Since the day I’ve started doing affiliate marketing, I have never purchased an affiliate marketing education course, product, or an ebook. (but I have received many review copies from several gurus/experts without asking for it).

I have received several recommendations from friends I trust, but after reviewing some of the sales pitches, I didn’t feel like buying any of them.

Internet marketing information product niche has become a huge market and I have nothing against this market getting bigger every day.

The problem I have is;

Most of these self-claimed gurus don’t tell you the truth. They have one and only one goal; To sell you their information products.

It All Starts with The Learning Process

When I was first getting into online marketing, the resources were limited. It was pretty hard to find quality, solid information about internet marketing.

But, now this has changed. You can find tons and tons of information on the net for absolutely free. Like everything else, internet marketing has its learning process.

If you are a total newbie to internet marketing, you have to start reading blogs and forums to learn as much as you can.

Some people are self-motivated, and they can handle this themselves, but for some, it’s a harder process. So, if you feel, buying an affiliate marketing introduction ebook will speed up your process, go ahead and buy it. But with careful research, and study, you can find almost all the information online for free, just keep in mind.

When You Need Support

While learning internet marketing, you are usually alone. Sometimes, you can get frustrated. If you are much used to team work, I understand. Some of these affiliate marketing courses come with private forum accesses, and 24/7 support line, etc. It’s definitely not for me, but if it will help your learning process, you should buy it.

Stay Away Signs Before You Buy an Affiliate Marketing Course/Product/eBook

1. Quick & Easy Cash: Almost all of these courses will promise for quick and easy cash. If you are a newbie, there’s almost NO way of making quick and easy cash with affiliate marketing. This is also true with any type of internet marketing. Nobody owns hope, but everybody has hope. So, these self-claimed gurus will use the hope factor in every sales trick.
2. Almost No Work Required: If you want to be successful in affiliate marketing, you need to work harder than anybody around you. There is absolutely no way that you will start making money right away without any work. After you get pretty good experience, you can always get into JV projects, hire people and only manage things. This is a different story. But for newbies, you need to be ready to work 24/7. So, if any of these affiliate marketing courses promise millions of dollars without any work, run as fast as you can.
3. Outdated Information: Some dude gets lucky, makes a few thousand dollars with a trick, and when his trick starts dying, he writes an ebook. In affiliate marketing, trends are extremely important. Most of the affiliate courses out there will teach you outdated tricks and trends. For ultimate affiliate marketing success, you need to be on top of all the new trends before the everybody else, plus, you need to be the one who sets new trends.
4. Over and over again (scaling): Most of these gurus who sell these affiliate marketing courses will promise you that if you can start making money with their tricks, you can duplicate what you do, and do it over and over again. I love this slogan; “over and over again”. They never tell you, you need people helping you to do it over and over again. Every new website needs traffic, organic or not, you need to work extra for each new website. So, it’s not a magic trick to duplicate what you have already done successfully, but it is time consuming. So, it’s not easy to duplicate what you did over and over again.
5. Fake Testimonials: I’m tired of seeing fake testimonials. One of the new courses sales page had a video of an elderly guy (the guru says his student) talking about how he does an absurd amount of money by working a few minutes a day. FAKE, FAKE, FAKE. Stay away if you see testimonials like this one.

Just like I said, these gurus spend their valuable time to create these affiliate marketing courses. So, I have no problem with them charging for these courses. Probably, some of these gurus deserve more than what they charge. But, the affiliate marketing space is flooded with these courses, so if you want to buy one of these courses, be very careful with the “stay away signs”, and do your research before you buy.

I and many other successful affiliates have succeeded in affiliate marketing without the help of affiliate marketing information products. But, I also have good friends who are very successful in affiliate marketing and they have tried many affiliate marketing products, ebooks and membership sites when they were newbies.

So, it all depends on you. Can you succeed in affiliate marketing by working 24/7 without the help of these affiliate marketing courses or not? You are the only one who will make the right decision. Good luck.

I had the feeling that affiliate marketing would be the next big thing for me and for the internet advertising. Later, it was proven… Affiliate marketing was the next big thing for me.

