A challenge for every small business is to get traditional PR from magazines, newspapers, etc…

You have options such as hiring a PR firm (likely with a hefty monthly fee), trying to build contacts, submitting press releases to major press release sites, etc..

These are certainly methods that could work for some small businesses – but – there are a couple options that every business should look into regardless of your current efforts:

Help A Reporter Out (link)
This free site will send you daily emails (up to 3 a day) with requests from magazines, newspapers, online publications, and more.  It is very important to keep your responses clear and concise.  Include your full details with every response and never spam or reply with cookie-cutter responses.

Comment on blogs
There is an increased number of occurrences where blog comments are used as sources in major publications such as the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, etc…

Continually build contacts
Start small with your local publications and grow your network of contacts.

Targeted advertising
There have been reports of success by simply running highly targeted ads that will be presented to reporters in your field. Ad platforms such as Facebook Advertising allow fine-tuned ad campaigns for such things.

Use your own creativity
Sometimes the best ideas come from simple creativity within your business.  Many organizations have capitalized on creative ideas that result in substantial press coverage from events, stunts, unique products/services, and more.

There are two basic groups of individuals who you will have contact over the course of your marketing efforts: buyers and non-buyers.

Buyers have already made a decision to purchase, they just may not be sure exactly what they want to buy. They tend to be looking for the vendor that can most fully and readily justify that decision.

Non-buyers are psychologically very different because they have not yet made that decision. So even though they are offering you the opportunity to coax them through the decision-making process, your efforts are much less likely to be rewarded and the tactics required are very different.

The focus of this article is right where the focus of your own marketing efforts should be: on the buyers.

You see, a lot of businesspeople run into problems by failing to distinguish between members of these two very different groups. Whether you’re marketing by email, direct mail, over the web, through television and radio advertisements, or face to face, the surest way to make sales is always to appeal to the buyers. You may be able to convince a non-buyer to make a purchasing decision, but that will tend to be a hard-won sale. A buyer has already made that decision. They basically just need a safe place to deposit their money. Actually, what they need is a sense of security.

Take a moment to remember the last time you had made a decision that you had a need. You went out looking for a solution, and what did you do? If you are anything like me, you started greedily devouring all the information you could find about the possible solutions to your need. You went out and made yourself an expert.

And what did you end up buying? Probably the product you had the most information about. The one that offered to fulfill aspects of your need that you hadn’t even thought about. The authority product.

Many people make the mistake of keeping their email marketing messages, web pages, and other materials nice and brief in order to appeal to the widest possible audience. They justify this to themselves by imagining that a snappy, bullet-list approach will instantly embed itself into the subconscious minds of passers-by, spurring them to suddenly take the dramatic action of biting into whatever hook you’ve tossed out for them.

In reality, this approach does nothing for the people who matter most: the buyers. These folks come to you with money burning holes in their pockets, and all they want is for you to make them an expert on why your product is so wonderful. If you can sufficiently educate them on the benefits of your product and the needs of the market it serves, they will feel grateful to you for accepting their money.

You’re much more likely to buy a product or a service that you hear about from a trusted source such as a friend.  Your friend has no reason to lie. When a product or service is offered to a customer it’s only natural for someone to consider the source before taking the plunge. The more positive experiences that a customer hears from their peers the more likely they are going to be swayed toward a similar course of action.  Face it.  There’s no sales pitch that’s so great that it hasn’t been heard before in some form or another.  After all we live in the information age. People are inundated by messages coming from every direction.  Audiences have gotten a lot smarter and a whole lot less trusting of messages that come directly from the marketer. Word of Mouth Marketing is an umbrella term for a number of marketing approaches such as buzz, viral marketing, influencer marketing, blogging, loyalty programs, and leveraging social media.  They all rely on word of mouth to some extent and they take advantage of existing networks to facilitate exponential growth.

