Building eCommerce

By Chris Marlow

What is the single most important thing you must know about landing a high quality client?

In a word, it’s EMPATHY. And my copywriting colleagues should know this, because understanding the pains, frustrations, desires, wants, needs, and goals and aspirations of your target audience is the key to higher response rates, more orders…and yes, better clients.

Why is this?

Simply because as human beings, from the moment of birth (and that first slap on the tush) we are in pain. We are in psychological pain (How can I get out of debt?), emotional pain (I never thought I’d get divorced), and sometimes physical pain (starting with our first moments into this world).

Are we ALWAYS in pain? Of course not. Sometimes we have pleasure, but first the pain must be absent (maybe this is why drugs are so popular!).

Now here comes the lesson: Pain is more powerful than pleasure. The human being will seek to alleviate his pain before he will seek to find pleasure.

The lesson here?

Simply that the freelance consultant who knows her target market’s pain…and seeks to SOLVE it…will be the freelance consultant who gets the job.

In lead-generating direct marketing, this is what the “offer” is all about.

As a direct response copywriter who targets marketing directors, I’ve made it my business to know what their life is like at work. I know a number of “pains” they deal with on a daily or weekly basis, and then I figure out how I can help them solve those pains.

When I think I have a great solution to a problem (e.g., how to increase response rates, shorten sales cycles, gain market share), I write a report (or guide, White Paper, Problem/Solution Recommender, etc.), and I present this free information as an offer to my target.

Being of high quality (I present only to pre-qualified prospects who meet certain criteria), this marketing director recognizes that I too am of high quality, and a “hot lead” is born.

When I share this information with my coaching students, I sometimes point out that most copywriters study every detail of the product or service, and spend very little time delving into the living, breathing pains of the prospect.

This is a terrible mistake, of course, because it is not the product we must convince…it is the prospect. So spend the time it takes to get to know the unique pains of your target audience, then offer them a solution for solving a specific problem.

For freelancers who target business, “pain” is on your side. You might find selling pleasure very profitable in the B2C space, but in B2B, pain is king!

About The Author

Chris Marlow publishes a free newsletter for consultants who want to land the high quality, high value clients.

By Brandon Hong

Traffic remains one of the lifeblood of any online business. There are basically two categories of traffic generation: free traffic and paid traffic.

In paid traffic, you have to pay someone to bring the traffic to you. For example, if you’re running a Google Adwords campaign for a selected group of keywords, when someone searches for that keyword, sees your ad and clicks on it, you’ll have to pay for that click. This can easily amount to a huge sum of money at the end of the month, as most Google advertisers have found out.

Besides Google Adwords, other form of paid advertising include classified ads, banner advertising, ezine ads, solo mailings and so on.

Results vary depending on the experience of service provider and the advertiser himself. For example, if you’re running your own Google Adwords campaign, you’ll
have to tweak and filter keywords that work for you and those that don’t.

Of course if you have more budget you might outsource the tasks of managing your Google Adwords campaigns to some company so as to free up your time for other marketing activities.

Besides paid traffic, there are also strategies you can use to drive traffic to your site, without costing you any money; hence the term ‘free traffic’. Some free traffic generation strategies include press release, article writing, ad swaps and so on.

One of the newer ways to drive traffic which I believe is widely under utilized is through the use of audio blogs. The focus of this article then is on how to generate more free traffic using audio blogs.

But first, what exactly are ‘audio blogs’?

Audio blogs are just like any other blogs save for one difference - they have more audio mp3 files posted. When you click on these audio links, depending on the setup of your computer system, your system will start to download the files and automatically play them on your PC.

There is one big secret that most people don’t know about when it comes to Audio blogs. The secret is this: You can actually get a backdoor listing in Yahoo for free with Audio blogs.

By submitting your audio blog to Yahoo audio search, your blog will get indexed by Yahoo search engine. This means your site or blog will now appear in Yahoo search results, helping to drive more traffic to your site.

Secondly, you can also submit your audio blogs to blogs and podcast directories. These are specialized directories that organize blogs and categorise them according to their topics. Listing your audio blog in these directories will expose your site directly to your intended target market.

Thirdly, you can also submit your audio blogs to iTunes directories. iPod remains one of the most popular mp3 devices in the market with strong following in US and overseas. The iTunes is an application that allows you to download, buy, organize
your music among other things. By submitting your audio blog to iTunes, you can gain access to tens of thousands of people who are searching for downloadable content in that topic.

Fourth, some people just prefer audios over plain text. With audio, you can listen to it on the go: in your car, in the gym, at the kitchen while cooking and so on.

In other words, audio will help you capture the segment of the market where articles or any written work does not work as well.

With all these benefits, online business owners should consider using setting up and running audio blogs to drive more traffic to their site. Is it hard to set up an audio blog? Actually, it’s easier than you think, especially if you are a member of AudioNicheBlogs

About The Author

Brandon Hong is a leading internet marketer and author. He has helped and trained many business owners to grow their business using advanced strategies like blogs, rss as well as creating multiple passive online income streams. http://www.audionicheblogs.com