Are you starting your own affiliate marketing business? That is not just anything, and there is quite a bit involved. Okay, registering with the Chamber of Commerce is one thing; it is done in no time. But actually starting an affiliate marketing business is all that comes before and after.

Ensure that you get customers that money is made. It is no secret that 40% of the companies that register with the Chamber of Commerce no longer exist after three years. In this article, I will help you avoid that scenario and tell you everything involved in starting your own business. I also take you through the process based on one example; one of my private companies.

Why do you want to start your own affiliate marketing business?

Everything starts with the ‘Why,’ Simon Sinek would say. Why do you want to do something? Only later will you look at how you will do that and what you are actually going to do. But of course that often goes the other way with real entrepreneurship. You have probably seen an opportunity in the market, or you simply have something that you really like and want to turn it into a company. Whether it is an eshop, a catering company, or a door-to-door hairdresser, it can literally be anything.

In any case, it is important to ask yourself why you actually want to start that company. Starting your own affiliate marketing business is a difficult road from which you only reap the benefits after a while. Many people do not get through the first period because it often turns out to be more difficult than expected. Having a realistic view can help to avoid disappointment. So take a look at how you can correctly estimate your chances.

For example, I was on holiday to Ibiza with a friend. We brought such an air lounger from the Action to relax on the beach. When we were there, many people came to us and asked where we had bought it. We found out that this product was not yet available at all in Ibiza. And so a new business idea was born, selling air loungers in Ibiza!

Market research is essential and can also be a lot of fun.

Before you register at all, you will first be able to see whether what you want to do is desirable. See if there is a chance of success. Of course, that can never be said with certainty, but it can often be said with certainty when something has no chance of success at all—certainly an important step to do some market research. Don’t think too hard about that, either.

You can do market research by talking to your network and asking what they think of your idea. You can launch a survey on Facebook or just address random people on the street. You can also visit your competitors’ websites at this stage to find out what they are offering.

For the air loungers I mentioned earlier, I decided to do some market research through my friends on Facebook. I asked what they thought of the product and what they thought people would pay for it in Ibiza. That way, I could reason whether it was a good plan to buy them. I also used the same network to make choices for the logo, the product, and even found my logistics partner. Sharing is caring.

Share and learn from others.

During your market research, don’t be afraid to reveal your idea. Many people always act secretive when they start an affiliate marketing business. But the truth is, if you’re one of those types, you’re not going to learn anything about the market. Openness is essential. An idea is a start, but not yet a business. It is only a company if something is done with that idea.

Research yourself before starting your own affiliate marketing business

A final part of the research mainly concerns yourself. Find out what your strengths and weaknesses are and prepare yourself for risks in the future. Also, look at your network and financial resources and map this out. This gives you an overview of the chaos, and you may just end up on the part of your network that you had not yet thought would help you further.

Now gather and analyze all the results of your market research and your research. Does this match your assumptions, and is there a chance of success? Then we can proceed to the next step. We can register the company.

With the air loungers, which eventually became Ibiza Loungers, I came to the conclusion that I knew a lot about marketing, sales, and design (logo, etc.) but simply NOTHING about import. From this, I could conclude that a logistics party was needed to advise me. If you don’t investigate yourself, you will only find out later in the process, and that is a huge waste because it will cost you money.

Starting your own business starts at the Chamber of Commerce.

You will register with the Chamber of Commerce. This can be done quite easily. That is why many people who only have an idea do that too. You make an appointment online at the Chamber of Commerce and suggest your company name.

It may be useful to check the trade register beforehand to see if someone is not already registered with the same name because then you can forget about it. Your company name must be unique and should not be confused with competitor company names. That would be unfair.

Is your company name already listed? Then invent a new one, that should be fine.

Legal form for your company

When starting your own affiliate marketing business and registering in the trade register, you will also have to choose a legal form. When you start your first affiliate marketing business, this is most likely a sole proprietorship. Other legal forms such as VOF, BV, NV, or a Foundation are less common in a start-up company but are interesting. However, you will have to read a lot more and be well informed before you start.

In 2017, of the 1.6 million registered companies, more than 1 million were one-person businesses. So the great majority.

Starters day own company

When registering, you will have a chat with someone from the Chamber of Commerce. He will ask you why you want to start your own affiliate marketing business and ensure that you fall into the right category. It will also invite you to attend a starter day where you will learn more about taxes and entrepreneurship. Be sure to do this. These days are the start of your professional network and help you to understand the affiliate marketing business. Starting your own business is difficult enough, so support for each other is welcome.