Networks begin when people form connections with others.  The strength of a network is based on both the reputation of the members in the network and the sphere of their influence.  For word of mouth marketing to work in an organization’s favor they must earn respect through instituting transparent policies that eschew anything that can be perceived as deceptive or manipulative.  Word of mouth can work both ways.  It can be positive or negative.  Transparency is important because it establishes trust by showing your customers that you have nothing to hide.  If you are perceived as being deceptive or manipulative then you will not be brought into any network with any considerable amount of influence because the mere inclusion of you lessens the value of that network.  Permission based Email Marketing is an ideal way of generating good word of mouth because you begin with a network in the form of a list of opted-in subscribers. The key words here are permission based.  They are already receptive to your message or else they would not have opted in to your list.

Word of mouth marketing in emails often relies on viral components such as forward to a friend links at the end of a message.  While viral marketing may sound scary its actually a good thing.  In marketing its any strategy that encourages people to pass along a marketing message to others in their network.  The term viral is unfortunate because people often associate that word with computer viruses.  Computer viruses are bad.  Viral Marketing is good. A message goes viral when it creates exponential potential for exposure by taking advantage of your subscriber’s existing networks. Like a virus… For a message to go viral however it is not enough to simply add a forward to a friend link to the bottom of the message.  The message must be worthy of being forwarded.   Think about subjects or material to use in your mailings that are likely to get people to want to forward your material to their friends.  Also think about what is likely to get people to talk.  The great thing about forward to a friend is that it is trackable.   You could include a forward to a friend link through your email marketing software and then use A/B split testing to test multiple campaigns to see which one generates more word of mouth.

Keeping risk factors low is essential for positive word of mouth.  This includes offering incentives such as discounts.  For example you could send out a mailing that includes a discount for your subscriber and for the person that they forwarded your mailing to.  Just be sure to cap off any incentives that you offer to prevent a customer service nightmare.  Avoid rewarding people based on how many people your subscriber forwarded your mailing to.  Such practices lend themselves to abusive handling of your mailing.  It also gives your message the unsavory perception of being spam.  You can avoid this by capping off discounts at a fixed rate such as 15% off for all parties involved.  Another incentive is offering something that is free and therefore poses no risk to potential customers.   Free 30 day trials or free versions of software that contain links to your product are both examples of things you can do to generate word of mouth.  As are the policies that you use.  A positive customer service experience is essential for positive word of mouth. A 60 day money back guarantee gives you good word of mouth because it lets people know that you are willing to let them try your product risk free.

What you need to do to generate positive word of mouth extends well beyond email marketing. You should make it easy for your customers to contact you by providing a phone number, address of a physical location, support area, and possibly even live chat.  How easy it is to contact you is something that people will talk about.  You should also offer ways for your customer to leave you feedback in public and private.  People listen to what their peers have to say.  Allowing people to leave comments on blog posts, documentation, and forums can give you a vehicle for generating word of mouth.  Ultimately, however, it comes down to how well you match appearance with reality.  Its one thing to have good policies but its another to follow through on them.  You will ultimately be judged on how responsive you are in handling the good policies that you put in place.

It’s not reasonable to expect that you will profit off of all or even most of your subscribers.   What you can expect is that a few of your subscribers will pick up for the majority of your list members.  We call them your best customers and you must value them as a precious commodity if you expect to make a living or turn a profit out of your line of work.  When you begin to lose any of your best customers you will know it because it will impact your bottom line.  The majority of your customers are good customers and this is equally true of your subscriber list.  However, you’re never going to be profitable relying on good customers alone.  You can expect to be marginally profitable off of good customers at best.  A hard truth you will have to live with in whatever you do is you will have bad customers no matter how right you run things.  If you have spent any considerable amount of time doing customer service the notion of a bad customer does not sit right.  But there have been times where you approach a situation using logic and reason.  You provide answers or explanations that are helpful or point in the right direction.  You spend considerable time and energy focusing your attention on a person and their concerns.  You give everything you have and no matter what you do you know it won’t matter.  That’s what’s meant by bad customer.

