To reach any kind of scale in a brief period of time, a launch needs a way to spread. It spreads through replication.  To replicate broadly, a launch requires:

• Access to a broad, influential network
• A receptive audience, and
• A simple message that’s easy to repeat with high fidelity.

There are many kinds of networks available to us.  In fact, Wikipedia tells us this about an emerging discipline known as network science:

Network science is a relatively new and emerging scientific discipline that examines the interconnections among diverse physical or engineered networks, information networks, biological networks, cognitive and semantic networks, and social networks.

The Internet is an information network, capable of creating millions of connections between people located anywhere in the world.  But just because we have the potential to connect worldwide to an enormous audience, doesn’t mean that those connections will actually take place.

To scale up a launch, we must tap into both online and offline social networks – the networks of people who have both influence over and connections to other people (and other networks) who also have influence, so our “launch virus” spreads.

There are many kinds of social networks available to leverage in our launches, including:

• Bloggers
• Customers
• Partners, Alliances, Affiliates and Resellers
• Press
• Analysts
• Subscribers
• Employees
• Associations
• Friends
• Facebook friends
• Twitter followers

Effective launch campaigns deliberately and effectively target which networks are used. The messages are carefully crafted so they are easy to convey and repeat and resonate with the buyer personas in the target market.  For best results, specific buyers are targeted using buyer language instead of product language.

The level of success achieved with a launch campaign is proportional to:

1. The size of the buyer network you can reach

2. How receptive your audience is to the message

3. How easy your message is to convey and repeat, and

4. How much influence you can continue to exert throughout the launch.

This last point is critically important – the ability to sustain your influence, especially with your “Launch List” (the community of potential buyers who are most likely to buy during the launch).

Buyer language usually resonates better and is more likely to be passed on than product language, so it is important to stay on target with your messaging to the audience and steer clear of “product language” and instead focus on buyer interests and needs.

A case in point, during a Harry Potter theme park launch, seven (7) carefully chosen bloggers reached and influenced more than 350 million people – quickly and inexpensively.  The important take away from this example isn’t just the enormous leverage involved – it’s the fact that choosing the right influencers who have the right network connections and influence is the key to getting your message out.  It also helps to have Harry Potter, or some other celebrity or authority figure, on your team!

You probably don’t need to reach 350 million people to have a successful launch.  You may only need to reach 10,000.  The key is figuring out who has the influence that you need to reach those 10,000, and what message will resonate with everyone throughout that network.  Having the proper network strategy will make the difference between your launch being a huge success… or just another morsel for Googlebot to file and forget.

The most important networks of all are the social networks that connect people together; not just anyone, but the people who want to buy your products or whatever you’re launching.   These networks make it possible for an idea or news to spread quickly from one person to another in a variety of ways.

Email and word of mouth used to be primary ways word of something new would spread.  They are still extremely important, but today there are many more available networking avenues.

Of course, word of mouth spreads anywhere people meet and talk; e.g., on the golf course, at lunch and dinner, in meetings, on the phone, via instant messages and text messaging, at church, at a bar, on an airplane, etc.

Today, there are numerous well-organized, Internet-based social networking avenues used on a daily basis by people, including the familiar ones like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, forums, along with other less well-known, niche social networking places.

There are millions of bloggers covering every imaginable niche, market and topic, who can reach large, targeted audiences quickly.  And unlike many of the other venues, bloggers often serve as authorities with their readerships – and are looked upon as “trusted advisors”, who are expected to provide the latest news, best practices and tips for their audience.

Choosing the best messages and then seeding the appropriate social networks can provide your launch with the scale and reach to catapult you into rapid success – assuming you actually have something worthy of a given social network audience’s attention in the first place.

The level of network influence you are able to exert and sustain for your launch is key to how successful it will be and how many sales you will make as a result.  If you do everything else right but fail to push the right network influence buttons, your launch will suffer. So pay close attention to your network influence strategy and have a great launch!

Related posts

• The New Rules of Launch (11)
• It’s good to be King (3)
• The all-important Launch Blog – Some tips for your success (7)
• The 3C’s of Product Launch (1)
• Social Media for Business Is CRAP. Really? (2)
• Psychology of Social Product Launches – Part 1, Social Proof (4)
• Product Launch Manager Interview with Jeffrey Pezzella (2)
• Product Launch 3.0 Sales Process (2)
• New Product Launch Template (2)
• New product launch process and methodology (3)

RECOMMENDED READING

I awoke early yesterday morning to re-runs of Larry King Live and the Glenn Beck show at 4 a.m.  Sometimes fate steers us in the right direction (esp. when we say our prayers the night before – something I try to remember to do).

These days, I can only seem to take about 30 to 60 seconds of Glenn Beck and his erratic, “political historian” stammering and posturing, so I very quickly ended up on CNN – while my brain rebooted after Tex-Mex and margaritas the night before…

Larry King was interviewing Jerry Weintraub, a famous Hollywood producer and serial entrepreneur.  I was soon absorbed and mesmerized by the short stories of Jerry’s amazing success promoting stars like Elvis, Frank Sinatra, George Clooney, John Denver and many rock bands including Led Zeppelin – among so many others.

I could quickly tell from this interview that what I was seeing was merely the tip of an iceberg – one that went much deeper beneath the surface – someone I simply had to know more about…

In the interview with Larry King, Jerry talked about how he learned from his father how to take seemingly regular things and “repackage” them into something special, then promote them effectively to the masses as an “event.  Well, as a product launch guy, this repackaging and event marketing stuff hooked me right away. I definitely had to know more – a lot more…

Jerry talked briefly about how he came back from the brink of death one day, and decided it was time for him to share his life story while he was still able, so he recently published his autobiography.  I was hoping Amazon.com had the Kindle e-book version available for download, so I could check it out while it was still fresh on my mind.

