Reseller Roundup Blog

Exercise 12 - New Year, New Plan

2009-12-22T22:08:00Z

If you've been reading along since last January, you should have a pretty good idea of what kind of customer you're aiming at, as well as a record of your 2009 advertising efforts. Now it's time to go back and look at what worked, and what didn't.

To review our planning process over the last year:

Exercise 1	Reviewed your existing advertising, sifting through the fruitless efforts to find best practices.
Exercise 2	Identified your ideal customer and hatched a plan to increase their numbers.
Exercise 3	Picked the products to promote this year based on customer buying habits and commissions.
Exercise 4	Started or grew your list of opt-in email addresses for use in sending out promotional emails.
Exercise 5	Chose one or two Social Networking strategies to try with your audience.
Exercise 6	Revisited the advertising plan you set in January, losing the duds and adding a few new ones.
Exercise 7	Evaluated, tested and adjusted product pricing for maximum profit.
Exercise 8	Learned free Search Engine Optimization strategies to attract more site visitors.
Exercise 9	Set up a six-month plan to keep in touch using your free Express Email Marketing® plan.
Exercise 10	Reviewed your product mix, checking for new commission leaders.
Exercise 11	Calculated Return on Investment (ROI) for each advertising method.

Now it's time to take what you learned and develop your marketing plan for 2010, including deadlines, goals and costs. If you didn't get a chance to try some of our suggestions in 2009, start with Exercise 1 in January. These monthly exercises can be repeated every year and your plan refined as your business grows. Congratulations on the progress you've made this year, and Happy Selling in 2010!

Commission Payment Options - An Overview

2009-11-10T21:56:00Z

We get a number of questions about the payment options available for you to receive your commission earnings. Here’s a breakdown from our Support team with answers to common questions. We will break this down in 2 segments, Domestic (U.S.) Resellers and International Resellers.

Note: The terms of the reseller agreement were updated on November 24, 2009 and these rules will apply beginning with Reseller Commission payments for November 2009 (Paid in December) or 4th Quarter 2009 (Paid in December) for International Resellers being paid by check.

Domestic (U.S.) Resellers:

Check – To receive a check payment for your reseller commissions we will need you to enter your Name, Address, City, State, Zip and Phone number into your payee account. Checks are mailed at the end of the month, usually the last business day. There is a $100 minimum earning required before a check will be issued. There is also a $25 check fee per check; new resellers are exempt from this fee for their first three months as a reseller. This fee is non-refundable if a check is mailed to you even if you do not cash the check or it is returned to us by the Post Office. Checks are sent via standard US Mail and we do not offer any priority shipping.

ACH/Direct Deposit – To have your commissions directly deposited to your bank account, choose this option. We will need the name on the account, ABA Routing Number and Account Number. We are only able to make ACH (Automated Clearing House) payments to standard personal or business savings or checking accounts. We cannot deposit to money market accounts, IRA or 401(k) accounts, etc.

ACH payments are sent on the 25th of the month, or adjusted to the day before if the 25th falls on a Saturday or Holiday, or the day after if the 25th falls on a Sunday. There is a $50 minimum earning required to receive payment and there is no fee as with checks. Since we do have to validate your banking account info, we do pre-note each account when it is first setup. This will delay your payments from being processed approximately 4-6 weeks. This is only required at initial setup or when you update your bank account info so please keep this in mind when you need to make changes.

Paypal® – We have just recently added this option. All that is required is your Paypal email address. We currently make Paypal payments on the last business day of the month. There is no fee to receive your commissions via Paypal and there is a $25 minimum earning required prior to payment being made. PayPal payments are sent on the 25th of the month, or adjusted to the day before if the 25th falls on a Saturday or Holiday, or the day after if the 25th falls on a Sunday.

Good As Gold – We also just recently added this option. Good As Gold is like a debit account for you to use, that is tied to your Go Daddy® or Wild West Domains® account. There is a $5 minimum for earning required prior to payment being made. Good As Gold payments are deposited on the 25th of the month, or adjusted to the day before if the 25th falls on a Saturday or Holiday, or the day after if the 25th falls on a Sunday.

You may then use those funds for purchases through that account. If you purchased your Reseller account through Go Daddy for example, you would be able to use these funds on other Go Daddy purchases or even just for renewal of your reseller plan. There is no fee associated with the deposit of commissions into Good As Gold accounts.

You will also get a 2% discount on purchases when you use your Good As Gold account for payment. To withdraw funds from your Good As Gold account there is a $20 fee to issue the check and only the full amount will be withdrawn.

International Resellers (non-U.S.)

Check - To receive a check payment for your reseller commissions we will need you to enter your Name, Address, City, State/Province, Postal Code, Country and Phone number into your payee account. Checks are sent on a quarterly schedule, as listed below. There is a $100 minimum earning required before a check will be issued. There is no check fee per check sent. Checks are sent via standard US Mail and we do not offer any priority shipping.

Checks to International Resellers are sent every quarter on the following dates:

January 31st, for commission earned October 1st to December 31st.
April 30th, for commission earned January 1st to March 31st.
July 31st, for commission earned April 1st to June 30th.
October 31st, for commission earned July 1st to September 30th.

Paypal – We have just recently added this option. All that is required is your Paypal email address. We currently make Paypal payments on the last business day of the month. There is no fee to receive your commissions via Paypal and there is a $25 minimum earning required prior to payment being made. PayPal payments are sent on the 25th of the month, or adjusted to the day before if the 25th falls on a Saturday or Holiday, or the day after if the 25th falls on a Sunday.

Good As Gold – We also just recently added this option. Good As Gold is like a debit account for you to use, that is tied to your Go Daddy or Wild West Domains account. There is a $5 minimum for earning required prior to payment being made. Good As Gold payments are deposited on the 25th of the month, or adjusted to the day before if the 25th falls on a Saturday or Holiday, or the day after if the 25th falls on a Sunday.

Important Notes:

The only way for International resellers to be paid monthly is by choosing Paypal or Good As Gold.
If the minimum amount of commission earned is not reached in a particular month, the balance will roll over and continue to do so until the total reaches the minimum amount. Once thresholds are met, payment will be sent for all commission owed.
PPC commission does not count towards the minimum amount required for payment to be sent.
The terms of the reseller agreement were updated on November 24, 2009 and these rules will apply beginning with Reseller Commission payments for November 2009 (Paid in December) or 4th Quarter 2009 (Paid in December) for International Resellers being paid by check.

Exercise 11 - Year-to-date Cost Benefit Analysis

2009-11-10T21:48:00Z

Back in January, we helped you create an advertising strategy for 2009. Now comes the MOMENT OF TRUTH, when we look at how each effort affected your business this year. Follow this three-step strategy to find out how you did:

Step 1. Add up the costs.

For each of your advertising efforts this year, make a list of "hard" costs – the fees you paid for Pay-Per-Click advertising as well as the cost of time you spent, say, passing out business cards at networking events.

Step 2. Calculate the benefits.

If you used Web-based solutions (promotional emails, banner ads, etc) and tied each effort to a marketing source code, it should be easy to come up with a total dollar figure for each effort. But that's not the only benefit to consider – don't forget the branding, goodwill and name recognition that comes from many advertising efforts. How many business cards did you pass out? And what about your email list – did you add legitimate opt-in addresses this year? Those are worth their weight in gold.

Step 3. Compare the benefits to costs..

