Sunday, December 3, 2006

Ten Golden Ways To Attract Prospects To Your Business And Have Them Patronize You As Life Time Customers!

The most challenging aspect of any business, be it online or offline, is to attract prospects (would be customers) irrespective of the nature of the business. Equally challenging is keeping these prospects as life time customers, which is the most important thing any business really desire because, when it does, the bank account swells up! Nonetheless, while others have cracked this code of profitability in business majority are still struggling with little or no sales.
However, if you could adopt the following ten golden rules, you will attract prospects to your business like swarm of bees and they would keep on coming back. They would become your life time customers and this translates to more money for you. Guaranteed!
Remember the ability to attract and retain customers determines the success or otherwise of your business. If you have made up your mind to turn around your business for utmost patronage and profit, then you adopt these 10 golden rules that have the capacity to boost your business by more than 100%.

1. Determine Who Your Prospects Are or Would Be And Where They Are And How To Get To Them.
This is very important and everybody seems to be aware of it but how many are actually taking the pains to work this out? You might ask yourself why do I need to bother myself about who are going to be my prospects, can’t I just reel out my service or product to the public? After all, I am passionate about my product or service and I know people would love it because it is such a great service or product. The answer is absolutely NO! Because if you do, you will eventually frustrate yourself when little or no person buy your product! Why? Foremost, there is no way you could create a product or service that would meet the need of the general public. Secondly, you are not knowledgeable in all area; remember no man is a fountain of knowledge.
So the first thing you need to do is to identify the segment or part of the public that would benefit immensely from your business. Are they in the lower cadre of the society or are they at the top echelon, are they adults or children? You need to know their buying behaviour and who make the buying decisions in their lives. What pains are they going through that your product or service would alleviate? What is their passion that your business could fulfil? Where do they reside, visit or have past time? Talking about past time, how do they spend theirs? All these question when properly answered and written down would not only guide you to design and package your product or service in such a way that it would meet the needs of your prospects but it would make them sought after what you have to offer.
But then, you must know how to reach them or how they could reach you otherwise you will be the only person that knows about your product. Could you access or reach them through phone, e-mail, search engine etc? Once you know this then you can take your product or service to where your prospects are.

“Reaching your prospects” or “your prospects reaching (looking for) you” are two different concepts that have different results! The former could bring up about suspicious, doubts and fears on the part of your prospects because you have probably reach them through e-mail marketing and such like or they see your advert somewhere when they are not actually looking for you and probably make an impulse response to your advert and eventually buy your product! The latter on the other hand, connotes that you have your products or services ready at where your prospects go whenever they need solution to their problem or want certain needs met which your business has the ultimate answer to. In this case because they are the one looking for what you have to offer when they see your offer they would be less suspicious and there would be no doubt or fear. What is the best place that your prospects could find you when they are looking for what you have to offer Online? The search engine!
Your site must be search engine friendly and to achieve this you must think like your prospects, get into their heads and use the exact word or group of words they would use when searching for the solution to their problems that your business has to offer.

2. Use Attention-grabbing, Gaze Riveting And Emotion Driven Words to Attract your prospects.
You should realise that you are in a market place and you are not the only one displaying your product or service for the prospects to see. But how do you woo the prospects so that he would not just look at you but visit your site to see what you have to offer? Your headlines must be very captivating and appealing that the prospect would only see your ad among numerous ads that are there. And how do you do this?
You must use the exact words to persuade the prospects that you and only you has the solution to the prospects problems or needs. Remember that you only have a few seconds of his/her time and that if your words are neither most promising nor revealing the benefits the prospects stand to derive from using your product or service, he/she would be gone at the blink of your eyes! Hard job, no doubt, so it is for everyone!
This is why I have committed myself to master the art of persuading prospects to seek out willingly my product or service far above that of my competitors. And it is a must for you too!

