us where he is that day and it gives us ideas that we can use for our promotional projects. If you own a restaurant, take a picture of the daily special, if you are making a sales call or want to connect with someone, just ask your friends and family. But don’t oversell on Facebook, it will be perceived as spamming and can backfire.
- Check out Nimble.com. My new favorite social media and sales management tool is Nimble.com. It was developed by Jon Ferrera, the CEO of the successful sales CRM tool Goldmine in response to his peeve of having referral and opportunity conversations fall through the cracks. Nimble will integrate your email, LinkedIn and Twitter accounts and show all the conversations in one stream or separate streams. What I love about it is that it allows you to see all these conversations in one place and then you can also create an action item for yourself around that conversation. Nimble is basically a social CRM tool that increases the value and ROI of your social media conversations.
Now, you might think all this will take an entire day’s worth of work. Well, I won’t lie to you – the set-up probably will. In reality, you can spend a day planning and strategizing your referral system – but once it’s done and you’ve focused your efforts, all it will take is about 15 to 30 minutes a day of working your system to keep those relationships and sales opportunities flowing your way.
This post is part of the The Word Chef Blog Blog Carnival hosted by Tea Silvestre. Join us for a fun and informative 1-hour Tweet Chat about Business Relationships, how to build them and nurture them on Thursday, September at 1 pm Eastern / 4 pm Pacific. Your participation in the Tweet Chat enters you into a drawing for a $50 Amazon Gift Card.
Over the past weekend, I took a really interesting communications course. We were exploring the nature of conversations. I won’t get into the details, but one concept that really made my light bulb flash was this idea that we treat conversations (the words we say to each other) as if they were physical objects. And they are not.
Conversations use words – and words are not objects, words are invisible and as soon as you say them,. they disappear. While objects take up physical space.
Do this experiment — pick up an object – any object; pen, cup, phone — any object will do. Place it down on the table, then walk away. Then come back. Assuming that no one has moved it, it will still be there. It’s an object – it doesn’t just walk away or disappear on its own.
Now – hold your hand in front of your face and say “Hey all you customers, click on this link, walk through my door and buy something!”
Did you SEE anything come out of your mouth? Did people suddenly come walking through your door? NO – because words are invisible. They are not objects.
So here is the problem — we THINK that when we say something or have a conversation that it’s just going to be there — like that cup. And guess what? It isn’t. We forget. We forget most conversations in the instant that they come out of our mouths.
This is the reason we forget people’s names so quickly – they are usually SAID in a conversation. That’s why the best way to remember a name is to attach it to a visual object. Because we are wired to relate to the world that way. Just saying a name doesn’t necessarily make it stick.
THIS IS WHY ADVERTISING MUST BE REPEATED
Until I had this communication session, I only understood that advertising had to be repeated because people didn’t remember it — because I knew that. I was taught that, I could see that people forgot. But I didn’t know WHY we forgot.
We don’t forget because we’re stupid, and your customer don’t forget because they aren’t interested — advertising messages are forgotten because they are a communication and part of a conversation — so they just disappear.
Now that you know that — you can really begin to see new and creative ways that you can get your messages across in ways that people will remember.
This is why Three-dimensional Direct Marketing is so effective. It’s a message that is attached to a physical object. If you keep reminding people of that message with additional physical objects you will be more successful.
This is why social media conversations that include Twitter, Blogs, Facebook and LinkedIn need to be nurtured and repeated because — they occur in the ether (quite literally) they are certainly more of an object than just words said in a conversation between two people – but they still scroll by on our screens and disappear.
Interesting isn’t it?
So do all conversations disappear and how do you keep them alive?
All conversations disappear. But they are more alive when they are IMPORTANT to you. So if your computer or car suddenly break down beyond repair and you go searching for replacements – these trigger events suddenly bring conversations around computers and cars to life. They appear on your radar, suddenly you notice cars and computers everywhere — you have conversations about brands and customer satisfaction, etc.
As a business it’s up to you to be prepared for these trigger events and make sure that you have current ALIVE and relevant conversations about these things going on all the time. You are going to think that you are boring – that everyone has heard this a million times. But guess what — they have forgotten. Because up until that point – everything that you’ve written, said and done was invisible to them because it didn’t matter.
After your customers make that purchase, the conversation will be alive for a little longer and then it will disappear again as they go back to the conversations that are important to them.
The Lesson
Repeat your message. Repeat your message. Keep repeating your message.
Don’t worry that it’s old or boring. Don’t think that people know what you are talking about. They are not paying attention to you or your product, they are paying attention to what’s important to them. So stay in the conversation with your customers and keep your message alive.
Everybody is going green! Or at least they’re trying to make it look that way. As a civilization we’re all gaining an awareness of our individual responsibilities in saving the environment. And of course businesses of all kinds are jumping on the band wagon. But when are their efforts real and when is it simply “green washing”? Using PR and marketing to create the perception that a business has green policies is often more popular than enacting changes to procedure. But when it comes to printing practices some companies really are making fundamental changes that can have a positive impact the environment. It doesn’t necessarily mean an overhaul or a major added expense. There are plenty of little ways that any business can engage in greener printing practices to help keep their day-to-day business a little kinder to the environment.
