The Keen Marketer

We always want to have new customers visiting our site and of course, look to recurring customers to come back. But often we run out of ways to attract these customers.

Here are 5 ways to set your attraction marketing train on the right track:

• Do you have an information product you can give away? Maybe you produced one or have one that you have give away rights to.  If it is the latter, however, you do take the chance that your customer will end up on the site of the person who wrote it, but it’s always a good tactic to take anyways.  Make sure that the information relates to your target market and ad your 2 cents to a page that would be accompanying the e-book at download time.

• Are you able to coach or consult on a specific area that you are knowledgeable in?  What better time than to offer a free consultation via email.  Yes you could do it live, but think about the time that would take versus doing it by email.  This can also be free advertising for you as you will include your signature file in each email.

• Have some information you can impart about a specific subject? Hold a free chat room seminar using Skype or other voip program to connect everyone.  Make sure your topic is very targeted and keep to the subject. A good tip is to present a marketing tip not too many people are aware of. ie: How to create free  links to your profiles in Hubpages and Squidoo.  Send a press release to the media to get customers for your seminar.

• Have  something special for customers if they join your club.  Make it free and offer your customers a little something special for belonging. People love to belong to something bigger than themselves.  A newsletter and a periodic free give-away at times are a good example.

• People also love deals. That’s why providing your product or service for almost free by accepting barter for your products or services is a great way to keep people interested and coming back.  Who knows, the next time around, they might just buy from you.  You can barter for things such as self-improvement products or information to better your business.

As you can see, there are countless ways you can attract customers to your site and keep them there.

So if I were to take my own advice, here is a free e-book download on Creating Recurring Income

If you’re like me, you use your autoresponder to collect leads, send follow-up emails and do the occasional broadcast.

But the autoresponder is much more versatile and can be a great asset to your online marketing business.

autoresponder

Here are some new ways for you to use your autoresponder:

• as an email digest of everyone’s contact info

• to publish a price list of your products and services

• for free reports related to your business giving away something of value

• to collect your customers’ opinions through surveys

• to publish a FAQ compilation of questions

• to show testimonials of your products or service

• to use as a newsletter using old articles in back issues

• to show off your website piece by piece

All of the above should give you enough ideas for you to never run out of  ways tol increase your exposure while still giving extremely good content to your customers.

You want people to come to your site and stay there, not just click away. Yet, you’ve been working really hard at just that but can’t seem to be achieving that goal very successfully.

Maybe these next 11 reasons have something to do with it.  See how many apply to you.

1. Are you giving your viewer something original that can’t be found readily anywhere else on the web?  It all starts here and if you wish for visitors to come back, giving unique value is key.
2. What about free software? I know that I like great software to make what I do simpler. Make a review and give the download links or offer something you have the rights to and give it away.
3. What about a contest? Everyone loves a contest, well nearly everyone. Just make sure that the prize is worth it for them to participate in it.
4. If your niche is specialized, you might want to provide a free web directory of sites on a specific topic. Targeted traffic will use your site to get their info “all in one place”.
5. Offering a free newsletter is always a good tactic. I belong to many free online newsletters and love the info selection I have coming in.
6. One thing quite overlooked by many, is having a professional looking website with your own domain name.  To say ” come visit me at  http://sites.google.com/site/mynetworkmarketingsite/home-1” leaves a lot to be desired.
7. When doing a sales page, don’t place your free bonus offers at the beginning. Hopefully your sales copy will keep them interested until they reach the end and will see that you are also giving stuff away if they buy from you.  Remember, that it’s always “what’s in it for me”.
8. Ever use a survey to find out what your target audience wants?  Couldn’t be easier with Survey Bob, a free tool full of unexpected features.
9. Track every thing you do and change it accordingly if it does not perform up to the standards you want. This means you  need to keep your copywriting skills sharp at all times.
10. A bird in the hand is worth more than 2 in the bush! Once you have your prospect reading your sales page, create urgency about how long your product will be available at a certain price before it goes up or is completely removed from accessibility.  If it’s too boring to evoke an emotion, then it’s much easier to forget all about it.
11. Offer your services as a coach, for free. Give them at least a good hour of your time filled with value and they will keep coming back for more.

So, you’re really busy promoting your site online, but did you ever think that there were other ways to promote your site, especially when you were not online?

Here are some really good site promoting ideas that have nothing to do with doing it online:

• Use a bumper sticker for your car with your site printed on it
• Have t-shirts made with your logo and site and give them as gifts to family and friends
• Use your head and those of your friends too via a ball cap with pertinent information
• Don’t forget the standby general promoter, the business card.
• Let your car be the billboard by using a magnetic sign
• Make up flyers with your info and keep on hand to pass out or leave behind when convenient
• Don’t forget to print your info on jackets too if you can afford it
• Everybody needs a pen. Get pens printed with your info to hand out.
• And everybody loves a coffee cup. Have some printed and give out as gifts.

As you can see, there are many options to promoting your site while not really promoting it online.  Be daring and give three or four of these ideas a try and let me know how it worked for you.

Everyone hates rejection. That’s why most network marketer hate telephone cold calls or personal cold calls to people they don’t know.

There is a solution to this problem and yes attracting your prospects to you is a major part of it.

But once you’ve attracted what then?

