With affiliate marketing, you get the chance to be creative when it comes to promoting your business. You can combine traditional marketing methods with more modern methods to promote your business effectively. Two marketing methods you can use to do this are article marketing and direct mail advertising.

Article marketing is your article writing efforts working, via article distribution, to drive traffic to your website. It means engaging in an article promotion campaign that targets a certain niche. When you write articles the focus on a specific niche market's concerns, you are performing highly targeted affiliate marketing. This is truly effective affiliate marketing.

Why is this type of marketing effective? It's because you are tailoring your articles to satisfy the information needs of a niche. For example, your affiliate products may be books on how to make money on the stock market. Consequently, your article content will deal with the different stock markets out there. It will also deal with investing in promising publicly traded companies.

Your niche market, those looking to make money on the stock market need this useful information. If you satisfy their needs with quality article writing that answers their questions they will seek you out continually. They will link back to your website, from your articles, looking for more. They see you as a credible information source and want more information about what you have to offer them.

This is why article marketing is effective. You warm people up to your affiliate products through your relevant content. People already pre-disposed to your affiliate product show up on your website. You convert more of these visitors into customers. You performed "pre-selling" via your articles.

Direct mail advertising is marketing that is also highly targeted. Direct mail speaks on a one-to-one basis with an individual. Its purpose is to elicit a direct reply or response from them. As in article marketing, you are speaking to the readers concerns. Your direct mail sales letter to an individual offers useful information. You write this useful information to encourage them to take action and buy from you. You write direct sales letters to those pre-disposed to your products.

The difference between article marketing and direct mail advertising is the purpose of the communications. Article marketing seeks to inform, direct mail seeks to sell. Article marketing presents information in a non-sales language way. Direct mail advertising is a sales pitch for a product or service.

With article marketing your articles give in-depth information on topics related to you affiliate product. Your articles do not publicize your specific product and are not commercials for them. However, your direct mail advertising does publicize your specific affiliate product. They are "commercials" in hard copy letterform. You want sales to result from your direct mailings.

Can these two marketing tools work together? Yes, they definitely can work together. Article submission to a good article distribution service will build traffic to your website. When a reader of your article clicks on a link to your website, you begin the selling process.

On your website, you can encourage visitors to sign up for an informative newsletter. These can be online or hard copy newsletters. You can offer them an incentive whereby you mail them more information free. When visitors to your site sign up for newsletters or free offers, you gain their e-mail and/or mailing addresses. You can use these addresses for targeted direct mail campaigns.

Therefore, your articles pre-sold your visitors and drove them to your website where they gave you more information about where to reach them. Now you can use direct mail to sell yourself and your affiliate products.

Use article writing to establish your authority as an affiliate topic expert. Use your article promotion campaigns to drive traffic to your website. Encourage visitors to let you further communicate with them. Then use the mailing addresses they give you, of their own volition, for your direct mail campaigns. It's the way to perform affiliate marketing today. Modern article marketing can work together with tried and true direct mail advertising.