Today I have a little tip for you about how to improve your relationship marketing.
This SINGLE tool can take a mediocre marketing strategy and make it wildly successful.
First, it’s important to understand what relationship marketing is.
“Relationship marketing is a marketing strategy in which a company seeks to build long-term relationships with its customers by providing consistent satisfaction.”
When you use relationship marketing you are aiming to form a real, loyal, long-term relationship with a customer.
So what is the ONE tool that can turn a mediocre strategy into one that will literally make you money for weeks, months and even years to come?
It’s this: emotion.
Try something with me. Think of a memory from your childhood. Something you remember vividly. Whatever memory comes up, what emotion comes with it? What were you feeling during this memory?
When you are able to remember something from many years ago, it’s because the memory is attached to a powerful emotion.
It’s true, isn’t it? Your most vivid memories are from your most emotional moments. Both negative and positive emotions have the ability to lock something in our memory for decades.
How can we leverage this in our relationship marketing strategy?
Unless you pull your potential customers emotions to the surface (hopefully positive ones) your message just become noise in their life.
To create brilliant marketing strategies that create positive emotions in your audience, I suggest the following:
Know your target audience.Who are you trying to reach with your advertising, and what do they care about? What problems are they likely facing? What trends does their demographic gravitate towards? What will SPEAK to them deeply? Make them sit up and take notice?
Tell their story.This could radically affect the success of your business if done well! Your message should tell the story of your audience. It shouldn’t be about you 90% of the time. And when it is about you, it should be in a way that resonates and relates powerfully with your audience. Talk about them. Represent them. Tell THEIR story.
Speak into their dreams.Tap into the dreams of your target audience. Show them how your product or service can help them live the life they’ve always wanted. Make sure you are genuine and authentic.
Connecting to your readers through creating real emotion (and memories!) has the potential to dramatically impact the success of your business.
Remember, it is imperative to be authentic and genuine when doing so. If you aren’t, people can feel it, and they won’t trust you.
In 2 weeks I will be launching a new, comprehensive workshop on relationship marketing. I will walk you through everything you need to know to get started with your own relationship marketing strategy, so you can build genuine connections and learn how it can be used to transform your business.
Keep an eye on your inbox!
Have a great week.
Robyn
P.S. If you don’t want to wait two weeks, you can sign up for a complimentary one-on-one call with me to discuss your business goals and strategies. Let’s dive deep and figure out what will take you to the next level. Sign up here.
Putting out high-quality content can work wonders for your traffic and list building goals. For one, it builds you as an authority figure. People start to trust you more, which will have them linking to you and talking about you more. It’s also exactly what Google is looking for, which means you’ll quickly see big boosts in search traffic.
So how do you create high quality content that people and search engines love?
Start With an Interesting Title & Concept Your title plays two crucial roles. First, gets people on your website to stop and read. But what many webmasters don’t realize is the role it plays in Google. Your title is what people see in search results – it’s the main piece of information they use to decide if they click on the link and come to your site. It’s your headline in the search engines.
If you’re writing about toddlers needing sleep, a title such as “my sleepy toddler” will not cut it. Instead, use something like “Why toddlers need naps” to grab the attention of both search engines and readers.
Make it Emotionally Engaging People want to have an engaging experience when they’re reading content. Even if their primary goal is educational, it still helps to make your content engaging. Add in personal stories, interesting anecdotes or a dash of personality to help keep people engaged.
Explain Concepts in Easy to Understand Language Avoid using jargons. Use simple language that an 8th grader could understand, even if you’re describing a complex topic. Make sure your readers walk away with several “aha” nuggets of knowledge.
Build Out Evergreen Content Evergreen content refers to content that isn’t seasonal. Instead, it addresses questions and needs that people will have for months and years to come. Use tools like online forums, blog comments and the Google Keyword Tool to find questions that people ask regularly. Address those questions.
Quality Over Quantity The first and most important factor of your website’s success will be the quality of your website’s content. Quantity – how many articles you publish – is secondary to the depth of the information you share.
Publish at least one in-depth, information packed article every month. Naturally, the more often you can publish these types of articles, the better. But don’t sacrifice quality for quantity.
