You have a web site, and hundreds if not thousands of people visit your site each week. If your site is working well it should be providing you with a list of hundreds of people who want to be on your marketing list each week and dozens of qualified leads, people who want you to call them right away about your services.

Use the following five tactics to generate a list of qualified prospects.

1. Collect Contact Information

Strive to collect the email address of every person who visits your web site and is interested in the problems you solve. Offer a free article, tutorial or guide as bait to motivate people to give you their email address so you can market to them again and again.

Offer prospects something they want, and place your sign-up form prominently at the top of your home page and in a side navigation bar on the other pages of your site. This should help you capture the email addresses of 10-20% of the people who visit your site each week.

2. Use Auto Responders to Collect Detailed Information

If you use a free giveaway and the briefest of sign up forms to get people to give you their email information you can market to prospects but wouldn’t it be helpful to have more information?

Use an autoresponder to send people a confirmation when they request your free article or sign up for your newsletter. In the email ask them for detailed contact information and ask them a couple of questions about what they’re interested in.

3. Get People to Tell You How You Can Help Them

Many people use the web as tool to find solutions and to hire people who can help them solve their problems. If you are a financial advisor, giving away an article on financial tips is a great way to get contact information but what you really want to do is to identify those people who have an immediate interest in your services.

Prompt people to contact you by including an inquiry form on your web site, but don’t make the mistakes made on most web sites. Too often inquiry forms are buried on the site, multiple clicks away from the pages most frequently viewed by your visitors. Include your form on high visibility pages, at the bottom of your homepage and other key pages about your services and products.

Use your inquiry form to both collect contact information and to identify the services your prospects are interested in and how you can help them. When you make your follow up calls you’ll know where to start the conversation.

When you receive completed inquiry forms you can sort through them to identify which ones are worth following up on based on the answers provided. Then pick up the phone and use these qualified leads to find new clients and grow your business.

4. Collect Feedback and Learn More About Your Prospect’s Needs

When people visit your sell pages, the web pages that describe your products and services, they’ve expressed an interest. Some will move directly to purchase, others will discover they don’t have any further interest and a large number will fall into the middle. These are people who are interested but not ready to commit.

Before visitors leave your web site sell pages, you can use exit pop up windows to collect feedback and to find out what they are looking for.

Offer a free article to motivate visitors to fill in the form. When you get these feedback forms, follow up with a call. Use this conversation to find out why they didn’t buy the service or product or to get further information about the problems they want solved. Once you have these prospects on the phone you’ll be surprised how many you can turn into clients.

5. Send out Surveys to Identify What Sells

If you have a newsletter you can leverage the trust of your readers to collect ideas of what they want to buy. If you’ve been sending out ideas and information to your target market periodically they will be more than likely to respond when you ask for their input.

Two to four times per year, send an informal survey to your subscriber base, asking for their ideas. Ask them which of your product or service ideas they like best and what they need and want. Tabulate their responses and develop the products and services they asked for.

Use these five lead collection strategies to identify prospects with a problem, one you can solve. Once you know who needs your help, its easy to follow up, close the sale and grow your business.

-

2004 © In Mind Communications, LLC. All rights reserved.

About The Author

The author, Marketing Coach, Charlie Cook, helps independent professionals and small business owners attract more clients and be more successful. Sign up to receive the Free Marketing Guide and the ‘More Business’ newsletter, full of practical tips you can use at http://www.charliecook.net
ccook@charliecook.net

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I was at one of those big show events and walked past a demonstration booth. I even knew it was coming. About 50% of the people walking out were carrying two bright yellow cylinder-things.

As we walked toward the convention center, I told Tim (my other half), “There’s one of those guys with a microphone in there, doing a demonstration. He gets people so excited they think they have to buy those things. They over-pay then never use them.” I said this a bit smugly. I know of such things, so I wouldn’t succumb.

Yeah, right. This guy was good. So good, I came away with five ideas for increasing sales from impulse purchases. Next time you evaluate short-term sales and marketing strategies, think about and apply these five impulse purchase lessons…

Impulse Purchase Lesson 1: Demonstrate an impressive, relevant feature.

If the product is chocolate, sold at a retail checkout stand, you have no need for this one. Human nature takes over. When you are selling unrecognizable cylinder things, people need some encouragement.