Fortunately, they did.  So I bought the e-book for $12 and downloaded it to my PC moments later (I don’t have an actual Kindle, just the free Kindle for PC and iPhone readers, which I like just fine).  I grabbed another cup of coffee and before I knew it, I looked up and it was almost 9 a.m.

I had already spent 3 and a half hours reading one of the most fascinating success stories around – a kid who went from the Bronx to the top of the world, creating movies like Oceans 11 through 13, Oh God!, The Karate Kid, Vegas Vacation and many others – and who discovered and made stars like John Denver and many others what they became (among hundreds of other success stories).

One of the most important lessons in business and in life Jerry sums up toward the end that is absolutely true:

“Most important, I was never afraid to fail, which meant I was never afraid to try.  I was never afraid to look silly, which meant I was never threatened by a new idea.”

Jerry exemplifies these statements when he describes how he managed to go from being a relative “nobody” to taking Elvis on his first cross-country national tour – and after that six-week tour, became a self-made multi-millionaire and launched his career as a world-class producer.  After being told No, in no uncertain terms, for 364 days straight – every single day by Colonel Tom Parker – he finally got a call back saying Yes – and the rest is history…

I wonder how many of us could believe in ourselves and our vision of what is possible enough to be told no that many days in a row, and wake up the next day, looking forward to being that much closer to getting the Yes we know we need.

I highly recommend you take a moment to download and get your own copy of Jerry’s latest autobiography and learn from his experience, persistence and ability to forge lasting, profitable relationships and sell almost anything.

Believe me, it’s the best $12 investment I have made in a very long time.  I finished my first reading in just two sittings – probably a record for me lately.

One of the things I like most about Jerry is his fearlessness, his belief in himself and an impeccable tenacity for success – traits that are absolutely essential for anyone to succeed in today’s hyper-competitive world.  His life is filled with a series of tremendous successes, along with some failures, that were all predicated on his ability to establish new relationships, and then leverage and monetize those relationships to the maximum extent possible, while at the same time forging real, lasting friendships.

Jerry’s Lifelong Success Formula: (my interpretation)

1. Clarity of Vision - Having clarity of vision around what can and needs to be accomplished (that others often cannot see themselves as clearly)
2. Identifying the Path - Figuring out who holds the keys to the stepping stones for fulfilling that vision
3. Leveraging Relationships – Breaking through all obstacles to establish the relationships with key decision makers and influencers, which provides the necessary leverage to cause and sustain profitable change
4. Communicating a Shared Vision – Making clear, bold statements about what can be done to help the other party accomplish and achieve a shared vision (once in front of the decision maker)
5. Telling Persuasive Stories - Using master storytelling as an effective persuasion tool to sell the vision
6. Packaging – Effective “packaging” – positioning and naming things so they have extremely high perceived value (even when the intrinsic value may be very low)
7. Launching – Turning opportunities into “events” and then promoting those events effectively as a launch
8. Delivering – Doing whatever it takes to actually deliver the promised results as expected
9. Disruptive Innovation – where appropriate, changing the way things are traditionally done by replacing the “old way” with a new, improved approach that better serves customers (business models, distribution models, pricing models, etc.)

It’s easy enough to understand, but a formula that takes courage, relentless persistence and a healthy dose of creativity and a willingness to “do whatever it takes” to succeed and win – that should be every entrepreneur’s credo.

Finally, and perhaps most important, Jerry is a master storyteller.  Stories provide the carrier wave for our messages that people will actually listen to, absorb and internalize – then make decisions upon.

Packaging the story up and then selling it as an “event” is the vehicle for actually delivering the end sales and generating millions in sales.

Much of what Jerry is actually a master at doing is what we now commonly refer to as “launches”.  Instead of launching products or websites, he launches and builds the careers of stars, movies and performers like bands and musicians.

Boy – just when you think you know a lot about something like launches, you find out just how much more there is to learn…  I’d sure like the opportunity to meet Jerry and learn even more about his fascinating journey someday.  I wonder if I can break his record of 364 days?

Related posts

• Story marketing: Why it works and why you should try it (6)
• ALL BUYERS ARE LIARS: Stories we tell ourselves to get what we want (3)
• Your Relationship Development System – Profiting or Costing You? (3)
• Story: Struggling organic farmer saves the family farm (1)
• Psychology of Social Product Launches – Part 3, Storytelling (10)
• It’s good to be King (3)
• How To Create Stories That Sell, Part 2 (2)
• 14 Best-Kept Killer Hook Secrets That Grab Your Audience And Hook Them (7)
• The 7 Rules Bestselling Authors Use To Hook Their Readers (1)
• Storytelling Tweet goes viral overnight (11)

Product Launch Manager Group blog owner and product launch manager Jeffrey Pezzella interviewed me yesterday.  Jeffrey asked a lot of good questions and it ended up being a content-packed interview that lasted almost a hour.

Download the MP3

(this is a 36MB file, so it takes a little time to download and buffer up, so please be patient)

We ended up talking about all kinds of things related to product launches, including corporate style launches vs. online launches, the importance of relationships, the “numbers game” that goes into planning for revenue success and a lot more.

I also discussed WinningWare QuickLaunch briefly, why we developed it and what’s coming next.

