By Carl Weiss
Whenever I speak before a group, one of the first questions I ask is, “Why create a website?” While the responses are varied, the only correct one for business owners, large or small is, “To make money.” Having been professionally engaged in
Internet marketing since 1995, I can tell you that
accomplishing this task is no easy matter. Where in years gone by business owners merely had to create an optimized website in order to cash in online, today they need to busy themselves with an entire armada of online marketing, such as blogging, social networking and video. All this just to get featured on page one of search engines like Google. But what most business people do not know is that having a page one position will do you little good if you don’t have a systematic way with dealing with responses created by your website. By system, I mean a comprehensive method of sorting, selecting and feeding prospects and clients the information they need to either make an initial purchase, or come back for more.
One Size Doesn’t Fit All
Does your company have a formalized touch marketing system in place? If they do, it may not have been created for online leads. Many drip or touch marketing systems have been created for responses generated from direct mail, cold calls or even broadcast media such as radio and TV. While helpful, the best thing you can do to maximize your online results is not to retool your existing drip campaign, but to create one specifically tailored to handling online responses. In the first place, web savvy individuals are in a hurry. They are not going to respond to long copy, particularly if presented in written form. So sending them a ten page white paper is not going to get the job done. What you need to do to generate results with online respondents is to employ short copy, snappy comebacks and/or video.
What’s In It For Me?
Once you succeed in getting someone to respond to an offer, unless the offer leads directly to a sale, you need to follow up with something new and exciting. What I mean by this is you don’t want to get a prospect all worked up with your initial offer only to disappoint with the follow up. Emotional attachment is the name of the game if you are trying to create a dependency-based relationship between the consumer and your products and services. In order to create dependency you first need to establish a sense of attraction.
Secondly you must inspire loyalty.
While attraction alone can spark a relationship, failure to move the relationship along will inevitably result in its dissolution. What are relationship drivers? Let’s look at the situation of dating. While the thing that brought you two together in the first place was attraction, once the bloom is off the rose it requires effort to sustain and move the relationship to the next level. Successful touch marketing is a lot like that. In the first place there has to be something in it for the prospect. Like offering your date a bouquet of flowers and then enjoying a night of dinner and dancing, prospects like to be wooed as well. If all you do with drip marketing is send sales circular after sales circular, don’t be surprised if you get nowhere with the prospect. Nobody wants to be regarded as easy.
Making the Customer the Center of Your Universe
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| Customers are Ignoring You (Photo credit: ronploof) |
Properly executed, touch marketing can create and sustain the kind of emotional dynamic needed to woo a prospect. Instead of going straight for the sale, each time you reach out and touch the prospect, loyalty, confidence and continuity should be the goal. Entertain them and make them laugh. Don’t bury them is dry prose. One of the best ways to get a bead on what motivates and drives a customer toward a sale is to evaluate everything from the customer’s perspective. Face it, every customer lives and breathes to satisfy their unique needs and wants. They are for the most part emotionally driven and will purchase from merchants whom they know, trust and like. Many people will shop prices online, which is a battle in which you do not wish to engage. If you want to break away from the herd and distinguish yourself as someone who is worth spending the extra dollar, then you need to let the customer know that you are a different breed of cat from the outset.
The Touchstones of Successful Online Marketing
Fortunately, the Internet is chock full of low-cost or even no-cost solutions to making touch marketing a snap.
1.
Automated Newsletter Providers such as
iContact,
Constant Contact and
Mail Chimp offer a low-cost solution to creating online forms, newsletters and
emailable coupons that are template-driven. Best of all, they allow you to set up multiple folders to collate your results. This way you can isolate different demographic and psychographic profiles, test your offers and respond to each group with a unique message or offer.
2
E-Card purveyors such as
http://www.jibjab.com/ http://www.jacquielawson.com and
http://www.someecards.com provide online greeting cards with a touch of humor.
JibJab even has video cards you can personalize by inserting
headshots of you and your staff, or your client or prospect. Never underestimate the value of humor to seal the deal. Remember, one of the cornerstones of relationship building is to get the prospect to like you. Who doesn’t like a card that makes them laugh out loud?
Say it With Video
– Aside from YouTube.com that provides you with editing capabilities for every video you upload, there are a number of newer contenders that can even turn your stills into a compelling video, such as
http://animoto.com/ and full-on animation sites such as
http://goanimate.com that offer a user-friendly environment in which to create animated clips. There are even services that
specialize in video email, such as
www.bombbomb.com, mailvu.com and
www.iwowwe.com that makes sending videos via email a no brainer.
Taking it to the Next Level with Send Out Cards
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Want to automate greeting card and postcard mailings? Like to reward your best customers with gifts?
https://www.sendoutcards.com/ is an online card store and customer reward program rolled into one. Who has the time to shop for cards and gifts? With Send Out Cards you can create customized greeting cards and postcards with the click of a mouse. Then you can add treats, gifts or even gift cards that reward your loyal customers. If you want your best customers to feel the
luv, this is one service that’s hard to beat.
While setting up a successful touch marketing campaign can be a bit daunting at the outset, remember that once established this system will automate your customer relations program. Now don’t you wish it was that easy with your girlfriend?
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Since 1995, Carl Weiss has been helping clients succeed online. He owns and operates several online marketing businesses, including Working the Web to Win and Jacksonville Video Production. He also co-hosts the weekly radio show, "Working the Web to Win," every Tuesday at 4 p.m. Eastern on BlogTalkRadio.com.
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