How To Guarantee Increased
Sales On
The Net?
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by Jan Taljaard
Every day I receive letters from people around the world asking
me for advice on what they should do to increase their sales. Of course this is
a very legitimate question and something that all web marketers are concerned
about.
The average sales conversion rate on the Net is about
1.5%, which means that for every thousand visitors you receive on your site, approximately
15 will buy products from you. So, for example if you're making $12 profit from
each sale, in this example you'd make roughly $180, which although it could be
a nice extra bit of pocket money, is not enough to live on. Not by a long shot.
Here are some concrete steps you can take, if you want to increase your earnings:
1) Increase your daily, weekly and monthly visitors
2) Multiply your
sales efforts
3) Follow up on your visitors and leads
Sounds
Simple, But How Does One Practically Go About This?
First
of all, let's examine point (1). How does one get more visitors. Through actively
marketing your site on a daily basis. The problem with most marketers, is that
they get so side-tracked by junk-emails, tweaking their sites to *perfection*,
answering relentless questions from *potential customers* who have no intention
of ever buying, or just keeping up with the daily office *grind* and other time
wasters, that at the end of the day, their total marketing efforts amount to almost
nil.
Your main concern, whether you're trying to sell your
own products, or whether you're part of an affiliate program, selling someone
else's products, should be just that: marketing! Leave the rest of the stuff to
someone else. Your number one job is MARKETING! -- or you won't make sales, because
you won't have the visitors! Plain and simple. It's a numbers game.
How
to go about marketing is a whole other story, and one which I've written hundreds
of detailed reports about. In my latest book "Money From E-Commerce", I outline
42 ways of getting visitors to your site, so I'm not going to delve further into
that subject here.
In point (2), let's examine the multiplication
of your efforts. This is the ultimate *key* to your Internet Sales success. The
sooner you realize that you can only do so much, the better off you'll be. You
need to multiply your efforts, by delegating.
Assume you're
part of an affiliate program. And the best affiliate programs are the two-tier
kind. Let's also assume, for the sake of argument, that you're making approximately
15 sales a month, as in the example I used above. Your commission earnings are
$180.
Now if you actively start referring other affiliates,
with a little effort you can soon build up a network of 100 or more sub-affiliates.
Most two-tier affiliate programs will pay you 10% commissions on the sales made
by your sub-affiliates.
Now here's the key: train your sub-affiliates
to market their sites the way you have learnt to market yours. Let's look at the
difference in your income now, still assuming that you're only making your 15
sales a month, but now you've trained your sub-affiliates to also make 5 sales
a month each.
You make 15 sales = $180 and your 100 sub-affiliates
make 5 sales each, from which you receive $5 per sale =100 x 5 = 500 x $5 = $2,500!
Do you start to see the potential?
You started out with your
own knowledge and experience and lessons learned in marketing, and you shared
this with your network, and trained them also to do the same.
The
more you invest in training your network, the more sales you'll make whether directly
or indirectly.
Declan Dunn talks about the *Super Affiliate*
Jeff Belton who was making an annual income of $65,000 as an affiliate! Now can
you imagine if you had a sub affiliate like Jeff in your network, how much you
would earn? Almost $26,000 annually from his sales!
The Internet
is changing. The hype is dying or dead. The only way to survive today is though
performance marketing. If your site is not performing effectively, and converting
visits into sales, you will start losing money, and eventually go bankrupt.
Now for the clincher. See point (3). You go through all the trouble, expense and
hard work to get your visitors, and then...? I'm amazed at how much money individuals
as well as corporations are willing to spend on getting new customers, but how
little efforts are made to follow up on existing customers or visitors.
First
of all you'll have to give these visitors a reason to want to hear from you. You
can do this by creating an opt-in mailing list for a newsletter, reports, product
updates, etc.
Next, you have to create a rapport with your
customers. This may take a little while, but is well worth it. Once your customers
get to know you, and trust you, they'll come back again and again. This alone
could result in a very significant portion of your annual sales.
A
satisfied customer is worth their weight in gold! Don't you ever forget it. So,
let's recap:
1) Focus your energy on marketing your product and/or site
2) Train sales people to duplicate your efforts
3) Follow up on your existing
customers and create back-end sales opportunities
If you will
just follow these 3 simple points, I guarantee you will have an increase of sales.
It's time for change. Don't wait until you're forced to, and have no other option.
"The only difference between a rut and a grave is their dimensions."
-Ellen Glasgow
I dare you to break out of your unprofitable
ruts, and start focusing on performance marketing. Not tomorrow, not next week
or when you have time, but today, right now. Your very existence on the Internet
depends on it.