Learn more about WinningWare QuickLaunch

Related posts

• The New Rules of Launch (11)
• The 3C’s of Product Launch (1)
• Step-by-step Launch Plan for Web Sites (1)
• Startup Launch Marketing Process (4)
• Product Launch Automation Software with Free Trial Available (3)
• Product Launch 3.0 Sales Process (2)
• New product launch process and methodology (3)
• How to Launch a Product using Social Networks (3)
• The all-important Launch Blog – Some tips for your success (7)
• Psychology of Social Product Launches – Part 2, Proof (1)

The Relationship Development System

In prior posts, I have talked a lot about how important relationships are to making money online and how our sales process needs to include a Relationship Development System.  When a website visitor arrives at our website, blog or reads our article the first time, we are effectively strangers at the onset.  When things are structured properly, this visitor undergoes a series of relationship development stages, as shown below.

Let’s look at a visitor’s online pre-sales relationship and how it develops over time until that first sale is consummated.

Our journey begins with the Awareness phase, where the visitor becomes aware of their need and your product or site as a possible solution or information source. This could involve one or more exposures to our product—through word-of-mouth, social media, search engine ads or results,  radio, TV and the like. This is where your marketing reaches prospects and they go from unaware to an aware state.

For example, we become aware that analog TV signals are no longer available, which causes us to decide it is time to get a new high-definition TV set. We become aware of a need and something triggers us into bringing this TV need into the “foreground” in our life.

High-definition TVs have been around for many years, but for whatever reason they remained in the “background” for many of us—until recently. So, we begin noticing ads for HD TVs. We actively look around at them online and at stores, and we begin discussing them with our friends and family. This is awareness.  These ads and devices have been around for many years, but suddenly we begin to actually take notice of them.

In the next phase, our marketing creates Interest in what we have to offer. Interest results when your marketing grabs the prospects’ attention and often is the direct result of an initial offer (e.g., a money magnet offer) that captures their attention. We must create interest, or we will never get the prospects to progress any further toward buying.

It is very tempting to try and “short-circuit” the process and jump straight to the close… FAIL!  How many times our impatience comes back to bite us.  Good things cannot be rushed – and a sale is a very good thing!

Continuing our HDTV example, our presentation of benefits and features, cool-looking pictures and demo videos trigger increased interest, because we realize we can now watch sports in high-definition, and then the seller really grabs our attention with a great price for a nice HD TV unit. You need to create the same level of incremental interest with your online marketing processes.

Interested prospects become open to learning more about what you have to say and offer. If your messages and product offerings resonate with the prospects, Desire begins to build in their mind. They are now evaluating various aspects of what you have to offer and they now have decided that they “want it” but aren’t yet ready to buy—they still have questions and concerns that you must address.

At this stage, they will likely be involved in various “self-talk” about where they’d put that new HDTV, how they are going to justify spending the money on it, and where that money will actually come from.  It is very important not to disrupt this thought process.

In the next stage, we begin a Bonding process with the prospect. We begin to create strong associations in their minds that bond them to the product. For example, GoDaddy.com uses NASCAR racing and high-profile racers like Danica Patrick as one way of bonding with their target audience. Racing has absolutely nothing to do with domain names, but it has everything to do with bonding and credibility (and sex sells like nothing else through association).

You can bond with your prospects in a variety of ways: by entertaining or amusing them, by giving them free stuff they enjoy and get immediate value from, and by sharing stories they identify with, among other ways.

What you are really doing during the bonding phase is anchoring positive, motivating associations between you, your site and/or product within the prospect’s mind. This is incredibly powerful when done correctly, as it begins to create a “preference” for you and your product vs. the prospect’s alternatives.

Remember that metaphorical “Bridge of Trust” across the “Chasm of Doubt” we talked about earlier? In the next phase, your prospect will reach a critical state of Trust for you—at least enough to consider buying from you. Everything you have done up until now has either created trust, eroded trust, or had no impact on trust development at all.

Avoid any marketing that causes suspicion or detracts from your prospects’ trust in you. For example, have you ever received an email from a marketer where the email subject line says something designed to grab your attention and get you to open that email? So, you open it. Inside the email, the content has absolutely nothing to do with the subject line and there’s some vain attempt to bridge from that subject line to the actual email content.

How do you suppose this makes your prospects feel?  When it happens to me, I feel tricked. Tricking your prospects is not a way to build a trusting relationship!  In fact, it says you care more about getting your way (making that sale) more than you do about your prospective customer.  This is not lost on most people.

Instead, our actions need to build trust and reinforce that we are trustworthy. Many aspects of our marketing can act together so that prospects begin to trust us.

Creating trust is a complex topic. Fortunately, there are many proven ways to develop trust and help your prospects across the Chasm of Doubt.

At some point, it is time to pitch the prospect. Now that they desire our product, have bonded with us and prefer our product, and trust us enough to do business with us – then we can close the sale.

So, you enable your prospect to engage with your online sales process as a buyer. We call this the Activation phase, because the prospects are now actively entering a buying mode. They decide to invest some of their time and actively pursue a solution.

Various triggers can activate your prospects. Before going deeper into activation, let me ask you something. What do suppose would happen if your prospects hadn’t bonded with you and didn’t yet trust you and you tried to force activation too soon?

Once they are activated into a buying motion, you’d just be yet another option for the prospect to choose from.

Moreover, if they trust someone else more than they trust you, they will probably make their purchase elsewhere.

They might actually look at and consider you as an alternative, but their fears and concerns about doing business with a stranger or someone less trustworthy could easily cause them to steer away once they are engaged in an active buying motion.

