Is there an easier way to develop a community of customers? The answer is YES and I can prove it!
So you’re starting a website that you would like to eventually get conversions for an information product, affiliate ads or even maybe for a business opportunity. You’ve been told that the only way to do that is to generate traffic and grow a list of people who opt-in and subscribe to get information from you. For new internet marketers this can be a daunting task. But let’s think about how the subscriber list has evolved.
The purpose originally was to convince those in your target market to allow you to send them information that they were interested in, allowing you to have them get to know you, thereby trusting the email marketing of products you would promote and develop a community of loyal followers that buy what you recommend. But with the evolution of new social media alternatives, is this stale strategy proving to be a more needlessly difficult and archaic method to accomplish these objectives? I’ll tell you right now that the answer is a resounding YES!…. and I can prove it.
Say Hello To The Evolution Of Internet Marketing! Let’s use twitter as our example. Social media can be a time hog is you don’t know how to do it efficiently. Personally I’m a big fan of using 3rd party applications to get more ROI in my social media efforts. I use Tweetadder and absolutely love it but you can use whichever one you feel most comfortable with. You can then use keyword searches to identify people in your target market and follow them most will typically follow you back. If they don’t reciprocate after 2-3 days you can then auto-unfollow. If they are not paying attention to their Twitter updates very often then they’re not my target market anyway.
So you have auto searching, auto-following and unfollowing set daily and you then basically leave it alone. You are then free to auto tweet interesting content and links back to your site as you would an email list. Having said that I cannot stress enough how important it is for you to interact personally, respond to messages, @mentions and participate in conversations under keyword #hashtags where your target market interacts. What you will then see is the emergence and cultivation of your active community.
For those that say “yeah, yeah that sounds good in theory but where’s your proof”. Well my friend, you might have noticed that I do things a little differently than many of the so called internet marketing gurus who use marketing methodologies that have actually become obsolete but get away with it because they have successfully branded their name, company or site. Kudos to them, however you don’t have that luxury.
You’re new and you need something that works to get traffic and conversions. You want to drive up the search rankings but you need traffic to do that. But how do you get traffic before getting into the top spots of page one of Google searches?
The only option typically taught is to advertise, throwing money at Google Adwords and other PPC advertising options to get traffic. Everyone that has done this knows that it is expensive because your site is new, your Adwords account is new and thus you will pay several dollars for each visitor that comes through your ads I personally know people who flushed over 20K down the toilet doing that before I showed them what I’m about to show you.
My strategy has been to drive all my targeted traffic to this site and eventual create product conversions through social media alone. I haven’t paid for advertising, I don’t use PPC and it’s primarily because I wanted to prove my point. The function as you now know it of building a list is DEAD! It’s dead and the way marketing is evolving, you are doomed to fail if you’re building your online business with the expectation that it will be a major source of your conversions.
I personally drive over 25K visitors every day from social media ALONE! From that I’ve gotten 15-20 opt-ins a day to my email list which translates to over 7,000 into my list every year…… and if you’re one of them you know, I don’t shove affiliate products down your throats. In fact I hardly ever email information about my coaching or training to my list …. Because I don’t have to. My list is not for driving conversions directly but rather to cultivate a community that trusts me.
In the end they know I respect them and they know this site is where both the free information along with the paid training and coaching assistance is found. So what do I send them? I mainly send them daily motivational quotes and messages of encouragement which in-turn cultivate loyalty and subscriber retention. How loyal? I might see only one or two unsubscribe from my list every 3-4 weeks and that’s unheard of!
But now you’re wondering how many really pay attention to what I send. Good question. The answer is – more than I even originally thought. Here’s a story that actually happened. Aweber had a glitch one day which caused nothing to be sent to my list. When I woke up I saw this, alerted Aweber and they fixed the issue.
I then went in my email inbox to already find literally HUNDREDS of emails afraid they had erroneously been unsubscribed and wondering where their daily motivation email was. They said they look forward to reading what I send them as they start their day. It bothered them so much that a small army actually took the time to write me about it. I need to tell you; that really blew my mind!
What about conversions? Well I have copies of the “Success Steps To Gaining Wealth Online” training literally flying out daily. My unlimited 1-on-1 coaching club is consistently full as is the unlimited email support and I have yet to pay for traffic. That all converts to over $100K annually… generated solely from free traffic with no PPC and no affiliate or joint venture sales.
It is important to me that, if I’m going to preach about marketing strategies to launch and explode your online business, showing you how to create your own WP site and grow readership through free traffic, that I use the exact strategies I teach everyone for my business that promotes those strategies and training. It’s a shame but almost all don’t do that and I personally feel it undercuts their credibility. If the strategies are so great, then why don’t they use them? The answer is obvious; it’s because they aren’t giving you all the pieces of the puzzle.
