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Today I want to share with you the problems you may have in cultivating your list of contacts. I also want to share with you a solution to easily take your list of contacts and get them to know, like and trust you…you get a web site and a newsletter and I do all the work for you.

As a business person you make contact with a potential client and they are not yet interested in your services. And what do most of us do? We walk away. Because we have read that for every no we are getting closer to the next yes. Or we have paid a lot on marketing and advertising to get clients. But as soon as we have done business with them we have no way to easily communicate with them. The contact’s name ends up on a piece of paper stuffed away in a drawer.

This may not be a general situation for all business people. Some of you may have your own web site, some of you may have an email newsletter but I know that very few have both.

Some of you may have an email newsletter but you are frustrated with the software that bombs out on you. Your computer slows down and you have to start all over again.

Secondly, your email newsletter is underground because of the way email works. It’s locked in a box and it’s only available to the person who received to email.

How do you solve these issues?

This is what I suggest to any business person who want to create long term relationships with everyone:

  • Never walk away from any potential client without inviting the person to subscribe to your newsletter.
  • Never publish any marketing material (for example business cards) without inviting the person to subscribe to your newsletter by sending them to your site. 
  • Make it easy for people to subscribe to your newsletter. This must be possible when you are on vacation or fast a sleep. (Just think about this: How can people subscribe to your newsletter while you sleep if you don’t have a web site?)
  • Never send a newsletter that is not publicly available on the Internet as well. Because you want people find you through Google, people you have never met to read your newsletter as well and then subscribe to it.

How do you do that?

  • Create your own personal web site or blog and add a newsletter to your site.
  • Add an newsletter subscription form to your site.
  • Take your list of contacts and add them to your newsletter database.
  • Publish your newsletter on your site and let the newsletter software send it automatically to your subscribers.
  • Now your content is available for other people who have not yet subscribed to your newsletter. And if you do it well then people who search the Internet will find you.

How Can I Assist You In Getting This Done?

You can choose one of these options:

  1. You may like the ideas, I have shared with you, but you don’t want to go through the hassles of learning how to do it. All you want is a web site and a newsletter. Well, that’s easy: Get It Here.
    1. I will create your web site and add the newsletter software to it.
    2. I will add a newsletter subscription form to your site.
    3. I will upload all your current contacts to your newsletter.
    4. You will write one or two articles a month. (If you want to publish more articles then we can discuss it.)
    5. You will email me these articles and I will publish them for you on your personal web site.
    6. The newsletter software will email the news to your subscribers.
    7. This service is provided at an initial fee of $299 US (Check the value in South African rand). to set up your site and add the newsletter. Then there’s a fee of $24.99US (Check the value in South African rand). per month to continue publishing and maintaining your site.
    8. You can decided to stop this arrangement at anytime and you can keep your site forever.
  2. You may want to maintain your site yourself: Get It Here. 
    • This option is the same as above with the difference that I teach how to publish your articles on your site and how to set up and use the newsletter software.
    • This service is provided for a once off fee of $337US (Check the value in South African rand)..
  3. You may want to have a web site with the newsletter and many additional features like a community forum, photo gallery, how to make online videos and many more. You also want support and training for a year. This is provided at a once off fee of $597US (Check the value in South African rand).
  4. Get It Here.

In addition to all these you access to all the exclusive articles and videos that are currently closed for non members. 

Guarantee: If you are not happy within 120 days I will give you all your money back. I will not ask any questions. I will just give you all the money back. Even if you decide to have all your money back Johan will continue to host my site for FREE.

This no-risk option can take you from being a traditional marketer who push to a marketer; who pull people towards you, a marketer who get people to know, like and trust you. And the options available at less than $0.82US (Check the value in South African rand). per day is a lot less than all the money you spend today on traditional advertising. Then I am nothing even including the time and frustration you experience today to try and manage your list of contacts.

Start Cultivating Relationships Today And Select Your Option Here. If you prefer to use your bank than you can contact me here.