Have you ever bought something from Amazon.com without looking for a better price elsewhere?  There’s usually a better price if you just look.  But we don’t usually look, do we?  It’s because we have bonded with Amazon.com as a brand and prefer to deal with a known quantity vs. going through the entire RDS process as a buyer with someone new. And Amazon.com does a great job making it better to stick with them, with customer reviews and even access to those cheaper 3rd party deals through Amazon!

We can trigger activation of prospects by making them an offer they simply cannot refuse. This offer is compelling enough to overcome “procrastination inertia.” Procrastination occurs when people avoid taking action on something they know they want to do or even should do, but continue to delay for various reasons.

They might say (in their minds or to their spouse): “I’m just not sure.” “It’s a lot of money.” “Maybe I’ll find a better one if I keep looking.” “I’m too busy right now” or “I’ll do it tomorrow.”

When you activate your prospects, you essentially light a fire under them to take action now. You give them multiple reasons to act now; e.g., discount pricing, time-limited extras/bonuses, special financing terms, limited quantities, and such.

This is a critical moment.  At this point, the prospect is serious about buying from you, but very likely still has questions and possibly some objections.  It is important they be able to find answers to the remaining, burning questions and get them answered completely.

Activation can create buying momentum that is sometimes sufficient to overcome our prospect’s procrastination inertia – and possibly even enough to get them to dismiss their remaining questions and tell themselves something like – “it comes with a money-back guarantee – what do I have to lose?”.

Activation causes them to begin actively going through your sales process. During activation, your prospects become “buyers”. They begin looking at their options and are about to make a purchase – from you.

The online selling process answers their questions, overcomes their objections, and motivates them to buy from us and to buy right now, before they change their mind, or the phone rings, or the dinner bell rings…

The prospects then decides to buy, and they press that magical button.

That single click represents their buying decision (Buy Now button, Add to Cart button, Join Now button).

Once the buyer completes the checkout process, the Sale is consummated and you now have a new customer.

The Relationship Development System (RDS) is a proven process that increases online sales conversion rates.

Why do you suppose long form sales pages are structured the way they are?  Because they are designed to take the reader on a rapid RDS “journey” through the entire process.  However, in reality it often takes several visits to a typical website and sales page before a buying decision is made – unless the RDS process has taken place beforehand (via email, a blog, a video or some combination of RDS actions).

Without a functioning RDS in place, the best you can probably expect in direct-selling of visitors to your site is perhaps 1% to 2%. With a high-performance RDS in place, your aggregate conversion rates could well reach 5% to 10% (or more when prospects are “referred” by someone they already trust).  This is why an auto-responder follow-up system is so critical to every online business’ profitability.

Of course, developing and nurturing relationships takes time. Fortunately, this can all be automated so it is taking place 24/7. For the most part, it is a hands-free set of activities managed by the auto-responder, except for adding new offers and occasionally freshening (and testing and optimization).

Whatever combination of technologies you choose to use, follow the RDS steps more deliberately and you will make more sales.  I might suggest an “RDS Audit” of your existing selling process – to identity and fill any holes or sticking points that may be present.  Of course, you should always A/B split-test any change you make and measure the actual effects over time.

You will know when your RDS is working because the sales ticker will speed up and that “cha-ching” sound will happen more often – and your bank balance will go up more often than down (if you control your spending).

In 2008, I documented this entire process in The Online Leadership Guide.  There is also a free 5-part mini-course available where you can learn more.

I hope you have an effective RDS in place for each of your products and sites.  If not, what are you waiting for?

Related posts

• It’s good to be King (3)
• When I Stop Talking, You’ll Know I’m Dead: Useful Stories (9)
• Psychology of Social Product Launches – Part 2, Proof (1)
• Crossing the Chasm of Doubt (1)
• Groundhog Day Website Marketing (7)
• Email Lists – The key to sustainable online profitability (4)
• B2B Lead Generation (0)
• The New Rules of Launch (11)
• The importance of the campaign revenue goal (5)
• Product Launch Manager Interview with Jeffrey Pezzella (2)

In Part 1 of the three part series on the Psychology of Social Product Launches we discussed the first key element: Social Proof.  In this post, let’s examine the next key element: Proof.

Proof consists of evidence that can be used to demonstrate the truth about something.  This evidence convinces someone about what is true and what is not.  In marketing, we see many forms of evidence used to assert proof that what we say is true.

Since buyers realize we are selling something, their default assumption is that we could be stretching the truth or even lying to make the sale.  And since online buyers are often not dealing directly with another human being they can already know or feel they can trust, there is an inherent lack of trust at first.

This trust gap must be bridged in order to attract buyers and make more sales. This is where Proof comes in.

Coming up with an effective plan for providing proof is critically important, especially when launching anything new or selling to someone new (who hasn’t bought from you before).

It’s even more important if you are a new company without established brand recognition. One of the reasons established brands enjoy so many advantages is that consumer already know and trust the brand. The buyer may, therefore, be willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the seller.

There are many forms of evidence that you are telling the truth and are trustworthy that people may accept, including:

• Independent reviews by someone the buyer knows and trusts; e.g., bloggers, testing labs, magazines, consumer agencies, etc.
• Free trials that enable a buyer to try the product themselves before buying
• Interviews with experts who have first-hand experience with what’s being launched
• Videos and demonstrations showing actual results
• Testimonials and interviews with real people who are already getting the intended results (not paid promos)
• Specific numbers, data, charts or statistics from a respected 3^rd party
• Credentials that certify your qualifications; e.g., PhD, CCIT, Certified Platinum Reseller, etc.
• Endorsements by celebrities, recognized experts and authorities.

