Keeping Your Sales-Force Motivated
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Running a successful affiliate program is easier than ever with the software and help available now. However, keeping your affiliates motivated and selling is just as challenging as it has always been. If the success of your business rests upon how your affiliates perform, you should already be providing them with the right tools to get the job done successfully.
I’m going to bet that if you are not providing the tools they need to succeed then you probably have a large amount of affiliates in your program that you never heard from again shortly after they finished the sign-up process.
You can however, begin reducing this number of non productive affiliates immediately by getting in touch with them right now, and remaining in touch with them constantly.
Get started by sending them an e-mail reminding them of their username, password, and affiliate link. Tell them where to log in to check their stats, or doing anything else you can think of to get them excited about your program again. Feel free to get creative. Always keep them informed of new product lines or changes in policy or procedures.
The key to motivation is making sure that you stay in touch. Always pay attention to who your top sellers are, and make sure that you contact them on a regular basis. But, don’t forget to pay some attention to your worst producers as well. You will be surprised but, many super affiliates could be hiding in your program because they saw potential with your product or service but, were dissatisfied with your execution of the program. One small change and… “BANG” they are off to the races!
The main reason the majority of affiliates don’t perform well is because they don’t possess any leadership or guidance. This can easily be changed by writing a detailed marketing course or producing marketing videos, which you can even offer for sale to non affiliates to offset your production costs.
Always keep your sales copy up to date. You should also provide new material for your affiliates to use on a regular basis. Providing them with nothing but a text link and one banner just doesn’t generate much excitement at all. Remember, provide the right tools and reap the benefits. Need some ideas?
Here are some tools you can easily provide your affiliates that have proven success:
- A “Tell-a-friend” form that they can fill out in your affiliate area that is preloaded with high conversion e-mail copy.
- Multiple sets of e-mail copy that they can cut ‘n paste, change a little bit to personalize and send off to their own mailing lists.
- An assortment of example signatures ads that they can use in all of their outgoing e-mail correspondence.
- A bunch of articles that they can change a little to personalize and submit to article directories, post to their own websites, or even provide to e-mail newsletter owners as content.
- A large variety of text links that they can include on their websites.
- A couple of example reviews that they can use as posts on their Blogs.
- Some MP3 audio, or video (YouTube, etc.) content that they can use on their landing pages, blogs, and websites.
- Cut ‘n Paste pop up code, or the new “Peel Away” corner advertising code for their websites.
- An assortment of example tags (keywords) they can use for pay per click advertising or for submitting their affiliate pages to social bookmarking services.
- A special report or eBook preloaded with their affiliate links. (There are even scripts available that can generate them on the fly for you so you don’t have to manually create each one for them).
- Press Releases that they can submit to various places that accept them.
- Example, PPC or Google Ads.
Make sure that your affiliates know the material is there for them to use, and feel free to explain exactly how, when, and where to use the marketing materials. Make sure you ask your affiliates for feedback on the materials you are providing and act on that feedback.
To really provide the best marketing materials you should create, use, and test them yourself so you are providing them with the highest possible conversion producing materials at all times!
The list of tools above can appear to be a daunting task to setup and it can be but, there is a great tool available to you that will cut the setup time for all of your affiliate programs by a TON (and it does everything I described and more)! I personally use it and highly recommend you take a look to save you time and increase your affiliate sales quickly. You can check it out by clicking here.
The best affiliate programs out there also provide video training for their affiliates. You can get started using this strategy by holding live online video training sessions with your affiliates and recording them to post in your affiliate area. But, don’t stop there. Hold live training sessions on a routine basis to really kick it up a notch. Make sure you invite questions before hand and discuss them during the training.
Giving your affiliates the credit they deserve is also extremely important. Each month, you should give credit to the best performers in your affiliate mailings. Give nice bonuses to those that perform well (like cash, or free products), and you can even set up a payment structure that rewards higher commissions and bigger volumes of sales.
Assisting your affiliates to succeed with your program should be a top priority. If they maximize the amount of money they can make – then so are you! Their success is your success.
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