If you want to increase your sales and expand your outreach, you need to position yourself as an authority in your market.
An authority can:
The first step in your journey to positioning yourself as an authority in your niche is to ask yourself two important questions:
Seems like two rather easy questions, right?
Because ultimately, all people are about is “what is in it for them?”
They need to know how you plan to help them, what you bring to the table and how you will solve their problems.
Authority marketing is about positioning your business in a way that you become the logical choice when someone is making the decision who to turn to for help, advice, products or services.
Your goal is to become the go-to person in your niche, or at the very least, one of the first names that come to mind when someone thinks about who to turn to for help with specific topics.
Note that I didn’t say “specific markets or niches”, I said topic.
That’s because it’s always best to position yourself so that people identify you as an authority on a very specific topic or category rather than the market as a whole.
For example, rather than trying to establish yourself as the authority of all things related to blogging, positioning yourself as someone who is known for teaching people how to drive traffic to blogs, allows you to connect to a specific audience.
This will make your marketing campaigns far more effective and targeted than when casting a wider net.
Trust me, it’ll cut down on a lot of research, trial and error and testing as well because you’ll be able to spend the majority of your time researching that one specific segment of a market and learning everything you need to know about it.
So, begin by taking some time to decide what area of your niche you’ll venture into. Then you’ll be able to study that segment of the market thoroughly, create a plan of action and execute quickly.
Sounds obvious, right?
You need to know WHO you your audience really is and HOW you can help them.
In fact, knowing your audience is one of the most important things you can do when trying to establish yourself as an authority in your market.
This goes beyond just creating a quick overview of your average customer. Instead, spend time on the same websites, in the same circles and on the same platforms that they do.
Always put yourself in your customers’ shoes. They don’t care about your personal goals – they care only about themselves and their needs – and above all else, how you will help them solve a problem.
Read that again: you’re the only one who truly cares about your business growth. Everyone else just cares about how your business can personally help them.
This means that your focus should always be on identifying key areas in your market where people are struggling.
Then you can use that information in many different areas of your business, such as: coming up with customized products and services that fill that need, developing a USP (Unique Selling Proposition) that offers a promise to solve that problem and creating marketing campaigns that trigger your audience into taking action.
Thorough market research is the key to success when it comes to gaining the advantage of becoming an authority.
Those who overlook the importance of truly understanding their audience even before they create a business plan or launch a marketing campaign will quickly discover just how difficult it is to gain traction.
In fact, without knowing your audience, you’re venturing into a market blindfolded with little chance of success.
On the flip side, putting time and effort into researching your market and connecting with your core audience early on, will make all the difference in your ability to create in-demand products and services that are a no-brainer for your customer base.
You’ll be able to stand out from the crowd, position yourself as an expert and easily convince people to give your brand and business a chance.
And your marketing campaigns will be far more successful and ultimately, cost you less in terms of time spent tweaking and split-testing campaigns. Because you’ll know what makes people tick.
Are your ads mainly geared towards highlighting features rather than the benefits?
Are your campaigns structured in a way that personally connects with your core audience and goes to work at solidifying your brand?
Do they help position you as an expert?
When it comes to the psychology behind successful brand building and authority positioning, it often hinges on your ability to demonstrate empathy.
The more you do this, the easier it will be to resonate with your audience and connect with your customer base. You’ll come off as more personable, approachable and as someone who truly has their best interests at heart.
There are 3 basic types of empathy: cognitive, emotional, and compassionate.
Cognitive empathy is also known as perspective-taking. It’s the ability to think the way someone else thinks, to imagine you’re them and see how they’d react to something.
It’s a useful skill, especially in marketing, but not exactly what you imagine true empathy should be. Empathy should have an emotional component if it’s going to go the distance.
Emotional empathy is when you inject emotional triggers into your campaigns, ads, sales copy and general content.
How do your customers feel when they look at your ads or read your content? What emotions do you stimulate with your communications, campaigns, emails?
Emotional empathy allows you to feel what others do, like when you hear someone laughing and you smile without knowing exactly what they’re laughing at.
It’s contagious. And when you learn to inject this kind of emotion into your overall brand, your ability to connect with your audience will become one of your super powers. J
Finally, compassionate empathy is the ability to identify someone’s emotion and act on that with a solution.
In this way, you’ll create something that not only takes their feelings into account, but gives them a logical solution to that emotion.
Example: Someone is stressed out because they’re unable to pay their monthly bills. You understand their concerns, what keeps them up at night and act on that with a solution: a business opportunity that will help them gain financial freedom and eliminate stress.
