Category Archives: sales

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How to Get Your Emails Opened

Email marketing is still as relevant today as it was 10 year ago, but, like most things, approaches have had to be evolved in order to remain effective. No place is this more true that with opening rates, in which marketers evaluate how often their email communications are opened and read.

Every email you send that doesn’t get read is a missed opportunity, and subject line tricks and formulas that may have worked a few years ago might not carry the same weight today. Much of this is due to the problem of volume inundation. The average email account today is spammed with anywhere between tens and hundreds of junk communications per day, on top of a varying volume of legitimate/wanted ones.

Along with this inundation, comes the fact that people have become desensitized to sensational headlines. Things that may have piqued interest in 2010 now just scream “scam!” or “yeah right, I don’t believe THAT!” to the average consumer.

What all of this means, in a nutshell, is that you’ve got to get creative in order to get opens these days. At the very least, you’ll need to invest in some longterm strategic thinking.

In fact, your plan for improving open rates should be occurring long before an actual email is sent or a subject line is read. The largest factor in any open is going to be the sender, so you need to make sure you have established trust with whoever you are mailing.

One of the first steps to this, and something I cannot stress enough, is using confirmed – also called “double” opt in. It forces people to see your name twice, and gets the recognition process started. The people you lose because they couldn’t be bothered to confirm their subscription were probably not great prospects to begin with.

Next, make your opt-in incentive excellent. I mean award-winning. Make it actually useful and give them something they’re not finding somewhere else. Most marketers in any given niche are giving away half-solutions or useless “5 steps” PDF’s – be the one person in your area who isn’t.

Next, and this is probably a step where the most dropoff in open rates occurs despite not getting much attention, is that you ensure that the quality of your email followups can compete with that of your first email/incentive. Especially your second and third email, really overdeliver and give people information they can’t live without. Really prove you’ve done your homework and have the answers they’re looking for.

I cannot stress this enough. People get hung up on writing the perfect subject line when the reality is that you could have the worst headlines in the game and still pull off stellar open rates if you’re a trusted sender whose advice is valued. By the same token, you could find your traditionally excellent subject line methods scoring low on open percentage because no one remembers who you are or thought that it became too obvious early on that you were more interested in selling to them than helping them.

Once you have this trust established, feel free to go crazy with your subject line split testing, but know that this step – the one email marketers spend probably the most time on – is insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

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Copywriting Toolbox: The ‘Foot in the Door’ Technique

Most marketers are serious do-it-yourselfers. They’re learning constantly about all kinds of different facets of marketing and trying to put what they learn into practice all with just one pair of hands. Most internet marketing guides will tell you to begin outsourcing and managing as early as possible, to help grow your business at the fastest rate possible, but this kind of management role isn’t always feasible if you aren’t entering into your entrepreneurship journey with some startup capital.

Oftentimes, you’ll have to make something work all on your own, and copywriting is no different. There’s a reason that there’s an entire industry dedicated to having someone else write your web copy, sales letters, email series, and more – but that doesn’t mean you can’t do a bang-up job yourself with a little bit of know-how. Today, we’re going to go over the “foot in the door” copywriting technique; it’s a classic copywriting move that can help you to increase responsiveness by easing into your propositions (purchases, sign ups, referrals, or whatever constitutes a successful conversion for your business).

The foot in the door principle is based upon the fact that people are naturally resistant to taking large steps out of the blue. This is, for example, why telephone salespeople have to work through such a large volume of number registries to keep sales at an acceptable level. That said, this resistance tends to lessen when the ‘ask’ becomes less and less of a hassle or monetary obligation for someone. Obviously, you would be more likely to try a new type of shampoo if it cost $5 per bottle than if it were $15.

Those studying (anecdotally) copywriting psychology posited that perhaps these smaller actions could be used to build trust, and thus, over time, increase the chances that someone would agree to a larger ask. As luck would have it, for you, they were right.