There is no substitute for providing proof that what you say is true.  Social proof complements and amplifies actual proof, but is not a substitute for real proof.

Unfortunately, it is tempting to just assume that people will trust what you are saying is true, but the reality is, people are trained not to trust strangers.  And whether we like it or not, when we first meet someone (or their website), they are considered a stranger – unless someone we know and already trust has referred us.

Don’t assume people will trust you or what you have to say.  Instead, have a deliberate Proof Plan that provides sufficient evidence so that newcomers will be convinced you and your site are indeed trustworthy.

We provide our clients with a number of services that help build trust, develop a relationship between buyer and seller and generate improved sales results both during and after launches.  Learn more about these solutions.

Related posts

• It’s good to be King (3)
• Your Relationship Development System – Profiting or Costing You? (3)
• Crossing the Chasm of Doubt (1)
• Psychology of Social Product Launches – Part 1, Social Proof (4)
• Product Launch Manager Interview with Jeffrey Pezzella (2)
• New Rules of Attention: Customers Are Now In Charge (6)
• When I Stop Talking, You’ll Know I’m Dead: Useful Stories (9)
• Twitter Research Formula (16)
• Top 5 Product Launch Success Factors (and Pitfalls to avoid) (10)
• The Truth About How To Use Twitter in a Product Launch (11)

Under the old rules, marketers use shouting and interruption techniques to reach buyers and get their attention, and it just doesn’t work well anymore.  The outbound marketing techniques that worked so well in the 1980’s and 1990’s don’t work anymore because people have ways to filter the advertising out.

Buyers now use caller ID, Tivo, email filters, RSS subscriptions and other techniques to filter unwanted interruptions by advertisements and unsolicited sales calls.  Turning up the volume louder only causes people to tune out further and look for new ways to block you and ignore you in the future.  The lonely marketer with his little megaphone no longer controls us.

What buyers want today is a relationship – and great content. They want to know more about you and your people, and they want to know that you are listening to them – they actually want to engage in a conversation with you.  Since they’re doing most of their shopping and more of their business online, they want to know more about who’s on the other side of transactions – before they buy.

Unfortunately, when many marketers started using the Internet and Web for their marketing, they brought their usual interruption-based, broadcast methodology with them. This resulted in unsolicited emails, banner ads, pop-ups and other forms of interruption.

Fortunately, many of these same marketers have come to realize they cannot generate a profit with only a 0.1 to 0.5 percent (or less) response rate.  People have become very proficient at filtering the interruptions out of their life, because we have to in order to get anything else done.

If you continue to use interruption-based techniques as your primary means of marketing online, you will fail and you will lose money (and customers). Today, customers have too many choices to put up with annoying popups, banner ads, unsolicited emails and other forms of marketing harassment.

Instead, people use their available time to check email and open only the ones that interest them, surf the web to find interesting and useful content, and interact on Twitter and Facebook. We use Google to search for what we want to know more about.  We get educated about topics of interest on sites like Wikipedia.

We spend time downloading and listening to our favorite music, watching interesting videos on YouTube and many other sites.

We download podcasts from iTunes and other podcast sites to our iPhone and take them with us, making productive use of travel and commute time.  We work offline, as well as online.

The only way to reach us is by providing competitive content that’s more interesting than our other alternatives.

Today, we pay attention to whatever we choose – and certainly not anything that advertisers try to force upon us.  If you’re advertising and shouting, we’re just not listening – we’re ignoring you. And unless you appeal to us in the right ways, the right places and at the right time, we’ll just continue ignoring you.

Advertisers are no longer in charge – buyers are in charge. You can’t just buy our time and command us to pay attention – at least not online (and the offline methods aren’t working so well now, either). And this phenomenon is just as prevalent in B2B as it is with consumers.  Just because you’re selling to business people, don’t kid yourself – we’re people, too.

People are consumers first and foremost, and business people second. Our consumer behaviors determine how we prefer to look for and find what we want – and how we make most of our decisions.

Instead of bucking these inescapable trends, smart marketers have learned to update their canvassing and branding strategies.  Instead of interrupting people and either shouting louder or jolting people to gain their attention, these marketers figured out if you simply talk about what prospects are actually interested in, they’ll gladly pay attention.  What a concept!

And it works.  The key to gaining people’s attention is giving them great content that’s interesting, engaging and useful.  People love good content and they will go out of their way to actually find it.  That’s right. Instead of broadcasting and interrupting everyone to find those chosen few who actually have an interest, you attract qualified prospects to you.

Bloggers know that content is king and the only reason their audience shows up is because the content is worthy of the reader’s time and interest.  And Twitter provides yet another direct way to find relevant content, as well as poke your head into someone’s social network tent from time to time and see what’s happening.

Blogging platforms like WordPress have made it so quick and easy to become an information publisher than anyone can do it. In fact, WordPress is so robust and flexible now that it’s often the best way to build a new website, very inexpensively and quickly.

Millions of people are now information publishers. People are now so busy socializing, publishing and consuming interesting content and taking care of business online, they no longer have the time to deal with interruptions – and when they do get interrupted, instead of paying attention, they get angry and look for ways to block future interruptions (by hitting the SPAM button in email, blocking the user and making a mental note to avoid this time-waster from now on).

Welcome to the age of “inbound marketing”.  Your mission, should you choose to accept it is to join the conversations taking place in your marketplace and add some value, so you’ll be noticed and buyers who are looking for you can actually find you.