Lately, I have been getting involved more in affiliate marketing industry, and trying to network more often with fellow affiliate marketers and networks. During these networking events, I have been meeting with many smart people who are new to the industry and just getting started with affiliate marketing business.

I am a huge believer in the benefits of networking and helping the newbies. I help people without asking for a return or favor. It might sound too naive, but this is a part of my character, and I’m glad I have this in my genes. As much as I would like to help all the newbies in affiliate marketing, my crazy busy schedule doesn’t let me to be flexible. Therefore, I have decided to share almost everything I know about affiliate marketing via my blog posts. I am also planning to add videos and screencasts.

Let’s start with the mindset I had when I was first starting affiliate marketing.

Affiliate Marketing Mindset

I was already making money online when I first got involved with affiliate marketing. Whether you are a newbie in the online game or not, you can be successful in affiliate marketing if you have the right mindset.

Most people fail making money online because they are lazy. Making money online is not rocket science. You have to start by setting your mindset. Please take a few minutes and read this blog post I’ve written some time ago about failing to make money online.

Get rid of all the excuses you’ve had before.

If you are total newbie in affiliate marketing, and still trying to understand the basic logic behind it, please spend a few minutes reading this blog post I’ve written about CPA Arbitrage. It’s the basic introduction to CPA marketing.

If somebody is trying to sell you an ebook promising a 4 hour work week, and millions of dollars made online, pass the opportunity and save some bucks.

If you are a newbie to making money online, there’s absolutely no short way to success without working hard, I mean really hard work. But if you work, and keep improving yourself, affiliate marketing is one of the most rewarding professions I have ever found.

You have been doing research and reading about affiliate marketing for a while, or maybe you have already started testing some campaigns, or you are a full time affiliate marketer making a great income. The question is; Do you have the right mindset to take it to the next level?

Ask this question to yourself, and come up with an honest answer.

When you read success stories of affiliate marketers, see the pictures and videos on their blogs, you only see the final outcome. You don’t see the countless sleepless nights we put into work, you don’t understand how much we sacrifice for ultimate success. If you have been in online game for a while, probably you know what I am talking about.

While doing your research about affiliate marketing, you will get a good feeling about it. You have to make sure affiliate marketing is right for you. This is extremely important, you have to be happy and love what you do to be able to become a huge success story.

Love What You Do

It doesn’t matter what you do for living. Unless you love what you do, you will NEVER become the most successful person in your profession. Affiliate marketing is no different than other professions.

You have to get excited, and love affiliate marketing, PERIOD. If you treat affiliate marketing as a regular job, you might still make lots of money, but in the long term, you will never be one of the most successful people in this field.

Life is short, do not spend your life working on something that doesn’t get you excited.

If you get so excited with affiliate marketing, and can’t even sleep sometimes working online, you are absolutely on the right track. You can become one of the most affiliate marketers in the world.

Let’s talk about how you can be more productive with setting up goals and self motivation.

Setup Goals

Setting up goals with affiliate marketing is more important than anything. Setup both short term and long term goals. Trust me, setting up goals will keep you targeted and motivated. If you have a next level dollar amount goal, write it down on a paper and hang it everywhere.

Setup meaningful goals, if you are a newbie and if your first goal is $10.000/Day net profit within 30 days, it’s not a goal, it’s a dream.

Short and long term goal examples for affiliate marketing:

• I will launch my first campaign 30 days from today
• I will increase my net profit per day from $100 to $150 within 3 weeks
• I will make $6000/month net profit after taxes within 6 months and quit my day job
• I will work at least 5 hours/day on affiliate marketing
• I will buy a Porsche within 24 months
• I will hire my first employee within 3 months
• etc. etc. etc.

Depending on your age, situation, financial condition, schedule, time etc. you can setup the right goals for yourself.

Setting up goals is the most important part of self motivation. And self motivation and hard work will bring financial freedom to your life.

Big Secret in Affiliate Marketing

Everybody is in search of the big secret for ultimate success in affiliate marketing.

I will one more time repeat what other successful affiliate marketers have been saying for years;

1. Read, research, be on top of every new trend in affiliate marketing world
2. Don’t wait, and test whatever you learn. You will fail many times, but testing is the route to success.
3. Back to #1

You can be a successful affiliate marketer by doing the things above. But to become the best in what you do, especially in marketing, you have to be different. You have to learn the big secret:

Thinking outside the box is the key and the big secret to become a successful affiliate marketer.

