After the Sale? 2 Words, 1 Action = More Money For You: Follow-Up

Do you follow up with customers, affiliates, or employees?

Many businesses believe that once a sale is made the follow up process should end. Unfortunately they are losing a significant opportunity to build additional rapport, satisfaction, trust, credibility, lower returns, and increase knowledge of items purchased.

Follow up is for more than just prospects.

Customer Follow Up:
Post purchase follow up is overlooked by many businesses. Utilizing this process after a sale can benefit overall consumer satisfaction significantly.

• Training to teach a customer how to use a product.
• Answer commonly asked questions before they are asked.
• Teach about lesser known features.
• Reduce returns.
• Provide support contact information. An auto-responder can integrate with any existing shopping cart system utilizing a feature known as “email parsers”. These permit the ability to automatically build a list of customers within an account.

Affiliate/Reseller Follow Up:
In most affiliate or reseller programs over 90% of affiliates never do anything. By properly following up with new affiliates you can help increase the percentage of affiliates that actively promote and see results.

• Provide promotional material.
• Teach effective promotion techniques.
• Product education.
• Reminders to get the affiliate to take action.

Employee Follow Up:
Training new staff members on various company policies and procedures is a perfect example of effective follow up. Dumping a big manual on their desk the first day is likely to never be read. However, if you “drip” that same information to them over a period of time they are more likely to read and retain that information.

What’s Next?
Learn how autoreponders enable blog and RSS publishers to take advantage of their data to increase repeat visitors and ultimately overall revenue. If you’re serious about getting your message in front of thousands of eager prospects, then you’ve got to seriously check out an autoresponder system.

Split testing allows you to test an idea or change to see if it helps improve results.

For example, if you were testing your web form to improve the number of people who sign up for your newsletter you might try two different colors for your headline. One in black and one in red. You then alternate showing each form to different visitors as they come to your site. The one that generates the most new subscribers has the resulting best conversion rate.

Web Form Split Testing:
Creating and testing different web forms is easy with an Autoresponder. Web form generators allow you to easily create different versions of web forms and then automatically rotate them on your website to see which one generates the best conversion rate.All of this is easily accomplished by copying a single line of HTML to your website.

Tips for testing web forms:

• Type of web form. Embeded in the page, pop over, pop under,exit popup, regular pop up.
• Location of the form. Top of the page, bottom, side bar.
• Headline text.
• Headline length.
• Headline color.
• Headline pictures.
• Field order. Ask for the name, then email or email then name.
• Number of fields. Does asking for phone number, address, or otherincome affect opt-in conversion?
• Time delay for pop up appearance. ie 5 sec, 10 sec etc.
• Link to privacy policy.

Broadcast Newsletter Split Testing:
In the same way you can split test web forms, split testing anewsletter can have a measurable impact upon overall conversion.In this case you might be trying to achieve higher open rates ormore click thrus. A good
autoresponder provides the ability to test up to 4 different versions of a broadcast and easily measure the open rate and click thrus of each version.

Tips for testing broadcast newsletters:

• Subject line variations.
• Subject line personalization vs. no personalization.
• Subject line date inclusion.
• HTML vs Text
• HTML with images vs. HTML without images.
• Different HTML layouts and colors.
• Pricing variations.
• Call to action variation.
• Time of day sent.- Day of the week sent.

What’s Next?
Learn how follow up can be extremely important for prospects before they buy but also for customers after they buy, partners, employee training, and many other uses.

Did you find this article helpful? If you did, then take a look at the step-by-step video tutorials here! http://www.make-more-money-today.net

How I Use Article Marketing to Boost My Link Popularity

Writing articles is by far the best way to increase your link popularity in the search engines. It is also one of the most important, easy and effective tools of viral marketing. Let’s have a look at how this works and why it’s so effective.

To increase your link popularity, you have two options. You can take the slow and tedious route of manually exchanging links with other sites, or you can write articles and submit them to article directories. Manually exchanging links with other websites will take many months to increase your search engine rankings.

I write content to boost my link popularity in the search engines. Content is king as always. I write articles and submit them to high traffic article directories. These are quality article authored through my own expertise related to my site. Search engine positioning happens to be a very popular topic. Getting article directories to post my articles along with with my site’s URL(s) is very easy. Over time, websites publishers will pick up my articles from these high traffic article directories and use them on their sites.