Now, having made the case for inbound marketing, there is certainly still a place for outbound marketing.  It’s just that marketers need to choose the right balance in their marketing mix to ensure both routes to customers are used properly. And be careful not to “cross the streams” – don’t use traditional outbound techniques with social networking, for example.

Instead of “driving” people to take action (the old marketing vernacular), we now “invite” people and “attract” them to join us and become a part of our launch.  In this way, the majority of our time and energy shifts from “getting the word out” to building a relationship with those who are actually interested in and excited about our launch – and delivering high-quality content for them.

Inbound marketing is a bit like going fishing. To catch fish, you must use the right bait and go fishing in the right places – where the fish hang out.  And if you locate fish that are feeding, you catch a lot more fish.

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Here’s a few excerpts from an excellent post by Brian Carroll, CEO at InTouch and author of Lead Generation for the Complex Sale and the Start with a Lead blog.  For more information on the source article, check out the Lead Generation Checklist blog post.

In this particular post, Brian summarizes the 6th in an an 8-part series called the “Lead Generation Checklist”, a comprehensive approach for helping organizations optimize their lead generation processes.  Brian outlines a complete system for companies to use in generating leads, as discussed below:

To be successful at generating leads for a complex sale, marketers can’t rely on one specific tactic but rather they need to leverage a portfolio of channels. To illustrate, I created a mind map of what multi-modal lead generation looks like (click image to enlarge).

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In the traditional sales world, sales people used to use a Rolodex (remember those?), business cards and a call log – and of course, their telephone.  Many still do today.  Of course, modern CRM systems have automated this process nicely.  The Rolodex was the “list” back then… today, CRM software has largely displaced the Rolodex.

In my last several blog posts, I stressed the importance of building a relationship with your list of subscribers.  Don’t have a list of subscribers?

Oops!  You probably aren’t turning a profit online if you aren’t building and nurturing your list – are you?

Today I had a nice discussion with a work at home mom about her attempts to make money online.  She had invested around $5,000 in affiliate marketing and advertising based on some “make money” course she saw on TV… well, I’m always saddened to hear these kinds of stories, when good people are taken advantage of by scams or incomplete sales processes…

I explained to her that the only way to turn a consistent profit in an online business is with a list of customers, subscribers and prospects.  The reasons for this is actually quite simple.  It’s simple economics.

It costs too much to advertise and bring a visitor to your website.  On the first visit to a website, 99% are probably not yet ready to buy whatever you’re selling.  Well, it’s impossible to turn a profit when only 1% or fewer people buy from you, given the cost of bringing visitors to your site.

Instead, it’s a proven fact that in order to run an advertising-driven, profitable online business, you must build a list of subscribers – who you then can develop a relationship with over time and market to them on an ongoing basis.

It seems simple enough, yet I’m still amazed at how many small business owners and entrepreneurs don’t do this properly.  There’s tons of great information freely available on how to develop landing pages that get visitors to register and there’s certainly no shortage of email auto-responders to choose from (arguably there’s too many of them to choose from today).

So what’s the issue?  Why are so many companies and people starting out still missing this critical piece of the online profit puzzle?

Perhaps it’s because they lack the content – the so-called “money magnet” needed to attract the right kinds of people to register and subscribe in the first place.  Money magnet is a term that’s been used in a variety of ways, but I first heard the term applied to online marketing by Frank Kern, a very experienced and successful Internet marketer.

A money-magnet is anything you can give away for free or nearly free that attracts the right kinds of prospective customers to register and become a subscriber.  Now I realize this is online marketing 101 stuff, but like I said, there’s so many people who are skipping right past the basics to put a gorgeous looking website up and then wonder why it’s not making money, that apparently it needs to be stressed more.

I outlined the entire process for building a profitable online business in a post earlier this year called “A PROVEN ONLINE SUCCESS FORMULA“, where I go into quite a lot of detail on proper goal setting and putting the necessary online selling machinery in place.

Incidentally, all of this is spelled out in even greater detail in the Online Leadership Guide, which comes with some very cool free tools and a mini-course you should check out (it’s very affordable, at only $19.95).  Incidentally, this is a decent example of a money magnet and landing page.

So if you’ve tried Google AdWords or other online advertising and are disappointed with the lack of sales results, if you weren’t using a proper landing page with an enticing money-magnet free offer for your visitors to register and learn more, go back and fix your front-end “lead generation” process and start building your list.

Several earlier posts discuss the importance of developing a relationship with your subscribers, giving them even more value for free, then eventually *some* of them will be ready to buy – and when they are ready, some will buy from you.

Done properly, your subscriber and customer list become your more valuable online business asset – much like that Rolodex was to a salesperson in the offline world.  Invest in building your list and the relationship with those on your list, and I promise you’ll be amazed at how much it will help you.

If you’ve been in business for a while as a small business, chances are you already have a “list” of sorts – a mailing list in the making inside your Gmail contact manager, Outlook or other mail client.  This is, in effect, your mailing list – all your contacts.  If you’re like me, you have hundreds of business cards squirreled away in a desk drawer somewhere.

Getting these entered or scanned into your contact manager will begin to round out your business contacts.  Keep in mind that these folks would probably accept a personal email from you, but would consider advertising or other forms of direct promotion as spam, so be careful how you use these resources.

If you are a more established medium to large corporation, then you most likely have a corporate CRM system, which is a primary list source for you.  You also probably have lists scattered all over the place and you may need to do some list consolidation, de-duping and cleansing.  It’s well worth the effort, as these lists are pure gold when used properly with a focused email marketing strategy.

