Wed 11 Apr 2007
The Virtuous Cycle in Marketing and Sales
Posted by jtmcarthur under Affiliate Marketing, Branding, Storage and Data Management
[2] Comments
My brother, Ken, has often said, “If you focus narrowly enough and spend a few months researching intensely, you can become the world’s leading expert on a topic.” The key here is focusing narrowly enough. As you can tell, if you clicked on the link, Ken became, if not the, at least a leading expert on affiliate marketing.
Because Ken focused on affiliate marketing, he created something else which is valuable for many of you who are trying to launch a new venture. He created a community. And from that, he also created a virtuous sales and marketing cycle. Ken started with a service, which he developed, sold and delivered by himself. Later, he built training materials and supported the authoring of several books, which, indirectly helped promote the service. He’s now developed a conference business that helps promote the training materials, which helps promote the service. More than that, however, he has built up a community of similar companies and actively promotes and speaks at the conferences of his competitors. And I’m reasonably sure that he retains at least a small sliver of the revenue that passes through his affiliate program to a competitor.