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How Do I Find Customers?If you need customers for your online business, you need to read this!Many of the same things that apply to off line business practices also apply here, they are just done in a different way. For instance, a brick and mortar store can get by with being a "department store" with a lot of various merchandise, because people get used to knowing what kinds of things they have, and they can go there, see, feel, and sometimes hear the products, and make up their minds easier, sometimes with the help of a salesperson to explain things to them, and to whom they can address questions and get immediate answers. Meeting the needs of the customer, your #1 goal. On the web, the same principles of a good looking presentation and display still apply, but since the customer can't feel the item, and can't normally pick it up and look at all sides of it (although some software can rotate it and show a 360 degree view these days), we have to be able to explain it in different ways. Even hearing a product, such as sample tracks from a CD, isn't going to sound nearly as good on his laptop as it will when he plugs it into his expensive sound system at home. The whole customer experience is quite different on the web, and must be addressed differently. A customer on a web site won't have a salesperson available to ask a question to, so the web display needs to include every possible bit of information that it can when presenting a product, so that the customer will not have to close the page with questions in his mind. If he does, that's a sale lost. Who, what, when, where, why....and sometimes how. If you can't answer those questions, then don't print the story until you can! A good copywriter has to ask himself every question that he could ever anticipate the customer coming up with, and then provide the answers! Having worked in a newspaper office in high school, the one thing that got drilled into my mind was "who, what, when, where, why....and sometimes "how". If you can't answer those questions, then don't print the story until you can! There is nothing more aggravating to me than going to a web site to buy something, and not having all the proper information there to be able to decide. I'll leave and go to another site to get it! If it's not a product I was looking for in the first place, the copy writer needs to do a "sell job" on me to get me interested. He needs to build desire in my mind, so that by the time he gets done explaining what it is, and how it can benefit me, I already want it and have my credit card in hand. Simply showing me a picture, giving me the features, model number and price won't do it....for me or anyone else! He has to "make" me want it! It is a proven fact that most people who search for things on the web are looking for information. Very few actually go to the web to buy, unless they go directly to a "sales" site, like an auction or shopping portal. Therefore, in order to turn curiosity into a sale, they must be subtly led into it. Answer their question first, and then show them other products that might also be helpful to them, and explain how those products will benefit them. That's how sales are made. Think about a typical process in a regular store. How many times have you heard a customer tell a clerk (something like) "I was just looking for something for my niece's birthday". In other words, they don't know what they want.....they're just looking for information. So the clerk shows them what they have, and makes it sound like it would be perfect for the niece. Say they buy a skirt. OK, what's the logical thing to go with a skirt? How about a blouse in a complimentary color? There's the first back-end sale. Then by the time they get to the counter, the clerk has talked them into some shoes, a scarf, and purse (more back end sales), all to complete the "perfect" outfit! At the checkout, he will usually get their name and address so the store can send them fliers on future sales. He may give them a business card (maybe one of those magnetic ones you stick on your refrigerator). Then he gives them a break on the price, since they bought so much stuff, and even throws in a freebie, maybe an inexpensive bracelet, to make the customer really happy. Then they put it in a bag that has the store's name on it, so that anyone else who sees what they have will know where to get it. Do you see just what happened here? Do you see anything sounding familiar to the same sales processes you have been led into on the web? Same process...different methods! Knowing what the customer wants. Even before you can fill his needs, you have to know what the customer wants. It is impractical to be a "department store" on the web. It has been proven time and time again, that the fewer products you can offer on one web site, the better off you are, for many, many reasons. Sometimes the answer is as simple as giving the customer too many options, and rendering them incapable of making a decision, so they put it off.....and never come back. Another good reason is that web sites with multiple products are harder to maintain, harder to test with, and take way longer to build! Who needs all that work? Some of the most profitable products online are on simple two page web sites..... (1) to present the product and make the sale, and (2) a thank you page after they have checked out! Knowing what to offer to the customer on that one sales page is the trick we all have to learn. This takes some research. All of it can be done on the web, and this is where the web really shines. There are programs, both free and paid versions, that will tell you how many people a day are searching for particular keywords or keyword phrases. Many things need to be taken into consideration, depending on how you plan to present your product. Basically you need to find something that a lot of people are looking for in the search engines, and are finding very few results for. The bigger the difference, the better chance the product has of being sold. There are other things that need to be examined, but that's the basis of it.b Most people come to the