Client Magnets Official Blog

Archive for the ‘Affiliate’ Category

Good marketers know they need to stay fresh in people’s minds to be ideally positioned for that sale, or to form a good business partnership with a new affiliate. People try a variety of ways to stay in people’s thoughts, both physically and on the Web. You may do article marketing, newsletters, email blasts, and media marketing to keep your Web presence fresh. Alternately, you may send postcards, letters, holiday cards, or even birthday cards to build relationships and stay connected with people physically. Most of these methods are getting old and tired, but forming good relationships enables you to connect with people in creative new ways.

Be Creative with Your Connections
Do you send out holiday cards every year to your prospects? So do most businesses. You don’t stay fresh in people’s minds by doing the same thing that everyone else does. Find new ways to be creative with your connections, and catch your clients’ minds in a unique way. By forming good relationships with people, you’ll have a fresh pool of creative ideas to draw upon to keep your relationships dynamic and unique.

Consider this example: Carrie Wilkerson spoke with my Mastermind Group and talked about how she uses social media to build relationships. Carrie mentioned that one of her contacts talks on Twitter every day about how he walks his dog in the morning. He mentions the dog by name, and even the type of dog. When Carrie wanted to make a connection with this man, she didn’t just send him a note or a card; she sent a dog toy for his dog. She mentioned his dog by name, and found a toy that the dog would appreciate, based on the information that this man shared about his dog.

This showed the man that Carrie listened, and was interested in him as a person – not just him as a business contact. This is a fantastic strategy for solidifying relationships, and as a way to stay connected with people that will actually stay fresh in their thoughts. That man probably won’t remember everyone who sent him a card, but he’ll definitely remember the woman who sent his dog a toy.

Use Your Relationships to form Unique Connections
Your relationships with people provide valuable connection opportunities. By building good relationships, you set yourself up for opportunities you might not otherwise have. When you build a good relationship with someone, for example, you’re much more likely to be set up with the friend of a friend as a new business contact. People are more likely to refer business contacts that they like, than pushy sales-oriented people who don’t care about them as a person.

Use your relationships with people to form unique connections. Don’t just be the sales person, or the person with the coaching product, or that consultant. Be a friend; be the person who sent the dog a toy, or the person who’s always asking about the kids or the wife. By building these unique connections with people, you’re getting into their lives in a real and meaningful way, and you’ll be in their minds if a fantastic new business connection comes up, or if they remember that they know someone who might be a good match for your business.

Bernadette Doyle specializes in helping entrepreneurs attract a steady stream of ideal clients. If you want to get clients calling you instead of you calling them, sign up for her free weekly e-zine at http://www.clientmagnets.com

Are you under the impression that other business owners who offer something similar to what you offer are your competitors? Do you think these people won’t promote you because they see you as a competitor?

This is a common belief among many small business owners – and it’s a big mistake. Don’t view these other business owners as competitors. Consider them as potential joint venture partners.

Joint venture partnerships with businesses that complement yours are a prime source for you to find new traffic and generate quality leads.

It is so beneficial to your company to find other businesses that have lists of prospects similar to those you are targeting, and to approach them about a joint venture.

This is how the people who are in mastermind groups think. This is why they are so successful. They have this abundance mentality – meaning that they believe there is more than enough business for everybody. These mastermind types are always looking for other things to offer to their list.

They know that there is always going to be that group of hyper-responsives – the people whose desire to buy is greater than your ability to keep up with them. If you are not putting offers in front of them, they’ll take that desire to buy somewhere else. You risk losing them as customers if you don’t continue to offer them opportunities to buy from you.

That’s one of the reasons that, in addition to promoting my own offerings, I’ll often do reciprocal joint ventures with people who promote me. When I plan a teleseminar, I create a list of all the people I think could promote my call and invite them via email to participate.

At the end of the call, I always offer something for sale, and the people who helped promote the teleseminar receive a percentage of what I make from those sales. This is a model that works really well.

And the leads you will get from these sources are quality leads. One of the most important things about lead generation isn’t only the quantity, but also the quality. What percentage of those leads turn into actual customers? How much are they going to spend with you over the next 12 months? You stand a better chance of getting quality leads by reaching out to the clients of people who are doing things similar to what you are doing.

An added upside to joint ventures is that you only pay your joint venture partners when you make a sale. You don’t invest any money up front, which is especially helpful if you’re just starting out.

When you develop this mastermind way of thinking, it will give you the opportunity for the exponential growth that you may have been unable to achieve on your own.

As a small businesses owner, you may once have thought that talking to your perceived competitors was the last thing you should do. You need to change your mindset about that. Together, you can accomplish so much more than either one of you could possibly do on your own.

Bernadette Doyle is a small business marketing expert. Get more tips and advice at http://www.clientmagnets.com