After registering with the Chamber of Commerce, you must submit your VAT return every quarter (in case of a sole proprietorship). Look for a few tutorials and screen the website of the tax authorities. Then it should be all work. Would you rather outsource that accounting? I have a friend who is an accountant, does a top job;). Now on to the interesting part of starting your own business!

Get started with actually starting your own business.

I can talk about it long or short, but I have seen so many times that people in my area wanted to start their own business, but the idea was not converted into an activity. The reason for this was often that it got stuck with fear of the rules and legislation. When it feels like it would be too difficult to implement or the risks it entails.

The reality is often that you will indeed fail if you start your own business. That cannot be prevented. You start on something new, and then mistakes are made. The most important thing is to accept that and estimate in advance. When you do that, you accept the mistakes and realize that we all have to start somewhere. Only then do you actually get to work instead of always remaining an unrealized idea?

The first steps as an entrepreneur

Now is the time to start doing affiliate marketing business! Here it obviously differs enormously per company how this is worked out. In general, you can say that you first have to get customers before the money is made. Or there must first be something to sell. But assuming you have already arranged the latter, now is the time for business because those customers do not come naturally.

Do you already have a logo, business cards, website, linked-in profile, press release, Facebook page, or folders? It’s time to take your ‘brand’ out into the world. Shout it from the rooftops and let everyone know you’ve started a business. This will no doubt help you with your first customers. In many cases, those first customers are acquaintances of acquaintances. 

Make sure everyone knows about it, and you’ve started!

For the Ibiza Loungers, we made a logo, printed t-shirts, and caps, and had our own beach flags made. We wanted to make sure everyone would see us at the Ibiza beach sale. Now it was time to sell!

Conclusion starting your own business

I have already started (and stopped) several companies myself. I fell hard a few times (read this story), but got up just a little more often. And that is entrepreneurship. The way is not always clear, but when you start, you will find out automatically. Sometimes it is the process of trial and error in which you learn the most and can achieve the most. This means that starting your own business is not for everyone. After all, not everyone can motivate or discipline themselves enough to go through that process.

And just to recap, the steps to take into account when starting your own business are the following.

1. Put the why, how and what on paper
2. Share your plans
3. Research the market
4. Examine yourself
5. Choose a legal form
6. Register with the Chamber of Commerce
7. Visit a starters day
8. Provide visibility
9. Find customers
10. Business through trial and error

Good luck with starting your own business!

What is content marketing? It seems such a simple question, but an answer cannot be given entirely unilaterally. That first word, content, is a collective term. Affiliate marketing, too, by the way. With content marketing, I managed to attract 25,000 visitors a month to this website. Every month and I don’t have to pay for that. Not to mention the turnover that all those people generate. In this article, I discuss what content marketing is and how you apply it successfully.

What is content marketing?

So let’s break down the concept into content and marketing. Content can be a web text, article, infographic, video, vlog, case study, blog, e-book, webinar, statistics, review, or news story.

If you thought that content marketing always comes out in the form of a blog article, then you are wrong. The word ‘marketing’ means that we use the content for marketing a product or service. We, therefore, use the content instead of, or in addition to, advertisements.

In practice, content marketing comes down to a blog on someone’s website or a YouTube channel full of instructional videos. In almost all cases, it concerns free, accessible content to reach as many people as possible. The goal is to help, advise, and bind the potential customer by providing free content.

Content marketing example

If we had to put content marketing in a marketing funnel, it would be somewhere at the beginning. To explain that, I give you an example below.

“Imagine you sell hairbrushes. Then your content marketing strategy could look like this. You have an article or a video explaining how to get tangles out of the hair. In it, you give all the useful free tips. When a potential customer suffers from tangles, they search on Google ‘How do I get tangles out of my hair?’.

Your article or video on how to remove tangles will then be found. The potential customer reads the article or watches the video and finds the tips useful. Then he finds out that you not only have good content but also sells brushes (gosh, what a coincidence!). Because the potential customer is grateful for your tips and feels connected by reading or watching, they decide to buy from you.”

The above example is how content marketing is applied in most cases. That is also the case on this website. I provide all the free information that I know is valuable to my website visitors. If they then want to know more, they can proceed to purchase a product or register on my mailing list.

For whom is content marketing (not) interesting?

Not every company can apply content marketing. But for 99% of the cases, content marketing is applicable and effective. With content marketing, you can show in an accessible way that you are the expert in what you do. In many cases, setting up is relatively cheap, and not applying it is, therefore, a shame. Many entrepreneurs find it difficult to figure out how content marketing can be applied within their company. Therefore, below are four specific examples of how this can be done.

