Carrot On The Stick Formula

A management article
By: Larry Johnson

People online are much like those offline when it comes to promoting and marketing their products, affiliate links or services.

They look for the easiest, quickest way to do it as long as it is cheap or free and does not involve any work on their part.

Unfortunately there just isn't any way to do it without some effort and work and planning on your part.

Here is a simple formula to apply when it comes to building some repeat traffic to your site.

The "Carrot on the stick" formula works pretty well. You remember, the rabbit chases the carrot on the stick. There is always some incentive offered out there to keep him on the move and coming back for more.

The lesson you need to take from this simple principle of behavior conditioning is that you have to offer your visitors some reason to return to your site.

Repeat visitors are likely to become loyal customers which will result in increased business and profits for you.

Check your bookmarks of favorite pages. Why did you choose to remember these sites as worthy of a bookmark ?

Did they offer great content ? Great resources ? Terrific ideas ? Discounts ? Free offers ? Contests ?

Did you complete a survey on the site that earned you a discount for their products or services and also captured your e-mail address ?

Did they send you a free report over a period of several days that involved auto-responded messages designed to bring you back to their site ?

For example: I offer a free report on helping newsletter publishers who want to gain more subscribers. Visitors simply send a blank message to my autoresponder at:

ezineminicourse@freeautobot.com

They then receive a free, four-part mini-course on how to increase their number of subscribers and ezine exposure overnight.

Take a lesson from your bookmarks. Utilize them to create your own "carrots on the stick" reasons for visitors to return to your site.

About the Author
Larry is a publisher and editor of the Biz Site Biz ezine which is now in it's seventh year of publication. He has been active on the internet for more than 10 years and brings advertising and public relations as background experience.