7 Ways To Build Trust and Response With Your List

Posted on August 21, 2012 by Paul Counts

Guest Blog Post: Carol Amato, www.CarolAmato.com

Carol Amato has a passion for helping people achieve their goals. She enjoys interacting with her blog readers and subscribers on a daily basis. Carol has mastered the art of effectively building a relationship with your subscribers to achieve great results.

For more information on how Carol can help you with your online business visit www.CarolAmato.com.

The Importance of List Building

Ask any highly successful Internet marketer how they’ve achieved their success and the answer will almost always be, “Building a loyal list of customers.” Just adding people’s names to a list is not what I mean here. The list that’s going to help you most in your marketing campaigns contain those people that you communicate with on a daily basis and whom you’ve developed a relationship with.

The purpose of a list is to share information and convert sales. It’s not just about the sales, it’s about building your list based on good communication and offering something of value. No one wants to belong to a blog or visit a site where they feel that the sale is the ultimate goal. They want to feel as if they have a friend and mentor who offer valuable information that they can use to build their own business or find out new information about a product/subject they’re interested in.

Some lucrative ways to stay in touch with your list of customers and pique their interest:

Updates – If you stumble (or research) on to something that you think your list might be interested in, by all means, send them a notification. Or, if something has changed in the marketing world, such as the recent change that affects sales tax for online purchases in some states – let your list know. They’ll appreciate the notice and think of you as a valuable source of information.

Announcements – Planning a webinar or joining with an affiliate to create some great offers – send your list an announcement and invite them to join. Don’t forget to remind them about the event along the way.

Lucrative Offers – Let your list in on a product by offering them a special link to purchase it at a lower price. They’ll be glad they opted to join your site and/ or participate in your blog if they receive offers of value and that honor them as members of your site.

Pamper Your List – When your list is happy and benefiting from the information received on your site, they’ll become loyal customers and pass your name to other Internet marketers. Offer content that’s relevant to the subject your list is interested in and be sure to build autoresponders to remind your list about offers and to spur them on to action.

Don’t think that simply offering content on your site is enough. You should be aggressive enough to implore your list to take action on products for sale without turning them off.

This can be done if you balance your content with selling.

People want to purchase information and products that will improve their own sites. Buyers need you and you need them. It can be a win-win situation if you’re willing to build a strong bond with your list by taking the time and making the effort to offer

Here are some tips to build a bond with your list:

Be consistent – Don’t keep in touch with your list for a while and then suddenly stop. Their responses (and sales) will also come to an abrupt halt.

Offer valuable information – You can establish yourself as an expert in the field by offering information that will educate your list about your mutual interests. This means that you must stay on top of everything happening in your particular

Build trust – This is one of the most important aspects of building a relationship with your list. Trust is paramount when offering information about yourself or your product. Testimonials should be real testimonials and personal experiences should be actual things you’ve experienced.

Create videos – Videos can pull your list into your personal space and help them to trust you. So many marketers are afraid to “put themselves out there” with videos, but it’s a very effective way to build a special bond with your list. And, the more you do it, the easier it will be.

Newbies, especially, need to consider list building as part of a daily exercise. It won’t happen overnight – but eventually your list might make the difference in becoming a highly successful Internet marketer – and a mediocre one.

To learn more about Carol visit her website at www.CarolAmato.com.

Email Marketing Is NOT DEAD!

Posted on September 20, 2011 by Paul Counts

One thing that really ticks me off in our industry is the “Flavor of the Month” gurus that launch new products and they use scare tactics to get you to take action! Some of the more recent ones I have seen tell you that “E-mail marketing is dead!” and Facebook or Twitter or YouTube or LinkedIn or (Insert Favorite Social Media Site Here)…is the only solution!

I saw another one that said “SEO Is Dead!” and it proceeded to promote a Facebook product. Ironically 3 months later this same person released a course on SEO saying it is the only way to get traffic!

Now I understand why they do this because scare tactics tend to work on a lot of people, but the irony of it sickens me. The irony is that email marketing was used to get people to buy into their product on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. telling you that Email marketing is dead! LOL! Most people don’t catch this and they go buy that product to be hit next month with something that says Facebook is changing so you need to focus on LinkedIn now or some other thing!

