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Chris: Thanks for joining us today. I’m Chris Malta. My co-host, Rob Cowie, is traveling right now and will be back with us next Monday. This segment of the Entrepreneur Magazine eBiz Show is brought to you by LearnKey.com, just in time training to learn QuickBooks quickly. Joining us on the first segment of today’s show is John Grosshandler of ecomXpo.com. EcomXpo is a virtual online tradeshow bringing together a large number of ecommerce companies and services. John has brought someone from one of those companies with him on the show today.
Chris: John, how are you doing and who have you got with you today?
John: I’m great and how are you?
Chris: Hanging in there. We’re looking forward to the next ecomXpo.
John: Wonderful. Well, I’m sure we’ll talk more about it later, but it actually opens up tomorrow, which is amazing. So anyone who wants to register for free can do so at www.ecomXpo.com. But we’re really here to talk about one of our most loyal sponsors and most impressive presenters at many of our events, including the one that opens tomorrow. Her name is Linda Woods, and Linda is the CEO and President of PartnerCentric, an internet marketing agency. She’s also known throughout the industry as the affiliate goddess and has been involved with affiliate marketing really pretty much since its inception. I’m pleased to have her today and I’m pleased to let folks know that she’ll be speaking at ecomXpo this week on a very interesting and featured presentation that I’ll let her perhaps talk about later in the interview. But with that, I’ll give her to you.
Chris: Terrific. Hi Linda, welcome to the show.
Linda: Hi, how are you? Thank you so much for that great opening John, I really appreciate it.
John: Well deserved.
Chris: Well, anyone who can be described as an internet goddess of any kind is someone I definitely want to be talking with…(Laughter)
Linda: (Laughter)
Chris: …because there are so many different points of view from so many different people and those who really know what they’re doing are the kind of people that we want to talk to, so we’re glad you’re here Linda.
Linda: I’m delighted to be here.
Chris: If I’m a business owner with a line of products that I wanted to take online how do I determine what kind of internet marketing is right for my business?
Linda: The first thing you have to identify is how are you going to get traffic. Because it doesn’t matter how good your products are, you have to figure out who’s going to come. So identifying what your target market is is the best thing you can do first. Who’s going to buy it? Where do they hang out? What kinds of sites do they go to? And then you have to look at what kinds of marketing is going to work best and a lot of times that has to do with what your budget is. But a couple of key things that you want to start out with first is the site needs to be very well constructed for sales. So being a beautiful site is one thing, but being a site that will sell is the most important part. So, is it easy for your customers to make their way around the site, can they navigate well, is it quick to be able to buy what they’re looking for? So those are very important factors. Probably the next most important factor is is it optimized for search engines. Will Google and Yahoo and the others be able to find what your site is about when people type in keywords of what they’re looking for. So the most important thing you could possibly be doing is thinking about putting the hat on of your target customer and thinking, okay, what are they going to type into Google to be able to find me, and then you want your site to be very relevant to what those keywords are. That’s a really critical strategy that is not terribly expensive, but it really makes a difference in being able to generate traffic.
Chris: Right, that makes a tremendous amount of sense. And you said at the beginning too that you want your site to be easily navigated by your customers and have a direct sales message. That is so important as well.
Linda: Yeah, what do you want them to do, what action do you want them to take.
Chris: Right. From what I understand, Linda, the best way to really engage someone in a sales message is to present a problem or an issue that they have and then start telling them about the solution and lead them to the sale.
Linda: Right, because that’s probably the keyword that they used to get to your site in the first place.
Chris: Right.
Linda: They’re looking for something. They have a problem to solve or they’re looking for a particular product that is going to take care of that. So how are you addressing that in your sales copy and in the flow of how your site moves.
Chris: And don’t slow people down too much and don’t take them through too many clicks to actually get to the sale, correct?
Linda: Yeah. You know, I see a lot of sites with these beautiful flash openings. That’s just another click. They’re really beautiful and they’re lovely and everybody knows how cool and creative you are now, but it’s one more click. Don’t make it hard. Don’t put on the first page how great you are, on the first page right there put your featured product.
