Can I Trust You? Building Trust in Your Business

There are other ways to spread the word, Let me suggest a few names to you:
·    Frank Kern
·    Mike Filsaime
·    Michelle MacPhearson
·    Joel Comm
·    Andy Jenkins
·    Dr Joe Vitale

What do these people have in common? They are all published writers on the Internet, specializing in supplying content on marketing, making money on the Internet and just about everything between.

Content IS King!
Every person who has been watching the Internet and any article regarding information/content and search engine strategies; knows that Content is King! Most site visitors are looking for information of some kind when they go to a site or subscribe to an ezine.

Building trust does indeed take time and these “Internet Gurus” understand that the best way to attract and keep visitor traffic is to provide them with what they want. By providing free information and give aways, they are able to provide their readers and site visitors with high quality content.

There are many sources for free-reprint articles, that can be used to provide your visitors with high-quality content subscribers and surfers demand. And in the process you are establishing a familiarity with your product or service and how it can help your visitors to accomplish their goals.

Writing about your product or service does not have to be difficult, the best style of writing these types of articles is in a friendly, conversational tone. You are addressing a specific problem, giving a recommendation to the person that you feel confident will provide the solution for them.

There are also hundreds of articles that are available to use as content for your website, newsletter or ezine and if you want to hire someone to writer articles for you, there are several agencies that you can contact for this service.

It all adds up the same: it doesn’t matter whether you have been operating an online business for 1 month or 10 years, or you are looking to find your first customer or your hundredth customer, you have to give people the information that they need to establish a level of trust in you.

The choice of methods is up to you; of writing yourself, obtaining free reprint content or hiring a writer for yourself can all provide the same result – quality information about the subject that interests your prospective customer the most.

Operating a marketing or affiliate marketing website means that you have to incorporate your information in a format that will help you convert visitors into sales.

Content…Content…Content
For the real estate industry it is Location, Location, Location, but for Internet businesses it is Content. Content. Content! The evidence has been reviewed and the verdict is in. Visitors want good quality content and lots of it. So give them what they want. It can be in a variety of forms; articles, tips, newsletter archives and details of each product or service on your site.

Michael Wise
eMarketProfitStrategies.com

Information as a Sales Tool - Article Marketing

Dreaming of “Overnight Riches”?
There are many more stories of broken Internet business dreams than ones of success. Many people have cleaned out their bank accounts in pursuit of the “overnight riches” that is highly touted on the radio, television and Internet, only to find that the overnight riches belonged to the one pitching the program.

As a result of these types of experiences, the individuals who have decided to change their method of operation are coming to terms with the fact that their dreams can be realized by using methods that work in concert with factual information, products and services that have market appeal and techniques that address the way people make their purchase decisions.

If the challenge of finding customers has you wondering what to do, you have done exactly what thousands of others had done: started to search for information. This brings us to the point of this article: how to use information as a marketing sales tool.

Power of Article Marketing
Article writing for the Internet is experiencing a huge boost of popularity. Why? Because most people use the Internet to find information. Articles have always been written and published, but today many internet marketers are strategically building trust and “readership” through Article Marketing.

No matter what product or service you choose for your marketing or affiliate marketing business, the fact still remains that you must give people information about it so that they can make a purchase decision. No one is going to buy a product without knowing how it works, what it will do for them and how much it costs.

Using graphic images and flashy headlines no longer satisfies the savvy Internet shopper. For those individuals who shop online regularly, they have long since become familiar with cool graphics and luring headlines.

Promoting a product or service by low price alone won’t work either, because the marketplace is global and the competition is such that some merchants will sell an item at an incredibly low price because they know they will sell huge quantities of the goods.

There is no “Magic Formula”
If you are subscribing to every newsletter, ezine and e-book in sight to find the magic formula to gain customers, you might be in for a disappointment. The truth of the matter is that it takes a combination of factors to find, retain and service customers.

Operating a business online has as many advantages and disadvantages, as a brick and mortar business has to face. The challenge is to understand the differences in the dynamics between these two ways of doing business and apply the correct set of principles to make it work.

For example, in the physical world, a customer enters a store that has an item they are interested in buying. There is a salesperson present to answer their questions and demonstrate how the product works. If the person is satisfied, with all that they have heard, seen and experienced to the point where they are ready to purchase the product a sale takes place.

