Mixing it up

One of the (many) things that really gets me excited about blogging is the fact that it’s now easier than ever to get your customers to do your marketing for you. For instance, if you’re an e-business, simply give your customers the ability to run their own “franchises” as associates.

Amazon does this by letting customers become associates; Tower Records does the same thing. Essentially, instead of simply linking to a product, associates get a special code to embed in their links to identify traffic from their website. The code gives the traffic a discounted price on the purchase and gives the referrer a cut of the total purchase.

Great idea!

What the retailer gives away on the item, they make for in savings from their search marketing program. Plus, a referral from a trusted source would, I’m presuming, be more valued than a key word search buy.

Additionally, it’s a great way to access the “long tail” as the referrers have their past favourites that the retailer may not have space for on their home page or other high traffic areas. Not to mention the benefits that the additional links to the site would bring…

Ultra cheap marketing that also creates passionate users – I’m more likely to not only link to your product but actually artificially create ways to link to your product (reviews, top 10 lists, cultural references etc) if I’ll make some cash off it.

So I was pretty surprised to hear from Todd that if you publish an iTunes mix (as he does every week), Apple haven’t enabled you to monetarise it. Surely iTunes would have the classic “long tail” and a very cluttered home page? How much would it benefit Apple to implement a “refer 10 get one free” type deal?

What other businesses would benefit from a similar model? 

…

Do you represent a laptop manufacturer or retailer?  Do you want your logo here? If you do, please email me!