List Building
Marketing includes any materials you use with your clients or prospects including letters, faxes, ads, emails, brochures, and of course your website. All of these things should shout to your prospects and customers that you are the best place to do business regardless of price. Failing to deliver that message and deliver it effectively is a business sin.
What I am about to say applies to all marketing, but I am going to talk specifically about your website and how you can leverage this incredibly flexible and powerful tool.
Some Facts About Buyers
Buyers and prospects sit on a buying scale starting at “0″ and moving to “100.” Those at the bottom of the scale may not even be thinking about what you sell, where those at the top of the scale are ready buyers just looking for the right opportunity to buy.
If you get 100 visitors to your website, they will likely be spread across the scale from top to bottom. This means that only 3-6 percent of them will be ready buyers, people have already decided to buy. These folks will engage and buy from you if they find the information they need for their final decision.
The other 90+ percent will be in some phase of the decision making process. This group hasn’t yet made the decision to buy. They seek more information or time. Some may not be prospects, but in the case of the web they have probably ended up on your site via a search, meaning that many of these people will buy at sometime in the future.
The value of your List and List Building
Businesses live and die by their list of customers and prospects. This is the only piece of your business that is not replaceable. It is the most valuable asset any business has.
What most business owners don’t understand is that they should be building this list everyday, and how valuable that is to growing the business. We have all gone shopping. You go to the mall and visit any number of stores looking for what you want. But do the businesses you visit make your acquaintance? Do they get your name or information that would let them contact you in the future, send you information about specials or events? NO!
If you are a business person you have people coming and going through your business everyday. If you have a website you probably have many people visiting that site each day. If you were to start engaging these folks your list of prospects would grow and over time these prospects would become customers. This is what every business needs to do.
The Key
If you have a website the chances are that you are spending money to get people to the site either directly or indirectly. If you are not engaging your visitors and only getting the buyers you are wasting money and may be paying two times what you need to in your marketing efforts to get the same amount of business.
To be successful your marketing, and specifically your website, must engage the prospect that is still making the decision to buy. This is the largest group of people that see your business or marketing efforts. If you are not engaging them you are wasting money.
If your website and other marketing materials doesn’t have a low-risk offer that is nearly impossible to refuse, then your visitors or marketplace is not going to engage you. And you are not going to get their contact information which would allow you to market to them over time and develop them as customers.
The primary key to building your business is; building and growing your list of prospects so that you can providing them value and assistance in making a decision.