You would never know it to look at them, but these things were super absorbent shammies. They can suck 8 - 10 ounces of soda out of your carpet in nothing flat AND it makes for an impressive demonstration. When the demonstrator mentioned they could dry a sweater in three hours, I was hooked. Never mind we have about two spills a year in my house and I don’t own any “lay flat to dry” sweaters.

This ability to get people to “live in the moment” is one key to a successful impulse purchase demonstration. The salesperson has a lot to do with it, of course. Repetition of an incredible, attractive feature, however, is key as well.

Think of any infomercial or “Billy Mays” product. There is always an “AMAZING!” feature - cooks in minutes, instantly removes stains, easily pulls dings from your car, etc.

2: Try to “time it right”.

Quite coincidentally, one of those semiannual spills in my house happened the day before I bumped into the yellow cylinder guy. I was thinking “If I’d had these yesterday, right now we wouldn’t have books stacked in the middle of the living room floor.” Quite by accident, he had related to something that was top-of-mind for me.

Fortunately, you do not have to rely on coincidence. At any one time, there are usually six or eight generally popular “themes” you could tie into. Better yet, your target audience is likely to have it’s own unique interests.

On the Internet, you can “time it right” by associating complementary products or services. If someone is researching monitors, for example, perhaps they need an ink cartridge for their printer.

Showing or highlighting ink cartridges on the screen along with the monitors may incite an impulse purchase. Better yet - and this is impossible unless you have order histories or detailed profiles - show them the exact cartridge they need.

3: Make it easy.

It turns out the cylinder things costs a flat $20. There was no change to mess with, no stopping to fill in order forms, and no multiple pieces of currency. As people pulled $20’s out of their pockets, the demonstrator took them and handed over the shammies in a single motion.

On the Internet, you can make it easy in two ways - ordering and delivery.

Make the order process as simple as possible. Amazon’s “Quick-Click” links are a good example of making ordering easy. Impulse purchasers simply click on the “Buy from Amazon” button and order straight off a pop-up window. You can see how it works here, in the left column under “Amazon ‘Quick-Click’ Example”: http://WebSiteMarketingPlan.com/Arts/ImpulsePurchase.htm

Easy delivery is another way to encourage impulse purchases on the Internet. Immediately downloadable digital items are an example. For physical items, quick delivery - overnight, same day, or local store pick-up - can increase sales.

4: Give an enticingly presented discount.

A roll of three shammies was $21 something, but the guy was taking care of the sales tax, which made it an even $20 (But wait, there’s more!). Because it was early he would throw in another 3-roll for no additional charge. Caught up in the moment, we nodded agreement. We were getting a deal - no sales tax plus three free.

The way a discount is presented can make a deal sound either appealing or “not such a deal”. Which sounds better?…

1. “Buy One, Get One Half Off.” OR “Buy Two and Get a 25% Discount.”
2. “3 for $5.00″ OR “$1.67 each.”
3. “40% Off Sale” OR “On Sale, $12.00 each.” (Assuming $20 item.)

Another way to encourage impulse purchases is to give a discount by bundling. Offer to reduce the price on a second, related item (Like in example #1, above.).

Online, I have seen this done with books. Some booksellers offer you a chance to save money on shipping and/or book price if you also purchase a related item.

5: “Keeping up with the Joneses.”

Instead of putting the shammies in a bag, the demonstrator rolled them up into a cylinder. This way, people at the show would see others carrying them around and wonder what they were missing.

The same concept can be applied to the Internet. I have seen messages like: “Others who bought ‘x’ also bought ‘y’” on order forms, at check out, and on product screens.

So there they are - five tactics the yellow cylinder guy used to convince me (and nearly everyone around me) to happily walk away with six shammies. By correctly applying these same techniques you can see your sales soar as well.

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Education-Based Marketing creates demand by showing the prospects why they need your products and services, how to make intelligent buying decisions, and how to best use it after they buy.

Education-Based Marketing creates a ‘halo’ surrounding everything you sell.

When you promote an individual product or service, only that particular product or service benefits. But empowering customers and prospects benefits every product and service you sell.

Information pre-sells and differentiates. It builds customer confidence and positions you as credible, knowledgeable and trusted. Information sets you apart. You become a unique, trusted advisor.

