10 Internet Marketing Tips for Retailers
When you opened the brick and mortar retail shop, chances are you planned for a grand opening or ribbon cutting. Marketing and advertising to get the word out about your new business was probably one of your top concerns. Marketing online is just as important for a retail store.
Don't just sit there watching cob webs gather on your website. Whether you sell products online or have a one-page website, there are many ways to generate more in-store traffic from your online presence. Increase exposure online with these Internet marketing tips for your retail store.
1. Send a Press Release
One of the fastest ways to spread word about your store, and products or services, is by sending a press release. Media outlets all thrive on press releases every day. The abundance of online news distribution services is now making it easier than ever for retailers to announce new product lines, special events and other shop news.
Using Press Releases
2. Submit Product Feeds
Retailers that sell products online should most definitely be using product feeds to reach a broader audience. A product feed is simply a file generated from the website that lists product details such as photos, descriptions, pricing and even specials. These product feeds can be submitted to shopping comparison websites, search engines and also made available to customers using feed readers.
Google Base
3. Share Your Knowledge
There are many ways a retailer can appear as an expert or voice of authority in a certain industry. One way is to host classes, seminars or workshops in-store. Another way is by signing up to teach related continuing education courses at the local college.
Internet retailers have known for years that one popular way to share knowledge and gain extra exposure is by writing content for free distribution. Article marketing, as it is known, has the ability to increase awareness of a retailer's presence, online and off.
Article Marketing Tips
4. Create a Newsletter
Newsletter and email marketing is key in keeping in touch with the customers you've manage to get in your store or on your website. It takes a lot of work to gain a customer. Why let them leave without offering a way to stay in contact?
3 Types of Newsletters
5. Submit Your Site
Many new website owners submit their site to the major search engines and then sit back and wait for customers to come. While this is an important step for marketing online, website owners often overlook all the other directories available.
Look for specialized link directories and niche sites to submit your business information and website. Not only will these directories help increase your link popularity, but they can drive highly targeted traffic to your retail store.
No More Search Engine Submission
6. Grab Local Listings
Google, Yahoo, Superpages and other directories and search engines are creating tools for local shoppers to find your business, provide maps of location, hours of operation and even coupons. Many of these listings are free with upgrade options for a fee.
Local Search Marketing For Local Business
7. Create Your Own Commercials
If your store has paid for a print display ad in the local newspaper, you may know how ineffective marketing without spoken word or visual imagery can be. Radio and television marketing may be too pricey for your shop's budget, but there is another option.
Video marketing online allows a retailer to extend the reach of their message to a larger audience for little investment. Unlike traditional marketing, producing a unique online ad or video to convey your message or brand your store can have an extremely high ROI.
How To Produce a Promotional Web Video
8. Join Social Networking
Social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn may or may not help you sell your products but if that's where your customers hang out, maybe you should too. The blogs on these sites can help retailers keep in touch with shoppers, make announcements or feature new merchandise and promotions.
Leveraging Social Networking Sites to Generate Business
9. Offer an Affilate Program
One very popular and effective method of Internet marketing for retailers is the affiliate program. This is the process in which a retailer pays one or more affiliates for each sale or customer gained as a direct result of the affiliate's marketing efforts. The retailer generally provides banners, buttons or product feeds for the affiliate's use.
Many retailers manage their own affiliate programs while others opt to use a third party to track sales, orders and payments to the affiliate. The amount of commission or bonus paid out is determined by the retailer and outlined an affiliate agreement.
How to Create a Successful Affiliate Marketing Program
10. Give Something Away
Shoppers love to get something for nothing! Retailers know this and have used freebies and giveaways as marketing tools for decades. Pens with the business name on them at the checkout counter and shopping bags with store logo are so commonplace in a retail store that we may not even see them as marketing items. Unfortunately, these items can actually become quite costly.
Not all giveaways must be expensive. A big advantage of marketing online is the opportunity to easily and quickly offer contests, coupon codes, product samples and even valuable content as promotional giveaways.
10 Tips to Use Giveaways Effectively
How to Create a Successful Affiliate Marketing Program
Affiliate marketing is often termed as one of the best online marketing programs that are available to small business. Why? There is no risk when it comes to affiliate marketing, you only pay after the results are delivered. Using an affiliate marketing program you agree to pay your affiliate partners a referral fee for each lead or sale that is generated.