The first time I learned of the technique, it was written something like this: If someone came to your door and asked you to put a large political yard sign out endorsing a certain candidate, you would likely be resistant (even if it came from a party you identified with). But let’s say, instead, campaigners ask you to take just an “I support [candidate name]!” button. You’ll never wear it, but the ask is small and you agree; there doesn’t seem to be any harm in doing so. Let’s say that a week or two later, the same people come by and this time they are asking about the yard sign. You may have said no before, but you already agreed with them once, and the button spurred you into doing a bit of research on the candidate, and now maybe you’re more open to a public endorsement. Without a doubt, the second strategy will end up with more lawn signs in more yards.

No matter what your business is, you can use this same technique. In your own business, think of how you can get someone to agree to something small before you ask them for something big. In sales letters, you’ll notice that copywriters often pose questions with seemingly obvious answers.

“Do you want to cure your acne this week?”

“Do you agree that acne creates an unattractive, juvenile appearance?”

The purpose of these questions is to bait readers into mentally agreeing and nodding along; if they’ve already agreed with you on one thing, they’re more likely to agree with you on the next thing as well. In your own businesses, think about how you can use this technique to ‘soften’ any ask you have – you might just be surprised at how dramatically conversion rates change when correctly implementing it.

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3 Reasons Your Social Media Presence Sucks

Social media has been hailed time and time again as the new (which is a bit out of date now, really) big player in marketing and brand engagement. Then again, the reality of the situation has shown that the vast majority of brands, individuals, and even social media managers don’t actually find themselves successful in cultivating a large following. If you’ve ever wondered why that is, here are a few mistakes that keep marketers from ever reaching their maximum potential.

 

1) Not being a creator.

The people who have the biggest social media followings on the planet, or even just within whatever niche(s) you find yourself marketing, are people who create something. Their tweets, posts, and pictures carry weight because they’ve got something solid to back them up. Too often, people as for “follows” and other social media engagement without giving anyone a good reason to actually do so. If you’re begging people to retweet your link, you sure as heck better have something on the other end that delivers true value if you want those who get curious enough to continue to engaging with you.

 

2) Mistaking social media for a one-way channel of communication.

In other instances, I’ve actually seen it be the case that someone had great content on their blog, but wasn’t having much luck getting people to engage on social platforms. One of the reasons this happens is that people assume importance too early. It’s like any kind of marketing that isn’t in its infancy anymore: You don’t get widespread recognition just for “doing it,” or even doing it well, because the market is too saturated.

So, how do you stand out? You start talking with people, and not just at them. Make sure that you are giving out what you’re asking for be engaging with others you find interesting, asking them questions, and commenting on their content. Real comments, not the “wow, great read!” variety. Some of the biggest names in social media still take time throughout the day to respond to people messaging and asking them for advice.

 

3) Automating.

Gary Vaynerchuk, who has a mind that’s built up companies based almost exclusively on social media expertise, has an interesting stance on automation; it’s a stance you can learn from. First of all many people get caught up in automating their social media endeavors far too early. In a sense, they haven’t really maxed out their time, they don’t really need to back away from active engagement, they’re just lazy. Or maybe they’re just putting the cart before the horse. Automation isn’t inherently bad, but it is when you try and hide the fact that you’re doing it. Another way of putting this is that it’s fine to automate simple tasks that don’t involve direct customer interaction, but you shouldn’t fake interaction. Customers know that the mass email you sent out wasn’t personally directed to them just because their name is in it. They know that your auto-following them back on twitter wasn’t out of genuine interest. Don’t be fake, people will see through it.

While social media isn’t intensely complicated, it’s also not hard to end up doing it wrong. Make the time to strategize and account for factors like these before you actually touch your fingers to your keyboard… or your phone… or your tablet… you get the idea.

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Redeveloping the Headline – How to Generate and Narrow Down Headline Ideas

Ever wondered how professional copywriters, ad agency creatives, and online marketers arrive at killer headlines that draw readers in and have them pulling out their wallets like nobody’s business? Wonder no more, because today, we’ll be taking a look at exactly how many of those headlines come to be.