Education-Based Marketing answers questions that must be answered before prospects will buy:

1. Who benefits from the product or service?
2. What benefits does the product or service provide?
3. When is the product or service needed?
4. Where is the product or service used?
5. How do you choose and use it?

Conventional advertising is hard to create because it’s judged by its creativity – how effectively it attracts attention, how cleverly it delivers its message and how memorable it is.

Education-Based Marketing, however, is easy to create because the goal is to inform, rather than interrupt, manipulate or show-off. All you have to do is answer the five questions listed above.

Education-Based Marketing saves you money because technology has caught up with technique. You can do most of the production yourself using desktop-publishing software, saving on expensive outside production costs.

You can distribute educational messages for free as web site downloads or as e-mail attachments. Five ways to educate your prospects include:

• White Papers. These analyze challenges and trends and show how to benefit from your products and services.
• E-books. These offer in-depth, procedural descriptions that demonstrate your competence and communicate how-to-buy and how-to-use tips.
• E-mail newsletters. You can keep in constant touch with customers without addressing, printing and postage costs.
• E-courses. You can automatically deliver information in chunks over a period of several days – or even weeks.
• Teleseminars. You can also present teleseminars, which permit prospects to get to know you in an informal, interactive environment. Free line rentals are available; others cost about $25 an hour.

Education-Based Marketing works best when you keep in touch and deliver information at frequent intervals.

A monthly One-Page Newsletter, for example, is far more effective than a bimonthly four-page newsletter or a quarterly eight-page newsletter.

Customers and prospects give you their total attention when you offer information that helps them achieve their goals.

Education-Based Marketing’s effects are cumulative. The more information you share, the more your market will look forward to your messages and refer coworkers and friends to you.

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Way No. 1 - Clog Up Their Internet Connection

Imagine it. They’re happily surfing around on Google looking for your ‘widget’ and everything’s going smoothly. Your website appears in the first page listings (congratulations you must have employed magnet4web or another highly-esteemed website marketing company!) and they click through to you. Then their internet connection starts to clog up. It is positively groaning and creaking under the strain of downloading your homepage which has so many images on it takes over 30 seconds to appear. They look at the progress bar at the bottom of their screen. It reads ‘20%’. They look at their watch and then click on the little ‘X’ at the top right of their screen. Well done - you’ve just sent away a visitor - for good.

Way No. 2 - ‘I am not a number - I am a free man’

Along come some more visitors. They lick their lips in anticipation of viewing your widgets which they are very interested in buying - they have their credit card handy.

They land on your homepage and all is well, at first. “The benefits of choosing Widgets Inc. are as follows…” Your homepage is laden with customer-focused benefits and selling points - excellent. But wait a minute. What’s that at the bottom of the page? It’s not what I think it is, is it? Oh dear, there in black and white is one of the fundamental no-nos in web design that is guaranteed to send the message “This website was built by my dog”:

“Welcome - you are visitor number 102″

Regardless of the number (and let’s face it 80% are either you or your family!) you will be sending away people in droves. Well done - your site is becoming less busy by the day. Let’s move on to way number three..

Way No. 3 - “Help me buy from you - please…”

They’re lost. You have built the site around what seems a logical approach but your visitors are lost. You’ve given most prominence to testimonials but they just want to send you an email. They click on three, four and sometimes five pages but can’t find your phone number or email address anywhere. But it’s okay - of course they have a spare quarter of an hour to hunt through your website (that doesn’t have a site map) to find your contact details when they already have another window open with your competitor’s website - complete with email address, phone number, fax number, street address, mobile number, map and GPS coordinates..

Yes - you’ve guessed it - you’re one step closer to that ghost-town..

Way No. 4 - ‘Please Let Me Watch Intro’

Yes, admit it - you once thought the best thing on the planet was a website that started up by having a revolving animation of the company logo that exploded, span round a bit to an 80s sounding techno tune and then re-constituted itself in the centre of the screen with the immortal words:

“Click here to enter site”

Strange that - “enter site”. That’s what all your visitors were trying to do when they typed in your web address or clicked on your link but instead they were faced with Jean Michelle Jarre and some possessed bit of code that replicated the effect of someone regurgitating your business’ corporate identity over the screen. Nice. Flash intro = trash intro. Use em (the intros) and lose em (the visitors).