internet only searching for information, so what they want may not be a product at all. It may be answers to a question they have. In order to turn that into a sale, you may have to write an article or ebook on that topic, which you can sell them, and then insert some active links to a web site with a product that will also solve their problem. This is one way of creating "back-end" sales, which offer a second chance to sell the customer something without having to bother them for their email address! If you own the web site AND the product, then you get to keep 100% of the sale if they buy it. Better yet, is if you have multiple web sites with similar products and have links to all of them in your book! You could end up with several sales, all from that one book! If you don't own the product, that's OK, too, because you can still make money by being an affiliate vendor of that product, and collect a commission for directing the customer to it. After all, 50% of something is better than 100% of nothing.....right? And even though they paid for the book, and maybe aren't supposed to pass the book around, some may do it anyway, unless we can implement some expensive special processes to control it (which most marketers don't). But is that really bad? If they pass it on to other interested parties, who also see your links and click on them to buy, are you really "out" any money? So you lost the sale of a book? If there are other products "in" that book that they can buy for even more money than the book was worth, isn't that just another sale that you wouldn't have had otherwise? Who is your competition, and what do they look like? Supply and demand are what rule the real business world, however just finding a product in short supply on the net is only part of the answer. Some real-world principles still apply. What is the competition like? Are there a lot of other ads or stores for the same product? If so, what is the quality of those ads? Are they well written? Does the ads and the web sites that the ads go to look professional or do they look like some six-year old put them together? Is the copy well written? If not, and you can do it better, then you can take the sales away from them! You would be surprised how many people jump into a niche just because it is a "hot" niche, who have never studied marketing, and have no idea how to write good sales copy, or know how to present a good looking site! Just because the niche is flooded with other ads and other web sites, doesn't automatically rule out your getting into it! Only YOU know what you are capable of. Can you produce a better looking web site (even if you have to pay a designer to do it)? Can you produce a better USP or sales copy (even of you have to pay a copywriter to do it)? These are all things that are examined every day in the real world of marketing, and they still apply to the web. It's just that doing the "legwork" on the web competition is a lot easier than going out and getting marketing information on real world businesses, and gathering all the logistics and demographics that go with it. Many successful chain stores and restaurants spend months on research. They gather traffic statistics from the department of transportation, they look at real estate prices, they check competitors stores to see how they look, how they do things, and even how close they are. On the web, you can find out everything you need to know about a particular niche in about five minutes! Targeting the right keywords. One way to get "buying" customers, rather than "shopping" customers is just knowing what keywords to target....in other words what you want to use in your keywords and meta tags that the search engines will use to bring you buyers. For instance, if you are selling kitchen blenders, just using "blenders" in your keywords will only get you shoppers. They haven't made up their mind what they want yet. If you are more specific, such as "hand-held blenders" or "counter top blenders", it may help, but you will still get a lot of shoppers. However, if you put the exact brand and model number of the blender in the keywords, now you will attract people who know exactly what they are looking for, and are ready to buy! This is especially true of pay per click ads. Don't waste money paying for clicks from "shoppers". Target your ads to be specific, and then only pay for clicks from buyers, otherwise you can waste a lot of money for nothing! The other part of this equation is getting the search engines to find and recognize those keywords. It isn't all that hard to do, but it gets into more than I want to go into here. We'l cover all that later. Keeping the customer's attention. Unlike a normal store, where the product still remains in view, close at hand, and easily reachable even though the customer may turn his head for a moment....on the web, once a customer "turns his head" (clicks off a web page), he is usually gone for good! You have about 5 seconds to present your product to him in a way that will make him stay and want to find out more. This is where good graphics (the look of the web site and the pictures on it) are very important. Even the location of the pictures and text on the page can be important. Just as important though, is the opening lines of text that the customer will see before they ever scroll down the page. That opening text is the called the "USP" (or unique selling/sales proposition). It MUST grab the viewers attention to make him become interested in learning more! If you lose him here, he will never take the time to read the rest of the page! The rest of the story (the sales copy) must hold his attention at every step, and build desire in his mind, so that by the time he gets to the bottom, he is already looking for the "add to cart" button. Features are OK to explain, especially for technical products like electronics, but what really sells are the benefits to the customer. How will that product make him feel? Will their spouse (or other people) find them more attractive? Will they be the envy of the neighbors by owning it? Will it save them time or money, or will it make him money? How much money? Will it make