"Use Tell-A-Friend To Increase Online Sales"

By Polly Hummingbird
Posted Friday, October 15, 2004

One of the most successful ways of marketing in offline businesses is word-of-mouth advertising. Customers tell their friends about a business and up go the sales. There are no direct costs involved.

How do you do the same thing online? By using tell-a-friend.

Tell-a-friend buttons and messages are becoming popular on websites all over the Internet. One day it could become one of the best methods of free online marketing.

Tell-a-friend is especially successful for relaying information to genuine target markets. In other words, when someone logs onto a website they may not be interested in the offer, but they may know someone who would be.

Friends can be personal, business, or online contacts.

You can place a tell-a-friend button somewhere on your website. When a visitor clicks on this button a small form pops up. The visitor enters the name and email address of their friend as well as a short note. When they send the message a link to your website is sent with it.

The best part of tell-a-friend is that it is private and voluntary. The only information the friend should receive is what is promised in the tell-a-friend message.

If your site sells online products or services, tell-a-friend might be especially beneficial to your e-business.

How does it work?

As an example, someone logs onto a site that is selling an ebook of "Seafood Recipes". They know someone who loves this type of cuisine. They click on the tell-a-friend button and send their friend a little note about the website and the ebook. The friend receives it by email and then clicks on the link to visit the site. In the end, an online sale might result from this recommendation.

Even if you decide not to be as elaborate as using a special button and form, you can always place a note on your website that says something like "Tell A Friend About This Site". You can put this in another color to make it stand out more.

Tell-a-friend is free. Once you have your system in place there is nothing else to do.

When visitors begin to tell their friends and contacts about your website, and those friends tell their friends, and so on, the traffic to your website will increase tremendously over the months to come. All from the little tell-a-friend button on your site!

TELL-A-FRIEND RESOURCES

CGI Tell-A-Friend Scripts Over 20 different tell-a-friend packages are available. Some are free and some require payment. (http://www.icthus.net/CGI-City/scr_tell.shtml)

27STARS
Each person who recommends your site receives a free gift of an ebook. You can also provide your own free gift instead. Free service. Easy to install. Easy to use. (http://www.27stars.com/tell-a-friend.html)

SendaPage4U
Free service. See demo.
(http://www.sendapage4u.com/join2.htm)

Polly Hummingbird writes printable ebooks. Super Business ebook. Amazing Bestseller ebook. (http://humming.biz.s5.com/home.html)

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