If you are running things the right way this number should only come down to a handful.   Still it only takes a few bad customer to demoralize your employees with excessive complaints or demands. If they are not dealt with properly they can hurt your business with negative word of mouth.  Also, they can be a drain on your resources and not allow you to focus on your best customers who you depend on to remain profitable. As someone looking to protect your bottom line,  especially in tough economic times,  you must always be on the look out for ways of turning good customers into best customers. At the same time you need to be cognizant of handling bad customers and looking for ways to turn these customers into good customers.

The 80/20 Rule

The 80/20 rule is often referred to as the Pareto principle after the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto.   He described the unequal distribution of wealth in his country as coming down to 20% of the people owning 80% of the wealth. Since then the 80/20 rule has been used as an organizing principle for understanding everything from time management, to running a business, engaging content in emails,  SEO, and of course managing your subscriber list.  This number is not set in stone but it can be used as a guiding principle for segmenting your list.

The exact breakdown of your numbers is going to be specific to your list and business.  What you are going to want to do is to find out which portion of your list accounts for most of your profits.  This is usually anywhere from 10% to 20%.  Find out which part of your list is marginally profitable or breaks even.  Should be between 60% or even as high as 70%.  Next identify which portion of your list you lose profits from.  This is the bottom end of your list which can be anywhere from 10% to 20%.   Now you’re going to want to find ways of moving some of those marginally profitable subscribers up your list so that they are more profitable and therefore best customers.  That way even if you lose a best customer your bottom line is not effected.  You are also going to need to decide what to do with the 10% or 20% that you’re losing profits from.  You’re going to want to find out if there is anything you can do to at least break even with them.

There are advocates for firing a bad customer and sending them off to a competitor.   How you deal with these customers depends on your business.   However, information spreads quicker than ever before.   How you conduct your business in circumstances that are difficult is noticed.  If you take the high road even in a circumstance where you know you are going to lose no matter what you may be surprised to find out you can gain the respect of even a bad customer.  Tell them you are sorry that things did not work out and that you wish them the best in their future endeavors.  Think of it as a breakup in any relationship.  Do not give them any reason to say anything bad about you.  Never burn any bridges.  Just like in relationship you never know but this person can come back in your life in a positive way.  Word of mouth spreads quickly. If nothing else the bad customer might be impressed with the way you conducted yourself and give you good word of mouth by telling people about that.

RFM Analysis

Although we never formally referred to it as RFM (Recency, Frequency, Monetary Value) we discussed this when we talked about targeting your best customers.   Doing a RFM Analysis is a great way to find out where your subscribers fall in line with the 80/20 principle.   It will also allow you to create a marketing strategy that is based on what kind of customers your subscribers are.   You can increase profitability by treating subscribers that make infrequent big item purchases differently from subscribers that make frequent small item purchases. Recency refers to how recently a customer made a purchase from you.   Frequency is how often they made purchases from you.  Monetary Value is how much a customer spends.  RFM Analysis gives you a way of quantifying your best customers based on their past purchasing behavior.

Lets show you how RFM Analysis works by opening up our own online music store.  We’ll assume that you worked out a licensing agreement with all the major record labels and each song costs only 99 cents and albums cost $9.99.  Because buying an individual song is only 99 cents we’ll count it as nothing until you get to 10 songs which is near the equivalent of an album.  We’ll use a 3 point system for the sake of simplicity.   3 points for customers that make the most recent purchase, 2 points for those that fall in the middle, 1 for those that have not made a recent purchase, etc.

Recency Score

1. Purchased at least 10 songs or an entire album more than a year ago.
2. Have not purchased within the quarter (3 months) but have within the last year.
3. Purchased within the quarter.

