Archive for the ‘Internet & Social Media Marketing’ Category

4 reasons why you should be using testimonials

Published by CarlanaCharles on October 12th, 2011

I recently did an overhaul on my site. It’s about 95% completed, I just have a couple tweaks to make here and there but it dawned on me that I should add a ‘proof’ or testimonial page to the site. I’ve been working online since 2006 and never felt the need to have a testimonial page on my site but the more time you’re in business the more you learn that with everyone out there claiming that they are an expert at this or that and they can fulfill every customer’s dream, the more you see why a potential client would want to hear directly from your client regarding their experience with you more than they’d want to hear from you about how great you are.

You might be thinking: Why do I need a testimonial? I have a ton of clients, I have a strong copy on my site, my business is doing well, why should I even bother? Well, here are 4 solid reasons:

1)   Increased credibility. Testimonials give your company, product, or service credibility. The marketplace is hot and heavy nowadays. Prospects are inundated with tons of marketing and promotional messages on a daily basis from the many providers competing for their dollars. If you can show your prospects there are people who can attest to your skills, experiences and abilities, you stand a greater chance of earning their trust and dollars.

2)   Testimonials act like the glowing reference to your resume. The people who provide you with a testimonial are essentially vouching to your skills and abilities. A prospect hearing from a current or former client is more likely to want to work with you because your clients rate you well.

3)   The ability to identify. Your prospects will probably be able to identify with the clients who have provided testimonials. Many will have similar needs, problems they need solving and hopes for their business. Oftentimes as marketers we make the mistake of believing that our prospects must identify with us. They don’t necessarily need to. It’s great that they are considering us and really nice if they like our online presence, but they don’t necessarily need to identify with us. Identifying with the experience of past and current clients I believe is much more valuable.

4)   The proof is in the pudding. The power of proof, alone, is reason enough to encourage your current and past clients submit testimonials. Testimonials solidify your marketing initiatives and make it so much easier to close a sale with a prospect. The prospects not only knows what you said you can do, but through the proof of a testimonial, they also know that you can.

I hope I’ve provided a few solid reasons why you should be using testimonials if you’re not already doing so. Every business provider in this economy should be incorporating testimonials as part of their marketing arsenal. If you have prospects that are still on the fence and hesitant to enlist your services, a testimonial may just be what you need to covert them from prospect to client.

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Repurposing your content – turning your articles into videos. Part 2

Published by CarlanaCharles on March 25th, 2011

The best way to integrate article marketing and video marketing is to first write articles and submit them to article directories, and then turn each of your articles into videos that can be submitted to various video sites. If you check my video library, you will see examples of articles that were repurposed as videos.

When you first create the articles, be sure you are using keywords for the titles. These keywords will be critical for the traffic of both your articles and videos. Since articles receive the majority of their traffic from search engines, and videos receive a very large portion of their traffic from search engines, it is absolutely vital to ensure that you

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Repurposing your content – turning your articles into videos. Part 1

Published by CarlanaCharles on March 23rd, 2011

Without a doubt, video is the fastest growing type of online content. People naturally love videos, and they are gravitating toward them in droves. If you aren

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21 tips on getting more traffic to your website

Published by CarlanaCharles on March 21st, 2011

Here are some simple, tired and true ways of generating traffic to your website. If you have found tips that work for you, I’d love to hear about them!

Article Marketing
In case of article marketing, you pen articles on subjects that you have a vast knowledge of. The article must be very well-researched and proofread for spelling and grammatical errors. This will ensure that you get a good targeted traffic to your website.

Forum marketing
You can start posting in various forums to enhance your presence, as more people will get to know you, and will trust you. For getting traffic from the forums, you must put your signature in your profile, which is nothing but text of about 3-4 lines, with a link to your site or the affiliate

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Affiliate Marketing – Part 6

Published by CarlanaCharles on March 18th, 2011

Thanks for following the series on affiliate marketing. Today, the series wraps up. I hope you found the material useful and will put it to practice in your next affiliate marketing camapign. Let’s get in to today’s post..

