Unless you are a total newbie or have been living under a rock, the affiliate marketing world recently has been going through a major change in the way that we sell products. While it is good for the consumer, it is not good for us as marketers. Yes, we are at fault, including myself, for using some I guess you may call shady ways to lure customers to rebill offers. But hell, how long has this been going on in the offline world? We can’t help it if the customer is too stupid to actually read what they are signing up for.

But anyways, the government has decided that people are too stupid to take care of themselves and took the due dilagence responsibility the consumer has before buying a product out of the equation (if you haven’t noticed, I am not too happy about these regulations). So, you need to basically be very careful of how you market your products, mostly the false information part, such as farticles and flogs.

First, if you haven’t done so already, brush up on the new FTC regulations. Check out these two posts on these guidelines, as they pretty much sum up what you need to know (FTC Guidelines and FTC Guidelines Cliffnotes). Like these posts say, it is very vague, as usual, and leaves a lot open for discussion and interpretation. If you have a good lawyer, vague actually is better for the defendent, as you can usually argue a vague law easier then a black and white one. But let’s not worry about courts right now. How about we try and learn to sell products within these guidelines.

Okay, this method that I am going to share has not been tested yet, but if done right, I guarantee you success with at least half of this project. Now, this takes some selling skills and being good with people, so if you are not a people-person, outsource. I am sure you have a friend who is a great salemen. Myself, I can sell if I want to. But I don’t. And I have a longtime friend from before I got into affiliate marketing that is perfect for this and is working with me on this project. He only gets one part of the project revenue though.

Alright, the method. Rent out a hotel conference room or any where that you can have people sit for a presentation. This is a spin-off of all those guru meetings you here about. MLM companies use this method with great success as well, so why not spin it off into other niches. It has to be successful with the right salesperson, no matter what crappy product you have.

Advertise on radio, TV and print ads if you can afford it. Buy a ton of those directional/roadside signs advertising your conference. Make it a weekend thing is what I am shooting for, a Friday night, Saturday and Sunday event. Once you decide on all the event stuff, like time and such, get a presentation ready. Use technology of course and build a nice PowerPoint presentation and show videos that you have gathered that promote your product. Now comes the killer and the reason that you are spending so much money on this offline thing.

At the conference, let people try out your product and see how they feel about it. Say for diet pills or drinks, let them sample and get their reaction on how they feel it will get them to lose weight. Try to get examples and how great they feel and how much weight they want to lose and things like that. Get this all on video and in writing. But the trick is that you need to lead them to say what you want. Here is what I mean.

On paper, have like 20-25 questions that are very targeted. An example would be for diet offers, “Close your eyes and imagine that you have lost all your weight. Now, tell us how much you lost and what you feel like.” Now, you have that on paper. Use it as a testimonial. What something better? Do the same thing, except tape the interview with the same laser targeted questions. National news agencies have been pulling this for ages, so why not take advantage of it. Nothing is false and you are just restating what they said in an interview.

Now that you have the testimonials you need, build your landing pages. Now, you will have real looking people, not models or actors, claiming that your product works. Good way to get real people to advertise for you, but you do have to spend a bit of money to get them. But, real video testimonials will kill and I have no doubt that this will work. Worse case, if you can’t make it work, you could even sell all of those testimonials you get. Hell, you might get so many testimonials that you can don’t need them all.

Also, try to get people to sign up for whatever you are selling at the event. Get together with your affiliate manager first and see how they want you to collect the leads, because getting them to all enter their info from your computer on-site would of course throw red flags up. So, talk with your AM first and make sure they even allow offsite marketing like this.

That is the gist of my new project. Why did I give this up? Because there are so many towns out there that I don’t see how this could be saturated before I get around to it. Plus, I will only be doing it in one medium-sized city unless the conference also makes a ton of off-site sales and I get an actual return on my investment offline. So, try it if you are looking for a creative way to get some testimonials for your new products.