Direct Marketing....Offline. Ewwww...just mentioning that marketing term among some affiliates makes them shiver and squirm in their seats. It's true, many affiliates thumb their nose at using direct marketing to promote their services or products...but why?
Now when I talk about about Direct Marketing I'm referring to all the methods you can use to promote your products and services to potential customers. These include but are definately not limited to:
Mail Order
Direct Mail
Telemarketing (using the telephone to call prospects or take orders)
Radio
TV
Fax (yes some people still use it)
Classified Ads
All of these types of Direct Marketing methods can produce incredible results for you as an affiliate while adding a varied degree of personalization to potential prospects. My favorite choice for these "direct response" campaigns is running "Classified Ads" in newspapers to build your newsletter subscriber list or directly promote an affiliate program.
Lets talk about promoting affiliate programs for a moment. In the near future I'll show you how to build a hungry Online subscriber list through this marketing method.
Although newspaper circulation has slipped over the last 20 years years the printed word will never go out of style. No critics there right!? An ongoing poll being conducted by the Wall Street Journal Titled What is the main reason for declines in newspaper circulation? has identified what some 7,306 voters believe the problems may be:
Diminished quality - 571 votes (8%)
Online alternatives - 4402 votes (60%)
Hassle of recycling - 91 votes (1%)
Biased reporting - 1683 votes (23%)
Something else - 559 votes (8%)
You'll notice Online alternatives leads the way (good for us) but there are still millions upon millions of people who religiously read the newspaper on a daily basis (see below). It's part of our lifestyle. Many of these news readers are looking for home based business opportunities or special niche products you may produce or promote.
Lets say your promoting a program like Affiliate Money Tree to show people how they can profit Online without having a product or Web site. Here's an ad you may want to place in your local newspaper for $20 - $25 for a three day rotation:
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Earn a FT/PT income from home.
No product or inventory needed.
Top earners make $10-18K/month.
//Your affiliate URL or actual site here//
----------------------------------------------
Now in the above example the site owner would obviously use their address: www.affiliatemoneytree.com. As an affiliate you would need to use your own URL and make it original. A great redirect service to use for these types of classified advertising campaigns is Namestick. This service was specifically designed for affiliates. It converts long, ugly affiliate or website links into short, easy to remember, search engine friendly domain names.
I'm sure you've seen all the info-mercials on TV before about "placing small classified ads....blah, blah, blah....but there IS truth to it and people HAVE been doing it for over a hundred years!
So with a very small investment at your local newspaper, unless you live in a large city or metroploitan area, you have just reached a brand new audience looking for exactly what your selling or promoting. It's obviously not rocket science here but it does work with the proper ad copy and ad placement.
Now multiply your profits by experimenting with different ad copy in different newspapers across the country. Get the picture? Remember, for many affiliate programs cookies are stored for years. In addition, when done correctly (using tracking URL's) and consistenly this type of marketing can also identify critical demographic information that may increase your overall sales and conversions
As an affiliate it's important to experiment with as many different marketing avenues you can personally handle and your bottom line allows for. Unless your website gets boat loads of traffic, throwing a simple link up on a page nowadays doesn't cut it.
Here's a listing of the Top 20 USA papers you may want to try this Direct Marketing method out on.
Average daily circulation of the nation's 20 biggest newspapers for the six months ended March 31, as reported Monday by the Audit Bureau of Circulations. The percentage changes are from the comparable year-ago period.
1. USA Today, 2,281,831, up 0.05%
2. Wall Street Journal, 2,070,498, down 0.8%
3. New York Times, 1,136,433, up 0.2%
4. Los Angeles Times, 907,997, down 6.5% (a)
5. Washington Post, 751,871, down 2.7%
6. New York Daily News, 735,536, down 1.5%
7. New York Post, 678,086, up 0.01%
8. Chicago Tribune, 573,744, down 6.6%
9. Houston Chronicle, 527,744, down 3.9% (a)
10. San Francisco Chronicle, 468,739, down 6.1% (a)
11. Arizona Republic, 452,016, down 3.2% (a)
12. Boston Globe, 434,330, down 3.9%
13. Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., 394,767, down 1.6%
14. Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 391,373, down 2.4%
15. Star Tribune of Minneapolis-St. Paul, 378,316, up 0.33% (a)
16. Philadelphia Inquirer, 364,974, down 3% (a)
17. Plain Dealer, Cleveland, 348,416, down 5.2% (a)
18. Detroit Free Press, 347,447, down 2.0%
19. St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times, 337,515, down 3.2% (a)
20. The Oregonian, Portland, 335,980, down 1.8%
You are free to re-distribute this article as long as the following resource line remains intact.
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About The Author:
Stephen Ralph is the founder and operator of http://www.top-affiliate.com - a search engine optimized affiliate directory and affiliate blog.
