Business Alone

You have heard many times that keeping customers and web site visitors on your site and coming back for more should be one of the top priorities of every online solo business owner.

There are a number of reasons for doing this - one of the most important is that the cost of finding new customers is typically higher than the cost of retaining current customers.

There are other reasons as well. Today we're going to look at just what the business owner can do to keep his paying customers coming back for more!

Regardless of the niche you are in, developing your web site and business philosophy so that you keep this simple principle at the forefront of your execution will pay you great dividends over the course of your business life.

Here are seven top ways to hold on to your customers:

Chances are very good you will rely heavily upon email communications in your new solo business if you use the Internet to conduct your operations.

And contrary to what some folks will tell you, there is no excuse for not understanding what email type you should employ.

Email contact without prior permission, in most instances, is considered SPAM by the majority of today's email experts. It's SPAM (unsolicited and usually unwanted contact) because you are invading someone's personal space and right to privacy.

In a lot of online business situations, email is the lifeline between you and your customers and suppliers.

You don't have face-to-face contact and you may never converse over the phone.

Since your emails are so important, so critical to your communication with both customers and vendors in the business world, it is very smart to pay particular attention to both the substance and presentation of your emails.

All of us get in the habit of becoming lax in the business "chores" that are commonplace and routine. Email is no different.

The ways an auto responder can be employed to automate your business tasks are many. Here are just a few of the typical business uses of an auto responder:

- if an email address is no longer valid, a message can be sent from the mail server that the email is now "undeliverable,"

- if the business changes its email address or URL, a new forwarding address can be sent to those that send mail to the old address,

- if you go on vacation or are otherwise unavailable for a time, your auto responder can alert customers to your absence and when you'll return,

Most profitable Internet business owners will tell you that a consistent, fresh, value-packed email newsletter is one of their key ingredients to success.

But you would be surprised at the number of businesses that don't have one.

Popular excuses for the lack of a newsletter include lack of time to write and mail one, the owner has nothing to say, customers won't read it, the business doesn't want to be confused with a spammer, and the cost of writing and mailing it.

Of course you will never know if a newsletter will be of value to your specific business until you try it, but for many it has proven to be the difference that has allowed the business to thrive.

Why?

Successful Internet business owners know that a consistent, fresh, value-packed email newsletter is one of the best marketing tools at their disposal in terms of both cost effectiveness and customer satisfaction.

Here are some tips that will help a solo business operator create and develop a valuable and profitable newsletter.

1) Before you begin publishing, answer these four questions:
- Who is my perfect customer? (My targeted prospect)
- What do I intend to accomplish? (My purpose)
- How can I be different and unique? (My specialty)
- What do I have to offer? (My personality, experience, skills, etc)

Some solo business owners have experienced great success by marketing their company and products off-line.

That may sound weird, counter-productive, or just plain wrong. You've got to figure that online marketing is the cheapest and most widely reaching form of advertising there is.

Well, I'm certainly not advocating that you abandon your online marketing strategy - that needs to remain intact.

What I would suggest, however, is that you think about all the ways to spread the word about your web site, brand, products, and your business in general - off-line in the physical environment as well.

Before we get to today's post, I want to wish each of our readers a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Take some time off today and enjoy the holiday with your family - I'm going to do just that since I wrote this post yesterday!

When the Internet was new and online business owners were jumping on the ship right and left, there was often the feeling that all a business owner needed to do to have a business was put up a web site, add a product or two, and the sales would begin to flow.

Yes, I'll remind you once again of that worn out phrase that everyone else quotes to describe this erroneous thinking: "if you build it, they will come."

Online business owners now understand that phrase is a lie.

I did a little experiment myself that proved the point to me in very real terms. Two years ago I set up a little web site with it's own domain name, some content, keywords, etc.

I asked visitors to register at the web site (for free) to get my newsletter with lots of great benefits. I even offered a bonus worth a legitimate $300 merely for signing up and there were no other strings attached.

The solo business owner has many tools and resources at his disposal that can leverage his time and automate his business so that he can accomplish much more by himself than would ever have been possible prior to the Internet.