Regards

Johan Horak

Examples of Web Site Of People Who Are Cultivating Relationships. You’ll notice the newsletter subscription form on all these web sites.

benonipropertynews

durbanville

somersetwest

whalewatching

jatropha simonstown

Get It Now And Start Cultivating Relationships Today

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or Email. Thanks for visiting!

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What’s the difference between push and pull marketing given the Internet?

I am asking this question to try and understand the impact blogs and online newsletters (email and RSS) have on brick to brick (off-line) marketing.

I am also asking because I am writing a book called “Kiss On The First Date: What Lovers Know That Marketers Cannot Remember” on my experiences as a naive boy and the lesson I learned while trying to get my first kiss and how that lesson applied or did not apply to my off-line marketing efforts.

This is what some of the experts had to say on push and pull marketing:

Please note: I don’t necessarily agree with all the views by the experts because they may not have considered relevancy and and that fact that we will always use push marketing:

Mirek Mirpo said:

PUSH - you don’t care whether the audience is interested in your message, or not - very aggressive.

PULL - you try to target your audience contextually, behaviorally so that your message is more likely to be relevant to the audience, hence more welcome and more effective.

John Naughton – Leeds Met Keynote

In thinking about the future, the two most useful words are ‘push’ and ‘pull’ because they capture the essence of where we’ve been and where we seem to be headed.

Broadcast TV is a ‘push’ medium: a relatively select band of producers (broadcasters) decide what content is to be created, create it and then push it down analogue or digital channels at audiences which are assumed to consist of essentially passive recipients.

The couch potato was, par excellence, a creature of this world. He did, of course, have some freedom of action. He could choose to switch off the TV; but if he decided to leave it on, then essentially his freedom of action was confined to choosing from a menu of options decided for him by others, and to ‘consuming’ their content at times decided by them. He was, in other words, a human surrogate for one of BF Skinner’s pigeons – free to peck at whatever coloured lever took his fancy, but not free at all in comparison with his fellow-pigeon perched outside on the roof.

The other essential feature of the world of push media was its fundamental asymmetry. All the creative energy was assumed to be located at one end (the producer/broadcaster). The viewer or listener was assumed to be incapable of, or uninterested in, creating content; and even if it turned out that s/he was capable of creative activity, there was no way in which anything s/he produced could have been published.

Looking back, the most astonishing thing about the broadcast-dominated world was how successful it was for so long in keeping billions of people in thrall. Networks could pull in audiences in the tens of millions for successful and popular broadcasts – and pitch their advertising rates accordingly. Small wonder that one owner of a UK ITV franchise famously described commercial television (in public) as “a licence to print money”.

But in fact the dominance of the push model was an artefact of the state of technology. Analogue transmission systems severely limited the number of channels that could be broadcast through the ether, so consumer choice was restricted by the laws of analogue electronics. The advent of digital technology changed all that and began to hollow-out the broadcast model from within.

The Web – is the opposite of this: it’s a pull medium.

Nothing comes to you unless you choose it and click on it to ‘pull’ it down onto your computer. You’re in charge. In the words of Elizabeth Murdoch, the Web is a “sit up” medium, in contrast to TV, which is a “sit back” medium. So the first implication of the switch from push to pull is a growth in consumer sovereignty. We saw this early on in e-commerce, because it became easy to compare. Because analogue transmissions on adjacent frequencies could interfere with one another. You can read the full story here.

John Duff had this to say about push and pull marketing:

Push advertising in Internet terms would be anything you are actively driving to customers, whether they want to hear your message or not. One great example of this would be sending our regular e-mail blasts. Now most of the customers you are sending an HTML newsletter to probably signed up in some way, shape, or form some time ago. They may or may not be interested any more. They key to sending out effective email blasts is to send relevant messages to an interested audience. Don’t send a list of Porsche owners a good sale on your Kia line.

Pull advertising consists of RSS, blogging, and pay per click advertising. A customer is choosing to actively subscribe to your message or is seeking you out on their own terms. Most of these customers feel less threatening or advertised to because they are deciding when to hear your message.

Both are very effective forms of media and should be bundled together in an appropriate marketing package. I hope I was able to answer your question. I’d be happy to clarify further.

