Build A Solid Business With Email Marketing

      What's a solid business?

      Let's compare with a business that is not solid. A business that is not solid has no real presence in the marketplace. It's here today...gone tomorrow. It's a business that can't be relied upon to take care of their customers into the future. It's certainly not interested in getting repeat business from the same customer. After the first sale, a loosy-goosy business will lose interest in the client.

      If you want to build a solid business you need to be there for your clients... into the future. You want to be there when they need service on something they bought from you in the past. You want to be there for them when they want to buy from you again. A solid business can be trusted to provide good products and services. People can count on the business to be there when they are ready to buy, and that’s what they do…they buy again and again!

      A solid business has a presence in the mind of the prospect and in the mind of the client.

      How do you get that "presence"?

      Some call it "branding". This is where your customers and prospects know something about you. You have an image...a reputation.

      How do you accomplish "branding" in your customer's mind?

      Many factors go into branding a particular identity in the consumer's mind but repeated exposure to the company's messages is the basic common thread.

      Some call it advertising. I'm calling it "messaging".

      Advertising is when you pay to get a message to your target market. I call it "messaging" because email doesn't cost anything. (If you want to consider the cost of Internet and an email distribution software, the cost is minimal).

      Email allows you to get a message to your prospects and clients quickly and easily. You can send messages repeatedly in order to accomplish "branding".

      Staying in touch with prospects is a sure-fire way to have them get to know you and hopefully they will get to like you and trust you, as well.

      When you have a large number of people who know you, like you and trust you...you have a solid business.

      Direct mail is a good way to develop a solid business. Email messaging is much cheaper, can be more timely and much easier to distribute. That makes email marketing a better way to develop a solid business. (I'm in favour of using direct mail as well, but in this article we are talking about email marketing.)

      If you develop a list of prospects and customers and stay in touch with them on a regular basis you will have a solid business. Anyone who is in business would agree...so why are so few people doing it? I don't really know. It may be "tradition". When people first get into business they need customers right away so they advertise. Advertising gets them some customers so they do it again and again and they never really grow beyond that.

      With email marketing being so inexpensive and easy to use, people are starting to use it, but they are not using it as a system.

      Because the email marketing is based on computers you can automate much of the relationship building and branding process.

      For example, if people make an inquiry about a certain product you can have them fill out an inquiry form with their criteria and they will automatically receive the information they want, instantly! in addition, you can pre-program follow-ups and provide more information, as needed. The beauty of email automation is that the consumer will think they are getting personal emails from you, but it is all strategically pre-programmed.

      By automating responses and follow-ups to routine inquiries you can take a lot of work off your table. You can set it up so you end up spending your personal time only with qualified prospects that are likely to buy from you.

      Using email marketing as a "system" is easy to set up. You can experiment with different message sequences until you get the right combination of messages with personal follow-ups.

      If your business is entirely online, you can set up an automated system to attract prospects, cultivate relationships and close deals so you never have to actually spend personal time developing real human relationships.

      In reality you will end up with strong personal relationships, but you only do the work once to automate it and the rest is taken care of by the computer program.

      This way, email marketing allows you to build a solid business where people get to know you, like you and trust you... You only have to take care of situations that really require your personal time.

      I'll cover the details of how you set up "automatic sales funnels" in a later article.

      The next topic will be about cultivating the "lifetime value of a client". Click the link below for the next article.