Welcome To The World of Online Marketing

If you want to be an online marketer, you need to understand the bigger picture or you’ll never be successful. If you’re in business, you’re trying to help people in some way, such that they give you money. As blunt as that sounds, at the end of the day, that’s what business is about.

Let me ask you a question:

Are you running a business? Are you running a church? Are you running a non-profit organization? Or do you have a hobby where you’re donating your time?

What are you doing?

If you want people to give you their money, they have to have a reason why.

That reason why is their reason why. It’s not your reason why.

Imagine you’re selling cotton candy at a baseball game. The reason parents buy the cotton candy from you isn’t because they want to feed their children sugar. Usually it’s because they want their kids to chill out. Sometimes people buy it for the taste, right? Sometimes people have to buy it because they’re starving. Sometimes they buy it because there are no other options.

But you have to understand, why you’re doing what you’re doing and why they’re doing what they’re doing. It’s not enough to just have people. It’s about having the right people. Only the right people will hand over their hard-earned money.

In the World of Online Marketing there are five different stages that you need to understand:

Advertising/Traffic
Audience/Leads
Conversation/Sales
Customers/Fulfillment
Content/Product

Let’s take a closer look at these five different stages and their importance when it comes to the world of online marketing.

Stage 1: Advertising/Traffic

You need to get eyeballs where you want the eyeballs, such that they then can decide to pay attention to you. If whatever you are talking about resonates, they will want to know more.

You can easily sell kid stuff to moms or baseball stuff to baseball fans. But what if you have a football fan? They’re not going to pay attention to baseball ads. You want to get the right people. The right people will self-select into wanting to know more.

Here are some common ways to advertise and increase traffic in the online world.

Facebook ads. Facebook ads show up on your desktop and mobile newsfeed. A business is able to create an ad on Facebook and choose the type of audience that they would like to reach (age, gender, location, etc.). If you or your social group are in that audience, the ad will show up on your newsfeed.
Google Ads (or AdWords). Google ads connects you with people when they search for words or phrases in the Google search. Your ad will appear on Google or any of its partnered websites when someone uses “keywords” in the search engine, if it applies to your business.
PPC (pay per click) ads. Certain search engines like Google, Bing or Yahoo authorize businesses and individuals to purchase ads once someone has searched for something. The ads show up on the right hand side of the search results, alongside the non-paid results. A bidding system is used. If you win the bidding war for the top spot and the ad is clicked you’re then charged for how much you bid on the ad.
Advertising networks. These are networks that will connect you to websites that want to host certain advertisements.
SEO (search engine optimization). As long as other sites link to your page, Google, Bing or Yahoo put them as “top ranked” on their front page when a person searches anything related to your business. Amazing content motivates people to link to your page. When people link to your page, this shows search engines that you are interesting and authentic. Search engines want to show interesting and authentic pages in their top-ranked search results.

Stage 2: Audience/Leads

Marketing is like standing on the street corner preaching. You can preach on your soapbox with the best message, and the most compelling sales pitch, but what good is this if no one is walking by? Without an audience, you don’t have anything. If there is nobody there to actually buy from you, you have nothing. That message and compelling sales pitch isn’t even heard.

The actual art – the art of doing business – requires a person. It requires money. It requires something to be exchanged in value.

Now that you have traffic to your site, you’ve built an audience that is actually paying attention.

They have raised their hand. They have signed up for your email list. They have visited your website. They’re thinking, “I want to know more about how to fly an airplane. I want to know more about how to build a house. I want to know more about how to become a Nascar driver. I want to know more about how to accurately predict the weather… whatever the topic is, when they come into the audience, they did not just walk past that person that’s standing on the soapbox. They have stopped to listen.

You have engaged their attention.

We used the word “leads” – it’s a sales word – it’s not necessarily a dirty word but the idea is that they are potential customers. They are potential customers because they are paying attention. They are interested in whatever you had to say. AND they could possibly buy what you are selling.

Stage 3: Conversation/Sales

You’ve increased your traffic, built your audience and now it’s time to interact with them. You can interact with your audience iin any number of ways. Ultimately, you’re going to ask them to buy something or to do something, or to take some kind of a call-to-action (CTA).