When dollars and cents are involved, you can do a direct analysis by dividing benefit by cost. And if you can determine an hourly cost for your time, you can extend that model to include the hours spent writing and refining Pay-Per-Click ads, building a custom storefront, editing and mailing an email newsletter and other similar activities.

Calculations get trickier when you try to measure intangibles like brand awareness or goodwill. If you kept close track of everyone you swapped business cards with, and can match the networking events you attended to specific customer accounts, you can calculate the Acquisition Cost for each customer. Now you have an idea of whether your efforts made your business money. But wait — don't forget that that relationship got you a referral for three more customers. . .

Start planning for the next year.

Once you've analyzed each of your advertising methods, you'll have a pretty good idea of what's working and what's not. Decide if the unsuccessful efforts are failing outright, or if they might pay off with more time or with better measurement.

Expand whatever's working, discontinue what's not. Need new ideas? Refer back to Exercise 1 and pick another option or two to try in the new year. By this time next year, you'll have this down to a science.

Exercise 10 - Revisit Your Product Mix

2009-10-23T20:38:00Z

If you were with us last March, this month's exercise will be a breeze. But audience demographics change over time. So even if you reviewed your offerings against your audience back in March, it'll pay to do it again. By periodically checking your product offerings, you can minimize any missteps quickly, adjusting your product offerings before it cuts into your bottom line.

Pull the numbers

Start by using the Product Sales Report and Microsoft® Excel® to determine which products have sold best for you over time. You'll find the Product Sales Report under the "My Reports" menu in the Reseller Control Center. You'll want to look at a minimum of three months worth of data, to get a feel for month-to-month trends.

First, run your report using the Order Type filter to isolate 'New Purchases'. Export this data to your spreadsheet program, and sort highest to lowest UNITS for each month. This tells you what your top products are by volume

Next, sort highest to lowest on COMMISSION to find out which products are bringing you the most income. It might be useful to highlight your top five, so you can find them at a glance. Now answer the following:

What are your top five products for volume as new purchases?
What are your top five products for commission as new purchases?
How much cross-over is there between your top five for volume and commission?
Are your top five always the same or do you see spikes and variations?

Hold on to that data. Now do the same exercise with the Product Sales Report, only this time set the Order Type filter to 'Renewals'. Again, compare your monthly data and answer the four questions:

What are your top five products for volume as new purchases?
What are your top five products for commission as new purchases?
How much cross-over is there between your top five for volume and commission?
Are your top five always the same or do you see spikes and variations?

Compare new sales to renewals

If your top five products for new sales and renewals match pretty closely, these are the products you should emphasize in your advertising. To increase income, send an email promoting natural add-on products (e.g. If one of your top five is hosting, promote Search Engine Visibility^TM.

If renewals are drastically lower than new sales for your top five, send out a customer survey via Express Email Marketing® asking why they are not renewing with you. Then adjust your strategy accordingly. Remember, renewals are the #1 means of building income!

If your top five or 10 products for new purchases are varied AND your renewal numbers are growing steadily, you've found the sweet spot! This means your customers are renewing existing products AND adding new ones.

Note to self:
Now that you've created a tracking system for your product mix, take a few minutes every month to run Product Sales reports and compare your month-to-month trends. Checking this regularly will ensure you're aware of any shifts in your product mix, so you can either take advantage of the shifts or make an effort to correct them, as appropriate.

Exercise 9 - Shape up your email strategy

2009-09-21T22:33:00Z

Email is one of the easiest and least expensive ways to generate additional income from existing customers. Regular emails remind your customers that you’re out there, ready to meet their needs as they arise. This month, we lead you step-by-step through the process of reviewing your current email strategy and creating a fool-proof plan for the next six months.

First things first
Any evaluation of email strategy has to start with your mailing list. After all, you could be sending out the best-looking and most relevant emails with the greatest offers ever, but if you’re sending them to a bad list, the effort is wasted.

So the first thing you should do is look at your list. Did it grow this year? Did it shrink? Did you lose names through un-subscriptions or bounces? Go over your email list with a fine-tooth comb, deleting outdated or undeliverable addresses and adding any new ones you’ve gathered through approved opt-in processes. To learn more about how to get customers to sign up for your emails, click here.

Next, check Campaign Performance
The next thing to look at is how individual emails performed. If you’re using your free Express Email Marketing® account or another solution to manage your email campaigns, you should be able to get the open and click-through rates (ie: the number of people who clicked through to your Web site) for every email you’ve sent. Depending on your audience, an open rate of 3% - 25% is great. Click-through depends on the strength of your offer and will be a percentage of overall open rate.

When you open Express Email Marketing, the stats for your latest emails will be right in front of you in the “Sent Campaigns” dashboard. To review all of your campaigns, choose “Response Analyzer” and “Campaign Response” from the left side menu – you can pick a specific email or “Select All” to see the results of all of your past emails.

To calculate your Open Rate, divide the number “Opened” by the number shown under “Mailings.” Your click-through rate should omit any bounced emails, so figure it as ”Clicked” divided by “Opened.” Now use these measures to determine which emails are interesting enough for your customers to open and which ones actually drive them to your site. You may be surprised by the results.

Review frequency
Another factor worth evaluating is how often you’ve sent emails in the last year. Once every two weeks. . .once every six months? Did your open rates increase or decrease based on the length of time between emails? What about your unsubscribe rates – if they’re up, it might mean you’re mailing too often.

Opinions on how often to email customers vary widely. But ask anyone: Finding that sweet spot of “just often enough” is worth its weight in gold. How often is too often?

Identify your best-sellers
The Holy Grail of email marketing is effectiveness so look at what worked this year. Which emails/offers brought in the most revenue? Mark those for reuse. Which emails got little or no response? Mark those to discontinue for now.

If you used Marketing Source Codes to track revenue generated by individual email offers, look at:

Subject lines – Which ones got opened most often
Offers – Which ones generated the most revenue
Tone of your text – Does serious work better than humor?

Don’t forget to check the effectiveness of any marketing emails you opted in to have us send to your customers. Steal any particularly good pieces (subject lines, offers, tone) and incorporate them into your emails going forward.

The next 6 months
Now for the fun part. Sketch out a plan for the next 6 months that includes the following:

How often you’ll email customers;
Two actions you’ll take to enlarge your email list; Grow your email list
What you’ll test -- frequency, offers, subject lines (remember to give any emails you test against each other different source codes so you can compare results);
How often you’ll review results.

Once you’ve done this, put deadlines on your calendar, allowing a week to edit and prepare each email before sending it. Also be sure to schedule a day every two months to review your results and refine your email plan.

All it takes is time, all it makes is money.

Exercise 8 - Increase Traffic with Organic Search Optimization

2009-08-24T23:24:00Z

There are many ways to attract visitors to your site, but only one that’s free: Organic search listings. Organic search results are not like paid search results, whereby you pay Google® or another search engine to display your ad on the search results pages for a particular keyword.

Rather, organic search results are based (among other things) on the content of your site and how closely that content seems to match the searcher’s keywords. Because they’re not paid for, consumers tend to trust organic search results, viewing these listings first before reading paid ads.

Getting listed the old-fashioned way

Most search engines display 10 organic listings per page (in addition to their paid listings), and few people will look beyond the second or third page. Obviously, you’ll want your site to appear as close to the top of the list as possible. Ideally, you’re site should make it into the top 30.

Much of the real search action happens behind the scenes, where search engine “spiders” continuously “crawl” the Internet. Unless you submit your site directly to the search engines, it can take months for the spiders to find your site on their own. But once they do, they scan its contents and catalog your URL for future reference (i.e.: the next time a searcher types in a keyword that matches your content).