Frequency Score

1. Purchased 10 songs at 99 cents or an entire album with the last year.
2. Purchased at least 100 songes or 10 albums within the last year.
3. Purchased more than 10 albums within the last year.

Monetary Value

1. Average purchase amount is at least 10 songs an album at $9.90-$9.99
2. Average purchase amount is between 20 songs or a couple of albums at $19.80 – $19.98
3. Average purchase amount is greater than $19.80-$19.98.

Anyone scoring a 3 falls within the top 20% in regard to Recency, Frequency, Monetary Value.  Those that score of 2 are within the middle 60% while anyone scoring a 1 falls at the bottom 20%.  Anyone that scored a 3 on all categories is a best customer.  Those scoring a combination of numbers either fall in the middle 60% or the bottom 20%.  Pay attention to those scoring any variation of 3s and 2s as they are your low hanging fruit.  You should implement a marketing strategy that offers these customers an incentive for moving up to best customer.  RFM analysis is useful for identifying who your best customers are and for giving you an idea of what you need to do to turn good customers into best customers and bad customers into good customers.

In order to control the future you must control the past.  While you cannot rewrite the past in order to take over the future you can use it to predict it.  The past allows you to learn more about your subscribers so that you can then target your email marketing approach toward them.  When it comes to understanding your customers there is no better predictor of future behavior than the past.   Purchasing behavior is a response to an object of interest.  If behavior is recent then its more likely to happen again.  Perhaps that object of interest is a song you recently heard when you were around an acquaintance.  You really like the song when it’s played but you do not know who its from.  You spend the entire next day trying to remember who the song was from.  You would purchase if you only knew.  You completely forget about the experience the next day.   As an object loses its recency interest fades over time.

However,  if a positive impression is initially formed it can lead to purchasing behavior later.   This is why its important to work on forming good impressions with everyone you meet.  You had a positive impression of your acquaintance because they had something to offer you in the form of good music.  This did not translate in a purchasing decision the first time around but let’s see what happens when you run into the same acquaintance again.  By the time you run into them you are no longer interested in finding out who played the song you liked.  You do however trust their opinion so you can say they have established credibility.  When you are around them this time you hear a different song that you are impressed with.   This time you get your acquaintance’s number in case you forget the name of the song when you go out to purchase it tomorrow.   You become friends with your acquaintance and the more time you spend with them the more likely you are to go out and purchase music.  Interest peaks when exposure is recent.  Your subscribers are more likely to purchase from you in the period immediately following a mailing.   The longer they do not respond to a mailing the less likely they are going to.  You have a window of interest but after that they will forget about you completely.  One way of measuring purchasing behavior is by measuring when the purchase was made.  Before you met this person you were not exposed to music so recency was low.   Now that you are friends recency has increased.

The frequency with which an action occurs in the past can be used to measure interest.  You are now purchasing more and more music with greater frequency as a result of your friend.  The frequency of your product purchases is directly proportional to the amount of time you spend with your friend.  One other way of thinking about frequency is how it relates to exposure.  Have you ever played a song that you really liked over and over again until you got sick of it?  If you’re frequently exposed to a song then it sticks in your head and this is a good thing or a bad thing depending on what you think of the song.   The fact that you’re voluntarily playing the song over and over again means you are interested in it.

Notice what is happening here.  When your friend was merely an acquaintance they did not force their music taste on you.  They gave you a good experience by exposing you to what they considered good music.  They established trust with you.  When you later ran into them they were able to repeat the positive experience.  Credibility began forming and this led to a purchase decision. As your relationship progressed your acquaintance became a friend.  You begin basing your purchasing decisions on their judgment.   You do this because they demonstrated reliability.  Which led to an increase in frequency of purchases.

A good newsletter does the same thing.   It exposes subscribers to something that’s worth having.  The newsletters you send should be of interest to your subscribers.   If you are able to demonstrate how your newsletter is of interest you will establish trust.  From there you establish credibility by repeating the positive experience without being too aggressive.   Your subscriber is an acquaintance that is just getting to know you.  When you are able to demonstrate reliability to your subscriber they will begin relying on your judgment when forming the basis of their decisions.

