Online Marketing Part 10

Last time we looked at creating a list of interested people - potential customers - from those people that visit your website.

More information on how to do that are in our free ebook on email marketing, 'Automated Customer Collector' that you can download from our Cinnamon Edge Website.

But how valuable is that list of names to a business?

Well, if you don't use it to stay in touch it's probably worthless, but if you do - well, anything can happen.

With an active list you can

1. Remind people who you are and what you do

2. Make people offers and announce new products and services

3. Offer them an enhanced service or an 'upsell' on what they've bought from you already

4. Tell them about complementary products and services in exchange for a share of the profits or for a fee

5. Enhance your reputation as an expert in your field or a trusted supplier of your goods or services by giving away useful information

6. Give customers instructions on how to use your product safely or get the best results from it

Etc, etc.

By contacting people regularly you stay in the front of their minds rather than the back. When you use the messages to clarify your marketing message and unique selling proposition (USP) or irresistable offer, it will be you they think of when an opportunity to do business arises.

This means potential customers and clients start contacting you for help, which is a much better position to be in than when you're chasing them.

So even if your email marketing doesn't include 'selling' as such, it is still a valuable part of your marketing.

First step, though, is to start building that list. Second step is to remember to use it!

Roy

Online Marketing in Bury St Edmunds Bonus

In the previous part of the course we looked at getting visitors to take action when they get to your website.

We concluded that the most valuable thing a visitor can give you is their contact details, because that enables you to begin and continue a relationship with them - which means you can build trust and create more opportunities to promote your goods and services.

We will look at the mechanics of email marketing soon, but I wanted to break in at this point with a look at what is probably the most powerful email subject line I've ever seen.

It will also be a great headline or sub headline on a sales latter, in the right context.

It's powerful because it not only hits an emotional hot button but also pre-qualifies readers, so only those who are really in the market for the product will read on. For anyone else, the headline will probably tell them they needn't read on, although it will still produce a visceral reaction if they used to be in the specific situation it addresses.

So, this headline isn't suitable for every business or every product, but if you can stir anything like this reaction with your services or products, you might like to adapt it.

The heart-stopping headline is:

Re: Your Unpaid Bill

Now, most of us have been in debt at some point. Even if we haven't, most of us have forgotten to pay an important bill at some time or another. But if debt has been a major issue of yours for any length of time, the memory of those unpaid bills will still be all too vivid.

The content of this email isn't important, but of course it was promoting a way to make money fast - the primary concern of anyone in serious debt. And the subject line stopped me in my tracks and it's just four words long.

Notice it uses the singular 'Bill'. This makes it more authentic, since one company wouldn't normally refer to money you owe to anyone else - they just want you to pay their bill, and soon.

Not many situations in life are as stressful as being in serious debt, and I won't offend anyone here by refering to events or situations that are even more traumatic, but whatever matters to your clients, whatever problem you help them overcome, must be an important issue for them, so stating it as starkly as this example could be all you need to do to get their attention.

We'll get back to normal with the next part, Part 10, of the online marketing course very soon.

Roy

Online Marketing, Part 9 - Collecting Customers

Last time we looked at persuading your website visitors to respond to your site in the way you want.

This could be:

1 - Buying from you now

2 - Contacting you by phone, letter or email

3 - 'Bookmarking' your website to return later

4 - Telling other people about your website, perhaps via a bookmarking or social media site

5 - Leaving their contact details

Number five doesn't sound like the most exciting option, and if you can get people to buy from you and tell other people as well, that's even better - but building a list of interested visitors is a very valuable function for a website.

In Internet marketing, 'list building' is the number one aim of many websites. You can see from Part 8 of the course that a simple web page and an incentive are often all you need to get people to join your list.

But what happens to those details, and doesn't a growing list get unweildy and difficult to organise? Well, the simplest answers are, you use an autoresponder, and no, it doesn't get unwieldy.

Using an autoresponder like Aweber (which we mostly use) means you can collect customer details automatically and contact them by email any time you want. You can have scheduled 'follow up' emails that are sent at fixed intervals after people sign up and you can add 'broadcast' emails that are sent to all or part of your list at a time and date specified by you.

These messages (or newsletters) will contain useful information, which promotes you as a caring sharing business owner, and marketing messages, news of offers, new products, and so on.

Because the system is so automated, it takes no more effort to send these messages to a thousand or ten thousand people than it would to sent them to five or ten people. Because people have opted in to receive these messages from you, there is no danger of 'spamming' anyone. (A subscriber can opt out of receiving them at any time through a link that's included in every message.)

Most autoresponder services are inexpensive, especially in the beginning, and Aweber is less than £20 or $30 a month.

Email marketing, as it's known, is suitable for most businesses, although the details of how to go about it will vary with your business type and market sector.

Feel free to contact Cinnamon Edge for more information about email marketing services.

Roy

PS. We've written a more comprehensive guide on email marketing, called 'Automated Customer Collector', that you can get free of charge at our Cinnamon Edge Website.

You Have Visitors - What Next?

Part 8 of our online marketing course.

We'll perhaps look at other ways to get traffic to your website in the near future but for now let's look at what results you want from your website.

From that, you can decide what you want your website's visitors to do.

From that decision you can frame a 'call to action'.

A call to action is where you tell your website visitors exactly what you want them to do, but it's not usually quite as simple as that. To get people to do what you want you must give them a reason.

For example, you might want your visitor to join your mailing list. To persuade anyone to give you their name and email address (at the minimum) you will need to offer them an incentive. That could be a free product, a discount or something they can't find elsewhere.

If you want people to buy something you need to offer them a reason to buy now rather than going away to think about it - people who go away to think about hardly ever come back to buy.

That reason to buy now could be a one-time offer or a limited period discount and urgency is a very persuasive factor as long as you're offereing something people want.

If you just want people to stay on your website and learn more about you or your business, you need 'sticky' content - content that they will enjoy staying to read.

But all these incentives and reasons for people to do what you want will be less effective if you don't actually tell them what you want. You must highlight your offer, your special deal or your discount and tell people to act now and exactly how to act.

So you need to tell them to enter their details in the sign up form, click on the link to buy now or even 'read on for more information'.

Tell people what you want them to do, why they should do it and exactly how to do it.

Then test each element of your website in turn to see what improves response, and gradually, step by step, your website will become an effective 'direct reponse' website.

Then you really are making use of online marketing for your business!

Here's an example of a direct response 'squeeze page' that collected the details of almost one hundred percent of the people who visited.

Next time we'll look at what you do with those names and email addresses you've collected.

Roy