Stress is the emotion you identify and your business positions itself in such a way as to become the solution to eliminating or addressing that emotion.
And it doesn’t have to be a negative emotion either. Someone could feel elated that they have discovered that blogging is a great way to connect with people and help them but they need to know how to create that blog, launch that blog and grow that blog.
All of this comes down to knowing your market so you can position yourself as the expert and authority they are looking for.
They’ll feel they need you, that you’re the solution to their problems and that you truly understand how they are feeling and what they need most.
That is how you’ll stand out in your market 🙂
If you want to know more about leveraging the power of authority marketing, then check out the featured resource below for a free report that expands on this post; download, read and take action 🙂
Labels are important. Most important are the ones that we give ourselves. How you define yourself will color the way you see yourself, and this in turn is going to influence the way that you interact with others, your happiness, your confidence and much more about you.
This is particularly true for people who are entrepreneurs and internet marketers. If you’re someone who works online, then you will be doing something that isn’t easily defined and that many people won’t really understand. What is it you do again? How do you make money without leaving the house??
And it also changes the way you feel about the work you do and the kind of path that you will end up pursuing.
But here’s a thought; have you ever considered shifting the way you describe yourself away from ‘internet marketer’ to ‘content creator’ instead?
Yes? No? Well here are a couple of reasons why you should be a content creator and not a marketer.
You might be wondering how you can just go ahead and change your label if you’re still doing the same job. Isn’t a content creator something entirely different from a digital marketer?
Well, not really! In all honesty, they are essentially the same, but the perception is very different.
These days, content marketing is the most effective option for any brand wanting to increase its visibility and status online.
Content marketing is necessary for SEO (because SEO is predicated on having content for Google to crawl) and it is synonymous with social media marketing (because one of the most important aspects of social media marketing is sharing content through your various channels).
And if you’re a content marketer who creates articles and videos for a blog, then chances are that you have the precise same goals as the marketers: getting your content seen.
The only difference is that a content marketer is someone who puts the ends first, whereas the content creator puts the quality content first. They put the value first. The content creator builds a brand and then promotes that brand with great multimedia content.
The marketer on the other hand looks at the market and asks how they can make money…
The thing is, the content creator – ironically – actually often makes more money.
That’s because they have a brand they believe in and they are putting more work into their content.
Both these things are not lost on readers who will end up wanting to spend more money as a result. And thanks to Google’s more recent changes, they’re not lost on the search algorithms either…
Then there’s the fact that content creators are happier. Why? Because they are working on something they love.
Success doesn’t come online quite as quickly as some marketers will have you believe. It takes a lot of time and even more work.
If you’re going to avoid letting this crush you and make you miserable, then you better ensure that you are doing it for the love and not because you have to!
Think about all the most wealthy and famous people online. How did they get there? From pedaling ‘make money’ eBooks? Or by creating an amazing YouTube channel and sharing a vibrant personality and talent for writing and production?
Content creation and marketing go hand in hand and rely heavily on each other, but by labeling yourself as a content creator rather than a marketer will change peoples perception of you, but perhaps more importantly, it may change your perception of yourself and that is priceless!
Using the internet to promote goods and services for your business is generally known as internet marketing or online marketing. This process may also be referred to as electronic marketing, e-marketing and e-commerce.
Internet marketers use a wide variety of strategies to make their business visible to their target audience, or niche. These strategies include SEO (search engine optimization), blogging, direct marketing, email marketing, content marketing, social media marketing and the list goes on.
There are many advantages and disadvantages that come with internet marketing as a business model and we are going to be looking at a few in this article.
There are many advantages that come with having an online internet marketing business and these include cost, reach, technology, 24/7 availability of products/services. These are primarily customer advantages, but the business benefits include reliable data collection, quick competitive analysis and personalisation.
Compared to traditional brick and mortar or offline marketing, it is much cheaper to promote your business online using the internet and this is especially true about advertising. In fact, there are many ways to promote your business online for FREE! Unlike traditional ad media such as the TV and newspapers, your online ad spend will be a fraction of what it costs to promote a business traditionally. As well as being cost-effective, internet marketing is also time-saving because it takes less time to find prospects, turn them into buyers (hopefully) and complete their transactions.
As there are little to no overhead costs, the returns on investment (ROI) that comes with online marketing far exceed that of traditional marketing. If you have a good target market and laser focused marketing strategy, you will get higher and (sometimes) instant returns on the money you spend when placing online ads. And don’t forget that many of these techniques are completely free and will still yield good returns.
