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SELLING ON THE INTERNET: ARE YOU A RETAILER OR WHOLSALER?

By Maurice Bretzfield

If you're a retailer who sells merchandise from your stores into the hands of consumers, and you want to expand your sales through Internet marketing, you must change your perception of customers. And if you're going to sell your merchandise to a large and ever-growing number of Internet customers, you cannot simply sell on the Internet: you must become an Internet Affiliate Marketer.

As you know, brick and mortar retailers sell directly to customers. They advertise their merchandise in newspapers and magazines, on television and radio. Their marketing costs are all up-front and often quite high.

If you're a wholesaler, you sell your merchandise through a network of sales reps to the buyers at retail outlets.

When you become an Internet marketer who relies on affiliate networks to drive customers to your website, you will no longer be a conventional retailer; you will have become an Internet wholesaler, relying on an affiliate network of web sales reps.

An affiliate network acts, in effect, like a middle man, a distribution network, that drives customers to your website where the sales are made.

Affiliate networks are not passive entities. For your affiliate network to put cash in your coffers, it must be pro-active. No website achieves success by waiting for customers to come knocking. Customers must be identified by their shopping preferences, solicited, and lured by appeals to their self-interest so that they arrive (credit card in hand) at your website. And that's precisely what effective and pro-active Internet Affiliate Marketing does.

In addition to garnering a dramatic increase in your sales and revenues through Internet Affiliate Marketing, there is an attractive financial incentive for you: there are no up-front advertising costs! Depending on size and ad budgets, companies spend thousands or millions of dollars on conventional advertising. With Internet Affiliate Marketing, however, you pay a commission only when a sale is consummated. There's no waving good-bye to ad dollars that escape and never bring a return on your investment.

Whoever drives the largest number of actual customers to your website will receive the largest financial rewards. The affiliates are commission-based sales people with a hungry incentive to produce customers. You pay only for completed sales.

What to Look For:

When retaining the services of an Internet Affiliate Marketer, a merchant should

  1. Choose a company that has a proven track record of successfully increasing sales and revenues.
  2. Choose a company that has demonstrable expertise in the field of Internet Affiliate Marketing.
  3. Choose a company that understands the Internet medium as a marketing medium.
  4. And be prepared to listen.

Common Mistakes:

Ad Agencies
Many merchants who have used advertising agencies to create print or electronic ads assume that their agencies will be able to guide them through the thickets and sand traps of Internet marketing. It's not so. Ad agencies are often the least knowledgeable of how Internet Affiliate Marketing draws in customers. Ad agencies tend to carpet bomb potential customers. They believe that if they bombard a plethora of consumers with their ads that a certain percentage will surrender and turn themselves into paying customers. That is not the best return on your ad dollars. When a company advertises on TV, for example, it reaches as many as 50% of the wrong customers, those who will not spend a nickel on their merchandise. In such cases, 50% of the ad dollars went into the living rooms and bedrooms of people who had clicked on the “mute” button.

A successful Internet Affiliate Marketing program, however, identifies consumers who are interested in specific products and then drives those consumers to websites where they can purchase just the kinds of products they are interested in. There are no wasted ad dollars!

In-House Marketers
It is essential that Internet merchants reach the right audience of prospective customers. For many merchants, unfortunately, reliance on in-house marketers often results in aiming at the wrong affiliates. There are countless Internet merchants who have made pornographers and hate mongers their affiliate marketers. Imagine, for a moment, selling children's toys on a porno site! Or selling warm friendly religious vacation packages on a site that spews hatred! Not only will there be no sales, but prospective customers who saw a trusted retailer on such a site will lose all confidence in that retailer and the retailer's merchandise. Such problems are commonplace when the marketer is not a savvy and experienced manager of Affiliate Networks.

An Affiliate Network must be regularly reviewed and investigated; its sales volume verified from month to month.

If an Affiliate Network, comprising thousands of websites, is not being managed, the merchant will ultimately suffer a loss of sales.

For more information about successfully creating and managing Internet Affiliate Marketing, contact the experts at EComWorks, where E-commerce works for you.