Finally, keep in mind that one of your best sources for lists is leveraging lists of your partners through cooperative marketing campaigns, whereby your partners promote your offer to their lists, bringing lots of qualified traffic to your landing page and building your targeted list.

Ultimately, you’ll need to break out from your core contacts and build focused lists of prospects in each of your target markets.  It does take time, but done properly, it is well worth the effort and investment.

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It’s been said that on the Internet “Content is king.” Well, if content is king, then relationships go cha-ching!

Of course, cha-ching is the sound of the cash register ringing—the sound of making money.

Another popular online marketing adage is “The money is in the list”—meaning if you have a list of prospects and customers, the money is in farming the list.

In reality, the “Money is in the relationships,” including relationships that are embodied within mailing lists.

No relationship = no money.

Great relationships = great money.

These “Circles of Trust”, as illustrated at the top of this post, are where the real money is made. Get inside one of these major circles, and you’re in the money.  And the more of these circles you become a part of, the easier it becomes.

Tapping into these circles of trust is probably the biggest untapped potential for social networks to create tangible value for online businesses.

One of the fastest and most reliable ways to make money online is to build relationships and then turn them into money.  Sounds simple enough…

RELATIONSHIPS = MONEY

For example, let’s say you have a friend or business associate that has a newsletter and blog in your target market. Let’s assume this person has built a following of 30,000 newsletter subscribers and 20,000 regular blog readers per month.

These aren’t uncommon numbers on the Internet; in fact, these are relatively small compared to many people I know personally.

So, you convince this person that it would be in her subscribers’ best interest to know about your new product. As an added incentive, you agree to pay her a 20% commission on every sale you make from her subscriber base and blog. Never mind exactly how we will track those commissions (it is easy) for now.

I am going to use this concept of a “Trust-O-Meter” (below) to depict how much trust a prospect has developed in us. The following Trust-O-Meter shows how much our associate’s audience trusts her:

Like a thermometer, the Trust-O-Meter represents the level of trust and relationship strength, in a simplistic way, so we can conceptualize it better.  As we see above, our friend’s audience not only trusts her, they like her.  We might even consider extending the scale further to the right by adding “Respected” (not shown here).

Why Affiliates and Bloggers Are Trusted

Continuing the affiliate example above, since most of her audience has been with her for some time, they have not only developed a high degree of trust in her, but they also like her. Going beyond trusted to liked is a sure way to make more sales—a lot more sales.

So, we were introduced by our friend and associate to her audience. What is our Trust-O-Meter reading with them at the start?

Because we were introduced by a person the audience (those on the affiliate‘s list) both trusts and likes, we get the benefit of the doubt and begin in a semi-trusted state with her audience.

We will have to earn the rest of their trust…

Together, you and your friend come up with a strategy for communicating and involving the subscribers:

• An initial email and blog entry that introduces you to her community
• A free teleconference where she interviews you about a hot topic of interest
• A recording of the free teleconference posted on the blog site and a brief email note sent to the subscriber list
• A free giveaway item you provide that is relevant to her audience
• A “special offer,” a time-limited discount on buying your product!

Assuming your product can interest the majority of the 50,000 audience your associate has just introduced you, guess what just happened from the above steps?

First, a foundation of trust and respect existed between your associate and her subscribers and readers. Second, she introduced you to them. You are no longer considered a stranger, so you instantly became semi-trusted.

Next, your free teleconference gave those who attended an opportunity to learn firsthand what kind of person you are and to ask you questions and see how you responded. In effect, you became an authority who is operating at nearly the same level as your associate, and perhaps even at a higher level in your particular area of expertise.

Incidentally, everyone who actually registered for and attended that teleconference just became qualified leads for your product, since they invested some time with you.

Next, everyone else who listens to the recorded teleconference audio also trusts you more (assuming you didn’t blow it during the interview by trying to sell something!) Notice how you have moved up in the Trust-O-Meter!

Next, you gave away some of real value to her audience. This shows what a stand-up kind of person you are, someone who cares and is trying to help.

Finally, she pitches the special offer for your product to the subscribers and audience. In this pitch, your friend is effectively endorsing you and your product, which confers an even greater amount of her trust equity onto you.

I call this “transitive trust,” since her audience now implicitly trusts you primarily because you have been endorsed and approved. Why do you think companies pay so much to get celebrities to endorse their products?  Because they are both trusted and liked by so many.

Now, let’s run some numbers to put this example of ours into the proper perspective.

Out of 50,000 subscribers, only 50% are even mildly interested in what you have to say or offer them, leaving 25,000 potential prospects.

By the time she makes these 25,000 the offer, around 40% have enough interest and familiarity to open the email and learn more (This is your email “open rate.”) That is 10,000!

Out of those 10,000, about 25% click through to get more details on this special offer— that is 2,500 qualified prospects that now show up at your website (instead of her blog).

Let’s assume your offer is truly special and motivating to the buyers who have an immediate need and budget, and now trust you enough to buy from you. Let’s assume that 20% end up buying your product over the next 30 days as a result of this campaign.

So you make 500 sales! About 1% of her total subscriber base ended up buying your product. Not bad for a brief campaign with this associate of yours. Let’s say your product sells for $100. You just generated $50,000 in sales.

Let’s say your product sells for $995. You just generated $497,500 in sales!  Now you are talking!

What just happened here? You went from zero to half a million in sales and 500 new customers in a matter of a few weeks. That is what happened. What other business do you know of where those kinds of results are possible?  It happens somewhere on the Web every single day.

The truth is, this happens in online businesses all the time. In fact, I’ve seen product launches orchestrated with multiple partners who have large subscriber bases sell many thousands of units in less than 24 hours—generating millions of dollars in just hours.

