What is Reverse Marketing?
If you are trying to sell a product or service on the web, then you understand how hard it is to get traffic to your site. Web business seems to be completely driven by the sheer volume of traffic you can get to your web site. It doesn’t seem to make sense because you know in your heart that thousands of mass e-mails and site hits do not always equate to sales. There has to be another dimension to your goods and services, and you are probably curious as to how to market these quality items without seeming like a complete pest.
The truth is that traditional internet marketing techniques can plain wear you out. It is not enough that you have a good product and a good web page, but now you have to try your hand at viral marketing, advertisements, e-mail lists and catchy web gimmicks. For most people this means flooding the market with news about your product or services. Sometimes this can make you feel cheap and like you are annoying to potential customers by continually spamming them all the time. Sometimes the traditional type of marketing can actually backfire on you, driving potential customer away.
Well if you are interested in marketing your goods and services in a less invasive way then reverse marketing might be something you want to look into. For some people this is a much better approach because they can back their quality products and services with supportive content that sheds an attractive light on your company. In this way you can gently sway buyers to purchase your products. You will earn a great reputation and will have a more loyal fan base.
Sounds great, but what exactly is reverse marketing? Reverse marketing is a simple concept but you still need to have a great plan of attack. Rather than running web banners or advertisements on TV and radio, in reverse marketing you might strategically place essays or e-books on various topics that people look up on the web. You could post helpful tips or a website dedicated to home repairs. Of course, you place a tag line for your website at the end of the helpful “how to” article. This way, you attract people after demonstrating that you know what you are talking about.
Reverse marketing seems like a great way to attract customers because you are showing your expertise in an area or many areas. People who have been helped by your article or tip will tend to purchase a product from you before they go somewhere else. It is all about putting seemingly unbiased information out there but woven into a thinly veiled advertisement for your goods and services. You can plug your product out in the open, but not too overtly.
Reverse marketing can seem like a godsend for those who are sick of running the rat race of traditional internet marketing techniques. Instead of just spamming the world to see if you can convince someone to buy your product, you simply be ready to capture those quality buyers who are all ready to make a purchase. This kind of marketing—allowing customers to seek you out—can feel much better for you
Neil Bartlett is the founder of MyIMCoach.com. My IM Coach provides aspiring Internet Marketers with Tips and Techniques for getting started and/or improving their marketing skills. To learn more INSTANTLY grab his FREE report “How To Make It Online”
Create a Need – Make Them Want What You Have
If you are a regular person trying to start a web business for the first time, then you know how hard it is. You may have a great product, may have put together a nice web site but you still are not generating the attention that you want. You may have tried various internet marketing techniques but to no avail.
It is very competitive out there in the world today. With everyone trying to start their own internet business, you have to go up against a lot of products similar to yours. You may even be up against someone who knows internet marketing better than you, and this person seems to be all over the web. You cannot help but feel small and insignificant. So just what do you need to do to create such a need for your product that people cannot help but purchase from you? How do you create that overwhelming need?
A lot of what you have to say about your product can either make or break a sale for you. If you have content on your website or articles written about your product with the intent of directing buyers to your website, you may want to review it to see if it matches some specific criteria playing on consumers’ emotions so that they will purchase your product.
Customers’ emotions? That’s right; it means that in your content or ad for your good or service, you will make an attempt to evoke an emotion in your consumer. Advertisers do it all the time and it is a very effective marketing tool. As you write content for your pages, you can keep some of these emotional triggers in the back of your mind. These will help you develop a content style that will help you evoke consumers into buying your product.
So what are some of the emotions you will play upon in your content? There is flattery, greed, guilt and anger, to name just a few. For instance, if you are trying to play on someone’s anger, your content will be geared to showing how you can relate to the customer’s frustration. You can show how your product can help them alleviate their frustration and achieve “victory” in the end where other products have failed for them in the past. For greed you can show them how they can use your product to get ahead of everyone else they know at a much cheaper cost to them.
There is certainly an art form to advertising based on the emotional aspects of every day consumers. It might seem challenging at first, but with a little work you can create a need for your product based on some very powerful human emotions. And if the customer is satisfied with your product, they will convey their pleasure to friends and family, and you will gain return sales from your efforts.