Example 1: From funeral chapel to dormer

A company that sells dormer windows offers an e-book on its website called: “How do you ensure that your dormer window does not become a funeral chapel?”. Website visitors can download this e-book free of charge in exchange for their email address. After reading the e-book, they will be followed up by email. Super smart because, in this way, you split a big decision (buying a dormer) into small steps. The e-book also helps to inform the potential customer, who most likely has no understanding of dormer windows.

Example 2: Flower arrangement videos

A company that sells flowers has a YouTube channel with a weekly video about flower arranging. Those interested will find these videos and become connected with the woman who gives the free flower arrangement tutorial videos. They then no longer buy their flowers from the local florist, but from ‘the woman they know from the videos’.

Example 3: Blogs about depression in the workplace

A company that offers to coach employees struggling with depression has blogs online with topics such as “Ten Ways to Deal With Depression in the Workplace”. Employers find these blogs in their search via Google. They find the information useful and then turn to this coach to help them further.

Example 4: Press release about birth announcements

A company that sells birth announcements makes a press release about the most common baby names of that year. They send this press release to newspapers and are published with their name—a good way for such a company to build brand awareness without having to pay for it.

Don’t forget the call-to-action

Depending on your business, you can see which content marketing strategy fits best. If you want to start with content marketing yourself, you must include the ‘Return On Investment ‘. When I looked back at how I started with content marketing, I saw that I got a lot of website visitors, and only a single customer came out. I was then able to learn that, no matter how much you give away for free, you do well to ask people if you can help them further actively.

You do this by placing calls-to-actions. You can do this by asking if someone wants more information if they want to subscribe to your mailing list or directly refer this person to your sales page. In any case, always make sure that there is the next step around your content. This naturally leads to a higher return.

Why content marketing has so many benefits

Besides the fact that content marketing is free or relatively cheap compared to advertisements, there are even more advantages. Of course, by sharing free content, you will come across as an authority in your field to your potential customer. But not only your potential customer will see you as an authority. Google does that too. And that has the significant advantage that when you share more content, Google will place your entire website higher in Google (including your sales pages). Content marketing is, therefore, the best way to work on your SEO / ranking.

Outsource content marketing

Now that you have a clear idea of ​​what content marketing content is, you can get started. If you don’t like it yourself, you can also outsource your content marketing. Self blog I for multiple companies, and get massive results there (often 1000% more website visitors).

Content marketing is downright trendy, and that sometimes requires creative solutions. What works great in one market won’t work elsewhere. Do you have no idea where to start? Read more posts on our blog.

1000’s, if not tens of millions, of on the web webmasters and entrepreneurs are turning to affiliate advertising and marketing to receive extra money from the net. Affiliate marketing and advertising give the best way for the particular ordinary person to cash in on the billions of product sales produced on the web every 12 months.

But is Affiliate Marketing and advertising appropriate for you? Or is programmatic advertising better?

Is it one thing you need to investigate and go after further if you genuinely want to monetize your website or articles? As a solution and to get you pondering about affiliate marketing and advertising, I would like to provide some of my personal encounters as a total-time online affiliate marketer. I would also like to give you some advertising guidelines and a few pit-falls you must try to keep away from.

Truth be told, I did not like the strategy to turn into an affiliate marketer. It just transpired, mainly by accident, as I struggled to promote my first internet site on Net marketing some ten years back now. My authentic strategy was to re-sell some software program items with hopes of making my fortune on this new factor named the World wide web.

Properly, to make a protracted Tale limited, most things never really switch out as we originally program. Instead of promoting my possess goods, I grew to become considerably far more fascinated by studying “how to market place online” and analyzing. “How marketing programs worked” then, in fact, selling my very own things. I was a lot far more fascinated by the “nuts & bolts” or “marketing equipment” behind these on the internet advertising and marketing systems than earning a few pennies.

I was captivated explicitly by a new look for a motor called Google. Of course, many entrepreneurs have been researching Google because it initially began. And I believe it was Google and its AdSense System in specific that sort of legitimized the “complete thought of generating money online” for me. I turned my interest to other ways of monetizing my sites, especially with affiliate packages. And the rest, as they say, is historical past…

But ample about me, what about you?

Do you have an internet site? Are you interested in earning extra earnings from your website? Are you striving to generate an entire-time income online? A lot more importantly:

Is Affiliate Advertising and marketing Right for you?

1st, you have to comprehend Affiliate Advertising is when you market and sell affiliate products from your site or websites. In fact, an offering is not really the correct phrase since you Will not actually promote anything at all from your site. You simply refer or ship buyers/fascinated customers to the affiliate web sites you’re selling by way of your affiliate backlinks.

