What is Affiliate Marketing?

One of my first posts on affiliate marketing in what will be a series of posts on affiliate marketing on this blog, and I’ll try to cover the basics of setting up a successful affiliate marketing business in this. I intend to cover many other topics related to affiliate marketing in successive posts, so watch this space.

This particular article though, will be more of a 101 on affiliate marketing, but I’ll dwell into some of the more technical stuff later on.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

www.mayocoo.com

Infographic on how affiliate marketing works, detailing every step involved in the process of earning money as an affiliate from start to finish (click to enlarge)

You’ll probably come across a ton of different ways that affiliate marketing is defined on the internet. Here’s how I do it: Affiliate marketing involves individuals or organizations (knows as ‘affiliates’) promoting another company, business, organization or brand’s (referred to as the ‘merchant’) products and/or services through different avenues, and earning a commission on each sale.

The great little infographic on the right actually does a pretty good job describing the different processes involved in affiliate marketing, and how the whole thing works. Click to enlarge the image.

What are the benefits of affiliate marketing?

The benefits for both parties are quite obvious. Merchants are able to maximize their sales for virtually no extra cost or overhead (such as marketing costs) by offering affiliates an incentive, which is usually a small percentage of each sale that is made through the affiliate’s marketing efforts.

From an affiliate’s perspective, affiliate marketing is a great way to earn online, and if done right, can be quite lucrative. For instance even a single sale worth $1000 could bag the affiliate quite a bit of money, depending on the percentage offered in the program.

‘The 4 core players’ in affiliate marketing

The affiliate marketing page on Wikipedia does a great job in identifying the ‘four core players’ in the affiliate marketing business. Here’s what it says (along with my own thoughts on each):

• The Merchant – the business, retailer, or the brand.
• The Affiliate – the publisher, which could either be an individual promoting the merchant’s products, or an organization.
• The Network: refers to the mechanism through which the whole thing works. The network acts as an intermediary between the affiliate and the merchant, allowing affiliates to choose from and participate in an affiliate programs. The network also determines the mode of compensation (more on this later), and hence includes tools used to track and monitor sales and performance, generate reports, process payments, etc.
• The Customer: pretty self-explanatory, don’t you think 

What it takes to start an affiliate business?

A website or a blog, that’s it!

One of the biggest advantages of starting an affiliate business is its relatively low start-up cost. The initial investment could be as low as nothing, if you opt to host your blog on a free blogging platform.

However it is recommended to go with a self-hosted blog, preferably using WordPress. Self-hosted blogs provide a lot more flexibility, customization and options especially in terms of SEO and the ability to get more targeted traffic – something that is vital to your success as an affiliate.

Other than that, you need a sound understanding of what your customers’ needs and what would appeal to their interests.

You also need to be able to pull in a lot of highly-targeted traffic, so be prepared put your marketing hats on!

How do affiliates promote the merchant’s products and/or services?

The affiliate is usually provided with links to the merchant’s products/services. These are usually direct links, but can also be banner ads that the affiliate can place on his/her website.

When visitors come on the affiliate’s blog or website and click on an affiliate link – usually of a product or a service that they might be interested in buying, they’re taken to a page on the merchant’s website where they are able to buy the said product/service.

Affiliate links usually place a cookie on the customer’s computer, which are usually valid for an ‘x’ number of days. Any purchase made on the merchant’s website during this time earns the affiliate a commission on each of the purchase.

Understandably then, affiliate marketing requires the affiliate to get as much visibility, exposure and traffic on his blog as he possibly can. Specifically, the affiliate needs a large amount of targeted traffic, as well as a high CTR and a high conversion rate.

Affiliate marketers usually use a wide array of different internet marketing methods and SEO techniques to maximize their earnings. These include a different SEO (search engine optimization) techniques – specifically on-page optimization, off-page optimization and keyword optimization that is targeted towards getting organic (search engine) traffic, paid search engine marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, content marketing, as well as writing product reviews and informative articles, to name a few.

Compensation and payment methods

Most affiliate marketing programs out there function on a per-sale model (pay-per-sale or PPS) – whereby the affiliate earns a fixed percentage of each sale that he/she makes. The Amazon Affiliate Program for instance – one of the most popular, successful and widely-used affiliate marketing program out there – functions on a similar PPS (pay-per-sale model). The Amazon affiliate program actually switches between a volume based payment model and a category-specific payment mechanism for different products, as illustrated in the table below.