Shopping is a Social Experience!
On the other hand, shopping on the Internet is a completely different experience. And this is the first thing that many internet marketers and affiliate marketers lose sight of. Shopping is a social experience. When a person visits your site, they are greeted by text and images instead of a human being. Even if there is a picture of a person on the site, the visitor has no way of knowing if that is a real person.

This underscores the greatest challenge that everyone who is working online has to face:
how to build trust in the hearts and minds of the people who need our products or services.

Online marketing is a process that normally cannot be accomplished in one fell swoop. It takes time to establish trust when we are face-to-face, why do we think it will be easier to do this when we are on the Internet?

There are many methods you can use to promote your internet marketing or affiliate marketing business, but none of them will work if they are only used one time. The rate of information exchange on the Internet is as fast as lightning. You cannot expect someone to buy your “widget” if your single advertising banner flashed at them once last month.

You can spend hundreds of dollars on banner advertising and still not be any closer to building the interest or the trust necessary to make them click their mouse and visit your website.

Strategically use Information
Obviously, you cannot rely on banner advertising to bring the customers you need, so what CAN you do to get them to your site?
Give them what they want:
Information.
Information that they (your customer) want by researching their interests and problems.
Information on the benefits of your product or service and how it will SOLVE their problems - and - make their lives better.

People are being bombarded by advertising images and messages all the time. On the radio, the television, and the Internet. This is what makes marketing through information more effective. If you construct your article in the same tone as you would talk to a friend who has come to you for advice about a problem they have, you will begin to gain the trust of whoever reads that article.

With the millions of websites and social media sources on the Internet, the possibility a person will see and act on a “banner ad” depends completely on the amount of money in your marketing budget. But if a person needs to know the definition of a word, they are more likely to go back to dictionary.com because they know they will find the information they are looking for there.

Work To Become The Source
The same holds true for your internet marketing or affiliate marketing website. If you focus your attention on defining your niche on the Internet, and then work toward becoming the source of information that is relevant to all of the people in that niche, you are now in the position to become the “dictionary” so to speak.

Writing and publishing articles is one of the best ways to create the reliability and trust you want for your marketing website. Each article you write and publish is like a little “salesman” out working for you.

Newsletters and ezines delivered by email is also a great way for building trust in your products and services. But the challenge is to first get the subscribers or website visitors and then to deliver informative content that is different every time. Once you begin to build a mailing list of subscribers, it is fairly easy to keep them coming back.

Michael Wise
eMarketProfitStrategies.com

Communicating Benefits and Solutions For Maximum Confidence

Copy in our marketing must communicate Benefits and Solutions, resist listing “facts”!

Gain Trust and Reliability
One of the best ways to encourage people to buy a product through your marketing business is to gain their trust and to establish a high level of credibility. Once you manage this, the products you support as an affiliate marketer will look more credible and valuable in your visitors’ eyes.

However, before you can use trust and credibility to your advantage, you must develop a basis for it. Ethical business practices, solid quality products or services, informative website content, well-written materials, good marketing, third party testimonials and other strategies are all components that work together to help elevate you to a level of trust.

From the thousands of ways you can increase credibility, do not lose sight of the importance of what to do once you have it. Ideally, a solid reputation will make it easier for visitors to take the time to click on your referral link.

The more positive exposure you gain through your various marketing activities, the easier it will be to make sales. In depth knowledge of your product or service enables you to make personal recommendations for them.

If you take a shy approach to endorsing the products, you are short-circuiting your income potential as well. Acting in this manner may allow you to earn some money, but unless you are willing to commit and commit fully to your action plan, and make a name for yourself the profits that could be yours will be going to someone else.

Select your affiliate marketing products using this criteria:

1. Would you use this product?
2. Would you recommend this product to a family member?

If the answer is yes, use the product and study it. Once you have first hand experience with the product, your website content and promotional copy about the product will have a more personal touch. There is a big difference between generic sales copy and a personal review.

And what your website visitors want to see is how the product may be useful for them; what type of experience could they expect from this product? Rather than saying, “Over 1,000 people have used our product”, and meanwhile your visitor is asking, “Who are they and did they like it?”

Choosing products that you believe in and use yourself give you the confidence to put your name on the line and personalize your offer. This is one of the fastest ways to boost your customers’ confidence and any promotion you create in this way is sure to have a good response.