Chris: Right. If I’ve determined that my company is a good fit for affiliate marketing what would it take to get a program started?
Linda: Okay, well let’s back up just a little bit. There are a lot of kinds of marketing. Search engine optimization, which I mentioned before, making sure that the search engines can find you. Search engine paid search management where you’re actually paying to be listed in search engines. Email marketing, all of these things are excellent ways to get started. Affiliate marketing is one of those channels. Affiliate marketing is basically being able to find partners online that have the traffic that you need and the interest in your products. And by putting your ads on those sites asking those people to partner with you, then their customers click through and hopefully buy from you. So what you have to understand about affiliate marketing is it’s a people relationship kind of thing. These other websites that you’re going to partner with take time to develop these kinds of relationships. It’s like having an outside sales force on the internet. So this in itself means that it’s inherently slower than simply paying for traffic. If you buy an ad somewhere people see the ad, they click through, they’re going to buy or not buy. You know immediately what the results are. In affiliate marketing it’s developing that relationship with that site, getting them to promote you and then making sure that your site and your message is relevant to their traffic. And then that traffic is feeling comfortable enough with the message to actually click through and buy from you. And it’s kind of one site at a time, so you’re making these relationships one at a time over time. So over a period of months what happens is you end up with a network of partnered sites that are all sending you either a little bit of traffic or a lot of traffic and that’s what takes time to develop.
Chris: If someone were to ask you if there is a secret to success with internet marketing, would you say there is?
Linda: Yeah, you have to really work at it (laughter).
Chris: (Laughter) Just like everything else, right?
Linda: Just like everything else.
Chris: Yeah.
Linda: I think that a lot of people try to do too many things at once. You need to identify what the different options are. Is it forming partnerships online? Is it buying ads? Is it developing a good email marketing list? Is it investing some time and energy in paid search? You have to understand what these things are, whether or not you have the expertise to learn how to do them well or whether you’re going to outsource these to other parties who are expert at it. And then you just have to keep at it and testing, testing, testing. I think the beauty of internet marketing is that everything you do you can test, it has metrics, it’s definable.
Chris: Yes.
Linda: So that’s what’s great. Try something, see if it works, if it does do more of it, if it doesn’t throw it out and try something else.
Chris: So what other online marketing strategies do you think are the best ones alongside affiliate marketing?
Linda: The one thing you have to know is about 50% of traffic comes from search engines. Consumers are very reliant on search engines, so it’s extremely important that the biggest part of your strategy has to do with how are you going to be found by the search engines. If you don’t know how that works, find out, because it’s extremely important. Then the other type of strategy is an email marketing list. You want to be absolutely certain that when people come to your site you are persuading them, enticing them to join your list somehow, not just “join our email newsletter list.” Nobody wants to join any lists.
Chris: Right.
Linda: So you have to say, “get a list of our hottest products just as they come out,” “get notified first when we’re going to have a discount,” you know, “be the first to know about the new release of …” I mean, it has to be something compelling. Or make it content, a top 10 list of some kind. Then people want to give you their email, they want that information, and then they’ve agreed to communicate with you and then communicate with them effectively. So building an email marketing list is how you build the relationship that allows them to trust you to buy from you.
Chris: From the affiliate side, if I don’t own a business that sells physical products can I make a living as an affiliate?
Linda: Absolutely, and I have three words for you: content, content, content. Make your site relevant. It has to be about something you’re passionate about, something you love, something that’s interesting, and something that other people are interested in. That way you can find products that match the content, they’re going to see those products, click through, buy, and you’re going to make commissions off of that.
Chris: Fantastic. That is our time today with John Grosshandler of ecomXpo and Linda Woods of PartnerCentric.com. Thank you both so much for being here and we look forward very much to seeing you at ecomXpo. We will definitely check out your presentation.
Linda: Thank you.
Chris: If you’re looking for legitimate wholesalers to work with your ebusiness, then sign up for a free subscription to our product sourcing newsletter at ProductSourcingNews.com. I’m Chris Malta.
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