Fikir Kritis # 18

Brain Fuel Bulletin #15
The Two Greatest Online Marketing Secrets
--------------------------------------------------------
As a special bonus in this final Brain Fuel Bulletin, I want to leave you with not just one, but two lessons that will increase your sales and profits and give you a powerful advantage over your competitors if you'll take them to heart.Well, actually three lessons.

The first lesson is to: Always give people more than you promised I hope I achieved this both in the content of all these bulletins and by giving you a "two for one" surprise here at the end. And now, let's get to the two important points for today.
======================================
Closing Lesson #1: Despite what anyone claims about any emerging technology, until proven differently, email is THE heavyweight champion of the marketing world
======================================
When it comes to marketing your business online, NOTHING compares to the power of email. Now, there are many pretenders to the throne. It seems like nearly every month another shiny new technology rear sits head, promising to be that "magic bullet" that solves all your marketing problems forever.Yeah, right. But day-in and day-out, there's no stronger work horse, no more effective performer than email. You can use email to build your list. You can use email to build a relationship and establish credibility with your list. You can use email to educate your list with an ezine. You can use email to send promotions to your list. And you can do most online marketing tasks better with email than through any other medium. But what REALLY makes email marketing the killer online application of all time is. Every other marketing technology depends on email to spread the word! Think about it. How did you hear about the diet blog you just subscribed to? Through email. How do you get the majority of your invitations to stay in touch on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and just about any other social media? By email, of course. And how did you hear about that hot new video that's just been posted on YouTube or dozens of other video sharing sites? Yep, you guessed it - by email.The lesson here is simple. It's fine to examine new marketing technologies to see if they make sense for your business. Give them a try and see if they get the results you're after. But whatever you do, do NOT neglect your email marketing. It's the "goose that laid the golden egg" and it will continue to be so until something comes along to dethrone it. But frankly, I can't imagine that will occur anytime soon.
======================================
Closing Lesson #2: The Secret of 7 Touches
======================================
No, I'm not closing with an erotic lesson here. Quite the contrary. But the 7 Touches I'm talking about here maybe as important as any secret you'll ever find in the KamaSutra.So let me get directly to this powerful secret. Years ago (I believe it was in the 1980's), Sales and Marketing Magazine conducted an extensive study that showed that, on average, it takes seven contacts with a prospect to make a sale.It also revealed that the majority of sales people give up after an average of just two contacts! So you can imagine how many sales are not being made and how much money is left on the table, simply because sales people don't harness the power of this simple law of averages. However, this exact same scenario plays out every day in most of your marketing efforts, both online and offline.While your prospects crave more information and more attention, instead of providing what they want, you give up after a half-hearted effort or two. And your sales suffer because of this. But it really doesn't have to be this way. Establishing a regular pattern of touches - at least seven to start with - is easy when you apply these three "secrets".
======================================
Secret #1: Make sure you set up a "serial capture and contact cycle"
======================================
First and foremost, you can't maintain a contact cycle if you don't capture your prospects' contact information.I know, it sounds like "square one" and it is. But I'd beremiss not to mention this since I'm still amazed by how many businesses I see that don't capture their prospects contact information. Choose something you can give away for free. It can be an ezine, blog, free article or report, a white paper, a demo of your system or some other type of "bait piece".The catch, of course, is that in order to get this item for free, prospects have to supply you with their contact information.That's a more than fair trade and most people are willing to make that trade with you. Those who won't make this simple type of trade are really telling you that they aren't prospects for your product or service anyway. After you've captured your prospect's contact information, be sure to follow up with them. All major email software has an auto responder function built into it. This is the ability to program a sequence of messages that go out at set intervals to your subscribers. You can set the numberof messages in your auto responder series to be as long or as short as you'd like. Personally, I've found that the original findings of at least 7 touches is a good number to start with.
======================================
Secret #2: Mix your media when appropriate
======================================
Once you've captured your prospect's contact information, you can start mixing media if it makes sense. For example,when I co-owned a software company, our "bait piece"was a free demo of our software. Prospects had to trade their name, company name, email address and phone number in order to take our demo. Now, realistically, that's a lot of information to require from a prospect. And asking for that much information will cut down on the number of people who sign up for your free item. But in the case of an expensive software suite, forcing prospects to give us that much information meant that those people who would take the time to give us the required information were much more qualified prospects.So part of our follow-up cycle was a personal phone call from a senior officer of our company. That's important when selling high priced products or services. And since most businesses don't take the time to do this, you're miles ahead of your competitors just by adding this simple"touch" to your mix of contacts.You can also send your prospects videos, more reports and white papers, informative emails, industry studies, and case studies of the results your product or service is producing for your customers. The sky is really the limit here, so make sure to consider as many options as possible.
======================================
Secret #3: How to determine when to end your contact cycle
======================================
How many contacts (or touches) should you include in your cycle - and when should you call it quits?In my experience, as long as it remains affordable, you shouldn't put any limit on the number of times you contact your prospects. I've had people on my email list for years who never buy a product or service, but then their situation changes or something is a perfect fit for them and they become a paying customer. If I had picked some arbitrary number of contacts as my cut off point, I never would have made these sales. However, the time to stop contacting a prospect is when they've specifically asked you to. This can come as an unsubscribe, an email requesting that they be removed from your list, or during a phone call when a prospect tells you clearly and unequivocally that they are no longer interested. If you regularly fail to respect your prospect's wishes to be removed from your contact cycle,word will get around soon. And you'll earn a negative reputation that's hard to overcome.So let me close this on a high note, with another example of the value of multiple touches. Going back to when Ico-owned a software company, there was a large company with 800,000 employees who we coveted as a customer. I sent a high-level executive there an email inviting him to take our software demo for free.He emailed me back saying that he would. I monitored our sign-up log for a few days and he didn't register, so I sent him a reminder. He thanked me, said he had been busy, and promised to take the demo soon. Another week passed by with no action on his part. So I picked up the phone and gave him a call. I could tell there was a bit of irritability in his voice, but at the same time, he admitted that it was unique to actually get a phone call from a senior executive of a company. And, of course, we closed the call with him promising to take our demo.This continued for months. I'd send him emails, reminders, statistics about how we could help his type of employees specifically and much more. I thought I had finally hooked him one day when I sent him a copy of an email from a senior executive at IBM praising our software. Because his company was a large international corporation, I was sure that would impress him and move him to action.Well, it certainly did impress him. In fact, he actually picked up the phone and called to congratulate me on our growing reputation. And without me asking, he volunteered that he'd be taking the demo right away. Still, it did not happen! However - and this is critical - since he never told me that he wasn't interested, I maintained my series of contacts. All together, it took a total of 21 contacts before he finally signed up and took our demo. Had I given up at 2 touches, or even 7 touches, I never would have hooked this big fish.
======================================
Conclusion
======================================
I hope you've enjoyed and benefited from these Brain FuelBulletins. And I'd greatly appreciate it if you'd tell others who you feel would benefit from these bulletins about them. Just tell them they can get a free subscription to my valuable ebook, "10-Minute Business Success" and a free subscription to the Brain Fuel Bulletins by signing up here with the passcode "8008": http://www.profitalchemy.com/free-ebook.php I wish you all the best with your business!

Regards,Bob Serling, Founder Profit Alchemy, Inc.http://www.profitalchemy.com/