Defining your offer
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Okay we are back on track after a week end away and a big thank you to Charles for his guest blog post yesterday. Time to get back on track with building a real business.
It is a necessity that you have decided and done your niche research at this point. You could have skipped the mind set and the organization sections (although I strongly recommend against that) but you need to have the research on what you are going to promote.
The first question you need to answer is who is your ideal customer. This is important and I can’t tell you how many people can’t answer this question and then wonder why they don’t make money.
If you can’t draw a picture of your ideal customer how can you possibly build a system to attract them? Luck? Maybe, but I really doubt it.
The second step is to figure out what that ideal customer would want enough to give you a chance to build a relationship. If you don’t have a clear picture of step one you are not very likely to get this one right. Even with that picture you won’t get it right all the time. (Yes we have a fix for when that happens we are building a system here not shooting in the dark.)
Depending on the area of interest this item may be a book, an e-course, a video series, a piece of software or even a free sample of some type.
Ever go through a Sam’s Warehouse store and not have the chance to try various products. My son would go for the variety to have lunch when he was younger and never complain unlike when he went shopping other places.
How many of you that have tried those have bought something that wasn’t on your list because you enjoyed it? Me!
Offline they have the product right there to purchase and taste but online you need a mechanism to deliver the sample. You aren’t there to ask them how they liked it so it is best to set it up to get permission to continue the conversation after they have “tasted” it by creating a squeeze page.
Now you need to create that follow up and automate it with your autoresponder. My personal preference is AWeber because in my opinion they are simply the best.
There is one more step while we are preparing this and that is to set up some type of tracking system to see how well each piece is working. That is how we will know if we got the bait right, or if it is something else that is breaking down in our system.
This part will never be totally built but will always be under construction. It will always need to be improved.
It is much easier to improve it when you build the structure properly first.
As always your questions and comments are welcomed.
Mike Paetzold
June 11th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
Your remark “There is one more step while we are preparing this and that is to set up some type of tracking system to see how well each piece is working. That is how we will know if we got the bait right, or if it is something else that is breaking down in our system.” got me thinking that I would be interested in some feedback from your readers (or you).
I’ve used Google Analytics, but find it a bit to extensive, therefore a bit complex for my needs and have just started on to using the StatCounter service.
Is anyone else using it, and is there any limitations to it I should know about.
Thanks
AllanJames
June 11th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
Defining your offer tends to an area of business that people overlook and it’s costly. Nice post Mike! (I dig the new hairdo by the way!)
So many people focus on tweeking the product itself over and over again to fix conversions rates when it could be something as simple as asking your customers what they feel will help them next. This is a great strategy for two reasons. 1.) You immediately tend to the customer right in front of you and 2.) You’ve collected data that tells you what your customers natural next step is and give it to them before they even ask.
Sorry I missed you at JV Alert my friend!
June 13th, 2008 at 8:05 am
[...] ebook as the lead in, if you are mainly going to write about and sell blogging stuff. Check out the defining your offer article from Mike Paetzold for more [...]
June 17th, 2008 at 3:05 am
Hey Mike
Great post, a wealth of information for me to digest!
Sally
July 20th, 2008 at 11:23 am
[...] as the lead in, if you are mainly going to write about, and sell blogging stuff. Check out the defining your offer article from Mike Paetzold for more [...]