You have to build a relationship. Your product, your company opportunity is NOT what is important. If you cannot build a relationship with someone then how do you expect that person to trust you or your information?

The consultative approach is a major key in growing this relationship.

So how do you do that?

• The number one biggy is to help people solve their problems by listening to them. Forget about your needs and focus on those of your prospect.
• There are different degrees to listening.  Go further than just the words and listen without thinking about what you are going to say next.
• Ask questions to understand what the prospect’s needs are, not the type of questions that you can use the answers to push your product to them as the solution.
• A good tactic is to repeat what they have just said. This serves as a confirmation, first to them,that you at least heard what they said and then, second to you, that you are on the right track in identifying that person’s problems so a solution can be found.

The above tactics can be clearly traced back to Michael Oliver, who published  How to sell network marketing without fear. And Cindy Schulson, in her Squidoo lens on “How to use the consultative approach and turn rejection into a profitable business relationships”, does a splendid job of reviewing Oliver’s consultative technique.

Cindy also mentions Ann Sieg’s expertise in using this approach and how Sieg has cultivated the attraction marketing model to its highest levels.

Listening is an art and if network marketing is what you do, then become an adept at this technique. It can help you prosper in your business but it can also help you in your personal life for as you become a great listener, your family and friends will come to value your opinion more and more.

Blogs are everywhere and there are many good ones but there are more bad ones.  Is your blog one with attractive content that will bring a reader back again and again?

What is attractive content?

Attractive content is value based where sharing experience and insights will help the reader be a better person, blogger, marketer.

To over-market oneself is considered very unattractive and will just make you and your blog very lonely.

However, one person’s spam could be another person’s “ah-ah” moment.

So how do you know what to do?

• First, you must achieve balance.  You get to decide which way you want to lean.  Are you going to lean toward value or toward promotional?   That also goes when you create your profile within a community.  There is nothing wrong with promoting oneself, but like everything, there is a time and a place where it is more appropriate.

There are certain factors to consider when deciding which way you will lean:

1. who are you attracting
2. put on your target audience’s shoes: what will they think of you?
3. more promotional will bring in more targeted but less leads
4. more value will you give more leads but less qualified ones

Your content needs to be well balanced.  Don’t just look at one aspect but the whole enchilada.

• your title wording will set the tone (is it a review, sharing insight or personal opinion?)
• your opening paragraph will either score high on the promotional billboard or give value
• your overall subject matter will also contribute to value based or promotional based
• how your content looks to the eye: short or long hubs, bolding words, using pictures
• using specific anchor text will indicate value or promotional content
• linking clusters can also attract or detract

These are just guidelines to consider.  But people blogging to attract leads are there to make money in the end and there is nothing wrong with that as long as its done in a respectful value-based manner.

These are the people that will succeed over those that just promote.

If you bookmark your content, then you may be using Digg as one of your tools.

Digg is a social site considered a bookmarking site.  Although there are tons of these sites, Digg is quickly gaining attention and can bring you a lot of attention if you do it right.

We know that bookmarking sites are there for you to share your favorites with a community and of course your content also makes a contribution to this.

It should be newsworthy type news and not junk, of course.

If content you share on DIgg gets “dug”, this canl give you much more traffic to your site.  But that is really not, or should not, be your goal when using Digg bookmarking.

The main goal of Digg should be to help you come up on the search engines.  You can use it to promote events, newsworthy content that you may have on Squidoo or Hugpages, NOT A LEAD Capture Page.

It has to be value oriented.

Let’s say you create an e-book called, “The No No’s of Social Bookmarking”.  Once your book is ready to promote, then a really good way to do this, is to write an article, create a Hugpage and create a Squidoo lense about it.  Linking to each other and bookmarking the article, the lense and the hub will give you instant backlinks.

Then you DIGG your article and shout it to your friends.  I have found that friends on DIgg are much more loyal and interactive than other bookmarking sites.

So don’t be shy to ask other Diggers to become friends with you.  Remember that all you have to click on the person’s picture and click on the “friend” link and then go see that person’s friends and go ahead and add some of their friends too.

The wider the friend base, the wider you can spread your knowledge and the more you will be considered as someone that gives value and not someone out just for themself.

If you really want to learn all there is to learn about social bookmarking, there is really outstanding bookmarking training available.

Without leads, you’re dead in the water.

That’s why you are asking for referrals from clients as well as others who have no interest in your product.

But you hate it?  So do I!

That’s why using a proven system that will generate leads that come to me really makes my day.

If you intend to build a business based on residual income, there’s no getting away from it.

A system is not shy. A system doesn’t sleep.  A system pushes beyond human failings. A system has no comfort zone. I like that one.

I grant you some people can do network marketing the old way and make it look easy. And yes you can learn how to do network marketing that way too because it is skill that will help you to succeed.

But there is a time and place where you can apply the skill you need and that’s to connect with your prospects once they are already in the pipeline.

If you really want your business to grow and hate the traditional methods and know that there is a better way, then using a proven system is a must.

However your system must also grow.  If the one you are using or looking to follow does not keep up with the times then consider switching to one that does.

That’s what I like with my system.  It is constantly changing and growing, teaching me new tactics to be more web worthy and to grow my business with integrity and steadiness.

It’s great to have the desire, but the desire fueled by a step by step system to teach you the right way is dynamite.