Think of me. At times, this idea is very hard to explain to shut loved ones and buddies. But what do you offer on the internet? Don’t you have everything to offer? How can you make funds?

To repeat, with affiliate advertising, you will not offer anything at all straight on the internet… you deliver clientele and buyers to online organizations or merchants in which they purchase stuff, and given that they’re coming from your site’s affiliate links, you get credit rating for sale.

I don’t straight offer Dell Personal computers on my sites. I basically send out prospective clients to Dell exactly where they can purchase Dell products. Since they arrived from my affiliate backlinks, I get a credit rating, additionally a little fee in return if they purchase something. The same goes for Amazon or hundreds of the other companies and goods I promote with my web sites.

Now Affiliate Marketing Fits Me to a Tee! Here’s why…

You will not handle any product sales transactions.

You do not take care of any shipping of merchandise.

You will not have to deal with client grievances or operate buyer help.

You don’t have to deal with staff or work for a company.

You don’t require a workplace, inventory, or any bodily merchandise.

With Affiliate Advertising and marketing, all the selling and enterprise functions are completed by the organization you happen to be promoting. This saves you from many headaches and troubles that come up from operating your possess business or building your very own merchandise. It’s all carried out for you.

Moreover, on the internet, Affiliate Marketing and advertising does have some great advantages:

Your websites and affiliate links are operating for you 24/7, 365 days of the calendar year. You generate income/commissions, although you are sleeping, eating, watching television, or doing everything we individuals do!

You receive cash even when you might be on Vacation. This happened to me very last year when I went to Florida to see Bruce Springsteen in live performance. Sadly, a band member died, so I did not get to see Springsteen, but I did make more than ample on the web to shell out for my whole journey. While I was in Orlando. It was also the 1st time I didn’t have access to my personal computer or sites for a lot more than several times, but they manufactured my income.

As soon as you get your affiliate backlinks set-up, they will continue to receive your revenue instantly. All your on the internet advertising can be automatic and run from your property business office or wherever you select.

Preserve in the brain, your articles and web sites hold creating and developing. Perform you did compose that wonderful write-up two several years in the past is nonetheless bringing in affiliate sales nowadays.

Furthermore, with Affiliate Marketing, all your advertising materials (banners, income copy, videos, advertisements, hyperlinks…) are all presented for you by the Affiliate Network or Business.

There is certainly little pressure with affiliate advertising because you’re your personal manager, and you can perform at the house: no workplace politics or all that foolishness. No commuting. Besides, there is an extremely tiny capital investment; for several hundred bucks or significantly less, you can have a website up and operate on the net.

Even so, Affiliate Advertising does have some true negatives:

You can typically earn considerably more if you develop and promote your possess products. You’re not truly obtaining the optimum return on your site’s content material by selling other people’s stuff. The earnings margin can be much, considerably higher if you promote yours possess products.

There are also missing commissions and theft of product sales; you can never be sure you receive credit history for all your site visitors and referrals. In most situations, you happen to be not.

There are numerous times there is rigid opposition from other affiliate marketers promoting the same stuff and using the same advertising resources… even though many leading affiliate marketers create their personal marketing materials, they stand out in a crowded marketplace.

Because I am an entire-time online affiliate marketer, the positive aspects much outweigh the handful of downers linked with this excellent way of life. Mostly due to the fact it is just that: a lifestyle fairly than a task. I, by no means, consider it as an occupation or operating. Perhaps, because I am my possess grasp, I can perform from home and set my own several hours. I can take time off, I can go on vacation, or I can dwell wherever on the planet, exactly where you will find Internet access. These days that’s just about wherever. The feeling of flexibility is truly intoxicating, to say the minimum.

If you do find Affiliate Advertising is one thing that you would like to pursue, even component-time if not complete-time, here are some of my very best tips for raising your affiliate revenue and revenue:

Concentrate your marketing and advertising attempts and attention on plans and goods which give you recurring or residual income. Make one particular sale and get compensated for a long time to occur.

Develop your personal websites and advertising and marketing supplies to stand out from the other affiliate marketers. Develop your very own exclusive promoting place even if you’re not technically marketing the products. Give further bonuses if they acquire from your backlinks or internet site.

Develop affiliate tracking software for buyers who are interested in the goods you might be selling. Develop your own listing, as properly as that of the affiliate firm you’re selling. You will usually have these subscribers, and you can market other similar items to them.

Concentrate on targeting “lengthy tail keywords” with your material and internet sites. These multi-worded keyword phrases are simple to rank higher for and typically have much better conversion prices.

