Guess what? Your so called “offline” customers are hanging out online. Yep, they sure are. In fact, they are all over Facebook (800 million strong at last count), Twitter (200 million strong), and LinkedIn. They are posting on blogs, participating in forums, reading email newsletters, and checking out youtube videos (second largest search engine next to Google.) And well, to date, you may have been reluctant to jump online and connect with them. Get over it, you need to get out there and here’s why!
While you may have a website, that is just the tip of the iceberg today. (Oh, and if you don’t even have a website, run, don’t walk to your nearest website builder or snag the nearest teenager to build you one.)
#1 COST EFFECTIVE
Online tools are free or very low cost. Traditional offline marketing like newspaper ads, radio spots, TV promotions, magazine quarter pages, and direct response cost hundreds and thousands of dollars. Why not check out the cost effective tools?
#2 PERMISSION BASED
Online marketing is permission based, that means that you have your prospects and customers express permission to send them information, promotions, updates, events, specials, trends, education, and a lot more. You are not spamming, you are invited.
#3 GIVES YOU EXPERT STATUS
When you educate your customers online through your blog, your ezine, your articles, you are instantly accepted and viewed as the expert. You are their go-to-guru in your niche, your industry, your specialty. And you don’t even have to create you own content, instead you can be their expert filter or curator as they can’t possible see and read everything you can and you garner the reputation of bringing them the best of what is out in the wide world specific to your expertise.
#4 EXPLODES YOUR VISIBILITY
Using online marketing will radically raise your visibility online as each piece of content that you share becomes searchable and serves to build your SEO (search engine optimization.) Each time you share a blog post, an ezine, a tweet, a facebook post, you add to what can be indexed about you and your business. Being strategic just makes sense.
#5 WORKS FOR YOU 24/7/365
Your online presence is available 24/7/365, it doesn’t take weekends, nights off, vacations, or holidays but you sure can. Your online marketing is working all the time so you don’t have to. It creates avenues to fill your profit pipeline with ideal customers even while you are sleeping. Want to save time and effort?
#6 SAVES TIME
One of the real cornerstones about online marketing is the time saving convenience of repurposing your content into multiple formats to further share your expertise, establish your brand, and attract and capture your ideal customers. Create once and save tons of time with multiple formats. Broadcast your brilliance (and trust me, you are brilliant at what you do, never doubt.)
#7 BE WHERE YOUR CLIENTS ARE LOOKING
Let’s face facts, today your customers (and prospects) are looking for you, your services and your products online. We don’t yellow page any longer, we Google. We look for resources in Facebook and Twitter. We search article directories for expert knowledge. Be available to your customers where they are looking. They are looking online. Want help finding them?
ASK ME ANYTHING HERE! Break it down into bite size pieces and implement one step at a time. Don’t stay stuck or stalled or you may find yourself closing up shop.