him feel more comfortable or make his life easier by owning it? These are all things that need to be expressed in the sales copy. Keeping the customer! The best way to build a customer base is to give them a quality product at a fair price to begin with. You don't need to build loyalty by hounding a customer with emails, especially of the product was questionable to begin with. Sure, if he was satisfied, he may buy a slightly higher percentage of your products than a new customer who has never dealt with you before, but unless you want to create more work for yourself, there are easier ways of getting them to stay in touch with you. It's kind of a catch 22 with follow-ups. Yes, you can do it, but the work involved in writing all those emails, setting up an autoresponder, and constantly come up with new products to offer is more than I want to deal with! I have had many repeat customers for my products, and I haven't had to email them to remind them to come back! Have you seen those magnetic business cards that people are supposed to stick on their refrigerator as a handy reminder to have people call or visit you again? That's the same thing that you are doing by teaching them the right way to put a "refrigerator magnet" (web site icon) on their desktop! And it's even better because they won't have to leave the computer to go find it! They'll see it every time they turn their computer on, and if they need something, they will come back! And if they won't do it from that, then no email is going to remind them either! Sure, some won't do it, just like some will throw the cards away because they don't want magnets in the house with a computer! Some people will delete emails without reading them, too! And worse yet, some will get tired of all the ones that they don't want, and opt-out completely just about the time when the odds are in their favor to get something they can use! Stuff happens! You can't win them all. But there's always going to be those happy customers who thought your customer service was superb, they got their order sooner than they expected, the product was great, and they will be happy to deal with you again. Not only that, but by showing them a better way to bookmark something that they plan to use all the time, you have made them happy on another count because you saved them time on something that they can use on other things besides your product! I believe in working smarter, not harder, and this is the best way I know of to hang onto a customer! Give them the best customer service that you now how, and keep them happy! Just getting rid of those ignorant autoresponders is a step in the right direction. If you tell the customer up front that when someone responds to them that it will be a real person, even if it's not right away, that would automatically win a vote in my book! I don't mind waiting for real person! If there's one thing I despise, its trying to get an answer from someone and having some stupid autoresponder send me a form letter back with an answer that has nothing to do with what I asked! That's just plain irritating! And getting an answer back from an actual person who has only read the first line of what you asked is also irritating! If you are going to be in the customer service business, for Heaven's sake, take the time to read the email, and understand what they are asking before you answer their question! If you have a hard time paying attention to what people say, and can't take the time to read their email, then get out of that CS position and let someone handle it who knows what they are doing! If nothing else, and you couldn't understand the email, then reply to them and ask them to call you. You should have a toll free number if you are in business. Let them call you and then maybe you can help them. If they don't follow through, then at least you have put the ball back in their court. If they fail to call, then maybe their question wasn't so important in the first place. Either way, you are done with it for now, and can move on. I know that doing without an autoresponder is unthinkable for most marketers, just because of the sheer volume of people on their lists. But if they didn't have the lists to begin with, they wouldn't need the autoresponders, would they? And if they didn't put out great products with time limits and then take them off the market again right away, they wouldn't have such a large burst of customers all at once that they need an autoresponder to handle it would they? When I respond to people on email, I don't just put my name on it. I make sure that I thank them (usually twice) for buying from me, and then I sign off with something like "Thank you for being our customer", or "We appreciate your being our customer". That way, they feel like we have some personal appreciation for them being in our lives. The business world has gotten to be a very cold, unfeeling place, and if we can offer the customer some warmth and hospitality, and make him feel welcome and at home, he'll come back for a visit without having to send him an invitation. Time sensitive....hurry! Made you look....didn't I? How many times have you heard that before! There's nothing time sensitive here, but just the thought that you might miss something got your attention, didn't it? Personally I've never bought into all that useless hype. For one thing, there have been many products come out that I didn't have the money to buy when they hit the market, and before I could work it into my budget, they were gone again. That just literally ticks me off! Of course, most of them will come out at a later date, whether it be in an updated version, or somebody's old copy showing up on Ebay, so I don't waste a lot of sleep over it. Besides, they are so numerous, and so "over" launched that a cynical person like myself becomes immune to the hype after a while. I have seen too many marketers in the past nine years come out with great products for ONE time, and then re-hashed junk after that. They may have made big money for a short time during a lucky spurt, but the sales fell off afterward. That does not make good business sense. It takes constant work to keep up