Can your business benefit from an affiliate programme? A virtual assistant can help with all aspects of the procedure. With an affiliate programme the chance to make extra money from your business, by having others advertise and promote can be dealt with by your virtual support. From the initial set up of your account and details to maintaining the programme. Choosing banners and links and embedding on your site can all be handled by virtual support. By liaising with your graphic designers promotional links and banners can be created to complement your business brand.

Copy can be written, for your approval, that regularly connects you with your affiliates and can supply them with banners and links to use for promoting your business. For Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, virtual support can write social media updates that affiliates can use to advertise and promote. They can write examples of blog posts that can also be used to spread the word about your product.

By implementing a timetable, promotions can be scheduled and materials organised that will be required to run the proposed campaign.

A VA can manage your programme by supporting your affiliates, answering any questions and help them with any difficulties they may have. By keeping in touch with them by email they can provide tips to help promote your product. Contacting affiliates by phone, providing a personal touch, can help your team, knowing that there are real people within the business, there to assist them, in what can be a rather ‘lonely’ internet world.

A virtual assistant can run regular reports to check on affiliate sales and follow up with contact to them to help with promotion or congratulate on their performance!

Are you thinking of starting an affiliate programme for your business? You can email us here, or telephone and speak to Tamara, on 0208 468 8594.

You have a prospective customer make contact and enquire about your services or products and they go away with all the detail you can supply them with.  Let them take the information but don’t forget to follow up.  A report by Sales and Marketing magazine suggests that 80% of  people who request information progress to purchasing the product or services within the year, but not from the company where they initially enquired.

Many people like to go away for a time and continue with a little research, to see things from another point of view, another customer’s experience; consider the costs and reliability or productivity. Perhaps their enquiry was for a future purchase and although the sale wasn’t achieved in the first instance , contact at a later date may result in a sale. Don’t be afraid to follow up enquiries, to see if there are any questions that have arisen from their research and see if there are any ways you can help them decide on their purchase. In general, surveys suggest at least five contacts with a prospect can take place before they commit to a purchase.

People buy from people they trust, so nurture and build a relationship with them so you are uppermost in their minds when they make the decision to invest. Show that you are a valuable resource and and expert in your field, remind them of what you do and follow up in different ways. There is no need to bombard with sales pitch but build a relationship that answers all their questions and keeps you uppermost in their minds. Emphasise different aspects of your product or service, supplying other advantages of investing in your product/service.

Let them know of events that may help with issues they may have that are delaying their decision to buy.  If you are speaking at an event, a sponsor or organiser invite them to the occasion.

If you discover articles that have been written about your product or service, email them the item or send a link. Likewise, if you have written an article about it, send this and a link too.

New things happening in your industry? – send them the announcement about the development. If you produce a blog or newsletter, send them copy and ask them to subscribe so they are kept up-to-date.

If you have a video of helpful tips, how to use your product, or client success stories send a link for them to review. If you have a free tele-class or webinar about your product or service invite them along.

Be consistent in your follow up and your marketing activities will produce results. Contact those that have send ‘no’ in the past, you will be surprised at the response.

Again, it’s making sure your name is the one that springs to mind when they next consider buying.

Using a sales matrix with your existing customers buying history may help you identify where you can increase your sales. Don’t forget that the customers you have had in the past, know your products and may not realise all of the products or services that you can supply.  As existing  customers, they know the value of your product or service having bought from you before. Trust has been established by supplying a superlative product or service.

Create your own sales matrix by simply placing you products or services in columns then place your customers in the rows. Tick products sold and to whom, (tick or colour cell) you can then easily see what your customers have bought and which others in the range you can sell to them. The blank cells are your  opportunities to sell more and increase your profits.

For more information, email us, or telephone Tamara on 0203 4688594.

The savings made by removing travel and accommodation expenditure, together with venue costs will obviously make a vast difference to your costs and expenses associated with a virtual event as compared to a physical one.

ON24, a virtual event company, their research shows that between 20% and 95% savings are achieved when the event is a virtual one. When you realise it doesn’t just stop at savings made by attendees and all the travel and accommodation costs, the people who are arranging the event also gain from the ease and speed of arranging a virtual event, together with additional benefits of spending less time on the project.

In creating a virtual event you have produced a permanent record for future use, whether in a learning base, or for repeating at a future date to another audience or to re-purpose the information to use outside of the event.

A virtual event generates excitement, meaning extra customers and more leads. ON24 research reports that 4 to 5 times more leads are generated from a virtual event than from a physical one.

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