How to Reach Thousands of Your Ideal Clients and Customers and Skyrocket Your E-mail List (science news)
No commentsBy Alexandria Brown
One of the questions Im asked the most by my clients is, How can I most quickly build my e-mail list?
My answer is, find someone whos already reaching your target market in droves, and use THEM to build your list! How? With these three easy steps:
STEP 1: Determine exactly who your ideal client or customer is.
The more descriptive you can be here, the better. For example, dont just think men. Think men ages 18-40 who like sports and working out. Dont just think small business owners. Think women owners of professional service businesses that do less than $1 million a year.
Can you take on clients or customers who fall outside of this description? Of course! But you need to know who youre going after.
Example: About three years ago, I spent a romantic summer week on Nantucket Island in Massachusetts. My beau was wonderful in letting me decide most of the activities wed do each day. But there was one thing he definitely wanted to do at least once - go bluefishing!
Now Im not sure if you could have guessed this, but Im not really into fishing. ; )
But hey, Ill try anything once, so off we went to the docks. Now, I figured we could go on any boat with any captain and do this. But no we went with Captain Dan the Bluefish Man (who smelled like his specialty). Dan took us on his special boat to this special place off the island where the bluefish were, and we even used special bait that the bluefish liked. And we had great success - they just kept biting!
I realized that if you know exactly what youre going after, youre much more likely to get it. The same goes for reaching your target market.
STEP 2: Find other people, companies, or websites that are ALREADY reaching your target market en masse.
Sit down with a cup of coffee this weekend and do some online research regarding your target market. What sites are they already visiting? What newsletters or magazines do they already read? For example, if your target market is stay-at-home moms, find the most popular sites they visit. Find the most popular ezines they read.
Come up with a list of your top five websites and top five ezines that are already reaching your ideal client or customer.
STEP 3: Contact these websites and ezines and see if they will:
REVIEW your book, products, services, or ezine for their readers. If so, send them a review copy and follow up a week or two later. Request that when they run the review they mention your e-zine and direct people to your website to sign up.
accept guest ARTICLES. If so, then submit one of your best, with a short bio that links people back to your website to sign up for your ezine.
SWAP ads or recommendations for each others websites, products, or services. If you have an ezine that reaches the same target market they want to reach, this is a great win-win.
do a CO-REGISTRATION deal. If you already have a good amount of e-zine subscribers and website traffic, they may be open to adding your e-zine to their ezine signup form if you do the same on your part. (Ideally folks should just check a box to subscribe to the additional e-zine automatically.)
run a recommendation or ad in exchange for a COMMISSION on resulting sales. For example, you give them the ad to run, tagged with a link that lets you know if any sales come from it. (This is easy for you to do if you have an online affiliate program.*)
accept PAID advertising. Banner ads, text ads, and other paid placements obviously cost you money, but if its your only option and you really want to reach these folks, go for it. But be sure to track your results so you can see if its working. (Youll need a link tracking program to do this.*)
And these are just a FEW ideas to get you started!
Remember, your #1 goal is to get people back to your site to sign up for your e-zine or other email list, because THAT is how you guarantee the chance to market to them repeatedly!
Online entrepreneur Alexandria K. Brown, The E-zine Queen, is creator of the award-winning Boost Business With Your Own E-zine system. To learn more about this step-by-step program, and to sign up for her FREE how-to marketing articles and FREE audio class, visit www.EzineQueen.com
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7 Marketing Lessons We Can Learn From TV Infomercials
By Alexandria Brown
I hate to share this, but I love watching infomercials. And I’ve ordered more than once from them! Everything from cosmetics to a cell phone accessory.
When pressed, my friends admit the same. If you sniff around most people’s homes, you’ll find SOMETHING ordered from an infomercial, whether it’s the Ronco Rotisserie or Victoria Principal’s skincare.
You may think of these often annoying programs as “trash TV”, but think again. Did you realize that they use many of the exact same strategies that we should?
Now, I don’t mean you need to scream at your customers or flash “$19.95″ in blinking digits on your website! Those are gimmicks. But what most people don’t realize is that many of the STRATEGIES that sell the kitchen doohickey gadget are the same ones that can also sell your products and programs.)