Most article directories will allow you to include at least one website URL in the signature file or resource box. The resource box located at the end of each article is the primary reason for you to write and publish your articles. By including your site’s URL in the resource box, you are effectively increasing your link popularity in the search engines. If your articles are well written and useful, they will also be pick up by website publishers who need content for their sites.

Now, you do the math. If you submit to 100 article directories a week times four articles a month that’s 400 articles a month. Google will love you. Google has these three factors: content, quality and one way links. Within a short period of time, those links will boost your link popularity and drive your site to the top of the search results for your targeted keyword phrases.

A higher ranking in the search engines means alot of things. To a Webmaster, it means a move in the right direction, pure, unadulterated achievement or alot of money in the bank (Hmm, feel good?). To Google, link popularity means importance and relevancy. It also means your site is a valuable and viable resource.

Article marketing will generate tons of traffic to your site, as your articles are published and syndicated across the world. Traffic to your site will pick up speed as you submit and publish more articles. You will also enhance your search engine positioning just by increasing your link popularity in the search engines.

You can get started right away. Simply write a high quality article related to your website or commission someone to do this for you. You can find a ghost writer for a reasonable amount of money by posting an ad in the “Gigs” section on Craiglist.com. You don’t have to live in the city you post in. Post in the larger cities to get better results, but be prepared to get tons of emails.

I hope this advise helps you. Gook luck in the search engine positioning campaign.

Upshur Creative builds custom ecommerce websites with drop shipping. All websites are pre-stocked with brand name products from trusted suppliers. Visit UpshurCreative.com

Making Room For Marketing In Your Business Budget

by Melissa Brewer

As a business new to marketing, you may say you say you know where your money goes and you don’t need it all written down to keep up with it. But marketing is tricky – as with all plans, your results must be both achievable and measurable. You need to be able to track a return on your investment. And you may say you spend enough time on it – but if your business isn’t growing, it may be time to spend a little dough to keep it moving.

Unless you have specific objectives built around your strategies, your marketing plan may never be achieved properly. Marketing requires specific resources and you need to communicate these with your staff (if you have staff) or your outsourcing partners. You will be shocked at what the smaller expenses (such as paper, mailings, and stamps) add up to. Take the total you spend on just one extra mailing each month, multiply it by 12 for months in a year and multiply the result by 5 to represent 5 years – and then subtract it from the results. Is your marketing really as effective as it should be? Is it worth the resources you have been using?

When you start to implement a marketing plan for the first time, it’s best to start with a small sampling and wait for results first. It is true that doing something is better than doing nothing – but don’t overwhelm your staff or your budget by attempting several new marketing methods that you are unable to track – for example, if you direct traffic to your website, make sure to target each campaign to a different page or product to track your results.

If it is overwhelming to create several marketing activities, make a small but definite commitment to add at least one new marketing tactic a week. For example, set aside an hour every day to make cold calls or send emails to your prospects. Add one service listing to Craig’s List every week. Send “Thank You” emails to your customers once a month and let them know that you’ve added a new product to your product line. And, I issue you this challenge. Keep track of every penny you spend on marketing for one month – could you have afforded more? Did the amount of time and money you spent seem worth the effort? Set some specific long term and short term goals for making more money – and allocating more money to your marketing endeavors. There are no wrong answers here – just remember, it always takes money to make money. If it’s important to you, then it’s important period.

Some suggestions for powering your marketing strategies
follow:

• Make room for marketing in your business budget by cutting other expenses.
• Barter expertise and skills with other businesses you may network with (LinkedIn contacts, Chamber of Commerce, etc.)
• Cut expenses for services you rarely use. Do you really need call waiting on your business phone line? How about that subscription to Entrepreneur online?
• Don’t discount the power of low-cost and free marketing activities-such as online forum postings, ezine advertisements, article marketing, and blog advertising

Melissa Brewer is the author of the Little White Ebook of Virtual Assistant Jobs, available at LittleWhiteEbook.com. She has worked as a freelance writer for the past 9 years and currently resides in Washington, DC, three miles from the Obama White House.