Most business owners that utilize email will tell you that its low cost and "free" fast delivery are the main advantages of using it. But in my mind, at least, there are some other very important reasons why email is the communication medium of choice for the solo business owner.

If you are not using of these email advantages, why not give them a try? They may even be more important resources for your business than the low cost of contacting your customers and prospects.

If, indeed, the Internet is a great information highway with traffic, data, digital goods and services, and communications whizzing back and forth at the speed of light, it would be worth the effort for every business owner to create as many links to that highway as possible.

Think of these links as little roads that feed a tiny portion of this traffic back and forth between your small business and the super highway.

Every business connects itself (or should) to the highway traffic. Some do a great job of it and others don't. Each owner determines for his business, both the number roads leading in and out and the ease with which those roads are found by passers-by that have an interest in this side trip.

Of course the Internet small business has many formats to choose from when advertising its products and services.

I believe using a variety of methods is generally preferable to always relying upon one format. Your customers may tire from the same looking message received repeatedly.

One of the most effective selling formats is the personal letter from you (the small business owner) to the customer. It's a proven strategy that often works better than any other because it's:

(1) personal - most of us are much more likely to buy a product that is personally recommended than one we have no human tie to;

(2) intimate - we feel that a personal letter is not something that would be shared with lots of other people, hence we view it as tailored to our own needs or geared to our own circumstance (even though that may not be the case since the same "personal" letter might be sent to thousands of prospects);

Both online and offline small businesses can create and distribute product and service offerings very cost effectively with coupons that are designed to do all of the following things:

1- Collect the name and contact information of the respondent,

2- Provide an incentive for the user to contact your business,

3- Brand your company and it's products (services) with your unique tag line, logo, and web site URL,

Marketing a small business can be a daunting task for the owner that has no previous marketing experience.

I was in that position many years ago and I remember having a constant struggle to come up with ideas or ways to market my business on a shoestring budget.

Yet, around a holiday it was usually easy to dream up a promotion of one sort or another based on that holiday's theme.

It's pretty easy and natural to promote a New Year's Kickoff, a 4th of July Firecracker Deal, or a Halloween Spooky Special.

List building is one of the greatest keys to establishing a viable and lucrative solo business online.

When you think about it, communicating with your prospects and customers is one of the best and most effective ways to build a relationship with them.

You need the trust and confidence of your customers. If you don't have it, they won't give you money for your products or services, and they will only allow you a short amount of time to prove to them that you are worth dealing with in your niche.

Building a list of prospects, and possibly a different list of buying customers, allows you to make contact with them repeatedly so that you can share your knowledge, products, and advice for their benefit.

A list is simply a data base of customer names and email addresses. It is possible to add additional customer information items (like address, phone number, age, etc) but typically that is only done for your best customers that give you such information as part of an order for your products.

When it comes right down to brass tacks, I would say every Internet business owner should consider herself or himself an information publisher.

It seems to me that all business web site owners need to be publishers of:
a) website information;
b) sales letter copy;
c) site content in the chosen niche;
d) products in digital or hard copy form;
e) blog content;
f) email communications;
g) customer service responses;
h) advertising / marketing copy;
i) articles and press releases;
j) probably other things I'm forgetting about ...

My point is, whether you consider yourself to be an info marketer or not, you really need to pay close attention to your publishing (i.e. putting it out on the net or in emails) and how it can affect your overall business.

All small business owners will be faced with the decision to use less than truthful advertising and promotional strategies in their sales letters, email communications, ads, and other promotional material.

How do I know? It seems to be the way business marketing has evolved on the Internet.

Deceptive practices include all those little white lies, half truths, and marketing tactics that many feel are perfectly legal, excusable, and appropriate in this day and medium.

Some, I know, would question why we are even discussing this topic as they feel anything is game as long as you don't cross the line of outright lying in your presentations.

I don't see it that way.

I believe that Internet marketers has a responsibility to their prospects and customers that includes being upfront, honest, and ethical in everything they publish, say, and do.