Free, Trust and Obligation Marketing Strategies

Which do you think is easier? Selling something or giving something away? So how about giving people something free and using an up sell marketing strategy to buy from you? Another mistake most people in Internet marketing make is they approach their marketing with a “Selling Attitude”. A Selling Attitude requires hype because without hype it isn’t possible to convince someone they really need your product.

The primary reason people use the Internet is to find information. The search engines were designed for finding information not for product sales pages. Is it logical to show people something they are not looking for? It’s true that people are buying on the Internet, but primarily they are looking for “information” and “solutions” to their problems. So if you provide them that “information” or “solution” they are then likely to buy from you.

Before going into actual monetization methods visualize that your primary job is providing information and solutions to people, and not selling. Most of the time you need to provide that Information for FREE. You are not a sales person. You are not a hawker shouting in the streets that you have something to sell.

>>>”Then How will I Make Money?”…You Ask<<<

Following this method and permission email marketing you need not worry about making money. Actually you also need to decide that making money is not your main objective. Your objective is to provide QUALITY information. Now don’t take this wrong. You will make money eventually but you will not have to chase money. Money will come to you as a result of providing what people are looking for. I will show you how to prepare information people are looking for and how to use that for your lead creation process and finally how it makes you money in return.

Trust Building vs Money Making

Before you make money from this process you must gain people’s trust. Trust is a synonym for success in web marketing. Remember you are offering something free to people which they were looking for. This will place your name in their good book and eventually they will pay you back many times over.

If you follow the other route and try to sell them upfront by using some sales pitch and hype in your advertisement you might make some short term money but what will your end result be? Sure, there will be people who bought from you because of your sales pitch and hype, but you will need to continue chasing the money with ongoing hype and sales pitches if you want to keep making money.

Furthermore, once your product doesn’t meet the expectations created by the hype and the sales pitch you will lose all your credibility in the eyes of that customer. The story does not end here. That customer will go to different forums and product review sites and complain to people about the quality of your product.

Once you get a bad name the game is over for you. People will be reluctant to buy anything from you in the future no matter how good a product you market. “Your name is your brand”. The respect for your name in your market should be your top priority. Never sacrifice the credibility of your name for short term money. You can make money anytime, but you can’t make your name once it’s ruined.

Make Them Obliged

When you give something valuable for free your prospect normally feels obliged. This is human nature that you feel a sense of obligation when you take something from someone. You will feel a sense of obligation due to the marketer’s good will. This psychology works and once you give something free to your prospects you create a sense of obligation in their subconscious. This will at least gain you their attention in future communications and a better chance for sales.

Obligation plus trust and respect in your name is what makes your subscribers loyal to you. An unhappy customer can ruin your name and can run you out of business and a loyal customer can take you to the next level of success. Loyal customers are also mouth pieces for you and will market for you without any incentive from you. They will do this from a sense of obligation you created in their minds.

The book “Customer Satisfaction Is Worthless, Customer Loyalty Is Priceless” by Jeffrey Gitomer sure hits a home run on accurately assessing the state of business in the United States and in all countries for that matter. A loyal customer is worth gold. A satisfied customer won’t talk bad about you, but has no reason to either return or recommend you.

Permission Marketing Strategies Can Make Sense

Author: Scott Holden – TrafficEraBlog

Jumping Business Mindset Mental Hurdles

Goal setting is a misleading concept and isn’t as simple as setting goals. In order to work on your marketing goals you must do something different to be able to think in different ways other than how your brain is used to thinking. This is why most people set a goal and don’t reach it because unconsciously they keep following the same patterns that allowed them to reach their goal in the past.

Usually we don’t know what steps to take with our marketing strategy and we need a mechanism or a step-by-step process to show us once we have a goal, how to achieve it. The first step is to know what you really want instead of what you think you want. What do you really want? Not what you think you should do or what you think someone else wants you to do.

What do you want to set as a goal? What’s your intention? I have learned that most of us have been taught that we can’t focus on what we want, but must focus on what we need. This is the real killer of ideas and aspirations of most people.

That is the first major obstacle to setting goals … knowing what you really want. Many of your beliefs and assumptions can stop you from taking action or believing in your goals and what you want to achieve. You can assume that you will make $7,000 this month or you can assume that you are going to need to get a job until you can figure out a way to generate $7,000. They’re both just assumptions and the effect of choosing one over the other will manifest that assumption.

The difference between goal setting and goal getting is taking action. Setting a goal is like trying to solve a problem. You want something and there’s something keeping you from reaching it. Most believe the way to solve a problem is to make sure you have the proper web marketing knowledge for solving it in the first place. This is total nonsense “chicken and the egg” logic because the only time you’ll know you have the proper knowledge is after you’ve solved the problem.

Here are three definitions you might not know about:

• Knowledge has no formal definition and is still argued as to what the meaning of the word is to this day. The scientific method is the only thing many people can agree creates knowledge and even that scientific proof can be false.
• Prudence is the exercise of sound decision making or being practical. A good business entrepreneur has used prudence if they made a good decision, but how will we know it was prudent until after the result of their decision can be measured against other decisions?
• Wisdom is the direct application of knowledge and is related to intelligence, but guided by experience of life.