The Process

One of the things that too many people don’t understand about headline writing is that it is a process. Just like anything else worth doing for your business, proper headline writing takes up time and concerted effort. The misconception that time spent on headlines should be relatively smaller compared to, say, the time spent to write a sales letter, is probably rooted in the fact that the final product where headlines are concerned is fairly small.

A small final product doesn’t mean a small effort, however. The next time you’re writing a headline for your email, sales letter, or even just your next blog post, try this:

Sit and write 25 to 50 headlines. Don’t stop until you’re there. How do you come up with so many ideas? Go bigger than you think you can, go more ridiculous than you think you can. In this initial phase, we’re too often already wearing blinders and filtering out ideas that could be developed later on if we gave them a chance.

Even if any idea seems too risque, “out there,” or bold, jot it down to get the juices flowing. A big mistake many people make when trying to write their own headline copy is that they don’t actually write ideas down unless they think they’re “good enough.” Most people aren’t able to visualize in our heads as well as we can do on a piece of paper, and you’re doing yourself a disservice by not letting the process take its course out in the open.

Once you’ve got your ideas on paper, go through the list one by one and ask yourself if there are other directions you can go with it (variations, slight changes, etc.), or if the idea just wasn’t up to snuff and needs to be eliminated. In this stage, you’ll drop out the weaklings while simultaneously developing your stronger ideas.

When working on variations and trying to pick out your top contenders, here are a couple of things to keep in mind:

– People generally buy on emotion: things like love & acceptance, the want for wealth and popularity, etc. are almost always elements of a successful headline. Don’t hesitate to push a bit with your headline, oftentimes a (not-too-misleading) shock means that people will stop and read.

– The age-old trick about including numbers of tips, tricks, and steps into a headline holds true. People like things that sound logical, specific, and easy, so “3 easy steps to eliminating acne at home” is likely to perform better than “Here’s how to eliminate acne at home!”

Finally, your overall champion of a headline, once you’ve narrowed it down to 2-5, will probably not be able to be determined by intuition alone, especially not without experience, so get ready to split test, split test some more, and then split test again.

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Why You Might Want To Pay Attention To Podcasting Again

Let’s get one thing out in the open straight away: We all know that podcasts are nothing new. In this newsletter, I’m not going to try and tell you that podcasts are anything new – these web-hosted, episodic radio show type broadcasts have been around for roughly a decade now. So no one would have known that they would have just soared back into popularity, but, by gosh, they absolutely have.

Of course, the time to develop the medium and for listeners/viewers to grow their expectations means that anyone who wants to standout these days is going to need to try a little harder in order to make a splash. Let’s take a look at how you can turn your personal brand(s) into the splashiest of podcast.

First things first, dig into something that you can really dominate. What are you so passionate and knowledgeable about that you’ll be able to put in more hours each day than anyone else? What part of your business do you feel you have the strongest execution in and would be the most impressive for someone earlier on in their journey to learn about?

Once you’ve honed in on something you can do well, start thinking about how you could make it interesting. For most people, podcasts start out as a series of videos or recordings where they simply talk about what they know. As long as you’re personable and can pull that off with some enthusiasm, you’re ahead of the game. That said, once you get several episodes deep, even the most prolific thinkers might be at a loss as to what to say into the microphone.

Here, a great route to go down is the Q&A route. If you’ve built up a little subscriber base, ask them to tell you what they want to know, ask how you can help with the problems they’re facing, etc. Or you can go down the tutorial route. Or you can create themed episodes in which you do a giant fast paced knowledge-dump of everything you’ve got on a certain topic. Keep your show interesting at all costs; look at what else exists in your market, and make your content the obvious choice.

This revival is also very much about the use of diverse media. In the early days, podcasts were often audio-based and lived in itunes, embedded in webpages, or even on platforms like Soundcloud and the like. Now, many podcasts come in video form – it’s not a necessity, but it does give you broader options for presenting your show. Even if you stick to audio format, take advantage of promotional graphics and logos to pique interest for your podcast.