Cloak your affiliate links to cut down on affiliate theft. For illustration, ClickBank has a basic HTML code that will hide your website link. Use it.

World wide web consumers and especially buyers want basic useful info to make their buying conclusions simpler. Give them with worthwhile data they can use in their process, and they will reward you with a sale. Also, supplying absent discount codes and online reductions will improve your income and commissions.

Use the major affiliate networks like Fee Junction, LinkShare, ClickBank, Amazon, Shareasale… I have identified these networks as extremely easy to use and extremely efficient. Additionally, their checks by no means bounce!

Preserve a close eye on your month to month revenue; with several companies, if you go more than $25,000 or $fifty,000 in revenue for the month, you get added bonus incentives. I have discovered these can significantly improve your regular monthly income, so look at your revenue stats closely.

If you do locate that Affiliate Advertising and marketing is right for you, odds are virtually a hundred% particular that you will in no way regret it. Affiliate advertising and marketing deliver one of the minimum stressful techniques of earning a dwelling on the earth. The way of life can not be beaten. Anybody can change their life with affiliate marketing and advertising. I did, and you can too!

How to get more customers in affiliate marketing? The cold acquisition is not what many entrepreneurs are enthusiastic about. Cold calling or emailing customers often brings quite a bit of pressure. And that is quite a shame, because cold acquisition, both by telephone and by email, can be the way to acquire new customers quickly. 

The result compared to other marketing channels is much more direct.

I regularly write cold acquisition emails for companies, and I am active in telephone sales. This article will find an in-depth look at cold acquisition and how you can apply it successfully.

What is Cold Acquisition?

Let’s start at the beginning. The cold acquisition is approaching potential customers. Essential to cold acquisition compared to warm acquisition is that customers do not know you at that moment and are, therefore, most likely not waiting for your offer.

The forms of cold acquisition discussed in this article are acquisition emails and acquisition calls.

Why do many people hate cold acquisition?

We all know them, those phone calls from companies that want to sell you something.

Terrible.

Or those marketers who want to make an appointment with you because they ‘ can mean something ‘ for your company, when in fact, they just want to send a high invoice. You would say that not the finest forms of acquisition. And that may also be why we all hate it so much and prefer to avoid doing cold acquisition ourselves.

But the cold acquisition also has another side. When you can bring in thousands of euros extra turnover in a short time, that sounds quite attractive.

That is why it is good to look at cold acquisition through different glasses. One where we do not primarily try to sell, but try to help people. In this way, cold acquisition gets a positive charge, and it becomes more fun to work with. Also, I can already reveal that you will also sell more that way, but more about that later.

From seller to the angel of salvation

When I got a side job in a call center when I was sixteen, a script was pushed into my hands. I was going to call people to sell them phone plans and just had to read a script.

I don’t know who wrote that script, but it didn’t do me any good. Apparently, there was something in my voice that didn’t seem genuine. Logical, because I was not enthusiastic about the product and was not interested in what I sold.

The gains to be made in cold acquisition originate insincerity. Don’t sell things you don’t want yourself and be helpful instead of selling.

Nowadays, when I write or call a cold acquisition email, I don’t start with what great things I have to offer. I try to offer a listening ear to the customer. I focus on the problem that occurs within a company or with a person and go deeper into it.

When I have a sense of mutual understanding, it is only time to move on to how I could solve this problem for them.

That sequence is essential for good cold acquisition results. And that is why I have incorporated the sequence for both an acquisition email and telephone follow-up in a step-by-step plan under the next heading.

A step-by-step plan for the cold acquisition

Whether you are approaching people by email or acquisition call, the order of the conversation or email is quite similar. Use the steps below to make your cold acquisition a success.

Step 1: Analyze the problem

Starting your sale is not going to work. No one wants to feel like something is being sold to them without asking. That isn’t very pleasant. In addition, you probably don’t need the product or service at that moment, or at least you feel you don’t need it. As cold acquisition marketers, we must therefore first ensure that there is a reason to want the product or service.

Do you remember the scene from “The Wolf Of Wallstreet” where they try to sell a pen? Rather than promoting the pen, they first create the need for a pen. It should be the same as your product or service.

We will first zoom in on the problem that the product or service solves in the email or conversation.

Finding out the problem you are solving is the basis of marketing. Not sure what problem your product or service solves? Then now is the time to find out. When you know that, you will not only process it in your cold acquisition but in all your communication.

The problem is the trigger of why people do want to have something. To give you some examples of what such a problem entails, below some recent parties I have worked within the cold acquisition and the problems they address.