Now an emerging need for treating different customers differently is apparent.  You’re not treating some customers better than others.  You are treating them like people and using their past behavior to govern your future behavior toward them.  Which of your customers recently purchased from you?   How many times did they do it.  How much did they spend on individual purchases?   You are asking yourself questions in order to learn which of your subscribers are your best customers so that you can target your marketing approach to them.   In the process you are attempting to turn acquaintances into friends by showing respect for the relationship.  A healthy relationship grows because it is mutually beneficial to both parties.

Now let’s consider monetary value and what it means to be a best customer.  Some of my favorite albums of all time have been concept albums such as Wilco’s A Ghost Is Born, The Decemberists’ The Crane Wife, Radiohead’s OK Computer, and Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon.  The beauty of a concept album is that you are not listening to it just for one song.  You have to purchase the entire album to appreciate the concept!  Every song is made fuller and richer by the songs that surround them.  They also have a powerful emotional component. Perhaps you’ve heard a song that you really like that led you to purchase an entire album.  Once you purchased the album that led you to purchase other albums from the band until you owned their entire music catalog. You then tried to turn your friends into fans of the music so that you wouldn’t have to enjoy it alone.  If you have then you would be that band’s best customer.  You would be one of the true fans that the band relies on to make a living.  Once you have a best customer you can market to them differently because they have demonstrated through their purchasing behavior that the relationship demands it.

You would market to a best customer for a band such as Pink Floyd differently than you would for a weaker customer.  A best customer may be interested in owning all of their albums in CD quality,  having all the original vinyl copies as well as digitally remastered CDs, box sets, concert recordings, T-shirts and posters, DVD footage of live concerts as well as documentaries, Nick Mason’s Personal History of Pink Floyd, and solo albums from the band members. Marketing all of these products would be of great interest to a devoted fan of Pink Floyd but would be of lesser interest to a fan who simply wants to have MP3 albums of their most seminal work.  Here you could use a newsletter to turn a casual fan into a best customer by giving them insider information on the band in order to strengthen the relationship that fan feels toward the band.  Meanwhile,  you could keep the devoted happy by offering them exclusive opportunities for material that would only be of interest to the band’s most ardent supporters.  One purpose for the newsletter would be to track live performances from surviving band members.   A best customer would not let money be an obstacle for going to see a live performances from David Gilmour or Roger Waters.  You could offer these subscribers the first chance to purchase the best seats available.  At the same time you could keep all your subscribers happy by offering all of them an opportunity to win free tickets.  The best part of having a best customer is the word of mouth advertising they provide.  A Floyd head will try to turn their friends into fans as well.   Perhaps some of these friends may later turn into best customers.

The marketing approach of your newsletter should address the needs of all your subscribers separately.   You are going to earn most of your revenue from your best customers.  So your challenge is to turn good customers into best customers and weak customers into good customers.

Persuasive writing begins with being able to communicate with your reader in a language they can understand.  This does not mean that you need to dumb down your language or show off how much you know.  Both can be equally frustrating if the person that you are talking to does not understand what you are trying to say.   Write in a language that sounds natural and unaffected.  Be clear and concise when presenting your subject.  Make your points using concrete details that your audience can relate to. If you follow this simple advice, you’ll see much better results from your web, print, and email copywriting.

Some of the best teachers that I ever had were able to take abstract ideas and put them in a language that everyone could understand.  They were masters of keeping their audience engaged by finding ways of making their subject relevant in order to reach as many people as possible.  They could do this because their mastery of the material allowed them to present it in any way they needed to in order to reach their audience.   If you asked them a question and they spoke to you individually you knew that they knew their stuff because they could explain it in a way that you could understand.