Become memorable through the use of a catchy intro or jingle. Don’t make music? Don’t write jingles? No problem, just grab a freelancer – old standbys like fiverr, odesk, and freelancer are alright to start, but with a bit of searching you can find specialists ready to spice up your show intro without breaking the bank. There’s a reason advertisements have had jingles for decades: They get stuck in your head, and, along with them, comes brand recall.

Finally, assure good audio (and video, if applicable) quality. Don’t worry, you can do this on a budget. For most audio podcasts, you can achieve a professional sounding setup for less than $100. Grab a quality USB mic (the ‘Snowball’ and other iterations by Blue are really excellent). Once you’ve got your recording, learn a bit about how to make your voice sound nice and rich using a free program like Audacity. When you launch your podcast, try to have several episodes already recorded so that listeners will be hooked from day one.

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5 Ways to Increase Click-Through Rates with Killer Meta Descriptions

You can increase traffic to your website in one of two ways. The first is to improve your page rankings on the search engine results for your keywords. The second is to improve your click-through-rate (CTR).

Most Internet marketers focus on the first approach. But improving CTR can provide you with huge results, especially since it’s so easy to do.

Over the years, I’ve discovered dozens of effective ways to increase CTR, some of which yield better results than others. Here are the seven that are easy and provide huge results very quickly:

 

1. Copy Off Other People

While this technique may have been frowned upon in high school, it should be standard operating procedure for successful internet marketers.

A lot of online marketers are allergic to the idea of paying for traffic. But that doesn’t mean that you don’t have anything to learn from the people who do buy paid ads.

The truth is that people who pay for traffic spend a lot of time and money testing their ads to make sure they get the optimal results. The result is ads that already are fully optimized.

All you need to do is swoop in and steal their optimized copy and use it as your own.

In fact, because Google Ads are limited to the number of characters they can contain, it’s a safe bet that the keywords paid marketers include are the ones that perform best and get the most conversions.

 

2. Copy from Non-Paying Competitors

As long as you are stealing your competitors’ best ideas, why stop there? You also can take the copy from the most successful competitors who use organic SEO strategies.

Look to see which keywords and phrases they are using. What benefits or features do they highlight? Then take them for your own and use them within your copy.

This isn’t stealing. It’s known as “not reinventing the wheel”.

 

3. Tickle Your Customer’s Curiosity

Curiosity may have killed the cat, but it also caused billions of web users to click through on links because they were dying to find out what happened next.

In fact, this is a strategy you see all the time on social media sites such as Facebook. Marketers will post something like, “A Woman in Texas Stopped to Give a Dollar to a Homeless Man on the Street. You’ll Never Guess What Happened Next … Wow!”

This may be an overused trope, but it’s overused because it works like magic. Try other clickbait phrases in your meta descriptions like this to exploit people natural curiosity. Other phrases include:

– “Find Out How …”

– “What You Do If … “

– “Discover the Amazing Way …”

– “Have You Ever Wondered What Would Happen If …”

 

4. ‘Features Tell, but Benefits Sell …’

This is a phrase that is as old as advertising itself. People aren’t interested in the facts and statistics about what they are buying. What they really want to know is what it can do to make their life better. Explain that and you can sell practically anything to anybody.

Start your ads with benefits. Features like how much something weighs, how big it is, how long it lasts, and so on, should only be included if they drive the story you are trying to tell. If they don’t, leave them out.

In your meta descriptions, include benefits phrases like “Make More Money by …” or “Lose Weight and Feel Great with …”

 

5. People Love Numbers

Getting clicks is easier when you use numbers in your meta descriptions. That’s because people believe something is more factual if you qualify it with real number.

For example, which would you be more likely to click on?:

– Learn How to Improve Your Click-Through Rate

– 5 Ways to Increase Click-Through Rates with Killer Meta Descriptions

Considering you already are reading this, I think you just answered the question!

