(In case you hadn’t realized, at the start of the New Year, we started over at 1 . 
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Affiliate marketing is, arguably, not appropriate for every business.
Say you sell bathroom fixtures offline and you’re using the internet to advertise to locals, or to go national with a wholesale division. There might not be enough interest, or enough profit, to get an affiliate army to help you.
However, you can get referrals. Every single successful client contact you’ve made can result in another connection of some kind. Imagine if every client referred you to five clients, and of those only one bought on the spot.
That’s twice the clients as you started with, already.
So if you don’t see affiliates as appropriate when you read about how affiliates can help your business grow, think about how you can re-engineer those tips to work with referrals. Instead of profits as a lure, think discounts or finders fees.
Instead of figuring out how to get them – brainstorm way to get them to talk.
A good site for researching this topic is Duct Tape Marketing. John constantly has new information about getting referrals for business, as well as a whole referral marketing archive. All free!
Referrals aren’t just for offline promotion, or for getting sales either. A past or current client can also:
- Write a blog post about you.
- Submit a link from your site to Social News sites like Digg, Propeller or Stumble Upon
- Broker a joint venture between another contact of theirs and you
- Share resources for local or internet advertising (Think pizza delivery and DVD rentals.)
- Submit a glowing, multimedia testimonial
Your current clients are happy or you probably wouldn’t have them still. Happy clients like to help. Don’t you? So ask them. Next time, we’ll talk about affiliates, and where to find them pre-assembled.
