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Action Plan
ACTION PLAN FOR AFFILIATE MARKETERS
By Savannah Kruse
Congratulations!
You have taken the first step, and that is the hardest one. But what should you do next?
With so much information available, it is hard to tell what is best. This guide provides a solid action plan.
It is a basic marketing plan outline. You can start any campaign from this outline and continue building on it for as long as you like. You can add new methods to it as they come along or as you are able to learn them.
For purposes of this guide, it will be assumed that you don’t yet have a web site and are just getting started in learning affiliate or internet marketing. It is also likely that you want to keep expenses for this new endeavor minimal until you have learned more, so most of the guide is based on things that can be done for free.
There are a few very important things you should do before you launch a campaign.
1. Find your niche. That is, check out the products and services your affiliate program offers and select one item or one related product line. Be sure it is a product you use and can discuss enthusiastically. This product will become the focus of your marketing campaign.
2. Look at all the ways your affiliate program offers you to earn money from them. Note which items are related to your product. These items are useful for cross-selling or for future promotions to current customers.
3. Consider the type of person who is likely to be your customer. Why would they purchase your product or service? What can you do to make your campaign stand out from others?
4. Determine your budget. Affiliate marketing can be done for virtually no expense except your time. Internet marketing is about visibility and there are many way to make your internet media score high in searches. As you learn more about marketing you can decide where your budget would be best spent.
PART II: RESEARCH A MARKETING CAMPAIGN
Marketing is about getting your product seen by people who will buy it. Learn as much as you can about your target audience. Who are they? How old are they? Are there other relevant specifics (e.g. male or female) you can determine?
What kinds of things do they do online? What kinds of web sites do they like to visit? Are there particular online activities they prefer (chatting, mini-quizzes, surveys, games)? Do some of their online activities occur more at certain times of the year? How about during just a single day?
Why are these people buying what they do? Look for the underlying emotion. Fear, pleasure, or desire for love can often be an underlying force for a purchase.
You can construct a web site that offers things of interest to your potential customers, or you can place ads on web sites that already exist that attract potential customers. For starters, focus on the sites that already exist.
Now examine possible ways you can advertise on those sites, whether by link exchange, classified ad, articles, or posts in a discussion group or forum.
PART III: RESEARCH KEYWORDS
Part of getting your marketing seen is to have it show up on the first page or two when people search on your keywords. For the most part, search engines still use page relevance and number of links to rank your pages or work in their listing.
Use a keyword tool to research the keywords people might type in to find your product. Google provides keyword tools with their AdWords site and you don’t need an active campaign to use it. Sign up is free.
The keyword tool will help you find out what keywords people are using that relate to your product. You may have better luck using keywords with lower competition even if they have lower search volume.
Use keywords in your articles where they make sense. You may find that by changing a few phrases in each article, you can obtain better results with some keywords than with others. This part of the process becomes trial and error to some extent.
By using topics relevant to your product that are useful and interesting you can get high ratings on many keywords. This is because the search engine found the content of your articles to be relevant to the keyword. It is the best method for getting targeted exposure through the search engines.
PART IV: CREATE USEFUL CONTENT
Write two articles, 300 – 600 words in length, about your focus item. For example, you could write an article about gruntbuggly shapes, and another about how red gruntbugglies attract the most attention. Use at least one keyword phrase in the title. Use one or more keywords inside the article body.
Start brainstorming on other articles you can write about your focus. Your article can be submitted to many different article directories and can also be placed in newsletters or ezines. You can re-use your article by rewriting it into smaller pieces to use as blog posts.
When you start a web site of your own you can put up all the articles you have written, so be sure to keep an archive of all of them.
It is also time to start thinking about the blog you will use to market your focus item. You will want to be able to add content to your blog on a regular basis, so the blog topic should be large enough to encompass long-term discussion. Balancing this, the topic should also be defined enough to attract the type of people who will be interested in buying your focus item.
When being used for marketing, the blog title should impart the topic and content of your blog. Use your blog to impart interesting and useful information about the topic. Keep ads and links minimal. Use posts to show readers why they want your focus item and how it will benefit them, and encourage them to click on an occasional link at the end of a post.
PART V: PREPARE FOR LAUNCH
Make sure you know the URLs of your landing pages, gateways, sales pages, blog, and any other marketing tools you are using. Obtain any ad text and graphics provided for your use by your affiliate program.
Use a search engine to find 10 different article directories where you can submit articles. Look for directories specific to your product type. If you find them, they will help you better target the audience you are trying to reach.
Now, create your blog using the title you decided on in part IV. Go to www.internetmarketersdreamsite.com if you would like a recommendation for a blog host. The site is designed to help new marketers get started in a comfortable “one step at a time” fashion.
Back to the search engine, this time to find 10 different places where you can submit classified ads. There are many free places to do this although it may take more time to search them out. Find at least 2 newsletters or ezines where you can submit an article or an ad.
Also search for forums related to your focus. Find two that you like and join them.
PART VI: LAUNCH THE CAMPAIGN
It is finally time to set all the background work you have done into motion. This is just a suggested schedule and you can start any day that you like.
It is recommended that you stick to running ads on the days of the week outlined. This schedule is based on average internet use by all people during any given week and designed to maximize these usage time frames.
EVERY DAY
1. Leave at least one and preferably two posts in your blog.
2. Visit each of the forums you joined and leave at least one post in each. Be sure to include an ad or link (as allowed by the forum rules) to your sales page in the signature of your posts.
MONDAY
Submit one of the articles you wrote to the article directories you found. Be sure to include a link to your sales page as permitted by the directory rules.
Run one ad in a newsletter or ezine.
Do every day items.
TUESDAY
Run at least 5 classified ads today.
Write one of the two articles you will need for next week.
Do every day items.
WEDNESDAY
Place 3 more classified ads.
Submit the second article you wrote to article directories. Be sure to include a link to your sales page as permitted by the directory rules.
Do every day items.
THURSDAY
Place 2 more classified ads.
Write the second of the two articles you will need for next week.
Do every day items.
FRIDAY
Run one ad in a newsletter or ezine.
Explore new places to post classified ads, new ezine and newsletter sources, and look for more article directories.
Consider the new methods and techniques you may have learned about this week. Does one seem reasonable to add to your campaign? If so, determine how you will do so, and add it to next week’s schedule.
Do every day items.
It is up to you whether you wish to work weekends or not. It is suggested you still post to your blog and visit forums at least on Saturday. Just one post each in two forums on Saturdays will generate at a minimum over 100 links to your sales page during the course of a year.
START THE WEEK ANEW!
Now just repeat the weekly schedule above. This is the most important part of the whole campaign. You MUST continue doing these things in order to build the number of links to your sales page.
By leaving just the forum posts, you will gain at least 520 links every year. Add another 100 if you are posting on Saturdays too.
Submitting 2 articles a week to 10 different directories each will generate over 1000 links per year! So just following this simple plan can generate over 1500 links a year to your sales page and these links stay in existence for as long as the forums and directory sites remain.
Additionally, if others use your posts or articles, they are obliged to keep your signature and link intact when they post it elsewhere. In this fashion, your writing can work for you 24 hours a day every day, and you can end up with hundreds more links to your sales page.
Be sure to contact your affiliate sponsor if you have one for more tips or to ask specific questions about your affiliate program.
Please contact me at SFI@internetmarketersdreamsite.com if you have any questions or comments.
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