Marketing Method: Follow Up : Blogging Your Brand with Wordpress

Most unsuccessful marketers lack one thing, and it’s the one thing that 99% of the successful marketers have in common. Can you guess what it is? Come on, I gave you a hint (in the title).

Thanks right. Follow up.

And you can’t follow up if you don’t capture their name and email address. That part is called *Building a list*. Generally speaking, you offer something of value in exchange for permission to follow up with them. That *offer* is an ethical bribe. And frankly, it needs to be worth their name and email address in today’s world of spammers.

A free ebook they can’t get elsewhere, a newsletter, a 20% discount on a product they will likely want (based on your niche) or something of this nature. It will vary depending on the niche you are in, but not too much.

This Gets You In The Door

A name and email address in exchange for something of value is just your foot in the door, and like all good salesmen, you have to continue to earn their trust and attention. That’s where the follow up comes in. This is your opportunity to build your reputation with them. Build trust. Build a relationship. And don’t be like the other marketers that fail this part of the process by “marketing” too soon.

You aren’t an adviser yet. They don’t know or like you yet. You haven’t earned the right to recommend anything yet. To earn it, you have to continue to send them info/value/product that matches up with their needs. And for this to be successful, your message has to get past their “ad filters” (visual), their “spam filters” (physical) and reach their email inbox.

There Is One Tool You Need In Your Arsenal

Well, okay, to be fair, you really need a few tools, but without the ability to follow up over time, and get those messages past their spam filters, you are just spinning your wheels in this industry.

The tool is rightly called an “Auto Responder”. It’s an automated tool that allows you to custom craft your messages and then assign a time period when to send them. In other words, send message 1, 10 minutes after they sign up. Send message 2, 3 days later. Send message 3 and every future message 7 days later. You get the idea.

Now, you can try to remember all this, you can track your prospects in Excel and you can manually deal with the Internet Service providers that will ban your IP address or domain name (it happens all the time), or you can sign up for a service such as AWeber or iContact, Constant Contact or Get Response.

Using a service (particularly one that forces an opt in confirmation), allows you to focus on your messages, your follow up and not the mechanics.

I know which method I would prefer. How about you? Are you ready to follow up like a pro? Get an autoresponder service account. I prefer AWeber for a variety of reason, but it really doesn’t matter which autoresponder account you go with. Just go with one of them. You can get an AWeber Test Drive here.

Each has their own merits so you can evaluate based on what you need. Trust me? Then get an AWeber account for a pittance ($19.95 a month) and double or even triple your sales numbers by allowing your prospects to get to know you first, hear from you often and purchase from you when you gain their trust.

Related AWeber Resources

About The Author

Cenay Nailor offers Online Marketing and Personal Branding Tips and Insights

Cenay Nailor is an Online Marketing and Blogging coach with mad technical skills she loves sharing with Videos. Visit her video tutorial blog and get some technical help. You should also snag the weekly injection of Tech-Based Marketing Newsletter, and have it sent right to your inbox. (Upper right corner)

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5 Comments

Sherman Smith July 12, 2010

The fortune is in the follow up is what successful leaders say. Without following up, your business will not go anywhere for sure. The reason for this is to build more trust by building a relationship with your prospects. Once you do that, it becomes easier to sponser them. Great post Cenay!!!

Take Care
Sherman
Sherman Smith´s last [type] ..SALSA DANCING AND ATTRACTION MARKETING
Carol Hansen July 14, 2010

Boy, is that the truth. People seldom buy from strangers. They need to develop a relationship with you first, to know, like and trust you. That is what auto-responders do, create that relationship and let people get to know you. I like Aweber too. Very inexpensive and easy to use. Lots of tutorials on how to use it, including yours. (the best of course) Thanks Cenay.

Carol
Lawrence Miller July 16, 2010

Hi Cenay,

I have recently started following you via RSS. I found you through your instructive video on HeadSpace2. I am not quite sure I know exactly how to enter keywords in the correct way in the various modules. If I can’t finally figure it out, I will be back to you on that.

I have a question today but that is not it. I have just about finished setting-up a website, HerFinestFinery.com, which will eventually be a super niche website with 100 or so posts on it. The posts will be renewed from time to time in light of recent events or just to make them better.

The question I have is: I have installed W3 Total Cache, using default settings and found it is not compatible with Google Custom Search Element. I wrote the people at W3-Edge.com asking how I might overcome the this problem as I like W3 Total Cache very much. I wrote them twice in fact to no avail.

I wonder if you know how to overcome this compatibility problem with a simple fix or, alternately, if know how I might hope to get an answer from W3-Edge.com. If I can’t fix it, I will have to drop W3 in favor of WP-Cache on this one website.

I’ll keep following you and–oh, one more thing–do I get everything you send out via RSS or do I need to subscribe to your email list also to get part of what you send out.

You’re a sharpie; keep it up.

Lawrence
Lawrence Miller´s last [type] ..Another round of Prohibition- anyone
Lawrence Miller July 17, 2010

Hi,

Now, I finally have time to respond to your post about Follow Up. There’s really not much to add to what you wrote. I believe, just as you said, follow up is all important.

I reckon following your advice will tend to be the right thing to do in every instance. What you write in a given instance may be simply a reminder for some, but news to someone else. We aren’t all equally knowledgeable, so I say keep the tutorial and tips coming without concern as to whether some or all of us already know to do what you suggest. The time when you think we should all know something is the time when some of us or most of us won’t know it. We are richer for having found you and for deciding to follow your blog.

I sure am glad I found you.

Lawrence
Lawrence Miller´s last [type] ..Another round of Prohibition- anyone
Josh@Network Marketing Consultant July 31, 2010

Hello Cenay,

You pretty much hit the nail on the head. Many network marketers that I know have no idea about the importance of making follow ups with their prospects.

There is a lot of potential in making the follow up. Whether it is by phone or email, you should do it anyway, because it could be the difference of achieving your goals in 2 years or 6 months.

By building quality relationships and providing helpful advice to your prospects, they will see you as a leader and possibly the right person to act as their up line.
Josh@Network Marketing Consultant´s last [type] ..Tips for Network Marketing – FREE Guide

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