I found one such teacher when I took Calculus in college.  I actually found Calculus to be one of the most enjoyable classes I took and it was not because I was a math person.  Every subject uses its own particular vocabulary and can seem complicated unless you are able to keep up.  This is especially true when you use that same vocabulary to build upon further concepts.  My calculus teacher had us solve equations based on word problems that had to do with episodes of the X-Files, a popular TV show at the time.   This made class more interesting and I began understanding new concepts effortlessly because equations involved diabolical schemes from the Smoking Man.

In order to write persuasively you must first master the material you are presenting and be able to explain it in as many ways as possible. That way you can reach as many people in your audience as possible.  Like a good teacher you must master the art of communication.   If given the opportunity you should be confident enough to present your material to every individual member of your audience in a way that each and every one of them is able to get.  When you are able to do this you establish your credibility.

You must empathize with the person you are writing for.   Empathy allows you to see things from another person’s point of view because you are able to feel what they feel.  In order to effectively persuade you must be able to view things the way the people you are communicating with view them. You are going to need to make a practice of empathy in your daily lives as this is the only way of truly understanding the different ways in which diverse sets of people think and feel.  In order to master persuasion you must learn to feel what other people feel when you attempt to communicate with them.

When you empathize with your audience you are not just connecting with them but they are also connecting with you.  Empathy bridges divides.  In order to speak in a language that another person understands we must know what it feels like to think and feel the way they do. When you do this they are more receptive to the way you think and feel.   If you empathize with others they are more likely to empathize with you.  This makes them more persuadable because they are more willing to place themselves in your shoes in order to understand how you think and feel.

If you can then follow this with reasoned arguments then they will consider your reasons and place themselves in your worldview.  Some people may be initially surprised or confused by your empathy at first.  They may initially mistrust your attempts to empathize with them and think you are simply trying to be manipulative.  However,  once you establish that you feel the way they feel through sustained effort in your communication with them then this quickly leads to trust.  In order to master persuasion you must be able to establish trust with your audience.

For some it will be harder to come around toward your worldview than others.   You are going to want to pay special attention to people that do not see the world the way you do.   Remember,  a good teacher is able to take questions from anyone in the room and present learning in a way that everyone understands.  They have a mastery of their material and this allows them to present it in more than one way.

You will have people that understand what you are saying when you say it.   They are attune to your way of thinking so your arguments make sense to them and they sound persuasive.   In order to do your job effectively you need to especially consider arguments from people who are not attune with your way of thinking and who are the least persuasive.  Their objections will make your writing more persuasive. Persuasive writing is able to answer questions from anyone no matter what point of view and present arguments in a way that everyone can understand.   Everyone you attempt to communicate with may not agree with you but they will consider what you have to say.

Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of Marketing 101 is familiar with the 4 P’s of Mixed Marketing.  Marketing decisions being made using a recipe was posited by James Culliton in 1948.  ‘Marketing-Mix’ was coined by Neil Borton in 1953.  Move ahead to 1960 where E Jerome McCarthy first proposes the 4 P classification system and it later finds its current mainstream acceptance in Philip Kotler’s Principles of Marketing in 1967.

Considered the traditional elements of marketing the 4 Ps are:

• Product -  Goods or services.
• Price-  What the customer pays for your product.
• Placement – The distribution channel for the product
• Promotion -  All Communications such as advertising with the customer

Collectively these ingredients represent a company centric worldview where the company establishes the terms upon which the client is acted on.   This was establishment thinking at a time when products were mass produced, prices set on profitability,  distribution limited to one way channels, and clients targeted by one way promotions.   Promoting products required having mass appeal and often grabbed people’s attention in ways that were disruptive.  People were interrupted from programs on television with commercials. They listened to commercials on the radio because that was the only place to go for new music.