The point of my rant here is to say that I think social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, StumbleUpon, Google Plus, etc.) are all excellent ways to get traffic. The thing I want to caution you from doing is relying on them for your only source of traffic!

This is a warning because Google Plus has recently launched so people will be selling you courses on it. The courses themselves aren’t bad and I have one in the que myself to make, but just be wary of people telling you that you should focus 100% of your attention on it to get traffic or else your business will be doomed!

Read my quote below which is an excerpt from a blogger that I have a lot of respect for. That proves my point right there that email marketing isn’t close to being dead nor will it be going anywhere in the near future!

Further some will argue with me that mobile is going to take away email, but that is a funny argument because nearly every mobile phone out there has a built-in email software program on it! Millions of phone users check email everyday. They may not check from their computer, but they get it on their phones.

If you take anything away from this rant you need a well-rounded marketing approach to your business which includes SEO, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn (if applicable), StumbleUpon, GooglePlus, YouTube, Press Releases, Social Bookmarking, Web 2.0 Content Sites, Article Marketing, other backlinking methods, paid search, and of course email marketing!

The email list will arrive for you if you leverage these other methods! Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket! Be smart and don’t let anyone fool you that the latest craze is the only way to work. The fact is that they all work.

Also, you should still invest in courses on those traffic topics, but buy them with the understanding that you should use them as a piece of an effective online marketing campaign. Not one of those methods will be everything you need to get traffic. Just like paid search slapped people that relied heavily or entirely on it, I a guarantee that Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon will make changes as well. They all eventually do!

So just be careful out there!

Let me know your thoughts as I am sure you will!

Quote from Article:

“E-mail’s value. Website Magazine compares the marketing potential of Web sites and social media to the value of e-mailing (Picture Proof of Email’s Value).

There are 3.3 billion daily searches on the 463 million Web sites.

Facebook has more than 750 million members worldwide, of which there are 60 million updates daily.

Twitter has 300 million members who tweet 140 million times per day, but more than 50 percent of the accounts aren’t active.

Google + has more than 25 million users with 1 billion shares by the users each day.

But e-mail accounts, worldwide, total 2.9 billion – 42 percent of the planet’s inhabitants – with 188 billion e-mails sent daily. No wonder the U.S. Postal Service is in trouble.

In other words, e-mail is more promising for mass marketers because it represents the highest volume of traffic in communication.

E-mail marketing is king if it executes by accomplishing three goals: 1. The right message. 2. The right audience. 3. The right time.”

Source: Timely for Q4 Sales: Latest Trends in E-mail Marketing

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Writing A Free Report In Under One Hour – Lesson 3

Posted on December 5, 2008 by Paul Counts

We are picking up where we left off with lesson number 3 in our series where we are teaching you how to setup a free report so you can start building that all important list. In case you want to review the first two lessons you can access them here:

Lesson 1 – List Building With Free Reports

Lesson 2 – How To Begin Writing Your Free Report

The first thing we are going to talk about here in lesson 3 is constructing an outline for your report, so that when you begin to write your job will be much easier.

If you want to write a really good report from scratch you need organization and form. An outline supplies both. If you are trying to write a report within one hour, the best thing is to keep your main points to only three. Three well-discussed points are better than a half dozen that are only briefly covered. Once you have organized your research and written an outline, it will take you less than half an hour to type up a five or six page report.

A good outline will break down the different parts of your report and help you to organize your thoughts so that the writing process will go smoothly. Think of it like a table of contents.

First, write a brief introduction describing what your report is about and what your reader will learn by reading it.

Next to organize your main points into a logical order and break them down into subcategories if necessary.

Now when you begin to write your report, you can address the main points individually. This is much easier then trying to write the entire report at one time. Begin by writing anywhere from one to three paragraphs on each point. Keep in mind that this is a short report that you’re giving away for free, so you don’t have to delve too deeply into each point. Remember you want them coming back to you for more information.

After you have addressed your individual points write your conclusion and your report is finished. Please don’t be concerned if your first report takes a little longer than an hour. Once you have mastered this process you will be able to create one report after another in no time at all!