Staffing costs will also be lower when compared to a more traditional offline business. Hiring costs for virtual assistants is far less than on the high street and you can outsource all over the world!
Cash flow is also often improved. As consumers pay for the product before it is dispatched, this helps to improve the cash flow for the company, making sure that the business can pay any suppliers and other costs (such as online marketing tools) on time.
There’s also the advantage of being able to get in front of a global audience with your online business (unlike a traditional business that is normally restricted within a specific boundary of operation). This opens up so many new opportunities and even allows you to compete on a global scale, even with the big guys! If you already have a traditional business, it is a good idea to move some of your operations online, so that even if your offline office is closed for business, customers and prospects will still be able to visit your website and place their orders.
The amazing technology that powers the web, and also your online business is one of the major benefits of hosting your business online. And the technologies are only going to get better and more sophisticated as time goes by. With reliable auto-responder services, you don’t have to worry about your emails being delivered (email marketing) to your target audience in a timely manner; delivery is almost instant! And you can even schedule emails to go out on a daily/weekly basis on autopilot! On the other hand, the traditional direct mailing system can take days, or even weeks to deliver mail to their destinations, especially when you are mailing globally.
There is no time restriction on when a consumer can shop online because the internet is always available. Many online sales now start at midnight on a particular day encouraging customers to shop all hours of the day. For example, many retailers will start post-Christmas sales on the 26th of December at 00.00, but many consumers are starting to shop even on Christmas Day itself!
Every time a customer interacts with your business, that interaction is captured. The business can then use this data in a number of ways. To start with, information can be analysed to find out which are the most popular products/services being sold. Secondly the data can be used to assist in segmenting their customers, profiling them and sending customers promotional material based on past buying habits. This can even go a step further with potential customers, as you can now retarget them with ads based upon their browsing history, so they see relevant, targeted ads tempting them back to buy.
There has been much controversy over the amount of information that is being collected online by various companies. This is of particular importance when it comes to social networking sites and there has been many a debate as to whether customers should be able to opt out of that information being shared to third party users.
Any business owner knows that it is important to analyse your competitors. The internet allows businesses to analyse their competitors’ online strategy quickly and easily. You can keep an eye on what new products they are releasing, react to any price changes, or use the internet to discover all sorts of secondary data on your competition. The internet allows you to react quickly to any change in a competitor’s strategy, and enables you to try to provide a service that at least matches, but preferably beat your competitors. Just keep in mind that they can do this too!
Browsing competitor websites can also provide a wealth of background information about the business such as:
The internet often has information about your competitors (and you) which is prepared by independent organisations which are not connected to competitors so the data should be reliable.
When customers log into their accounts, a business can make their web experience almost unique. Using a membership portal which requires them to login is definitely a preferred option here as there are so many benefits, from offering special offers to that particular customer, offering an add-on to their recent purchase, (much like Amazon does), or by allowing the customer to personalise their own products, like Nike does with their trainers. Personalisation allows the business to form stronger bonds online with customers who they don’t have any physical interaction with, and this helps to form long term online relationships thus ensuring customers come back regularly.
Not everything is rosy! There are always going to be some disadvantages to any type of business and internet/online marketing is no different. Some of these include loneliness, motivation, no face-to-face contact, and once again technology!
Do not underestimate this! Many people dream about working from home and living the “laptop lifestyle” but it can be pretty lonely working on your own, especially in the beginning when you may see little reward for your efforts. Try to involve those closest to you such as a spouse, family and friends.
This is intrinsically linked to point 1. If you are lonely, not seeing much reward for your efforts, and have negative people surrounding you (we all do), it can be very difficult to stay motivated. This is a trial which pretty much ALL online entrepreneurs MUST overcome to become successful, but this is a very real danger and can have a serious impact on your relationships, but you need to hang in there because the rewards are well worth it!
This is a real downside to online marketing; the lack of a tangible physical connection. Limited face to face contact really is one of the major drawbacks of internet marketing because nothing beats having a potential customer in front of you. Businesses that are solely based online aren’t usually able to build strong personal rapport with their customers. As a result, there is the possibility that they may lose some of their customers to more traditional competitors who use strong customer service tactics. But the good thing is that more and more people are turning their buying power online for the convenience it provides so all is not lost!
Ah, so you have probably noticed that this can be an advantage AND a disadvantage! The virtual nature of internet marketing increases marketing complexity. When you are just starting out it can quickly become confusing when trying to choose which online marketing techniques will become profitable.