3. Bait Them!
How do you feel when you are offered valuable things as gift? You will be exhilarated and eternally grateful to the giver. You really want to be identified with such person. It is the same concept that you must adopt to hook and keep the swarm of prospects that your attention grabbing headlines have attracted to your site. Everyone loves free things and you will do well to shower your prospects with valuable free offers which could be e-books, a sample of your product or service, free subscription to your e-zines, free mini e-mail courses, you name it! You must be creative and offer something unique that the prospects would value.
Make it in such a way that it is the freebie that grabs your prospects attention immediately the headline has drawn him/her to your site. Why? Many online visitors or prospects are so much in a hurry and often times have little or no time to really view the content of your site but the bait you offer them at this stage would sustain their attention and make them stay long enough to want to view the content of your site. Take it or you leave it, I do it many times myself.
But whatever you offer must be unique, valuable in the eyes of the prospects and equally relevant to your products or services. The rider here is that it must be unique otherwise you will lose the prospects! Yes, he/she doesn’t want to waste his/her time at your site when he/she could probably have elsewhere whatever you are offering or may be have it already. When it is relevant to your product or service then the prospects would know you actually, own the ace solution to his/her problem or needs that must be met. The prospects don’t know you from Adam and don’t know whether you are black or white, hence they would not be obliged to give you any preferential patronage because all they want to know is what they can get from you and it is only when you offer them unique and valuable freebie that they would be tempted to try out what you really have to offer them! You must do it in such a way that the freebie would give you further access to or contact the prospects.
This scenario reminds me of my just over a year daughter, when she has eaten and fully satisfied, she wouldn’t take whatever food you offer again, she would leave you to go and play. Imagine a child at that age to know that she already has whatever food you are offering her again at that time in her belly to the full. She moves away because whatever you are offering her at that time offers her no value, it is no longer appealing to her.
The same thing applies to your prospects when they already have what you are presently offering them. You get the gist? Fine! Let’s move ahead.


4. Ensure You Provide Valuable, Rich, Irresistible and Highly Informative web content To Your Prospects.
Once you have been able to sustain the prospects stay at your site through provision of the unique and valuable freebie, don’t attempt to just throw around sales page full of sales pitch on your site as content. Most of the visitors or prospects online are highly intelligent and would on impulse move away from anything that tends to reduce the amount on their credit card. An average surfer on the net hardly want to spend but when you give them valuable information as content on your site and you subtly guide them to click to your order page they would be parting with their money before they know it! And they would be glad they did this, because you have provided them with useful and valuable content that have now turn them to your customer and once they are satisfied they would come again and consequently become your life time customer. Your rich, valuable content has presell them for you far better than what sales page full of sales pitch would do. The content of your site would enable the prospect to establish in his/her mind if you are an expert in your field or not. He/she would know this through the content of your site, how you deal with the issues that were paramount on his/her mind; how you provide relevant and unique information about this. Your content must pierce through the heart of your prospect and guide to do the most important thing you ever want him/her to do. And in this case you definitely want him to order for your product.
One thing such content would do is to establish cordial and friendly relationship between you and the prospects; it offers him/her something to come back for. He is attracted and would soon become a lifetime customer.
And more than anything else, this would show the prospect that your primary objective is not sincerely help him/her and not to squeeze every penny out his/her purse.

5. Your Product Must Be Affordable.
Granted your product is not for every Tom, Dick and Harry and so it is not everybody that wants your product would be able to pay for it. But be that as it may, when you place a value far above what an average prospect of your product or service expects, bearing in mind the market price, then you will lose the prospect faster than you gain him, your freebie notwithstanding. No matter what level of benefit your product or service might offer the prospects if you make the price unaffordable to him, he would definitely not become your customer; he would go over to your competitors or look for another alternative.
Spy on your competitors and see the price they offer, then try and bring down your own price a little bit might be the turning key you need to attract the prospects and have them patronize you as life time customers. Affordable is not been cheap; the former connotes placing the interest of your customer above your own and ensure he could reasonably and conveniently pay for your product and services while the latter reveals that your product or services is of poor quality. In other words, you must know how to adequately and reasonably price your product or services.
If you don’t know how to do this, then you must find out how I am doing it here!
You must not rip off your customers; otherwise you won’t see them again. I can guarantee you that!
Remember information flies every where these days far above the speed of light! This makes it easier for your customer to find out if they have over-paid for your product or not. One unsatisfied customer would tell a thousand.