Compensation/payment mechanism used by the Amazon Affiliates program to pay it’s affiliates

Some affiliate programs also use other compensation methods, such as cost-per-click (CPC), cost-per-action (CPA), or a cost-per-mille/cost-per-thousand views (CPM) based compensation mechanism to pay the affiliates.

The PPS-based model though remains the most popularly-used one, by far.

In the PPS or pay-per-sale method, the affiliate is paid on the basis of the number of successful transactions he/she makes, when the transaction completes. A sale generated through the affiliate’s efforts, the visitor is directed to the merchant’s website, and a ‘successful sale’ is only counted at the end of the sales process, which usually ends when the customer purchases the product by making a payment – at which point the affiliate earns the commission for the sale.

Internet cookies, unique to every affiliate, are generated and used to track the movement of buyers so that sales can be attributed to each affiliate.

Best affiliate programs on the internet

Well, for starters, there’s the aforementioned Amazon Affiliates – a program widely regarded as the best in the business. It is also the only one I have experience using. However here is a listof 10 of the best, most popular affiliate programs out there, compiled by ProBlogger.

Is it lucrative?

It certainly appears so! This Guardian article for instance is a good example of how affiliate marketing can be quite lucrative.

Like many of the other forms of online earning, affiliate marketing certainly isn’t some get-rich-overnight scheme. It can take a while before things get going, especially in terms of money. But like the article above, you’ll find plenty of examples on the internet of affiliates promoting products as their day-jobs, and where people are making big bucks as full-time affiliate marketers.

It isn’t easy by any means to set up a successful affiliate marketing business. It takes time, perseverance, the right knowledge, access to the right set of tools, patience, maybe even a bit of an entrepreneurial knack and business know-how, but it is certainly possible to make some serious money as an affiliate, and maybe even quit your day job down the road!

For me, the key to success for any affiliate is his or her ability to pull in highly-targeted traffic. The more, the merrier! And of course, good marketing skills don’t hurt! We will speak in detail about how affiliates can accomplish this in a future post on this blog, so stay tuned.

Share your experiences

Are you an affiliate marketers, who’s just started off or been in the business for a few years? Do you know any successful affiliate marketers? Do share your stories and thoughts with us in the comments below!

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Affiliate Marketing Tips To Help You Improve Your Earnings

Are you ready to get started on your affiliate marketing plan? Are you still trying to figure out how to begin or where to start? Are you aware of what products will be effective for your business and work for you? If you don’t have answers for these questions, the following tips are here to help.

If you try an affiliate program and it isn’t working for you, just go find another one to try. There are many different programs available and no two work exactly the same. Different services, products and payment plans are offered. Some programs offer more flexibility and freedom, such as different designs and colors to help with better matching your site. You can also check to see if one of your favorite stores or vendors have an affiliate program. Try mixing and matching until you locate a program that will suit you needs and preferences.

When it comes to selecting which affiliate marketing companies you want to align with, select companies that offer products that your website visitors will be very interested in buying. When users purchase products or click using your affiliate link, you earn money. So it just makes sense to select things that your website visitors are likely to be interested in.

Come up with a plan. Just like you would do for most undertakings, sit down and form a marketing plan. How can you put your business name out there so that people will see it? Who can help you get the word out regarding your new website?

Any claims of affiliate marketing being “mastered” through one single eBook should not be trusted. Just think about that for a minute. If the person selling the eBook could effortlessly make millions by just following a few eBook instructions, why would that individual bother even selling their eBook to you? Usually this kind of eBook is a failed affiliate marketer’s last ditch attempt to make a few dollars off a collection of articles that have previously been published.

Search for companies with affiliate programs offering lifetime commissions. Some programs only offer 60 days, after that you don’t receive commission. Before signing up with any program, be sure to read the terms and conditions to ensure you are working with the best programs.

Test various affiliate offers and compare them. It is easy to find affiliate products, so it doesn’t take a lot of effort to find good ones. Register a domain name. Next redirect the domain to the affiliate link that you would like to test. You can always change the redirect any time by just going into your web hosting service’s control panel.

