Building Your List Of Customers

by Tyrone on July 23, 2009 - 19 comments

It’s time to attract visitors to your Internet business and to build a list of customers. Your customers will be your lifeline and without them, your Internet business cannot survive.

Build Your Foundation – The Email List

In the online world we communicate with our customers via multiple mediums and ultimately we need to collect their email address. Email addresses are used to send orders, updates and more information from your e-commerce website. Building an email list is very important because you will be able to deliver more information and convince your customers to buy more from your website. I strongly recommend you start building an email list at the beginning.

Here is a simple process of how collecting an email address is used to create sales:

  1. Sign up subscribers to your online newsletter through your website and send updates of new products and promotions
  2. Build rapport with these people who will be interested in receiving your online newsletter. Be sure you offer great advice and resources they can access.
  3. They become a customer of your website because they trust you and will recommend friends and family to buy from you.

This is a short process that is quite simple but very powerful. If you can build strong relationships with your customers via email, then imagine what your e-commerce business could achieve.

How To Market Your Internet Business To Get A Targeted List Of Customers?

It is far more effective to get quality customers than having thousands of customers who are not interested in your products and services. By attracting the right type of customer to your Internet business, you will build a targeted list that will be responsive and loyal. There are many ways to generate leads online and here are some common strategies that have been proven to work. You can either hire a company to implement these for you or put them into practice yourself.
Search Engine Marketing
Millions of people from around the world use search engines every day to find specific products and services. The most common search engines people use are Google, Yahoo and MSN. If you learn how search engines work and play by their rules, you can generate a lot of visitors to your e-commerce business. There are two methods to try: Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC) and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising
If you want a guarantee that your e-commerce business will be seen at the top of a search page for a particular keyword, consider investing in Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising. These types of campaigns allow you to pay a certain amount to be listed in the ‘Sponsored Advertisement’ sections of search results. This allows you to achieve results faster if you have the money to invest. The best way to utilise this method is to create a landing page that will direct visitors to sign up. Once they are on your email list, begin to build a relationship with them and introduce them to your e-commerce business. I recommend starting with Google Adwords first.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Simply put, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of organizing your website so it is displayed higher on the first page of the search engine results. By carefully arranging your website text and links to include keywords that are related to your products or services, you will get more visitors to your website. This method takes time and does not necessarily happen overnight, but the results are worthwhile if implemented correctly.

The primary goal is to understand your customer’s needs. Once you have those, it’s straightforward to develop the most effective keywords and insert them into your website’s content. I recommend reading Nicolas Prudhon’s blog — he is an SEO expert and my good friend. Visit his blog http://www.nicolasprudhon.com/ to get free expert advice on all aspects of SEO.

Tyrone Shum
List Builder

19 Comments

  1. revizyon

    @SEO

    You and my have same question :)

    Yeh, Do you use AWeber as autoresponder?

  2. SEO

    Do you use AWeber as autoresponder?

  3. PSP Go

    It is much easier to preach to the already converted than it is to continually seek out new leads. Looking after your existing customers is more important than generating new ones all the time.

  4. Tyrone

    Hey Nicolas,

    Thanks for leaving a comment and great to see you again. I’m always keen on doing Podcasts and will mix it up with some of my thoughts.

    Send me an email and I’d love to hear your “something new”.

    Catch up soon!

  5. Diety

    Trully said, good customer is just like good provider – you trust a person who is reliable and want to make business, not cheat. I would say that making list of consuments is a great idea and I would recommend it to anyone who is in a branch connected to specific clients.

    • Tyrone

      Hi Diety,

      With trust and reliability, you will go a very long way, especially for you to establish long term business.

  6. tykhon

    Sorry for offtopic.

    But has anyone ever seen a content generation tool based on Youtube service, like “Tube Extractor” – http://tykhon-ua.com
    It can fetch comments and post them on your blog or CMS!
    Id like to get some feedback on this if anyone interested.

    Thanks and sorry again for offtopic.

    • Tyrone

      Hi Tykhon,

      No I haven’t heard of this before. Though I’m checking out as I type this and it’s an interesting concept. Can you send me some more information on this as I don’t use Drupal. Is it compatible with WordPress?

      Thanks.

  7. Nicolas Prudhon

    Hi Tyrone,

    Long time I didn’t see you write a post ;) I almost thought that you’d be only doing podcasts.

    Anyway, thank you for naming me here.

    I’ll get in touch with you soon, because I’ve something that should really interest you and your readers.

  8. Web traffic

    If a home was built to the specs of a customer and the deal fell through after the home was built, is there usually room for negotiations for a new buyer or does the builder always stick to the list price?

  9. Karaoke hire

    It such a nice way to maintain the followers and customers. I am glad to visit your post.

  10. Benjamin Cip

    Very informative article. Do you use AWeber as autoresponder?

    • Tyrone

      Hi Ben,

      Thanks for your comment. Yes I use Aweber and Profollow (blacklabel of Aweber). It makes a huge difference in managing a database online.

  11. Grant

    Thanks for your input! Having my own email list is very helpful as is SEO on my website.

    • Tyrone

      Hi Grant,

      Thanks for your comment. Having a list helps you build a stronger relationship with your customers.

  12. Increase Website Traffic

    Interesting!

    Doing business is not a rocket science, but maintaining business profitability is an important factor in any business. I will maintain my business profitability with online business and search engine optimization a supplement to it.

    • Tyrone

      Yes, you are right! It’s a fine art in maintaining business profitability. It’s also a skill that many business owners should focus on bettering at.