While in the midst of this Internet marketing evolution if we don’t adapt we become ineffective no matter out effort level. With that in mind I just want to encourage you, that you can establish your branding identity, generate free traffic and cultivate a community through low maintenance social media development alone. I know because I’ve done it and the great thing about it is when you combine that with my targeted keyword and back-linking strategies, the traffic that’s generated launches your site up the search rankings….. and then gives you even more free traffic! It’s the gift that keeps on giving as you dominate the search rankings for your keywords causing the “traffic generating momentum” to grow exponentially!
Trust me, I teach it every day and it’s a fun ride!
Your coach & fan
Patrick Daugherty
The “Biz Coach”
CEO of Learn2earn it now Training & Support
Click to jump on the “Biz Coach Blog” RSS Feed!
Creator of: “The Success Steps For Building Wealth Online” The step by step training program that teaches aspiring internet entrepreneurs how to earn money online by launching an internet marketing home business. Learn SEO along with Internet marketing training, affiliate marketing programs, effective social media marketing, getting free traffic and everything you need to know to design any online home business opportunity to achieve your financial goals.
I’m giving away FREE 1-on-1 coaching sessions to a select number of you to prove that I can teach YOU how to launch your business in 4 weeks and the secrets behind semi-retiring in 12months!
“You DONT have to change who you are to be successful but instead, make a commitment to discover & express more of who you’re truly meant to be! Believe me, there are people who desperately need what you’re holding back. Free yourself to celebrate that & let yourself shine obnoxiously!”
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[...] Originally posted here: Internet Marketing Evolution! Is This The DEATH Of The OptIn List As … [...]
Hi Patrick.
Very direct and extremely useful information. The tides are certainly turning in the world of marketing. We should talk soon. Thanks for all you do. Hat’s off to a coach who gives his all!
Margo
While I agree with you that using social media is useful. The high number of twitter followers you have proves that you can drive a massive amount of people to your website.
Here’s my problem with abandoning the opt-in list. With Twitter, you don’t own your customers, Twitter does. If for some reason they shut off your account, you lose all of your customers.
Why not instead, use Twitter to drive people to your site, then entice them to opt in to a list? You can still continue to use your Twitter strategy but aren’t relying solely on them.
As far a TweetAdder, I’d love to know you follow / unfollow patterns. I had my account banned twice by Twitter when I started using TweetAdder. Whatever I was doing was clearly too aggressive.
Thanks for your comment Joe
First let me say that I do not at all suggest one should “abandon” their opt-in list gathering at all. I am suggesting that the function that it once served is dead however it still definitely serves a function in my business for sure (as I mention in the post). It’s just not to drive sales directly. I am suggesting that for a new person, just starting out, it is far easier to drive traffic and potential early conversions through social media like twitter and then to cultivate trust from your community through the opt-in. The old methodology would be to bombard your list with emails with sales links and affiliate offers. What now happens more far more often is that the list will never grow for the new marketer because they are unsubscribing as fast as new people are opting in. That is not a turn over to build a business reputation on.
Yes you are right about tweet adder, Twitter announced recently that it has updated its security against such automated software and named tweetadder as one of the targets it was defending itself against. Using tweetadder is now suicide for a new twitter account. However the other advice given in this story is sound, email may be dying but that is no reason to still not try and capture that lead. Many don’t know this but you can use twitter as a free sms service. Complete with shortcode numbers for most countries. I use it and other methods to drive customers into my webinars on the facebook platform and convert them after they arrive and I’ve built some ‘know, like and trust’ with them via the webinar. The optin rate is much higher and many become paying customers as well as join my pages and download my apps so I can then do push marketing to them direct to their mobile thru the installed app.
“I personally drive over 25K visitors every day from social media ALONE! From that I’ve gotten 15-20 opt-ins a day to my email list which translates to over 7,000 into my list every year…… and if you’re one of them you know, I don’t shove affiliate products down your throats. In fact I hardly ever email information about my coaching or training to my list …. Because I don’t have to. My list is not for driving conversation directly but rather to cultivate a community that trusts me.”
Whoops! Missed the point of your post. You are still using mailing lists, you are just using Twitter as the vehicle to drive traffic to your site.
list building…
[...]Internet Marketing Evolution! Is This The DEATH Of The OptIn List As You Know It? | TheBizcoachBlog[...]…
(mobile moneymachines)…
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Great stuff I think the key is to build relationships doing what you love and be a real person. The subscribers and money will come with patience if you do that.
Free Ebook…
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Interesting article- I’ve wondered about the utility of tools like TweetAdder. I think the key is exactly as you said- to make sure to reply to messages, @ replies, and RTs and build relationships once you’ve made them.
