February 7, 2008

Don’t Bite The Hand That Feeds You

You probably know as well as I do that your internet marketing education is vitally important. You also know it can be quite expensive to obtain this knowledge and purchase the various products, software etc to keep up with all the changes.

There are however a few ‘must have’ marketing tools that you need to run your online business and quite a few that you don’t necessarily need but would certainly help.

One of these ‘must have’ pieces of software is an autoresponder. You will find it nearly impossible to run a sustainable, long term business without one.

I often talk with people who are using an autoresponder to build their list, but have no idea how to make it really work for them in the most effective way.

Now don’t presume that this is going to turn into ‘The Money Is In The List!’ article. Of course that is true. But what happens when you’ve got a list – even if it’s less than 200 subscribers?

Here’s the mistake I see new and often experienced marketers make time and time again:

- They set up a sales page or squeeze page.

- They have an opt-in form and a good free product or report to entice the prospect to enter their name and email address.

- They have also managed to start driving some traffic to the site using lots of free and paid techniques.

So far, so good. The prospect joins the opt-in list and downloads the free product/report. Everybody’s happy!

This happens more than once and voila! The list starts to grow.

Unfortunately from then on, it all goes very wrong. - Our intrepid marketer thinks “great, now I’ve got a few people on my list and it’s starting to grow I can send them every internet marketing product in the world which I am an affiliate for and make a ton of easy money”!

Their list is then bombarded on a daily basis with an endless stream of sales pitches and nothing else. No good quality information, no help and advice just sales pitch after sales pitch.

The end result? – Usually an ex-unhappy subscriber and a list that is worth diddly squat because all they get from you are emails wanting money.

So What Is The Best Way To Market To Your List?

Easy…Don’t!

Stop thinking about how to market to your list and start thinking about what valuable information can you send to your list?

If you have nothing worthwhile to send to your list other than sales pitches, then don’t send them anything or don’t bother building a list in that niche.

Look, if you’ve gone to all the trouble in the first place to set up a system in order to capture a prospects name and email address, you may as well make full use of that list and provide them with lots of hot, useful information. Then when you do offer a product or service with your affiliate link embedded, you’ll much more likely to make a sale.

Makes sense right?

Keep in contact with your list and send them good quality, useful information, which builds a rapport and trust between the two of you. Then, every so often you recommend a product or service that you have had experience with and can demonstrate how it can benefit your subscribers as well.

Isn’t that going to be more effective than simply trying to market a product to your list just because you are an affiliate of the product?

Your list will be delighted with the high quality, free information and will be just as happy to receive an email from you once in a while recommending a useful, related product to them.

So stop thinking about marketing to your list and start thinking about how to give them quality information that will benefit them.

Your autoresponder and your list are the most important aspects to your internet marketing business – bar none!

I promise you, if you shift your perception and start communicating with people the way you would like to be communicated with yourself, you will always be able to make money in this business.

If you have a list already, take a look at your autoresponder series. Examine every one and decide if it really will benefit the person who is going to read it.

The first time I did this, I ended up amending or deleting every single email I had!

But the resulting outcome was amazing. Try it for yourself, even if it means deleting some autoresponders. Not only will the quality of your emails improve, so will your sales!

~ Peter Tremayne

P.S If you found this tip useful, please comment below.

Filed under Blog, Internet Marketing by Peter Tremayne

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Comments on Don’t Bite The Hand That Feeds You »

February 8, 2008

Randy Smith @ 9:33 am

Hi Peter,

First time I've visited your blog.
(I bought your $50 a day an age ago)

Just wanted to comment overall as well as this post.
Good solid advice that I can relate to - I wish you had been in touch more often…lol

I also read your bio and employment history….crikey - talk about similar ventures, I don't think there was anything (entreprenuerial_ that I didn't match - and with similar results…LOL

I'll be popping by more often in future.

Warm Regards
Randy Smith
http://www.RandolfSmith.com
P.S. - I couldn't get the URL to enter where it should?