Building Your List Of Customers
It’s time to attract visitors to your Internet business and to build a list of customers. Your customers will be your lifeline and without them, your Internet business cannot survive.
Build Your Foundation – The Email List
In the online world we communicate with our customers via multiple mediums and ultimately we need to collect their email address. Email addresses are used to send orders, updates and more information from your e-commerce website. Building an email list is very important because you will be able to deliver more information and convince your customers to buy more from your website. I strongly recommend you start building an email list at the beginning.
Here is a simple process of how collecting an email address is used to create sales:
- Sign up subscribers to your online newsletter through your website and send updates of new products and promotions
- Build rapport with these people who will be interested in receiving your online newsletter. Be sure you offer great advice and resources they can access.
- They become a customer of your website because they trust you and will recommend friends and family to buy from you.
This is a short process that is quite simple but very powerful. If you can build strong relationships with your customers via email, then imagine what your e-commerce business could achieve.
How To Find Your Internet Business Niche
The biggest challenge I have found in any Internet business is creating the right systems that will leverage your time and make money while you are not there. Our ultimate goal is establishing upfront a system that allows us to walk away from the business for at least six months and come back with more money in our bank account. This is the power of running a business online. If you can apply these systems that I show you, you will create a business you own rather than a business you run.
Where Do I Start? Let’s Help You Find Your Niche!
Many people who launched their Internet businesses successfully started with leveraging their industry experience or personal interests. You need to look at identifying market niches that are under served within those areas. Ask yourself what expertise have you gained from your life experiences that you can offer to potential clients? Or what personal interests can you look at turning into an Internet business? For me, I started the dragon boat niche business out of frustration that there was no company in Australia that offered the products I needed. As I was involved in the sport at an elite level I started hearing the same questions, “where can I buy dragonboat carbon fibre paddles?” Each time I heard that, I started to see there was a demand and took this opportunity to create an Internet business. For you, the idea would be different, but the search for an untapped niche market is an opportunity for you to create a successful Internet business.
I recommend doing some due diligence and research to find out if your idea is viable, and here are three major questions you need to ask:
- Does your idea exist already?
- Will it be easily identifiable?
- How will I make it marketable and targeted?
A key point I want to make: looking for a profitable niche market is about finding the buyers first. From my experience, most people start off with the wrong idea and look for a product to sell first. Find out what the problems or needs are from people and provide a solution. (As I mentioned in my example, I saw a problem and offered a solution).
How To Create Your Internet Business Press Release
I wrote a post previously on How To Use Press Releases To Gain Exposure For Your Website? If you haven’t read this, please take time to read this first. If you have, let’s move on. Before you release a press release to the market you must spend time preparing and creating the right elements. Spend more time here and I can assure you that you will have greater success when you speak with the media. They want to know that you are knowledgeable in your area of expertise and don’t want to waste time. So let’s begin with preparation…
The Secret Is In Preparation!
The key to dealing with the media is demonstrating your ability to act quickly and to have information ready when people ask for it. Before reaching out to the media, develop the following:
- A good media release (some hints follow)
- A few backup ideas, in case the first one you present is knocked back by the journalist
- A one-page biography of yourself highlighting your experience and capabilities, which shows them you are a credible source
- A list of sample questions for the journalist to ask you (this can be especially helpful when working with radio stations, particularly the smaller or underfunded ones)
- A digital image of yourself, such as professional photos available for download at 300dpi
- Samples of your product (or if you’re providing a service, testimonials from customers who have tried it)
By providing a journalist the information they need, it makes the process of writing a story very easy for them and they will appreciate your efforts.
How To Use Press Releases To Gain Exposure For Your Website?
If you want to establish credibility and create brand awareness in the shortest amount of time, utilising the media is a more effective approach than paid advertising. The goal is to get the media to write great stories about your Internet business and yourself using press releases. It allows you and your website to reap the benefits of free exposure, which is considered to be three times more valuable than paid advertising. By having a third party such as a journalist write a story about you, your brand message becomes more credible and effective. Their coverage offers an impartial endorsement that tells their readers you are an honest person, and that your services or products provide substantial value.
Understanding How The Media Works
Our society is very time-poor, and this fight for attention includes our journalists and writers. They have to scan through literally thousands of articles, ideas and proposals a day to pick the best ones that will capture the reader’s attention. If we want to stand out among the thousands of articles a journalist will receive daily, we first need to understand what they are looking for.
Most journalists will ask — where’s the angle or the hook to this story? What is going to appeal to my readers that will make a great story? For example, if the heading of a story reads, “Man takes dog for a walk,” then people will not be interested. But if the heading reads “Man takes flying dog for a walk,” that story will grab the reader’s attention.
Podcast: Article Marketing Talk
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Our Step By Step Guide To Article Marketing
In our weekly podcast, we are exploring article marketing. The reason why we wanted to share this with you is to help you understand why article marketing is a crucial traffic generating tool for your Internet business. If you do article marketing correctly, it will help rank your website higher across multiple search engines and also bring in more traffic from many different sources.
Within the podcast we’ll teach you:
- How to create unique content that readers will find interesting and click through to your website.
- Why you need to structure your article in a certain way to achieve the best outcome
- Our top tips on how to get your articles marketed quickly and tools to speed up the process
- How to research the market to write about a topic your readers want