Create custom Web pages

Because your storefront features the same content as all other Wild West resellers, it has built-in codes that prevent search engine spiders from crawling it. If spiders were allowed to index Wild West sites, the search engines would notice the content is identical and then punish all resellers by excluding them entirely from search results.

So to get your reseller store included in search listings, you’ll need to create some new Web pages with the point-and-click Web site builder included free with your account. Or if you prefer to create your own page layouts, you may use the Deluxe hosting account that came free with your reseller account instead.

By creating Web pages with original text and images and linking them to your storefront, you can get your reseller site noticed by search engine spiders. And on the Internet, getting noticed is everything.

Start with content

If you haven’t already done so, now would be a perfect time to align your store with a niche market.

Let’s say you have professional experience with the law or childcare or nursing. Brand your reseller business as “the lawyer’s eResource” (or childcare professional’s or nurse’s, etc). Then create five Web pages that show how a lawyer/childcare provider/nurse can use your products to make their lives easier, more rewarding or more lucrative.

Here are some S.E.O. tips to keep in mind as you write text and choose images for your custom Web pages:

Keywords. Find out the top five keywords for your reseller store and work them into the text – as well as into the title tags, alt tags and meta tags – on each custom page.
Links. Include links on each custom Web page to other pages in your site (including your reseller store). WebSite Tonight makes this very easy.
Site map. A site map enables search engines to quickly index your Web pages by putting links to every page in one spot.

Once you’ve created your pages, you’ll need to link them to your reseller store. The new pages will “wrap around” your turnkey storefront to give it a unique personality.

WebSite Tonight makes it really easy to link your new page to any product page in your reseller site – just write a call-to-action such as “SHOP NOW,” then highlight it and click the insert link icon in the Page Designer toolbox (it’s the little globe with the chain link). Insert the html string displayed in the browser bar of the page you’d like the page to link to and you’re done.

Watch your search listings improve

Once you’ve published your newly customized store, monitor the search listings for your main keywords. Update your sites and resubmit your site map and then benchmark again. How are you doing?

Be patient. There are billions of Web sites on the Internet and it takes time for the search engines to catch up with changes you’ve made. Your SEO efforts will pay off.

One note: Search engines like sites that are often updated with changing content. Make it your goal to add new, relevant, keyword-rich content to your site on an ongoing basis. Then sit back and watch your traffic (and sales) increase.

SEO RESOURCES
> “SEO How-to,” Reseller Roundup Chat Archives: June 10, 2009 (downloadable pdf)
> “Customizing Your Storefront,” Reseller Roundup Chat Archives: August 12, 2009 (downloadable pdf)
> “Keyword Density for SEO,” Reseller Roundup Blog
> “Building a Custom Landing Page,” Reseller Roundup Blog

Exercise 7 - Evaluate Pricing Strategy

2009-07-21T17:30:00Z

There’s no question that the domain and hosting industry is highly competitive, and that price is a factor in buyer’s decisions. But selling products at the lowest possible price isn’t always the best choice. Even a small change in price can change your customers’ perception of your business and your bottom line.

To find the optimum price that your audience is willing to pay, you’ll need to do some price testing. As you test, you’ll want to watch the following:

Conversion rate – This is the number of visitors to your site who actually buy the product you’re testing. By raising a price, you might find that you have fewer new visitors who buy, but that your revenue actually remains steady or even increases. You can use your free Site Analytics tool or Google® Analytics to measure conversion rates.

Return on Investment (ROI) – If you’re paying for marketing in the form of Pay-Per-Click ads, affiliate programs or banner exchanges, consider what each sale or customer acquisition costs you. Divide what you spent by the number of new customers you gained, and then compare that figure to how much the average customer spent. Not in the black? Increase your prices till you are.

TIP: Use Marketing Source Codes to track the revenue generate by individual offers or ad placements.

Refund rates – Is your pricing set at a level your customers feel good about, or do they regularly experience buyer’s remorse and have their orders refunded? Use the Order Refund Report in the Reseller Control Center (RCC) to monitor levels of refunds and look for patterns.

Setting up a price test
Within the RCC pricing options, we’ve provided the tools for you to run automated price tests. Before you start, you’ll need to decide the following:

Sale duration –If you only make 1-2 sales per day and have very low site traffic, it could take a month or more to gather significant data. If you have hundreds of orders per day and thousands of hits to your site, a week of testing will probably be enough. No matter what duration you choose, keep an eye on the test so you can turn it off if it starts hurting sales.
Sale price – There are many ways to approach testing a sale price. You can do incremental testing over time, raising the domain price by $.25 or $.50 per test. Or you start with a price that’s closer to the top range in your market and then work your way back down to the sweet spot. It’s your call.
Minimize variables –If you want a clear understanding of the impact of your price test, you need to minimize the number of variables you change during the test period. So if you’re planning a new advertising campaign, be sure to benchmark sales at the current price with that advertising plan before starting your price test.

Once you’ve determined your sale factors, log in to the Reseller Control Center to set up your automated price test. From the Product Offerings page, choose the product you’ll be testing and click the link to get to the Edit Prices page.

If your pricing is currently set at minimum retail, you’ll need to change overall pricing to test higher prices. To quickly modify pricing for an entire product group, use the Quick Edit Pricing option. For example, if you wanted to test an overall price increase of $.50/unit you would:

Set the Price to Modify = “Your Retail Price”
Set the Price Point = “Suggested Retail Price + .50”
Click “Calculate”
Review the pricing to be sure it’s correct
Click “Apply” to apply the changes to your storefront

At the end of your test period, you’ll have to decide whether to keep your prices at this level, or reset your pricing based on the results of the test. This type of test does not have an automated shut-off.

If your current pricing is above minimum retail, and you want to run a price test at a lower price point on an entire product group, you can use the Sale feature to run a timed test. To test an overall price decrease of $.50/unit you would:

Set the Price to Modify = “Sale Price”
Set the Price Point = “My Retail Price - .50”
Click “Calculate”
Review the pricing to be sure it’s correct
Enter a Start Sale Date and End Sale Date
Click “Set Dates”
Click “Apply” to apply the changes to your storefront

With this test, your prices will automatically revert to your original retail pricing at Midnight PST on the date you specify for your end date. If you need to end the test earlier, you can reset the Sale Dates at any time to stop it immediately.

As your test is running, use the Product Sales Report to evaluate your test period orders against a control period (an “average” period of the same length, prior to the beginning of the test). If you’re reviewing results daily, look at the same day in the previous weeks and compare units and revenue. If you’re running a weekly or monthly test, check against non-test weeks for an overall picture of units and revenue.

Be sure to account for any holidays or advertising campaigns you might have run that would affect one period and not the other. Holidays may show a decrease in sales, while you’re likely to see a spike in traffic and orders the day you send an email campaign.

Once you’ve completed your test, you’ll need to determine if the new price did better or worse than the control. Did the following measures increase or decrease?

New customers
Orders
Units
Revenue
Commission
Conversions
Return On Investment
Refund Rate

Based on your particular goals, these factors will tell you if your test price is better or worse. If your primary goal is to build your customer base, New Customers and Conversions will be key factors for you. If your goal is to increase your income potential whether your customer base increases or stays steady, Revenue and Commission will be your key factors. If you want to maximize your advertising budget, Conversions and ROI are most important.