When you are setting up a website for affiliate marketing purposes, register a unique and related domain name. Make sure you also use reliable hosting. When you register a domain name, the major search engines can pick it up. The domain name that you register should be a reflection of the services and products offered on your website.

Select a niche market, then sell to that market instead of trying to sell affiliate products to everybody. Your efforts will be diluted if you try to do that, and your readers will be confused. Remain focused on services and products that serve customers from your particular niche. Readers will grow to trust you, and this will increase the chances that they purchase the latest offerings from you.

Transform your home office into a spiritual and profitable place to work by using Feng Shui. This will help you grow your affiliate marketing business. Keep your office a productive place by keeping things organized, decluttering and working in the best location. Just remember that out of sight tends to mean out of mind. So when you put things away, keep track of them.

If you own a business already, affiliate marketing can bring in a nice additional income stream for you. First, decide on a product to market that aligns with the industry your established business works in. Then you will be able to advertise the product subtly to your clients, using business communication channels that you have already established.

Cater your affiliate marketing items to your website’s topic or theme. If you blog about baseball, links to items such as season passes and player autographed jerseys. If your website caters to stay-at-home Moms, links could be included to things like the hottest toddler toys of the year and latest baby care products.

When you decide to recruit your own affiliates, be sure the affiliates you choose are able to drive the right kinds of traffic to your site for making the sale. For example, if you sell home appliances, having affiliates who own adult websites doesn’t make a lot of sense. Wisely select the affiliates who you want working for you.

Are you ready to come up with your plan now? Do you think you can find a place to start? Do you know what things will work in your business and what won’t? If you have answers for these questions, you have grasped the meaning from the previous tips. Now you prepared to make affiliate marketing something that works for you.

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How to Double Your Traffic Without Any Marketing

Marketing is undoubtedly one of the most crucial success factors for new online businesses and should be a primary emphasis early on. But if you only focus on traditional traffic generation strategies like link building you're missing out on lots of potential customers.

The following strategies can easily help you increase your website's traffic - even double it - without having to do an ounce of marketing.  Here's how:

1. Add Long-Tail Variations to Your Pages

It's easy to focus on short, high-volume terms because they are easier to identify and research.  But in reality, 80% to 90% of the traffic Mayocoo you're likely to receive will be from "long-tail" queries with three, four or five-plus words.

Long-tail keywords are easier to rank for and usually convert at a much higher rate than shorter, more generic terms.  Here's how you can maximize your exposure to long-tail variations and increase your traffic: 

Identify Long-Tail Modifiers

Let's pretend we sell the Logitech C310 webcam and wanted to optimize our page to rank for as many searches as possible.  We'd visit our old friend the Google Keyword Tool and make note of all the long-tail variations. We'd also want to look at the bottom of the search results where Google lists related searches. The related searches for "Logitech C310" look like this:

Work these Modifiers into Your Page Copy

Because our Logitech C310 page is (hopefully) somewhat optimized for the term "Logitech C310", we don't need to insert each long-tail search phrase verbatim into the page. Instead, we want to work the unique variations at the end of "Logitech C310" into our copy to allow the possibility that we can rank for it.

Revisiting the related searches from above, we'd want to make sure the words boxed in red below appeared on our page:

We'd want to ensure our page included the words "Skype" and "Mac", as well as discussed the differences between the C525 model using the "vs c525" phrase.  With all of these newly included modifiers incorporated into the copy, our page has the potential to rank for a wider range of queries. 

Not all of the modifiers we uncovered will be applicable. Branded keywords - like "best buy" above - won't be useful, and we would likely have a number of modifiers already incorporated. However, more often than not, we'll uncover a handful of long-tail gems to help increase potential ranking opportunities and ultimately boost our traffic.

2. Stand Out with Rich Snippets

Rich snippets are search listings that include information regarding a product's price, availability and review count.  They're useful for learning more about the particular product and/or site at a glance from the search results page without having to visit it.

Rich snippets are incredibly powerful because they can increase the number of people that click on your page by up to 30%.  That's a huge boost for something that can usually be implemented relatively painlessly! Compare that to increasing your marketing or ad-spending budget by 30% and you'll see why it's so powerful.

The process for setting up or enabling rich snippets will vary based on your platform, so you may need to do some research to get it implemented. Once you think everything is setup properly, you can use Google's Rich Snippets Testing Tool to make sure there won't be any display problems. Rich snippets can take some time to appear in the search listings, so don't worry if you don't see them right away. 