There are many affiliate program available on the Internet today, so it's important to make yours stand out and catch the attention of professional affiliate marketers. Once you've done that you are well on your way to a successful campaign. Here are some tips on how you can make your affiliate program stand out from the multitudes that are available:
1. Claim a niche market. Don't try to sell everything to everyone. This is the quickest way to fail in your adventure.
2. Locate niche partners. Once you've claimed your niche market research and find web sites that have viewers interested in your niche market. You will want to find partners that have already built traffic and would benefit from your affiliate offer. Your offer should be a win-win for both you and your affiliate partners.
3. Develop compelling creative. Provide your affiliate partners with creative and promotional material. You want to make their job of marketing your products or services as easy as possible. The less work they have to do and the more conversions they see the more likely they are to promote your products or services.
4. Continually be on the look out for new affiliate partners. Don't rest on your laurels just because you have a few good partners, you never know when they may decide to jump ship. Protect yourself by actively recruiting new partners. You can find new partners by advertising your affiliate program on your web site, listing or advertising in affiliate directories, or by contacting potential affiliates directly.
5. Take care of your partners. Communicate with them by welcoming them to your affiliate program send out updates on product additions or changes. Give them tips and advise on how to be successful in marketing your products. Always pay them on time.
A successful affiliate marketing program takes time to build, but with a bit of effort it has the ability to increase your Internet sales noticeably. It's worth the effort and it can become on of the best time and financial investments in your marketing plan.
Six Strategies to Becoming a Successful Affiliate
Affiliate marketing is a low-cost way for merchants to build awareness and showcase their products and services. The model is simple; it works as a commission-based referral system. A partner or affiliate markets a merchant's products for a "piece of the pie."
Affiliate marketing experts often make an income that can tally over five figures per month, however only 1 to 5% of thousands of marketers achieve this level. When an affiliate reaches this elite level they are often referred to as a "super" affiliate.
How does one become a super affiliate? Can anyone do it? Super affiliates have common tactics that they embrace and put into place. Anyone can become a super affiliate, but it will not come without blood, sweat, and a hefty time commitment. The typical super affiliate possesses the following traits:
* Persistence
* Patience
* Thirst for Knowledge
These three traits combined with the following strategy gives you the formula for the makings of a "super" affiliate.
1. Find a Unique Niche
The mistake that many affiliate marketing hopefuls have in common is that they try to offer everything under the sun rather than focusing on a specific niche market. Do not scatter your efforts, focus on your niche, promote it, and sell it well.
2. Search Engine Marketing
Once you've built your affiliate storehouse you will need to promote it. Many affiliates use pay-per-click engines. I suggest that you learn how to achieve organic search results or hire a search engine marketing company. This will save you from spending all your profits on pay-per-click engines. Only use pay-per-click engines if you know what you are doing, otherwise all your profits may end in the hands of Google Adwords or Overture.
3. Know Your Product, Know Your Audience
Create a resource. By taking the time to learn about the products and/or services that you are offering you can create information that builds your credibility. That credibility builds trust. If your viewers do not have trust in you more than likely they will not purchase from your storehouse. If you want more information on the psychological process that an online buyer goes through I suggest that you read my article on the Five Levels of Internet Marketing and the Sales Process. This will help you in creating a web site that converts well, which in return will increase your cash flow.
4. Don't Put All Your Eggs in One Basket
Promote products from different merchants. This way if you have a problem with receiving payment from a merchant, or their products do not convert well the effects on your business will be minimal. Watch out for exclusivity agreements; remember this is your business. Protect yourself and diversify so that you do not feel the famine effect if something goes wrong. There is absolutely nothing wrong with promoting niche products from different merchants.
5. Seek Knowledge and Embrace Change
If you are familiar with Internet marketing at all you know that what worked three months ago may not work today. Stay on top of the trends. Seek knowledge, start by learning something new about affiliate marketing daily. For example remember those marketing tools called "banner" that use to drive sales at an astronomical rate a few years ago? Well those banners developed a term called "banner blindness." That means most online viewers will not click on banners even if they do pertain to what they are looking for. To be a "super" affiliate you must always spend time reading, learning, and embracing the changes in Internet marketing.
6. Don't Give Up
It's hard to do, and most of the time those dabbling in affiliate marketing give up way too soon. Monitor your statistics, watch to see what is working and what is not. Make changes when necessary. Do one thing daily to promote your storehouse and be patient. Before you know it you will start getting payments.
Remember that it will not happen overnight. Encompass and develop the persistence, patience, and knowledge. Then follow the tactics I've mentioned above and you are on your way to becoming a "super" affiliate.
