Ben Arment (see his blog here) poses an interesting perspective: you can’t take a mediocre idea and make it viral, no matter how much marketing ‘savvy’ you have. Ben suggests that instead of focusing on the mission and ideology of what you are offering, just for a moment focus on this: is the idea of your offering a good idea or a bad idea for the community that is your target market? Could it be that you are answering questions nobody is asking?

Now, I don’t know about you, but this strikes a real chord with me.

I’m not suggesting for one minute that at the first sign of things not happening (if that makes any sense!) you junk your ideas and decide you are anwering the wrong questions – but at least consider the possibility sooner than you might have in the past…

So my call to action is simple: get clear, if you aren’t already, about the questions your community or target market are asking. What could you do to answer these questions in a more useful and accessible way for your community?

And just as I sign off, this last question emerges from the fog: are you even clear enough about who your community or target market is? (I think my next blog will be about identifying your target market!)

To your success!

Cheers

Martin

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Is it in the list? Some say “asbolutely!”

Others say “are you kidding? It’s not in the list!”

So who’s right, and who’s wrong?

Well, I reckon both sides may have a point….

What I actually believe is simple – the money IS in the list…. IF IT IS THE RIGHT LIST!!!

What does it mean to have the right list?

Well, the right list will have a high conversion rate – for every visitor, a higher proportion of them will convert to a sale.

The right list will also have higher efficiency – some say that before the average sale, the customer must be exposed to your sales message as much as 7 times. The right list could do this in 1 or at most 2 ‘exposures’ (sounds a little rude lol).

The right list can be much smaller than many other lists and still give you superior sales performance.

How is this all possible?

It’s possible because the people on this list are very clear about what they need, what you offer, and basically they also LIKE YOU!!! It’s a relationship thing.

There are 2 ways to build a list..

1. Entice any old punter in, use all manner of freebie giveaways – if there is little risk to the freebie, people will grab it “in case it comes in handy later…” – I know I do this sometimes – it’s part of my market research…
2. Be so clear about what you offer that those people who are in the market for what you have or something very like it, will come to you readily, and everybody else will stay away.

Some of you might be thinking there’s a third way, where you are being very natural, honest & sincere, and that attracts people to you as well. I agree, AND I would want people attracted to me BECAUSE they like me AND want/need/are very interested in what I am offering, so for me that puts this personal liking & connection element firmly back in to the second way to build a list. But that’s just me…!

Let’s start with a useful question. I like this one, and I think you will too..

Why do you even need a list? Why does anybody?

Well, if you want to upsell, cross sell or do any other selling in the future, it’s far better to pitch to people who’ve already put their hands up (thanks to Bernadette Doyle of www.clientmagnets.com for this turn of phrase!). To do this you need to know who these people are – and in my book that will be a list… capiche?!

But as I alluded to before, it’s not size that matters so much as quality – the quality of your list.

So why not turn your energies to building quality connections, to really understand the needs of your market and individual customers? Look at concepts such as Critical To Customer or CTC trees and the Kano map, both from the field of quality & performance improvement, in particular, Six Sigma (find more on both at www.isixsigma.com free, with no signup needed…)

I had a much better experience & growth on twitter when I stopped trying to get as many people to follow me and started focusing on conversations with individuals.

The ‘downside’ is it all takes time – 30 mins a day is unlikely to be anywhere near enough…. The ‘upside’ – some wonderful relationships with great people, fun, and actually, some cracking good referrals and recommendations…

Try it – it doesn’t cost anything!

Cheers

Martin

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… questions that are answered by some of the Industry’s most successful marketers and business people.

You can find out more by taking a look at this video here.

I recommend you remove any distractions and give it your full attention for the next 15-20 minutes.

For those of you wondering about Tahir’s wonderful accent, he hails from the north of England – magic!

Get on over to www.easilyanswered.com to learn more.

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Why?

Well, at the end of every downline has to be a functioning and active retail seller, somebody selling to end users. For many MLM operations this translates to retail selling in the local region – selling away from the local region would be in my book at least, Internet Marketing…

This is necessary to generate the sales from which we get our commissions – that income we get whether we’re asleep or awake…

Anyways, there’s a great little posting here at http://www.allfreelance.com/freelancing_blog/2008/01/24/60-unique-ideas-for-marketing-your-business-offline-locally/ which you’ll find interesting & useful to get you pointed in the right direction.

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And I’m always curious about the claimed 95-97% of people who start out in network marketing, multi level marketing and internet marketing and fail to achieve what they really want.

I’ve been thinking about why this might be – I’ve come up with a number of contributing factors.

Some you will know.

But I bet this is one you don’t – THEY TRY TO COPY THE GURUS TOO CLOSELY!!!

Read the full article here.

With best wishes,

Martin

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Ever since I saw early signs for the impending economic storm, I’ve felt driven to create The Second Income Manifesto, also known as the MLM / Network Marketing Manifesto.

And now it’s here, available to all, for free download, from
http://www.thenetworkmarketingmanifesto.com/

After you’ve read and worked through this Manifesto, you will be in a fantastically better position to make an informed decision about your next steps towards starting, or significantly growing, a second income. This is as true of you are totally new to all of this, or an established mlm operator or MLMer.

The Manifesto is both an information source and a workbook, helping you to assess your own unique situation to figure out the next steps. There’s stuff here you won’t find anywhere else, as well as some of the more well known concepts and tools – I want this to be the most convenient way to access what you need.

Anyways, enough said here – you’ll find so much more about a home based business in network marketing, and what is in the Manifesto, plus details of how to freely get hold of our own copy.

Later, as you reflect on what you have read about and in the Manifesto, your mind will be racing with all the possibilities that become known to you – almost too pumped to sleep, glad that you did download your copy…

Click on over to http://www.thenetworkmarketingmanifesto.com/ now!

Cheers

Martin

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