Way No. 5 -”I am five years’ old - I like things that flash”

One day in the future a law will be passed that will make it illegal to use scrolling text, flashing images, rotating heads, animated animals and boucning cursors on a website. Your website is here to do business. It is supposed to be a serious tool in your marketing armoury. It should be used to convey useful information to your visitors and convince them that you are worth doing business with. Dress it up with flashing icons, swirling graphics, flashing logos and spinning pictures and the merry-go of visual delights will just make your visitors sick. They will leave your glitzy fairground never to return..

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(1)List Building: One of the most POWERFUL ways to promote any website is to have your own list to promote with. This is something that you have heard many times and it is the first thing you should be doing to start your way down the road to success. Building a list is not something that is hard nor is it costly. There are many ways that you can do this one would be to start your own newsletter or safelist. This is something that is easy to do and it is very very profitable.

(2)Ezine Advertising: Still the most powerful advertising that you can get on the internet. Ezine’s have subscribers that are looking for ways to make money or increase their incomes. Solo Ads are the best! They are sent to the publishers data base by their self with no other adverts, Also TopSponsor Ads are a great source of advertising because it is the first thing the readers will see when they start reading the Newsletter Issue for that day.

(3)SearchEngine Advertising: Now with Affiliate programs you do not have much control over the way that the webpage is built. So in order to get your affiliate program ranked in searchengines is to use a Frames Page Template. This is a text template that can be put in HTML to mirror your affilate page with your affiliate link. This way you can add your own meta tags that will help you get a higher page rank.

(4)Leads And Traffic: This can be very responsive advertising because you can target your market of buyers, Alot of time these lead companys are using FFA and Classified Ads lead pages to get email addresses of people that are looking for ways to make a income. Good Lead companys use a Double Optin Process to capture leads of people that are looking for ways to get advertising or affiliate programs to join. You can do a search for Leads and Traffic sites through your searchengines like google and excite.

(5)PPC (Pay-Per-Click): PPC advertising can be some of the best ways to advertise any business on the internet. There are many of PPC’s that you can place your advertising with. Just do a search with google and excite and you will find that they are many of them to pick from. These PPC’s can drive all types of targeted traffic to your website or affiliate program for pennys on the dollar. You can also own your own PayPerClick system and send traffic to your site and at the same time use it to build your own targeted list!

The above information is what has pushed HaileysComet Weekly Ezine to the success that it has become and it will work for you as well. 90% of all people that are successful in marketing and advertising have the above or started out with the tools that it takes to make a living online. If you are wanting to jump start your success there is one tool out there that you can use that is proven to pull in loads of cash and help you build a business with the profit you make.

The product is called The Total Resale Package. It has every tool that you need to start,run, and succeed with your very own business. You can pick up a copy of the Total Resale Package here. http://www.haileyscometweekly.com/total-resale/

This is just one of the tools that will put you in the life that you want. It works for me and so many others that are just starting out and I share it with everyone. You can learn more about minisites and the above information with out any cost by coming to my site at the link below and signup for our weekly newsletter. It is packed with some of the most helpful hints and tips to get you started and keep you going in your venture to freedom!

Good Luck In Your Quest!

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So does your site need one?

This question is somewhat like asking if your site needs a newsletter. Sure, the sky won’t fall tomorrow if you don’t get one today, but once you realize the benefits of having a news feed for your site, and try it for yourself, you may become an addict like the rest of us.

Reason #1: More free traffic to your site

I’m not exaggerating when I say that a frequently updated feed can bring you massive amounts of traffic in a short time period. This won’t be true forever.

Here’s a snapshot in PDF format, of just the feed-originating traffic to a new page of my site for the first 24 hours it opened.

http://www.freetrafficdirectory.com/2-rss-marketing/screenshot.pdf

Not exactly a stampede, but here’s the good part.

On the fourth day, the feed traffic doubled, and all other traffic continued to rise at the same rate.

That’s my fifth active feed of the twenty I have spread out over four sites, and I get similar results each time. In thirty days, that would be at least 5,000 new targeted visitors - again, this is not counting my present traffic, or those who try my feed and stay subscribed, nor does it factor in what happens when the traffic doubles again..

I can’t promise you the exact same results, no one can. But you should know that my feed is targeted towards a crowed market - if you know how to set up your feed properly and correctly apply your keyword research, you could have better results..