How to Become a Successful Niche Marketer
By Top Affiliate on Monday, March 7th, 2011 | 0 Comments and 5 Reactions
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Becoming a Successful Niche Marketer
Online niche marketing is more than just an online fad. People have been earning amazing incomes from it for several years; every day, more and more people get on board and start living the dream, too. If you think that becoming a successful niche marketer is out of your reach, think again. With the right guidance, it’s truly possible for anyone to become a success in the niche marketing game. These days, the crème de la crème of the niche marketing how-to world has to be Micro Niche Finder. Get on board with that program and read the following info to get the ball rolling on your niche marketing adventure!
Step One: Researching Popular Niches
There’s a delicate balance to finding the right niche market. On the one hand, you want something that’s specific enough to keep the playing field as sparse as possible; on the other, you need a niche market that will earn you steady, reliable income. The first step to becoming a successful niche marketer is zeroing in on the right niche. There are literally thousands of them available; getting started can be quite overwhelming. Micro Niche Finder simplifies this daunting step, allowing you to pinpoint the niche that is right for you.
Key things to keep in mind when researching niches include:
Find Out what People are Looking For – To find the right niche, you need to keep your finger on the pulse of what people are searching for online. Any niche marketer will tell you that staying abreast of what’s popular in online searches is the backbone of making this venture work for you. The main ingredient to being a successful niche marketer is drawing in targeted traffic; once you have an audience, the battle is all downhill. Selecting a niche that people are seeking information about is a great first step.
Choose an Untapped Niche Market – Here’s where the balancing act comes into play: You need to select a niche that’s being searched for but that isn’t oversaturated. If there are hundreds of other niche marketers trying to get in on the action, your profits will be extremely diluted. This is why it pays to sign up for an automated system like Micro Niche Finder, which helps you zero in on emerging niches with ease. By getting in on the ground floor of a niche market, you will increase your odds of experiencing amazing success as a niche marketer.
Analyze Niches at a Glance – A big stumbling block for any niche marketing is analyzing the potential of any given niche market. Usually, doing this is extremely difficult. With MicroNicheFinder, you can size up a niche market at a glance.
Step Two: Finding the Right Product
The next step in becoming a successful niche marketer is finding the right product within the niche of your choice. In this case, it pays to get as specific as possible with your keyword research. Overly broad keywords and key phrases are going to leave you spinning your tires. You need to zero in on a product that can be found through more in-depth keywords and key phrases. Micro Niche Finder makes it a snap to analyze the usefulness and effectiveness of various keywords and key phrases, allowing you to pinpoint the products that will generate the most business for you.
Another thing to keep in mind when selecting a product as a niche marketer is gauging its potential in terms of affiliate marketing. For many niche marketers, affiliate marketing is one of their most lucrative sources of income. Some products do better than others in the affiliate marketing game. MicroNicheFinder makes it possible to get a feel for how well a product will perform for you in this regard.
Step Three: Setting Up Your Venture as a Niche Marketer
Once all of the analyzing has been done, it’s time to get the ball rolling in earnest. Yet again, Micro Niche Finder simplifies the process of getting your business off the ground. There are many ways to get going as a niche marketer. Setting up a series of small sales websites is a great first step. These sites can include forms that people can use to sign up for e-newsletters; you can then use those newsletters to expand your reach and make sales. As emphasized in the MicroNicheFinder program, diverting and converting are exceptionally important things that any niche marketer should know.
Basically:
Diverting – As a niche marketer, you need to divert as much traffic to your own sites as possible. This can be done in various ways, including press releases, pay-per-click programs, article marketing, email campaigns and backlinks.
Converting – Once the traffic’s been diverted to your site, you need to convert it into sales. You can do this by selling your products or through affiliate marketing. Another prime option you can use as a niche marketer is AdSense revenue; convert the traffic into email lists that can be used to generate income, too.
As you can see, there’s more than one way to go about becoming a wildly successful niche marketer. In fact, it pays to put as many different things to work for you as possible. If you’re really serious about becoming a niche marketer, though, you need to sign up with MicroNicheFinder. Between its indispensable assistance and the points made above, you’ll be able to skyrocket to the top in no time.
Affiliate Marketing
There are plenty of ways an industrious individual can make money online. Countless people have turned to the World-Wide-Web looking for a good money making opportunity they can accomplish from the comfort of their own home.
It may seem daunting at first but you can make money online if you learn, duplicate and most importantly have the determination to just start. One of the most ingenious ways to supplement or even replace your income is through online affiliate programs.
Online affiliate programs first sprang up in 1996 when Amazon.com started paying websites for referring customers to their site. Now in 2006 online affiliate programs are a mainstay in the e-commerce world. Even Fortune 500 companies such as Dell, Walmart and Apple have adopted the online affiliate program marketing module.