People understand that although a marketer has an incentive to endorse a product, but they also know that only a few of them will go the distance be willing to risk their reputation for it.

It is up to you to decide which type of affiliate marketer you are going to be. Do you want to project the image of an insecure, frightened individual without a face and name or is the image of yourself a person who is an informed, credible and respected expert that provides beneficial, firsthand reviews of product use?

Obviously the best choice is to work and act in a way to be the credible, respected expert that provides concise, firsthand reviews.

Maximizing customer confidence starts with you, and as a marketer you want your visitors to click on your referral link and give you the opportunity to earn a commission. The more receptive you are to your visitors needs for information and solutions to the issues that concern them, the more receptive they will be to your offer.

As a marketer, your primary tool is the written word; website content, newsletters, solo ads, sales pages, auto responders, ezines, these are all written materials. Content is important to your visitors and that makes it incredibly important to learn how to use words to your advantage.

Writing content calls for you to play many roles; storyteller, educator, advocate all of these hats you may have to wear at one time or anther. The bottom line is that information rules the day if you want to have a successful online affiliate marketing business.

Whether you do it yourself or hire a pro, you will certainly need to keep your eye focused on quality. And with articles the key to whether it will deliver the goods is in the headline.

Pay special attention to the headline for any advertising piece you write, for this is where people make their decision to continue reading or to push that button with the green arrow within seconds of reaching your page. First impressions are always the strongest, so take care in handling this powerful tool and make it give the impression you want to project.

Remember this: What is the first thing your visitors see when they visit your web page? It’s the headline-and it has to get their attention and hold their attention for it to work.

And just how do you create a headline that does that? Headlines have to stop the reader in their tracks and make them think. While they are thinking the clock is ticking and with an effective headline you can keep the visitor on your website discovering the answer to the question that started them thinking.

Make your headline strong. Who wants to read a wimpy headline? Make your headline proactive. Words like “if” and “may” are not words for a headline. The headline is the domain of the power word - the kind of word that will sparks interest and drives people to take action.

The headline has to tell your customers enough to keep them interested. The headline of “Satisfaction Guaranteed”, may give the customers just enough information to motivate them to keep reading to find out what you are talking about.

There is no magic formula for winning headlines. Different situations call for different strategies. The important part is that the headline creates a compulsion to keep on reading.

Your name and your words, these are your two most powerful tools to build customer confidence and your sales via your marketing efforts.

Make the most of both of them by using quality content with strong, honest headlines that capture attention and keep your visitors reading until the very last word.

Michael Wise
eMarketProfitStrategies.com

Niche - The Marketing Secret of Millionaires!

You’ve been encouraged to focus your attention on the keywords that apply to the products or services that you have to offer on your website.

Targeted Niche Marketing is all about finding SPECIFIC solutions to the problems of a SPECIFIC customer base.

What is a Niche?
A niche market/audience is a group of people who share a common interest, pain, desire or problem.

A niche market is a group of people who are already searching internet for a solution to a problem – and not finding good results

When your marketing website is strategically designed to delivering a clear understanding of what benefits your customer is looking to receive from a product or service, then it is easier to connect the dots to the product that provides the solution to the problem they are facing.

As simple as this may sound, there are thousands of online businesses that have yet to grasp the importance of this one principle.

No matter how great your product may be, the focus must always be on what the customer wants from that product; how it will enhance their lives and give them what they want.

It is essential to thoroughly research the concept of targeted niche marketing – where the idea is to be one thing to one group of people instead of the shotgun approach that is responsible for the failure of most affiliate marketers - trying to be “all things to all people.”

Your Niche Market Customer Base
Just as we linked keywords from your domain name, to your search engine information in your website design, to the website content, giveaways and promotions, the same approach holds true for identifying your target niche market. It is not enough to simply offer a product that solves a specific problem. In a marketplace as large as the Internet, generalization is the fastest road to oblivion.

Connecting the dots from your product or service to its prospective users is important in order to get their attention, present a solution to their problem and a means to take action. Using the advanced technology that is available to affiliate marketers to find their customer base, there is no reason why you cannot take advantage of these resources for the success of your online business.

The sharper your focus, the easier it is to hit the bulls’ eye of the target. Keep in mind that the attention span of Internet shoppers is short and your affiliate marketing competition is growing everyday.