Recycled Paper
The most obvious way to implement greener printing habits is to make a move toward recycled paper. The virgin paper production process is taxing on natural respurces like trees, water and energy. According to the Environmental Defense fund, the creation of 1 ton of new, uncoated paper uses almost 3 tons of wood more than 19,000 gallons of water and results in over 2000 pounds of solid waste. That’s why it’s so important to try to use recycled paper as often as possible. While not all recycled paper is the same, the majority of recycled products created now are virtually indistinguishable from virgin paper in appearance. But there are a few key things to look for in recycled paper products. First you’ll want paper which is anywhere from 50- 100% post-consumer waste (PCW), you also want to look for the letters PCF which mean that the paper was Processed Chlorine Free. You can also choose paper that is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). Their approval means that the paper was made using renewable energy sources like wind or solar power. In some cases you can go completely tree-less and get paper made from kenaf or hemp. Even when you are outsourcing printing, you can select these kinds of paper for everything from business cards to brochures and presentation materials.
Recycled and Alternative Inks
Another easy step any business can take is to make a commitment to recycling ink and using recycled ink. Each year over 300 million ink cartridges are thrown away, and each one of them will take over 500 years to decompose. When you simply throw away empty office ink cartridges they wind up in landfills where they disseminate cancer causing Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) into the ground. Rather than tossing out used ink cartridges, send them back to the manufacturer or visit any number of local establishments like Staples or Office Max where they have ink recycling programs in place.
When you are buying ink, there are a few ways you can make greener choices. First, buying recycled ink tends to be a little bit cheaper. And because there are environmental consequences to the production of every single new ink cartridge, from both the cartridge itself and the toner inside, using recycled cartridges is the greener choice. Manufacturing one single ink cartridge results in almost 11lbs of GHG (Green House Gas) emissions. Add to that, about 6lbs of emissions from the ink and you have 17 pounds of GHG’s for every single new ink cartridge. But buying recycled or refillable cartridges spares the environment the production of new ones and keeps empty cartridges out of landfills.
Perhaps the greenest choice in printer inks are vegetable or soy based. Traditional inks are petroleum based meaning that they use fossil fuels and are non-renewable. But vegetable and soy inks on the other hand are completely renewable and are priced competitively. While soy ink takes a bit longer to dry it is also easier to recycle on paper. The main benefit of soy and vegetable inks though is their relatively low amount of VOCs. Not every soy ink is the same, but you can get inks which have less than 2% VOCs. The disadvantages of course are that soy won’t work with many personal printers or coated paper like magazines. But many larger printing companies are now using them regularly, meaning that all you need to do is outsource to a printer that utilizes vegetable based inks.
Going Paperless
Of course the ultimate way to green your printing process is to cut paper and ink out of the equation as much as possible altogether. There are plenty of practical ways to cut down on paper internally and in marketing.
- Replace inter office memos with emails, an intranet or another web-based communication platform.
- Cut back on marketing materials like flyers and brochures and experiment with online marketing techniques. Internet marketing is a whole new landscape for advertising, and you can do an amazing amount of promotion through strategies involving social media, email marketing and online coupon codes.
- Ditch traditional newsletters and switch to digital ones.
- Rather than printing reports or booklets, consider digital power point presentations or small websites for meetings.
- Implement a “paperless policy” in the office, encouraging employees to only print what is absolutely necessary. And when something must be printed, set the printer default on double-sided to cut down on the amount of paper needed for the job.
Going 100% paperless is hard for any business, but if you make paper use reduction an active goal, you’ll find that you can cut down on your paper consumption significantly.
The truth is anyone can call anything “greener” these days because it’s a hot buzz word. But truly taking steps to help reduce your carbon footprint requires work and conscious effort. The choices your company makes about printing products, policies and vendors will determine how green your printing practices truly are. There are simple decisions and difficult decisions in business, but taking tiny steps to help the environment should be the easiest decision a company ever makes.
Juliet writes most often for Print Express a UK Printing company that offers FSC certified materials, recycled products and uses vegetable based inks. Juliet has been working in marketing, advertising and brand consulting for many years.
You haven’t seen anything new on Strategy Stew because I had been moving the site from one server to another. It’s usually an easy thing to do – except that this time — everyone could see the sites except for me. I couldn’t see the sites, I couldn’t log in and I couldn’t do anything.
This was a technical issue that no one had really seen or pinpointed. And the resolution didn’t come from some amazing technical tool – it came from collaborative problem solving and open listening.
The HostGator customer service team must have some amazing human relations training in addition to the standard technical smarts that come with the job.
These people never stopped listening to what I was saying. They didn’t try to get me off the chat. They didn’t try to put the problem on someone else — other than to check every avenue for a solution. When we were at our wits end trying to figure out what the problem was – Charles could have gotten me off the chat by saying — “I don’t know, you are on your own, it’s not my problem – it looks good from here” — and any number of things. He never did that,
Instead, he let me go through the case and narrow down the different failure modes and he and I went back and forth from the beginning. We induced. We deduced and then he said — ok – go to the site now. And AMAZINGLY – it was there and looked fine.