with all those special promotions that the big marketers come up with. Some are good and some are just so-so, but the hype makes you think they are all the greatest thing since sliced bread! That is no way to build a business, although I have to admit that the money some of them made in that short time can sustain most of us for the rest of our lives! And if they really are THAT brilliant that they can keep the ball rolling, then bully for them! They deserve the success! But when you get used to making that kind of money, and spend most of your windfall instead of saving and investing it, you HAVE to keep making it, or be dubbed a failure! Ouch! More pressure again! About 98 out of a hundred people never have that kind of talent, and never will, with all the training the world. And most "flash in the pan" businesses that the rest manage to run for awhile aren't likely to last for the long haul. It's just plain shaky business practice. The most logical way to build a business, is to provide quality products that are long term in benefit and availability, and keep smaller amounts of money coming in for longer periods of time! The income is more steady, gives you more time to make the changes that are inevitable from time to time, keeps your business on a steady foundation, and even looks better to other businesses (such as banks, if and when you need to get a loan to expand with). Besides that, it would leave quality products available to those who really want them and would use them, rather than most of them sitting on somebody's hard drive, never to be seen or used again, because they only bought them due to the high pressure sales tactics at the time! I see nothing wrong with introducing quality products, maybe spread the word around that they are there, through the same joint ventures employed today, but then LEAVE them there until they are so out of date and undersold that the site can't pay its own expenses anymore! THEN take it down! The web (especially the search engine tactics) is an ever changing medium anyway, so some things that work today, may not work two years from now, so the let the product die a natural death! And if it lives to be 100, isn't that more beneficial to the public, AND profitable to the owner?! Can you imagine something like a pipe wrench being introduced for only a short period of time? How many sales would have been lost, and how many people denied the use of a useful tool, and how much money lost in the tool industry from other people continually selling something that one man invented so many years ago! Maybe it's a poor example, but you get the idea. If a product is such a great idea, then why take it off the market? I don't buy the fact that the marketplace will get "saturated" and the "effectiveness" of the product will get diluted. Do you know how many billion web sites there are, how many hundreds of millions of computers there are, against how many people there are, that are actually going to make use of those products? The number is so insignificantly small that if they sold those products through their entire life cycle (of possibly years) it wouldn't make a dent in the marketplace! Are you ashamed of yourself? Cut your customer service calls back by giving people good and complete information to begin with, and making it easy to find on your web site. If you have answers on your web site, then there should be less reason to have people calling you or emailing you and asking questions! That's not rocket science, it's common sense! I don't know about you, but if I don't find clear contact information that looks like the owners are "approachable" I will usually leave the web site and go somewhere else to buy! If they have their warranty, privacy policy, shipping policies, about us page and other information clearly available, I feel a whole lot more comfortable buying from them! Put a picture on your about us page! If you have an office or a building to be proud of, then put a picture on the web! Let them know you are a real person, with real offices! If you have a staff, put all of their pictures on there, or at least the key players. People relate to other people....not web pages or cartoon characters! When I feel like people are hiding information from me, I lose trust in them! Make sure your web site isn't a mass of confusion to navigate in, give them the best buying experience they could possibly have on the web, and you will get repeat visits without being a pest to them! Here's a good example, that works in the real world, too. I used to live in a small town of about 5,000 people. At that time, back in the mid-seventies, there was a new McDonald's built there. From the time it opened, it was always packed, even in the middle of the afternoon. I thought that was a little strange, until I realized why. No matter what time of day it was, there was the manager, out on the floor, coffee pot in hand, constantly going around to refill coffee and talk to the people. If they needed napkins, extra ketchup, or straws, he would get it for them. He set up high chairs for the kids, held the door for people, even swept the floor when necessary, and emptied trash bins on time, to keep his business clean and presentable! In other words, he was approachable! The people knew he was on duty, and would not only give them excellent service, but would actually take the time to visit with them and get to know them! That made them feel important, and like he cared about them! I don't know if it was true or not, but I heard he paid for his franchise within the first year of being in business! That's the kind of customer service that all businesses could take a lesson from! I sure did, and it has helped me build every business I have ever owned! Do you need a lesson in customer service? Or are you going to continue to chase customers down with emails because you aren't sure you treated them right the first time? It's your decision. Either fix one problem once, or continually pay the price from now on! (It is NOT permissible to copy or redistribute this article!) Author: John W. Abert 2009 All rights reserved.
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