Authorship and Video Thumbnails 

Product-based rich snippets will likely be the most applicable for many merchants, but there's also two other types of enhanced listings to know about: Google Authorship and video thumbnails.

With authorship markup you can tell Google which content you've written and your picture will appear alongside the listing for that piece. Just like the name implies, video thumbnails are a thumbnails of a page's embedded video that appears alongside a page listing. Just like product-based rich snippets, both of these have also proven to dramatically increase the click through rate of the associated pages. 

When should you use each type of enhanced markup? That will vary based on your content, products and goals.  Google Authorship markup could be a great choice for enhancing a store's blog posts in the search results, while video thumbnails could potentially help video-rich educational pages stand out.

We're now even seeing multiple mark-up mediums combined in one listing, as seen below:

Setting up Google Authorship is fairly simple assuming you have a Google Plus profile. For more information, see these guides by KISSMetrics and 312 Digital.

To get video thumbnails to appear, you'll need to create a video sitemap for Google. You can do this manually via your Webmaster Tools account, and some video hosting services like Wistia (I love these guys!) will do it automatically for you. For more details on video SEO and thumbnails, see this video from Wistia.

3. Write Titles and Descriptions People Can't Resist 

The meta title and meta description are attributes that determine how your page appears in the search results - and they're immensely important. Write a compelling title and interesting description and you'll stand out to searches.   Alternatively, if your copy is boring and doesn't offer any compelling reason to click, you'll get much less traffic.

In the search results below, I've tried to make the homepage for my trolling motor store stand out by highlighting:

• That we focus exclusively on high-end trolling motors
• We offer free shipping
• We don't charge sales tax

Despite competing against some big competitors, I'd bet our listings receives a higher click-through rate than the other pages, especially given many of them aren't very appealing from a sales and copywriting perspective. 

When writing meta titles and descriptions, you need to approach think like you're writing an advertisement - because you are! Highlight your expertise, unique selling proposition, and why the customer will benefit shopping with you.

You also want to keep SEO and keyword optimization in mind, but don't go overboard. Include your primary keyword(s) at least once in the title and description, ensuring they flow naturally with your copy. But when in doubt, prioritize readability over SEO.

Revamping underwhelming titles and descriptions with compelling copy can have a massive and almost overnight impact on the traffic you receive.

4. Leverage Your Internal Links

Getting links from other sites is obviously an important and well-known technique. Far fewer people understand how much influence your own site's structure and internal links have over your rankings. Need to give a particular page a rankings boost? Linking to it from existing high authority pages on your domain can pass authority and help the target page to rank better.

Here's what you can do:

• Make a list of high-value target pages you'd like to rank better.
• Identify the pages on your website that currently have the most authority and "SEO juice."
• Add a link from your authority page(s) to your target page(s).
• Incorporate the link naturally on the authority page using anchor text related to the keyword you'd like the target page to rank for.

A site's homepage will usually be the most authoritative page on a domain, so it's an obvious choice for an authority page to link from. To find other internal authority pages, use Open Site Explorer to search for internal links, and then sort in descending order by Page Authority so the most authoritative internal pages rise to the top.

The Power Of Optimization

It could take years to double your traffic if you relied solely on increasing the number of backlinks your site had. Using the techniques discussed above, it's possible to drastically increase your traffic by making smart adjustments to your existing site - and in significantly less time.

What would you do with twice the number of customers?

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30 Free Ways To Market Your Small Business Site

Are you looking for ways to market your small business website with a limited budget?  

Whether it’s with established sites such as Google and Facebook, or newer outlets like Mayocoo, there are plenty of options available to promote your site.
There are at least 30 ways to market your website with a time investment and no credit card required. Some of these are oldies but goodies, while others are newer and exciting avenues you may not have tried out yet.
Here are 30 things you can do today to get started marketing your website for free.