Jori Ford said,

Push is a bit more aggressive, however I would say in terms of e-mail blasts, aggressive is only for unsolicited e-mails without a double opt-in. Because users have the ability to unsubscribe to a list they have opted into, it’s safe to say as long as the information is not entirely ad based and not every day, twice a day.

In terms of business and online promotion, push marketing would involve engaging users that maintain large lists such as Internet marketers who use the above mentioned method, to promote your products as an affiliate.

Pull marketing engages your user(s) and entices them to return. The big part about this type of marketing is that it’s only as affective as the method you utilize to inform Internet users that the resource is available. A very useful technique to engage in in order to show your blogs relevance and make use a high quality e-mail opt-in list is to do a joint venture with another blogger or an Internet marketer who supplies related content or makes use of a list of users who would find your content useful.

In my professional opinion, I’d say that an initial online press release of the up and coming book which references the blog would be an excellent beginning and a non-aggressive approach.

Ensure your blog is setup with the ability to sign-up for your e-newsletter, updating users on the book release, and subscribe buttons for your RSS feed(s). Then update the blog with the progress of the book. Engaging visitors in a poll or asking them for feedback via your comments would also be a very “pull” type of marketing that engages the user to interact with you and keeps them coming back for more.

Additional reading on push and pull marketing:

If you have any comments, questions or ideas on push and pull marketing then I urge you to share them with me as I may include them in my book ;-)

Have fun

Johan Horak

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A blog can quickly become a rambling and an unstructured mess. Well that’s my experience and from that experience I want to suggest an idea to structure your blog correctly from the start.

The other day I thought of writing a book called Kiss On The First Date: How To Market A Brick To Brick Business With A Blog.

I went searching. Because I have never written a book I needed guidelines on how to write a book. After searching and signing up for a free course on how to write a book I eventually bought Nick Daws book called, "Write A Book Under 28 Days Working One Hour A Day Max".

Never did I realise the opportunities this book presents to us as bloggers:

  • The book can help you to generate ideas for your blog and it can help you to structure and create a more meaningful blog.
  • You may take the ideas from the book and create a viral book. If you don’t know; the intention with the viral book is that people can pass it on and create publicity for you (an example of pull marketing).

I don’t want to share all the Nick Daws secrets with you as I am not allowed but let me try and explain the process:

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Yes it is. The only thing dead about push marketing is how people use it. Push marketing will always be part of marketing and no one will stop that. But people being interrupted by irrelevant push marketing will and are already ignoring outdated push marketers.

Today, you are spammed with push marketing wherever you go.

  • As you drive down the main street you see the bill boards and flashing neon signs.
  • At night real estate agents, insurance agents and vacuum sales people keep knocking on your door.
  • Direct sales pieces and other junk mail flood your post box.
  • The car salesmen sends you sms’s to come and drive the new model.
  • Television programs are interrupted with messages from their sponsors.
  • The Internet bombard you with advertisements.
  • Everyone tries to sell you something by interrupting you.

How can you reduce the risk of being ignored when you use push marketing?

I can think of three ingredients that makes push marketing more effective. They are relevancy, your ability to add value and two step marketing (I will explain how push marketing can be made effective with two step marketing in a follow-up post).

Let me explain by defining relevancy and then a few examples:

Relevancy is defined as the appropriateness and usefulness of information. If information “fits” the purpose for which it is intended it is relevant information.

When you read the definition it is obvious why push marketing, as used in the past, is being ignored today and will be ignored in the future if the message is not appropriate and useful.