But…I’d argue that the opt-in list is still alive. It’s just taking a new form in some businesses. And, for many businesses with a slightly less technically-savvy audience that doesn’t use Twitter, the opt-in list is still a useful tool.
Businesses should start with an assessment of their goals in marketing and a clear understanding of who their audience is and where they’re most readily found. Then, and only then, can a determination be made about which platforms make the most sense and have the most potential to deliver the strongest ROI.
albert f a matthews…
[...]Internet Marketing Evolution! Is This The DEATH Of The OptIn List As You Know It? | TheBizcoachBlog[...]…
I’ve seen you around ,but I never took the time to read your stuff. Very interesting and enlighting. I like how you talk about the evolution of the and how fast it’s moving. Another thing I people are so used to the optin that it has lost it’s worth. To me (just like what you are doing) inbound marketing ,and the authentic entreprenuers are the only ones who will succeed from here on out.
the affiliate list strategy…
[...]Internet Marketing Evolution! Is This The DEATH Of The OptIn List As You Know It? | TheBizcoachBlog[...]…
Patrick this was a very enlightening and detailed article. The information you supplied will help so many. I look forward to reading more from you.
Continued success to you.
Terri Pattio
Mentor with a servant’s heart
Great post ! I truly agree that using social networking sites such as twitter will help your network marketing business to grow. By sharing it through tweets with thousands of followers, you can gather huge amount of people to join you in your business. Thanks for this informative post.
An important message that you have presented in your post. However, you are writing that from a position of a market leader where you do not have to have an opt in list. Other people starting out in in internet marketing would find it very hard to run their business using Twitter/Social Media alone.
Regards
John Cosstick
John
I appreciate the comment. I do need you to know that I started my Twitter marketing as a newby. Also, when I launch a new site I do not launch it as “Patrick Daugherty” but under the new site’s entity so its like starting from scratch, not relying on my marketing coaching reputation at all. I prove it valid every site I launch. I just didn’t want you to think I was one of those that aspouse a strategy that only works because it is predicated on the fact I’m popular and thentelling new marketers they can do the same thing. That’s a common practice but I refuse to do that. Its too demoralizing for new people. I know, I road that roller coaster myself when I first started too.
Patrick Daugherty
The “Biz Coach”
You are absolutely right about using 3rd party applications to stay on top of the social media waves. Things can really pick up when you combine these applications.
It took me a little while to realize the power of social media. Just a few simple tweaks with engagement make all the difference.
I totally agree with using the same strategies that you recommend to clients. I use my own business as a mini laboratory to test different marketing tactics and to discover what works best. Also, I used TweetAdder and think it’s a wonderful product. It’s a great value and really a no-brainer to buy it.
I have to say that this is one great article! As a fairly new internet marketer, I have read many blog articles on social media and “growing your list”. Yours is by far the best I have come across. You can add me to your proof – you found me on twitter, I followed you back, will definitely share this article & will be visiting again. I agree that you need to keep up with new trends and technology; staying in the dark ages will get me nowhere!
Thank you again for the great info!
- Jodene
Patrick, great article. You are so right and this article should resonate with every business. There is nothing that will lose your fans, list or followers quicker than simply spamming them with ads and solicitations. We too believe that the best use of Twitter, Facebook and the like is to use it to offer value to folks and the rest will fall into place. I love your articles and one day, something will strike me that also adds me to your customer list.
Social media is going to keep changing but what will remain the same is that people will buy from people they trust and respect.
I also wanted to point out a great new app (no, we are not affiliated with them) called Social Bro – great tool for Twitter that allows you to get all sorts of statistical data about your followers and other great info.
Lisa Parziale
Portside Marketing
A good autoresponder communicates pre-written email messages on the optin email list in the period, which you have chosen. 4. Utilize a verification e mail . when a particular person has done …optin lists
Hello Patrick,
Just want to say that I am one of your loyal follower on Twitter. I just read the article above and it’s truly an eye opener. I would love the opportunity to learn what you’re doing. I am now Flying out of Europe to Las Vegas for the “NO EXCUSE SUMMIT 3″ this coming weekend. Are you going to that by the way? I will be staying in the US for quite some time, mainly in California. Which city are you from? If you happened to be in California somewhere, I would love to come where you are and meet with you! if of course that’s possible.
I look forward to hearing from you very soon.
Giorgio
My programmer is trying to convince me to move to .net from PHP.
I have always disliked the idea because of the costs. But he’s tryiong none the less. I’ve been using WordPress on numerous websites for about a year and am anxious about switching to another platform.
I have heard great things about blogengine.net. Is there a
way I can transfer all my wordpress content into it? Any help would be really appreciated!