Go back to the big picture. You have to understand the WHY they’re paying attention and WHY you’re talking to them. That is how you can understand where those two overlap.

You may have a lot of conversations before the sales conversation.

It’s like dating. Nobody asks you to get married on the first date. You have to have the conversation so you can create trust. You are providing value and you are creating trust. Empathizing with them also creates trust. Getting inside their head, understanding their psychology. Being able to talk to them as if you were one of them so that they end up saying, “That person sounds like me.” You need to establish that rapport.

If you’re having conversations correctly, you’re doing a number of things. You’re creating trust. You’re creating an opportunity without creating pressure. If you’ve had the conversation right, you should never shame someone into buying something. There’s no, “Buy this or else.” While a lot of people will sell on fear, it’s not the most effective sales tool for long-term relationships. Yes, it will get you a quick hit but it doesn’t create trust.

Sales is presenting an opportunity.

The sales conversation should come from an abundance and helpful mentality. There’s more than enough customers out there. In the end you want to help people reach their goals. You should be educating them about what their goals COULD be and then helping them reach those goals. If it’s not for them, there is absolutely no shame in saying, “this isn’t a fit.”

It’s like going to the dressing room and trying on clothes. You can have something that looks really great on the rack. You think it’s going to fit you just right. And then you put it on and look at yourself in the mirror and think, “What the heck happened?”

Sometimes things just aren’t a fit. And that’s okay. There may be something else at some other point in time that may be a fit. If the sales conversation is done correctly there should not be any high-pressure.

Stage 4: Customers/Fulfillment

When somebody gives you their money, they become your customer. You want to make sure that you’re taking really good care of your customers. That you are fulfilling whatever promises you made. You want to make sure that you’re wowing them.

When someone gives you their money and becomes your customer, it’s the beginning of a relationship.

If you want to build and grow a business, you have a couple different ways to do that. You can sell the same thing to more people – but then you’re always focused on the next sale.

A better way to grow a business – you sell more things to the exact SAME people.

It’s really easy to get those two flipped around. It takes a little bit of thinking. You can have 10,000 customers giving you $10 each or you can have 10 customers giving you $10,000 each. It’s a totally different mentality on the value of your customer.

When growing an online business you really want to make sure that you’re setting your business up for long-term growth. Make sure that you can continue to sell to your customers and that they can grow with you.

Let’s say that you sell baby clothes. You have customers who absolutely love you and guess what, their babies just started walking. Now they need shoes. Then, guess what, they started eating solid foods. Now they need bibs. Guess what, they started potty-training. Now they need potty-training underwear … you get the idea. As that customer goes through the lifecycle, if they love you and you are providing value to them, they want to keep buying things from you.

As you grow your business, you can create brand new products and sell it to the same customer group. They already know that they like, love and trust you. There is no reason for them to have to go through the, “Oh, I wonder if I should buy this. Is it going to be any good?” They are thinking, “This is going to be fantastic. Let me tell my friends about it.” It’s a lot easier to grow your business that way.

Ideally you want to create the best lifetime value for your customer. Across their entire lifetime.

Stage 5: Content/Product

It’s really important to know exactly what you’re selling.

Is it an experience?
Is it education?
Is it something online/digital?
Is it a combination?

You have to understand – why are you selling it? What’s your story that you are selling? Why should they care and buy from you?

To understand the WHY exercise in regard to your product, as you talk about your product what are its features? What can you hold onto or talk about? What are the benefits? Why does somebody care about it? Why does somebody care about it and what are the emotional triggers that go along with it?

For example, “Buy my awesome nerf gun collection.” People don’t care about nerf guns. Even if they do care about a nerf gun, it’s deeper than just, “Oh I want a nerf gun.” No. It’s, “Buy my awesome nerf gun collection so that you never run out of little nerf ammunition when you are playing in a war and you can win the battle against your brothers and sisters.” You are selling victory. You are not selling the nerf gun collection.

When you are talking about your product and your content, try to understand what is going through your customer’s minds, their mindsets and their lives. Create your customer avatar.

In order to be most effective you need to understand what you are dealing with. If you’re in the space of selling online courses or online products, then ultimately, you need to understand who you are selling to so that you can effectively reach them and grow your business.

Welcome to the world of online marketing. Are you ready?