Increase Sales and Traffic with this tried-and-true marketing method

May 1st, 2007 | General

You know when you finish reading a book and there is usually a short snippet of another book at the end, generally from the same author? For example, awhile ago I was reading a book by Tami Hoag (she’s a suspense writer) and after finishing the book I read the ‘sneak preview’ for her next book. Naturally, I ran out as soon as I could to get it.

This marketing method has been around for ages, but I haven’t seen it used very much on the internet, and I have to wonder why because it obviously works great!

I bet you could get a leg up on your competitors if you applied this method to your own products. If you have more than one product you sell online, you can use this as a way to cross promote them. It doesn’t even have to be a product you sell, it could be a mini-course you’re offering, or another website you want to advertise.

Let’s say you have a website about crocheting. You already have one product that you sell to your readers that teaches them how to crochet. Now, you’ve just finished another ebook that includes crochet patterns. Why not include a couple patterns at the end of your first ebook to entice readers to buy the second one?

Here’s another example. You have a website targeted to affiliate marketers. You publish information regularly that brings in some decent traffic. You’ve just created a mini-course that will be very valuable to your readers, and you should score some affiliate sales from it as well. Why not take a few key ideas from your mini-course and give your current readers a sneak peak to entice them to sign up for it?

The trick is to give them something valuable, but just enough that leaves them wanting more. If you can’t give them something they’ll benefit from, then you should think about recreating your whole product so that it does. Fluff and hype just doesn’t cut it anymore (and it never should have). So take a page from the ‘real world’ of marketing and apply it to your own online business.