Regardless of how you decide to approach the prospect of creating a need for your product, remember that your content should always be tweaked. Be sensitive to the results of your sales and tweak your content to suit. The bottom line is that you are never done!
Neil Bartlett is the founder of MyIMCoach.com. My IM Coach provides aspiring Internet Marketers with Tips and Techniques for getting started and/or improving their marketing skills. To learn more INSTANTLY grab his FREE report “How To Make It Online”
The Pre-selling Process is Vitally Important
I had an understanding of it, I went to college and majored in Business Management with Marketing emphasis. Well, bookwork is one thing and the real world is another thing.
Went I got out of college, I worked as a salesman for Best Buy. I didn’t give the whole sales process much thought. All I was concerned with was talking to someone, gaining their interest and closing them. That is about all that I really thought about, but there was a lot more to it.
You see, Best Buy, just like any other business that sells products has a pre-sell campaign in place. They spend millions of dollars on it every year. I saw their commercials and their ads, that they sent out, but I didn’t think about it much.
I think that the reason I didn’t concern myself with it is because I wasn’t involved with it. It wasn’t my job. My job was to sell people, in the store, when they came.
I thought that I was doing a lot of the work. I was personally selling them because of my talent as a salesman. That was all true, but plenty of them had experienced a sense of pre-selling before they ever even walked in the store.
Sure, some of them were just casual shoppers and were just walking by and I pitched them and sold them, but most of them had seen some form of advertising for similar products that I was pitching to them. They had probably come to my section of the store because they had seen an ad somewhere.
So what is so different about the sales process when you’re running your own online business. The answer is, not much of anything, the only differences are that it takes place online and that a lot of times, you’re responsible for it.
That is the big difference. When you’re running your own online business, you either need to be in charge of the pre-selling process or hire someone to be in charge of it. If you want to sell a product online. Having a good pre-selling campaign cannot be understated. You’re going to have a much better conversion rate with that process in place, believe me.
Internet Marketers Resist the Temptations
It’s tough for me because I have so many hobbies and interests. I love sports, film, music, video games etc. Well, all of those things are only a few clicks away.
I can go to ESPN and check sports scores and read dozens of articles. I can go download about any song that I want. I can go buy or download any game that I want.
That’s a lot of temptations and I know that I shouldn’t be doing those things when it isn’t my free time. A person needs to focus on their project and get it done.
I still find myself cheating a little and going to these websites when I should be working, but I’m getting a lot better. One thing that I do is not let my mind get restless.
Don’t give yourself time to think about the outside world. I just focus on my work and don’t think about anything else until it’s done for the day. I block everything else out.
The Internet is not the only temptation. Since we work at home we have the normal home life distractions. They are different for every person, but everyone has plenty of them.
What I do is get up in the morning and tell my girlfriend that I’m going down stairs to my office and no distractions unless it’s important. No phones calls or nothing unless it’s important.
I basically lock myself in my office and get to work. I come up and eat lunch and that is my break time. Then I go back down to my office until later on in the afternoon. If I have any errands to run, then I go ahead and get them done.
After that I eat and usually have the night to do what I want, relax etc. Unless I’m really busy and I have to keep updating something online. I find that by cutting out the distractions I not only get more work done, but I have more time to play and relax.
When I used to get distracted during work, I would go to a website. I would say to myself, oh just a few minutes. Well that few minutes would snowball into an hour. I started to lose a lot of time on just useless distractions. Keep focused people, it will really pay off in the long run.
Focus on the Basics to Achieve Online Success
E=MC²
A very simple looking equation. That Alfred Einstein guy was on to something, haha. Yes I know his first name is Albert. It sounds so simple, but so many potential and present Internet Marketers search for the magical formula that is going to transform them into instant Millionaires.
No one has come up with the magical Internet Marketing equation that will make them millions. The closest thing to that equation is what I stated earlier.
A great product, with converting sales page and targeted traffic are the key. The great product means that there aren’t very many refund requests. The converting sales page means that you don’t need to have as many visitors to get sales. The targeted traffic ensures that you have a great conversion rate.