1. Press releases still work. Granted a submission to PRWeb or a Vocus account make the pickup and link benefit much easier, but those cost dollars
2. Send the press release to your local media outlets, or any niche media outlets that may be interested in what you do.
3. Claim, verify, and update your Google Local Business listing. This is extremely important. Google Local Listings have been absorbed into Google+, so be sure to check out this great resource over at Blumenthals.com to keep up to date on how to manage your Google Local Listing.
4. Find a niche social media site that pertains to your exact business and participate. Be helpful, provide relevant and useful information, and your word of mouth advertising will grow from that engagement.
   • Examples:
     • social network site – www.mayocoo.com
     • Photography store – Coosnaps.com
     • cloud storage  Favor site – coodocs.com or myphonebok.com forums
     • Search your niche or service plus forums to find ideas. If there isn’t a forum out there, consider starting one.
5. Build a Google+ page for your business and follow businesses that are related to your product or service niche. Share informative and relative content and link to your profile from your website. You should also consider allowing users to +1 your content on a page by page basis.
6. Setting up joint benefit with local businesses or others in your niche can help you reach eyes you never did before. Be sure to answer the question "Will my user find this information beneficial as they shop and purchase?" every time you link to a resource, or request a link or listing on another site.
7. Comment and offer original, well thought out, sensible information, opinion and help on blogs that are relevant to your website's topic and be sure to leave your URL. Even if a nofollow tag is attached, you could gain a bit of traffic and some credibility as an authority on the subject matter. This is not blog comment spamming, this is engaging in a conversation relevant to your website's topic.
8. Set up and verify a Webmaster Central Account at Google.
9. Set up a Bing Webmaster Tools account and verify it.
10. Update or create your XML sitemap and upload it to Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Tools.
11. Write a "how-to" article that addresses your niche for Wikihow.com or Answers.com. This is kind of fun and a good resource for getting mentions and links. Looking at your product or service in a step-by-step manner is often enlightening in several ways. It can help you better explain your products and services on your own website. I will say I don’t know why some of these sites still rank well, many of them are junk. I do like most of the answers on the two sites mentioned above. Be picky with where you participate.
12. Write unique HTML page titles for all of your pages. This is still extremely important, don’t skimp on this one.
13. Share your photos at Flickr – get a profile, write descriptions, and link to your website. Don't share photos you don't own or have permission to use.
14. Start a blog. There's nothing wrong with getting the basics of blogging down by using a free service from Blogger or WordPress.
15. Make sure your Bing and Yahoo Local listings are up to date.
16. Update and optimize your description and URL at YP.com. They'll try to get you to spend money on an upgraded listing or some other search marketing options. Don't bother with that, but make sure the information is accurate and fresh.
17. Use your Bing Webmaster Tools account to look at your incoming links. How do they look? Are all of the sites relevant and on-topic? If not, reevaluate your link building practices and start contacting any of the irrelevant sites you can and ask them to take down your link. A clean and relevant incoming link profile is important; cleaning up bad links is a necessity until we can tell Google and Bing which links we want them to ignore.
18. Make a slideshow of your products or record an original how-to video and upload to YouTube. Be sure to optimize your title and descriptions. Once it's uploaded, write a new page and embed the video on your own Web site. Add a transcription of the video if possible.
19. Try a new free keyword tool for researching website optimization, then see #20.
20. Add a page to your site focused on a top keyword phrase you found in #19.
21. Build a Facebook Page and work to engage those that are interested in your product or service. Facebook is so much more robust than it ever was! Create groups, events, and photo albums. Link to your Facebook profile from your site and allow visitors to your site to like and share your content.
22. Install Google Analytics if you don’t have any tracking software. The program is pretty amazing and it's free. You need to do this if you haven’t already. It's that important.
23. Start Twittering or start doing it much better than you are now – it's a great way to network with like-minded individuals.
24. Pinterest is hot right now. If you have visually stimulating content that is relevant to the site's demographic, you can find great success right now. Be sure you're using solid practices for marketing on Mayocoo as you get started.
25. Create a new list in Twitter and follow profiles of industry experts you know and trust. Use this as your modern feed reader. I don’t use RSS feed readers anymore. I like content that has been vetted by my peers and is worthy of a tweet or two.
26. Try a new way to write an ad for a struggling PPC ad group or campaign.
27. Review your Google Analytics In-Page insights and take note of how users are interacting with your page. Where to they click, what is getting ignored. Make changes based on this knowledge.
28. Set up a Google Content Experiment through your Analytics account and test with the information you obtained and changes you made in number 27.
29. Build a map at Google Maps and add descriptions for your storefront, locations, and nearby useful points of interest. Make your map public and embed it on your own website. Add links back to relevant content on your site if possible to each point of interest.
30. Keep reading Search Engine Watch for more free tips and tricks.