  • When you use Google to search then Google push you with relevant advertisements. As you may or may not know; Google Adsense is a very sophisticated system that only push you with advertisements relevant to your search term. For example, if you search for “permission marketing” you’ll see ads on the right of the search page with relevant ads. And the more relevant the advertiser’s ad is to the search term the cheaper it becomes to be on top of the list of ads. Read more here on Adsense Relevancy. Therefore Google’s push marketing rules are adding value to your search and by adding value they are making more money and the advertiser can make more as well.
  • When you have an email newsletter (or RSS), that people subscribed to, you have an gentleman’s agreement that you will send the subscribers useful and appropriate information. As long as you stick to the agreement you can become successful. But when you start pushing for the sale or you push irrelevant information you are past tense.
  • The car salesmen asks you if he should notify you via sms on maintenance schedules or any critical info regarding your car and you agree then he may push you. But as soon as he sends you sales promotions he is on thin ice and you will ignore him.
  • Let’s consider direct mail. The best example is a direct mail piece from Readers Digest. They send you and envelope with amazing offers on the front and a long letter inside. As with all push marketing their success depends on the numbers of letters they send out. But they have learned that specific groups of people are more inclined to subscribe to Readers Digest. The problem these direct marketers have is how to define a relevant list. It’s not easy but the more relevant the list they use the more effective push marketing becomes.

One more point to clarify on why I say that push marketing is not dead. You may be pro-pull marketing and you should be. But when you pull someone towards your blog, for example, you have a newsletter, and the reader subscribes then you will become a push marketer as soon as you send your first newsletter.

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It all started while growing up on a small farm. My mother and father worked in town. And my sister and I had my grandfather at home looking after us.

Granddad showered us with unconditional love but I was the real favourite. He would buy me an air gun a only gave my sister 50 cents. Obviously mother and father did not approve but I was oblivious to all this grownup stuff.

It took my parents years to find a way to stop this and they decided to send me to boarding school. Today I realized that granddad preferences were not their only motivation. However, I had to find a reason for this painful decision. I did not want to go to boarding school.

As with all changes the new adventure became a learning school way beyond my greatest expectations.

Every Sunday afternoon all the school boys would get on the train and travel to the boarding house. Most of these boys were older and experienced in the desires of life. They introduced me to the wonders of girls. As we travelled on the train I was supposed to sleep but could not stop listing to what girls can do for boys. Apparently they kissed them. They also elaborated but these stories were not familiar to my limited vocabulary.

I thought I understood kissing and the desire to kiss a girl became my only saviour as I faced my boarding school life. As we were in an only boy’s school the opportunity to kiss a girl came many years later at a party with a neighbouring school.

Tonight will be the kissing night. The excitement made me uneasy. I could not dance but new I had to. This is what the older boys told me. I had to dance and then get the kiss. And it meant that I had to get close to a girl..

I picked a nice looking girl and gathered the courage to ask her for a dance. The poor girl did not know what I had in mind. But she was prepared for the dance. I could not move my legs and said very little to her. My desire kept me on the dance floor.

As we eventually finished she walked out with me. Outside we exchanged names and a few other non important details. As soon as we were finished with the formalities I decided to go for the kiss.

As you may expect I never got the kiss. All I got was a bruised ego and a few smacks. I never saw the girl again.

This lesson came back to haunt me later in life when I started my own business. As and when I advertised I expected the kiss on the first date.

My question: Why do we expect the kiss on the first date when we advertise?

Answering this question and proposing solutions are what this book is all about.

Before we get there let me tell you a little more about my school boy kissing adventures.

Obviously I made a mistake and could not face the world outside of school. And I discussed my first attempted kiss with the other boys. They all thought it was funny. Until I met the local Casanova at school.

This was the advice from Mr. Casanova:

He told me to take my time and get the girl to know me, then if she likes me I need to find ways to get her to trust me. That made sense but it will take time and I may need to spend money, write letters, give her flowers and tell her that she is beautiful.

I had to give. As I practiced giving, kissing eventually followed and a regained my ego, my proud and met a very nice young girl.

After many years spending money and wasting money on Kiss On The First Date Advertising I decided to revisit my past and decided to find a model where I can get people to like, know and trust me.


This will be the the introduction on a book I am writing, called "Kiss On The First Date: How To Market Your Brick To Brick Business With A Blog" and you are invited to one of the first people to get a copy.

I need you to help me write this book: If you are new to blogging and want to know how to market with a blog you may send me any questions you may have. Use the comment area below.


Regards

Johan

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People, new to blogging, always tell me that they don’t have time to write articles and blog them. Then I ask them, "how much time do you need to blog?" and they cannot tell me.