Those visitors, from the first hour of traffic to today, resulted just from submitting my feed to the list of directories I compiled from many sources and studied. Some bring great free traffic to new feeds, some are better for once your feed has matured.

You can often get better placement in feed directories and in Yahoo’s RSS Directory than you could from your results in a regular search engine, and often, inclusion is instant.

Reason #2: It’s a hands-off way to update your audience

What if you could run your newsletter without the hassles of maintaining your list, removing bounced addresses, finding new subscribers, formatting the content you find, altering your content to keep from being blacklisted, and after all that, wondering if all the various blockers mistakenly kept your message from getting through?

If that sounds like heaven, you can be one of the angels as soon as an hour from now.

When you supplement your current newsletter with more frequent updates via feed, you will be able to push out updates to subscribers to your news channel or feed more frequently and more efficiently.

With all the new free tools available, even if you’re all thumbs when it comes to making a web page, if you can fill out a form, you can create a feed.

Reason #3: Get visitors to click through to your site whenever you update

If you haven’t used a feed reader before, you might be confused about the connection between the feed and your site and why it can result in an increase in traffic. I’ll attempt to explain this to you in words, but I suggest downloading a news aggregator (also known as a feed reader), and looking at the results of your favorite site’s feed through a reader after you read this for the full effect..

You can use my main feed here if you don’t have one to view:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/FreeTrafficTips

If you don’t want to have another application up while you’re surfing, you can try Pluck , a free application you can use for more than just feeds that integrates with Internet Explorer - get it at

http://freetrafficdirectory.com/pluck - it will take you right to the downloads page.

You can also do this from My Yahoo!, by changing your page to include their RSS Headlines console, still in Beta testing at http://my.yahoo.com.

To summarize, a visitor sees the headlines they want to read, view the summary, and click through to your site to read the rest of the news, either in a new window, or without having to leave the application they are in.

And when you update again, the reader will notify them that you have new headlines, and/or populate the list of items you have available. This can keep your audience coming back.

If you had trouble following that, come to this page for a one minute tutorial:

http://www.freetrafficdirectory.com/members/postt95.html

Reason #4: Recycle old content.

If you have a list of your older articles, some older product reviews, site suggestions, or archived newsletters, you can use those to build content to populate your feed with information. As long as this news is still relevant, you can recycle this content to attract new visitors

Reason #5: Its so easy it’s crazy not to do it.

Before the last few months, there weren’t as many free tools online that made the process of starting and publicizing a feed so effective and user-friendly.

The bottom line is, now that you can get all those benefits from filling out a form, saving the file, uploading to your server, promoting it once, and updating it from time to time, it’s insane not to do so.

You already have to update your site from time to time. You might as well get all the benefits of having a news feed too.

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Shortly after it went live I realised that nobody apart from me could see it and it started to dawn on me what this ‘Internet thing’ is all about. It is not about having a stand-alone website plonked somewhere that nobody will ever see - it is about being part of an INTERconnected NETwork of other websites. INTER-NET. The penny dropped - I needed to start getting connected to other websites.

Much has changed since then (my hair got longer, shorter and has since started to recede further up my head for one thing) but it seems the desire and pressure you face as a website owner to exchange links shows no signs of fading. But link swapping is killing your website! Here’s 5 Reasons why…

Reason No. 1 - It’s Addictive!

It’s true. You might not be that far down the link-swapping path yet but I promise you it will happen sooner or later. One day you’ll find yourself laughing like a maniac as you run a report to see how many in-bound links you have and start rubbing your hands gleefully as you reach that magic milestone you set yourself six months ago. You’ll start mainlining reciprocal links:

“Just one more link. Please - all I need is one more link!”

Take a deep breath, step back from the precipice and think for a moment. Why do you want all these links pointing to your website? No, honestly - why do you REALLY want all these links pointing to your website? To improve link popularity? You’re falling into the trap. Do you want it to boost that little green bar that Google assigns to your page? (see toolbar.google.com) Wise up!

Reason No. 2 - It Is Eating Away At Your Time Like A Hungry Hippo!

Just take a look at the last time you went out looking for a link and got it. How long did it take you? Not long? Well, let me put this another way - how long did it take you to find the right type of websites, look through those and find ones that even have a links page, find the contact information for the websites you wanted to contact, create the email, send the email, respond to the email, place their link on your website, check that they reciprocated with you, email back and forth a few times more and so on…?

