Introduction

Let us say you are a small business owner. Your business may be a brick-and-mortar business, or it may be an online business. And you want to attract more paying customers to your business.

You can attract more paying customers using offline methods (TV ads, fliers, postal mail direct marketing, and so on). And you can attract more paying customers using online methods (using digital marketing strategies – online advertising, content marketing, social media marketing, and so on).

On this website we will cover how to attract more customers online through digital marketing strategies.

The Main Pieces

There are many pieces that have to work together to attract more customers online. It is my attempt here to simplify these pieces and show you an overview – the BIG picture – of how the various pieces fit together to attract more customers for your business online – through digital marketing strategies.

Let us start with the basics…

You need three things to attract more paying customers online, i.e., using digital marketing strategies. These are obvious to most people:

  1. Something to sell
  2. Some to sell it to
  3. Someone who actually buys

In other words, you need:

  1. Something to sell: You need to have products and/or services to sell
  2. Someone to sell to : You need to have identified your niche market along with their frustrations and desires, you need to identify your clear marketing message, and you need to get traffic
  3. Someone who actually buys: You need to have a process to convert prospects into customers, i.e. sales conversion

Something to Sell (Products/Services):

Here are the types of products or services you may have that you are looking to sell:

  1. You already have existing physical products or existing services.
  2. You can create information products (information that help people to solve their problems)
  3. You can create services that help your customers

If you have existing physical products or services to sell, you are ready with your product/serve to sell.

However, if you want to sell information products, here are the 3 types of products you can sell:

  1. Private Label Rights (PLR) Products: You can buy the rights (PLR) to products others have already created, and sell them as your own
  2. Affiliate Products: You can sell products created by others and get paid a commission
  3. Own Products: You can create your own info products, and sell them

If you want to sell services, here are 3 types of services you can sell:

  1. Consulting: You consult with your customers and advise them on how to solve their problems
  2. Coachiing: You hand hold them as they work to solve your customers’ problems
  3. Done For You Services: You do all the work to solve your customers’ problems

Someone to Sell To (Niche, Marketing Message, Traffic)

You want to find some one who is willing to pay for your products or services, and also have the ability to pay for them. The three main steps are:

  1. Identify your niche (your target audience demographics, also knows as their ‘avatar‘, then be able to document their fears, frustrations needs, and desires better than they could express themselves)
  2. Come up with a marketing message that addresses their fears, frustrations, needs and desires
  3. Get traffic

Traffic is of 3 types:

  1. Cold traffic: People who don’t know you yet, and don’t trust you yet because they don’t yet know you
  2. Warm traffic: People who have communicated with you by signing up for your free report, or also bought a very low priced (tripwire) product
  3. Hot traffic: People who have bought more than once from you, they know, like and trust you a lot. They are looking for your next offer so that they could buy it quickly, and are vocal advocates of you and your offers to their friends

Two methods to get cold traffic:

  1. Paid traffic: You buy advertising (such as Facebook advertising, Google advertising, YouTube advertising, Bing advertising) to generate traffic. Paid traffic is also known as inorganic traffic. It provides quick traffic.
  2. Free traffic: You get traffic by posting on blogs, social media, and YouTube. Free traffic is also known as organic traffic. Free traffic takes much longer than paid traffic to actually get traffic.

Someone Who Actually Buys (First Prospects, Then Customers)

The methods used to get people to buy depends of the type of traffic they are targeting:

  1. To get cold traffic to buy: You need list building and content marketing.
  2. To get warm or hot traffic to buy: You need email marketing and sales funnels.

One of the key skills you need to get people to buy is copywriting – being able to write convincing “copy” that will convince people to take action on what you ask them to. This includes the ability to write captivating headlines.

Summary

So there you have it. The big picture of what you need to attract more paying customers using online digital marketing strategies.