Let me ask you a few more questions:

  • How much time does it take you to get a new client?
  • How much does it cost you to get a new client?
  • Do you have an easy and free way to communicate with your clients at a click of a button.
  • How much time does it take to create an advertisement?
  • How do you stay in contact with people who want to use your services/goods, meets (or read about) you, today, but don’t need your services/goods today? Are they lost forever? Are you sticky?

As soon as you consider these then you may agree that brick to brick marketing is not effective. And as soon as you learn how to market with a blog then all the time and money you spend will become more effective. Yes. You will not double your success you will amplify it many times.

This is what I suggest you do to save time and money:

  1. Decide how much time you have.
  2. If you have time for only one article then write it well.
  3. Write it in Word and check your grammar and spelling.
  4. Create a blog and integrate newsletter software to your blog.
  5. Copy paste the article into your blog.
  6. Continue to ask people, you meet or who read your ads, to subscribe to your newsletter.
  7. Add their emails to your newsletter software or ask them to go to your blog and subscribe.
  8. And when you publish the article, once a month (or more), it will be emailed to your subscribers.
  9. The added benefit is that people can now find your articles on the web as well.

With this approach you are using your blog as a tool to send your newsletter. You are at this stage not worried about having 1000’s of articles on your blog. You are not worried about search engines and how they can help you. No.

You just want:

  • a place on the web where people can subscribe to your news
  • a place where you can post articles
  • a tool to send out your articles via email

That’s all. Nothing more nothing less.

Have fun and join me online.

Johan Horak

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Let’s say you are a business person and you do what’s called brick to brick business. You don’t use the Internet at all. Ok, you use email and you may surf the Internet from time to time. But you don’t have an online presence.

You know about web sites and have heard of blogs but you are clueless on how to use it and how easy it is.

The following process will help to explain the marketing process if you have a blog. Let’s start with the brick to brick approach:

  • Brick to brick advertising is based on the kiss on the first date (more):
    • You advertise for the sale. Meaning that you advertise and tell people what you do and how you can help. You include your business name, phone number and other brick to brick info.
    • The real bad part of this approach is that; only people who need your services today may phone you. Any other who may want to use your business in the future will not react to the advertisement.
    • People how may want to use your services have no way of knowing you,
  • Let’s look at marketing when we use the brick to blog/web site approach (I call this the two step approach):
    • As soon as you have an online presence you can advertise wherever and ask people to subscribe to your free blog news or to receive a free report on your on info that they want. For example if I were a plumber I will advertise my services and my blog. I will also tell the readers of my advertisement that they can get a free report, when they subscribe on, “10 Secretes No Plumber Want You To Know About The Approaching Winter And How It Will Affect Your Pocket!” You can adapt it for your business.
    • This will ensure that not only people who need your services can become part of your sphere of influence. Because they gave you permission to educate them via email. Now; when you post an article on your blog the article is emailed to your subscribers.
    • By doing this you keep them attached to you and you now have the opportunity to create long lasting relationships.
    • You have just amplified your advertising spend by getting people who need your services today and those who may need your services in the future.
    • Now you have the ability to create a database of people you can communicate to at the click of a button.
    • You’ll notice that I have not mentioned

I have had many people telling me that they don’t have the time to write articles. And they don’t know what to say.

Let me tell you that if you can write one article a month you’ll do a lot better than your opposition who don’t have a blog.

When you tell me that you don’t know what to say then you should not even be in business. Sorry. But you have something to say to your clients everyday. You give them advice. Now all you need to do is share these tips and advice on your blog as well.

You can amplify your message and you can become the trusted expert. And I will take your hand.

Regards and have fun

Johan

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When Bloggers Thank You

We always want good news. We all want to be liked. And being liked give us the energy and inspiration to continue. I have said many times that we need to collect testimonials from people who we meet.More on testimonials and more.

These testimonials ensure that both parties stay committed to the contract and to the expectation.

  1. When you can get an unsolicited testimonial ask the person if you can share it.
  2. Make it easy for people to send you testimonials by doing more that what they asked for.

But today’s post is not about the testimonials it’s about a testimonial I got and want to share it with you because it made me feel good.