Online affiliate programs provide home business professionals and online entrepreneurs a risk-free form of advertising to produce revenue from their websites. Affiliate marketing has become an increasingly popular home based business opportunity because:
* It requires no production costs
* Very low start-up costs
* No employees
* No inventory
* No order processing
* No shipping
* No customer serviceVery limited risk
So you don’t have a website? In many cases you do not even need to operate a website or know any HTML to make money with online affiliate programs. With the maturation of contextual advertising through Yahoo! Publisher and Google Adwords many pay-per-click (PPC) savvy online affiliate marketers have moved away from deploying websites and focus entirely on search engine marketing (SEM).
This may be a good way for some to test the waters with marketing online affiliate programs but if you’re not familiar with setting up PPC campaigns tread lightly. The cost per click can quickly add up with little return on your investment if done improperly.
As for myself I still believe content is king and always will be. Having real estate on the web is much like owning a piece of property, it only matures and appreciates in value with age.
An article published by Click Z News identified that according to eBay their largest affiliate earned over $1.3 million dollars just one month alone in 2005 commissions, the largest amount yet in their online affiliate program’s history. Their top 25 affiliates averaged over $100,000 per month each and the top 100 affiliates earn almost $25,000 each per month.
With these sort of numbers buzzing around the Internet it’s no wonder affiliate marketing is quickly becoming the numero uno money making opportunity online. There are literally thousands of people just like you making a very handsome living from selling other peoples products online.
Don’t be fooled though. As we all know there are NO get-rich-quick programs online or offline. Like any business making money with affiliate programs takes work, dedication and education.
Stephen Ralph
Top Affiliate Recommended Tax Affiliate Programs
Tax season is here, are you ready? I hope so because there is a hungry market out there searching for e-File authorized online tax preparation services. Just how many? Well here’s some interesting facts and figures the IRS released on November 2, 2009 in regards to e-filing in the 2009 tax season. (See IR-2009-99 (Nov. 2, 2009) for the entire release.
1) in 2000, 27.57% or 35,412,000 returns were e-Filed, whereas in 2009, more than two-thirds–67.18% or 94,980,000 our of 141,376,000, were e-Filed;
2) The total number of returns shrank, however, from 153,650,000 in 2008 (a drop of 8%);
3) More taxpayers were doing their own e-Filing–almost 20% more prepared and e-Filed their own returns rather than using tax preparers to do so;
4) The government gave $303.069 billion back to taxpayers in refunds this year, an increase of more than 20% over last year’s refunds; and
5) The 73 million taxpayers who got electronically deposited refunds got them at least a week sooner than those waiting for a paper check, and cost the government less at the same time..
Since the IRS e-File system meets the needs of nearly all taxpayers, no matter how complicated or simple their returns are, more and more people will turn to online tax preparation services. Using e-File helps taxpayers take advantage of the tax credits available to them to maximize their refunds during these tough economic times and provides key benefits such as:
* Faster Refunds
* Greater Accuracy
* Secure and confidential submission
* No paper return to mail
* File now, pay later
* Quick confirmation
This is great news for affiliate marketers because there is a a variety of tax software products available commercially that offer e-File. Here’s a selection of the top e-File authorized tax affiliate programs across some of the major networks:
buyat Affiliate Network e-File authorized tax preparation services on the buyat Affiliate Network.
Express Tax Refund Commission Value: $25 per completed filing
Cookie: 30 days
TaxACT Commission Value: $3.30 per registration
Cookie: Same Session Only
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Commission Junction e-File authorized tax preparation services on the Commission Junction Affiliate Network.
Complete Tax Commission Value: 20% per completed filing
Cookie: 120 days
H&R Block Commission Value: 20% per completed filing
Cookie: 45 days
Quicken Commission Value: 15% per completed filing
Cookie: 30 days
Turbo Tax Commission Value: 15% per completed filing
Cookie: 45 days
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Linkshare Affiliate Ntwork e-File authorized tax preparation services on the LinkShare Affiliate Network.
Free Tax USA Commission Value: 50-65% per completed filing
Cookie: ? days
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e-File authorized tax preparation services on the ShareASale Affiliate Network.
OnepriceTaxes Commission Value: 30% per completed filing
Cookie: 120 days
TaxBrain Commission Value: 60% per completed filing
Cookie: 30 days
TaxExact Commission Value: 20% per completed filing
Cookie: 120 days
Tax Head Commission Value: $2.00 per completed filing
Cookie: 30 days