Customers also face complexities in the aspects of shopping online and may have security concerns leading the un-informed consumers to stick to conventional buying rather than enduring such online purchase complexities.
And there are such a myriad of tools to accomplish a particular task that it can quickly become overwhelming. Just look at the number of auto-responder services, domain name providers, hosting providers, page builders and it can quickly lead to despair. In fact, this is probably the number one reason why many budding entrepreneurs give up before they even really get started which is a real shame.
Don’t be one of those people; if you want to learn more about the technical basics of having an online business, I have a fantastic free report that you can download here.
So, there you have it. 11 things you should know about internet marketing broken into the advantages and potential disadvantages of internet marketing and running an online business. I’m sure you will agree that the advantages definitely outweigh any potential pitfalls. So, what are you waiting for? Go out there and claim your slice of the online pie, and if you want to remove the confusion around the technical aspect of running an online business, then download the Internet Marketing Startup Report now.
If you’re an Internet Marketer who has an online business, you should always be looking ahead to the end goal i.e. have a long term vision for your business. If you are like most businesses, the majority of your costs are going to be on your “front-end” offers that you are using to attract new customers, so the majority of your profits are going to come from “back-end” products and ideally these should be “high-ticket” products. This is the single most effective way to scale your business and is also a fantastic way to build your own brand and reputation as a premium seller.
Well, the answer is simple really: it is a product or service that you’re going to charge a lot of money for. There’s no strict definition of where a high ticket price should begin as this is largely determined by your niche and the market you are selling to, but the minimum is probably at least $97 and this can easily rise to $2,000, $10,000, $20,000 all depending on the nature of the item, the marketplace and your own status. This is why branding is also critical in allowing you to position yourself as a premium seller/brand.
The obvious advantage of a high ticket item is that you are able to generate a lot more profit from far fewer sales. Rather than earning $17-27 for an ebook, you might now earn enough to live on for a week, month or even a year by selling this one, high-quality, exclusive product.
At the same time, high ticket items help you with your positioning and authority status; they make you appear more important and they will help you to strengthen your brand. Think about this; when you price your information product or service, you are simultaneously valuing yourself and other peoples perception of you! If you are willing to sell your time for $10 an hour, then people may well think you’re small time and a low-end seller and it can be difficult to remove this perception.
There are other benefits too. One is that having fewer customers means that you will have less customer support issues, fewer emails to answer and fewer complaints. Another is that high-ticket customers actually tend to be the best type of customers who have the fewer complaints in the first place as they are willing to pay a premium for the information that they require; it’s all about the mindset!
And when you get to this situation, you can now start selling a product that you really believe in and that really delivers quality and value. At the same time, you can care for each of your customers and give them the time and attention they deserve.
The problem here is that a lot of people don’t have the confidence and knowledge that is worth a high-ticket asking price and so they’re too shy to start asking for that much money.
This is definitely not the case. There are plenty of things you can sell that will be worth $2,000 and more; the key is just to understand why people are willing to pay that kind of money and to find something unique and worthwhile that you are able to bring to the table.
Your aim is to get as many positive testimonials as you can; NEVER underestimate the power of social proof! Not only will this help you sell more copies but it will also give you the confidence in your product and your abilities to produce premium high-ticket offers in the future. It is a great feeling to know that what you are selling is definitely worth the money you’re charging, and that it is having a positive impact in your customers lives.
So what are you waiting for? Get cracking and start creating your high-ticket offers today and become a premium seller in your niche. If you aren’t sure where to get started I have created a short report that can help you on your way. If you would like a copy just click on the image below and I will get a copy to you immediately so you can start to reap the benefits of adding a high-ticket line of offers in your business.
Internet marketing is something a lot of people are interested in getting started in, but their eyes glaze over once they hear terms like FTP, domain names, hosting, script installation… all those terms that all internet marketers have to learn eventually, but seem so daunting to a beginner.
This post is going to cover some of the most important things you’ll need to know as a newbie to internet marketing.
We’re going to cover topics such as domain names, hosting, cPanel and FTP and in future posts we will cover much more. We’ll cover some of the technical basics that you need to get started in internet marketing as it is these technical things that stop so many people from even starting!
The first thing you’ll likely need to know is how to get a domain name. Your domain name is your website’s street address, basically. It tells web browsers how to find your website.
A domain name looks like this >> your-domain.com
And your web address would look like this >> http://www.your-domain.com
While you could get away with using a web address such as:
http://www.wordpress.com/your-business-name
The fact is there are some problems with this.
