You can ignite your marketing efforts and passion for the game by learning to use your personal story and expertise to get potential clients subscribing to your opt-in list.
I want to show you 10 simple steps you can implement with a low-cost investment and a little effort that you can use as a springboard for more aggressive online marketing campaigns.
By creating an interesting web site, which consist of one simple, yet, well-designed web page you can begin a relationships with qualified prospects. The Interest Site is designed to share content and offer a customized introductory e-product to someone who would qualify to be considered your ideal client. The focus of the site has to be a HOT TOPIC for your ideal client and it has to tie back to your product theme in some logical way.
The Interest Site will include the following components:
1. The reason why the ideal client should read the content and subscribe to your list to get the introductory product. You written communication should be compelling, not contain hype, and impress the ideal client so they know free product does not mean no-value, low-value productbut it means you are a generous person, you are a skilled business person, and you are beginning your relationship with them on good and ethical terms.
2. Weave in a soft introduction that is designed to create affinity with your ideal client so they know you are like them, understand them, and share some of the same concerns and interests as they relate to this topic. Be brief.
3. Discuss one to three key points related to the topic that the ideal client would find very interesting. Notice I said the ideal client would find them interesting, you may not, and the non-ideal client may not. You may have expertise in this area or you may have to go and do some research. Either way, make sure the information is highly relevant to your ideal client and related to your primary business offering.
4. Include a message that lets the ideal client know that this content is incomplete and they can get more advanced information by signing up for the complimentary ecourse or workbook. Dont offer just a newsletter or special report. These things are over used and are often perceived as low value until your credibility is well established.
5. Give the ideal client a teaser preview of the HOT HOT HOT TOPICS covered in the ecourse or workbook. Summarize what you have provided and remind them to subscribe.
6. Provide a Bio-box with 3 or 4 lines about you, written in third person to start imprinting the ideal client with the perception that you are a great resource, expert, etc. Be sure to include email contact. Get yourself an official domain and email address. Make sure the web address you pick for your interest site relates to the topic being discussed. Remember to represent yourself as being an established professional. Do not use an ISP email address. Bob@my-interest-site.com is much more attractive than bob1698@yahoo.com.
7. Use an autoresponder to create an online signup form for your opt-in list. Include this sign-up form directly into your web site page. I use an autoresponder which allows for attachments and can create both text and html messages. You can use the HTML software inside the autoresponder to create simple yet elegant messages without knowing HTML. I recommend you stay away form text based messages, there quick, fast and cheesy looking. Imagine getting a text-based email from Amazon, it just wouldnt look all that professional, would it
8. Set up your autoresponder so the subscriber gets an immediate message congratulating them on their new subscription. Assure that the e-product is sent with the first message. You can either attach the product or store it on a web server and include the link. The first option is the easiest if you use the full-featured autoresponder.
9. Instead of trying to push people to your replicated site or your affiliate site, or convince them to spend money with a stranger, you want to get them to your interest site and get them into your opt-in database before sending them off to some other web site or having a serious sales conversation with them.
10. You can get more information about tools and resources for the Interest Site Project and you can also receive a complimentary template for creating your first ecourse when you subscribe to our online newsletter at http://www.marketing-with-a-story.com.
Copyright 2005 Robin Harris, DesignerLife
Robin Harris is a Certified Coach and the Founder of She works with entrepreneurs who want to market with ease by using their personal experiences, knowledge, and passion to attract their ideal clients. You can reach Robin via email at
Internet marketing can seem mystifying not only for beginners, but for moderately skilled internet marketers. With all the courses, forums, blogs, reports, seminars and teleconferences available to help people learn how to get traffic to their sites, it is one of the most overwhelmingly dense subjects on the internet.
Unfortunately, and this is perfectly true, most of the advice or expert tips are outdated or completely false. Since anyone can publish on the internet, you have a mixed bag of good information followed with much more bad information.
The mysticism of internet marketing is created largely by this glut of some good and mostly bad information. It makes the whole topic SEEM like rocket science when, in fact, much of what was true about internet marketing years ago is true today.
Most people think that since search engine marketing changes every five minutes, that ALL internet marketing tactics must have changed as much in the same amount of time. Not true.
The basics, like trading links, article syndication, testimonials, forum signatures, joint ventures, affiliate programs - most work as well today as they did years ago. That is, if you know how to value the work above for what it will truly do for your website traffic.
Funny thing is, no one places much value on the above tactics anymore because there is always some new tactic around the corner that claims the death of everything that came before it. And most people blindly follow that advice as if it were true.
Most of the time, this is to the detriment of their internet marketing efforts. The basics are what work all the time and what have always worked on the internet.
You can always experiment with new things, as long as you have not forgotten to do the basics. The basics proven to drive traffic, page rank, link popularity, and branding to your business.
Conservative, relevant reciprocal linking
Article syndication
Participation in your field and among your market (forums)
Blogging
Offline advertising
Non-reciprocal linking tactics
Press releases
...and many other proven methods.
Everything else is just a big experiment until proven to work over time. Over time being the operative words. Lots of flash in the pan crack pot schemes work for awhile. But most never stand the test of time.
Links from a widely syndicated article will never fade away, yet I see people chasing down fly-by-night linking pyramid schemes as if they truly believe something like that is a smart thing to base their internet business on!
Tens of thousands have walked away from their dreams, gone back to their depressing, predictable, slave-labor jobs never knowing how close they were to actually succeeding.
Good people have left this business proclaiming it an utter lie that any average person can make it with an internet business and an internet marketing plan.
I guess there is truth in that statement. Average people do in fact quit this business before they ever get started because average people fall for tricks and schemes that above average people avoid on their way to success.
If you have read this far, you are probably in the above average category. Why Because average people would have take one look at the list of things I mentioned that are the bread and butter of internet marketing and saw nothing but hard work. And theyd be right!
Above average people dont shy away from work though. I dont know a single soul (and my rolodex has some of the biggest names in internet marketing in it) who got where they are today without a lot of hard work.
You can succeed in internet marketing if you are not afraid to work, and not constantly tempted by those who say you can succeed without it!
Focus on the basics of internet marketing and stay with them as you try new strategies. We all experiment. But successful internet marketers never leave their bread and butter tactics behind unless they cease to be effective.
Copyright 2005 Jack Humphrey
To learn bread and butter internet marketing tactics along with cutting-edge new internet marketing tactics, check out Jack Humphreys all new Power Linking 2005.