Source: ENT

Tags: entrepreneur,, small, business,, customers

Some of you are probably reading this title and thinking to yourselves, wth? Well, the title is pretty clear cut, it’s how you go about doing this that makes the difference.

I tried this for a week in order to battle the obscene number of telemarketers that call my wife and I (especially around dinner time, i hate this) all the time without remorse. So the thought hit me when I was on the phone with a telemarketer attempting to be nice because this woman clearly was new at it and sounded as if she had a bad day (Idea, if you are a telemarketer use the sympathy card on some of your calls, people are very sympathetic and tend to want to help) so i figured I’ll let her get it out and then just hang up.

My Experiment

I used one of our online shops as the advertisement and received a decent response. In fact, sales for that week increased by 20% on the fly. What product you ask? Shame on you we all have to have or secrets. I figured most telemarketers are probably calling from the comfort of their home with a computer right in front of them or are possibly calling from their uncomfortable cubicle thinking about going to their comfortable home with a computer in front of them.

Are you getting where i’m going with this?

Example:

If you are getting calls from the ‘Fraternal Order of Police‘ everyday non-stop, then your advertising message needs to be geared towards law enforcers, products that are of use to an officer or donuts (it’s all in fun here, no hurt feelings I have family in the CIA and FBI). Not all officers are made the same so think about it and get creative.

Maybe quiz the officers that call your home before implementing the ‘advertising message.’

The Set Up

1. Take your current answering machine message or tape and either replace it with a new tape or new message (if your phone allows you to save multiple messages then save the original) while keeping the original on hand for convenience.

2. Record your marketing message (this is the killer part… haha…)

* Record your marketing message intro: ‘This is a paid advertisement’

* Record your marketing message: ‘Don’t forget go enter the free Foof Chair giveaway at TheBeefJerkyBlog.com’

* Very short, simple and easy to understand

* Repeat the domain name twice or three times (this helps with memorizing things) if repeated more than once then the chance of your ‘victim’ memorizing the domain and message are pretty high.

3. Next go into your regular home message: ‘Hello you have reached the Baker’s Dozen, please leave a message after the beep’

Telemarketers will probably never leave a message, so you should be ok there.

Now let’s say you really want to play with the telemarketers:

1. Answer the phone

2. Just as they begin to speak, play your advertisement message over the phone until they hangup.

and there you go… You have just killed two birds with one stone.

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Extra Information

10 Offline Ways to Promote Your Blog Site

a blog post by the guys at iBlogMoney.com

Affiliate marketing looks pretty simple from most prospectives, but in reality it is a little trickier than most people think. One of the main reasons why affiliate marketers seem to fail at making money online in Affiliate marketing is mainly due to the lack of dedication and work. Affiliate marketing should be treated like any other business or entrepreneurial endeavor. It takes work and dedication to succeed in just about any business.

One of the most common reasons for failure can be attributed to the lack of knowledge about promoting. Affiliate marketing depends on getting a lot of targeted traffic to your sites ( I say sites because in most cases just one site won’t cut it). Once the traffic is generated, then you can hope to achieve a substantial click through and sales conversion. Many new affiliates are not aware of the amount of work that goes into getting targeted traffic, in some cases you would think that PPC is the only means of generating traffic, then you have a costly idea of how a fool with deep pockets thinks.

The other mistake is not to have your own website. This prevents you from doing your own website promotions and does not allow you to capture the email addresses of your visitors. When you do this you will only be building your sponsor’s business and not your own. You will also be decreasing your sales conversions.

Not knowing how to advertise your site, where to advertise, and what you should be doing in order to direct traffic to your site is also another costly mistake. I would suggest that you do your research before treading these waters. Advertising should be aimed towards your targeted niche and not in unrelated publications or on sites that don’t come close to relating to your niche. In some cases, you will find gold in unfamiliar waters, like discovering that your niche products, services and offers indirectly relate to a site that has an untapped market of unpopular keywords and so on.

Selling, not pre selling:
Too many affiliates try to sell their affiliate products instead of getting the click through. If you try to sell to your visitors and then send them through to your sponsor’s sales page they are in effect being double sold and will not be very inclined to buy. Possibly… you never know until you try.

If you pre sell to your visitors and warm them for the sale they will be ready for your sponsor’s sales page and be inclined to buy. Maybe… This can increase your sales conversions and your commissions.

For more on Affiliate Marketing visit iBlogMoney.com

Start your affiliate business off on the right foot:

However, with buyers and shoppers (there is a difference) starting to make way out to the shopping malls and online stores and with the holidays around the corner; Easter, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day… and so on not to forget Birthdays… here are some gadget gift ideas that may raise your value a few notches.

1.       Kodak Zi6 HD Pocket Camcorder - priced at $180 (Buy for less). Flip Mino (Low Price Check) is a decent alternative.

2.       Garmin nuvi - GPS unit sells between $250 - $500 (Check for lower prices). Tom Tom (Low Price Check) is a great alternative.

3.       SanDisk Sansa Fuze - Sells for $80 (Buy for less). Decent price, but I would rather pay the difference for an iPod Touch.

4.       Bamboo Mouse & Keyboard (price check) (MSI Computer) - Made of, you guessed it, bamboo, the eco-friendly and quality minded tech geek will enjoy this one. Sells for about $20 & $40

5.       Mini Projector (Optoma Pico) - priced at $400 by Optoma Technology can take the simplest ‘Gotta Have-it’ gadgets and make them into something fun for everyone… Literally.

6.       Sylvania Meso Netbook (Good Alternatives)- Priced at around $369 with a 9″ screen display, webcam, Bluetooth, 80GB of hard drive space, not to mention that it lacks the chunkiness of most laptops. However, I myself prefer the new eco-friendly 17″ Apple Macbook Pro.

7.       VholdR Wearable Video Camera - priced at around $350 (buy for less), wear wherever you go, as long as a helmet is involved in order to easily attach the device. Looks like more and more camera people may find themselves out of work, damn technology.

8.       Smart Phones - There are so many Smart Phones out now that I can’t even say that I highly recommend one. Like I said earlier, I own an iPhone and Apple pissed on me twice already.

a.        Released a ‘so-called’ better version - The 3G iPhone - WTH?

b.      Lowered the price to a crappy $199 and now sell it at Walmart - huh?

I have been playing with the idea of getting my hands on the Blackberry Storm, something about it just says sexy… and I just don’t care for Cingular… oh, AT&T…

So there you go, grab’em, get’em and enjoy’em… But remember… once you get your hands on them and become fluent with using the gadget something better will most likely always come out, so if you wait you may be able to get it for a steal…