And this is such a goofy simple thing, which is funny because if you are not getting people who want to join you I can promise you that you are somehow making things just way too complicated.
I get quite a bit of traffic to my sites and I get a decent amount of opt-in leads.
I am certainly not one of these, “Build as big of a list as possible by giving away a bunch of free crap so that I can sell them every affiliate product under the sun…” typs of guys.
My leads, I find, tend to be super-qualified.
Now, there is something to be said for both directions I suppose, but I do tend to focus my attention on the particular network marketing opportunity that I am promoting. So, there are some guys who just build a huge list and market the hell out of that list, making most of their money from the sales of affiliate products, software to automated various marketing tasks and so fourth, and I have done a lot of affiliate marketing as well, but just as a matter of fact at this time I don’t happen to be heavily engaged in such a thing.
But the point is that you could think if this in terms of two very different internet marketing styles.
One being that of leads, leads, leads, leads, and more leads,.. each lead is not very qualified and you really don’t have much direct communication with each lead but you have a whole lot of leads and though the percentage of them joining your primary business may be less than 1% that is okay because you have so many damn leads coming in.
Nothing wrong with this approach at all. I have done this approach. It works. It is a different type of “work” from the next approach. I mean, just the minutes that you are spending doing it tend to involve a different type of activity.
The other approach (these are just general divisions here) would, I suppose, be a more “traditional” network marketing approach on the internet, and does tend to be what I enjoy the most. This would be not so much worried about getting 100+ “not very qualified” leads every single day, but maybe getting even as little as 2 to 5 leads which are extremely interested in working with me and who call me, or when they opt in to my list the do so asking questions which let me know quite clearly that they are really ready to join.
This is who I would rather spend time talking to, rather than making 50 phone calls every day to a bunch of leads who maybe just opted in because they wanted the free crap I was giving away.
So, it would seem that I just use the internet, audio, video, copy writing, to replace the time I would have used for offline advertising and in-person presentation (usually in groups) a few years ago. There are probably lots of people who sponsor way more people than I do (at 15 to 25 per month), but in reality I also work only maybe 3 to 5 hours per week on it, and most of that is spent returning calls to people who have called me. So, what is the point to all this?
Well, it just leads into this goofy simple little thing that you can do to increase the number of leads that are joining your business, but it is more of a traditional approach of actually getting into communication with the individual and getting to know them…you know, “networking”.
This would be in contrast to complete automation and 1000 leads per day.
This is more of a “Hey, how’s your Mom and them?” approach.
So, if you can wrap your mind around the idea of keeping it super-simple and in terms of just introducing yourself to someone and getting to know them, understanding that this is really what is important because people who know you, and like you, and trust you are going to be the ones joining you then this might be productive for you.
It really only has one prerequisite and that is that your contact form on your lead capture page asks for both first and last name.
But here it is: Look at your entire list of opt-ins and for all the ones that have first and last name simply search for them on Facebook, MySpace, LinkeIn, etc. and add them as a friend and send them a little message letting them know that they had requested “such and such” from you on whatever date and you just wanted to say “Hello” and see connect a bit.
Pretty darn easy.
Maybe too easy because I really don’t know of too many people who do this.
I can tell you that people are about 100X more likely to click a link and visit a video or one of your webinars, or blog posts, etc. if they know you. Well, what better way to get to know someone ( and what could be easier ) than hooking up with them on a network that shows you all their likes and dislikes, and most likely what kind of business they are in, and in many cases allows you to see exactly what they are trying to do for marketing, and so on? Realized that almost everyone using networks such as Facebook to try and market their opportunity are simply spamming people’s profile walls, and blasting out a bunch of spam email pitches for their opportunity.
There really are very few who are actually originating live, sincere communication with the intention of getting to really know what that other person is about. I wouldn’t even worry about brining up my business unless they ask me about it, or they appear to be ready and willing to receive the information. From my viewpoint this is really what “networking” is. Automation, and PPC, and internet sales funnels are cool and I use them and such but in reality the entire point of all that stuff is simply to allow people who are interested to get to know you, and like you, and trust you. Well, it can be done one at a time. You might be surprised at what a response you would get doing it that way.
You know 10 years ago, that’s all we had and we made it go right but we had to do it in person!
Anyway, hope you find some value or help in the above. Let me know if you experience some success with it if you decide to work with this approach.
Tags: conversion
I enjoyed reading this, Alan. That happens to be the style that I enjoy myself. Hate selling; love relational stuff. Thank you for sharing!