First of all, it doesn’t look as professional as using your own domain. If you’re hosting on a free platform like WordPress or Blogger, you may find people aren’t as likely to trust you, especially if you’re selling something.
Another potential problem is that free hosts have a variety of different rules you must follow. Some of them don’t allow you to use advertisements on your site. Others don’t allow you to use plugins. These rules and limitations can be extremely restrictive and hamper your marketing efforts greatly.
Finally, if you don’t have your own domain on your own hosting, you will be extremely limited with what you can accomplish with your website itself. Running WordPress on your own domain will allow you to use custom themes and plugins on your site, for example. While hosting on the WordPress servers limits you quite severely.
There are many different places to buy a domain, but not all are created equal. Some have higher fees than others, while some use tricky or deceptive means to entice buyers to use their services.
The most commonly used registrar by internet marketers is:
NameCheap has very fair prices, and they are known for being honest and having excellent customer service. Additionally, you can Google “NameCheap coupon and you will get a discount code that will take a fair amount of the purchase price of a new domain name.
NameCheap offers a service called WhoisGuard that comes free with a brand new domain. What is WhoisGuard? Well, it protects your private information from potentially prying eyes, spammers and stalkers. This service is absolutely invaluable when it comes to privacy.
There are a couple of minor potential drawbacks to using it.
Some people may not trust you if you use it, so it may slightly lessen sales. But the odds of someone checking your WHOIS information before they buy from you are relatively slim.
If you don’t want to risk disgruntled customers or crazy stalkers showing up at your front door, this is a great way to protect yourself.
First of all, don’t be suckered into buying anything but a domain that ends with the .com extension. It’s been proven that domains that end in other extensions have a tougher time ranking well in the search engines. Not only that, but if you want people to be able to remember your domain if they want to come back and have forgotten to bookmark it, you really need to have the .com version. It is what people instinctively visit.
Ideally, you want to choose one of two types of domains:
Here are some examples:
This type of domain is best for online stores, social media sites, and other types of sites that focus on products or services more than content.
Examples would be:
I have no idea if any of those are currently being used, but they are examples of the types of domains you might want to get if you were trying to rank for those phrases.
If you buy a domain name, you must have somewhere to host it. If your domain is your street address, your hosting is basically the building in which your company resides at that address.
There are many reputable hosting companies to choose from, but perhaps the most popular among internet marketers are Bluehost and HostGator.
>>Bluehost: warr.us/bluehost
>>Hostgator: warr.us/hostgator
HostGator has a very affordable plan called Baby Croc that costs about $10 per month and gives you all the space and bandwidth the average person can use. If you happen to use more than your server can handle, you may need to get a dedicated server, but if that becomes the case, you should hopefully be making more than enough money to afford it.
HostGator also has the Fantastico system, which will allow you to install scripts such as WordPress with just a few mouse clicks and with ZERO knowledge of technical stuff like databases.
The minimum specs you will need from your hosting company will depend on what you want to accomplish with it and how much traffic you think you’ll be getting, but most companies are fairly flexible. You can move up or down in plan size pretty much anytime if you find you need more options or if you’re paying too much for stuff you don’t need.
At the very least you will probably want:
There are other features that come in handy, such as regular automatic backups to protect your websites in case of crash or hacking, but nothing is really critical. Most hosting companies these days will offer such features, anyway.
One thing you may need to become acquainted with is cPanel. Your hosting company will probably provide some basic tutorials to help you learn to use it. But if you want to add new domains to your account, setup redirects, install software, etc., you will need to learn to use it.
>> https://www.cpanel.net/products/cpanelwhm/cpanel11/tutorials.html
FTP, also known as File Transfer Protocol, is a method of transferring files to and from your hosting server. This is used for uploading images, HTML files, etc.
You will need to use a FTP program if you need to transfer files, and unless you’re using WordPress (installed with Fantastic) exclusively, you will likely need to upload files at some point.
There are some great free FTP programs available for most OS platforms. Very few people would need the features that come with paid FTP programs, anyway.
Here are a few to check out:
>> http://filezilla-project.org (Windows and Mac)
>> http://www.coffeecup.com/free-ftp/ (Windows)
>> https://www.smartftp.com (Windows)
>> http://www.coreftp.com (Windows)
Check the instructions that come with the individual programs to learn how to use them. Most are quite simple so get stuck in.
Hopefully this post helps you to look at some of the more technical aspects of Internet Marketing with a little less trepidation.
This post is actually part of a larger report that I have put together and if you want to get hold of a FREE copy you can do so HERE