---------------------------------------------------
Now when I talk about about Direct Marketing I'm referring to all the methods you can use to promote your products and services to potential customers. These include but are definately not limited to:
Mail Order
Direct Mail
Telemarketing (using the telephone to call prospects or take orders)
Radio
TV
Fax (yes some people still use it)
Classified Ads
All of these types of Direct Marketing methods can produce incredible results for you as an affiliate while adding a varied degree of personalization to potential prospects. My favorite choice for these "direct response" campaigns is running "Classified Ads" in newspapers to build your newsletter subscriber list or directly promote an affiliate program.
Lets talk about promoting affiliate programs for a moment. In the near future I'll show you how to build a hungry Online subscriber list through this marketing method.
Although newspaper circulation has slipped over the last 20 years years the printed word will never go out of style. No critics there right!? An ongoing poll being conducted by the Wall Street Journal Titled What is the main reason for declines in newspaper circulation? has identified what some 7,306 voters believe the problems may be:
Diminished quality - 571 votes (8%)
Online alternatives - 4402 votes (60%)
Hassle of recycling - 91 votes (1%)
Biased reporting - 1683 votes (23%)
Something else - 559 votes (8%)
You'll notice Online alternatives leads the way (good for us) but there are still millions upon millions of people who religiously read the newspaper on a daily basis (see below). It's part of our lifestyle. Many of these news readers are looking for home based business opportunities or special niche products you may produce or promote.
Lets say your promoting a program like Affiliate Money Tree to show people how they can profit Online without having a product or Web site. Here's an ad you may want to place in your local newspaper for $20 - $25 for a three day rotation:
----------------------------------------------
Earn a FT/PT income from home.
No product or inventory needed.
Top earners make $10-18K/month.
//Your affiliate URL or actual site here//
----------------------------------------------
Now in the above example the site owner would obviously use their address: www.affiliatemoneytree.com. As an affiliate you would need to use your own URL and make it original. A great redirect service to use for these types of classified advertising campaigns is Namestick. This service was specifically designed for affiliates. It converts long, ugly affiliate or website links into short, easy to remember, search engine friendly domain names.
I'm sure you've seen all the info-mercials on TV before about "placing small classified ads....blah, blah, blah....but there IS truth to it and people HAVE been doing it for over a hundred years!
So with a very small investment at your local newspaper, unless you live in a large city or metroploitan area, you have just reached a brand new audience looking for exactly what your selling or promoting. It's obviously not rocket science here but it does work with the proper ad copy and ad placement.
Now multiply your profits by experimenting with different ad copy in different newspapers across the country. Get the picture? Remember, for many affiliate programs cookies are stored for years. In addition, when done correctly (using tracking URL's) and consistenly this type of marketing can also identify critical demographic information that may increase your overall sales and conversions
As an affiliate it's important to experiment with as many different marketing avenues you can personally handle and your bottom line allows for. Unless your website gets boat loads of traffic, throwing a simple link up on a page nowadays doesn't cut it.
Here's a listing of the Top 20 USA papers you may want to try this Direct Marketing method out on.
Average daily circulation of the nation's 20 biggest newspapers for the six months ended March 31, as reported Monday by the Audit Bureau of Circulations. The percentage changes are from the comparable year-ago period.
1. USA Today, 2,281,831, up 0.05%
2. Wall Street Journal, 2,070,498, down 0.8%
3. New York Times, 1,136,433, up 0.2%
4. Los Angeles Times, 907,997, down 6.5% (a)
5. Washington Post, 751,871, down 2.7%
6. New York Daily News, 735,536, down 1.5%
7. New York Post, 678,086, up 0.01%
8. Chicago Tribune, 573,744, down 6.6%
9. Houston Chronicle, 527,744, down 3.9% (a)
10. San Francisco Chronicle, 468,739, down 6.1% (a)
11. Arizona Republic, 452,016, down 3.2% (a)
12. Boston Globe, 434,330, down 3.9%
13. Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J., 394,767, down 1.6%
14. Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 391,373, down 2.4%
15. Star Tribune of Minneapolis-St. Paul, 378,316, up 0.33% (a)
16. Philadelphia Inquirer, 364,974, down 3% (a)
17. Plain Dealer, Cleveland, 348,416, down 5.2% (a)
18. Detroit Free Press, 347,447, down 2.0%
19. St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times, 337,515, down 3.2% (a)
20. The Oregonian, Portland, 335,980, down 1.8%
You are free to re-distribute this article as long as the following resource line remains intact.
---------------------------------------------------
About The Author:
Stephen Ralph is the founder and operator of http://www.top-affiliate.com - a search engine optimized affiliate directory and affiliate blog.
---------------------------------------------------