There you have it – 30 ways to market your website. Get to work and make something happen! There's no reason to say you can't be successful because you don’t have a huge advertising budget. Time is all you need.

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10 Proven Ways To Market Your Website

So, you’ve taken the steps to create your company website…but what do you do now?
Now you face the challenge of actually bringing in new, qualified traffic. After all, that’s how you will make more sales and increase your customer base.
Check out these 10 ways you can pull in visitors to your website:
1. Search engine optimization
SEO is the process of increasing your website’s visibility in search engine’s organic results through optimizing your pages with the keyword phrases people are likely to search for. Think about it: when you search for something in Mayocoo, do you typically go beyond the first couple pages of results? Probably not, and neither will your potential customers.

Some popular ways to improve organic search results are through editing existing content, removing barriers to indexing activities of search engines (something we’ve been doing at Ciplex for a while and see this type of marketing as one of the highest return on investments) increasing the number of backlinks or inbound links (links your website receives from other webpages — which indicates the popularity or importance of your website).
SEO can be a time-consuming process initially, but it’s an important step towards getting more traffic and grabbing a top spot in search engines for your main keyword phrases. If you haven’t already optimized your website for search engines, it might take several months to see significant results with SEO.
2. Blogging and guest blogging
Offering free, original content on your site can help bring new visitors and set you apart from the competition. However, writing for other prominent blogs in your niche, is even more beneficial in generating traffic. By including a link to your website in your biography at the end of your guest post, you can draw in new visitors from a source that likely gets much more traffic than your current blog or website.
3. Pay per click (PPC)
Use PPC Internet advertising to bring in traffic to your website from search engines like Google. Here’s how it works: you pay a fixed price for every click your ad gets in the search engine, and your ultimate goal of the click is to convert that user in order to see a return on investment. With GoogleAdWords, there’s no spending requirement — you can set a budget of as little as five dollars a day or a maximum cost of ten cents for each click, for example. Your main focus should be conversion so you get the best ROI possible. Simply choose keyword phrases and the search engine will help you get your ad in front of your target market, wherever they might be looking on the Web.
4. Retargeting
Retargeting ads work by placing a tracking cookie on each of your visitor’s computers. Then, when they leave your site, they start seeing ads to come back. Using this type of advertising helps you reach visitors who leave without conversion — which is about 98 percent of all your traffic — and makes retargeting a valuable strategy in getting those visitors to come back and convert. You’ve already worked hard to get people there, but most leave…so get them to come back to make sure you’re not throwing away that money you’ve already spent.
5. Facebook ads
Millions of people use Facebook every day (they had 483 million daily active users in December 2011) and the average U.S. Facebook user spends eighthourspermonth on the site. And it’s not only popular with teenagers and college students — all types of demographics are now regular users of the social network. Additionally, according to a study from Nielsen, people are 68 percent more likely to remember seeing an ad with social context than without. Facebook ads can help you target people from a specific location, friends of your current fans, or even folks who “like” other pages, among other options such as age and interests. Plus, it’s a cost-effective way to bring in new traffic — you can set a daily budget, pay for clicks, or pay when people see your ad. Similar to Google AdWords, you’re piggybacking off of Facebook’s traffic in order to bring those visitors to your website.

6. YouTube

Creating videos and posting them to YouTube can help your content get found on YouTube itself. From there, not only does Google index your content, but others can embed your video on their blogs and share it via social media. Although going “viral” is certainly desirable, it’s important to remember that not every video needs to get a million views to successfully drive traffic to your website. Instead, focus on a call to action that tells viewers exactly where to go (your website), how to do it (link), and why to do it (free content, contest, etc.) once they’ve finished watching.
You can also advertise on other people’s videos by buying targeted ads relevant to your business — which could yield a high conversion.
7. Email marketing

