March 25th, 2008 by Barry
Every successful marketer must have this…
Category General | 4 comments »
No, it’s not a product.
You don’t need to invent, design or develop a product to be a marketing success.
You can sell other people’s products-as an affiliate marketer.
But that’s still isn’t enough.
You don’t need a library full of marketing books or an MBA, though it wouldn’t hurt (well, the MBA might, but not the books).
You may be an unread, uneducated dolt and a monumental bore at a party, and yet you may have an unbelievably intuitive understanding of what it takes to quickly persuade and sell ice cubes to an Eskimo.
But if you’re missing this one thing, you’ll still never be a success.
You may be a master at SEO, designing websites, adding video, and every Web 2.0 trick of the trade out there to your thousands of websites. And you may have enough money in the bank to run thousands of pay-per-click campaigns…
But you’ll never be a marketing wunderkind-you’ll never make a 6 or 7 figure income as a marketer, if you don’t have this one crucial, absolutely vital thing…
A list.
No, not a list of things to do, or buy.
A list of names.
No, not any names. Not names from the yellow pages, not names from a “compiled list” sold by a list broker-but a list of names of people who are hungry, who are absolutely dying to buy what you are selling.
Without a list of such hungry buyers, the best product ever invented, ever marketed by the most cash-flush marketing organization ever built-will go unsold.
And where do you easily and quickly find such a list-how do you cultivate such a list?
It should be right under your nose-it better be right under your nose.
It’s your house list, your customer file. It’s the names of people who have bought from you before.
Such a list is worth more than ten times its weight in gold-it’s more valuable than any product ever invented and sold.
Why? Because you’ve already successfully marketed to and sold these people-on you.
You don’t have to convince them again, though it wouldn’t hurt to remind them, that you can be trusted, that what you offer is of great value. They know it-they’ve experienced it and they want more.
With a house list your entire organization, your entire inventory of products can go up in smoke-but you won’t go out of business. So long as you have these names, you can dust off the ashes and get right back to the business of marketing and selling.
Without such a list, you’ve got to start from scratch, all over again.
How do you easily compile such a list, if you don’t have one already and never sold anything before…?
Stay tuned.
–Barry
www.WritingWithPersonality.com
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March 29th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
This smacks of “not listening to your customers”. As a customer, if a website owner insists on emailing me, I will never buy from them again, and I will inform Google (my mail server) that they are spammers. How many people actually return because of your email? 2%? You may think that is a good return. To me, that means you spammed 98% of your customers to get that small return.
I wish people that provided this sort of advice dropped off the face of the earth. My email inbox is so full of junk, I can’t process the important things. If your website has useful content, I have already bookmarked it.
March 29th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
I’m not sure about you, but all the big names email me; Yahoo, Amazon, eBay, heck even Google sends me their updates. Do you consider them spammers?
If you sign up for a service (free or paid) whose terms of registration include email notifications, IMHO you’re hard pressed to call that spamming. It’s what you agree to.
March 29th, 2008 at 7:32 pm
M.K. Rahn, it appears I got you a little hot under the collar.
No problem, a little vitriol occasionally is good for the heart–clears out the plaque.
Nonetheless, you misunderstood my meaning of a “house list” or a “customer file.”
And, I’ll take responsibility for the misunderstanding.
So now let me set things straight…
When I say house list and customer file–these are email addresses that have opted-in, preferably double opted-in, to recieve communications.
I do not condone spam under any guise–and I, like everyone else with an email address, wishes it would stop–maybe someday it will, but I doubt it.
Are we clear now?
Good. Thanks for reading the post, and, please, stick around. I gurarantee you they’ll be more…
–Barry
April 4th, 2008 at 1:49 am
Nice one Barry! I completely agree, the customers you know are already sold on you are your best bet for future sales. They are your base and you need to pay attention to their needs in order to stay loyal to you and your product/service in future endeavers.