Whether you exhibited or plowed your way through the multiple exhibit hall floors, you’ve had firsthand experience in the value of human interaction. In a world of multiple communication tools it’s more important than ever to place a face with the voice on the other end of the line.

But in reality, it is a combination of your polished soft skills and diligent follow up that’s imperative in turning those handshakes into dollars and cents.

Proactive Preparation: Know Your Audience

• Review and scrub your Rolodex against the exhibitor list.
-There is no better time to revisit contacts whose venture never made it to fruition.

• Assess the speaker list and proactively arrange to meet with individuals/firms.
-The majority of speakers are the decision makers so take advantage of starting a dialogue after sessions.

Qualifying New Leads: Listen Twice as Much as You Speak

• Always initiate an introduction with an open-ended question.
-Passionate individuals enjoy speaking about their business (and themselves). Encourage this and you’ll quickly know whether there is potential for a lucrative partnership.

• Receive a pitch before giving yours.
-You have a window of forty-five seconds to certify if the individual(s) before you are a fit for your business model.
-Time is of the essence, thus give the courtesy of listening to a thirty-second elevator pitch and follow up with a validating question. This will ensure that you’re capitalizing on your time (during the conference), proactively qualifying your prospects (shorten your follow-up time), and it may present innovative business ideas which you may not have otherwise incorporated.

Capitalizing During Primetime: Hustle While You Wait

• Schedule new prospect “meet & greets” during breakout sessions.
-Save longer meetings for individuals that you have an active pipeline of business with.
-New prospects/projects only require two to five minutes (tops) to qualify any potential business and further action steps should be ironed out in the follow up call.

• Spend any downtime in a public gathering area (i.e.: hotel lobby).
-Public spaces receive the highest enter and exit traffic, so there is a 90% probability that you’ll reconnect with an old associate or a potential prospect.

Follow Up: Three Day Window to Close the Sale

• Take notes on all business cards exchanged in real-time.
-This will ensure you can pick up right where you left off and secure the next course of action.

• Swift and immediate follow-up will ensure your correspondence is received first and most likely addressed first.
-You truly have only a two to three day window to effectively follow-up and make certain that your message is conveyed most efficiently.

-While your prospect is being flooded with calls and you’re playing catch-up into the week following the show, a quick follow-up will guarantee that you/your firm are kept top of mind.

Miss White joined the MediaTrust Business Development team in 2008 where she’s responsible for strategic partnership alliances, new business development and portfolio management.

Download the entire FeedFront issue 6 here – http://feedfront.com/feedfront-issue6.pdf
FeedFront issue 6 articles can be found here as well: http://feedfront.com/archives/article00date/2009/06

Affiliate marketing is a journey that provides you with the entrepreneurial freedom to choose a business model that caters to your professional strengths and personal interests.

All successful conquests begin with a clear and concise roadmap and as an affiliate marketer yours must be transferrable and innovative.

Your marketing strategy should be as dynamic as the landscape is, and by incorporating these points into your initiatives, you will be well on your way to a success campaign launch.

Identify and Become the Brand

• Take the time to assess the active marketing initiatives of the brand you are looking to promote.

• Which mediums is the brand actively using to market its product (online, radio etc)?

• Current SEM promotion: is the brand marketing on all tier 1-3 engines?

• Note the verbiage and graphics used in all of the promotions (is the message clear and marketable?)

• What is the value proposition to the user and is there a sense of urgency (seasonality/limited-time offer)?

• Determine the core demographic of the brand and identify who the online target audience is.

• Is there a similarity (brand demo and online target audience)?

• If so, draw the parallels and note the similarities. This will assist you with marketing to the most conversion prone audience.

• If not, be sure to target both audiences, as there may be an opportunity to capitalize on a new (unsaturated) market share.

Competitive Landscape Analysis

• Conduct an extensive search to determine who the brands offline/online competitors are.

• Analyze each competitor’s campaigns by taking note of the features/benefits of the product and the value proposition to the user.

• Note the distribution channels that the competition is using to promote their campaign (IE: SEM and Social Media etc).

• Diversifying distribution channels allows for an extensive reach to multiple market shares (ie. SEM targets real-time purchasers while social media provides brand engagement/awareness).

• Do not simply mirror the competition but trump it through innovation.

• Identify what is marketable about the competitor’s campaign and finesse it.

Distribution Channel: En Route to Conversions

• Establish a marketing budget, which is flexible to the emerging media landscape.

• SEM distribution: Be clear with what your ceiling and floor spends are but ensure you have the ability to inflate/deflate daily.

• Institute a monthly test budget.

• If you’re monthly marketing budget is $1000 (SEM distribution), allocate $200 of that to test distribution via an alternative channel.

• Marketing your campaign through more than one distribution channel will assist with stabilizing your revenue streams and building your portfolio. Diversification is the claim to fame.
Follow these steps and you will greatly improve your chances of success in your affiliate marketing journey.

Miss White joined the MediaTrust Business Development team in 2008 where she’s responsible for strategic partnership alliances, new business development and portfolio management.

Download the entire FeedFront issue 5 here – http://feedfront.com/feedfront-issue5.pdf
FeedFront issue 5 articles can be found here as well: http://feedfront.com/archives/article00category/issue-5