If you add up all the minutes that each of these elements takes you could be looking at half an hour per reciprocal link established - maybe even longer!

And don’t think you’re cutting corners if you’re using software. It might be quicker to find possible linking partners using software but it’s a false economy as, to my knowledge, people are still cleverer than machines.

What I mean by this is I can tell if you email me using software rather than using your own fingers. If you go looking for reciprocal links using software you are FAR less likely to get a response so the whole process will probably take you as long in terms of time spent per link established.

Reason No. 3 - You Are Spending More Time On Other People’s Websites Than Your Own

If you spend a lot of your time researching and creating reciprocal links you’d better make sure that your website is perfect. Remember - all that time you’re spending developing reciprocal links could be spent adding new content to your website, sending out an up to date newsletter to your mailing list or even sitting down and writing out goals for your website.

If you spend all the time on improving your website, adding great content, providing excellent service, keeping it up to date, testing different headlines and homepage layouts INSTEAD of spending the time building links guess what? You will magically find that more people link to you anyway!

In fact - your website will become such a great resource because of all the time you’re dedicating to it that people will go OUT OF THEIR WAY to link to you! How ironic is that?!

You go hunting for links and your site suffers and therefore hardly anybody links to you. You spend time on making your website THE BEST IT CAN BE and everyone starts linking to you as, shock horror, you have a brilliant website that is worth referring to..

Reason No. 4 - You Don’t Have A Multi-Million Dollar Budget To Beat The Boffins

Those white-cloaked geeks over at Google towers and the like have millions of dollars at their disposal to create the latest technology that can sniff out the merest whiff of dodginess when it comes to link swapping.

If they think something is suspect you might get penalised. First you started to see sites that used the same phrase for their inbound links get penalised. Then it was sites that engaged with link farms. Who knows what’s next?

Ultimately you can bet your bottom dollar that the search engines will change their tack with reciprocal links and their importance - some of them are already starting to look at the words that appear before and after each link to make sure it is on a relevant page and not just created as part of a reciprocal linking deal.

It’s a risky game we’re all playing and my money’s on the guys with the white coats and millions of dollars..

Reason No. 5 - You Are The Weakest Link, Goodbye!

When push comes to shove this whole ‘game’ of website marketing is about balance.

Imagine you are a tightrope walker. Fifty metres beneath you is a huge vat of boiling hot lava. To help you across the rope from the podium of “website launch” to the podium of “website success” you get a balancing rod.

Spending too much time and effort on reciprocal link building is like having a large sack on one end of the rod. This sack has an elephant in it. The elephant is wearing boots. Made from concrete. Get the picture?

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Nothing is more important to getting your message noticed than your headlines. If you’re not allocating a sizable percentage of your time and creative effort to the headline used on each page of your website, you could be losing out on a large chunk of business.

Top copywriters understand this concept well. They know how essential it is to capture attention by literally stopping pre-occupied prospects in their tracks.

Here are five good reasons why your site headlines deserve greater emphasis and attention:

1) Headlines Are Natural Attention Getters. The majority of online prospects are quick scanners. No one reads the body copy of a page without first reading and being pulled in by the headline. Headlines are the first thing your visitors see. They jump out visually and command attention. Headlines are leads set distinctly above the rest of the text. Often the typeface, size, and style used for headlines contrasts with that uses in the body copy. It’s a proven approach that naturally attracts eyeballs, virtually forcing interested prospects to grasp the message of the headline and to read on.

According to advertising legend David Ogilvy, 5 times more people read headlines than body copy. Although Ogilvy was talking about print advertising in general, the observation is certainly applicable to websites as well.

With 5 times the readership, headlines have the power and capability to make any message many times more successful.

2) Site Headlines Serve As Valuable Guides To The Busy Surfer. Headlines reveal key details. They tip off readers as to what follows. They provide clear signals to help readers decide whether they should stick around for the full message, or dash off to something else – something better suited to their own special needs and interests.

As a quick summary of the entire piece, headlines either attract continued interest and readership, or they repel it. Without a headline, the reader is forced to wade through a portion of the text to understand the meaning. Forcing readers to do this is to risk losing them altogether. It’s sales suicide. In effect, having no headline will cost you at least 80% of your potential audience.