Advertising
There are other methods of advertising that should be mentioned as they are extremely effective, although more traditional. The first is flyer advertisements. The second is business card advertisements. Billboard and mass transit advertisement is also available for use. These methods of advertising help to allow the public to see the advertising in a real life setting. The flyers can be sent directly to their mail box and they can help to educate and interest the public to visiting the store or website where the products are sold. The business card advertisements are similar but they are left those areas where there is a lot of traffic and they are often found by potential customers who have their interest peaked by the sight of the card. Both of these methods can be handled by marketing sites such as VistaPrint.com.

Billboards and mass transit advertising are both fairly expensive modes of advertising, although they do strike quite a few people. These methods have the downside of not being able to be seen in the home where the people have access to the internet. This means that people may not necessarily act on the advertising that they see, despite being immediately interested by it.

Television and radio advertisements are also traditional methods of advertising. Unfortunately, these methods tend to be very expensive. It is recommended that affiliates do not use this method unless they are already experiencing success and can afford the expense. This can be very effective as more people are using the computer as they watch television or listen to the radio.

Online advertising is a far better approach of advertising since it

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Affiliate Marketing Tips – Part 5

Published by CarlanaCharles on March 17th, 2011

Ready for today’s nugget on affiliate marketing? Let’s continue.

Store Displays

Another good idea is to talk with the small businesses and stores in the local vicinity about hosting the products on their shelves. This works by selling the products at a discounted price to the store and allowing them to sell the products at a full price. This helps to provide the products to a public that prefers to shop at a traditional store rather than an online one.

This also helps to decrease the overhead because the store owner would be covering the costs of advertising for the product. He or she would also be covering the costs associated with running a brick store, including the personal needed to run the store. This can mean more profits for the affiliate even though the products were sold at a cheaper rate than normal. It is important to use this discounted rate for the store since the store will buy more products and the store will also need to make a profit otherwise the store will discontinue the product on their shelves.

When approaching a store about hosting a display about your product it is important to remember that some stores actually have mother stores that do not allow this. Even if the store owner gets rude, do not follow suite. Instead, calmly thank them for their time and walk away. Always be a professional. Another good idea is to carry a small sample of the products into the store. This will help to sell the product to the store owner.

If the store owner allows the affiliate to set up a display, be sure not to make it too big or overly obnoxious. By having a smaller and professional looking display, the store owner will be more likely to allow it to remain in place and people will pay more attention to something that does not hurt their eyes to look upon.
If the store owner allows the product to be displayed on the shelves with the other products, attach place cards to the shelf that describe what the product is and why it is so effective. This will educate the public and it will help to drive sales. This is for the affiliate

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Affiliate Marketing – Part 4

Published by CarlanaCharles on March 15th, 2011

Even the best products on the market need some advertising. Without advertising and marketing, the public will not know that the product exists. What is even more important for an affiliate program is the advertising of the program and the store. This combination of advertising a product and the store will help to draw more people onto the sales floor and this will result in more sales.

There are no set rules for how to market a product. Instead there are suggestions that can help a person market the product, the store, and themselves. This can result in more sales and therefore more money. These methods are not free, but the end result can easily pay for the money that is put into the marketing process.
In some cases, it might be best to hire a professional through a site like http://www.elance.com to find talented people who can market the product you

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Affiliate Marketing – Part 3

Published by CarlanaCharles on March 14th, 2011

Here are list of things you want to look for when promoting a product as an affiliate marketer.

