Relationship Marketing Online

The Evergreen Marketing History

These are very changing moments in Internet marketing. It’s very important to understand these changes so that we can not only save ourselves from being the victim of hype marketing, but also to build a real firm foundation for our Internet Business.

In the early days of Internet marketing it was way too easy to make money in comparison to today. Email marketing was very simple and very rewarding. In the absence of Spam laws one could make huge mailing lists ethically or unethically. The Internet community was also less aware of Spam.

Due to the immaturity of the Internet community the common Internet user was easy prey to fall into the net of marketers. A new era was emerging and with it a new romance. You may remember those days when you were ready to buy every thing labeled as “Make easy money online” or “learn how I am making thousands of $$$$$”.

In the early days of web marketing a bunch of people assessed its potential and I give full credit to those people for being ahead of the crowd at that time. The people who had the vision of the future took advantage and made mailing lists of millions, and many made fortunes out of that opportunity. There was nothing wrong up to that point. There were no Spam laws so I can agree with the argument that it was legal to Spam at that time (though it was still unethical).

At that very moment it was also very easy to Spam the search engines. It was very easy to trick the search engines and get high rankings by gaming the search engines using methods like link farming. Many people took full advantage of technical loop holes in search engines and established so called “Virtual Real Estate” sites. A few people made millions of dollars by doing this.

Once that time was over it became harder to make money on the Internet. The kind of money made in those early days is more difficult to make today and requires more work. Technology advancements in search engines and email means it’s not easy to game the Internet. There are laws on Spam now and above all the overall maturity level of the Internet community is growing daily and even an Internet virgin can sense what is valuable and what is garbage more quickly.

It became harder to sell garbage and make insane amounts of money by selling low quality products, because internet users could determine what was more valuable and search engines knocked sites out of the top positions for not providing relevant valuable content. Then the era of “selling marketing secrets” started.

Marketers who were failing in product markets or having their sites lose rank position decided to make money by selling their “secrets”. To accomplish this they used the money they made in those easy days. They fooled people by showing screen shots and videos of their checks many of which could be doctored with graphics or programming.

Marketers showed people how much money they “made” and promised to reveal the techniques which made them money. But they didn’t point out that those marketing techniques are not effective anymore or that they are of no use for most marketers. Hype marketing was the phenomena of this particular time period.

This period lasted for some time and people soon realized that they were being trapped by this hype. The maturity of the Internet community is upon us and is a great opportunity for mature online marketers not hype creators. You may have heard that in marketing “The Money Is In The List”, but that’s not an entirely true statement because your money is made in the value you give to your subscribers.

Relationship marketing is nothing more than relationship building. This point is very important to understand. Don’t treat your prospects as a tool to make money. They are your potential customers so take care of their needs and satisfy them by giving them solutions they are looking for. Don’t follow up with them in the intention of making sales with every mailing.

You might have been taught that using hype in your “subject line” is the most important factor in the open rate of your email campaigns. This is totally wrong. It is desperate to implement fear and scarcity psychological tactics to get a sale. Mostly these psychological tactics are based on hype. The first thing to learn is avoiding this, because people are getting wise to it after being ripped off again and again. “Next Big Thing” advertising is not gonna work any more.

Instead of that, focus on value and treat your prospects as valued customers rather than simply trying to make money off of them.  In the long run, this will provide a much greater return. You will no longer need to use sensational or deceptive subject lines like “You have got a payment”. Rather than focusing on the subject line you need to gain respect for your name. The most important factors affecting whether people listen to you are ‘believability’ and ‘trust’.

Establishing a trustworthy marketing relationship with prospects and clients is an evergreen marketing principle and how to have them waiting for your next contact via email or any other means. You can even forget a subject line and people will still respond to your contact.

Relationship Marketing Can Make Sense

Author: Scott Holden – TrafficEraBlog