The Internet is not as complicated as many claim. People simply go online to pursue their business interests, hobbies, passions, career, educational needs, socializing, and anything else they do in the real world. Our goal is to find out where they are meeting and drive them to your business quickly and easily.

This system is designed to help you target your customer base and convert them into long term customers. There is no magic to the process, just testing. This 7 Step Action Plan is designed to help you pinpoint with extreme accuracy your customer base through the following steps:

Section B. How To Grow Your Business:

This workbook gives you an overview of each step, with worksheets to fill in and test your knowledge of your customers. Be sure to write in the book, and begin tracking your success. We urge you to cover each step and don't do what most do, which is skip to Step 4, Web Advertising. You have to know your customers before you can offer your products and services. Good luck.

Objective: Define the benefits you deliver to your customers in two sentences. When you can explain the benefits to any interested prospect quickly, you have achieved your goal.

It seems so simple, doesn't it? If you are selling widgets, than that is what you are determined to sell. Why bother with this step?

The problem is, your customers are not determined to buy those widgets. They don't care about the box and the color, the features of your product. They care about what it does for them.

This step is where you start defining exactly what it is your product does for your customers, the benefits. You better be able to explain that to them in what I call the elevator talk.

Imagine if you were on an elevator with your target customer, and you had only two sentences – until they got off the elevator at the next floor - to describe quickly and exactly what your product would do for them.

That's what this step is about. Define your benefit statement and begin looking at your business as a solution for a problem your customer has. If you can solve this problem, and let them know quickly how you will solve it, your competition will be left in the dust.

In the next step, we will explore your competition and what your customer is facing online. For now, answer the following questions and start to pinpoint exactly what it is your customer wants, and give it to them.

(ZDNet, Your Top 10 Favorite Web Activities: http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/whoiswe/top10things.html)

1. Searching
2. Reading News/Sports
3. Career Management
4. Learning
5. Software Downloads
6. Travel
7. Socializing
8. Making Money
9. Playing Games
10. Shopping

Begin With The End in Mind:
Start By Listing Your Key Marketing Words

Step 2. Start Thinking Like Your Customer

Objective: Acting like a customer on the Internet, you will discover their experience. Find out what your competition does right and wrong, and ask your prospects to help you; just ask them what they think. Given the keywords and benefits you outlined in Step 1, put these to the test online. Give your customers what they want by taking a moment to "surf" in their shoes, and position your business so its offer is like no other.

Right now your target prospects are out there looking on the Internet. There are over a million commercial sites to choose from, so it's not easy. To develop your business and traffic, you have to do what few others are doing: clearly and quickly defining your value to these target prospects.

Now that you have an idea of what your customer is looking for, it's time to go out and act like the customer. As they say, until you walk a mile in their shoes, you will have no idea what they are facing.

Out on the Internet, you will find people doing things the same way. Check out the ad copy and the call to action that you get. Most Web Sites act like glorified brochures or magazine ads, always talking about the product or service the company offers. Few invite the visitor to act now, to buy now!

Online, the most important person is the customer visiting. How many sites allow you to take the action, to guide yourself to the purchase decision? Does anyone:

• Separate themselves from the competition with a clear and motivating benefit?
• Give an immediate reward for visiting their Web Site or answering their email, like a free report?
• Position themselves at the search engines so they are on top, and easy to find?
• Get singled out as an excellent resource for the particular subject?

By learning the problems your customer faces and making it easy to work with you, you are also beginning the marketing process. What are the best sites to find what you offer? What is the best way to market to your customer base?

The Internet is a powerful word of mouth tool; remember to set up your circle of influence, your referral network, by allying with related, non-competitive Web Sites that have to do with what you are offering.

Web Sites and discussions revolve around specific interest groups, specific niche markets; you need to locate where these markets meet, and create a message - your invitation to your prospects - that is different than anyone else's.

Find your niche markets and generate funnels of leads for a specific offer having to do with their interests, their passions. Tap into this incredible expressed interest and fulfill it at your Web Site and in your email contacts.

The best way to make it easy for your customer to work with you, is to give them a turn key solution for everything they are looking for.

Your Customer-Centered Marketing Strategy:
Start Creating the Right Offer and Target Where You Will Market to Maximize Your Profits

Step 3. Target your Natural Market: Create Your Customer Profile

Objective: Now that you have looked at your customer and what problems they run into on the Internet, it is time to build your target customer profile. Determine what information you want to know about your prospects, and think about the best way to get this information. When you have written a target customer profile that specifies the demographics, buying behaviors, and online sites that your customer visits, you can begin to test your marketing.

