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Greetings!
Essential Principle #3 was about testing all of your Marketing. If you missed this one, or would like to read it again, click here.
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Now we've built
the foundations of your exponential business success, let's get down to some
serious marketing strategies that you can start testing as you become more and
more of a marketing genius. Principle #4 is this; if you're going to maximise
the potential of your business, or anywhere close, you must use the internet and e-marketing effectively.
Recently, a very
interesting thing has been happening on the internet. Shortly after the dotcom
bust, when everyone was focusing on the disaster stories, thousands, even
hundreds of thousands of business owners were devising their e-marketing
strategies.
So, to start,
here's what you need to know about the internet. Firstly, the internet is by
far the most exciting, yet sometimes unpredictable, marketing tool you own. It
is the fastest, direct response marketing tool ever created.
Secondly, your
competitors likely know virtually nothing about good internet marketing. I'm talking about really good internet
marketing, not just creating a Facebook page or writing a blog post once a
month. The internet is changing and evolving so fast that unless you've made
the sort of commitment you've made by reading this email, you're going to get
left behind.
Third, you
absolutely must revolve your marketing around the internet. I could talk
forever about the internet and what you can do with it, but that is for another
time, and I want to focus specifically on the one single area that you can
leverage huge profits with, and that's email marketing.
Think of it like
this; for people like you and me, the biggest impact the internet had so far
hasn't been the ability to surf the web or buy online, it's been with emails.
Emails are used everyday, by a huge majority of people.
In the early days
of the internet, everyone thought that e-marketing was about your website.
Nowadays, however, having a good website is taken for granted. The key, at
least at the moment, is using the internet to communicate and build relationships with prospective
customers/clients, primarily, but not solely, through emails.
Most businesses
haven't got a clue how to use emails effectively, at least as a marketing tool
anyway. In fact, most businesses don't even use emails as a marketing tool,
which I quite honestly find astonishing.
Now everyone hates
spam, but if email was so bad, we wouldn't be using it everyday, would we?!
Anyway, let's get
down to the specific details; how can you get the most out of email marketing?
Firstly, do you
have all of your existing client's email addresses? If you don't, get on the
phone to them, and collect their email addresses, especially for clients you
have recently spoken to.
Email marketing
will probably be the best investment in marketing you will make; it's a
no-brainer. If you don't do it, you're crazy! Next, make sure you have a system
in place to capture the email addresses of anyone who comes near your business,
or your website. When I say catching their email addresses, I mean getting
permission to email them. So, when people phone, get their email. If someone
pops in, get their email. Now, how do you get someone to give you their email
address? An incentive. Offer the person something of value; it could be tips
relative to your industry, an article about something that would interest the
reader, etc.
Business is an
exchange of value. Let me explain; when you sell your product or service, the
customer gives you some money; you both have something of value. It's an
obvious point, but so often overlooked. What the smarter internet marketers
understand is that the giving value process should start before the receiving.
In other words, adding value to the potential client's life before they decide to make a purchase.
I'm guessing
you've heard the phrase 'permission marketing'. Permission marketing is very
simple; it says that instead of doing a 'blanket' marketing campaign, hitting
millions of viewers, and hoping for the best, you target a smaller group of people,
but they're people that have given you permission to market to them, so
therefore, they are interested already; that's half the work done! With
permission marketing, as said earlier, obviously you need permission, and to
capture their emails. I said about giving them something of value in exchange,
so here are some examples of what you could use; if you sell a product, then do
a report on how to make the most of that product. Think of the problem your
product solves, and then offer the reader a report on how to solve that problem. If you sell a service, again your service
is either going to be solving problems, or adding value to their lives. Giving
your visitors something of value for free is not only going to benefit their
lives, and add value, but it really is a great way to capture their emails.
Those businesses
that do already conduct email marketing usually encounter a common problem;
they wait until they have something to say, and then they send it out. That's
the wrong way round to do it. Why? Because there will always be something more
important for you than sending that email out. So weeks and weeks could go past
between emails, which is a huge waste, because I really want to get across to
you how effective and powerful email marketing can be when it's nurtured
properly.
So, the next question
is what can you put in your emails? This is the best part; this is where you
storm ahead of the competition on your way to becoming an internet marketing
genius.
You know all those
tedious emails you get from companies with their pretty graphics and newsletter
reports that are split into equally-boring sub-reports? Forget about these
completely; this is not how you want to conduct your email marketing. Here's
what you want to put in your emails;
First, you write a
personal message from you to the person
reading it.
Think about it
like this for a minute; what are the emails you currently enjoy reading? Is it
the tedious newsletters? Or is it an email from a friend or someone that knows
you?
Chances are it's
the friend's email that you prefer reading. The reason for this is not just
that it's from your friend, but because it's personal, interesting, and could
possibly add value to your life.
Let's think about
it from a different view quickly. If you send an email to a friend, you don't
sit there designing pretty templates, and you don't send it in a newsletter
with 20-odd things to read.
Hopefully you get
where I'm going with this now; you want to make the emails as personal as
possible; imagine you are writing to
a friend.
The second element
that will make your emails stand out from the crowd is your content. The key to
successful email marketing is within your content, and it's one word; give.
Give the readers something that, hopefully, they'll find useful, or make their
lives easier. But, at the very least, give them something that will inspire a
reaction; whether it's smiling, thinking, laughing, anything (except
unsubscribing!).
People often
hesitate about sending too many emails incase they seem to be selling too much.
Well, apart from the presumption that there is something wrong with selling, my
answer to that is don't even try to sell in your emails. I would strongly
recommend that you use emails to build a relationship with your customers and
prospectives. If you do that successfully, believe me, the sales will follow.
Sometimes, your email can be describing one of your products, or promoting
yourself, but more often than not, you want your emails to be positioning you
as the source of great knowledge in your industry.
For example, if
you are a dentist, send your customers and prospectives teeth-cleaning tips
every so often, or tips on how to minimise decay. Anything, as long as you are
giving the reader value, and
positioning yourself as an expert.
So, here are your
Email Marketing action steps;
First, create a
great system for capturing email addresses, and then automatically sending a
personalised reply back. This is called an autoresponder.
Then, decide how
often you're going to send your emails, brainstorm a list of subjects to email
people about, and then go send some emails!
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Thanks for taking the time to read this email. If you have any feedback regarding our Essential Principles, please email ben@keepers.info and let us know!
Ben & Chris
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