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Give Before You Take – A Brief Exploration of Value in Internet Marketing

Most anyone reading this is going to be familiar, at least in some abstract way, with the concept of “value.” The concept of value, or utility derived from content, products, or other offerings, is not unique to IM, however, and those working across a variety of markets, both online and offline, have to be keenly aware of the ways in which their value is perceived by customers. In this post, we’re going to go over the importance of balancing your ‘give’ with your ‘take’, and a few ways in which you can maintain that balance when working with IM clients.

 

The Why

Basic economics courses teach students that most people make their purchasing decisions based on a concept called ‘utility cost’; whenever someone is deciding whether or not to purchase an item or make a trade, they weigh whether the utility of what they will receive is greater than the utility of what they already have. Most commonly, this is the often quick and (nearly) subconscious assessment you would make as to whether an item is “too expensive” or seems like a “good deal.”

 

In online marketing, your customers make these decisions several times throughout your sales funnel:

– Is the freebie being offered worth more to me than the potential privacy giveaway and possible unwanted messages that entering my email could incur?

– Is the information this person posts on their site helpful enough to me that it’s worth taking ten minutes out of my day to read?

– Do I trust this person enough to take their recommendation that what they’re offering is worth my hard-earned money?

For many marketers, the second and third bullet points are where they lose people.

 

The Mindset Swap

Even though your end goal may be to make as much money as possible, your customer always wants to feel like they’ve “won.” In most IM-related instances, this means feeling like they’ve gotten the promise of greater future value from a product, tool, or training/coaching course than what they paid for it. However, there is another crucial evaluation that happens long before they’ll ever get close to purchasing, and that’s value-based-trust.

I recommend marketers practice a mindset swap, which involves taking the focus off of their bottom line and simply becoming a customer. Read every offer you’ve got, every promotional email, every review, and ask yourself, does this feel valuable? You are not smarter than your customers; if you know deep down that something you’re offering feels like a half-solution or copout, they’ll pick up on it too.

Most marketers, both experienced and novice, have a sales funnel riddled with these holes where offers feel like they’re doing more for the seller than the (potential) buyer. Remember, when perceived utility of an offer is viewed as a loss, people aren’t going to bite.

 

Actually Over-Deliver

Many of these low-value gaps occur because marketers are afraid of giving away ‘the whole solution’, system, or secret. Why then, you might ask, would someone make a purchase if they feel they’ve already been given the solution to their problems? It is a tricky balance, but too many err on the wrong side of the scale and come across as withholding value from their customers.

It shouldn’t be surprising that customers are often more likely to purchase after they have already had success with your methods and recommendations, and you offer them up a paid product that complements that success, rather than offering them a tiny piece of the puzzle with what they need to see any positive results locked behind a paywall. Which scenario do you think is more likely to foster an ongoing, positive relationship with a new customer? An opt-in freebie that gives visitors a complete system to make $1,000 per month, which you then upsell to a different version with larger earning potential later on, or just offering them the first page of the main system right off the bat, which essentially renders it useless to them and gives them nothing they can act on immediately?

The former has a high chance of resulting in a lifelong customer, the latter might just tick someone off and see them opting out of your email list as fast as possible.

The point? Give before you ever ask to take, work from the customer’s shoes, and always over-deliver.

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5 Quick and Easy Ways to Ruin Your Blog’s Credibility

Blogs are becoming one of the fastest-growing ways for people with common interests to share information, ask questions, and dig deeper into their passion subjects. They also are increasingly being used by companies to build stronger relationships with their customers.

But whether you are publishing your own special interest blog or writing a blog for your corporate masters, your objective needs to be to attract and hold onto the largest possible reader base.

Sounds simple enough, right? Yet thousands of bloggers routinely shoot themselves in the foot by making stupid mistakes that could easily be avoided.