Once you’ve evaluated your test, it’s time to decide if you want to continue to test that price point or stay with your winning price. If a higher price worked better, you might want to see if you can push the window a little further and try another price increase. If your original price won, you might want to test a smaller price increase to see how that impacts sales.

Price testing isn’t a one-time activity. As your customer base and advertising efforts change over time, you should continue to price test to make sure you’re getting the greatest revenue from your target audience.

Find all the articles in the 2009 Reseller Marketing Planner series in the Reseller Roundup Blog.

Creating Your Own Seasonal Trend Dashboard

2009-07-16T15:54:00Z

Each month in eSeller we provide you with a seasonal trend snapshot for the top products in your portfolio with the disclaimer that the data is overall figures for resellers, not specific to your account. We provide this information so you can check you store activity against anticipated program trends. For example - as we enter into the fall months, domain sales generally pick up. The closer it gets to the winter holiday season in the United States, we generally anticipate a decline in new orders.

Why watch Seasonality?

By watching seasonality you'll get a feel for the ebb and flow of activity on your storefront. As you get to know your audience's buying patterns, short-term dips in sales won't seem so scary. You can use the patterns you identify to determine when you should employ more aggressive marketing techniques to acquire new customers and meet your target revenue and commission levels.

Depending on how often you have time to run and chart data and your sales volume, there are different ways to look at seasonality. You might choose to watch month-to-month as we do in eSeller to so that you can anticipate general market trends for your audience. If you are running regular marketing campaigns you might want to watch week to week, or even daily numbers.

By watching week to week you can get an overview of how a monthly email campaign impacts sales numbers, or compare a week with a popular holiday against a non-holiday week and see if the holiday has a positive or negative effect on your bottom line. If your audience shops on the holidays, you might want to tailor offers with holiday messaging.

If you watch day to day, you should be able to track the time your campaign hits the streets, and see how long it impacts your business. With a successful email campaign you are likely to see an immediate spike the day emails are received, then a fairly steep decline in response over the next few days. Watching day to day will also give you a picture of what days of the week your customers are inclined to shop. If you're reaching business owners, you're likely to see orders placed during weekdays and business hours. If they're hobbyists, you're more likely to see increased sales Friday - Sunday.

To create your own seasonal trend dashboard, decide on the date range you want to monitor and then use the Product Sales Report found in the Reseller Control Center and spreadsheet software to chart your data. Read the blog post "Product Sales Report Tips" for detailed instructions on running stats for overall sales or customer acquisition rates.

Product Sales Report Tips

2009-06-22T19:19:00Z

You can find the Product Sales Report in the Reseller Control Center under the My Reports dropdown menu. This report allows you to compare product sales across two periods, if desired, or run detail for recent purchases. Each Product Group includes a drilldown that will show you detail of the line items sold and indicate which sales were new purchases and which were renewals.
You also have several filters you can employ to get even more specific data:

Dates - choose the exact date range you want to report on. If you don’t want to compare two periods, you can leave the Previous Sales Period dates blank and just get one set of data.
Product Type – this allows you to report on every product, just pull out domains, or pick a specific product group such as .NET Transfers or SSL Certificates.
Customer Type – with this filter you can run all customers or separate your list into existing or new customers.
Order Type – use this to get a view of all sales, or filter down to only new purchases, renewals, or refunds.

Here are some examples of useful information you can gather from this report:

Watch your sales trends period over period

Overall Sales – do you see a seasonal slump in your business that you can plan for/around?
Renewal Rates – ideally this number should increase steadily period over period as you acquire new customers and retain the old.
Customer Acquisition Rates – what percentage of your orders are new purchases? This is the measure of the effectiveness of your new advertising
Specific Product Sales – filter your data down to watch the action on a specific group of products you’ve been trying to promote.
Reseller Incentives – determine your past performance allows you to participate in reseller incentives, then watch your progress to see if you qualify for payouts or prize drawings.

Keep an eye on your account

If you launched a new Pay Per Click campaign or ran a banner ad in a partner magazine – use this report to track Specific Product Sales along with the Marketing Source Code report to see what impact the ad had on your account.
Set a weekly or monthly goal and run this report regularly to see if you’re on track to meet your goal.
See an unusual spike in sales? Drill down into the report detail and compare this report to the Customer Sales Report to see what happened…maybe you can determine what happened and replicate it.

Overall Sales – depending on your target customer base, you might see seasonal trends in new sales and renewals. For example, if your target market includes reaching out to college students who are taking web design courses, you would expect to see a spike at the beginning of each school semester. If you reach out to realtors who buy domains for the properties they sell, you’re likely to see a slump around the holidays when fewer houses are listed on the market.

To look for seasonality, run your report in monthly increments for a full year (or more if you’ve been in the reseller program for a while.) Since the report allows you to compare two periods, you can run two months worth of data at a time.
Using spreadsheet software, track each month’s total units, orders, and revenue.
To get a visual of trends, chart each type of data with a line chart or bar chart and look for spikes and dips.
Use your product sales report to dig deeper into the spikes and dips: is it an overall change, or is there a specific product that performs better or worse than usual?

Renewal Rates - one way to make a success of your reseller program is to build on your renewal revenue by keeping customers engaged and renewing their products on a monthly, or better yet, annual basis. Each new customer acquisition, if managed correctly, will result in many years of recurring revenue as they maintain their initial purchases and purchase additional products.

To track your renewal rates, run your report in monthly increments for a full year or more and choose Order Type = “Renewals”. Since the report allows you to compare two periods, you can run two months worth of data at a time.
Using spreadsheet software, track each month’s total units, orders, and revenue.
To get a visual of trends, chart each type of data with a line chart or bar chart – you should see a steadily increasing trend. Note: If you’re in your first year of the reseller program, don’t be disappointed if this trend isn’t clear yet, since many products renew annually, you will start to see activity year after year.
Another important factor with renewal rates is to determine what percentage of your overall sales are renewals. If you compare Renewal Rates/Overall Sales month to month, you want to see a steady to increasing trend here too. Note that the trend of renewal to overall sales will depend on how aggressively you are acquiring new customers and expanding the product suites of existing customers – a negative growth here isn’t an immediate negative, it might just mean your new business growth is exploding.

Customer Acquisition Rates – you can use the reseller report to get a feel for how your overall advertising efforts are working by watching the trend of how many new customers are coming to your store. Is it a nice, steady stream month to month? Or do you see spikes that could be related to a new campaign, a networking event you attended where you passed out many business cards. Is there a dip from last month when you didn’t have time to invest in your reseller plan? Use these indicators to help drive how you invest in your business.

To track your customer acquisition rates, run your report in monthly increments for a full year or more and choose Customer Type = “New Customers”. Since the report allows you to compare two periods, you can run two months worth of data at a time.
Using spreadsheet software, track each month’s total units, orders, and revenue.
To get a visual of trends, chart each type of data with a line chart or bar chart - look for spikes and dips, and see if you can identify what caused them. Then you can try to recreate the event that caused spikes.
You might want to re-run the report in weekly or daily increments to pinpoint the effect of a specific event.

Specific Product Sales – while you have full flexibility in pricing your reseller store products at any level over minimum retail, you will find that some products are more competitive than others with higher prices (and greater commission) and some products perform better with renewals (like hosting accounts). It’s always to your benefit to test promoting your best sellers to see if you can make the most commission possible. To get right to the data you need, use the Product Type option to drill-down to just the data that you need.

