There’s a lot of talk about email marketing these days. ( bear with me, I’ll get to Gibralter in a minute )
Almost everyone is online… and if there aren’t they are missing a big part of their potential marketplace.
Most people think that if they can get people to their website… or into their store… or visiting their blog… they’re home free.
But they’re not.
Face it… you DO want repeat business don’t you?
It is a lot of work to get one client in the door ( or your website ) sell them, get the order… collect the cash.
You want them to come back… over and over.
But how do you do that.
Online marketers say that you have a “funnel” because after the first sale, you offer another and eventually another.
But think about the way things “used to be”.
My Dad sold farm machinery for almost 40 years. Right out of WWll until he retired. He made decent money but he made it because he gave his clients great service and he was friends with nearly all of them. Yeah, he visited them all once a month… in his territory… and drove over a couple thousand miles every single month. And they loved him… and he was the epitome of a good salesman because not only did he have a good product, but people bought from him because they liked him.
Relationships.
How do you form relationships online?
Especially if you’re selling something and making a living selling online.
Simple… you form relationships and you do it the same way as offline.
But somehow this seems to have been forgotten in the shuffle.
Because it has gotten to be about analytics, social media, pictures of cats, and tutorials, systems and methods.
I don’t know about you but I buy online from people I like. Sure, once in a while, I break down and succumb to a good copywriter’s pitch… but there are some people that I enjoy reading and following… and I buy more from them than anyone else. They have become my friends and I trust them.
Building relationships.
Can it really be done over the internet… in an email?…or online?
Yes, it can.
When I was in Costa Rica … and I really didn’t know what I was doing… I shared “my adventures”, the things that went wrong, the things that were different from “back home”… and I shared my feelings about being away from my parents and feeling guilty… I talked about not being able to find a decent Alcoholics anonymous group… and I talked about a good friend of mine who passed away and feeling that I had abandoned him…even my bout with hemorrhoids was fair game. ( …and remind me to tell you about the time I ended up in Gibralter on a plane flight and didn’t know how I got there! )
Now, I know that this is probably too much for many of you… but I will tell you this:
Sharing yourself with your potential clients… the people that follow you and are getting to know you… is one of the most valuable things you can do.
I also know that many of you think that it is stupid… but, from experience, I can tell you that I had a list of over 20,000 people that would have followed me to the ends of the earth… because of what I shared with them.
And it was one of the things that made me close to the top of my own marketplace too.
And yet, not many people do it.
My book ( Reinvention Protocol ), has a link to another book in it, which I entitled “Seinfeld Moments” which is kind of a guide to what I describe in this post. The little things that bind us all together… the things that make us human… We become closer when we share pieces of ourselves…
And besides that… it feels good too.
And it could just be the most rewarding thing that you do.
And it sure doesn’t feel like work.
If you want to take a look at my Seinfeld Ebook, just message me… there’s even a section in it entitled “Being human… for dummies”
Thanks for reading…