Add Pictures! Web statistics show that users tend to stay on pages with images far longer than plain text pages. Add screenshots and illustrations to demonstrate the concepts you’re talking about. Add photographs of real life events. Or use stock photos to add some pizazz to your content.
If you publish this kind of content regularly, in a few weeks or months you’ll find your website’s traffic growing by leaps and bounds and help you build your email list.
What I suggest is you write a new piece of in-depth content. Spend some time making sure you have both an interesting idea to share, as well as an attention catching title. Ensure it is emotionally engaging and any concepts you describe are easy to understand. Include a picture, screenshot or stock photo when adding it to your website.
Plan a minimum of 3 more pieces to be written throughout the next 30 days.
Is your ideal community driven to reach a measurable goal, such as losing weight before summer, publishing a Kindle book or landing their first client?
If your answer is “yes”, running a time-limited challenge may be the best kick-starting strategy for you to build your list.
Challenges are wonderful because they tend to attract people ready to break past long-term obstacles and take action. Once you understand the psychology of this, you have a captive audience that is not only eager but motivated to succeed.
Make sure that your Challenge benefits and advances your ideal member in a transformative way.
For example:
Helps your challenge member achieve a specific goal or fulfill a dream
Empowers your challenge member with the confidence and/or skills to finally take the next step
Provides her with a knowledgeable community offering support and encouragement
Provides her with validation—from other members, as well as from you
Allows you to share in—and celebrate—her success
Challenges are exciting. They make people feel “in the moment” and alive. Members of your Challenge are drawn together by a common bond and goal—and they all look to you for guidance.
Reasons to use it:
For your own benefit, there is no more powerful testimony than from a person you have directly helped to succeed in attaining a measurable goal or result. As with a Facebook Group, you will also receive priceless feedback in the form of questions, praises and comments.
You will be able to gauge:
What really excites your typical member
What she still struggles with
What major obstacles she finds hard to overcome
What she finds easy
What she still needs
What she desperately wants next
And, of course, you are interactively engaged—with multiple members and potential clients at once.
How to Use it:
Setting up a Challenge can be done in several ways such as via a Facebook Group, through a membership site—whatever works best for you and your ideal audience.
You can set up instant or mini-challenges in contest form. You can use challenges within challenges to keep your members fired up and moving forward: For example, while you are running your Sixty-Day-Finish-your-Novel Challenge, throw in weekly mini-challenges with prizes, such as “Best Title”; or if your paid Challenge includes a deal on software such as eCover Authority, “Best eCover Design”.
Mini-challenges give people small, attainable goals—and there’s no shame in deciding not to participate in optional mini-challenges. They also boost confidence and keep excitement levels high—and let’s not forget that large successes are often built on smaller successes.
That being said, make very sure any Challenge you create is neither too easy nor too hard. It should feel like a “challenge”—but inspire your participant with the feeling that they can do it!
You can also create a free mini-version of your challenge to inspire people, give them a taste of what you’re offering and create momentum. Create milestones, check-in points and those mini-challenges—and decide in advance if people will be permanently eligible for the next time you run the Challenge; if they can put your Challenge “on hold” if some life event throws a wrench in the works, or if they have to pay full (or partial) price to start again.
Challenges create focus for you, as well as for your members. They help you fast-track your members—and your reputation-building and visibility too.
Challenges create a core community of loyal, engaged followers and subscribers.
Posting on forums, online groups and online communities can be a great way to generate free traffic to your website. Members of these forums (who’ve seen your posts) will often already be pre-sold by the time they land on your website. Many top personal brands got their start from reputations built in online forums.
So, how do you use forum and group marketing to build traffic?
Find the Right Group or Forum For starters, make sure you’re putting your time and energy into the right forums. Look for forums that have a lot of activity. It should have at least 2,000 members and 20,000 posts. Look for the biggest forum in your industry. That’s a good place to start.
In addition, it may be a good idea to post in a lower traffic but more “buyer heavy” forum. For example, let’s say you own a web hosting company. You’ll want to have a presence in the big online business forums. But you’ll also want to have a presence in smaller forums dedicated just to web hosting. Both are important.