It helps enormously to explain the problem so that suddenly there is a reason for interest. The need is thus created. Often the prospect is not yet aware of the problem or is playing in the background. Describing the problem (in an email) or discussing it (by telephone) can then be decisive.

What is your company’s problem statement? 

Feel free to be a little creative with this. Sometimes it can be a bit difficult to identify the problem immediately. It may be that there is not an immediate problem that you solve.

Then it is important to understand that you can also emphasize a problem based on your distinctiveness.

Being able to identify the problem is an important part of making cold acquisition successful. If you don’t have a problem that you are solving, you will do well to look further or come up with a problem.

Step 2: Show your expertise when making the cold acquisition

People often don’t know you when you make the cold acquisition. The chance that people will trust you in advance is therefore small. Once you have bonded by discussing the problem, you will need to show that you are the person or company that can solve it.

Three things are required for a successful sale. These are the trust in the product, in the company, and in you as a person. If you score well in all three areas, you probably have a successful sale.

You can gain confidence in yourself as a person by having the conversation and showing personal interest. Furthermore, you can deepen this and the confidence in the company by showing that you have expertise. For example, how long have you been in the profession, or what kind of results have you achieved before?

Using statistics or facts in cold acquisition ensures that the prospect has more confidence in you and the company’s expertise.

You could even choose to give something away for free and thereby substantiate your expertise. Think of an article on your website with tips. Or you give away an analysis, consultant conversation, e-book, or online mini-training for free as long as it shows your expertise. This way, the prospect knows that you can be trusted and good at what you do.

Another reason to give something away for free on cold acquisition is that it uses the law of reciprocity. It is human nature to want to give something back when you receive something valuable from someone.

Step 3: Make sure the prospect has confidence in the product

Then it is a good time in your cold acquisition, to specify exactly what you are offering. Ensure that you do not become a salesperson at once, but stay in the same tone of voice. You are still there to help someone.

Emphasize how your service or product solves the problem you discussed in step 1. That keeps it relevant and ensures that the conversation or email flows smoothly.

To further promote your product or service, you can name the USPs (Unique Selling Points). If you have no idea what those are, don’t worry, I’ll explain that with examples below. But naming the USPs can help you distinguish the product from other providers in the market. These are extra reasons to buy something from you instead of someone else. This is your chance!

With USPs, you bring distinctiveness and show why prospects should choose you as a provider. You show that your product or service is the best in the market and give extra reasons for wanting it.

Step 4: Complete the sale in the cold acquisition

Time for the next step, on to the call-to-action. Another marketing term. In fact, this is nothing more than the next step, but it’s super essential. If you don’t take this step because you’re afraid of being a salesperson, you’re bound to miss out on customers. Make it clear to the prospect what the next step is so that they can take that step effortlessly.

When you make cold acquisition, this step is different than with warm acquisition. 

Asking directly for sale goes too far with a cold acquisition. The recipient only knows you, your company, and the product and will have to think about it anyway before making a decision. Do not aim for a direct sale, but for an appointment on location, an analysis, a quotation, a telephone appointment, an investigation, or the sending of a brochure.

This way, you make the next step manageable for the prospect, and it is more likely that they will respond to it.

Step 5: Measuring is knowing

However, the chance that if you get started with an acquisition mail, you will immediately have a sparkling success is small. You will have to do some trimming here and there if this is the first acquisition email you have ever written. Therefore choose to send the mail first to a select group and not your entire mailing list and then evaluate based on statistics. With a professional mail program, you have insight into who opened the mail and who clicked on a link in the mail. Has nobody responded? Then check whether the many people have opened the email whether you have ended up in the spam.

The same applies here for telephone acquisition. Look at how you think the conversations are going and whether you are satisfied with how people respond. If you keep hearing the same objections, see how you could best disprove them. One learns by doing.

Common Mistakes in Cold Acquisition

To make cold acquisition successfully, you will have to go through a lot of trial and error. It often does not hurt to call in a professional for this part ( I feel called upon). But if you do get started yourself, keep the following pitfalls and points in mind. I come across them too often, so please share them with you.

• Use (almost) always ‘you’ instead of ‘you’ as a tone of voice; this comes across as more personal.
• Use your normal voice and write an acquisition email in spoken language, that makes it pure.
• Avoid formal language.
• Keep it long. Time is needed to generate interest. My best converting emails are at least one whole A4 page.
• Put yourself in the spotlight and think of what you would like to hear from that perspective.
• Use a lot of enters for readability with an email.
• With telephone acquisition, it is good to mirror your speech to the prospect.
• Use statistics to optimize.
• Do not expect results from your first contact, you will be inconvenient for many people, and it can take a few days before action is taken.
• Think about the objections and how you can refuse them.
• Use the triple yes strategy.
• Make it clear what the next step is for the prospect.
• Use a professional marketing mail program such as Enormail for good statistics.

