Okay. One of the realizations that has just slapped me in the forehead has been by Internet marketer, Terry Lamb.
Guys, I’ve been marketing online, I’ve been marketing in the online and offline worlds for over 20 years, right? So I should know this stuff. I should know this one little jewel, and I needed to be reminded of it because I had strayed from the path.
The path that I strayed from, the learning that was brought to me by Terry, was this: He said in one of his recent webinars that his number one purpose for his website is to entice people to sign up onto his mailing list.
That’s his one, singular purpose.
At that point, then he can have a conversation with them. Once he’s gotten somebody added to his list, he can teach them. He can bring value to them. He can offer them recommendations—product recommendations, solution recommendations—that kind of thing. But until then, they’re not a captive audience. They’re visitors. They hop onto the site and if they leave the site without ever signing up to your list, you may never see them again.
You know, for the last year or so I had kind of fallen away from that. I’ve been building an email list for a while, but I realized I had been falling away from it. I have been pushing people more towards the Facebook channel, or more towards the Twitter.
Really, the destination is the mailing list.
If we have conversations over at Facebook, if we have conversations over at Twitter or Google+, or wherever, that’s all great. But ultimately, you want the ability to reach into people’s inboxes to say “Hi. How you doing today? What is it that I can help you with? This is what I found to be helpful on my mission (and on our combined mission) to get from point A to point B.”
That little bit of awareness I needed. That’s my lesson for today. What can you guys do to help make your website more of a destination, first? So are you building value into your website?
Then, secondly, how do you keep the conversation going? How do you keep yourself on their forefront?
There’s your challenge for today.