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Private customer sales are very effective ways to get viral marketing started
for your own web site. All that you have to do is provide them with a special
incentive for that they can use, but also send to their friends and family.
You do it by offering a discount on someone else’s products and not yours. You
make money on someone else’s money.
The process is straightforward. You offer your customers a discount on a third
party’s products. They get the discount by using a discount code that promotes
your web site and encourages them to send that discount code to their family and
friends so that they too can get the discount.
To get the discount when they want to buy something, they go to a page that
promotes your company and further encourages them to send the discount coupon to
their family and friends. When that happens, they are lead to your site and they
are further encouraged to pass the discount offer on.
As this process moves forward, you gather opt in email addresses of people who
are interested in special offers. Periodically they are sent email with a
special offer that brings them right back into the circle of viral marketing.
You can see this process in action at http://www.qlbr.com/aff_master_page
Key to your success is:
the use of an affiliate program that uses discount codes instead of cookies, and
the use of an affiliate program that provides you a customized page that
promotes your company.
Affiliate programs with discount codes are not that prevalent on the web because
they are easy to set up and provide benefits to affiliates that many companies
do not want to provide to affiliates. The biggest benefit that affiliates get is
the ability to get long-term commissions and not to be affected by customers
deleting cookies.
If you can’t find one to your liking, you can set one up yourself very easy and
use it as part of your own viral marketing plan. The whole program is based on
using a shopping cart into which you can insert a discount code. That you can
get in many places. And you can even get one free at http://www.chamberofcommerce.pl/own_store
For a model, you can use the affiliate program at http://www.qlbr.com/aff_shoppoland_program
. Use the concept and make your own marketing materials. Note that it just uses
a simple free form for affiliate applications and the store that it promotes
uses the free shopping cart mentioned in the paragraph above.
But back to the private sale and your customers as viral marketers.
There are many ways to get your customers started.
Email, of course, is of the first. Just send the information about a special
offer to your mailing list. Email is fast, direct and you can generally predict
a response rate.
A postcard is second. Postcards have legs. Unlike email that gets deleted, and
web page addresses that are forgotten, postcards hang around. They get read,
they get filed, they get put on refrigerators and they get results. They are
particularly attractive when they make your customer feel important by telling
the customer that this is a private sale. Customers respond.
The real money comes with the follow up email or postcard with a special offer
for a unique and special item that is available only to people who are on your
list.
As you develop your viral marketing business model, you will develop tactics and
strategies that keep your customers telling others about the special deals that
they are getting through you.
And you will find that your customers are the best viral marketers that you
have.
About the Author
Gary Granai is a publisher of several web sites that are related to
international trade and sales. His first site went on line in 1995. It is at
this link
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