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Is Your Business
Right for an
Affiliate Marketing Program?
Say you make the world's best chocolate
chip cookies, buttery and chewy on the inside with a crisp exterior
and plenty of quality chocolate. Imagine the amount of potential
sales you could have if you could open a bakery selling your products
on every block! This is nearly the model that Mrs. Field's Cookies
used in the 1980s, when their stores were found in many malls
and offered the perfect impulse buying opportunity to hungry shoppers.
What if your business could be
visible to shoppers as they go about their regular activities?
It sure would help keep you at the top of their mind when it's
time to buy your product. And what if it wouldn't cost you anything
until you made a sale?
Affiliate Marketing may be a good
choice for your company. You probably won't get your logo on every
single web page and it does cost some money to set up and run
an affiliate program. However, the benefits can be pretty impressive.
Your small business can get part of the promotional impact that
big companies do if you set up an affiliate program as part of
your sales and distribution. In April of 1999, Forrester Research,
in a survey of marketing executives, ranked affiliate programs
ahead all other marketing methods in effectiveness in promoting
products.
Affiliate marketing costs far less
than most traditional promotional efforts and, best of all, you
only have to pay for results. Forrester and Jupiter, both market
research firms, predict that over 20 percent of Internet revenues
will be the result of affiliate marketing in three years.
How do you determine if affiliate
marketing is right for your business? The best way is to start
by looking at your business and at your industry.
If your product is something that
can be sold with an ad, a brochure or a video demonstration, an
affiliate program may be a valuable addition to your usual sales
methods.
However, if you normally sell a
very few products to customers that you know well, affiliate marketing
probably isn't going to help you much. And if your product requires
hands-on demonstration, chances that you can sell it from your
website (or any other) are small.
How many customers do you have?
What kinds of information do they need before making a decision
to buy your product?
If you can sell your product, or
service, to many people, affiliate marketing may be a very good
choice for you. Affiliate websites give you the opportunity to
be "found" by your potential customers all over the
Web.
If you have only a few customers
and your product is something that can only be sold to a few hundred
or a few thousand customers, affiliate marketing is not a good
idea. Under those circumstances, you should develop a direct,
personal connection with your customers unless this is a "one
time only" purchase. If there is repeat business, you will
want to meet your customers' needs by establishing an ongoing
relationship with them.
More than banner ads, which are
rotated by web advertising agencies, affiliate marketing demonstrates
that the website owner has chosen your program specifically. In
a way, that means that they approve of the opportunity that you
offer to their customers. Yes, they're willing to give you space
on their site in return for a commission.
Ultimately, though, they've got
control over your presence on their site. They don't want to annoy
their readers and customers, so they'll use their best judgment
in deciding whether to host your business on their site.
Should you decide to start an affiliate
program for your products or services?
Only you can answer that question.
Ask yourself the old Ann Landers question about relationships.
Can you be better off with an affiliate program or without one?
If the answer is yes or maybe, you owe it to yourself and your
business to find out more about these programs and how you can
benefit from them.
-Cindy
Nemeth-Johannes
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