Objective: Define the benefits you deliver to your customers in two sentences. When you can explain the benefits to any interested prospect quickly, you have achieved your goal.

(ZDNet, Your Top 10 Favorite Web Activities: http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/whoiswe/top10things.html)

Begin With The End in Mind:
Start By Listing Your Key Marketing Words

Step 2. Start Thinking Like Your Customer

Objective: Acting like a customer on the Internet, you will discover their experience. Find out what your competition does right and wrong, and ask your prospects to help you; just ask them what they think. Given the keywords and benefits you outlined in Step 1, put these to the test online. Give your customers what they want by taking a moment to "surf" in their shoes, and position your business so its offer is like no other.

Right now your target prospects are out there looking on the Internet. There are over a million commercial sites to choose from, so it's not easy. To develop your business and traffic, you have to do what few others are doing: clearly and quickly defining your value to these target prospects.

Now that you have an idea of what your customer is looking for, it's time to go out and act like the customer. As they say, until you walk a mile in their shoes, you will have no idea what they are facing.

Out on the Internet, you will find people doing things the same way. Check out the ad copy and the call to action that you get. Most Web Sites act like glorified brochures or magazine ads, always talking about the product or service the company offers. Few invite the visitor to act now, to buy now!

Online, the most important person is the customer visiting. How many sites allow you to take the action, to guide yourself to the purchase decision? Does anyone:

• Separate themselves from the competition with a clear and motivating benefit?
• Give an immediate reward for visiting their Web Site or answering their email, like a free report?
• Position themselves at the search engines so they are on top, and easy to find?
• Get singled out as an excellent resource for the particular subject?

By learning the problems your customer faces and making it easy to work with you, you are also beginning the marketing process. What are the best sites to find what you offer? What is the best way to market to your customer base?

The Internet is a powerful word of mouth tool; remember to set up your circle of influence, your referral network, by allying with related, non-competitive Web Sites that have to do with what you are offering.

Web Sites and discussions revolve around specific interest groups, specific niche markets; you need to locate where these markets meet, and create a message - your invitation to your prospects - that is different than anyone else's.

Find your niche markets and generate funnels of leads for a specific offer having to do with their interests, their passions. Tap into this incredible expressed interest and fulfill it at your Web Site and in your email contacts.

The best way to make it easy for your customer to work with you, is to give them a turn key solution for everything they are looking for.

Your Customer-Centered Marketing Strategy:
Start Creating the Right Offer and Target Where You Will Market to Maximize Your Profits

Step 3. Target your Natural Market: Create Your Customer Profile

Objective: Now that you have looked at your customer and what problems they run into on the Internet, it is time to build your target customer profile. Determine what information you want to know about your prospects, and think about the best way to get this information. When you have written a target customer profile that specifies the demographics, buying behaviors, and online sites that your customer visits, you can begin to test your marketing.

Who are your best prospects? And what is the natural market, their interests, you are appealing to? I asked that to one client recently; he told me everybody. Everybody would be interested in his vitamins.

Now try to put a face on everybody; what does everybody do during the day? What are their motivations? Why should they buy from you?

The funny thing about this common approach is the misconception that may kill his business. The client thinks it is just him qualifying the customers. Meanwhile, his customers are qualifying him, his Web Site, and his email. They want to know if he has done his homework, and if he knows what they want.

By copping out to the old, "I'll sell to everybody" routine, my client is killing his business. I asked the same question to the president of a hot tub company recently. His company is one of the biggest, and you can see why by his answers:

1. They are homeowners in their second home.
2. They are most often between 36-50.
3. They are a married couple with two children. They both work, with household incomes exceeding $60,000 a year.
4. They appreciate relaxing and treating themselves with special gifts as rewards for working hard.

That is the sort of customer base you can define, target, and convert into long term customers. Instead of everybody, he has defined it into "somebody" with an identity. He has defined a natural market that he can test to.

Your goal in this step is to create a customer profile that not only tells you who they are, but where you can reach them by marketing online. Then you can put your testing into action. The Internet builds on direct response, niche marketing.

What You Must Know About Your Customers: Your Customer Profile and Where to Find your Prospects Online

1. Do you have a natural, niche, market to target? __ Yes __ No
2. Is there an existing natural market on the Internet for what you offer? Is it easy to find resources? __ Yes __ No
3. Are there any 800 lb. Gorillas (big businesses) who dominate your natural market? Can you overcome their economic advantage?

__ Yes __ No

4. What are the key characteristics, or information, you would like to know about your customers?

Review: How to Target Your Customer Base

The first three steps in this process lead you to define your customer base and how to easily reach them. You will use this to quickly test your marketing and adapt your offer to give them exactly what they want.

Without a specific sense of what you are offering, who you are offering it to, and why they should buy from you, your customers are lost. They don't want to read about your product, or you.

Which is where most businesses get stuck. They sit in their Web Site and know what they sell so well that they unconsciously try to prove how well they know it with everyone that visits them. All the customer hears is the ranting of facts, figures, and knowledge, but little if any reasons to buy.