In addition to industry specific forums, look for groups on LinkedIn and Facebook. LinkedIn groups are fantastic for freelancers, speakers and other service businesses. The right Facebook groups can also be a great resource and a great source of traffic.
Once you’ve found the right forums and groups, the next step is to …
Focus on Your Reputation A lot of forum marketers try to focus on raw traffic generated. In the beginning, this is not a good indicator of success. Typically, people on forums are rather skeptical. They can be fantastic customers in the long run, but in the short run they’re unlikely to click on links. They’ve seen too many scams and too many spammers.
Instead, focus on adding value and solving problems. Share your knowledge. Answer questions. Build your reputation. Position yourself as an expert. Then, the selling will become easy.
Write Detailed, Experience-Based Posts Most posts people write on forums tends to be shallow posts. It might be a couple paragraphs long, or a short question. That said, when someone does post high quality content backed by personal experience, they tend to do very well.
Writing for forum readers is different from writing for websites. It should be personal and shared from a first person perspective. Don’t write a traditional how-to in a teaching tone. Instead, write from a “sharing my story” or “here’s what I discovered” point of view. Don’t be afraid to write and share long content.
Getting Traffic to Your Website Once you start building a reputation, it’s time to start linking back to your website. The easiest place to link to your website is from your signature or your byline. People who like your post are likely to click on your signature and go to your site.
You can also look for specific sections in the forum for promotions. Many forums have one specific area for people to post promos. Once you have a reputation, the posts you make here can do really well.
Finally, leverage your connections. Once you have a reputation, people will be very open to you when you reach out. Reach out to website owners for deals, list owners for mailings and blog owners for guest blogging opportunities. Forum marketing isn’t limited to direct clicks – often the connections you can leverage will be an even more powerful source of traffic.
May I suggest that you Join a few high quality, high traffic forums or groups within your industry. Regularly contribute helpful, valuable information based on your experiences. Work on making connections with other members and find ways to leverage those connections to help you increase your traffic.
Today I’d like to talk about the list we’ve built so far and some actions you need to take. And if you’re worried that your list is too small for these actions, remember no one opens up their brand new email management system and sees thousands of prospects from day one. We all start with a single subscriber, and we grow our list from there, so no matter your list size this applies to you.
What you do while your list is growing is critical to your future success.
It’s never too early to start promoting. This is the number one mistake those with a small list make. They believe—wrongly so, it turns out—that there’s no point in promoting to a small list.
There are two reasons this is a mistake. First, when all you send your list is information, and you never make an offer, you’re training them that there will never be an offer. Then the first time you send out an email promoting something, they’re not happy.
The second issue with not promoting to your list is that you’re creating a bad habit. Yes, it’s important that you offer value to your list. It’s just as important to present offers regularly.
It is possible to promote too much. Despite what I just said, it is possible to burn out your list with promotion after promotion. If all you do is send your subscribers offers to buy, watch your unsubscribe rate grow.
Instead, remember to set up a system of nurturing your list by providing them value. Teach them to open your emails by striving to always include information they want and need. Share your stories with them. Tell them what you’ve learned. Interact with them. Promotions are necessary, but they’re not the primary way to connect with your list.
Make good use of segmentation. Not everyone on your mailing list will benefit from the same information or promotions. Some subscribers may be at the beginning of their journey and just learning about the topics you cover. Others will be more advanced and in need of different advice. Some subscribers will be active buyers and jump on offers quickly. Others may not.
By creating segments in your mailing list software, you can offer your subscribers exactly what they need when they need it. This targeted approach will result in more sales and happier subscribers.
Whether your list is 50 or 10,000, these strategies will help keep your list profitable, active, and responsive. And a responsive list is one of the most valuable assets you’ll have. Take good care of it, and it will take care of you.
It’s getting harder to get people to come to your website and stick around long enough to see what you’re offering. In fact, most people spend less than 20 seconds on a website before they click away, never to return. Thankfully, there are solutions to that problem. The way to attract more prospects, engage viewers, get more email subscribers, and make more sales is with video and specifically, YouTube videos.