To track your specific product sales, set your report to compare the current sale period (whether that’s a day, a week or a month) against a corresponding non-sale period – this Wednesday vs. last Wednesday; this week vs. last week; or this month vs. last month, etc..
If you marketed your sale to existing customers via print, phone calls, or email* – filter Customer Type = “Existing Customers”. If you placed an ad, a link, or ran a PPC campaign trying to get new customers, filter Customer Type = “New Customers”.*
If you placed an ad, a link, or ran a PPC campaign trying to get new customers, filter Order Type = “New Purchases”.*
Now compare the two periods, did you get more sales? Were the sales for the product you intended to get people to buy? Often you’ll find that your advertising will bring people to the store, but they may not buy the product you offered to them. Then it’s time to look at the ad to determine if you can change it to make the product more appealing.

*Don’t forget to tie marketing source codes to your advertising whenever possible to track exactly which purchases were triggered by a specific offer.

Reseller Incentives – we offer many reseller incentives that give resellers the opportunity to make extra cash on commission payouts or qualify for prizes based on account performance. If your reseller plan is eligible for incentives, you’ll find a link to the incentive under “My Settings”, “Incentive Program” in the Reseller Control Center. To determine if you qualify to participate in a reseller incentive, read the “Details” for the specific qualifiers for the incentive, and review the “Official Rules”. Here’s an example of the incentive details from the Q2 2009 Incentive.

Opt in before June 30, 2009 at Midnight Pacific Time.
You must have had a minimum of 25 domains registered and/or transferred to your reseller store in Q1 2009 (January 1- March 31, 2009).
Payouts will be made for 25-unit increments only. An increase of 50 domains = $50 for two sets of 25; 49 domains = $25 for the first lot of 25 only.
Discount shopper purchases do qualify in your domain sales counts.

Requirement 1 is easy – just opt in before the deadline.
Requirement 2 – check to see if you qualify for the minimum requirements. For this incentive it required that you sold at least 25 NEW or TRANSFERRED domains between Jan 1 and March 31.
- Run your product sales report with a Current Sales Period of “1/1/2009” and “3/31/2009”. You can blank out the Previous Sales Period since you don’t need to do a comparison right now.
- Set your Product Type = “All Domains”
- Leave Customer Type as “All Customers”
- Set Order Type = “New Purchases” (this includes transfers).
Is your total at least 25? If so, you would qualify for the incentive. If not, you’d need to sit out until next time.
Based on Requirement 3 you will need to sell as many domains as you did last month, plus 25 more domains for every $25 bonus. Since you have three months to complete the incentive, set a goal you think you can meet. Can you sell 200 additional domains? Or will you shoot for 50?
Check your progress regularly to see how close you are to meeting your goal.
- Run the product sales report with a Current Sales Period range of “4/1/2009” – today’s date and a Previous Sales Period of “1/1/09” and “3/30/09”
- Set your Product Type = “All Domains”
- Leave Customer Type as “All Customers”
- Set Order Type = “New Purchases” (this includes transfers).
If you’re doing well…consider setting a higher goal. If you aren’t on track yet, try a new advertising technique or send an email to your current customers reminding them about how great your domain prices are.

Exercise 6 - Six-month review of advertising strategy

2009-06-22T19:13:00Z

We’d like to start this month’s article off with a mid-year pep talk.

Unlike many industries right now, the outlook for domains and related services is bright. In fact, insiders predict a period of amazing growth – much like the growth that followed the dotcom crash.

Widespread corporate layoffs are driving closet entrepreneurs to the Internet in droves. The ventures just emerging from the ashes now will help lay the foundation for the new economy. And each and every one will need a domain name (and very likely a shopping cart and an SSL certificate. . .) to grow their online business.

So roll up your sleeves and revisit the marketing plan you wrote for your reseller business in January:

Review your test results.
Discontinue the losers and reinvest in the winners – whether they’re ads, emails or offers.
Not enough time to get all the testing done? Air out your schedule – try sending emails every six or eight weeks rather than monthly.

Not enough data to make strategy decisions? Another reason to extend the duration of your test – continue for another month, then check your data again.

If you didn’t get started in the first six months of the year, don’t worry. Read “Exercise 1 - Review Existing Advertising,” and start now. There’s plenty more to come as we head into the second half of 2009.

Next month we’ll be looking at pricing strategy. Remember that lowest isn’t always best and the only way to know for sure is to test. The July article will show you how.

Exercise 5 - Get Social!

2009-05-26T14:56:00Z

The term “Social Networking” encompasses a variety of Web-based tools, some of which you might already be using. Most of these tools are free in monetary terms, but may take some time to set up or maintain:

Blogging – Writing, reading and commenting on trends and articles relevant to your readers.
RSS feeds – Use them to push information out to users and bring content in to your blog.
Bookmarking – Use it to gather and publish content to your blog.
Facebook®/LinkedIn®/MySpace® – Establish a following on these popular social networks.
Personalized networks – Build your own network with tools like Ning® and share information.
Forums – Create a discussion space where you interact with people looking for solutions.
Twitter® – Tell followers what’s new at your business in 140 characters or less.
Online classified directories – Post your business information on CraigsList® or Insider Pages.®

Blogging is the gateway to other forms of social marketing, so start here. Read other people’s blogs, make comments, participate in any communities that attract people who might buy your products. Once you have an idea of what the community is talking about, start your own blog with an eye toward providing information of value to these readers.

A few tips on successful socializing:

Keep it relevant. Nobody likes a pushy salesperson butting into their conversations, so make sure your comments fit the topic being discussed. Freely offer your expertise whenever a topic on which you’re an expert comes up; mention your product or service only when it might solve someone’s problem – not every time you comment.

Be timely. Old news is no news in social networking, so you’ll have to make an effort to stay ahead of trends. Let’s say you see an article in USA TODAY about Mexico’s growing interest in retail imports. You might post this “tweet” to Twitter: “Get a .COM.MX and sell your products online in Mexico, one of the fastest-growing retail markets. Now just $X.XX! MyStoreURL.”

Remember, a network is not built in a day. You aren’t going to attract a huge readership, friend list or Twitter following overnight. Networking takes time. Continue to connect through linking, friending and following other people until they start to reciprocate.

We created these banners for you to place on social networking sites – use these or make your own in similar sizes to help drive traffic to your reseller store.

Next month we’ll evaluate the results of the last six months of exercises. We’ll measure effectiveness, drop efforts that aren’t working and plan your next steps.

Resources:

13 Essential Social-Media ‘Listening Tools’, MarketingProfs.com
www.facebook.com
www.linkedin.com
www.ning.com
www.twitter.com
www.craigslist.com
www.insiderpages.com

Exercise 4 – Grow your email list

2009-04-20T16:11:00Z

As a reseller, email is one of the most inexpensive marketing tools you have at your disposal. Using Express Email Marketing® (EEM), included free with your reseller account, you can create and send great-looking emails with very little effort.

Email is also one of the most convenient forms of marketing. Customers can read your email at their leisure and from a variety of places – desktops, cell phones, handheld devices. Plus, EEM's automated batch send feature means you won't waste time sending 100 emails one at a time.

