Sunday, October 12, 2008

Using Audio for Affiliate Training

If you currently have an affiliate program in place, you understand the benefits of having a huge sales force that you only have to pay on performance. Likewise, you understand that, as one person, you can only sell x number of products, but with an affiliate program you have the potential to greatly increase your sales.

Of course, not everyone that signs up as an affiliate will bring you sales. In fact, the majority of your affiliates may not sell anything at all. You can increase the odds of their success by providing training on your products as well as training on affiliate marketing.

Using audio for your affiliate training is a great way to reach your affiliates. You may have created some very helpful affiliate training guides in the past, but many people do not have time to read them. As you know, different people have different learning styles, and those that do take the time to read your training guides may not absorb much of the information through reading. Creating an audio training will solve both of these problems.

The more knowledge your affiliates have about your product, the more they will want to market it. In a perfect world, all of your affiliates will be former customers who bought your product and loved it so much they wanted to become your affiliate and tell others about it. Of course, we do not live in a perfect world and many of your affiliates may have little to no experience with your product.

To combat this problem, you could set up a training where you explained the features and benefits of your product, compared your product with the competition and even gave a special discount offer at the end of the recording for those that listened to the entire recording and wanted to purchase your product.

Many of the people who have signed on as your affiliates may have no prior marketing experience. They may need help with generating traffic, creating ads, or writing effective copy. By offering a generalized training with some affiliate marketing tips can greatly increase your affiliates’ motivation and effectiveness.

In addition to the above reasons, audio is also a great time saver. Your can record the audio in a short amount of time and upload the files to your affiliate management center. You can use these same training audios for years to come.

Offering an audio training also helps increase the communication between you are your affiliate team. Your affiliates will feel that you really care about your product and their success. This will help you build loyalty and trust with your affiliates. When given the choice of promoting your product and your competitors’, they will choose to promote your product. The more you invest in to the relationship between you and your affiliates, the more profits you can expect to gain.

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Benefits of Friendly Competition

If you thrive on challenges and hate to be outdone, you may want to find some “friendly competition.” By nature, “friendly competition” is not meant to hurt anyone’s feelings. It is there to create motivation and to help people reach goals.

There are a number of message boards and forums that are focused on business; you can create a post that explains your goals for the next month and ask other members to reply back with their goals. All of you can keep adding updates each week on what you have accomplished.

You may choose to put together a more formal, tight-knit group of a few selected people that correspond via a yahoo group or private chat room. You can update each other daily, if you wish. You can even take this a step further and meet weekly on a conference call; as it may be easier to discuss problems and brainstorm with each other via telephone.

If you find yourself connecting with one person more so than with the others, ask that person to be your accountability partner. You can even give each other a quick call every morning to pump each other up, or at the end of the day to talk about what you had accomplished and what you plan on doing the next day.

Aside from going over each person’s individual goals, you can also create monthly “contests.” For instance, if you are in direct sales, you can meet with other people in the industry and have a contest over who can book the most parties, sell the highest dollar amount, or recruit the most people.

If you are an internet marketer, your group can have contests such as who can write and distribute the most articles or press releases. If you create information products, your group can hold a contest over who can develop the most new products in a given month. The possibilities are endless when it comes to creating motivating contests.

The simple fact that you are letting people know your goals, and meeting at designated times to cover your progress, can be very motivating. No one wants to admit that they haven’t done anything and that they are not even close to accomplishing their goals. This is especially true if the other people in the group have worked really hard and have accomplished several things.

Knowing that other people are going to hold you accountable for your actions and “kick you in the butt” if you need it, can drive you to work hard and accomplish your goals. However, friendly competition can take a downturn if the competition turns vicious or mean. If you are working at your best level, and attending your meetings makes you feel bad or “not good enough,” that group may not be the one for you. Look for a supportive, fun spirited group that inspires you.

Saturday, October 4, 2008

Be Unique…Be You

The way that you see your business has a huge impact on what your business becomes. If you view your business as fun, easy-going, and laid back, your business will be those things. If you envision your business as serious or tedious, it will take on that form. Your attitude about your business will show through to others.

There are no set rules about your business. You should feel free to have fun and do things the way you want to. Feel free to be unique and set your own goals. You may read a book or hear a story about the ways another person manages their business, and their way may work great for them. However, the way they do business may not work for you at all.

It is important to set your own business goals and follow your own management style. If your business becomes a chore, you may not want to do it anymore. You may start to procrastinate when it comes to completing your work and eventually stop working your business completely.

To keep things fun, try to stay positive about each aspect of your business; if there is a particular task that you don’t like, hire an assistant to do that task for you. When you are able to concentrate on the things you like doing most, you will feel energized and you will want to take those things head on.

You have surely heard the old saying “rules are meant to be broken”. When it comes to your business, take that saying to heart. If someone doesn’t like the design of your website or the way you write your content, so be it. You can’t please everyone, and that person may not have anything to do with your target market at all.

If you feel that what you are doing is right, keep on that path. Sometimes you have to walk down a long, bumpy road, but the rewards are worth it. If you were given a choice to have immediate success at a business you hated or to have success in two years with a business you loved, would you keep working those two years to have happiness and success?

Unfortunately, no one can tell you the date or time when your success will begin. But if you keep working and keep putting in consistent effort, you will find your success. Best of all, it will be on your terms.