SorenJordansen.comInternet Marketing Revealed, Reviewed & Discussed

Russell delivered some very powerful content in today’s live video training. He was talking about the “The 3 C’s of Affiliate Marketing”. I didn’t actually know about these 3 C’s, but I was happy to discover that I’m actually following these principles. I know it works and Russell delivered the message in an awesome way that really got my mind racing with new ideas. Anyway read this post and see if you can spot my 3 C’s… as I write about the 3 C’s

=> But First, I Recommend That You Grab The Replay Here!

The 3 C’s of Affiliate Marketing…

… Is a method you to build your list, to build a relationship with your readers, and to make them want to buy from you.

The 1st C: Commitment

It’s about getting your readers to make a commitment to you, all the way from the opt in to the actual sale (and hopefully recurring sales).

Russell gave the direct mail industry as an example. Direct mail has shifted towards mailing out post cards instead of long sales letters. Both because it’s cheaper, but more importantly because when people follow the call to action on these post cards to get more information, they are making a commitment – a commitment that will increase the likelyhood of a positive response when they receive the long sales letter.

In internet marketing that commitment translates very well to pushing people through a squeeze page in order to get more information, so far so good. But Russell has taken it one step further (and so have I, so I know it works)… Instead of writing loooong promotional emails, we tend to write fairly short emails and then point to a blog, sales letter, pdf etc. There are several reasons for doing it this way, first of all it tends to increase your email open- and click through rates. People get a lot of emails (especially in IM) and the long “novel style” sales email has lost a lot of it’s effect. But asking people to click a link to go somewhere to read more, is also asking for that essential commitment – on the road to making the ultimate commitment (purchasing).

You see, list building and email marketing is all about training your readers to take the action you desire – and you have to train your list from day one. It’s about getting you readers to make (and keep) small commitments, like…

1. First of all getting them to open your emails
2. Then training them to always click your links. (That’s why having most of the information on a blog or in a PDF works).
3. Train the to take action when they do click. Ask them to go post a comment, watch a video etc.

As you can see the commitments gradually gets bigger, up to the point where you are asking them to buy something.

The 2nd C: Community

If you can make your readers feel part of a community your are on track for big things. As Russell said, you can make your emails very personal and often people will appreciate that… But that personal email is not always great for selling. There’s a reason why many marketers prefer to use tele-seminars, conferences, webinars etc. for selling. You can make people feel part of something, part of a community – that in itself creates excitement and social proof and it’s a much more productive selling environment. Bottomline: making people feel they are part of a community, makes it a lot easier to close the sale.

There are numerous ways to make your readers feel part of a community, but the absolute easiest way is to use a blog. Think about it, you are most likely here right now because you read my short email and decided to read the whole story here at my blog. You can post you comment, agree or disagree, argue with me or even interact with other readers. Blogs are a great tool for creating a community feeling and you can combine them with all the other web 2.0 tools (notice Twitter, MyBlogLog and the Feedburner on the sidebar )

Of course you may have found this post through one of the search engines or blog directories, which lead me into the third and final C…

The 3rd C: Content

Yes content is still KING… This blog post will be indexed by the search engines, it will be bookmarked, plugged etc. and it will continue to receive traffic long after the last of my emails have been deleted from my reader’s inboxes. And that’s the thing, if you only use the email approach you get strong bursts of traffic for a day or two, but you have to rinse and repeat and keep doing the same work over and over again. After all internet marketing is about working smarter not harder – and placing your best content on a blog is definitely a great way to work smarter.

Having good content (and plenty of it) is of course also the foundation for the two first C’s – You won’t get a commitment from people if you don’t actually have something of value for them to go read, watch etc. But if you have some good content they will be more than happy to keep clicking to your links to go read it. And you can’t build that community feeling without good content, people won’t comment on and share everything you post on a blog – it has to be good…

In fact poke around on this blog and you will notice that some posts have created a lot of stir and comments, while other posts are just dead fish. It doesn’t necessarily have to do with whether the post is selling something or not – it has to with the way the message is delivered. And it also has a lot to do with the first C (commitment), when a post gets a lot of comments here, I have usually told people (in my email) to go post a comment

That Was The 3 C’s of Affiliate Marketing…

… Based on my own experience and the notes I took at Russell’s video training today. I know this is very solid information, and I hope it as been helpful to you. And in the spirit of the 3 C’s, please leave a comment – feel free to disagree, I’m passionate about this topic and would love a good argument.

Finally… I can’t stress enough how great these free video training sessions with Russell are, I higly recommend that you visit the site today – register to get instant access to the replays – and be ready for the last 3 live sessions on May 23rd, 24th and 25th at 11am EST.

=> Access The Replays & Live Training Here!

To your affiliate marketing success,
~ Soren Jordansen

P.S. If you listen to the replay you will notice that at one point Russell gets a question about using safelists. Lets just say I had to disagree with his answer, so I had to tell him. That got a laugh and I’m know off to email my buddy Russell a copy of my safelist guide – it’s never to late to learn new tricks, not even for Dot Com Millionaires

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Thursday, May 22nd, 2008 at 9:02 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.