To make the most of email marketing, you need to build your email list:

First, use EEM to import your current customer list. EEM complies with the federal CAN-SPAM Act, which makes it illegal to send unsolicited emails to anyone who has not given express permission to be contacted via email. EEM will only import the email addresses of customers who've agreed to be contacted.
Next, place an email sign-up form on all the sites you own using EEM's opt-in magnet (don't forget your blog or any other place it might fit in!). For the sign-up link you could try something like "Sign up for my newsletter." or "Get great domain deals."
Place your opt-in link in unexpected places. Add it to your email signature line, your Twitter® or Facebook® account – even the closing line on your eBay® or Craig's List® entries.
Make it a trade. Offer a white paper, case study or marketing tip you've written. Pass them to a secure page or email the item directly to them once they've provided their email address.
Do you speak publicly? Let listeners know they can learn even more from you if they visit your site and sign up for your newsletter.
Encourage readers to share this communication with friends. Just be sure to include a "Get your own subscription FREE" link in each email or newsletter.
Add an opt-in link to the bottom of your order receipts to grab the attention of any stragglers who haven't signed up. In the RCC pull down "Design & Layout" and select "Receipt Info." Click one of the radio buttons under Receipt Information to add a message or a link.

As your list grows, make sure you're communicating with these customers regularly. (How often is too often?) It's no fun to get an invitation, and then never hear back again. You've already made a good first impression by getting their permission; now follow through with ongoing communications.

A few tips on creating successful emails:

Be creative! Customize one of EEM's 41 pre-built email templates with your own greeting and pricing. Each EEM template features one of our most popular products or RCC promotions.
Test various offers. Divide your mailing list and test two different offers against each other. Or make a different offer every time you send an email to see which one gets the best response. Resend the winning email at least two more times this year.
Track your results. If you use marketing source codes with your offers, you can track which customers open which emails and identify the offers that bring in the most revenue. You can use this information to plan future campaigns.

Exercise 3 - Find your Optimal Product Mix

2009-03-20T20:43:00Z

Last month's exercise helped you look at your target market and build an audience profile. This month, we show you how to use the reporting tools in the RCC to create a product mix that will appeal to your target market.

Start by using the Product Sales Report and Microsoft ®Excel® to determine which products have sold best for you over time. You can find the Product Sales Report under the "My Reports" menu in the RCC. You'll want to look at a minimum of three months worth of data, to get a feel for month-to-month trends.

First, run your report using the Order Type filter to isolate ‘New Purchases'. Export this data to your spreadsheet program, and sort highest to lowest UNITS for each month. This tells you what your top volume products are.

What are your top five products for volume as new purchases?
What are your top five products for commission as new purchases?
How much cross-over is there between your top five for volume and commission?
Are your top five always the same or do you see spikes and variations?

Hold on to that data. Now do the same exercise with the Product Sales Report, only this time set the Order Type filter to ‘Renewals'. Again, compare your monthly data and answer the four questions:

What are your top five products for volume as new purchases?
What are your top five products for commission as new purchases?
How much cross-over is there between your top five for volume and commission?
Are your top five always the same or do you see spikes and variations?

Compare new sales to renewals

If you see that your top five productsfor new sales and renewals match pretty closely, that tells you which products appeal to your audience overall. These are the products you should lead with in your advertising.

To increase your income, approach this group with natural add-on products. For example, if one of your top five best-sellers is Hosting, but not Traffic Blazer®, offer them Traffic Blazer via an email you send through Express Email Marketing®. You'll find a template for this product and many more ready to go in the Reseller Templates category.

If you see that renewals are drastically lower than new sales for your top five, look closely at your advertising (banner ads, home page messaging, etc). If customers are failing to renew annual products, they may feel misled about how a product works or how it meets their needs.

To find out exactly why customers are not renewing, send out a customer survey via Express Email Marketing® . Then adjust your strategy accordingly. Remember, renewals are the best way to build your income as a Reseller!

If your top five or 10 products for new purchases show a much wider range of products than renewal numbers, but your renewal numbers are also growing steadily, you have found the sweet spot! This means your customers are adding to their product portfolios and your renewal base.

Look for patterns you can use
Drill deeper to see if you can find any patterns. You can use this information as a starting point for new marketing efforts.

First, run the Product Sales report with the Customer Type filter set to ‘Existing Customers' and Order Type filter set to ‘New Purchases'. This will show you which products you should be promoting to your current customers.

Then run the report again with the Customer Type filter set to ‘New Customers' and Order Type filter set to ‘New Orders'. This will show you which products you should be promoting to new customers via ads and home page messaging.

The big payoff

Now that you've created a tracking system for your product mix, take a few minutes every month to run Product Sales reports and compare your month-to-month trends. Checking this regularly will ensure you're aware of any shifts in your product mix, so you can either take advantage of the shifts or make an effort to correct them, as appropriate.

Exercise 2 - Focus on Target Market

2009-02-25T15:50:00Z

This month’s Marketing Tip will help you analyze who you’re selling to and how effectively you’re doing it.

The key goal of marketing is to address your best customers in ways that appeal to them. The more specifically you can tailor your offers to their needs and interests, the better the response. This kind of “targeting” leads to more repeat purchases, bigger orders, and a larger customer base.

Who are you selling to?
To speak to your target market(s), you first have to figure out who they are. How do they use the Web? Are they tech-savvy or novices? Why did they choose to buy from you rather than someone else?

To find out who your current customers are, start by looking at the advertising you did last year that worked (for tips on reviewing your advertising, see last month’s Marketing Tip). If your most successful ads appeared, say, on an industry blog about real estate, you know your customers are realtors looking for ways to promote their realty businesses.
Use the Site Analytics tool that came free with your Reseller Account to find out which key words people are using to find you on the Web (look under “My Settings” in the RCC). If “Cheap Web sites” is a big search term for you, you know price is important to your customers.

What do they want?
Let’s say your research leads you to the following conclusion:

“My target customer is a realtor who uses the Internet for business.”

The most reliable way to find out what your customer wants from you is to ask him. Use the Express Email Marketing™ program included with your Reseller Account to create and send a simple survey to your customers. Some tips:

Keep it short, since shorter surveys get more responses.
Include a few demographic questions such as gender, profession, employment status, etc.
Find out which of your products the reader currently owns (domains, hosting, etc.) and what they use them for (business, hobby, family, etc)

BONUS: Offer an order-level discount to the first ## customers who return surveys. Email the promotional code (found in the RCC) to respondents with an invitation to shop your store. Be sure to set a minimum order quantity.

The results of your survey should help you fill out your target market description still further:

“My target customer is a male realtor who uses the Internet to promote his business. He’s self-employed, so customer support and price are prime issues.”

Tailor your product mix
Now that you know who you’re selling to, the next step is to decide if you’re offering the right products and services. Check back here next month to learn how to create an optimal product mix using tools available to you in the Reseller Control Center.

Exercise 1 - Review Your Existing Advertising

2009-01-16T23:18:00Z

This month’s Marketing Tip focuses on advertising. If you haven’t kept a formal list of your advertising efforts, now’s the time to start. Knowing what works, what doesn’t, and when you last tried it will help you avoid making the same mistake twice. It can also help you decide when it’s time to re-test something that didn’t go so well the first time.

1. Evaluate your history
Let’s start with an inventory of everything you’ve tried to date to market your reseller business. (Just getting started with advertising? Jump down to the next section of this article.) Record any action you’ve taken in the following categories, jotting down all the information you have regarding that activity (cost, time invested, dates, duration of advertisement, etc.):

Online advertising – Pay-Per-Click advertising, banner ads, text ads on partner sites
Print advertising – Newspaper or magazine ads, business cards, direct mail postcards, brochures or fliers
Social networking – Writing your own blog, responding to or submitting articles or features to other people’s blogs, Chamber of Commerce listings, setting up RSS feeds, or listing with social search (Craig’s List, Insider Pages), social bookmarks (Delicious, etc.) or social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter)
Live networking – Handing out business cards, membership in professional organizations, public speaking
Email Marketing – Communications with your house list (using your free Express Email Marketing® or another tool), electronic newsletters, adding subscription tools to your site to grow your email list
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Creating custom content to attract traffic to your site “organically.”
Cold-calling/emailing – Reaching out to businesses that don’t have a Web presence via email or in person.

