The Merrie News - February 02, 2009Missing Out On Thousands Of Prospects?If you've been following The Merrie News for a while, you'll know just how important it is to create a "brand of one". That is, establishing and positioning yourself so that you attract potential customers and prospects to you. Not to your opportunity or your product, but YOU. One of the easiest ways to do this is with a web site. Over the next few weeks I will be covering some aspects of taking your business online, and some of the things you should be thinking about. Now, before I start, when I started work as a marketer back in the Middle Ages, and when I took my qualifications (with quill and parchment), online marketing didn't exist. Email, that we all take for granted now, had just made it into Texaco's head office where I worked back then. It was called "Profs" (the pre-runner to email I believe) and consisted of green writing on a black screen. Computers were strange, suspicious boxes sat on a desk that only the dishy guy from IT seemed to understand. The marketing strategies that we put together then did not include any form of electronic marketing - and worked absolutely wonderfully. What e-marketing has done has opened up a new way of finding and marketing to your prospective customers or business partners. So all e-marketing is, is another tool in your marketing tool box. You may choose to use it, or not, but as a marketer in the 21st century, I would strongly suggest that e-marketing should form part of your overall business and marketing strategy. If you haven't noticed, more and more savvy network marketers are going online with their own capture pages or full on web sites. This is called "internetwork marketing", and if Mike Dillard of Magnetic Sponsoring fame, and Ann Sieg of The Renegade Marketer , are anything to go by, this is the future. If you're not planning to be online in some form or another as part of your business strategy, then you're missing out on LOADS of potential business. That said, if you're completely anti-the internet, then you can still promote your business effectively offline. It's just that your life becomes easier using this particular marketing tool. Having a presence on the net will immediately give you many benefits. Here are my Top 5 as I see them, but there are many more:
1. First and foremost, it allows you to position yourself as an expert, or an authority in your particular knowledge area. 2. This therefore allows your prospects to check you out before they join you - ultimately meaning you only have qualified, very hot prospects filtering through to you. 3. So, benefit three is that a site allows you to have a marketing funnel that works on autopilot - attracting thousands of people to you, with only the hottest people dropping through to you personally. Yep - the hot prospects come to you, the ones that would have stood you up at your one-on-one will never get to you. Meaning you can stay at home and drink your own coffee. 4. You can create yourself a much bigger business - not just in network marketing. Having a site enables you to create additional sources of income. If you have a copy of The Renegade Marketer by Ann Sieg, you'll know that she talks about you creating income streams from different sources, not just from your network marketing company. Having a site makes this very easy. You can make passive income, or put in a little effort and sell your own products and services. Very easy when you know how. Go here for a free e-book , and very worthwhile, on creating an income from the knowledge that's in your head. It's not a flimsy 5 pager - it's a meaty publication that really takes you through the process. 5. Having a site actually takes the pressure off your network marketing business having to work. Yes, it will create additional income sources for you, but it also psychologically changes you. How? Well, because you are creating something "bigger", you become more relaxed about your network marketing business. And once you're relaxed, you'll find people come to you much more easily. Now, if you're anything like me, you're probably quite happy browsing around the internet, visiting sites, finding information and buying things. The thought, however, of creating your own website may fill you with absolute HORROR! All that funny coding that only strange geeky people understand is definitely not for you. (what does HTML stand for anyway?...and no, I don't need a barrage of replies...I am married to an IT expert!). Don't understand it...don't want to...couldn't possibly get to grips with it....sound familiar? Strange as it may seem, considering I have my own website, is that I felt like this too a year ago. I'd got to the point that I realised I needed a website, and I'd "had a play" with a web site building programme and failed dismally because I just didn't understand how to get a design from my pc up onto the internet, let alone all this search engine optimisation stuff. I just didn't have a clue how to make it work or where to start. Fortunately I found a company that enabled me - a normal human being without any special technical abilities, and no knowledge of HTML/CSS/JAVA and all those other funny sets of letters - to create myself a website. Actually it's odd that this newsletter is going out today - because it's exactly a year to the day that I took the plunge and signed up with SBI. A year on, and I have a completely different business to the one I had at the beginning of 2008. I certainly haven't got all the things in place that I've planned, but I do have a marketing funnel that works very effectively. My site is slowly taking shape, and I'm doing something that I've been passionate about doing for about 3 years now (ie coaching marketing to network marketers). My dreams are becoming reality because of electronic marketing. Now, the last year hasn't been easy. It's been hard work and a steep learning curve. Lots of late nights studying a strange new world. But I will say that it is now becoming far easier. The results don't come immediately - it's not a quick fix - but they do come. If you're going to step into the world of internetwork marketing and make it a part of your business and marketing strategies then you will need to be prepared to go back to school. You will need to learn a new set of skills, but it is definitely not impossible, and the results are very definitely worth it. So,
download the free book
and start thinking about how you can make a presence out there on the net. Next time I will look at the various ways you can be on the net so that you can decide the best strategy for you.
Quote of the Week
"I think there's a world market for maybe five computers."
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