B2B Affiliate World

     Think of affiliate marketing as being the online equivalent of franchising. If you opened a franchise operation, but didn’t have the store open at regular hours, or you did sloppy work, or you treated your customers poorly, do you think you would stay in business long? No indeed! It is more likely that the franchisor would terminate the franchise agreement.

     Likewise, once you sign up to be an affiliate, you are expected to perform to some degree. If your sales activity is too low, some affiliate marketers will drop you as an affiliate, and why not? They have spent a lot of time and effort developing their product and they want people who will sell it. If you aren’t willing to make the effort, why should they keep you as an affiliate?

     So let’s take a look at what you can do to maximize sales. Before we do, answer this question: Once someone has come to your website and gotten the information they were seeking, there are only two things they can do next. What are they?

     If you said take action or leave, you would be correct. Obviously, you prefer that they take action rather than leave. But if they are going to leave, then you need to give them some incentive to come back, or at least to allow you to stay in contact.

     Keep in mind that selling online is similar to marketing offline in that there are three groups of customers:

1. Those that will never buy from you—ever—no matter how well you market your site and product.
2. Those that will always buy from you on the first visit, regardless of what you do to your site and product.
3. Those that will buy from you eventually, but never on the first visit to your site.

     There isn’t much you can do about the first two groups, and the fact is that most of your sales will come from the last group, so what can you do to maximize your sales from these people?

• Make it easy for the consumer by having a unique web page for each product. You want your customer to make a choice, right? Well, the easiest way to do that is by giving them only one choice to make. If you have too many options, the user will get frustrated and, instead of picking one item, he will leave your site without picking any item.


• Do not hide anything. When you see a testimonial by “Mary M.” or “Technology Company CEO”, do you really believe it is a true testimonial? Of course not! Most people would question the credibility of such testimonials. So if you are going to include testimonials, include the real name of the person who advocates your product. Better still, include a picture of the person if it is available. To see an example, go to Action Plan Marketing and scroll to the bottom of the page. There you will see testimonials from real people with their names and pictures included.
• Using bullet points, make it clear how your customer will benefit from buying your product. Your focus should not be on what your product does as much as what your product does for you customer.
• Promote your site and product through article marketing. The key here is not to write sales pitches. Instead, write your article as an information piece that explains the problem your product solves, what causes the problem, and possible solutions. If you write your article well, the reader will be interested enough to want to learn more. You help them do that by including a link back to your site. Note that most article sites do not allow you to include an affiliate link, so you will have to direct your reader to a page on your site that requires an action (clicking on the affiliate link) to get the product. Two good sites to use are:
  1. PublishMyself.net, a free membership site, and
  2. SubmitYourArticle.com. There is a small monthly fee for this site, but they will actually submit your article to other websites and article feeds.

• Offer free reports to your readers. It’s like going to the ice cream store or the deli and asking for a sample before you buy. If you like what you taste, you will want more, won’t you? Offer a free report that is really useful to your target market, and have them give you their email address to get it. Once you have the address, you can use it to send emails letting your prospects know that another free report is available. The key thing is to stay in constant contact so the customer does not forget you. Keep in mind also that, statistically, you have to contact a prospect 5-7 times before they will buy or consider buying from you.

  NOTE: Use a confirmed opt-in email service to ensure that people want to receive email from you. I use AWeber.com. It is a popular service with excellent support.