Now let’s move onto a way that you can quickly create reports without doing all of the writing yourself.

Another way that you can produce a free report in under an hour is to download one that is already written from a PLR (Private Label
Rights) site. There are many such sites that are available on the Internet. You will have to be a member of a PLR site to download reports from the site. Memberships in these sites are usually rather inexpensive and they provide you access to a lot of material
that is almost ready for you to use.

You will still need to do a lot of rewriting on the reports that you download and if you download articles that you plan to consolidate into a report, you will need to make a good outline of your report so that the information will be presented in a logical sequence.

You can either download a report from a PLR site or several articles that contain the information that you want to include in your free report and combine the articles to make one longer report. All material that is downloaded from PLR sites should have at least some rewrite done before you use it on your own site, anyway. Rewriting is easily and quickly done.

Yet another way to create a report in an hour or less is to download articles from free content sites and then combine and
rewrite the information that is in them. The articles that are on free sites must be rewritten extensively.

The purpose that the authors of those articles had for placing them on sites for free use is to get credit for having written them. These
articles can be used as reference but they may not be reproduced word for word.

A word to the wise: Always check the accuracy of statistics or facts that are included in articles downloaded from free sites. You
can use the basic ideas of these articles as well as the facts that are contained in them but you must NOT reproduce them word for word without giving credit to the author… that is plagiarism and it is a crime.

Again… consolidating articles into a report requires that you make a good outline before you begin.

There is one more way that you can achieve getting a free report produced in an hour or less but in this case you won’t be the one doing the writing. You can hire yourself a good ghostwriter to write your free report for you. All you will need to do is to provide this ghostwriter with the subject and the material that you wish to have included in the report… not the actual material but the subject matter.

The entire process will take less than one hour of your time and they will do all the work for you. There are several places that you can find a ghostwriter, like; Hireaghostwriter.com, Elance.com or Guru.com. Of course there are many others but you get the idea. Just be sure to do your research and check out the references, so you can be sure that you higher the best person for the job.

After you receive a report read it and then pay the ghostwriter. The report then belongs to you. You can list yourself as the author and do whatever you choose to do with it. Including giving it away for free!

Come back for your next lesson where we’re going to be talking about how to put profit centers inside your free report so that you can start to make money online with these free reports.

How To Make Money Online With Free Reports – Lesson 2

Posted on November 12, 2008 by Paul Counts

In this lesson we will go over how to choose a topic and gather information so that you can begin writing your report. This part of the process is actually the most time-consuming, and one you have mastered your research and gathering techniques you will be able to quickly write your reports in 60 minutes, sometimes even less.

As we discussed in the last lesson free reports are a popular tools used by Internet marketers to build their mailing lists and make big profits fast. The reason so many savvy marketers use free reports so often is simply because they work.

Once you understand that people search the Internet because they want or need information it easy to understand why free reports work so effectively. People are constantly seeking for information on subjects that will make them feel better, look better, get smarter, or solve a problem. If you provide them with a free report that will help them solve their problem, you will look like an expert in their eyes and that alone can do a lot to increase your reputation and your selling power.

Reports can take many forms but no matter what the form, a report is simply a written document that provides information about a
specific subject.

Don’t worry, writing a report doesn’t have to be a tedious or time consuming task. A short report can be written in as little as an hour provided that you have access to sufficient information on the subject and since the Internet really is the “Information Super Highway” information on almost any subject is readily available with a few clicks of your mouse.

Today we’re going to talk about creating your first report from scratch. The first thing that is required for your report is a topic.

The topic that you choose to write your report on should be one that is directly related to the topic of your website or product, because you want the people that will be downloading and reading to be interested in the information that you are providing for them.

The easiest method that I have found for deciding on a topic is to choose a broad subject first and then narrow it down to two or three specific points. A good way to do this is to ask yourself some simple questions.

For instance;

What does my product or service have to offer consumers?

What are the major selling points of my product?

Who are the people that will be reading my report?

What are their needs concerning this topic?

Once you have answered these and any additional questions you may have concerning your audience, you can then begin to formulate your objectives. Your objectives will indicate exactly what the readers of your report will go after they have finished it.