Do you want to follow the latest trends in affiliate marketing world, or do you want to be a trend setter?

This whole article might sound like a motivational speech, but you will understand the importance of setting up your mindset first when you get really involved with affiliate marketing.

How Do I Qualify to Give You Advice About Affiliate Marketing?

Simple answer is I don’t.

I am not a guru nor a super/uber affiliate. I’m just a guy who happens to make more money with affiliate marketing in a month than most of the people make in a year with a regular job. I work at least twice more than any regular person who works a 9 to 5 job.

This is my personal blog, I write what I want, and I share my personal experiences. So, take it or leave.

But if you are a hardworking person, who is also serious about making money online, I will be happy to help.

Spend some time on researching and reading about affiliate marketing and make sure this is right for you. I have written this post to let you know that setting your mindset is the most important part of the road to success in affiliate marketing. Take it as a motivational article and laugh about it, or take it serious and start thinking about it now.

I will be writing about affiliate marketing and online marketing more often. I will get into details, share some case studies, and will try to help you succeed in affiliate marketing business. Thanks for stopping by, and please leave your comments. I love reading your comments.

We have met Michael at Azoogle’s office around 3.30pm, then some other affiliates started coming in around 4pm. We have spent some time in Azoogle’s kitchen chatting with other affiliates and met some smart people.

Then, we had a chance to meet Epic Advertising’s CEO Don Mathis. He also had a surprise drawing for a free ticket to Azoogle’s Playboy Mansion Party. After the short meeting, we have headed out for happy hour in Manhattan. Azoogle was a great host and had bunch of food and drinks for the whole night.

Our final stop was a bar in the city where Epic Advertising COO Charles Nowaczek was playing with his band.

It was a great event. I met many affiliates and affiliate managers. Here are some names I still remember after several drinks;

Kyle Paterson, an affiliate from New Jersey, great guy, we have talked bunch of things through the night.

Jon Fisher of Wickedfire.com, met him first time, seemed like a very nice and quiet guy.

Kyle Antoian, we have met with Kyle last year during the Adtech but never had a chance to catch up. Kyle is a great guy, if you do email marketing, you should contact him for some exclusive offers. We will drink Turkish Coffee together soon (p.s. Kyle is the guy eating the wings on the video).

Tim Antoian, Kyle’s brother, who’s also an affiliate manager at AzoogleAds. It was nice meeting you Tim.

Brett Lofgren, Epic Advertising SVP, Global Ad Sales. It was great meeting and talking to you Brett.

Moufid Al-Joundi, Epic Advertising Director of Distribution Development. It was great meeting you Moufid.

Wes Downey from PublisherRev and his friend David. It was great talking to you guys.

And my affiliate manager, Michael Boghosian. We had fun, we should definitely get together soon. Thanks for having us yesterday.

I have also met several other great affiliates and affiliate managers.

AzoogleAds was the first affiliate company I’ve signed up with when I was starting affiliate marketing. They have been so nice and helpful since day 1. I’d highly recommend AzoogleAds to anybody who’s getting into affiliate marketing.

Some Pictures from the AzoogleAds Publisher Appreciation Day

My affiliate manager Michael Boghosian and me

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Michael Boghosian, my brother and business partner Volkan KIRTOK and myself

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Another great guy and affiliate, Kyle Paterson and myself

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Party Time

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Thanks to Azoogle for hosting a great event and having us.

Why are the early adopters, such as myself, get annoyed about increasing number of new users? The answer is simple; Twitter spam is increasing with a tremendous speed as well.

How many contacts (friends & biz contacts) do you follow in real life?

You can keep in touch with a limited number of people in real life. Depending on the person, it can be 10, 50, 100, maybe 500. It’s already a huge problem trying to follow the tweets of hundreds/thousands of people you follow on Twitter. But twitter spam I’m talking about is not the spam you receive from your followers, or from people you follow.

What is Twitter Spam and Why will it be the end of Twitter Phenomenon?

