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Your EnterQuest Bulletin - Issue 319
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| Thought for the week: "It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation." Herman Melville |
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In this week's issue:
Increase your sales with affiliate marketing
One of the cheapest and easiest ways of promoting your product or service on the Internet is through an affiliate marketing programme.
This means you pay other businesses a referral fee whenever a visitor from their website completes a transaction on yours. Your affiliates provide a link to your service and you pay them an agreed fee when a visitor either clicks through to your website, signs up to your newsletter, or buys your product online.
Plenty of big businesses have affiliate programmes - for example, Amazon - and more small businesses are using the strategy to increase traffic to, and sales from, their websites.
And here's some food for thought. According to digital marketing and e-commerce researchers Econsultancy, the UK affiliate marketing industry will be worth in excess of £4 billion in online sales this year.
Here are four practical tips to help you put an affiliate marketing strategy into action:
1) Choose the right software. There are plenty of programs available to help you manage your affiliate marketing - some are expensive, but the pricier options offer benefits such as real-time traffic statistic analysis. You can read reviews and prices at the Review Centre.
2) Pick quality affiliates. Your first port of call should be an affiliate network, where you can get more information about how different affiliate programmes work and find some potential partners.
3) Consider hiding your affiliate links. Your ad can appear less credible to online shoppers if it's obviously part of an affiliate programme. And affiliate links can be easy to spot as they often link directly back to you and have the word 'affiliate' included in the URL. See this practical tutorial to find out how you can remove the relevant code from view.
4) Give your affiliates a good deal. There are a number of options for paying commission to your affiliates - you can do this per click, per lead, or per sale. This useful guide explains how each payment system works.
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The UK Small Business Marketing Bible contains hundreds more tips and tactics for boosting your sales using proven marketing strategies that work no matter what product or service you sell. |
EnterQuest readers can also get their hands on a free copy of our sister publication, BETTER business magazine. Simply send us your name and address to enterquest@cobwebinfo.com, putting 'EQ magazine offer' in the subject box.
Each week we provide you with summaries of some popular or emerging business ideas in the UK and elsewhere around the world.
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Clothes-buying club for men. Aimed at male executives and entrepreneurs, the Trunk Club is a membership-run club which promises that its members never have to set foot in a retail store. Instead, each member is assigned a personal shopper who buys and delivers the clothes to a member's home or office.
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Computer upgrades without the scary price tags. The nivioCompanion is a little computer which operates fully via the Internet, remains up to date and has no installation or configuration tasks. Owners rent or buy the software they want to access, at cheaper rates than it would cost when buying a full package. The nivioCompanion is priced at £99 for the companion, mouse and keyboard.
Regularly improving your vocabulary is not just about learning a new word and its meaning. It will improve your general knowledge and make you feel and act smarter in all sorts of personal and business situations.
Do you know the meaning of the word 'impasse'?
a) flawed, impaired
b) accusation, indictment
c) intense, fervent
d) stalemate, standstill
Answer at the end of the Bulletin.
The following topical business issues have been recently reported in the media. Did your radar pick them up?
1) Which of the following governments has been the first to introduce a clause in public sector contracts which means they must pay their small suppliers within 30 days?
a) the UK Government
b) the Welsh Assembly Government
c) the Northern Ireland Executive
d) the Scottish Government
2) Research by design software firm Serif has revealed that over half of respondents are designing some or all of their marketing materials in-house. However, over a quarter are still concerned about which particular issue?
a) the cost of design software
b) their lack of design skills
c) a lack of freelancers that can be used for outsourcing work
d) the quality of their finished products
3) HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) is warning people of a spate of fraudulent e-mails that look like genuine HMRC e-mails but are fake. What fake instruction do the e-mails dupe the reader about?
a) recipients need to resend their self-assessment tax returns
b) recipients are to receive a tax rebate
c) recipients must re-send their bank details due to a data glitch
d) recipients are to be investigated
Answers at the end of the Bulletin.
Tips for improving online sales conversion rates
These tips will help you to brush up on site design techniques which will help boost conversion rates. They're ideal if you're looking to build upon existing online sales knowledge and want to learn simple but effective design techniques that can help you.
How to write a design brief
This guide is aimed at small businesses, sole traders and anyone who has to commission a design brief. It covers basics such as what to include, how to make it effective and how design briefs are used by design teams and businesses. There's also a handy guide to the jargon used in briefs.
Energy efficiency tips for businesses
These short handy tips from Opus Energy provide businesses in key sectors such as retail, healthcare and hospitality with ways in which to reduce their energy bills. Tips for reducing energy consumed through heating, lighting, air conditioning and electrical equipment are featured.
When your customer goes bust
The Institute of Credit Management and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) have jointly devised this leaflet aimed at small businesses. It describes different types of insolvency affecting bust businesses and their creditors, and contains five top tips for remaining in the know if you think your customers have gone kaput.
Win an IT security audit worth over £500
Most people are aware of the threat from viruses and other malware resulting from Internet usage, and the risks to the security of our electronic data.
IT solutions firm axon-IT has teamed up with EnterQuest to offer one reader the chance to win a remote online security audit package worth £550.
Your computer system and its data are at threat if you do not take steps to protect them. Would you leave the front door to your house open or unlocked whilst you were out for the day? Of course not, but this simple analogy holds true to computers and systems that are at risk if you 'leave the door wide open'.
Axon-IT is accredited as a Microsoft Gold Partner with a specialisation in security, covering all aspects of IT risk. For your chance to win the security audit, simply answer the following question:
Q: Who is the Scottish Government's First Minister?
a) Alex Salmond
b) Nicola Sturgeon
Email your answer, together with your name, address and daytime phone number, using 'axon-IT competition' as the subject line, to enterquest@cobwebinfo.com.
All entries must be received by 30 June. Full competition rules are available on request.
Innocent's rise from festival start up to a firm that sells two million bottles of its produce every week is documented in this book about the company. It's packed with tips from its founders on what worked for them, what didn't, and what they learned from their mistakes. Check out:
Just one word answer
The answer is d).
Impasse means a stalemate or standstill.
The discussions betweeen the entrepreneur and investor reached an impasse as neither side was prepared to give up any more of their stake in the business. |
How's your business radar? The answers
1) The answer is d) - The Scottish Government has introduced a 30-day payment clause in public sector contracts to help small firms delivering the contracts receive their pay on time. First Minister Alex Salmond introduced the details of the clause during a speech earlier this week.
2) The answer is b) - Although more than half of respondents said they were taking on marketing tasks themselves, some 28% of all respondents said they were concerned about their lack of design skills.
3) The answer is b) - The e-mails claim that the recipients are to receive tax rebates from HMRC. The tax office has issued a statement about the e-mails and has tips on its website detailing how to identify a fake from a genuine e-mail. |
Visit www.enterprisequest.com to access all back issues of the EnterQuest bulletin. If you have any feedback or suggestions for us to make this service more relevant please e-mail your comments to enterquest@cobwebinfo.com.
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Good luck
The EnterQuest Team
This information is meant as a starting point only. Whilst all reasonable efforts have been made, the publisher makes no warranties that the information is accurate and up-to-date and will not be responsible for any errors or omissions in the information nor any consequences of any errors or omissions. Professional advice should be sought where appropriate. |
