Online Marketing Guru asked:


There’s a lot of money in affiliate marketing. This is true, however, only to those are seriously and zealously working on his affiliate program. Success in affiliate marketing varies in every individual affiliate and for the most part, it depends on his will and perseverance. No matter how good an affiliate program is, it will not prosper if the affiliate marketer does not pay the price of hard work. One must exert extra effort especially on the aspect of promotion. Nothing will happen if the links or banners would just lie idle in a web page, an affiliate must be able to convince the visitor to click it and proceed to the business site to buy the products. No click-throughs means no income for an affiliate marketer.

You can actually generate a full-time income by means of affiliate marketing and you can do it at home, and yes, even while you sleep. You must have a good web site to begin with. It must have good promotional and informative contents, pleasing design, inviting banner ads and all other important elements in an affiliate marketer’s web site. It would be great if you have exhausted other means of advertising such as newsletters, email marketing, message boards and ad listings such as Google AdWords. You just have to go online once in a while to check your site and update it and to watch over the development of your marketing program. Does this sound so easy?

It can be this easy if you have planned your affiliate program well and have taken all the steps towards success carefully and diligently. Now, there’s a tool you can use to help you go through the program with ease and confidence, the Ad Tracker. For many experienced and successful affiliate marketers, the Ad Tracker is a key to a successful affiliate marketing program.

What precisely is an ad tracker? It is a marketing tracking software or program that allows you to trace and take note of every click-through made by visitors of your site and by other customers who got your referral link. There are ad tracking service providers as well, so you will just have to pay them to do the tracking for you. With the ad tracker, you can keep an eye on the progress of your marketing campaigns even offline. This tool or program is especially helpful if you are engaged in several affiliate and pay-per-click programs and have placed ads in emails, pop-ups and pop-unders, message boards, auto responders, Ezines, forums, several web sites, surveys and various ad service providers.

Of course, you don’t want all your efforts to be put to waste so you want to make sure you are getting paid for your hard work. Likewise, you want to make sure every dollar or cent you disburse in your advertising campaigns is wisely spent. With the help of the ad tracker, you will know accurately how many and which of your links where clicked on, how many clicked on your links, how many of your emails were opened and how many of those who opened your email clicked through the business site and purchased a product, how many products were purchased, which of your banner ads or links brought the most leads and sales and many other pertinent facts and figures you need.

Sales records and all data stated are necessary in any business as this could determine if your affiliate program is still worth continuing. This would also help you determine which of your marketing strategies is most effective and which is most beneficial for each product or service you are promoting.

Every decision and plan you make must be well grounded on facts. That decision or plan of action may not be the best, but it is something not to regret about when you had valid reasons for coming up with such decision or plan. You cannot just decide to terminate your affiliate program, just because you don’t earn big in an instant.

If you are serious with affiliate marketing, again and again, keep in mind that your success lies mainly on promotion and your hard work. If you don’t seem lucky enough to convince many of your site users to buy the products, don’t be disheartened and jump into a conclusion that your affiliate program is a failure. If it works for others, it could work for you, too. Know whether your advertising techniques are effective or not, which works best for your program and which doesn’t. Get an ad tracker to help you know all these and you’d surely be on the right track towards success!

Felix Burke asked:

Traditional marketing methods are still a viable resource to engage customers, and you can use them to drive buyers to your online products as well!

Traditional marketing includes newspapers, magazines, catalogues, fliers, direct mail, business cards, radio and TV ads, and specialty products, such as pens with your logo. These communications have been successful since the printing press, and now they can enhance your online marketing. Here’s how.

Think of each of the traditional communications as your pre-sell for your online presence. Imagine that you have a vitamin product, particularly helpful for eye health. Place an ad, perhaps in a health magazine, that extols the benefits of the product and sends the buyers to your pitch page online for testimonials and to purchase. You have just used traditional marketing-the magazine–to direct buyers to an online purchase.

Here’s another great example. Imagine you are a CPA in business for yourself, and you’ve recently joined the Chamber Of Commerce. Attending one of their “Business After Hours” functions, you give out several of your business cards, and point out that more information about your services is available at your website. When a prospect visits your website, all your accreditations, education, awards, community service, family profile, and available services are front and center. Your site is easily navigable, and with each click, you are building credibility with the visitor. Although your product is your service, and that is done in person, traditional marketing-your business card–drives people to your website to pre-sell them, and predispose them to select you for a CPA.

Here’s yet one more example, to get your marketing juices flowing. Imagine you run a small local bakery which specializes in ten different kinds of pralines, shipped all over the U.S. Twelve weeks before the Thanksgiving holiday, your brochures are sent to a large mailing list of former and prospective customers. Your brochure is beautifully appetizing, but it can’t hope to cover all the pertinent information for shipped orders, so customers are directed online. At your website, every kind of praline is pictured, and testimonials abound by satisfied customers from Maine to Oregon. You don’t take phone orders anymore, as every available worker is packing pralines, so all orders are done via the website. And how did your customers find you? Traditional marketing in the form of your brochure brought them to you.

Don’t abandon offline marketing in your online efforts, for you may well find that the sum of the two is mathematically even more profitable than either one alone!

