February 3, 2012

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Making it Easy for People to Reach out To You

February 8, 2011 By 2 Comments

If you’ve noticed a growing trend in recent years where whenever you try to reach out to companies that you giving your business to, you are forced to endure an automated voice maze filled with advertising for products and services you don’t want, and directions on how to reach people you aren’t looking to talk to.

Take a lesson from these corporate giants, and what not to do. Generally when people are calling it’s either a) to inquire about products or services that you offer or b) because they have an issue with a product or service that they’ve already paid for. Either way these people are either already clients or potential clients and should be treated as a valuable asset that they are.

In the online world with websites, blogs, and other online communities, there is absolutely no reason for us not to be able to stay connected with our customers. We have multiple points of contact from the simple contact forms that plug right into wordpress, to our other many forms of networking tools like Twitter, Messenger, Skype, Facebook, and on, and on, make sure you are available to your audience on at least one of these different forums, and most of all don’t ignore them just because you think they represent an obstacle in the form of a customer service issue.

Now having said all that, I realize that many of you are running your business out of your home, and are very likely to be a one man show, and responding to every single person is a chore that we’d like to avoid. There are some things that you can do to lessen the requests on your time, and I’ll list a few below.

1.       Have a FAQ page on your website, FAQ stands for frequently asked questions, and if you find that you are answering the same questions over and over it might be a good indicator that you are in need of one. Spend the afternoon drawing one up, and post it on your site where people can see it.

2.       Keep all updated information accessible to clients and customers, if there has been an issue and you are aware of it, rather than sweeping it under the rug, announce the issue on your fan page, and the resolutions steps. It could just be that a download URL for a product was offline for a few hours, and anyone who made a purchase between those times was faced with an empty site. Imagine paying good money for a product and then being redirected to a 404 page not found or something similar. I’m sure you can imagine how they’d feel. By making a status update on your pages about the issue many will skip the PayPal dispute and simply wait till it comes back online.

3.       Use a custom “Support” email for customers, that way you can prioritize them. Rather than having 40 emails that you get to when you have time, you will likely just have one or two that you know need to be dealt with right away. You could also set up an auto responder to send out a copy of the FAQ to them, in case the problem can be solved via that document.

However you choose to connect with your audience, it’s important to remember that you have already gotten their attention, which is the most expensive aspect of trying to gather new customers. Make sure you aren’t losing them after you’ve gone to the trouble to attract them to you in the first place!

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Filed Under: Internet Marketing Tagged With: audience, contact information, customer service, staying connected

Hosting a Webinar – Things You Need to Know

August 31, 2010 By 2 Comments

Hosting A Webinar

If you are knowledgeable enough on a certain in-demand topic or niche, you may be able to host a webinar. Hosting a webinar is a very serious responsibility. Your audience is likely very new to the niche or topic you’re talking about. They have little to no knowledge at all. Or perhaps everything they know is based on myths and misinformation. Your job as a webinar host is to dispel these myths and convey the proper information. Free information is a great way to sell your product and increase traffic to your website. This is why many internet marketers and affiliate marketers host webinars.

The first thing you have to do is decide what your webinar is going to be about. It would help if it’s a topic that is high in interest. These topics may include e-business, internet marketing, affiliate marketing, SEO, blogging, how to work from home or blogging. The purpose of your webinar is ultimately to increase customers and sales. However, this is impossible to do if your customers don’t trust you. Therefore, a webinar has a dual purpose. You can show your audience you are knowledgeable and trusting. This will result in an increase in traffic to your website and an increase in sales.

Next, decide how long your webinar is going to be. This is a very important step in hosting a webinar. Most people who are in attendance will only be available for a no more than an hour. So when getting your presentation together, you need to keep your time limit in mind. You may have a wealth of knowledge on the subject, but remember that most of your attendees are beginners. You can’t talk to them about managing a successful e-business when they don’t even know what an e-business is. An effective introduction is in order. This will help grasp your attendees’ attention.

During your introduction, explain what your topic is before going on. The rest of your presentation should proceed in a logical order. When hosting a webinar, it helps to develop an outline that you can stick to. The outline will help make sure that you’re not going off topic. The outline should also be visible to those attending the webinar, so that they can follow along as well. Make your webinar presentation purely informational. Do not add fluff. No one wants their time wasted. At the end of the presentation, allow an appropriate amount of time to answer questions. This is also known as a Q & A session.

Before giving your webinar, it’s important that you practice your presentation. This is how you’ll know if you’ve got too much information. You should prepare at least 2 weeks in advance. As you’re preparing, you’ll also want to look for people who want to attend your webinar. You can find them by searching for websites that contain the type of audience that are interested in your information. This includes visitors to blogs relating to your niche, and other similar websites.

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Filed Under: Internet Marketing Tagged With: affiliate marketing, attend, audience, Blogging, e-business, hosting a webinar, information, niche, visitors, webinar