In my last two blogs, I gave you three powerful strategies that you simply must employ to build and promote a high growth online business. The three strategies are:
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- Narrow your focus down to an Ideal Client and
- Find a way to clearly differentiate your business, then
- Create a process strategically designed to sell.
In this post we’ll be talking about how to create a process that is strategically designed to sell online products and services. If you hate selling as much as I do, you’ll love this article with my top 3 tips for making more sales online. Why? Because if you set it up the right way you’ll never feel like a pushy sales person.
I don’t know about you, but when I think about sales, I picture the “won’t take no” sales guy who is trying desperately to sell just one more insurance policy or vacuum cleaner so he can pay for his grandmother’s operation. You know…the guy who just happens to show up at dinner time and yammers on and on about how wonderful his product is while making you feel like a loser if you don’t jump on the opportunity right now. You don’t want to be that sleazy sales guy and neither do I.
But stick with me if instead, you want to become a master of online marketing without ever having to push anything on anyone. To do that, you have to create structures and processes that are strategically designed to sell without you ever putting yourself into a pushy, sleazy sales position.
Are you on board with that? If so, read on.
Here are three tips to making more sales online without being pushy…
Tip #1: Keep It Real By Interacting With Your Audience
The Internet is built for interaction. Whether it’s through social media, like Facebook Live, LinkedIn or Webinars, or Zoom meetings…or even communication tools like Slack, there’s no excuse to not get into a two way conversation with your audience.
Encouraging commenting at the end of every blog post is a good start. In fact, you can set an example by becoming a regular commenter on forums, social media posts and industry blog content. Becoming a frequent commenter on blogs where your ideal client hangs out is a powerful way to interact with your ideal audience who may be unaware of who you are and what you offer.
What this is all about is taking the time to get to know and relate more intimately to people wherever you find them. If you are a lover of people, being able to connect and interact with them through an online marketing campaign without being pushy is your dream come true.
Now, I know responding to comments and questions as they come in takes time. At the onset of your internet marketing business, you might have more time than money. But eventually, you will need help.
As your interactions with your ideal customer audience grow, you’ll be able have more people on your team to help with audience interaction. Eventually, it does get to a point where you have to leverage your time with systems and virtual teams because you can’t do it all yourself.
But keep this in mind—at the onset of your business and all the way through each stage of your business growth, the more interactive you are on the internet, the more likely it is that you will become recognized as a leader in your niche and that recognition will help you to sell more of your products and services.
If you study some of the top online marketers and brand builders like Brendan Burchard, Jeff Walker, Eben Pagan, Tony Robbins, Robert Kyosaki, John Maxwell and T. Harve Ekker as I have, without exception, the ones who are successful take the time to interact and support relationships with their audience. As they have grown, they were able to hire a team to help them. But the point is, as far as their target market audience perceives, they are all very engaging and interactive and they never come across as pushy sales guys.
As a result, they are able to grow their brands into large and meaningful icons and they can make a much bigger impact on their target audience.
The key here is that when you get to know your audience well, engaging with them helps you serve them well. And, the interactions you have will help you get to know them as individuals. That’s where the magic happens for non-sellers like us in the world of internet marketing.
Oh my, when you get engagement and interaction with your viewers…well let me just say, that’s when things in the viral world will take on a life of their own. Then, you can begin to customize your content and your offers so they’re even more relevant to what your audiences wants most.
Tip # 2: Produce High Quality Content
If you want to engage a high level of interaction you must accept the maxim that in online marketing, “Content Rules”. When you get your messaging and content right, it becomes the backbone of your marketing and selling efforts.
That translates into this: it’s not you doing the selling, it is your content that sells for you. Your content helps you to create the C.A.R.E. your ideal clients desperately seek.
- Credibility
- Authority
- Relationship and
- Expertise
Simply translated, in order for your content to be engaging for your audience, your content has to be relevant, relatable and real. With each content piece you produce—a blog post, video, podcast, audio interview, infographic, etc. ask yourself if your content meets the 3 R standard.
The elegance and beauty of internet marketing in its purest form is that YOU DON’T SELL!
You let your content do it for you. And that means it works for you 24 hours a day every day.
Business guru Peter Drucker said…“Online marketing makes selling superfluous.”
I love that!
People buy from you because you give away valuable free content. At first, you give away quality content just like I am doing with this article.
Then you ask for an email address in exchange for a valuable and more in-depth content piece like a Cheat Sheet, a Survey, an eBook, a free online course, an infographic or a free consultation.
Tip #3: Set Up An Automated Marketing Funnel
The key to selling online without being salesy is to set up an automated system to locate and capture new leads, then turn those leads into customers. That in a nutshell is the magic to internet selling.
But, the biggest challenge people face in launching a successful product or service isn’t creating the product; it’s setting up the system to market and sell it.
If you want to have a constant source of new leads, qualify your leads and then turn them into satisfied clients and you want to do it on auto-pilot, then you simply must set up an automated marketing funnel.
Start by breaking your sales and marketing process into three basic goals and write down the details for each:
- Capture Qualified Leads
- Cultivate the Leads into Prospects
- Convert Prospects Into Satisfied Customers
A simple process from marketing to sales conversion could be:
- Create a valuable offer Lead Magnet to build an eMail list.
- Strategically place low-cost ads with Google and/or Social Media Sites to offer Free Lead Magnet.
- Nurture leads who sign up with additional valuable free content to build expertise, authority and trust.
- Influence prospects toward an Enrollment Webinar or other event via a series of email invitations.
- Host an impactful sales event with a powerful Call–to-Action and enrollment bonus.
- Follow-up with a 10-15 Minute diagnostic call.
- Recommend your product/service…online course, group coaching membership or 1-2-1 coaching.
To automate your sales, marketing and product delivery you need:
- An automated eMail Capture CRM (Contact Relationship Manager)
- A Landing Page
- A Sales or Shopping Cart
- A Webinar Presentation Platform
The entire process looks like this:
My challenge for you from this post is to invest a little time and write down your thoughts about automating your sales and marketing system. What will your sales process be? What lead magnet do you need to create? What eMail capture system will you use?
Feel free to share this article with someone you know and please leave me a comment below. I’d love to hear your ideas about what you found to be helpful or what else you think you might need. You can either post a question here or shoot me an email. I’d love to help you if I can.
Bye for now…I’ll see you in my next blog.
And remember…I Believe In You!
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