The key is to find this situation and to exploit it. Most markets don’t get this perfect equation very often. People simply can’t find the markets that have these perfect equations or they can’t create them, themselves.
Yes, these perfect equations can be produced by you. All you need is knowledge. There is nothing more important than knowledge. I will give you my favorite analogy when it comes to knowledge.
A brilliant business executive is driving his fancy car down the road. He is going to collide with a car at the next stop sign that car is going to run the stop sign. A window washer on a high floor can see the accident coming a mile away.
The window washer may not of even graduated high school, but he has found the knowledge of the situation. He can see it and the business executive can’t. Does that make the window washer smarter?
No, but it makes him more informed. Information is everything and it is something that can be attained by anyone. Since you’re reading this, you have an Internet connection, put it to use. There pretty much isn’t anything that you can’t find out online.
Your ability to attain knowledge can mean the difference between your success and your demise. It usually boils down to the time that you’re willing to spend and your willingness to do so.
Tips for being an Authority
The second is to create assets and build them up. An authority can’t make money online without having some of their own assets. A blog or website, a mailing list, their own products etc. These are all good assets to have.
The third is to never be content. What I mean by that is never stop trying to acquire more knowledge about your niche. Always be trying to grow and promote your assets and your reputation.
The fourth is to monitor and learn from other authorities in your niche. Some people view them as competitors and don’t want to talk to them. I look at them as people that I can work with and learn from. I’m not going to let the whole competitor thing get in the way of my progress and the progress of my online business.
The fifth is to make sure to follow up with customers. There are a couple of good reasons for doing this. The first is to go that extra mile and show them how much you care. Repeat business is a very good thing because it is a lot easier to get someone to buy something from you that has bought from you in the past. The second is that you might want to tell them that if they liked that product, they might like this similar product and get that extra sale.
The sixth is to always be thinking long-term. You want long-term success so make sure to uphold your reputation. Always promote the best products and services. Don’t promote them solely based on the best payouts.
The seventh is to simply have fun. Running your own online business can be a lot of fun if you have a positive attitude. Remember that you’re helping people, by providing them with good information, that is a very good thing.
Approaching Internet Marketers the Right Way
I remember when I first became an Internet Marketer. Like most people new to the scene, I didn’t really know what I was doing. I didn’t really see the overall picture.
I thought that I was on my own and would just go on by myself and not really interact with Internet Marketers. I would just put up a website and put Google Adsense ads on it or affiliate products and send traffic to it and I wouldn’t really interact with anyone.
Even if you’re making good money online, on your own with little interaction with other Internet Marketers, I still feel like you’re making mistake. I learn from other Internet Marketers and get new ideas on how I can improve my online business, all of the time.
If you’re an Internet Marketer, you are certainly not alone, there are a lot of other people that do what you do. I don’t really look at Internet Marketers as competition. I look at them as people who can help me in many different ways.
I learn from them, but they also can do much more than that. I can do joint ventures with them, I can get testimonials from them, I can get their opinions and feedback on my work etc.
These are all ways that other Internet Marketers can help you and your online business. Where do you go to find other Internet Marketers?
The Warrior Forum: www.warriorforum.com
Just go to this forum and introduce yourself and start building relationships. The people there are very friendly and you can start building great relationships right out of the shoot.
I’ve learned so much from that forum, but I’ve also built a ton of great relationships with the members of that forum. There are plenty of people to meet there. Last time I checked there was about 50,000 members, so there are plenty of great people to meet there.
You will meet people that are passionate about making money online. Those are the types of people that you want to surround yourself with. Those are the types of people who you can learn from and draw motivation from.
When you meet people, just send them a private message and tell them how much you love their posts and how much they have helped you. Bang, you have started a great relationship with them.
The last thing that I will say is that it’s all about motivation. If you don’t have the a strong motivational factor behind making money online, your online business will never make it. Use your own motivational factors to drive you. Surround yourself with people who will motivate you. When you get down, talk to the people that you have online relationships with and they will cheer you up and get you motivated again.
