The Lifeblood of Your Businesds - April 2007
Hello and welcome to the April 2007 newsletter, a little later than usual this month due to the Easter holiday.
And, to be honest I just cannot believe Easter has come and gone! It only seems 5 minutes ago it was Christmas and yet here we are sunny, warm weather, the Cricket World Cup, the Champions League Quarter Finals…Quite remarkable!
So…KICK ASS TIME
So, having reached this milestone in 2007, it got me thinking about how quickly time seems to pass these days. And, it also made me sit down and take a really serious look at what I’ve achieved so far in 2007.
If I’m honest with myself, I’ve actually taken it easy so far this year. When I did take that long hard look at my achievements for 2007 I was suitably
unimpressed.
It reminded me of 2003 when I was first starting out in this business and I just couldn’t seem to get things moving “in my direction” for love nor money.
This in turn reminded me of an old saying that I used to quote at my recruitment consultants back in the halcyon days of IT recruitment.
“If it is to be…it’s up to me”
In other words, no-one is going to do it for you (or me, come to that). YOU’RE the only one that can make it happen. It’s governed by a “universal law” you see. The more you put in the more you get out – simple really.
Take gravity for example. Drop a heavy anvil…and sure as eggs is eggs, it will hit the floor (make sure you’re foot is well out of the way first though). So it is with your own life.
Don’t have the things you want? The house? The car? The holiday?…The
partner even? Life a crock of sh*t?
Well, what have you done about it?
If you don’t have what you want from life the universal laws are clearly not
working for you. You’re not moving the “flow” in your direction.
The only way to make that happen? Simple - Do more.
Get motivated, get focussed, plan and take action. Once you start to take
focussed action you will notice that things start to go your way again. First of all it will be little things, then bigger things, then…within a few short days of taking massive action you will really be in the flow.
You will feel positive, you will feel better in yourself, you’ll have more energy and lo and behold, you’ll start to notice that things are indeed flowing your way.
Longer term, you will go on to achieve that which you truly desire.
Now, as you can tell by the title of this newsletter, I wasn’t going to do a kick ass motivational bit, but the truth is…I needed to kick my own backside. So, I thought I would share my butt kicking with you.
My goals for the next three months have now been firmly set, broken down into bite sized chunks and believe me…I am definitely taking action! Hopefully you’ll see some of the results over the next three months!
I hope that little slap on the bottom helps you get motivated and taking action as well. Go for it!
If you need some help with this, check out my Total Control product, it’s dynamite for getting you going and taking massive action!
Incidentally, one of the first things I have done in my new “go for it” mode is to drop PHP-Nuke for the portal. It had become a complete drain and was going nowhere…fast. I now have a new, much simpler direction, taken my own advice from a couple of months back! If the portal is not up and running come the May newsletter…well, watch this space!
Moving swiftly on, (as this has now turned into a bumper edition), this is what I was planning to talk about this month!
THE LIFEBLOOD OF YOUR BUSINESS
How many times have you heard the phrase “the money is in the list”? If you’re trying to be successful on-line this is something that you need to have very firmly ingrained on your brain!
There can be absolutely NO doubt, email marketing works. I guess the key
reason it is so powerful is that it enables you to contact the customer instead of forcing or waiting for the customer to contact you.
It is also vitally important because no-one ever got rich just selling one £29 or £49 product from a website. So, you have to be able to capture your prospects details and build a marketing database.
In sales (from whence I came), I was always taught that a customer needed
seven contacts to build enough trust to buy from you. It is my belief that this holds true on-line…it’s possible even more than seven contacts are needed in
this environment , without the potential for face to face meetings.
So, you need to capture your prospects contact details and then market to them effectively over time to build their trust. Once that trust is built, then you stand a much better chance of actually selling them something and tripping them over from prospect to customer.
So far, so good. But… what about the $64 million dollar question?
How do you effectively build your database?
Tough question… no easy answers.
Even in these enlightened days of buying online, people still do not like to give away their contact details. However, the only ethical way to market via email is to make sure you have collected the prospects permission to communicate with them.
Just one word on Spam – don’t. Enough said, I’m not going to bore you with the reasons why not again – I’m sure you’ve heard it a thousand times. It’s simple, always get permission via an opt-in.
So, how do you induce (in the nicest possible way) your prospects to give you that valuable email address?
There are a number of ways.
However, in a nutshell…you have to give them a damn good reason to do it!
You have to provide them with an overwhelming reason to want to hear what you have to say on an on-going basis.
The way I do it is give stuff away free. For example, there is my free seven-part business start up course. I hope you found it useful. Certainly the feedback I get suggests you find it so!
I also offer this free monthly newsletter. I use this as an inducement on another one of my sales sites. Again, the feedback I get suggests that for something that doesn’t cost anything, you find it valuable and helpful.
So, my way of “inducing” prospects to want to hear from me is to provide
outrageous benefits through lots and lots of extremely useful free stuff. I like to think I over deliver.
It’s very easy nowadays to use the little drop pops like I do to offer your
inducement. I get mine free from AWeber.
(please feel free to have a look, they’re excellent) but you can also get them from PayPal and many other sources.
But, come what may, it is crucial that you constantly offer new inducements to make sure your prospects keep coming back. If you do that, there is a much high chance that some time in the not too distant future they will move to the next stage of the sales cycle and become a buyer.
Once your prospect has moved to that buyer stage buy purchasing your initial offer and the trust is there, you can then move on to sell them lots of valuable back end products…and that is where the true profit in this business lies.
On that happy note, I’ll bid you farewell, and look forward to hearing your
success story!
Remember – plan, take action and go for it!
That’s it for now, more next month, until then,
Cheers now and have fun.
Derek
Derek Armson
Recent Comments