Making money online and offline
Publishers should be using the retail channel—online, offline, or both—and their products sold at retail should, at a minimum, mention a companion website on the package. Even better, the product should contain an incentive to go to the website.
Then, upon accessing the home page or landing page, the visitor will see a link to sign up for a free newsletter. If there’s no mention of the website, no incentive to visit the website, and no conversion architecture on the site itself, the publisher is not taking a long-term view and, unfortunately, is missing the boat.
Mequoda guidelines for evaluating a Retail Distribution Program assign the following grades to the program links and website conversion architecture:
Take a look at your own website and evaluate how it matches up in terms of using retail distribution to drive traffic and build relationships with your audience.
This article was written by Don Nicholas with the help of Jane E. Zarem. This is only one part of a whole series on using offline products to make money online.
See the rest of this series below:
