Article Marketing and Direct Mail Advertising can Build Your Affiliate Business | Article Marketing

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There's more to affiliate marketing then placing text ads and banners on your websites. To build your business you have to involve yourself in diverse marketing functions. Successful affiliates use a combination of marketing activities to increase revenues. Article marketing and direct mail advertising are two activities that can be part of your affiliate-marketing arsenal.

How are these two marketing tools alike? They are alike in that both of them allow for targeting of specialty or niche markets. Both allow you to focus your message to a niche in their language so-to-speak. You talk to them with a focus on answering their questions. This message is not so general that it offers them no new information concerning a topic they find interesting.

Another characteristic that article marketing shares with direct mail advertising is that you can get widespread distribution with both. With article marketing, the key is to sign up with a good article distribution service. You want one that deals with an extensive list of niche publishers. Your goal is to get as many of your web links out on the Internet.

With direct mail advertising, you work to obtain an extensive mailing list of contacts. You then send your direct e-mail campaigns or hard copy direct mail packages to this list. The bigger your list, the wider distribution you get for your sales message. Therefore, both marketing options allow you to get information about your affiliate products to many people.

How does article marketing differ from direct mail advertising? With article marketing, your focused message will be more generic. You will not blatantly promote your product by name in an article intended for wide distribution. If you do, you face rejection of your content by publishers.

Direct mail content that you write allows you the freedom to give a full-blown sales presentation. In fact, that's the purpose behind direct mail advertising; you are "advertising" your products. Direct mail advertising says, "Here's what I have and these are the benefits and this is why you should buy it."

Article submissions to article distribution services are for giving useful information to interested readers. You warm them up to your sales presentations with quality article content. You sell them later, via your direct mail packages with those personalized sales letters.

Another way that article marketing differs from direct mail advertising is length of exposure. With direct mail, you send out your mailings to your targeted list. It's a one-time deal for that particular direct mail advertising campaign. Those who receive your direct mail sales letter, or package, read it and choose whether to respond or not respond. They keep your direct mail because they're interested, or put it in recycling because they are not. That's the extent of your direct mail advertising campaign.

With article marketing, you send your article writing to that article distribution service. The good ones make sure your articles receive widespread distribution, sending them out to numerous publishers. Publishers publish your content. This may be niche publishers related to your affiliate product, or article directories. Your article writing efforts can remain on their sites indefinitely, if not for good. Your article content keeps working for you, long after you engaged in article promotion campaigns.

You can use article marketing and direct mail adverting together to build your affiliate business. You can write many articles and get them published, with links back to your site, of course. You then have waiting on your website an opt-in program whereby you offer a newsletter, an e-book, or a promotional product sample to those who sign up. This sign-up will include them giving you their mailing address. This is how you build your mailing list.

You then send out your direct mail advertising package to this list. They already have an interest in your affiliate product because they voluntarily signed up on your website. They freely gave their contact information and now you can send them what you promised. You can then follow up with that sales presentation through direct mail advertising.

Take advantage of different marketing options to build your affiliate business. Use article marketing to get widespread exposure for your website links. Let those links drive people to your opt-in page where you acquire a niche market list of names. Send those well-worded direct mail packages to that list. Then watch your affiliate income grow.

About the Author

Brad McGovern is the Marketing Manager at Article Marketer, and offers advice and news of note to article marketers. Watch for more from Brad in the coming days!

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