Here’s a great example of twitter spam. On April 12th, I have tweeted and said:

Lately, I was seeing so many spam looking ebook ads on twitter and I was simply complaining about it.

After my tweet, I have received 2 identical replies from 2 seperate twitter users (spammers) looked like this:

Above is an automated Twitter spam reply with an affiliate link inserted. This is big time annoying. Basically these spammers either use Twitter Search or use some paid twitter spammer tools and target specific keywords. Since my update had “affiliate marketing” keywords, they automatically reply me with their spam message and link.

This is called Twitter Spam, or Interruption Marketing.

But when I started doing little bit more research about the Keyword Based Twitter Reply Spam, I have found out that well known online marketer, best selling author, and a social media expert! Guy Kawasaki is one of the many Twitter Spammers who uses and endorses these spam tools.

In this video, famous online marketing guru Guy Kawasaki happily endorses and recommends a twitter spam tool called twitterhawk.

Way to go Mr. Kawasaki. You have a great reputation online and I know it will take quite some time to bash it, but you are on the right track.

If you would use a similar tool, it would be spam, but if the person who uses it is Guy Kawasaki, then people might call it “Keyword Based Direct Marketing on Twitter“. I love this made up term . Since it’s Guy Kawasaki spamming, many blog posts are already written to support him and similar twitter spam tools. Alltop is Guy Kawasaki’s twitter account mentioned in this post.

This tool recommended by Guy Kawasaki might be used with goodwill in rare situations, but it clearly shows that many online marketers including Guy Kawasaki are using this and similar tools only to spam twitter.

Guy Kawasaki is one of the smartest online marketers I’ve ever seen. I’m sure, sooner or later, he will accept what he is doing right now is spamming, but will it be too late?

Keyword Based Direct Marketing or Spam?

If you are not clear about the answer of this question, please read Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing, then you will understand why this type of interruption marketing will bring the end to Twitter phenomenon.

Let’s put it in a simpler form. A friend of mine and I are having a coffee at a Starbucks. We are making a conversation, and a guy at the next table is interrupting us on every single sentence. When I say “Should I drive my car or rent a car this weekend for the ski trip”, he jumps in to the conversation and says “You should rent a car at blah blah company”. I ignore him. Then my friend says “She’s planning to buy a new pair of jeans after our meeting”, and the guy again interrupts and says “XYZ Jeans running a sale on women’s jeans”. Now think about tens, hundreds, even thousands of people interrupting our conversation and adding their sales pitches without our permission.

How many interruptions will it take for us to walk about and find another coffee shop? Is this going to be the future of Twitter?

On this post, I have only talked about Twitter Keyword Based Search Reply Spam issue, but if you like to read a more through post about the twitter spam topic, here’s a great post called Ten reasons why Twitter will eventually wither and die…. You should also check out Stop Twitter Spam Blog if you are interested in the topic.

What is Twitter Doing to Prevent Search & Reply Spammers?

On august 2008, they said they were making progress on spam, then couple of weeks later they have announced that they are turning up heat on spam.

This message is to Evan Williams. I love twitter, and I hope it will have a great future. But if you want Twitter to survive and be a part of our daily lives in the future, you definitely need to focus on monetizing Twitter and stopping the spammers on Twitter. Good luck with these and I hope you will succeed.

Follow me on Twitter and send me a reply @AhmetKirtok about your thoughts on Twitter Spam (Please no spamming via reply ).

Many retailers don’t realize the value of returning customers. National retail chains already have the latest CRM software and staff for data mining and follow up. Some of them do a great job to increase the returning customer rate.

As a local retail store owner, you can benefit from email marketing in two ways. You can bring in new customers to your store and also increase your returning customer rate via email marketing. Let’s talk about both options with some examples.

Bring in New Customers to Your Store via Email Marketing

Email marketing is an affective way of bringing in new customers to your retail store, and it has the highest long term ROI between all online marketing methods. Think about all the fairs you attend, local events you sponsor, or participate. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to ask for the email addresses of attendants. You can also use several online marketing methods to create quality, permission based email list to promote your retail store.

Remember the basic rules of email marketing. Your email list needs to be permission based, therefore no spamming is allowed. If you start sending spam emails to prospective customers who didn’t sign up for your list, it will hurt your brand more than it will benefit it.

