Building An Internet Business From The Ground Up....Part 5
By: John Skorczewski
Hello,
Hey guess what? My little brother and his wife had their first child this weekend! It's a boy! Gabriel Skorczewski
burst into the world at a whopping 9 pounds 12 ounces. Yikes! I'm an uncle..hey hey!
In Last Week's Issue I talked to you
about my fourth step in building an Internet business, today I want to continue with the fifth step....
...and by the way, if this gets boring and you want me to move onto something else, just let me know.
This step is a staple, most people know and understand it...but I need to talk about it anyway.
It's follow-up. You can't have a successful online business if you don't follow-up....and that can be either
before the sale or after.
What do I mean by follow-up? Well let's say a person comes to your web site....chances are they're going
to look around for a minute and then leave.
You've gone through all the trouble getting them to the site...only to have them leave right away.
That's how the Internet works.
Now some people might stay at your site longer and even buy your product right away (maybe 1 or 2% of the people),
but for the most part, people come and quickly go.
The secret to successful Internet business (or any business for that matter) is to capture as many of those
people as possible and get their contact information so that you can contact them later, lure them with
special offers, and generally keep your company in the back of their mind until they're ready to buy.
I've seen statistics (and I believe them based on experience) that say a person needs to see your sales
message (on average) 7 to 9 times before they are comfortable enough to buy.
That's a problem on the Internet because it's so fast. Think of yourself and your own web surfing habits.
You jump from site to site to site...right? Even if you see something you might like to buy, chances are
you'll decide to come back later (only to get distracted and never return).
So how do we fix this? It's pretty easy...you've got to collect the email addresses of all the people that
come to your site.
Generally you do this by offering some sort of free report, free trial of your product, free subscription to
a newsletter relating to your industry or something like that.
You'll also need some sort of email management system to keep track of all those email addresses and
make it easy for you to send messages to that list of people. I recommend aWeber.com they're really
good and very cheap. (it's also very easy to use and offers great support).
You should have both a free newsletter and a free report offered on the first page of your web site.
Put a newsletter subscription form at the top of every single page of your web site....
As you build your list, keep in contact with the people on it. Email them at least every 2 weeks (or every
week if you have something good to say that's worth reading). Get to know them, keep it personal...people
buy from people they know.
Allow them the opportunity to unsubscribe at any time and respect that.
I could go on and on about email marketing techniques...and I probably will later. For now, realize
the HUGE importance of building a list of potential customers and following up with that list
on a regular basis. Your list will become your most valuable asset.
That's all for this week. See you next Monday!
John Skorczewski
(pronounced Score-Chess-Key)
Editor, WebPromotion-Weekly
http://www.WebPromotion-Weekly.com
Want to use this article in your own ezine or web site? You can...as long as you add this signature line
(including the links):
John Skorczewski is the publisher of WebPromotion-Weekly, a free ezine about Internet Marketing,
Promotion, Advertising, And Search Engine Submission as well as the creator of the popular Web Site Promotion software,
the Submission-Spider