Who are your best prospects? And what is the natural market, their interests, you are appealing to? I asked that to one client recently; he told me everybody. Everybody would be interested in his vitamins.

Now try to put a face on everybody; what does everybody do during the day? What are their motivations? Why should they buy from you?

The funny thing about this common approach is the misconception that may kill his business. The client thinks it is just him qualifying the customers. Meanwhile, his customers are qualifying him, his Web Site, and his email. They want to know if he has done his homework, and if he knows what they want.

By copping out to the old, "I'll sell to everybody" routine, my client is killing his business. I asked the same question to the president of a hot tub company recently. His company is one of the biggest, and you can see why by his answers:

1. They are homeowners in their second home.
2. They are most often between 36-50.
3. They are a married couple with two children. They both work, with household incomes exceeding $60,000 a year.
4. They appreciate relaxing and treating themselves with special gifts as rewards for working hard.

That is the sort of customer base you can define, target, and convert into long term customers. Instead of everybody, he has defined it into "somebody" with an identity. He has defined a natural market that he can test to.

Your goal in this step is to create a customer profile that not only tells you who they are, but where you can reach them by marketing online. Then you can put your testing into action. The Internet builds on direct response, niche marketing.

What You Must Know About Your Customers: Your Customer Profile and Where to Find your Prospects Online

1. Do you have a natural, niche, market to target? __ Yes __ No
2. Is there an existing natural market on the Internet for what you offer? Is it easy to find resources? __ Yes __ No
3. Are there any 800 lb. Gorillas (big businesses) who dominate your natural market? Can you overcome their economic advantage? __ Yes __ No
4. What are the key characteristics, or information, you would like to know about your customers?

Review: How to Target Your Customer Base

The first three steps in this process lead you to define your customer base and how to easily reach them. You will use this to quickly test your marketing and adapt your offer to give them exactly what they want.

Without a specific sense of what you are offering, who you are offering it to, and why they should buy from you, your customers are lost. They don't want to read about your product, or you.

Which is where most businesses get stuck. They sit in their Web Site and know what they sell so well that they unconsciously try to prove how well they know it with everyone that visits them. All the customer hears is the ranting of facts, figures, and knowledge, but little if any reasons to buy.

In the center of the Conversion flowchart are the three most important questions your customer asks:

1. Why is this important?
2. Do I want or need this?
3. Should I respond, i.e., react, to these words?

You have the headline and maybe your first few sentences to give them a positive response to all of the above questions. If the email or Web Site is targeted to someone's specific interests, few if any will object.

Define who your customers are. What do they like? What holidays and events have to do with what you are offering? Is this something they do alone, online, or with a group? If you cannot tell me why someone is a good prospect for you, how can you convince them?

Put a face, a motivation, and a defined need on your customer base. Set your objectives to deliver the best products and services that solve their problems, that fulfill their needs.

For this section you need to define:

1. Your Business Objective
2. Description of Product/Service (in two sentences or less)
3. Your Target Goals in Terms of Sales, Savings, and Time
4. Key Problems Your Customer Faces
5. Your Customer Profile
6. The Top Internet Places to Market and Joint Venture

Case Study: First Security Capital -
http://www.FirstSecurityCapital.com

First Security Capital (http://www.firstsecuritycapital.com/) is a financial services firm specializing in providing innovative, proprietary financial products to individual investors and small to midsize companies. They offer high loan-to-value loans against free-trading securities, including large, mid, small cap, and microcap stocks.

[NOTE: The Following Chapters are Available in the Full Course]

Section B. How To Grow Your Business:

The Internet Sales Channel Is Powered By Systems That Work Without You

Dear Friend,

What will you say about your business when it is over?

Businesses, like everything, do end. If you don't plan on how you would like it to end, you leave it entirely up to chance. I realized a fatal flaw in my approach that I am correcting.

So when I was forced to write about how I wanted my business to end, I was confused. I never thought about the end. And what I learned is that this attitude kills most businesses.

Most entrepreneurs create jobs for themselves. What is revolutionary is to create a system that works without you. It's the same logic that Ray Kroc applied to McDonald's. He created a system where the business could train people to do the tasks.

Here's how I see it: a Job depends mostly on me. If I can't do the job, no one will. A business depends on the system. You break down all the work and delegate it. Then you can go away, relax, or at least have it work, while you are not there.

Work on creating your system, and please feel free to visit my Web Site if you have any questions. I look forward to hearing from you.

Peace,
Declan Dunn

For immediate assistance, call us today at (770) 936-8308 info@activemarketplace.com Copyright (c) 1994-1999 M. Declan Dunn and ADNet International. All Rights Reserved.