Outsource cold acquisition

In some cases, you would do well to outsource the cold acquisition. This can have the advantage that the highest possible conversion is achieved, and you get the most out of it. After all, not everyone likes marketing and sales. And I guarantee that everyone does what he or she does best.

The new lead forms extension in Google Ads is a useful addition for B2B companies. What about lead generation options now? This blog describes how to lead gen-forms work on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google. There are advantages and disadvantages to each channel, and we will discuss a few useful tips—the basics about lead forms.

Is it essential for your B2B company to generate as many leads as possible? With lead gen forms, you involve potential customers in the company, for example, by offering them a free whitepaper or demo after filling in contact details. This is particularly interesting for B2B companies that do not sell tangible products and who put personal contact with the customer first. Lead forms are applicable in three phases of the marketing funnel: awareness, consideration, and action.

Lead forms on social media

Facebook and LinkedIn offer opportunities to collect leads through paid advertisements. You do this via – you guessed it – lead forms. Users click a button in the ad, such as ‘sign up now’ or ‘download for free.’ 

Subsequently, data must be entered. The administrator will request that of the advertisement (that is you). As soon as the user clicks on send, you will receive their contact details and thus have a lead. 

Both social media channels have advantages and disadvantages. The difference is mainly in the target groups. 

Facebook allows the advertiser to choose from a wide variety of targeting options based on interests and behavior, for example. LinkedIn also has those options, but mainly focuses on the business information that the user has entered on his page. Think of data such as the job title, industry, company name, and company size. 

LinkedIn is, therefore, often a more suitable platform for acquiring B2B leads. Facebook is more suitable for target groups outside of that. That does not mean that LinkedIn is always more convenient for B2B companies. After all, your target group can easily be found on Facebook.  

“Cost per click is usually cheaper on Facebook than LinkedIn.”

Both Facebook and LinkedIn automatically complete users’ data so that only two clicks are required to submit a lead form. This allows you to generate many leads potentially. 

Not unimportantly, the cost per click is usually cheaper on Facebook compared to LinkedIn. 

Lead form extensions in Google Ads

Recently, Google Ads also offers the possibility to add lead forms as extensions to a campaign or ad group. This feature is in beta at the time of writing and not yet available in all accounts.

The lead form extension in Google Ads consists of three parts: a call-to-action, a page with contact details to be completed, and a thank you page. You can determine which information the user must enter. You can also design the form to your liking by adding a background image and descriptions. 

Three tips for lead forms

You now know where to use lead forms, but what should they look like? Three best practices:

1. Could you keep it simple? Only ask for really relevant information. Lead forms with two or three fields are most often completed. 

“Only ask for information that is relevant.”

2. Clarify what happens after each click. What added value does it offer for a user if he presses the ‘register’ button? What does that person get in exchange for their contact details? And what happens once this data is sent? Make this clear. Use the thank you page to tell when leads hear from your company. 

3. Always emphasize what value the form provides. Free registration without any obligation is very inviting. If you offer free content downloads, use the ‘download now’ call to action on the thank you page with a direct link to the content.

Link new leads with a CRM

You can manually download lists of leads from social media and Google as individual CSV files. However, this is time-consuming and time-consuming, because double entry is created. It is more convenient to link the lead campaigns and the CRM of the company. This way, you receive and view all new leads in one place. 

First, check whether the platform where you are advertising supports the CRM. Google and Facebook support best-known b2b CRM systems. LinkedIn supports the following integrations: Linkedin.com/help

Lead Forms In Affiliate Marketing – Conclusion

With the rollout of lead forms on Google, the opportunities for B2B marketers to bring in leads are growing. 

You can start experimenting using the tips in this article. Are you already using lead forms, or are you planning to? And how are you going to apply them? 

We are working with performance indicators. Organizational design and corporate culture as success factors. Performance management and continuous improvement of results. Behavior, attitude, and corporate culture as success factors in performance management. Insights, examples, trends, and tips.

What is Performance Management

Performance management is steering on organizational goals and results. The first step is to identify these goals. We find this continued in the organization’s strategy in terms of turnover, margin, new products, better stock management, fewer returns or outages, and greater customer focus. Subsequently, a system of indicators can be used to keep track of the results based on regular reports.