Make a list of all possible occasions you can start asking people for their email addresses. In local events, running small drawings would be a good idea to increase the number of emails you collect. Enter your email address, and enter a drawing to win a t-shirt type of thing.

The key here is, to contact these people asap. If you have collected email addresses on Sunday during a local event, don’t wait for monday, send them a thank you email on sunday evening right after the event. Constantly keep in touch with an informative, quality newsletter.

If you run a quality and niche newsletter, they will stop by your store sooner than later. Remember, do not keep promoting your store on every email, do a soft promotion. Focus on the niche and the local events.

Increase Returning Customer Rate via Email Marketing

Once the customers are in your store, it’s easier to collect their email addresses. Kindly ask at the register if they like to be added to the email list to receive coupons and special news. You will be surprised how many positive responses you will get.

If you are having difficulty collecting email addresses by simply asking, try being creative and run promotions in the store to collect more email addresses.

Offer a last minute coupon at the register if they enter the email list, or a local event invitation if they accept to be in the list. Be creative, and come up with smart promotions within your niche and local culture to increase the signup rate for your email list.

Once you have their emails, similar to the first part, you need contact them and keep in touch frequently. But again, remember, do not bother them, offer them lots of quality and free content. Remember to check out my email marketing guide for further email marketing techniques.

If done right, email marketing is the gem of all online marketing methods. A quality, followed, smart email newsletter is a long term, recurring investment with a great ROI rate. Do it right the first time, and enjoy the benefits of email marketing for your local retail store.

*This article is a part of 10 article series; “10 Ways to Increase Retail Store Sales via Online Marketing“. Remember to read the other articles in this guide to increase your store’s foot traffic and sales.

Understanding The CAN-SPAM Act & Obeying the Laws

Email marketing is a serious business, and the government also takes it serious. Without getting into any details, if you want to create a long term and successful email marketing business, you need to read and understand The CAN-SPAM Act and obey every single law. Otherwise, you will get into trouble.

If you are new to email marketing, it’s a good idea to take a look at basic email marketing terms before launching your first campaign.

Email Marketing Terms

• Single Opt-in (or a single opt-in subscription): Visitors and/or customers are invited to subscribe to your email list. When they enter their information and signup, no further step is needed. They start receiving emails automatically.
• Double Opt-in (or a confirmed opt-in subscription): Similar to single opt-in, your visitors/customers need to subscribe to your email list. After the subscription, they receive a confirmation email for this subscription. They need to click the link in this email and confirm their subscription. This prevents mistakes, and unwanted subscriptions and increases the conversion rate and quality of your email list.
• Opt-out (or unsubscribe): To opt-out or unsubscribe from an email list is to choose not to receive communications from the sender by requesting the removal of your email address from their list. By law, you are required to add an unsubscribe link in every email you send to your list.
• Spam or UCE (or Unsolicited Commercial Email): Email sent to a recipient who has not opted-in or given permission to the sender. Spam is unwanted and unexpected email from an unknown third party.
• Open Rate: Percentage of total opened/viewed email to the total sent email in a given campaign. 78 out of 100 people opened/viewed the email during the campaign, it means the campaign has 78% open rate.
• CTR (Click Through Rate): The percentage of recipients who have clicked on a link within the sent email.
• Conversion Rate: The percentage of recipients who have responded to the call-to-action in a given email marketing campaign or promotion. Higher the conversion rate, more successful the email campaign. Conversion might be sales, leads, registrations, phone calls, appointments, etc.

Even though there are many other terms used in email marketing, these are the basics you need to be comfortable with. So, make sure you understand these terms clearly before getting into more advanced topics in email marketing.

We have understood the importance of The CAN-SPAM Act, and the basic terms of email marketing. Now, we are ready to setup our email marketing strategy.

*This article is a part of my Email Marketing Guide Article Series.

There’s a huge list of great speakers at the event.

If you will be in New York City between April 20th and 24th, you shouldn’t miss this event. I will update my post with which sessions I’ll be attending after registering.

Leave a comment if you will be at the event. I will be happy to meet and network.

Do You Use Local Directories to Advertise your Retail Store?