Its been estimated that there are 162 million web sites and 1.4 billion users on the web and this has fundamentally shifted the marketplace.  Along with the changing times have come changing attitudes.  Mixing ingredients and spoon feeding your clients with whatever you are selling is no longer a realistic approach to marketing. People receive information at a dizzying pace these days.  Technology has allowed the spread of ideas to flow to audiences faster than can be assimilated.  People have competing messages coming from all directions whether they come from blogs, user reviews, commenting, and forums.   They also have more options for tuning you out.  DVR,  On Demand, Podcasts, YouTube, and downloads are ways for people to tune in to what they want when they want it.

In order to compete with all these options marketers must win over the hearts and minds of their clients.  A client oriented culture is necessary in order to reach today’s audiences.  A new model of marketing that focuses on interactivity, building relationships, and keeping clients actively engaged is emerging as marketing’s new forward thinking. This new thinking acknowledges that audiences are more resistant to marketing speak and tend to be less impressionable to traditional forms of advertising.   In order to keep audience’s interest marketers must respond with more interactive forms of communication.

Newspapers are currently facing a yearly profit loss with a decline in circulation and an accompanying decline in dollars from advertising.  The Chicago Tribune recently declared bankruptcy and the economic picture for the New York Times is looking bleak.  Its been reported that they have a $400 million debt payment due in five months and a negative current net worth.

Yet it isn’t as if people have suddenly quit following the news.  Thanks to YouTube,  rssfeeds, and the popularity of blogs people have more options when it comes to where they want to get their news from.   Traditional media has been forced to adapt as a result.  Their focus has shifted toward giving people what they want and when they want it.  Streaming video, slide shows, rssfeeds, forums, and blogs are now standards on mainstream news sites.   This approach has lessened the bleeding.    Even as their newspapers continue to decrease in circulation The New York Times has emerged as one of the top ranked web sites.   The online domain nytimes.com attracts 180 million site visitors annually. The challenge now for newspapers is in inventing a model around this that can draw in more revenue.  Revenues from online advertising has given newspapers some hope but this still hasn’t been able to replace the profits they lost from print advertising.

Marketing is currently an evolving field in which the old rules no longer apply and fresh thinking is currently in demand.  Moving forward requires getting people’s attention by giving them what they want and when they want it.

Using text links in an advertisement or review you’ve written about an ActiveCampaign product will generate higher click thru rates then just a text link with no information. We encourage our affiliate members to invest some time in learning about our products, become an authority on what you are selling, because the best way to impress your audience is to provide them with information that is useful to them.

Although this may seem tedious at first, especially if your field of interest is not technically oriented, your work will be rewarded with higher click thru rates and thus a higher commission. Remember, by placing a text link for a product on your site, receiving a sales based commission, your role is generating sales traffic that leads to product purchases. The best sales people are willing to work to become knowledgeable about the product they are trying to sell. Anyone in sales knows that an informed argument is the best way to convince your audience. Make it worth their while to click on your text link by telling them something about the product that would be of interest to them. This is not much different than email copywriting, so basic information about how to write subject lines and writing a call to action will be helpful to you.

We provide text links for each of our products, that can be easily implemented on any page layout, are bandwidth friendly, and ideally suited for creating your own review or advertisement. The first step to writing an effective review or advertisement, one that generates high click through rates, is to become an authority on your subject. We make it easy for anyone to become informed about our products by extensively detailing our product features on the company site. If you decide to use a text link in a review or an ad of an ActiveCampaign product, you will find these resources extremely helpful. We make it easy to become knowledgeable about all of our products by readily providing you with extensive documentation including: knowledgebase articles, feature tours, demos, screenshots, and benefit pages. Furthermore, we have product specialist on staff to offer you further levels of assistance.

Show that you are informed about the subject you are writing about but personalize it as well. A personalized review or advertisement will generate higher click thru rates. Make your review speak to your audience by using language that speaks to them. When discussing technical information, it is important to make your presentation as personable as possible. Effective communication uses language that speaks directly to its audience.

Sign up for our affiliate program!