Many organizations have such a system of performance indicators (also called key performance indicators or KPIs). In practice, it is often limited to a periodic perpetual exercise in the top team under the financial manager’s guidance. Deeper in the organization, people don’t know about anything or see it as a top-down control tool that you are occasionally bothered with.

In that case, ‘steering’ is mainly seen as ‘wanting to measure and want to know by the top.’

Performance management: trend

Performance management continues. It is about ‘ continuous improvement at all levels of the organization. ‘ This is possible by making performance management a living reality in the organization. All parts work on it by connecting the indicators to their performance. And by discussing the results in the work meeting to improve the results.

That often goes wrong. We have known for years why that is, but the practice appears to be unruly. Performance Management, doomed to failure?

The trick is to keep it simple. Sometimes they allow themselves to be fooled by an attractive ICT system of dozens of indicators, diagrams, and figures. Very impressive, but failure is near.

Let simplicity rule

We must continuously know how we are doing. Everyone must know about costs, income, and orders. Every director, every manager of ours, must feel that responsibility. Everyone should be able to clarify this to the people in the workplace.

From the start, I was already working on making the most important figures of the companies visible in a system that allows everyone to keep a finger on the pulse. The commercial ICT firms that we asked for such a system made great promises, but the result was nothing like. I wanted a simple system that continuously shows how we run based on just a few numbers. I then made the screens myself using the numbers we needed.

We still work with that system. Simple and goal-oriented, directly linked to questions such as: “Is money being made, and do we have enough orders?” Every operating company knows how it is doing.

Suppose your results are visible, then everyone understands why. The figures are known. Costs, indirect hours, order book. If costs increase or if the order book drops, there is a problem that needs to be solved.

The solution often comes in collaboration with the shop floor. There is also expertise to realize improvements. Suppose you involve people in the problems and are clear about how we are doing.

In that case, everyone will want to participate if the managers fail to do so if they do not know what is going on in the workplace if they cannot explain what is wrong with their own operating result when things go wrong. This is a flat organization with short lines of communication, our people deserve attention, and the managers must show that.

Performance management is also behavior and organizational design.

We see that performance management is more than objectives and KPIs. It is managing to focus on ‘result improvement,’ it is the relationship between bosses and the workplace and between staff and line. It’s commitment and motivation. It is an organizational design in which components have insight into their own results and are also responsible for them.

Are you wondering what you can do in your organization to make performance management work properly? Then see the examples in the articles on this page.

Instrument Performance management and indicators

Have you already tried everything and has not yet succeeded then take this test. With this instrument, you can measure the result orientation of your team and your organization. You also make the possibilities for improvement visible. The instrument focuses on questions such as:

• Is your organization really working on improving results?
• Is there enough involvement and action-orientation?
• Do managers direct and stimulate the process of performance improvement?

For many businesses, the market in which they operate is becoming increasingly dynamic and faces increasing challenges. Demanding customers, shorter lead times, and a large increase in technological developments, among other things, have ensured that the attention for Performance Management has expanded enormously in recent years. However, performance management is a broad subject. You often see that businesses think too lightly about it. Please provide a list of KPIs, communicate this to management, make their bonus dependent on it, and people will manage. 

Nothing could be further from the truth, and you often see disappointing results. Setting up good performance management is, therefore, not easy.

Performance management can only succeed if the correct preconditions have been met.

• There must be a clear link between formulated KPIs and the organizational objectives. Often this link is missing, with the risk that people are not steering in the right direction.
• A good decomposition of processes is important in order to be able to do a good translation from strategic goals to operational objectives.
• Make sure you don’t have too many KPIs that make businesses micro-manage. This indicates a lack of focus.
• The introduction of Performance management requires a different way of leadership. Managers must be willing and able to steer based on the insights obtained. It requires a change in managers’ behavior in which addressing people about their responsibilities is of great importance.
• Ensure that the preconditions (rewards, responsibilities, etc.) are properly fulfilled for managers so that they can fulfill their role properly.
• Good and sufficient communication about the implementation of Performance management is necessary. The organization’s employees must be sufficiently informed because otherwise, resistance may be perceived as threatening as a possible consequence.
• The setup Performance management system must be sufficiently flexible. Inevitable organizational changes and adjustments in organizational goals must be easy to process if people want to continue to manage in the long term.

Performance management is, therefore, more than just managing based on a few numbers. Performance management is acting on business questions that play a role within the organization. Good Performance management must ensure that an organization:

• Can respond quickly to questions from the market

• Ensures the required transparency

• Manages the realization of the strategy

Performance management is, therefore more than drawing up a few KPIs. If businesses actually want to implement performance management and control performance, the preconditions are also very important!