In fact, the average person, at least, those who live in metropolitan areas, is exposed to more than 3,500 marketing messages a day. That’s 24,500 messages a week and 1.2 million each year.

And to make online sales even more difficult, marketing studies have shown that it takes nine or more impressions for your business to be remembered by a potential customer. This means follow-up is essential. But in today’s world this type of relentless follow up for the average business owner is not often practical. Fortunately there is a solution that many online businesses are using every day – online marketing automation.

Imagine being able to capture new leads on your website, build customer confidence through automated sequential responses, deliver products digitally while you sleep and track all of your prospects and clients without lifting a finger. For thousands of online businesses this happens every day.

In today’s competitive environment, automation is not a luxury; it’s a requirement for keeping the competitive edge you need. In fact, the benefits of automation are so numerous you can’t afford to ignore them.

Five Keys to Online Success:

1. Capture Email Addresses.  Your list is your goldmine.  It is critical to all your marketing and is literally your most valuable asset. To build your mailing list it is essential that you make a compelling offer. “Sign up for my mailing list” is no longer enough. Try something like this: “Free Special Report: The 5 Keys to Dramatically Boosting Your Website Traffic in 30 Days. A $127 Value!”

Through online automation you can offer digitally downloaded special reports, e-newsletters, mini-educational courses, or free trials to entice visitors to share their name and email. When their data is entered, it is automatically placed in your database and can be programmed to trigger autoresponders which are one or multiple automated messages. Share your privacy policy below your opt-in box as well as assurance that they can unsubscribe at any time. And of course, never spam anyone.

2. Set Up Sequential Autoresponders.  A very effective way to build trust with your prospects is to offer a mini-course which delivers content-rich, relevant information to your opt-in subscribers. These automatically-distributed email messages not only provide content, but also motivate prospects to revisit your site for the latest offers. And of course once they click through to your website you can offer more content delivered via audio, video and other multi-media options as well as offers for your products and services.

Since studies shows that 48% of sales people give up after the first contact and 25% after the second, this is a perfect way to make sure your follow-up stays consistent. Best of all, after you program the series it will perform flawlessly for you for years to come.

3. Take Payments Online.  It has never been easier or more affordable to set up online payment systems through PayPal or your own merchant account.  And once you set up your payment account it very easy to sell products or services online by purchasing an online shopping cart.  A shopping cart will allow you to capture email addresses, automate responses, track leads and then sell you product to customers around the world 24/7.  These systems are surprisingly easy to setup, operate and maintain.

4. Track and Measure Your Marketing.  Over the years I have trained and coached hundreds of business owners in marketing through my Guerrilla Marketing Coaching Program. Through a series of assessments it has become very clear that most businesses fall short in the area of measurement.

Here are some questions to consider:

1) How many unique visitors come to your website?

2) How many visitors opt-in to your mailing list or order your products?

3) When you send emails, how many are opened and how many people actually click through to your website?

The reason these metrics are so important is because if you don’t know these stats, you won’t know what to improve. It could be variables like the pulling power of your headlines, the copy or navigation on your website. You won’t know until you start measuring. Many of today’s automated systems include ad trackers which automatically calculate your click-throughs and conversion statistics.

5. Free Up Your Time to Work on the Most Important Parts of Your Business

When you automate daily tasks you gain more time to focus on priorities for the strategic growth of your company. This newfound discretionary time comes without your money-making activities coming to a halt, or hiring and training staff.

Also when your business becomes automated, your presence becomes optional leaving you time to actually take a vacation while making money at the same time. With most systems you can quickly and easily check your sales and orders from any web browser.

The Internet is a competitive, ever-changing marketplace. The right strategy combined with powerful and practical systems gives you an edge over your competitors. You’ll attract more customers and spend less time, money and energy winning them over. Automation services and software leverage the best technology available to make you money day and night, whether you’re there or not.