Now, think about each of these efforts and be honest about what’s not working. Is it because you haven’t been able to dedicate enough time to it? Is it too costly? Or is it just truly not working for your audience? Be ruthless and drop anything that’s not yielding a return – especially if it’s costing you money. You can always try it again later.

2. Set your strategy
Now that you’ve shortened your list to just the things that are working, pick one or two to expand through June of 2009. Decide how much time you’re going to dedicate to this activity each week, and if there’s a cost associated with it, budget what that will be. Make your goals as aggressive as you like, but make them do-able. Here are a few examples:

Increase Awareness with Business Cards
Cost: $25 to print custom business cards (you can do this for less at home or with a service like VistaPrint.com)
Time Commitment: 10 min – 2 hours per week
Strategy: Carry business cards with you at all times. Share them with anyone you meet who shows an interest in your business, whether you’re at a client meeting, your Rotary Club, or a party where the topic of what you do for a living comes up in conversation. Give each person multiple cards, one for them and another one or two to share with someone they know who might also be interested in your services.

Place Banner Ads
Cost: $200/month (costs will vary from $0 to thousands, depending on site)
Time Commitment: 2 hours per week
Strategy: This project involves several phases. 1) First you’ll need to identify potential sites that might refer sales-worthy traffic, determine their pricing/trade policies, and decide how much you’re willing to pay and for how long. 2) If you don’t find a banner ad you like in the “Marketing Tools” section of the Reseller Control Center, you can create your own or pay a graphic designer to create one for you. 3) Once you’ve posted your banner, watch the results like a hawk – you want to know how much traffic the site gets, how many clicks your banner receives, and how many sales or new customers you got as a result. 4) Use these numbers to determine the return on your ad investment (Total cost of banner advertising ÷ number of new customers gained = Cost Per Acquisition).

Promote Your Business with Email
Cost: $0 if you use your free Express Email Marketing® Tool
Time Commitment: 1-5 hours per month
Strategy: Use one of more than 50 reseller templates in Express Email Marketing to reach out to your current customers with proven marketing messages. Or create your own electronic newsletter that speaks to your target audience and shows them how your products can help them. Email once a week or once a month – whatever fits into your schedule and makes your audience happy.

Once you’re done with your advertising review, celebrate! You’ve completed a task that all successful business owners do routinely to keep their businesses on track. Next month we’ll take a look at your target market.

2009 Reseller Marketing Planner

2009-01-16T23:04:00Z

A Marketing Plan is a key tool that smart business owners use to grow their businesses. Since writing your own plan can be a little overwhelming, we’ve decided to break it down for you in a series of monthly articles. Each installment will feature step-by-step instructions on one activity, including tips, resources and suggestions for using the activity to expand your business.

You can commit as many hours as you like to these monthly exercises, but plan to give each one at least two hours of undivided attention. Don’t be surprised if you’re bursting with ideas and have to rein yourself in to narrow down your list of choices to pursue. And don’t forget to keep notes so you can revisit the rejected ideas later.

Exercise 1 - Review Existing Advertising Take a good, hard look at what you’ve been doing and how it’s working (be honest!). Pick one area to focus on in the next few months.

Exercise 2 - Focus on Target Market This month you’ll analyze who you’re selling to, and how effectively you’re doing it. You’ll also set a strategy for increasing your share of this market.

Exercise 3 – Determine Optimal Product Mix Using your sales report, you’ll identify which products are most popular and which are yielding the best profit. You’ll tailor your advertising to increase sales of those products.

Exercise 4– Grow Email Marketing List Grow Email Marketing List Who makes up your email marketing list right now? Employ strategies to increase that list and expand your reach.

Exercise 5 – Focus on Social Networking Strategies Already using social networking as a marketing strategy? Evaluate what’s working and where you need to expand, or choose one or two methods to start testing now.

Exercise 6 – Six-month Review of Advertising Strategy Revisit the plan you set in January, keeping the best and losing the rest. Choose a new idea to try in the 3rd and 4th quarters. (And yes, we’ll do this again in January 2010.)

Exercise 7 – Evaluate Pricing Strategy Selling low isn’t always the best strategy. Sometimes it’s possible to increase your prices and commissions, while keeping your sales steady. Find your optimal price point.

Exercise 8 – Generating Traffic with Organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Examine the content of your custom Web page or any external sites you use to drive traffic to your store. Don’t have a custom site? Now’s the time to create one.

Exercise 9 – Analyze Results of Email Strategy Email marketing is one of the easiest, most effective, and most cost-efficient tools in your arsenal. Time to look at your current strategy and set up a six-month plan.

Exercise 10 – Revisit Optimal Product Mix Time to review your product mix to make sure the activities of the past six months haven’t changed your customer base or product mix. Check for new commission leaders.

Exercise 11 – Year-to-date Cost/Benefit Analysis Determine your Return on Investment (ROI) for every cash outlay, deciding which to keep and which to drop. This will pay off in December, when you plan your 2010 budget.

Exercise 12 – New Year, New Plan Go back and look at what you’ve done throughout 2009. Take what helped you and make your own custom Marketing Plan for 2010, including deadlines, goals and costs.

Brand your company for higher profits

2008-12-22T16:26:00Z

Branding is one of those words that’s often thrown around and just as often misunderstood. Although the process involves several steps, the idea is really quite simple.

Branding is what Coca-Cola®* has – the minute you catch sight of that curly red “C,” you know beyond a shadow of a doubt what you’re dealing with. Your mouth may even water at the thought of that cool, refreshing liquid pouring down your throat. And all it took was a single letter!

To do what Coca-Cola did, you’ll need to create a brand for your company. How? Simple. Present an image and message that appeals to your target audience over and over again until your customers begin to associate that image and message with your company and yours alone.

The branding process usually begins with the creation of a logo and a tagline.

A logo may be made up of words (your company name), an illustration and/or graphics.
A tagline should sum up what you offer to customers that they can’t get anywhere else.

You sell domain names and related products to [fill in the blank with your niche]. Who else does that? What do you offer that your competitors don’t? A broader selection of products? Then your tagline might be “Your one-stop shop for all things Internet.” Or maybe your biggest sellers are domains and hosting and your biggest customers are extreme athletes. If so, a good tagline would be “Xtreme domains & hosting” or “Domains & hosting for those who live on the edge.”

Unless you’re a graphic designer, creating your own logo can be tricky – it needs to work in a variety of mediums and that kind of flexibility takes some skill. Regardless of whether you do it yourself or hire someone else to create your logo and tagline, be sure to run them past people who represent your target market (not your couch-potato uncle if your company caters to women runners) before putting them to use.

Once you have a logo, use it everywhere – on every page of your storefront, in newsletters, on receipts, on stationery, signage and business cards. You can even incorporate it into your Express Email Marketing® emails with a little HTML know-how.

If it’s short enough, your tagline can appear with your logo except in cases where the logo is too small to make the tagline readable. Your tagline should also appear on every page of your Web site. For bonus points, make your tagline clickable and link it to a page that describes your key promises and how your company delivers on them.