If he had rushed me off or put me off to someone else — we wouldn’t have gone through that reviewing and debriefing chat where we went through the logic of it together. If he hadn’t listened – HE wouldn’t have figured out the problem. The problem could have only been solved by going through the discussion we had — and he had the patience to do that.
Don’t Just Train Customer Service to Solve Problems – Train Them to Listen
It seems to me that HostGator has either figured out a formula to hire amazing listeners or they have a heck of a customer service training program.
Don’t skimp on customer service human relations and listening training - it can make all the difference to your business. I assure you that if HostGator’s customer service people were anything less than what I had experienced – I would have moved IMMEDIATELY.
HostGator has shown me that there is so much more to web hosting than moving files virtually – there is a human component that is sometimes even more important.
I don’t know yet about the quality of hosting my sites with HostGator — but I can tell you that their customer service has won me over.
Related articles
- Can Great Customer Service Overcome Technical SNAFU’s? (diymarketers.com)
- Web Hosting: The HostGator Way [review] (cash-bandit.com)
- How Social Media has Changed Customer Service Forever (ereleases.com)
One of my friends shared an interesting blog article on Facebook the other day.  It was called “The Top 5 Regrets People Make on Their Deathbed” and it occurred to me that these regrets applied not only to their life, but to those who might be running a business and wearing many hats.
What I’m trying to say is — that if you addressed each of these regrets in your life and your business, you will not only be (and die) happier, but possibly richer as well.
- I wish I had the courage to be true to myself. This is the regret of a life lived by someone else’s playbook and not your own. Â The nurse who authored the article talked about people leaving so many of their own dreams unfulfilled because they made choice to meet the expectations of others. Â When I think about applying this to your marketing strategy, I think about doing things because “that’s how it’s done” and not because this is what might blog your customers away. Â Fulfillment and success in marketing your business lives in the space of expressing yourself that intersects with meeting a genuine customer need. Â You’ve had moments in this space, from now on — work toward making your life and work live in that space.
- I wish I didn’t work so hard. I read a book that said that people like to work hard. Â It’s when the working hard isn’t self-generated or chosen that creates a problem. Â It’s working hard at the wrong things that don’t bring value. Â I often like to say that good marketing isn’t really hard work, it happens naturally and it’s fun — almost play. Â To someone else who doesn’t share your passion, it might be working hard, but to you — it’s pure self expression.
- I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings. There we go again — doing what we THINK is the right thing or what others might expect. Â I have a friend who has a very unique way of presenting information. Â She hates powerpoint and prefers telling stories. Â One time she got up in front of the management team to give a presentation and she did what was “expected” — it was TERRIBLE. Â Real excellence comes from creating your own special sauce of doing things. Â It’s worth the effort to find that balance between what is an expression of you and what works.
- I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends. Staying in touch with friends, staying in touch with customers.  Another expert said that humans are really only happy when they are in good relationships with others.  Being in contact with others and interacting is what makes us happy.  These days there are so many tools and systems you can use to stay in touch with friends and customers that if you don’t it’s because you choose.
- I wish I had let myself be happier. Happiness is a choice. Â You don’t become happy, you BE happy. Â As Dr. Phil likes to say behave your way to happiness. Â First you decide to be happy, then do the things that happy people do and you will HAVE all the joy that no amount of purchased, worked-hard-for bling can bring.
Interesting isn’t it? Â That when our time on Earth is done, we suddenly get very clear on things. Â I like this article because it shows us that we can CHOOSE today, right now, to be all these things. Â There is no process involved, no magical formula to do. Â Just choose.
It never fails, someone calls me and tells me that they’re spending a couple of thousand dollars to place an ad in a publication of some sort. Â And when I hear that — my toes just curl.
Placing print advertising is a great strategy when you are selling products and services to a broad consumer market in a regional area. Â (Yeah, I know that other companies place ads too – but they have WAY bigger budgets than what you’re talking about).
Another good reason to place print advertising is when you want to build name recognition. Â And if you want to build name recognition, you have to place that ad consistently no less than six runs and more likely twelve or more. Â The higher the frequency, the more successful you will be.
Here is a quick and easy way to see the results of your ad BEFORE you ever place it!
- Go through the publication where you are considering placing your ad, then
- Find a company that has already placed an ad in the same place or the same size as you’re considering.
- Give them a call and ask to speak to the person responsible for placing that ad.
- Ask them what kinds of results they’ve gotten from the ad. Â The results you’re specifically looking for is leads and the number of those leads that converted to sales.
- Run through this for a couple of companies in the publication.
One very LARGE variable that I didn’t mention and that you will want to consider is, of course. the quality of the ad copy. Â Poorly written ads will undoubtedly yield poor results. Â Don’t fall into the trap that big companies practice in writing “artistic” ad copy. Â You don’t have tens of millions to play that game. Â Instead write ad copy that targets your ideal customer’s pain, provide a feature rich solution, and give them a risk-free offer and easy call to action.
If you feel that placing print ads is a great strategy for your business, then don’t proceed without reading Bill Glazer’s book Outrageous Advertising.