Here are the top five ways many bloggers inadvertently ruin their credibility and turn off readers so they never return:

 

1. Talking Too Much about Yourself

This is more of a problem with company-sponsored blogs than with individual bloggers. But the purpose of both types of blogs should be to provide readers with content that consistently informs and educates readers on new and interesting topics.

Blogs should be commercials for products or companies. When you only write about what your company is doing (or about yourself), you are going to turn off a lot of readers, especially if you keep doing it blog after blog.

A better plan is to establish yourself as an industry thought leader and give you readers high-value content. When you do this, you can increase loyalty bonds and keep them coming back for more.

 

2. Shamelessly Hawking Your Products

Unless you are Amazon.com, most people don’t visit your blogs to buy products.

While it’s generally acceptable to include links to affiliate products or to promote products you endorse (and hopefully get a commission from), you can’t be obvious about it. Don’t hit readers over the head with your sales pitch. Educate first and sell subtly.

 

3. Not Selling Enough

Sure, this sounds like it runs counter to the last item, but it actually doesn’t. While you want to provide your readers with high-value content and avoid bludgeoning them with your sales pitch, you also should remember that your blog is there for a reason: To increase interest in your company or subject.

Tie your valuable content back to your brand and include a soft sell to get the message across to your blog’s readers.

 

4. Turning Off the Comments Section

Some companies are so concerned about their online reputation that they try to manage the way they are portrayed on their own blog by not allowing comments. Big mistake.

Not allowing comments doesn’t encourage readers to engage with your content. It sends the message that you don’t care what they have to say, that you don’t value their opinions.

While there may be some (minimal) risk that somebody is going to post something critical and that it will be read by other readers before you can get rid of it, if you properly maintain your comments section on a regular basis you can address any negativity quickly and effectively. In many instances, your best customers are those that had a bad experience that you addressed to their complete satisfaction.

 

5. Being Too Long-Winded

People aren’t clicking on to your blog because they want to read “War and Peace”. Keep your blogs short and information-dense. Providing too much information can make reader weary and wary of future blogs posts.

Remember the old show business adage: Always leave them wanting more!

These five common land mines can destroy the credibility of any blog. Avoid these and you can improve your chances of attracting many new followers, and holding on to your existing ones longer.

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Is Email (Finally) Dead?!?

For years, people in the tech industry have been predicting (or lamenting) the death of email as a form of communication.

“Kids don’t use email anymore.” “There are better, faster and more effective ways to interact with other people, such as texting and social media.” “I know people who don’t even have an email address.”

These are some of the most common statements you hear regarding the death of email. (Perhaps it’s telling that I’ve been hearing these same statements for nearly a decade now.)

 

The Death of Email?

So what’s the real deal? Is email actually dead?

To answer this question, let me ask one of my own: When was the last time you checked your email account? This week? This morning? Just now?

The truth is that most people will go to their email every time their smart phone beeps, vibrates or otherwise indicates that a new email message has just landed in their inbox. It’s just a natural human response, kind of like when people used to answer their home telephones whenever it rang. It takes some time to de-program it.

 

More Popular than Ever

In reality, email is more popular than ever, especially among marketers. According to an April, 2015, study conducted by Yahoo! Labs and the University of Southern California – called “Evolution of Conversations in the Age of Email Overload”, most people are now receiving more emails in their inbox than ever before.

Part of that is businesses finally catching up with available marketing technology. While many small businesses have been collecting customers’ email addresses for years, it’s only been recently that many have finally figured out what to do with them.

People are more willing to give up their email address than they are, say, their mobile phone numbers. That’s because they know they can easily ignore or delete emails they don’t really want to see.

 

Too Many Emails

Today, most people receive more emails than they can conceivably read and respond to. Personally, I usually begin each working day by deleting about 80% to 90% of the emails in my inbox – mostly from marketers or others promoting something I’m not interested in.

Yet like me, most people won’t go to the trouble of unsubscribing from the source of all those emails out of fear that they might miss out on the one offer or email that they genuinely are interested in.