3) Headlines Prepare The Reader For What Is To Come. Headlines stimulate interest. They captivate, arouse curiosity and stimulate the desire for more. It’s the headline that starts the reader’s motor running. A good headline sets up a feeling of expectation as the reader anticipates discovering more — and can’t wait to get it!

Successful headlines address specific audiences. They open prospects minds to new possibilities and expand their level of enthusiasm and interest. The best headlines involve prospects, virtually guaranteeing their sustained attention for the time being.

4) Headlines Simplify The Learning Curve. Every headline serves to introduce whatever follows. As an opening or lead-in, the role of the headline is to succinctly communicate the essence of the message it precedes in a n interesting and compelling way.

Effective headlines and sub-headings reveal key bits of information — often with the added power of emotion. A review of the various headings alone can often provide one with the gist of a given message. This makes it faster and easier to understand, remember, and review.

Use your headings to generate emotional involvement and you increase the chances prospects will go back and read more of your copy. When you make it easier to read and comprehend your messages, you increase the chances of making the sale.

5) Headlines Allow You To Deliver Your Biggest Bang Right Up-Front. Capture attention and interest at the outset, by using your most appealing selling point. If your strongest, most desirable product attribute (benefit) fails to pull prospects in, surely nothing else you could ever say would do the trick, either.

The stronger and more compelling your headline, the more readers are likely to read on and spend more time at your website. Create every headline to grab attention and inspire interest. The more alluring and irresistible you can make it, the more genuine prospects you’ll attract and ultimately, the more sales you’ll record. Headlines are powerful marketing tools when used effectively. Take a good look at your site headline. Could you add more intrigue, curiosity, or interest?

Test different headlines by trying various appeals and offer combinations. Keep an eye out for additional headline opportunities throughout your sales letters, as well as on other pages on your site. Make your headlines impossible to miss and difficult to ignore… then, watch your results soar!

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Even the top marketers continually try to learn and or improve on their existing marketing methods. The day that you think you have nothing else to learn or “know it all” is the day that you are finished in this business.

With that said, I would like to share with you my Top 5 knowledge resources and what has helped me in my 2 years online and I hope it can help you too!

#1 Corey Rudl’s The Insider Secrets To Marketing Your Business On The Internet

This is a huge 2 volume course that details everything Corey does that makes him millions online every year.

This is by far the best course I have ever bought. I would go as far as to say 85% of my internet marketing knowledge comes from this course alone.

The course doesn’t come cheap but with the information he shares, believe me, you will more than make up the money you spent for it. I highly recommend it.

And if you don’t buy it then do yourself a favor and sign up for his monthly newsletter. It’s probably the best of the best information wise.

http://www.milleniummarketers.com/internetmarketingchallenge

#2 Books

That’s right… books. If you don’t like reading then you are going to have a tough time being successful in this business.

Go to your local book store or to Amazon.com and you will see there are a ton of books from marketing to copywriting to self-improvement… you get the idea.

Here are some books that I highly recommend:

“Think & Grow Rich” by Napolean Hill

“Conversations With Millionaires” by Mike Litman and Jason Oman

“The Ultimate Sales Letter” by Dan S. Kennedy

“Mind Control Marketing.com” by Mark Joyner

#3 Fr*e or Paid Tele-Seminars

Tele-Seminars are like mini marketing seminars done by phone. You can learn alot of great information by attending these seminars so if you come across one, take advantage of it.

You don’t even have to speak at these tele-seminars, just listen in and take notes. It is a great way to shave off your “learning curve” in a hurry whether you are new or experienced.

#4 Internet Marketing Forums

Forums are a great way to get knowledge. And you’ll even noticed the “big” marketers pop in on a few of them from time to time.

You can post any questions you have and there will people there who will genuinely try to help you out. Or just read the other posts and see what type of knowledge you can gain.

Here are a few forums that I check out from time to time:

What I do and recommend you do is to sign up for the newsletters of all the “big” marketers out there. I won’t mention names…you know who they are. :^)

Study their websites and especially the emails they send you. Then ask yourself… What tactics or strategies are they using? How can I apply this to my business?

And if you ever find yourself wanting to buy something from them by all means go ahead but before you do…. stop and ask yourself why you wanted to buy.

The same tactic or strategy that they used can possibly work for your business as well. Don’t overlook this.

There you have it. My top 5 knowledge resources when it comes to internet marketing. I hope you take the time to make use of them.