In the center of the Conversion flowchart are the three most important questions your customer asks:

1. Why is this important?
2. Do I want or need this?
3. Should I respond, i.e., react, to these words?

You have the headline and maybe your first few sentences to give them a positive response to all of the above questions. If the email or Web Site is targeted to someone's specific interests, few if any will object.

Define who your customers are. What do they like? What holidays and events have to do with what you are offering? Is this something they do alone, online, or with a group? If you cannot tell me why someone is a good prospect for you, how can you convince them?

Put a face, a motivation, and a defined need on your customer base. Set your objectives to deliver the best products and services that solve their problems, that fulfill their needs.

For this section you need to define:

1. Your Business Objective
2. Description of Product/Service (in two sentences or less)
3. Your Target Goals in Terms of Sales, Savings, and Time
4. Key Problems Your Customer Faces
5. Your Customer Profile
6. The Top Internet Places to Market and Joint Venture

Case Study: First Security Capital -
http://www.FirstSecurityCapital.com

First Security Capital (http://www.firstsecuritycapital.com/) is a financial services firm specializing in providing innovative, proprietary financial products to individual investors and small to midsize companies. They offer high loan-to-value loans against free-trading securities, including large, mid, small cap, and microcap stocks.

Objective: Given your target customer profile and the places they visit online, you will test your advertising to find the best ways to generate leads and convert those visitors into long term customers.

The Internet is emerging into a personalized advertising medium which is:

Four Critical Web Credibility Builders

1. Develop the Promise of Your Offer

Your offer and the way it is presented will make or break your Web business. Build up your offer with curiosity; get them clicking on your headlines and exploring. The more they look, email you, and ask questions, the more qualified they are to buy.

Your customers are looking for someone to solve their problem, even if they do not know what that problem is. Your home page, every Web Page, needs to drive them to your promise. Always use headlines and bullets to quickly establish what you are promising.

The promise is developed in content pages; these can be brochures, pages of products, the services you provide, the process you take to provide the service, and sales letters. Content is where you do your selling, where you develop the promise behind the headline. Headlines get them to act, content starts the selling process.

Many customers do not initially know exactly what they are looking for. What a great way to develop contact by asking them what they are looking for and following up on their responses. You can use online questionnaires used with forms (explained later) to triple responses. By helping them define what they need, you drive them to the solution.

The key is listening to what your customers want and asking the right questions. Ask them the three ways they will use your product or service. Ask them the top three problems or objections they have, or the top three benefits they would like to get out of using what you are selling. Questionnaires, surveys, and contests are an effective way to help them define the challenges that brought them to your Web Site.

As they say, the proof is in the pudding. In this case, the pudding better be your Web Site. Show them that you can provide the solution Use photos of yourself or your physical store; also incorporate photographs of your products to make it real. Most importantly, tell the exactly why they should buy from you in 30 seconds or less. Online, that means a paragraph; why should they buy from you instead of the competition?

The final step to developing credibility is to get your customers to commit to your solution. The best way is to sell them; the second best is to get them to approve of being on your mailing list. This is called opt-in email list building. Get them to commit by putting a limited time offer or add bonuses. The key is to get them to act now.

How To Turn Your Web Site into a Marketing Tool

1. Establish as Many Points of Contact Possible on Your Home Page

Never expect a visitor to return to your Web Site. Bank on the fact that they will never return. Use your home page as a place to generate emails, phone calls, faxes, and inquiries. Use your autoresponder wisely; get them set up to answer a basic guestbook (tell us why you visited), surveys, sales letters, special announcements, mailing lists, and contests. The more ways you give them to contact you, the better your chances are for understanding who is visiting. Gathering email addresses is really the name of the game.

A Web Site has a few hot spots which will literally triple your response rates if you use it right. The screen a visitor looks at is wider than it is tall. If you want a hint, take a look at the computer interfaces on the two most popular machines, Windows and Macintosh. Most of the places to click on are located on the top and bottom of the screen; the left hand margin in particular is a favorite place to put your initial offers on a Web Site.

Both place all the action points, the points for people to click, in the frame of the screen. The hottest spot to put your words is the upper left hand corner. People who read English read left to right. Their eye naturally drops on the upper left hand corner.

Place your first point of contact in the upper left hand corner. Develop your important sections down the left hand side. Use the bottom of your screen as well, especially the lower right hand corner. This is where their eyes scan.

Example: By placing banner ads at the lower, right hand corner of the screen, a survey found that responses to these banners increased by 200+% over banners in the middle of the screen. Bank on years of experience and put your headlines on top, on the left hand side, and towards the bottom of your screen. Use the middle of the screen for graphics and for listings of areas to visit in your Web Site, as well as more headlines.

You will find that people visit about 20% of your entire site, and ignore the rest. This is normal. At a successful business site, people will spend about 7 minutes. For chats, games, entertainment, and high priced news media, these rules may differ. Give them enough information to make the sale, and follow up via traditional means as well. Telemarketing is an excellent tool to use with a Web Site. After all, the Web all revolves around different ways to use the phone.