Many local business owners don’t understand the importance of online local directories. If you are not advertising at these directories, you are sending a large number of potential customers to your competitors.

It’s never too late, get to work, and start promoting your store on these directories.

Why Should I Advertise at Local Directories

1. Most of them are free. Only investment is your time.
2. They bring direct traffic to your retail store and your website.
3. They are great at organic search results. If your store name is there, your listing will pop up in many related local searches on Google, Yahoo, etc.
4. They have customer reviews. Customer reviews are an important for potential customers to make decisions.
5. Before the internet era; Yellow Pages, after the internet era; Online Local Directories. You just need to be there.

List of Local Directories

*Alphabetic
http://www.citysearch.com/
http://www.citysquares.com/
http://www.genieknows.com/
http://www.getfave.com/
http://www.hotfrog.com/
http://www.insiderpages.com/
http://www.judysbook.com/
http://www.kudzu.com/
http://www.local.com/
http://www.matchpoint.com/
http://www.mojopages.com/
http://www.superpages.com/
http://www.truelocal.com/
http://www.tupalo.com/
http://www.tyloon.com/
http://www.uscity.net/
http://www.yellowbot.com/
http://www.yelp.com
http://www.zoominfo.com/

Above is a list of few popular local directories. After adding your store’s details to these directories, you should search for other local and niche directories related to your retail store.

Here’s a tip to search for local directories on search engines:

Try these searches:

“your keywords” + “location” + directory
“your keywords” + “location” + “add url”
“your keywords” + “location” + “submit site”

*This article is a part of 10 article series; “10 Ways to Get Foot Traffic to Your Retail Store via Online Marketing“. Remember to read the other articles in this guide to increase your store’s foot traffic and sales.

I am not going to write about the basics of blogging, if you like to start learning more about blogging before you start, here’s a great guide by ProBlogger Darren Rowse. If you are serious about blogging, spend some quality time and read every single post before you start blogging.

Choose Your Vertical and Become Authority

Choosing your vertical is the most important part. If you own a women’s fashion store, you can start a blog about Women’s Fashion. Or you can choose a location based vertical. Let’s say your store is in Dallas, Texas, and you can start a Dallas Shopping Blog. If you own a vitamin store, you can start a Vitamin & Health Blog, or if your store sells organic food, your blog can be Organic Food, Recipes, and Health.

Before you decide on your niche, take some time and search on Google for alternative blogs in the same niche. Create a list of what they do and what they don’t do right. Also make sure you will enjoy writing about the niche you pick. You don’t want to start a blog, write daily for a few weeks, and let it die. Blogging needs constant attention and time. Do you have enough time and courage to write frequently?

Another very important point to consider is your language. I’d highly recommend using a personal tone instead of a promotional tone. Try not to promote your store or yourself until you become authority in the field. Your first goal should be create a community of followers who’d love to read your new posts, subscribe to your RSS and email lists.

You did your research, you believe you can spend the time to write a blog, you have picked your niche and started blogging. Now let’s talk about the benefits you can get as a niche blogger and retail store owner.

Benefits of Blogging for Retail Store Owners

1. Authority & Recognition

Whatever your niche is, creating an authority blog in your vertical will start bringing direct and indirect benefits. When you blog, always keep in mind, you want to be the most trusted blogger in your niche.

2. More Foot Traffic to The Store

You are writing your blog as yourself, and sharing daily challenges in your store also. When you start forming that special bond between yourself and your audience, you will start getting more traffic to your retail store. Now, you have a place to tell your followers about the specials, promotions, deals and events you run at your retail store. Nowadays, people are spending less, and you should try every marketing method to drive more traffic to your retail store to survive.

3. Secondary Income

Other than bringing in more people to your retail store and increasing your reputation in the niche, you will start making extra money through your blog. There are many different ways to monetize a blog. If your content is quality and your blog traffic is increasing, you have a fair chance of getting sponsors to your blog, and create a secondary income through your blog.

Writing a quality blog, and becoming an authority in the niche is more important than ever. I have given only a few, simple examples of how you can benefit from a blog as a retail store owner. Depending on your niche, you can add many other options to this list.

