Incentivize

[private].[/private]You can use incentives for multiple purposes. The two main purposes we’ll cover in this section are A.) For motivating affiliates, and B.) For motivating your customers, subscribers, & members to take you up on offers related to products you’re affiliated with.

Use Incentives To Motivate Your Affiliates

Let’s start out with incentivizing your own affiliates (this is closely related to “motivating” affiliates but deserves it’s own topic) . . .

You want your customers to turn into affiliates and pass the word, or in this case the URL. You want them to help you market your product and, while some people might do this simply to see the joy it brings to others, you might find this does not take you very far. However, you can encourage them easily if you offer them an incentive to pass it on.

Each and every person who promotes your product or service and sends traffic your way, MUST be rewarded. You can reward an affiliate in so many ways and the primary way to do this is through commissions. By giving your affiliates high commissions, you are encouraging each and every one of them to give it their best shot.

One great thing about commissions is that they apply to everyone, no matter how much they produce. The affiliate who makes the fewest sales will be rewarded the same per sale as the one who makes the most.

The minimum percentage for commissions should be set at 50%. You want them to want to promote and if it is any lower than 50%, it won’t be worth their while. Some marketers go as high as 75% and above. This really gets affiliates moving.

Sure, you are paying out a lot of your sales, but you aren’t paying for the marketing and you are only paying the commissions when you make the sale, a sale you would not have made if it wasn’t for the affiliate. It is worth it!

You can also give your affiliates other types of incentives. Just make them GREAT incentives. These can be:

** Money

** Prizes

** Trips and vacations

** Discounts

** Concert tickets

** Recognition!

Your affiliates will start out in a mad rush. What you are offering is new and that makes it exciting, so much so that you might not even need major incentives beyond great commissions (although you will still offer them) to spur them on in the beginning. However, once the initial excitement fades, you will have to keep your affiliates motivated in order to keep them fixed on their goal of generating traffic.

Their initial incentive is the excitement and whatever you were offering at the time. As time moves on and excitement wanes, your affiliates will see a lower perceived value in promoting your product.

You want your affiliates to feel the excitement whether they sign up with you at the launch of your site or months down the road.

Now here is a great tip that I want to share with you. Do you give major incentives to your top affiliates? The answer is yes, but you do not stop there. If you only gave incentives to the cream of the crop, you would have the same few people promoting and selling all the time.

You need to offer incentives in other categories as well to spur others on to becoming top affiliates. Use things like:

Best new affiliate!

Most improved affiliate!

Random draws based on criteria everyone can meet

I know these examples sound like awards you would receive in high school for your grades, but it works.

Also, don’t just stick to iPods and TVs as prizes. They are great, but they are also offered everywhere. To truly motivate your affiliates, think outside the box and think big! What about a car? Depending on the scope of your launch be realistic and offer high quality incentives to your affiliates.

The idea here is to offer incentives that not only spur your team on to do its best, but that also keep them focused on your campaign instead of spreading themselves too thin. If they are marketing for 20 people, they will not have as many resources to focus on your products, will they? Make it worth their while and the affiliates will show you the money.

Will every affiliate strive for these incentives? Hard to say. You will still have affiliates that will fall by the wayside, those that will never get past signing up and maybe a feeble attempt at promoting.

However, you will also have affiliates who truly want to work hard and get to the top and if they have incentives at every stage of the journey, you will help them get there.

When you create a great incentive program for your affiliates, they will end up with a down line of affiliates and your bank account will get fat very quickly. Make it worth their while and they will work hard for themselves and for you because anyone appreciates it when someone recognizes worthwhile effort.

Use Incentives To Increase Conversions In Your Affiliate Marketing Efforts

Now on the other side of the coin when it comes to “Incentivizing” for affiliate purposes… we have a great method for getting more of your customers to take you up on those offers you put in front of them!

A few marketers who come to mind when it comes to “incentivizing” are Jeff Dedrick and Liz Tomey. They’re both masters at putting together powerful bonsus packages and offers for their subscribers.

Here’s how it works in summary:

Jeff and Liz will see a product coming soon that they want to promote as affiliates. They will sign up for the program but not stop there.

They’ll put together an attractive package of PLR products, eBooks, or similar items and even create a mini-sales page describing the incentives they are offering anyone who purchases the main product through their affiliate link.

Imagine a product that pays $100 commission per sale. You whip together a thorough description of a few eBooks you’ll offer as bonuses (incentives) to anyone who purchases through you…

Instead of a link to purchase these items at the bottom of the page you’ll have an affiliate link to the product you’re promoting.

You drop the message to your email list or possibly even promote the page via PPC and encourage as many people as possible to purchase through your link.

Reward those who purchase through you by providing the promised incentive.

Sounds simple right?

Hopefully Jeff & Liz will do a short interview with me sometime soon and we can really break it down a bit further.