S…, you are to good for words.

I just want to tell you:

My friend, Hannes, is very very computer literate. And I showed him your blog. He went trough it and said, “this guy us very good and the info that he makes available to us is very interesting and educational. It will help me a lot in my life”.

So what I am trying to tell you; because my friend is so good with computers he will never compliment someone else and he complemented you! Congratulations. I am VERY HAPPY – I am proud to have a training master like you.

Greetings

Lizelle DurbanvillePropertyNews

Thank you Lizelle. I am privileged to be able to help you creating and setting up your blog.

Johan Horak

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Can a book club make your blog go viral? In other words can a book club story become a free marketing tool. Yes and I will share the story with you.

I have a community blog here in Simon’s Town South Africa where we sell real estate using a blog.

My wife is an avid reader of books and joined a book club that also serves as an opportunity to have good wine with good friends.

You can read the story here (it will open in a new page).

As I mentioned in the story; the other night the book club became a wine club and they were introduced to some great wine from a local wine maker.

So I decided to tell the story and share it on my blog. The members of the club got hold of the story and started gossiping (Seth Godin) about it.

The organiser of the book club emailed the book club members:

Hey girls, we are famous!! Check out Johan’s blog and see his report about Christine’s surprise wine tasting. Nice touch Johan, thanks. Love Nicky

This is great and it’s only possible when we have email and a blog. Because email is a cheap and a fast way to gossip about the story and a blog make the story accessible and visible to all. It became a viral story.

And when these people get to the blog they may want to subscribe to the newsletter. Wa La!

The lesson for me is that I need to write about my core business but people in my community want to see their name in print. Or they want to hear about stories that relate to them. These stories should have gossiping power.

Because when they do other people will do the marketing for you for free.

Have fun and create relationships.

Regards

Johan

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I made a mistake and dropped three consecutive emails to people who gave me permission to communicate with them. Ouch!

Lesson 1) Most people will justify the mistake and I wanted to stay clear of that.

Lesson 2) The reason for the mistake is not the issue because then I justify and I hate justifications.

Now that I have made the mistake how do I rectify the issue? Do I send another email and ask these trusted friends to forgive me. But this will be the forth email in a row. Ouch!

Lesson 3: I had to say I am sorry.

I then decided to send a plain Sincere Apology letter immediately after the mistake. This is the letter:

Dear Friend

Please accept my sincere apology for the last emails that was send
to you. I am very sorry. I will try my utmost to only send you real
advice. I don’t want to make excuses as I could have prevented these emails from being send to you and I was not careful enough.
I will understand if you want unsubscribe from my how-to-blog
newsletter. You can use the link below.
Sorry again.
Johan Horak

Lesson 4: I had to take full responsibility for my mistake.

Lesson 5: I wanted people to unsubscribe easily if they were unhappy.

Now for the real surprise:

As soon as the email arrived I received emails from my friends and they had this to say:

Dearest Johan, can I tell you a secret? I have opened very few of your e-mails. I am saving them for when I have more time, as I have just entered this market, and I have SO much to learn, and I am 55 years old and still very computer-illiterate. I would very much like to start a blog,…….. I was planning on opening them over the long weekend and printing them out to make a hard copy-file to keep. Your apology is so sincere……… Can anyone stand up and say that they have never said: “I wish I didn’t say that!”? Have a fantastic week. Warm regards, Stella.

Hallo Johan, Thank you for the email. No problem at all. Mehnaaz

Dear Johan, Its no problem,thank you. Wendall

Johan, I am not unhappy with anything. Lizelle.

Lesson 6: I was able to create a better relationship by saying I am Sorry.

I want to thank everyone for the emails. It made me feel good. And today I am happy that I had the courage to say I am sorry because these emails, from trusted friends, indicate how important relationships are.

I respect this relationship and the fact that people gave me permission to talk to them.

Thank you for you for allowing me to say I am sorry.

Regards

Johan Horak

P.S. By the way: Nobody unsubscribed from my newsletter.

P.P.S. If you have any advice and other lessons you have pickup from saying you are sorry please share them here.

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