Email marketing is a great tool because most people need to be engaged multiple times before they buy. It’s been around for years, and is still one of the strongest ways to engage potential and current customers. Give people a compelling reasons to subscribe (contests, great content, insider information, etc.) and then continually send great content so they don’t unsubscribe. Encourage them to return to your website on a regular basis by showing them what they’ve missed since they last visited — perhaps it’s a new product, blog posts, whitepapers, videos, or something else.
8. Word of mouth (forums/Facebook fan pages, etc.)
When you’re looking for a new salon to get a haircut, or a great restaurant in a neighboring town, you probably turn to trusted friends, family, or online sources to discover the best rated and reviewed options. These sources are key points for driving traffic for your website, too. Focus on building connections with your fans and followers in order to gain positive reviews and word of mouth recommendations. You can also participate in related forums or comment on blog posts in order to plug your company without coming off as too promotional.
9. Social media
Similar to email marketing, social media helps you communicate with your potential customers and encourage them to buy. Again, you should provide compelling reasons to “like” your Facebook page or follow you on Twitter, but you should also share content that gets them visiting your blog or interacting with your brand on a regular basis to remind them why they stopped by your website in the first place. Social media is also a great tool for word of mouth marketing; it helps you see what people are talking about and what recommendations they provide. It’s also a great tool for customer service inquiries and real-time communication when a crisis hits.
10. PR
Building your reputation and influence is an important part of driving traffic to your company website. Through public relations strategies, you can brand yourself as an expert in your niche and build your credibility. Doing this can increase your conversion rates and build your brand awareness. For instance, by serving as a source in journalist’s articles, the outlet typically provides a linkback to your website — which is usually great traffic that converts well, all while building your reputation. Plus, when you’re mentioned on a big press outlet — a trusted source for many people — they ultimately trust you more. Press releases can also help drive traffic and generate interest in your product or service.
What results have you seen from the above tactics? Where does most of your website traffic come from?

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21 Ways to Promote Your Site Online and Off

Offline Promotions
1. Always put your URL on letterhead, business cards and in e-mail signatures--wherever potential visitors are likely to see it.
2. If your employees wear uniforms, put your URL on them so every one of your customers sees a walking advertisement of your website.
3. Include your URL on all promotional items you give away--coffee mugs, T-shirts, keychains and so on. A daily reminder is a good way to get people to visit your site.
4. Be sure to include your webaddress in all press releases you send out to members of the media. By having it at their fingertips, they may be more likely to include it in articles they write about your company.
5. Don't forget to put your webaddress in your Yellow Pages ad. That's one place people see it every day.
6. Do you own any company vehicles? Be sure to put your URL on the side of any car or truck that's out there delivering your products.
7. In addition to listing your toll-free number, put your webaddress on the bottom of every page of your catalog so customers have easy access to your online store.
Online Promotions
8.Hone your search engine submission processso you can get the best exposure possible.
9. If you're still itching for more exposure, you can explore search engine marketing, wherein you pay to have a text ad appear when visitors search for certain keywords.
10. Launch a sweepstakesthat offers anyone who registers on your site or subscribes to e-newsletters within a certain time frame the chance to win a free gift.
11. Send out a weekly e-mail newsletterto registered site members that offers tips and news related to your company or industry with links back to your site.
12. Offer free contentto other sites. It's a win-win situation: The other site gets free articles to beef up their offerings and you get a link back to your site and the cachet of being an expert.
13. Send a well-planned, customer-focused e-mail promotionto a targeted list of potential visitors and offer a credit toward the purchase of anything from your site. Spend time on your e-mail's look and content: You want to offer value to customers and not have it appear to be spam.
14. Create your own link exchangeby asking sites complementary to yours (but that don't compete) to put your link on their pages and you'll do likewise.
15. Hook up with webaffiliates--hundreds of sites that all link their traffic to yours--and get visitors from sites with related content.
16. Get active in online discussion groups and chats and always include your URL in your signature. (Don't do any hard selling, though. Most groups frown on such behavior and will think you're spamming the group.)
17. Any time someone orders a product from your site, include a catalog with their order to get them coming back for more.
18. Inspire your visitors to spread the word for you with viral marketing techniques, from the aforementioned newsgroup participation to including an "e-mail this link" on every page of your site.
19. Not sure what your customers want? Try creating an online surveyto get their crucial opinions on how well your site is selling to them.
20. When creating your own ads, make sure you understand who you're targeting, the goal of your campaign, and how to creatively use the ad confines to get viewers to click on your ad, not away from it.
21. Use other selling venues like online classified advertising or online auction sites to increase exposure to your site and products.

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