The point of me explaining these three briefly is that there are many marketers out there who will try and create fear in you based on using the example of a rich marketer having more knowledge, prudence or wisdom about marketing than you. This is a pure fear position and is total crap. Because someone was successful in making money does not mean they have more knowledge, prudence or wisdom than you in marketing. It only means they did something which was successful through trial.

Now don’t misunderstand my point…I am not trying to say everyone has the same knowledge level. I am trying to get you to finally tell yourself that you know a lot more than you may give yourself credit for and con artist marketers try to always make you feel inferior in these three areas. Don’t fall for it…scarcity and fear mentality are marketing strategies and two of a marketers biggest weapons.

We all have knowledge, prudence and wisdom and a person who made 3 million off an idea is none of those things because of their success. They are merely richer than you. Did you ever stop to think that they could try more things than you because they already had money? They got to become successful because of someone they knew? Maybe they just chose a marketing plan that someone else had success with and implemented it. There are many reasons why they found success and almost always it isn’t because they are wiser, more prudent or more knowledgeable than you.

It is in hindsight that marketers say, “Well, if I had done this, I would have solved it.” All problem solving is speculation. You learn as much about web marketing as you possibly can, and move in the direction which appears prudent. You will know you’re successful once you solve the problem. Being successful doesn’t make you more knowledgeable or smarter than anyone else it means you found a way that worked.

Let’s say someone’s friends are all well connected millionaires and he creates a mediocre product that does the job. He goes on to make millions because his friends all promote his product. Does this make him a great marketer? I think you get the point.

Mentality about success and wants are the same and what stops us is we’re not willing to be somewhat ambiguous about it. The only time you really know what you want is after you have it. You have to be willing to think, “At this point I seem to want X.” This is your intention, but you must allow for the fact that once you get there, you may think, “Is this what I really want?”

You need to choose something. That’s your starting point. People never know what they want, and think they need the perfect answer. Just pick anything that seems reasonable and interesting to you.
The simple answer is, do something instead of just looking at it.

I have a friend who taught me last spring a method for maintaining focus for long enough periods of time to achieve goals. He told me to give myself a task a small goal to complete and give that task a time target. He then told me to focus on one task only during that time target. So if my time target was 20 minutes working on the task and I wasn’t finished yet, what I found is I had an excuse to do some other task I liked more once my time was up.

The actual result has been to this day that I continue working on the task and I feel productive about it and don’t want to quit for much longer periods of time. You can then reset the time target for another equal period of time once you reach the first target. This is wonderful for your brain and allows you to focus.

Try this> Give your brain a time target, it will continue working more easily until the time target is reached. If there is no time target your brain will ask when you are going to quit?

When working towards a goal you have a lot of distractions, and an important skill is awareness. This comes back to the idea of intention and our intention is to stay focused. So we need to be aware when we’re not. While aware of not being focused, your goal reminds you to be focused. If things come into your senses when you’re trying to focus on something, just let them float away and don’t fixate on them. Distraction is also a decision, which means you have control over it.

A Goal Setting Marketing Mindset Can Make Sense
Author: Scott Holden – TrafficEraBlog

A Marketing Strategy Blueprint That Makes Sense

Have you read different authors works on how to create marketing plans for your online business? Did it leave you with too many unanswered questions? Do you know why you might have felt a bit cheated? Am I asking too many questions?

The thing that many marketers find when trying to build their online business is that the various marketing strategies and tactics out there are just that…strategies and tactics.

A business marketing plan is usually defined as a 1-5 year set of actions required to implement a strategy or to reach a marketing objective. In the case of most business owners it is more likely a one year plan if they can even follow it for one year.

The following list is a product of many years of following the jargon, tactics, plans and strategies of marketers. It is my blueprint for laying out a new web business or revamping an old one.

This is a general online marketing plan that is not a fully filled in plan, but it is a great outline and compass for seeing how various things can be sorted or mapped out. It is by no means a daily agenda, but more of an outline of steps which will lead to a functioning business model. You can see how I am categorizing my map and using acronyms as I describe on our home page.

I) Foundation – MRPFDDA

• Marketing Mindset
• Market Research
• Marketing Plans
• Business Formation
• Develop Product
• Design Website
• Automate Business

II) Promotion – COSAP

• Content Creation
• Site Optimization
• Social Media
• Product Affiliates
• Pay Per Visitor

III) Monetization – CAES

• Ad Copy
• Web Analytics
• Email Promotion
• Marketing Surveys

Now let me explain what all this means. First I placed all the foundation category bullet points there because these are the main concepts you need to build a foundation of knowledge as well a solid business foundation online. This may be missing some important point, but as you will see as this blog progresses most of those fall under one of these bullets.

The next major category you are probably aware of when selling online is promotion. Many would categorize it as website traffic. This category then includes the major areas of site promotion which will be covered on this blog.

The final category listed is monetization and basically encompasses all four of the items listed in so far as the way we are defining it. Monetization of course occurs to some level once the first two categories are built out and you have a working site. However, let us define it as meaning anything which helps to increase your website sales.

We will rap the blueprint up in the next article. Subscribe to our RSS feed or email list to receive upcoming content as it unfolds.

Internet Marketing Plans Can Make Sense

Author: Scott Holden – TrafficEraBlog

Next Article: Marketing Planning Blueprint