Here are 7 of my favorites:
1. They grab your attention.
Infomercials air on the most challenging medium there is out there: television. You’re just a second away from your prospect clicking their remote to the next channel. So they do their best to get your attention right away and KEEP it for as long as possible.
That’s why infomercials give bold statements and emphasize how this doohickey will change your life. You should do this too — stop beating around the bush and make it clear to your prospects how your products and services will change *their* lives!
2. They give tons of real-life testimonials.
You’ll see that TV infomercials have evolved greatly since years ago. It used to be one or two people talking to a camera for the entire time. These days most typical 30 minute spots are over 80% customer testimonials! And that’s for good reason… they are the hands-down BEST way to gain instant credibility.
A great example is for one of those home exercise machines. I noticed years ago they just showed the super-ripped guy using it on the infomercial. Now they show that guy, PLUS dozens of before and after testimonials from real-life guys with beer bellies and real jobs who used the product with success. That was a great move on their part, because c’mon, I just can’t believe that super-ripped guy got that hot looking using it just 30 minutes, 3 times a week!
3. They use personalities.
The most successful infomercials now use celebrity guest hosts. They know this gets people’s attention more than practically anything out there. Pro Activ uses Jessica Simpson. Youthful Essence (a skincare product I love) uses Susan Lucci. Even NutriSystem is now using Dan Marino in their commercials to target men.
You can do the same in your marketing. You can either hire a star, or even better, make YOURSELF the celebrity… by sharing stories, being personal, and having fun with your market.
4. They give an irresistible offer.
It’s rare these days to see an infomercial asking for you to pay for something in full. You’ll mostly see things like “3 payments of $19.95″ or “4 payments of $39.95″. Why? Cash-crunched Americans are always more concerned about cash flow than the total price. They’ll even happily pay much MORE in the end in order to gain a lower monthly payment!
You can do the same. Offer a payment plan for your products, courses, workshops, and coaching. You’ll be AMAZED at the increased response, and it’s easy to do with marketing-savvy shopping cart systems.
5. They give a strong call-to-action NOW.
These folks know that as soon as you change the channel, you’re going to forget about their product. So they make it very urgent that you pick up the phone and call them now or visit their website and order. They usually say something like “If you call in the next 10 minutes you also get…” and they list a few great bonuses.
This isn’t just specific to TV. Everyone would rather put off ANY decision these days, we’re all so busy and overwhelmed! So you need to give people a good REASON to act now, whether it’s a discount that expires, a payment plan that expires, a limited number of products or seats, a special bonus… you get the idea.
6. They sell on continuity.
What’s “continuity”? online newsletter it’s when you make ONE sale that results in multiple charges over and over. For example, because my friends have been raving about I.D. Bare Minerals natural makeup, I recently ordered a kit from their infomercial. Now, every 2 months, I receive a fresh supply in the mail, and my card is charged again. I love it because I don’t have to remember to reorder. They love it because they only had to make ONE sale, and how they’ve got me as a customer forever until I cancel!
Hear me now… continuity will change your life! Consider how you can use this principle in your business. Could you convert some of your current offerings into a monthly membership? Or instead of doing one-shot teleseminars, create an ongoing monthly program? (I did this with my Marketing & Motivation Mastermind.)
7. They repeat themselves. And repeat themselves.
And repeat themselves again! Smart marketers know it takes an average of 9 TIMES for someone to see/hear your message BEFORE they will even consider purchasing! That goes for you too. So many of my clients complain that advertising doesn’t work when they only ran one ad ONCE. Or published ONE newsletter and it didn’t get them results.
Remember it’s the ongoing exposure and repetition that breeds familiarity and trust with your prospects! And that leads to more sales than you’ve ever imagined.
Online entrepreneur Alexandria K. Brown, “The E-zine Queen,” publishes the award-winning ‘Straight Shooter Marketing’ weekly
ezine with 20,000+ subscribers. If you’re ready to jump-start your marketing, make more money, and have more fun in your small business, get your FREE tips now at
EzineQueen.com
Thursday, July 31st, 2008 at 4:10 pm and is filed under news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
