Marketing to a list of pre-qualified potential customers is a great deal easier than cold selling. The problem with marketing to a list, of course, is that it requires generating, building, maintaining, and otherwise qualifying lists of people interested in the products you have to market. That isn’t always easy.
Marketing to a List Is about Building RELATIONSHIPS
Statistics indicate that online buyers are more comfortable making a purchase from someone they believe is a leader in their field. While this is important, an internet marketer is not going to be a leader / leading brand necessarily in any given field. Instead it is more likely that the internet marketer will choose from the leaders in that particular market and create promotions based on those brands. Where the marketer earns his living however is in establishing a reputation for providing honest and accurate information.
The marketer who favorably describes a product that a visitor then buys stands to gain much in terms of repeat business provided they have made the effort to capture contact information (a must for all internet marketers). The reason for the potential gain is the immense credibility that comes from a satisfied customer. Because of the enormous disincentive for ethical behavior when it comes to selling products online, the reputation of all online marketers suffers. This makes making that first sale to a new visitor to your site much more difficult. All the more reason to establish credibility and integrity when recommending products.
Establishing Credibility with New Visitors
The way to build up your reputation with the all important first time visitor is to offer something of high value immediately without any strings attached. Offer up a product warning or information on recalls. You could offer a free guide where you collect their email in exchange for the (HONEST!) product review guide. Once you have made a contact where an offer of real value has been made without any attached cost the visitor should at least be able to recognize your name the next time you send out an email to them – greatly enhancing the odds that they will open the email and react to the information you provide in it.
We Regularly Add to This Site - Both As We Learn New Techniques and As We Find New and Better Sources of Tips and Information - Why Not Stay Informed and Subscribe to Our Free Internet Marketing Newsletter?
Learning How to Reach Your Market
Learning how to reach out and connect with a target market is the difference between making long term relationships with repeat buyers and no sales whatsoever. There doesn’t really seem to be much of a middle ground in online sales – you either get street credibility or you stare at a bunch of zeroes on your stats pages.
When I started out as an internet marketing beginner, I had a lot of motivation but not a lot of experience. The vast majority of what I have learned came from tutorials at Wealthy Affiliate. What I learned was that there is a long chain of events that leads a web searcher to your site to (hopefully) an intelligent purchase. Any breaks along the chain results in zero sales. Learning about the importance of establishing relationships and marketing to a list is one of the great lessons I learned at WA.