Create a niche YouTube channel, with lots of great information. You don’t need thousands of subscribers to make it work. You just need to target and market to your viewers effectively on your YouTube channel, as well as other places. Let’s get started by looking at how to create your channel.
Create a Targeted Niche Channel
The first thing you need to do is create your YouTube channel. Give this a lot of thought because you want the name and branding of your channel to describe what your viewers can expect.
Design – YouTube allows you to create a cover photo, backgrounds, and other branding that will make a lot of difference for spreading brand awareness.
Watermarks – Use a watermark for your videos to help keep your branding there along with the YouTube branding. In your dashboard, under channel, you’ll find a link to “branding” that will help.
Intros & Outros – Create a standard intro and outro for your videos. That will also help a lot with the branding of your channel. You can use your video editing software to pop your newest video into the middle of the intro and outro.
Keywords – When you create your “about” description take the opportunity to include as much information as space allows using keywords that your audience will use to find you. Look for keywords under your dashboard, channel, advanced.
Cross Promote – Include a link to your website as well as your social media accounts. This gives visitors the ability to choose what works best for them. You’ll find this information under the dashboard, channel, advanced.
Contact Info – Just in case someone wants to use you as an influencer (that can mean a big payday) include plenty of contact information.
Use keywords and information that helps anyone know exactly why you’re on YouTube and what you’re promoting. Keep it friendly and valuable. Avoid hard sales tactics because visitors are coming to you for information and solutions, not ads, links, and annotations that distract them from getting the info they want.
Create Videos that Get Views & Shared A lot of people do have videos “go viral” by accident but you can, with planning make sure that you have a bigger chance of a video going viral. Going viral can be defined as being shared a lot more than other videos but how much depends on your niche. For some niches, that can mean a million views. For others that might mean 1000. It just depends on your niche. However, you will have more of a chance of going viral if you follow the tips here.
Lighting & Sound Matter If you really want a video to go viral, invest in the tools necessary to create high quality videos. Don’t worry about perfection. Just concern yourself with ensuring that people can see clearly and hear what you’re saying. The more professional the video appears and the better the information you provide, the higher your rating will be.
Add in Some Background Music When Appropriate For some videos, adding a little mood music can be helpful. However, don’t make it too long or loud. Background means that it’s more like subtle white noise. Also, make sure that you have the right type of royalty free music. If you use music that is not approved for this use, your video will be taken down for copyright infringement. YouTube has music you can use but you can also do a search for “royalty free music” to find more options.
Create Custom Thumbnails The best way to get attention for your videos is to create custom thumbnails that draw attention to the topic you’re going to talk about. You can pick a thumbnail that YouTube snaps from your upload or you can upload a special thumbnail. Branding will be increased if you use custom thumbnails that help the viewer determine what’s inside.
Be Authentic That might seem like an obvious statement but a lot of people get so nervous doing any type of video that they start sounding like a robot. The best thing you can do is know your topic very well and just keep an outline in front of you about what you want to talk about, then just talk about it without memorization. It’s okay to look down at notes, share your screen, or look away from the camera. However, it’s very important to talk to the people as if they’re in the room with you and are your friends.
Keep Them Short YouTube videos work best if they cover only one point of action. This means that a video less than 10 minutes is ideal. If you can get your videos down to two minutes, it’s even better since those tend to do best on YouTube. You want to cover one point, one “how to,” and one call to action in each video.
Interview Others When you can involve other people in your videos, it makes for something more exciting than one person talking to the screen. Interview successful people within your industry, a customer who has had success with your products, or even a famous influencer that you know your audience will enjoy hearing from.
Keep Posting When you first start posting YouTube videos try to stick to a schedule. Usually, it’s best to post one short video a day than it is to post one long video per week. After you’ve gained momentum, you can slow down, but at first plan on posting one video a day for 30 days for the best results.
Finally, make sure that you appear in your own videos. You can make plenty of videos that don’t include you but the ones that include your face will get a lot more results than videos that only include products or screen shares. With over 1.5 billion active YouTube users online watching videos, you’re sure to find your audience.