 

Ease of Email

It’s also easier than ever for people to keep up with their emails. Spam detectors have done an effective job of filtering out the truly irrelevant and unwanted emails. And now people can read their emails – or at least their subjects and who they are from – as a scroll on their smart phones, tablets and other mobile devices.

And because more emails today are being sent and received on mobile devices, they tend to be shorter. Perhaps this is why the average amount of time it takes for people to respond to emails sent from smart phones (28 minutes) is so much shorter than those sent from tablets (57 minutes) or from desktop computers or laptops (62 minutes,), according to the Yahoo!/USC study. Could that mean that emails and text messages are beginning to morph into the same thing?

 

The Myth of Young People and Email

As expected, older people tend to use emails more than younger people. But the difference may not be as big as many people might think.

During the course of the study, 53% of adults between 35 and 50 years old sent emails from their phones or tablets at least once, compared to only 49% of teenagers between13 and 19 and 48% of young adults between 20 and 35 years old. Older people (51+) sent the fewest emails via mobile devices, at 43%, according to the study.

So email is definitely not dead. It’s not even wounded. Eventually, however, it may eventually morph into something entirely different, in the way the telephone did.

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What the Girl Scouts Can Teach Us about Internet Marketing

Did you buy Girl Scout cookies this year? If so, you aren’t alone. An estimated 200 million boxes of the delicious sweet treats are sold every year.

The Girl Scouts have been selling cookies as a fundraising tool for more than 100 years. But it was only recently that they extended their marketing efforts online. Now, in addition selling cookies door to door, Girl Scouts can now use the Internet to send customers emails inviting them to place their cookie order.

There’s also a mobile app Girl Scouts can use to handle credit card transactions during face-to-face purchases. The group has come a long way since the days of knocking on every door in the neighborhood.

 

Girl Scout Lessons

If there’s one thing you can’t say about the Girl Scouts it’s that they aren’t good at what they do. The market penetration of their cookie product is the envy of the industry. Honestly, is there anybody who has ever said “no” to a Girl Scout selling cookies?

Here, then, are some lessons we Internet marketers can learn from the Girl Scouts:

– Most People Respond to Human Interaction – In an age where most people are buying products and services from their smart phones, a face to face interaction with a real person has more meaning than ever, especially when that person is an adorable 8-year-old.

Making that type of personalized connection with your customers is what’s ultimately going to make the sale for Internet marketers and Girl Scouts alike.

 

– Know Your Audience – Let’s face it, the vast majority of Girl Scout cookie sales are made to relatives, friends, co-workers and other acquaintances of the parents of Girl Scouts or the girls themselves. Part of the reason for their success is that there already is a built-in customer base that they can reliably return to year after year.

Your Internet marketing can benefit from the same model. Your best customers are going to be the ones who buy whatever you are selling over and over again. Building lasting loyalty bonds for a series of smaller sales is generally better than making a single larger one.

– Friendships Matter – Girl Scouts know that friends are the most important thing in life. Social media marketers and other web-based entrepreneurs are learning the same life lessons.

Creating lasting relationships with your customers can guarantee that they are going to be open to our next offer … and the one after that. But they aren’t going to see you as a friend if you are always trying to sell them something. Alternate your promotional messages with ones that share something personal about yourself. Include free helpful, high value content that your contacts can use in their everyday lives and you can strengthen the genuine bonds you create with your customer base.

– Learning Is Better than Teaching – Girl Scouts is centered on continually learning new things: Crafts, activities, how to do different things. Sharing information and teaching others is fine, but learning something new is even better.

Your communications with your customers shouldn’t be a monologue. It should be a dialogue, with them telling you as much about your business as you are telling them. Make a point of letting your customers know that you value their opinion and are genuinely interested in what they have to say.

Marketers who are always preaching at people, rather than listening to them, usually aren’t as successful as those who value learning as much as they do teaching.

Now, if you will excuse me, I have a couple of boxes of Girl Scout cookies to eat.