You can use more than your home page to get people exploring. If you want to promote a specific product, you can direct them to that page. Then give them a place to contact you and make it clear how they can explore further.

Hint: Include many links on your home page, but limit the links on other pages. Links are choices. Get them to focus on your message, then get them to your home page, your Table of Contents, and to your Order page.

On first contact, it is unlikely that anyone will buy what you have to offer. You need to give people something of value for no money and little effort. Examples of this are:

• Coupon they can print out or email to you via a form; a dentist gives people the same kit (dental floss, toothbrush, information) that he does online. He uses the coupon to generate a response.

• Free report: Find something special, issues, news, special announcements, and use it to enhance your product sales.

• Free online newsletter: Some people call these e-zines, but basically you distribute a 1-2 page document every few weeks with information and your advertising.

• Bonus reserved for you: Create a specific page for people you are marketing to. Give them a page tailored only to your specific offer. Example: A Web Greeting Card delivered online for a specific season, like a Christmas Card.

• Free software; download sample. Almost anyone can create software now. Just use a database program or PowerPoint to create a simple interview, online evaluation, and use their feedback to start the selling process.

• Forms to ask questions and get people onto your list. A form is quite simple. It is where you type in information on the screen. This will dramatically increase your responses over a simple link where they email you. Forms make people think you are working for them by listening and giving them space on your page to respond.

A mastermind group are people gathering to learn, brainstorm, and take their ideas to the next level. If you can create great interest in discussion, you will gain high traffic and advertising revenue will become a reality. Get them talking and you become the expert.!

Animation on the Web is overrated. But movement on the page is the first thing people will notice. Use this to your advantage by placing a small, animated graphic next to the primary headline, link, or listing you want people to visit. Do not make it spin endlessly, let it repeat 3-4 times and stop. Be careful; limit your movement to one or two graphics; too much movement takes away from your message. It also gets annoying on repeat viewings.

Every product is created using a special process. You can turn this process into a special "how to" report or sales letter for your product; you can also turn it into an information product to sell to people. Use the process to generate leads and sales for the product.

Review and Put Your Plan Into Action
How to Test Your Marketing Online: Find the Best Places to Generate Leads

Testing online is simple. Begin by marketing to those niches you identified in Steps 1-3. Measure your results by tracking how many people visit from a specific offer, and how many come from the search engines. Compare this as your visitors generated, then count how many of those visitors contacted you via email, phone, and fax. This conversion ratio will help you pinpoint the best places for you to market online. Tracking is easy with statistical software like WebTrends and many Internet providers give you statistics automatically. Use them.

1. Search Engines

Search engines perform a function of cataloging the Internet, but I use them for finding niche markets. Once I go there, there is no point in searching any more. If you can name your product or service in four words or less, search engines are something to consider. Count how many actual visits you get, and what keywords they use. If these work, try to stay on top of the search engines on a monthly basis.

2. Email marketing

Email marketing is the most misunderstood term online. When you are contacting people online, you need to keep your offer to the point. Make your first contact less than one printed page. In email, your first contact should be a few paragraphs. Use bullets and introduce what you have to sell. Your goal here is to:

• Get them to contact your autoresponder

• Get them to visit your Web Site

• Become long term customers by hearing from you on a periodic basis via email.

3. Discussion groups

There are also discussion boards online where you can target customers as well. Be careful when you email them, because many people use these as non-commercial places to discuss their interest. They are great places to get market research, ask your prospects questions, and show them your Web site by participating. But be careful; this is a slow and long way to market, better suited to consultants than to people selling products.

4. Ezines

5. Business Directories and Free areas to promote your site

6. Banner Ads

Objective: Begin the process again. Test always. Don't reject anything. Accept what works. And recognize your mistakes and errors as the key ingredients to your success.

Business online is not that difficult to figure out; you test, see what works, and put your money into what is working. Sometimes this happens overnight. Sometimes it takes a few months. Sometimes it can take longer. It all depends on how accurately you target your customer base and how quickly you can find out how to deliver what they want.

These tools will allow you to communicate and follow up with your customers via direct mail, direct email, and telephone. You can also train anyone to use this system.

The Internet Sales Channel Is Powered By Systems That Work Without You

Dear Friend,

What will you say about your business when it is over?

Businesses, like everything, do end. If you don't plan on how you would like it to end, you leave it entirely up to chance. I realized a fatal flaw in my approach that I am correcting.

So when I was forced to write about how I wanted my business to end, I was confused. I never thought about the end. And what I learned is that this attitude kills most businesses.

Most entrepreneurs create jobs for themselves. What is revolutionary is to create a system that works without you. It's the same logic that Ray Kroc applied to McDonald's. He created a system where the business could train people to do the tasks.

Here's how I see it: a Job depends mostly on me. If I can't do the job, no one will. A business depends on the system. You break down all the work and delegate it. Then you can go away, relax, or at least have it work, while you are not there.

Work on creating your system, and please feel free to visit my Web Site if you have any questions. I look forward to hearing from you.

Peace,