Over the long haul, branding pays off. It not only increases customer loyalty, ensuring that your customers continue to buy from you for years to come, but allows you to charge more than your non-branded competitors. How sweet it is!

DOs
>Test. Get feedback on your logo and tagline from people who represent your target market.
>Follow up. Your long-term success depends on how well you deliver on your promises.
>Stick with it. Coca-Cola’s been doing it for decades; that’s why their brand is so powerful.

DON’Ts
>Alter the individual elements of a logo once it’s been created and approved. You want the viewer to take one look at that logo and think of you, so don’t confuse them. Use it consistently.

RESOURCES
Don’t feel comfortable creating your own logo? Ask our Dream Design Team to create one for you.

*Coca-Cola® is a registered trademark of The Coca-Cola Company.

Add value with Tutorials

2008-12-22T16:15:00Z

Looking for a way to add value to your products and services and generate keyword-rich content for your site? Offer how-to articles.

Offering free advice is one of the oldest and most effective tricks in the marketer's book. It not only sets you up as an expert with advice to give, it makes your customers feel indebted to you. People value good information, and they appreciate it all the more when it's given away for free.

You don't have to be a professional writer to produce useful articles, either. A quick Internet search [Break and link if needed] on any topic -- how to market your business, write your own HTML snippets, optimize your site for the best search engine listings -- will yield an abundance of information. Once you've found a handful of really good nuggets, think about how those tactics or tools mesh with your niche market. Use concrete examples to explain them.

If your article is a marketing how-to, create a Sample Company and give concrete examples of how Sample Company would build its Web site content. Don't be afraid to explain why Sample Company chose the Deluxe Hosting Plan based on their organization's size, pairing it with Group Outlook® with Mobile for maximum flexibility as the company grows. Maybe Sample Company didn't have a logo yet and used the Dream Design Team to design a new logo, along with letterhead and business cards.
Or do you have a real customer who would be the perfect example for your concept? Contact them and ask if they'll let you use them as a case study with a link back to their new Web site -- don't forget to get a testimonial if they're willing.
If you're pulling together an article on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) -- include a sample meta tag with keywords relevant to your target customer. (Do a couple of quick searches yourself to determine good keyword sets -- you can even view the source code of great sites you find and take examples from their keyword lists.)

Better yet, since you have personal experience with the products you sell, write about them. Tell your customers what you've learned about keyword advertising, or about time-saving shortcuts in Quick Shopping Cart®. Tell them how you increased your inbound links by swapping links with other sites. By making your experiences available to your customers, you shorten their learning curve. And cement their loyalty in the process.

EXPERT's tips
> Provide useful information that is directly relevant to your customers' everyday lives.
> Quote reliable and widely recognized experts, setting their words off with quotation marks.
> Break information down into numbered steps.
> Double-check to make sure your instructions are accurate.

RESOURCES
>MarketingProfs.com
>MarketingExperiments.com
>MarketingSherpa.com

Placing Banner Ads on Partner Sites

2008-12-18T20:16:00Z

There are currently several dozen great-looking banner ads in the Marketing Tools section of the Reseller Control Center under "Banner Downloads." We've created these ads for you to use in promoting the products you sell.

So how do you get people to see your ads?

The idea is simple, really. You place one of these ads on a Web site that attracts customers who may be interested in what you sell - this can be another site within your own network of ventures, or you can find external partners. Customers who see your ad and are interested in your product can click on the ad to be taken directly to your Web site. Every time someone clicks on a paid partner ad, you pay a small fee to the host site. On your own sites, or sites that offer trades, there will be no cost to you.

When you're looking for sites to advertise on, look for businesses that don't compete directly with yours. For instance, let's say your Web site sells domain names and related services to golfers. You might place a banner ad on a Web site that sells golf equipment. While your site and the site hosting your banner ad have customers in common, you don't sell the same products so you're not competing directly against one another.

There are a number of ways to find likely sites on which to place your banner ad. If there are trade journals in your niche market, read them and look to see who's advertising there. Visit those companies' Web sites and look for a page on advertising rates. Be sure to get answers to the following questions:

What are your rates and how many visitors do you attract each month? Rates are typically either flat (5 or 10 U.S. cents per click) or based on Cost Per Thousands (CPM) views. Expect to pay $10-$15 CPM depending on how much traffic the Web site attracts.
Do you have a banner exchange program? Programs like these don't cost you a thing - you exchange ad space on your site for ad space on theirs. Be picky about where they place your ad, though. Make sure it gets placed on the top half of a relevant page.
My ads have already been created - do you offer an agency discount? This can be as much as 15% or more, so be sure to ask.

Choose one or two sites and place an ad for a month. Be sure to check the click-through ratio once a week-this is the number of times your ad appears on a page compared to the number of times a viewer clicks on it. (An average click-thru ratio is between 0.5% to 2.0%.) If the host site doesn't provide this information, you can just check your access logs to see how many visitors you're getting from the ad. (Using Marketing Source Codes appended to the end of your link as ‘?isc=MYCODE' makes tracking easy - see our Blog article "Setting Up Marketing Source Codes" to learn how.)

At the end of the month, if you're not making more money that you're spending on the ad, try another site. If it's working, stay with it until performance drops off, then try another ad or another site. Remember, constant measurement is the key to knowing when to try something new - be sure to schedule time for this activity whenever you initiate an advertising campaign.

Increase Profits with Regular Customer Contact

2008-12-17T21:49:00Z

If you have a list of customer names and contact info but aren't doing anything with it, you're missing a golden chance to increase sales and build your business. A key tool in maintaining your relationships and increasing recurring revenue is to simply stay in regular touch with the customers you currently have.

Why contact. Your purpose in setting up a customer contact plan should be to help your customers, whether it's with free advice, breaking news or money-saving solutions. Express a genuine interest in their needs and concerns and your customers will reward you with repeat business.

How often. Opinions on how often to contact customers vary widely. One consultant advises once every 2-5 days, another suggests once every 1-2 weeks and a third says 1-2 times a month. The real answer is, as often as is useful to your customers. Start with once every 2 weeks, testing various frequencies to find the one that gets the best response.

Messages. Offer free advice to your customers or send a regular newsletter with brief text highlighting a couple of different products each time. Email them with product updates or new discounts.You can even tuck a come-back offer into your order confirmation emails. This puts you ahead of the curve, planting the seed of the next sale even as you thank them for their most recent purchase.

Mediums. Email is the easiest and least expensive means of contacting your customers - check out your free version of Express Email Marketing. But don't overlook print, as you can now order high-quality printing online for very little. One really successful approach is to send a direct mail piece first - say, a letter or postcard - followed by an email scheduled to arrive three days after the postal piece arrives.

Tracking your results. The easiest way to track the effectiveness of an offer is through a source code*. By requiring customers to enter a source code in their shopping cart when responding to a promotion, you can see exactly how many people respond to each offer, running the most successful ones again. Express Email Marketing will also track open and click-through rates to help you gauge reader interest.

Dos and Don'ts

Give them a little text and a small selection of products in every communication.

Test frequency to see what works (sells) best. Contacting them too often annoys people; too seldom allows them to forget you. Find the sweet spot -- just often enough.

ALWAYS give them the option to stop receiving your communications. If they ask to be taken off your list, do it. Send them an email confirming the change.

*Don't miss our blog article "Setting Up Marketing Source Codes" to learn how to use this tracking tool in the Reseller Control Center.