Want To Build Your Marketing/Salesforce Without Recruiting, Interviewing, Hiring, Training, & Praying for an ROI?

You can cost-effectively & successfully build your Marketing/Salesforce with a not-so-new strategy called #Affiliate Marketing! Think it's not for you? - - Read On! 

A Little History - After years as an entrepreneur in the Financial Services and Insurance related industries, I thought I had a fair grasp of the alternatives in building a salesforce. Like most of my friends in the industries, I had my share of successes and failures. 

When I entered the realm of #Inbound Marketing a number of years ago, it was a breath of fresh air. I had finally discovered an effective, cost-saving alternative to traditional Outbound Marketing and standard Prospecting. I became quite effective in "Leveraging the Power of the Internet, Search Engines, Social/Business Media, and SEO. I became an advocate for the Insurance and Benefits Industries to embrace Inbound Marketing. 

What's New? - It took me a while before I realized that I had missed a major piece to include in the Inbound Marketing puzzle - Affiliate Marketing. I barely new Affiliate Marketing existed and was clueless about this established and continually evolving marketing/sales strategy! 

It took me a while to see that Affiliate Marketing was more than an old vehicle for merchants to sell retail items through a network of part-time marketers utilizing their contacts, computers, and the merchants banners and text provided through networks. I have come to realize that Affiliate marketing in its evolved state can be a lucrative strategy for merchants - the creators of Products & Services - and astute Affiliates. This is true for almost all Industries including the Insurance & Benefits! We're acting as an affiliate for a number Insurance related providers of Plans, Programs, and Services - Click Here to visit the specific section of ExclusivePurchases.com. ExclusivePurchases.com is an online boutique outlet shopping mall for individuals, families, and business to efficiently meet their needs.

Combining Inbound & Affiliate Marketing - While I understood the Power of Inbound

Marketing, I had no experience with Affiliate Marketing. To me it was an old school strategy with a checkered history. I have learned that this was a misconception! As Blurgroup's blog points out, "...those who are really excelling right now in the affiliate marketing world have shed much of the negativity associated of the industry by renaming what they do. Affiliates are now SEO Specialists or Performance Marketing Specialists or even Bloggers and Content Marketers. It all points to the fact that the industry has changed and those employing the old tactics are being left behind." 

Blurgroup goes on say,"Affiliate marketing has gone from coupons to content’ and mainstream publishers are quietly making huge revenues with this model whose longevity in the world of digital marketing is unsurpassed. It has done so by rebranding and adapting to new trends, creating long term relationships and participating in inbound marketing tactics instead of pushing offers and vouchers."

Affiliate marketers utilize a combination of traditional outbound marketing combined with Inbound Marketing Strategies. As AMWSO (Affiliate Marketing Management Services) points out, "Inbound marketing has risen in popularity along with blogging platforms such as Blogger or WordPress, which make it easy to create content, optimize for search engines and even promote that content on social media, all of which are types of inbound affiliate marketing". 

Three Stages to Get Started with Affiliate Marketing as the Primary Source of Products, Plans, and/or Services (Called "Publishers in the world of affiliate marketing).


1) Select a Network to assist you with setting-up your back office, attracting affiliates - called the advertisers - and to assist in promoting your campaigns. Networks are an extremely valuable resource! According to Clicksure, "Networks offer a degree of quality control—the best networks will only take merchants that are relatively reliable. In addition, they have sophisticated tracking technology that can improve your ROI and make it easier to optimize your campaigns". Along with several others, we have a relationship with ShareASale - a leading network.
2) Build a Storefront for an Inbound Marketing landing page and to assist your marketing campaigns and affiliates. We are working with two companies to assist clients of all sizes:

Shopify - They make marketing and commerce simpler "so businesses can focus on what they do best: building and selling their products". 
 BigCommerce - They power some of the world's most successful online stores "from startups to billion-dollar businesses, companies in 150+ countries".  
3) Enhance Your Social/Business Media Presence - This will generate traffic to your website/landing pages, assist your affiliate marketing network, and drive sales! Consider using several services
Yext - Allows you to reclaim your brand in the social sphere. Yext instantaneously syncs and updates invaluable content—like hours, a new address, or an important status update.
Mouseflow - Lets you record/track website visitors and see website heatmaps showing where they click, scroll and even their focus. Areas being overlooked by users can then be improved to gain more attention.
SEO Profiler - A complete SEO tool that offers everything that you need to get high rankings on Google and other search engines.
PRWeb - Effective press release distribution helps you create buzz, increase online visibility, and drive website traffic.

Conclusion - Affiliate Marketing - especially when combined with the power of Inbound

Marketing - will "Build Your Marketing/Salesforce Without Recruiting, Interviewing, Hiring, Training, & Praying for an ROI". I am not suggesting that you abandon your traditional marketing and advertising people or resources. I am suggesting a shift to affiliate marketing as an efficient and cost-effective strategy. Affiliate Marketing - especially when combined with Inbound Marketing - will help you stay with or ahead of your competition. You will also better meet the needs of current and potential clients. 

Your potential clients are utilizing the internet to efficiently meet their needs! According to Brafton - a branding specialist - "89 percent of consumers turn to Google, Bing or another search engine to find information on products, services or businesses prior to making purchases". They go on to note that "70 percent of enterprise purchasing decisions begin on search engines"!

It's Time To Get Started!

Let's Hear From You - If you have questions, suggestions, or require additional information, please comment or send an email to phil@exclusivepurchases.com

Let's connect on Linkedin - http://www.linkedin.com/in/benefitplace