In Great Online Business Success,

Obe Pro

http://obepro.com

Notice that I used the word *system* to describe your follow-up program. It’s an important conceptual word. If you do not have a well planned, step-by-step system for lead follow-up you are leaving a lot of profits sitting on the table.

It is widely accepted that it takes a minimum of five attempts to close a sale (any sale) before the customer has enough information and confidence to buy from you. If your idea of follow-up is to bounce one autoresponder message back to your on-line inquiry and expect the cash register to ring, you are in for a shocking surprise.

You have heard often, and will continue to hear, that internet marketing is based on the building of *relationships* with your potential customers.

It’s true! Indeed, this is one of the true Power Principles of internet marketing. One of the great benefits of the internet is the ease and cost-effectiveness of relationship building.

We must understand that our potential customer is inundated with competing advertising messages from various media–television, radio, newspapers, magazines, billboards, point- of-purchase, direct mail–and now the internet.

All of these marketing methods attempt to build a relationship with its audience in order to make the advertising message credible and believable. Credibility and believability lead naturally to sales.

The one media that stands head and shoulders above the competition is the internet. No other vehicle provides the opportunity to connect with your audience in such a timely and intimate way. Using the combination of web sites and email you have the graphical power of television and the intimate targeting of direct mail–without the associated high costs. It’s a powerful combination.

If you really want to ‘Reach Out And Touch Someone’, the way to do it is with the real Killer Application of the internet… e-mail.

The two most powerful e-mail tools for effective client follow-up are:

==> Your own e-mail newsletter, ezine, discussion list, etc.

==> A programmed system of timed e-mail follow-up messages.

Let’s look at each one briefly:

YOUR OWN E-MAIL NEWSLETTER, EZINE…

I can’t say enough about what a regular newsletter or ezine will do for your bottom line. By communicating useful information to your clients and prospects on a regular basis you are building a strong bonding relationship with them. Over time, they will begin to see you as a partner in their success. The trust and friendship you have built through your newsletter will translate to added business and increased profits for you.

Managing a newsletter or ezine does not have to be expensive or very time consuming. There are several free services that will host your publication and provide an automated subscription process. I just switched one newsletter over to Facebook groups for new subscriptions and it seems to work fine. It has eliminated all the hand subscription process and automated it for me, all at no cost.

As a leader, you simply must communicate regularly with your downlines… and your product customers. You should give serious consideration to producing your own periodic e-mail newsletter. In doing so, you will be building relationships which will fatten your profits quickly.

AUTOMATED E-MAIL FOLLOW-UP:

The use of autoresponders to supply immediate and comprehensive information to your prospects is a very powerful use of e-mail technology and, I believe, a good one.

But, what do you do after the initial lead response? How do you continue to follow-up at regular intervals? If you deal with very few leads of high quality, it’s not a problem to follow-up with custom one-on-one messages and it is imperative that you do so if you expect to convert these leads to sales.

If your lead flow runs to big numbers, however, you have a problem. You simply must automate the follow-up process to insure that every prospect inquiry gets properly timed, on-going, information and reasons to buy–a minimum of 5 times. To do less is to waste your lead generation investment. You must maximize this return-on-investment if you are to succeed and the only practical way to do this is with automation.

A number of e-mail services provide an autoresponder system that will send a series of pre-written, timed, follow-up messages to your leads. This is a powerful use of technology. The real power comes, however, when the messages you send are professionally crafted works of benefit laden sales copy. These timed responses can be profit-enhancing selling tools, or downright intrusions. The difference will be the skill with which you use the tool.

Fortunately for you, these systems are readily available. Jusk ask.

The reward for building an automated follow-up system is always worth the effort. The time you spend nurturing your follow-up program will result in:

==> Increased sales and profits

==> Improved image

==> More sales leads

==> Lower sales costs

==> Shortened selling cycles

==> Improved cash flow

==> Faster Team Building

==> Higher Residual Income

==> Faster Return-On-Investment (ROI)

Remember… the profits are in the FOLLOW-UP!

In Great Online Business Success,

Obe Pro

http://obepro.com