All of this is only possible when you have the right relationships in place.

Remember what I said:  Relationships go cha-ching! It’s so true.

And, it’s good to be King!

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TRUST

The number one reason people don’t buy from us online (besides price and no need) is the fact that we’re strangers and they don’t know us and don’t trust us.

We’re all taught from childhood not to trust strangers. This carries over into business, because most of us have been burned at one time or another by someone we didn’t know.

The old saying that “trust must be earned” is very true.

Big brands like Amazon.com or EBay do not face this same barrier, as they’ve already earned their trust in the market. Unless you have the wind of an established brand blowing behind you, you will certainly have to face and overcome this trust issue. Even if you have a brand, it may not be enough to carry you, especially in new markets.

The other reason people do not believe or trust you is because they realize you are trying to sell them something. In addition, they often have developed an instinctive distrust for sales people because of experiences buying things (and being “hard sold” on things that turned out not to be in their best interest or of value to them).

Lack of trust and belief is probably the single biggest cause of online selling failure (probably offline, too). Fortunately, you can do plenty about this.

When people do not trust or believe us, there is a gap or chasm between us and them. Notice my use of the term “us and them” here. They do not trust us.

To maximize our online sales, we must change this “us vs. them” perspective.  We do this by building an online relationship – that eventually blossoms into a customer relationship.

Every relationship begins with a Chasm of Doubt between the two parties. This chasm is often filled with fears, anxieties, questions, misperceptions, and other forms of doubt.

There are those risk-takers who will simply leap right across this chasm, but more often than not, they are the exception instead of the rule.

To attract the big, mainstream part of almost any market, we must convince risk-averse people that they can safely do business with us.

Consider the following picture of the chasm.  How many people will put themselves at risk to jump across it?

It is as if we are standing on one side of the canyon or a large gorge, and our prospect is on the other side looking across at us.

He can see us and hear us but isn’t ready to try to jump across this dangerous-looking chasm to join us on the other side, where we can help.

Yet to sell to him, we must somehow help him across this Chasm of Doubt onto our side, where we can have productive conversations about his desires and his needs and how we can best help and serve.

So how are we going to help our prospects cross to our side?

By building a metaphorical Bridge of Trust across the Chasm of Doubt – by removing the perceived risks of being on the same side with us – and avoiding the risky-looking jump we see here.

This “chasm” has been written about before, so this isn’t really new.  Remember Jeffrey Moore’s famous “Crossing the Chasm”?  Another place I saw this concept being applied to email marketing was Michael Cheney, an accomplished Internet Marketer, who portrays this chasm in his River of Doubt metaphor.

To get across this famous chasm, we must build a  ”Bridge of Trust” and get our prospects to start walking across the bridge to reach us on the other side –  one-step at a time.

You might be wondering: what can we use to build such a bridge?

Trust is built one step at a time.

It begins by being honest and sincere about helping the prospects get the results and achieve the positive outcome they seek.

Each step of the bridge must be built. We provide the prospects with something that causes them to consider us as trustworthy.

They then take a step closer to being on our side of the Chasm of Doubt.

Here are some examples.

We offer the prospect something valuable for free (perhaps a free offer that attracted them to us  in our original advertisement), and then we deliver it to them.

We ensure they will be satisfied with what we give them. Gift giving has long been a good way to help build a relationship, and it is no different online.

Next, we give them something else that is completely unexpected for free, like a free video, report, or something else even more useful.  These gifts must not be self-serving, with embedded sales messages, links to buy your product or service, etc.  Real gifts aren’t Trojan horses – they’re honest to goodness useful, valuable things that can be appreciated.

By giving useful, free stuff to our prospects, we are accomplishing several important steps:

• We’re demonstrating that we are trustworthy by trying to help them
• We’re proving that we are interested in them and their needs
• We’re showing them that we actually do have something valuable to offer them
• We’re helping them along the path toward solving the ultimate problem (our product can fully resolve)
• We’re staying in front of them and keeping our company/product in the foreground (vs. not following up with them at all and allowing them to slip into the ether).

Another way to gain their trust is to confide in them by letting them in on something special, telling them a secret, or even sharing something personal with them. When people confide in you, they are signaling that they trust you. Therefore, you should trust them in return.

Think of all the ways you would go about building a relationship with someone and evaluate whether that same approach could work in building bonds of trust with your prospect.

Sometimes it is easy to forget all the stuff we learned when selling to people in the offline world—how our sales people go about their process of selling.

It begins by establishing rapport, finding common ground and establishing some nominal amount of trust that the sales person has your best interest at heart.

It is no different online.  Our brand (if we are an established company) helps to bridge the trust gaps somewhat.  If you’re like most small businesses, you don’t yet have an established brand in the eyes of your prospect, so that’s not going to help.

Instead, we must invest the time and effort required to develop the relationship and bonds of trust with our market. Then when our email arrives in her inbox, she will open it and actually read it more often than not.  When we recommend something, that recommendation will be taken seriously and not pre-judged as just another sales pitch.

So if developing these relationships is this straightforward, why don’t more companies do it?  Because it takes time, work and a sincere interest in our market and customers.  It takes doing things that aren’t in our own selfish interests and instead investing our time for someone else.  And that’s not nearly as much fun as building more stuff to sell…

So the next time you’re wondering what you can do to increase sales in your market, step back and ask yourself this question.

Which side of the chasm is my market waking up on today?

Related posts

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• How Successful Email Marketing Is Done (2)
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