Keys to Unlock Your Customers Wallet
Start targeting customers by using demographics, the information about the basic qualities and characteristics of your market, such as age, gender, culture, employment, industry, income level, marital status and location. For example:
Does your product cater uniquely to men?
Is the product more useful to people in a certain profession?
What you need to know is; who buys the type of product or service you have to offer?

Affiliate marketers as well as other types businesses shoot themselves in the foot by assuming that what they have to offer will appeal to everyone. Resist the temptation to fall into this pattern of thinking. Even if the product or service you have to offer is used by a diverse market, there are many different factors that you can use to identify who is the perfect customer for you and create your promotional material.

Another valuable tool to use in targeted niche marketing is called psychographics.

There is a tremendous amount of research available on the emotional and behavioral characteristics of your target market that cover everything from the thinking process behind the purchase decision, the rationales that are used to their buying histories of a certain type of product or service.

This data is collected from their areas of interest, the organizations they join, the types of products that they have consumed or the type of services they have used. Even the history of their loyalty to a certain company is tracked, from their initial contact with a company to the end of their relationship.

Where demographics profile those who need a certain product, psychographics define where the product is wanted as well. Starting with the question of who is your perfect customer you can use these tools to fill in the blanks.

Market Research Information in Action
For example, using demographic information, acne medicine manufacturers typically cater to teenagers who are most likely to experience this problem. In other words, teenagers specifically are potential customers because they need clearer skin.

Now let’s make the focus sharper using psychographics. In this example, not only do the targeted customers need clearer skin, but they want clearer skin as well.

This is an important fact, for there are some teenagers with acne who may need clearer skin, but it is not important enough to them to really want it - all of this is based around what are the priorities of the person, much like the other choices we make, from the type of work we perform to the style of clothes we wear.

The bottom line for the manufacturers of the acne medicine who wants to target this specific market as accurately as possible to generate higher quality leads, is that they must use the psychographic profile of their potential buyers along with demographic information.

With this information in hand, they can locate the websites that their potential customer visits and present their information about the benefits of using their products. For instance, there are many forums that address the common image problems facing teenagers.

The most important rule of thumb in targeted niche marketing for your affiliate business online is that less is more.

If you want to increase your earnings, decrease the customer base you are trying to reach until you have the most likely audience defined and then concentrate your efforts on satisfying these potential customers.

Michael Wise
eMarketProfitStrategies.com

Finding the Balance between Content and Graphics

Building your affiliate marketing business around your domain name is much more effective than using a general approach, like using the “affiliate done 4 you website”.

The more specific your focus, the easier it is to get your advertising message to prospective buyers.

Most affiliate marketing programs offer banners or text links embedded with your referral link that you can use on your website. Be aware that using these graphics is not always the best idea because they will cause your site to load slowly. If you want to use the “program” graphics, do some testing on your web site to see if there is a slowdown with load time.

What your visitors really want to see what new information you can offer them; what makes your site different from the other websites that they have visited. How well you meet the expectations of your visitors and deliver information that is of interest to them can have an impact on whether your visitor clicks your referral link or not.

The informational content of your website should be compelling articles about the products or services you are offering through your affiliate marketing programs. They should outline the benefits that the visitor will enjoy through its use.

Using highlighting to draw attention to the special features of your product or service, gives you the opportunity to ask your visitor to take action and make the click on your referral link.

Article headlines can be used to encourage the reader to continue reading, contact you, sign up for your FREE Newsletter or direct their attention to a specific feature of your affiliate marketing program.

Writing content articles is one of the best ways to target the market you want. There are a number of article submission services that will distribute your articles to other websites to be used as content, giving your site increased exposure on the Internet, which will increase your link popularity and in turn your search engine ranking. By submitting an article to these services weekly, you can rapidly build targeted visitor traffic to your site.

Never having done any “Article Marketing” myself, I purchased a good content program to learn a little more about it. Josh Spaulding has a product called “Article Marketing Domination” that I purchased and recommend to anyone who would like to learn more about this subject. Josh’s ebook steps through how to focus and strategically set up article marketing in order to rank your sales website high in the search engines. You can check out his product information and sales page here: Josh Spaulding’s Article Marketing Domination.

Michael Wise
eMarketProfitStrategies.com