Email Campaign Archive

Why are Relationships with Readers Important?

 
How do you build trust with others? You get to know them and find out what they are all about. It is easier to do that face to face, yes, but it can also be accomplished in cyberspace if you are willing to work at it. But, why do any of that anyway?

Building relationships with your readers is vital to your business. Remember that your goal is to make money and for that you will need people to visit your site. But, visiting is not enough in and of itself.

Think about it in these terms. Let’s say you launch an incredible new product. You advertise everywhere that you can think of. In the first months of your launch, your unique visitors go up 100% (it’s possible!) AND the sales go through the roof.

In your bliss don’t forget that the journey towards one-time sales is a short trip. If you made six figures in each of those months, it still wouldn’t compensate for the next eight months of basement stats because none of those customers came back. That’s no way to run and grow a successful business enterprise.

Instead, strive for repeat visitors every month of the year. How do you do that? You build a relationship with each one of them. No, you don’t have to know them all by name, but you will want to pay attention and give them what they want to keep them coming back.

Readers are more than just people who come to hear what you have to say, they are looking for something. It could be your product but they won’t stay where they are not appreciated.

Here are a few reasons why reader relationships are so important to your site:

1. They have friends. You never know who is visiting and reading your site content. One thing that you do know is that they have a sphere of influence with someone. That sphere can be yours if they are satisfied with their relationship with you.

2. They have money. What started out as simply a visitor can be converted to a customer who uses your products or services if they trust you. Now you have the potential for repeat business.

3. They represent a portion of the population. Whatever their connections, they can be useful to you in building a better business. Online business owners can provide organic backlinks for you; bloggers can ask you to guest post for them; avid social bookmarkers can help lift you to expert status by linking to your content.

Readers are not just numbers; they are people who are important in their own right and to your business. Connect with them.

It’s not enough to be social and get prospects to your site, once they get there are you keeping them engaged, are you directing them towards your funnel?  Your website is your "real estate" on the web.  Are you truly presenting yourself and your business in a way that will make others want to purchase, want to sign up for your list, want to get more information from you?

Much like real estate agents "stage" a house in order to show it for selling you need to set the "stage" on your website where it is inviting and your visitors want to come in and stay a while or even "spend some money" or "join your community".  Whatever it is that you are hoping for them to do.

We in the online business world think of this as inviting our visitors into our funnel. A marketing funnel begins with a free or low cost item, and then moves into our high priced items, and finally into high-end high cost products and services.  That is where you must make your site compelling. You must make it clear that you are "calling them to act".

Go to your website, spend some time asking yourself, am I setting the stage for allowing my visitors to feel invited in, to realize that I am "calling them to action", that I am inviting them into my marketing funnel?  If not make changes that will make that happen.

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