Scott Lindsay asked:

The popularity of the Internet changed the face of advertising forever, but it did not completely replace the more traditional, offline advertising strategies. Though these may not be of use to all types of work at home business it can prove to be a cost-effective way to gain new business in a regionally intense business.

Primarily, offline advertising would be best suited, but not limited to, businesses that offer a local service. This would include such businesses as an at home day care or computer servicing business. For both examples the customers you would be aiming to attract would be local or regional in scope. Parents may even choose a day care by the services that are closest to them to minimize travel time for young children, or choose a day care that is conveniently located on their way to work.

One of the methods people may be familiar with would be a classified ad in your local newspaper. There is usually a fee associated with this service so you will want to monitor how many customers it brings over a period of time. It would not be wise to cease using this form of advertising if they do not bring customers immediately, but you also would not want to continue them indefinitely if they fail to bring in a single customer.

Similar advertising space is sometimes available in the front of shop windows. Again for a fee you are able to post an advert for a purchased period of time. Your business phone book entry can also be upgraded for a fee to something more visible to information consumers.

Business cards are an inexpensive way to advertise. They can be handed out to people you meet as you go about other tasks. Similar results may be achieved by posting flyers in prominent places, where it is legal to do so. Many churches and community centers have a bulletin board and allow individuals to post information there.

For those who wish to branch out or try something different there are two other options. TV and radio advertising is not as inexpensive as taking out a classified ad, but it may not break the bank either, and you can target your audience more specifically and have the chance to reach more people. The drawback here is not only the cost, but also the fact that you would need someone to produce the spots and someone to appear in them although many broadcast facilities provide services with low cost or no cost options.

There are certain pieces of information that are essential in order to carry out your offline marketing strategies. You need to list a website address if you have one, as well as your phone number so people can contact you. If you don’t have a web site it might be appropriate to include a mailing address, or your home address in the case of an at home day care.

It would be foolish to completely ignore online advertising. Some people will use the Internet as their first place to search for services or products. Work with all of the tools available to you. Maximize all opportunities to make a success of your new business.

Hendro Iskandar asked:

By: Hendro Iskandar

As small bisnis owner, before knowing internet marketing, my knowledge about marketing only limited to offline marketing. Where we limitted by area of activity which we can achieve. Advertise our products or service, in limited area, as far as i can manage.While in offline marketing, the work area limited. But in internet marketing,which can be done at home or office, are not limited in area, you can reach people in the worldwide.

Which The Principle of marketing, strong brand image, positioning on the product or service and the difference with another product or service, all things that will help increase our sales, can be done with both marketing. The principles of marketing, can be applied to internet marketing much better, easier, faster and cheaper then offline marketing.

Offline Marketing in example is ‘Microsoft’. With the brand name ‘windows’, and the position as computer operating system, at most used, and the differentiation is inside the windows, quite a lot and user friendly (my individual opinion). Can you imagine, how much money that Microsoft spend just for advertise the product ?

For Internet marketing example is Amazon.com. With the brandname ‘Amazon.com’, the position of greatest bookstore, very famous, and the difference with another bookstore that Amazon.com sell the book online. And i’m sure that Amazon.com spend less money then Microsoft for advertise.

The internet marketing with a strong branding, can attract millions of people come to your website every day, allowing the total purchase existence also quite big. And if you know how to do it, you can have it too. In internet marketing, you don’t need to have your own website. But it’s better if you own one, because your credibility will be better in your customers side.

Run an internet marketing with your own website, will give you opportunity to get income beside your product or service. The best one is, maybe you didn’t know, if in Internet marketing, even you didn’t have any product, you can still get income. That the other difference of internet marketing.

Get to know more deeply the Internet marketing and exploit all the opportunities in it, because I see internet marketing is future business. Why not try to start at right now. . .

Ihab asked:

The great thing about search engine marketing is its ability to attract a consumer who has already expressed interest in a service or product via a search engine term. The consumer’s curiosity is already whetted. It is up to the e-marketer to satisfy this curiosity.

Offline marketing campaigns set the preliminary grounds by exposing the consumer to its product or service through the print media, the television, the radio and billboards. These offline campaigns affect about 70 percent of your overall audience. The remaining 30 percent is that part of the market that can be reached effectively through online marketing.

Thus, in a way, your advertising strategies have to effectively cover offline as well as online marketing. Only by integrating your online campaigns with the offline ones can you expect your brand to have better recognition. The more aware your target market is about your product, the better chances you have of establishing their trust in your brand.

Today, building a stable relationship with your audience is made easier with online marketing methods like podcasts, search engines, social interaction platforms, corporate blogs, mobile e-mail alerts, company websites, etc. to name a few. This YouTube era prefers a more personalized approach and outlook to any virtual communication.

Formality is a passé word for this generation of consumers, though they prefer to be approached with a degree of professionalism. After all, if a seller has to stand out from, the multitude of competitors that are present online, he has to have the right mix of trust, user appeal and a professional approach to conducting business.

At Clear Media Online, our e-marketing professionals work with you to understand your advertising requirements. We are proficient in understanding your offline campaigns and work accordingly to integrate them with our online marketing methods.