Whether your retail store is doing well or not, start a blog and start creating your community of followers. A quality blog will bring value and reputation to your business and your name in the market.

*This article is a part of 10 article series; “10 Ways to Get Foot Traffic to Your Retail Store via Online Marketing“. Remember to read the other articles in this guide to increase your store’s foot traffic and sales.

When press release distribution has become a part of online marketing, these rules have changed. With the press release distribution sites, you need a good story and you need to know how to submit it to these sites.

I’m just a local retail store owner, how can I make national news with my story?

From a small story worth mentioning on a local paper to a true well crafted story worth mentioning on national media, you have a fair chance to get publicity if you know what you are doing.

Tips to Write a Great Press Release for Retailers

1. Research What Others are Doing

Before finding a topic for your press release, start researching on press release websites about what other popular press releases are. This will give you some great ideas to pick the right topic.

2. Write a Unique Story Instead of a Press Release

If you try to come up with an idea for a press release, you might get stuck. Instead, try to come up with a unique story. Unique and personal stories always get attention.

3. Which Local Stories Get Your Attention?

When you read the daily paper, or watch the news, what type of local stories get your attention immediately? Also ask the people around you for their favorite local story they have read or watched recently. This will help you to come up with some great ideas for your press release.

4. An Ordinary Story for You Might Be Interesting for Others

Let’s explain this with an example. You own a retail store in New York City. One of the popular TV Shows was shot in or in front of your store. This might be ordinary for you since many movies are shot in the city, but it might be a great press release if crafted and written well.

5. Hot Topics Always Sell

Nowadays, recession is the hot topic. People want to read stories related to recession. You might come up with a great story how you have doubled your store’s sales during the recession, or something similar.

6. Never Underestimate the Power of Local Media

A story you have might not be suitable for national media, but it might be a great fit for the local paper. You’d be surprised how much free retail traffic you might get with a successful local press release.

7. Blogs Rule, and It’s Easier to Get Featured On a Blog

Blogs, specifically niche blogs related to what you sell might be great places to share your press release. If they like the press release, they might come up with their own stories, and send you tons of targeted traffic.

8. Target Vertical Niches

Let’s say you own an auto parts store. Instead of writing a press release related to auto parts and your store specifically, come up with a story similar to “Smart Consumers Save 40% by Changing Their Cars’ Oil Themselves”. This idea just came to my mind, if you spend time, and be creative you can come up with many ideas focusing on vertical niches and interests instead of products you sell.

9. Expert Thoughts & Statistical Data

Media outlets absolutely LOVE press releases with statistical data, I mean any type of data. Let’s say you have a Vitamin Store, and you’ve received the monthly press release from FDC about Vitamin A usage. Come up with a story, add your expertise and write a press release like; “The Reason Americans Consumed 20% Less VitaminA This Year”. National media loves this type of press releases. Do not promote your store, instead add your title, name, and store name in the resource box.

Being creative and unique, you have come up with a great story for your press release, wrote it and got it edited by a professional writer. The next step is distributing it to the right contacts.

Tips to Distribute a Press Release

1. Use a PR Firm

If you have the budget, using a PR firm might the best option. Established PR firms have some tight connections with media outlets. Keep in mind that some PR firms have fee structure where you pay when your story is published.

2. Submit to Press Release Websites

This is your best option if you have a low or zero budget for the press release marketing. Most of the press release websites let you submit your story for free, and some of them charge to feature it.

3. Contact Media Outlets Yourself

What are you going to lose? You can start creating a list of media outlets, and contacting them one by one. Remember to contact the bloggers in your niche also. You can also use this option along with submitting to press release sites.

4. Use Social Media

Whether you submit your press release yourself or get help from a professional, remember to promote it through the social media channels. Remember, most of the journalists are using social media. Make a list, start following them (on Twitter, Friendfeed, etc.), you might get their attention.

Checkout some of these lists of free press release websites (1),(2)

I hope some of these tips will help you create a successful Press Release Marketing Campaign. Remember to share your success stories at the comments section.

*This article is a part of 10 article series; “10 Ways to Get Foot Traffic to Your Retail Store via Online Marketing“. Remember to read the other articles in this guide to increase your store’s foot traffic and sales.