5 Internet Marketing Mindsets Required for Online Business Success
Posted by admin on December 03 2006 12:31:04
5 Internet Marketing Mindsets Required for Online Business Success
Copyright (c) 2006 Donna Gunter
Many independent service professionals nonchalantly enter
the Internet marketing game by throwing together a
half-baked website without any plan and mistakenly believe
that visitors will find them. Initially, my online
business grew from word-of-mouth referrals from other
clients rather than from any true Internet marketing. My
website simply served as an online brochure detailing my
services and my rates for several years.
Over time, I became tired of trading time for money. Upon
gaining some time and experience in business, the
independent service professional has a rude awakening that
there are only so many hours in the day and consequently
that limits the number of clients that can be served.
Despite all the useful information I'd absorbed over the
years about expanding my business reach through the
development of products that I could sell on my website, I
just didn't want to devote the time necessary to create
multiple streams of income for my business. However, as I
began to see friends and colleagues do this successfully in
their businesses, the light bulb finally went off, and I
realized that this was my next step, as well. So, I bit the
bullet and began to try some of the strategies and began to
get quick results from what I had implemented.
In my own professional development as an Internet marketer,
as well as from work with clients over the years, I've come
to realize that there are 5 Internet Marketing Mindsets
that must be in place for someone to be successful online:
1. Create content that can be re-purposed. The goals here
is to create your content once and find multiple ways to
use it or multiple ways of delivery. So, for example, if
you have an Inspiration Line phone service in which you
record an inspiring thought each day for your clients, you
can record these calls and have them serve as a publicity
tool by distributing them as a podcast. This will help
drive traffic to your site and bring people into your
marketing funnel. When you've accumulated enough
recordings, you then sell a subscription membership so that
the buyer receives a new inspiring thought each day via
email or a direct-to-desktop service. Over time, you can
categorize recordings by topic and then combine the
recordings into multiple motivational CDs or .mp3 downloads
and make them available for sale online. When you've been
doing this for a year, perhaps you then parlay the
recordings into a book or an inspirational card deck.
Sometimes it helps to start with the end in mind.
2. Record everything that you do. Whether you're doing
live events, radio or TV interviews, teleclasses, webinars,
etc., it pays to record and have a permanent record of
everything that you do. Having a digital video recording
of yourself in a one-day live event can be packaged into a
"home study" course. Teleclasses with transcripts can be
resold individually or packaged together for a bigger
product. Radio or TV interviews can be placed on your
website to enhance your credibility and convince a meeting
planner to pay you big bucks to come and provide a keynote
speech. Open your mind to the possibilities for
re-purposing your recordings.
3. Get yourself and your customers into a sales mentality.
Many of my clients simply like to have their products sit
obscurely for sale on their websites and do nothing to make
their list members or website visitors aware of what they
have for sale for fear of offending their visitors or
subscribers. If someone is going to be offended because
you're trying to sell to them, then just let them go. You
don't need a list of tire-kickers who want to sponge all
the free info that they can from you and never buy anything
-- you'll never be able to stay in business that way.
I have to chuckle when I do a promotion and get an email
from someone on the list who chastises me for "daring" to
sell to them and notes that they much prefer to "decide"
when they want to buy something from me and then they
threaten to leave the list. I just respond that I'm sorry
that they feel that way, but unfortunately I'm not a
trust-fund baby, and that my hard-earned information has
the same value as any info that they might get from their
car mechanic, doctor, attorney, or accountant, and I've
never seen any of those professionals give away what they
know.
Creating a sales mentality means that you need to
acknowledge that you're in business to make money through
selling and that your customers need to become accustomed
to having you sell and seeing things for sale all over your
websites. This is no different than the trait needed for
success if you were to own a brick-and-mortar retail
establishment. You can still provide free and valuable
information to your visitors, but reserve the right to take
that info, create a unique packaging and title for pieces
of info on the same topic, and put it up for sale.
4. Acknowledge that people will pay more for convenience
and instant delivery online. Many times, as I'm trying to
help a client determine the price for a product, they'
object to the price I suggest because they compare it to a
physical product that can be purchased in the local
bookstore or online bookstore for less. The "buy it now
and give it to me instantly" mentality that is prevalent
among online shoppers dictates that you can charge a higher
price for an electronic product than a physical product
because the shopper can fulfill his/her need for instant
gratification and receive the electronic product in mere
seconds. Wouldn't you rather do that instead of having to
get in the car to make a trip across town to buy the
product or waiting a few days for the delivery of a
physical product from an online store?
And, people will pay for convenience. I recently spoke
with a client about selling her content that was ready
available in various locations all over the Internet. She
was concerned that no one would pay for the product since
it was currently available online at no cost if someone
were to look hard enough. I told her that many of her
customers didn't know it was available online, and even if
they did, they would have to invest a great deal of their
free time to gather all the info in one place. Few of us
have that luxury of time today. For most of us, if it's
easy and convenient and will save us some time, we'll buy
it.
5. Plan your business growth around your marketing funnel.
Independent service professionals shouldn't live on the
sale of their services alone. Trust me, at some point in
your business, you won't want to do that any longer. You
need to create a marketing funnel of your products and
services that range in price from free to very expensive
and base your marketing strategy around that funnel. Your
online business success will depend upon people being able
to "sample" your expertise before deciding to purchase your
service.
Remember that it takes 7-10 "touches" before a prospect
will turn into a customer. Give them several ways to
experience your expertise, all the way from free to
expensive, with any number of price points and options in
between. Keep your marketing funnel in mind in all that
you do and strategize how every new activity, whether
that's creating a new product, writing another article,
offering a new service, or being a guest on a radio show
fits into your marketing funnel.
By adopting these 5 Internet Marketing Mindsets into your
daily marketing mantra, you'll be well on your way to
positioning your online business for many years of success!
About the Author:
Online Business Resource Queen (TM) and Online Business
Coach Donna Gunter helps self-employed service
professionals learn how to automate their businesses,
leverage their expertise on the Internet, and get more
clients online. To sign up for more FREE tips like these
and claim your FREE gift, TurboCharge Your Online Marketing
Toolkit, visit her site at
http://www.GetMoreClientsOnline.com