  1. You will want to look for a program that is of high quality. For instance, look for one that is associated with many experts in that particular industry. This way, you can be assured of the standard of the program you will be joining.
  2. Look for the ones that offer real and viable products. How do you know this? Do some initial research. If possible, track down some of the members and customers to give you testimonial on the credibility of the program.
  3. Does the program cater to a growing target market? This will ensure you that there will be a continuous demand for your referrals. Do a little research and make inquiries. If there are forums and discussions groups related to the product topic participate and look for reliable feedback.
  4. A program with a compensation plan that pays out a residual income and a payout of 30% or more would be a great choice.
  5. There are programs offering this kind of compensation. You just have to look closely for one. Don’t waste your time with programs that do not reward substantially for your efforts.
  6. Be aware of any minimum quotas that you must fulfill. Some affiliate programs impose pre-requisites before you get your commissions. For instance you may have to make more than a $100.00 or make ten sales before you receive your paycheck. If the sales target is too hard to achieve you may want to rethink joining.
  7. Select programs that have plenty of pre made tools and resources that can help you grow the business in the shortest possible time. Not all affiliate programs have these capacities.
  8. Check out weather or not the program has an automated system that allows you to check your referral statistics and compensation at any time.
  9. Does the program offer strong incentives for customers to make additional purchases or for members to renew their memberships. Affiliate programs that provide continuous help and upgrades for its products have the tendency to retain more customers. These things can assure the growth of your business.

Tune into part 4 of the Affiliate Marketing series. In the next post I will be sharing on ways that you can market your affiliate product.

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Affiliate marketing – Part 2

Published by CarlanaCharles on March 8th, 2011

Continuing from where we left off yesterday….

Most people would assume that finding the product to sell as an affiliate would be the easy part. This is not always the case, though. There are many thousands of different products on the Internet that are good choices for an affiliate to sell. Not all of these products are profitable and not all profitable products are worth selling as an affiliate.

When thinking about a product to sell as an affiliate, consider first the products you have personally tested and enjoyed (or for which you have good evidence that they are high-quality). This is the process of finding products you actually believe in and can support. This will help to ensure that the product is of good quality and something that people actually want. In addition, if the product is something that someone believes in, it makes it easier to sell.

There are many affiliate programs that can be found online. Deciding which one to use is a matter of preference and belief in the product. Each of these different programs will have different commission rates for sales and different starting costs.One of the best ways to find the right affiliate program is to use an affiliate directory website. One of the best affiliate directories on the Internet is the website http://www.AffiliatePrograms.com. Other good alternatives including http://www.commissionjunction.com and http://www.clickbank.com. These sites provide the information about a variety of different types of affiliate programs, including commission rates and product popularity. There are programs for retail products all the way to travel and website services. The programs are listed in alphabetical order on the front page and they are sorted by category.

To use this website, simply click on type of affiliate program that one is interested in starting and then read the information about the affiliate program itself. This
information is updated regularly. To choose an affiliate program, simply click on the title of the interesting program and it will take you to the website. This will then allow you to obtain an affiliate ID and corresponding affiliate links, which you can use to sell the product.

Another way to find the right affiliate program is to attend

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Affiliate Marketing – Part 1

Published by CarlanaCharles on March 7th, 2011

Being an affiliate involves selling products for other people and making a commission off that product. These products can range from ebooks to shampoo to adult toys. Most affiliates sell multivitamins and other simple products that all but sell themselves. These programs are sanctioned by larger companies that want to sell their products in a less traditional manner.

In order for the individual to make any money on the affiliate programs, he or she has to be a sales person and there must a drive. There are many people who will say that affiliate programs are simple money, but these individuals are more than likely making their sales in unethical methods. Through hard work, people are able to escape the bounds of traditional work and become their own boss and run their own store. This takes time, it takes dedication and it takes work.

The affiliate program can get easier as the person engages in it. This is because once the program is on the market and people become aware of it, they are more likely to pay attention to it. There will be return customers and they will spread the news about the program to those that they know and these people will buy the products that the affiliate offers to them. These satisfied customers then in turn spread more word about the products. The affiliate program often does take some start up money to begin with. While the phrase

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