Get Customers to Love Your Biz Using Web 2.0 Tools and Old Fashioned Relationships
Web 2.0, ain’t it great. I even do a training called Web 2.0 Guerilla Branding Training. Everywhere we go online these days, we read all about it. Unfortunately, the marketplace is overwhelmed with experts who forget one thing. Just as faith without works is dead, high tech without high touch is a recipe for disaster.
When the online marketing community t realized that the internet could be manipulated to make it interactive and used as a marketing platform, ergo Web 2.0, on line and other companies began to manipulate it into mass marketing. They took a new style of media marketing and turned it into the old style of mass media radio and TV tactics that people have grown to love to hate like interruption-style marketing in the form of spam and splogs.
What’s a splog?
splogs, are artificially created weblog sites which the author uses to promote affiliated websites or to increase the search engine rankings of associated sites. inauthentic text or merely stolen from other websites. These blogs usually contain a high number of links to sites associated with the splog creator which are often disreputable or otherwise useless websites.
What’s spam? Spam (electronic), unsolicited or undesired bulk electronic messages Wikipedia
None of these tactics builds relationships with people that'll turn them into lifelong, raving fans for you, your product or service. Bill Gates said back in 1995 that the on line companies who combine high tech and high touch will dominate. Web 2.0 is all about people, participation and persuasion. Forget just one of them, and you'll be forgotten about as quickly as your prospect deletes your well planned e-mail or long sales letter intended to persuade.
The bottom line is people will always prefer to buy from those they know, love and trust, like their family and friends. Their loyalty to their family and friends outweighs any kind of differentiation in the marketplace. If you are sincere about building relationships with Web 2.0 you can convert visitors to family and friends by building relationships.
Turning a Visitor into Friend A visitor is someone who finds your blog or podcast through a search, an article or by chance. Understand that if this visitor comes to you through a Google ad or other Web 2.0 type mass marketing they may already be forewarned about you. But if your visitor comes to you through an article, a podcast, a referral, then she will be more receptive to your message. She has come because she wants to learn more. If you provide authentic content with good information then she will be persuaded to subscribe to your list which is your ultimate goal, your ultimate on line relationship builder. She will subscribe because she wants to learn more. When this happens you now have a visitor who feels at home with you and just like your neighbor will come knocking unexpectedly because she feels comfortable with you, so keep your coffee pot on or keep your newsletters and your web site well stocked with fresh, useful information.
Friend to Family (or Customer)
Family is what your visitor becomes the moment she buys from you. Now it's your job to keep her in the family. Well if she’s a close friend or neighbor, you know what you do, you keep the type of sweetener she likes in her coffee and some of those wonderful sweet rolls that she likes. In other words, you make sure that your customer service to her starts the minute that she buys. When your friends become your family, if you take good care of them, they can’t live without you, your product or service, and they buy from you again and again.
Customer to Raving Fan
Herein lays the secret of extended success. When your customer grows to depend on you for whatever she needs, wants and desires--and tells all her friends and family about you, your product and service--you've got yourself a loyal customer for life. A loyal customer over a period of years, what’s that worth to you multiplied by the number of people she sends to you.
When forming these relationships, you must observe the standard rules of courtship and nothing does that like new media in the Web 2.0 world.
New Media Builds, Friends, Family and Raving Fans
Do you really think the phone companies are idiots, the old MCI, Verizon—they all have their version of friends and family networks? In an overcrowded marketplace, there are loads of people out there that need and want friends. They are being inundated with spam but no hint of someone asking for real friendship. Now all of a sudden you enter their world with an offer to “Be My Friend” from a social networking site and the day is looking brighter. Everybody wants to be someone’s friend. It goes way back to not wanting to be picked last for the playground games. When you enter someone’s computer from a social networking site, she sees your smiling face looking right at her from your page your message reaches her very core. She feels instantly connected to you. Mary immediately subscribes to your blog or podcast and becomes one of your regular viewers, watching your show every week to hear what you have to say. All of a sudden one day she buys from you and then she refers a friend and you have a raving fan or two. Why? Because you stuck your Web 2.0 hand out and said, “Hi, I’m the Monday Morning Marketeer and I not only want to be your friend but I want to give you some free tips every Monday on how to help you jump start your business.”
This blog post can be reproduced in its entirety with the following information: © Joanne Quinn-Smith, Monday Morning Marketeer 412-628-5048 Listen at: http://www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web/tscmd/tc/33960Blog: www.marketingmondaymorning.blogspot.com
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