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It’s not generating traffic, nor building an O’pt-In list, nor is it finding products to market and it’s not a lack of Cash.

You can buy traffic, you can buy O’pt-In list members, you can make or buy products and you can even borrow Cash.

The biggest single problem for any Direct Marketer is How To Earn Your Prospect’s Trust.

Learn how to earn AND keep trust and you open up huge new Marketing possibilities.

Too many salespeople of doubtful credentials, and too many adverts promising so much and delivering so little have hardened consumers, they no longer trust Marketers and Marketing claims without a great deal of convincing.

So how exactly do you turn a skeptic into a believer ?

Tip #1 - Make Your First Contact Count

Your initial point of contact with prospects is typically

* An advert, in a PPC, a banner exchange, a classified or solo campaign

* An entry in a Search Engine directory,

* Or an article you have written.

Unfortunate as it may be, people do judge others by first contact. If your initial impression of someone is poor, chances are that you will not give them a second look, be it in business or your personal affairs.

Make sure your initial point of contact with all prospects is to your advantage.

This does NOT mean expensive, glitzy or superficial.

It means make your initial contact Sincere.

Keep that one word in mind as you design all your sales and marketing strategies and your Initial Contacts will always be positive.

Tip #2 - Products, Pricing, Promises and Personality

Sincerity in your contacts with prospects comes from applying the (modified) 4 p’s of marketing.

* Products

Market the best products you can and never settle for second best. Add value and benefit to your prospect with quality merchandise. Resist the temptation to market “Cost Cutting” alternatives that are in fact more expensive due to their poorer real value.

* Pricing

Price your merchandise at a fair value for the producer, the consumer and the marketer. Over pricing your products is a self defeating tactic because prospects learn to avoid your pitch and with over high pricing you invite competition to under cut your cost and price base.

* Promises

Your sales literature and copy must be accurate and reflect the true benefits of your products and services. This does not mean you should be unduly modest, by all means make big claims, but make sure you can prove and demonstrate anything you promise.

Remember, in this context, any guarantee you give must be more solid than any Banks Vaults and worth as much as the contents of Fort Knox

* Personality

Inject your personality into your contact with prospects.

People love to do business with people they know. Avoid doing things you feel uncomfortable with, but do tell people about yourself, your failures, your wins, your hopes and your fears. Be the human face of you business and build a sincere relationship with prospects.

Tip #3 - Communication

When you get past the initial contact, the next hurdle in building trust is communication with your prospects.

There are several ways to do this

* A sequential autoresponder with relevant messages sent to your O’pt-In prospects at regular AND frequent intervals.

* An e-zine sent out to subscribers with useful information and not just an excuse for another advert.

* Articles showing your prospects how YOU manage your business and personal tasks, tactics and strategies.

Communication is two way traffic. Ask your prospects for input into your professional relationship and how they think you can improve it. Listen to your prospects.

Tip #4 - Credibility

Prospects always seek comfort that they are doing the right thing.

It pays to use “borrowed” credibility if you are not a world recognised expert in your field. This is where testimonials enter the picture.

Here are a few ways in which you can obtain testimonials and build credibility with a new product or service :

* Give a few samples away to a test group in return for the testimonial

* Use functionally disabled or time barred samples as demo versions which you can give away to prospects

* Develop fully functional modules with less features than the standard product and give those away to prospects.

* Develop e-courses and other training programs showing prospects the benefits and training them in how to use and consume your products and services.

Tip #5 - Service

Your prospect’s Trust is very hard earned. But this is as nothing when compared to retaining their Trust.

Once a prospect becomes a customer, too many marketers make the fatal mistake of taking that customer for granted.

Post sales service is a crunch time for cementing the Trust you have managed to win with such effort.

Make sure you stay in touch with your new customer. Offer them advice and help in the use of their new product or service. Make sure any potential issues are dealt with before they escalate.

Be available and within easy contact for your customers and prospects.

Relevant Resources

http://www.simplyeasier.com/me.html

Conclusion

As a direct marketer you can buy traffic, you can buy O’pt-In list members, you can make or buy products and you can even borrow Cash.

You cannot manufacture or in any way manipulate trust - Trust is the one thing in your business that must be earned the Hard Way.

Be sincere, do the right things as shown here and build trust with your prospects.

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