6. Alleviate Your Prospects Fears.
The chances of being duped or bought inferior products is far greater online than offline and the prospects have this fact at the back of them minds when visiting your site and this is the reason they could be sceptical unless they come to your site on the recommendation of one of your satisfied customer. To alleviate their fears that they are not on a scammer’s site, you must establish cordial relationship with them through your rich content and provision of unsolicited testimonies from satisfied customers that can vouch for the efficacy of your products or services. The genuineness of your business and your own impeccable integrity must be evident to the prospects.
If you are able to win the hearts of the prospects and they are satisfied with your services then you would be able to have them as life time customers

7. You Must Be Sincere And Modest In Your Claims And Presentations.
One main reason why most online marketers are not making sales is that they regard visitors to their sites as people of low intelligent or robots. Often time they insult the prospects intelligent and reasoning by making bogus claims and unrealistic promises of what their products or services could do. What happens? Prospects that are very realistic in their thinking flee the sites before one could blink his eyes. The result? Lost of prospects that could have become life time customers!

8. Make It Easier For The Prospects To Pay You Or Contact You.
This is very important otherwise you will be losing valuable prospects that could become life time customers. If the only mode of payment on your site is not accessible to the prospects, then you won’t be able to have his money and you will definitely lose his patronage. The truth is that, not every online prospect has access to credit cards and or pay pals and such like. A lot of prospects from the third world countries are still not able to do business online because they fall into this group – and they constitute yet to be or poorly tapped potential market. Imagine if you have several options that would allow this group that wants your product pay at your site. How could you offer reliable payment option to your prospects? I once ran into a similar problem at a site where I wanted to pay for a membership fee and click bank has blacklisted my country and I couldn’t pay with credit card or pay pal. It was an ugly and hopeless situation until Graphcard came to my rescue.

Graphcard is a leading online payment company that has the turning key for the e-commerce when it comes to online payment and shopping. It has devised reliable, efficient and convenient way of paying and or receiving payment for products and services to both merchants and online buyers alike thus overcoming the limitation posed by credit cards and such like. They offer prospects multiple ways of paying you.
How easily can the prospects or customers get in touch with you if need be? They might need your assistance, support or further information about your product or services. If they can reach you easily then they would be willing to patronize.

9. Your Product Or Services Must Over-deliver Its Perceived Value By The Prospects.
If you desire to turn your prospects to a life time customers then your product or services must over deliver far above the expectations of the customers. This is why it is good to be modest and not make bogus claims on your sales page. Let your product or service do the selling while you work on giving the customer value for his or her money.
What I am saying here is that if you are truly sincere to turn your prospects to life time customers, then you must ensure high level of customer satisfaction before, during and after the delivery of your products or services. You need to know if the customers actually benefits from your product or service. Why should you do this? Because your target is to have the customer as life time customer; and when you satisfied him once he would not leave you forever. A satisfied customer is a life time customer!
How do you handle complaints from the customers about your product or services? Do you leave them wallowing in the cold or do you promptly come to their assistance?
Let me give you an instance; before a friend referred me to the excellent services of Graphcard I already had problem with my precious online payment solution company over a service they rendered for me and upon several complaints e-mails I sent, they never replied me. You bet, they not only lost my future patronage but those I could have recommended to their services or products. Ever since, I have been telling practically everyone what they did to me and give them the name of the company on request.
The lesson here is Never! Never!! Never!!! Ignore the complaints of your customers, no matter what! It could bring down your business in a twinkle of an eye.
Initially, I was sceptical about Graphcard when it was recommended by a friend who incidentally knew about the fraudulent activities of the former company. But after I tried their services, I have come to trust and rely on them.
In essence, what I am saying is that you should make the trust and be able to rely on you.

10. Continuously Improve Your Products or service.
You must continuously research and improve the benefits that your product or services could offer your customers from time to time thereby generating back end profits.

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