For example, for a web design report one objective would be “After you have finished reading this report you will be able to add
an image to a web page.”

If you get stuck for ideas try asking your current list of subscribers or customers and see what they need help with. Do some research by visiting blogs and forums that relate to the products and services that you sell and see what their customers, thoughts and concerns are.

Another good way to do some quick research is to set up a free account at a fairly new website called www.ask500people.com.
This site allows you to post your questions in a format that makes it easy for you to receive hundreds of responses from people all
over the world and you can use this information to narrow down your choices quickly.

Once you have settled on a topic for your free report, the next step is to gather information that is related to that topic.

This can be easily accomplished by referring your favorite search engine again. This time just plug in some key words related to the
topic that you have chosen. Don’t worry that you won’t be able to find enough information to work with. In fact, most of the time it’s
the exact opposite. Chances are, you will find too much information rather than not enough. Be prepared because you are
going to have to sift through and consolidate the information, but if you have narrowed your topic down properly, it won’t be all that
difficult.

That’s it for today’s lesson, but you do have homework. I want you to get out your notepad and start doing your research. Remember to think about what your product has to offer, narrow down your topic and main objective, then start jotting down some ideas and links to information that you can use to write your report.

In the next lesson on this topic we’re going to talk about how to construct an outline for your report, so that your job will be much easier when you begin writing. Plus another way that you can construct your reports without doing all of the writing yourself. I appreciate you reading my blog.

List Building With Free Reports – Lesson 1

Posted on November 10, 2008 by Paul Counts

This is the first lesson in a five part series that will help you learn how to quickly create, distribute, and profit from your own free reports.

In this first lesson let’s talk a little bit about what you can do with free reports and what they can do for you.

Let me ask you this question….

How often do you see the words “free report” when you are surfing the Web looking for information?

About a million…. right?

It doesn’t matter what topic you’re searching for, everybody seems to be offering a free report on the subject.

The big question is, why?

Why should anybody go to all of the time, trouble, and effort to produce a report that is going to given away for free?

You see the point is NOT to sell the report you create and make a boatload of money from the sales. The entire point of a ‘free report’ is to give it to people in exchange for their names and email addresses.

Not that the report isn’t valuable in itself, but the real value is in the names and email addresses of those who download your report. They are much more valuable than the report will ever be!

The truth be told, with the thousands of free reports that are available online, there are only a few very, savvy marketers who know exactly how to put together a ‘free’ report and market effectively so that it takes on a life of its own and continues to produce phenomenal results for weeks, months, or even years after the report is released. These savvy marketers use their reports to build massive mailing lists, quickly and efficiently.

Don’t get me wrong. The free report list building technique isn’t limited only to Internet marketers. It spills over into brick and mortar marketing as well…or maybe that’s where it started. Who knows? The lines between Internet marketing and Brick and Mortar Marketing have become a bit blurred over the years.

If you don’t believe me, go and perform a search for ‘free marketing reports’ using your favorite search engine. You’ll find free reports about all kinds of products and services. You will find free reports about marketing beverages, sports, music, B2B marketing and dozens of others. The point of these free reports is the same. The idea is to give your potential customer valuable information to in exchange for his or her name and email address for the purpose marketing products and services to them in the future.

One important key to effectively using free reports to build an opt- in list, either online or off-line is that it must contain good, solid information. The information does not have to be completely unique, but it must be accurate and free reports must be well written… no poor grammar or misspelled words are allowed. The information needs to be presented to readers in a clear way, as well.

Another key is that good reports, whether they are free or paid for, must be helpful to the people who read them. Make sure you check your facts and include relevant, timely data.

As you’re creating your report you also want to keep in mind that the whole point of your free report is NOT the actual report. The report is only a means to and end. In the planning stages you will want to decide exactly what you want your report to accomplish and keep those goals in mind as you are writing.

Look for your next lesson on this blog. We will be going over how you can write your own free report in only 60 minute. But until then, I want you to take some time and think about the reasons that you’re writing your report and exactly what you wanted them to do for you. Be sure to take some notes and jot down some ideas, so that you will be ready for the next step.

Thank you for reading my blog. Make sure you come back soon for the other part of this report.