My Story: How I Get All My Clients From the Internet

One of the questions that readers of this blog might have (I think there are about 4 of you ;)) is how I got started in the Internet marketing business, and why I’m qualified to advise others on Internet marketing strategies.

How I get all my clients from the Internet

There’s a lot of info around about Internet marketing and how to earn a million dollars in your pajamas through affiliate income etc. etc. I’m not trying to compete with that. Seeing as I only make a few hundred a month in affiliate income, I don’t feel that I’m sufficiently qualified to talk about that.

But what I can tell you about is how I built my marketing consulting practice up from zero to over 5 figures in monthly income using Internet marketing strategies only (apart from one $500 space ad that I ran about a year ago).

My marketing costs are around 2% of sales, and I spend zero time directly prospecting or looking for new clients. (OK, there are some activitites such as writing newsletters that play a part in getting new clients, but I see these as distinct from traditional “cold calling” or prospecting activities).

I’m sure there are many people out there who’ve achieved faster and better results. But I also know that there are a lot of people out there who are yet to make their website into a viable lead generation system and are looking for tips on what has worked for others.

So here are some of the strategies that I’ve successfully used to build up my consulting business. Your business may well be different, but if generating high-quality sales leads is a challenge for you, you may find many of the same tactics directly applicable.

I should also point out that most of these tactics have achieved success only after much trial-and-error. You normally need to stick at each one to get over plateaus and achieve lasting results.

1. Be different

How you position yourself has a big effect on how attractive your offerings are to your target audience.

Most web designers are technically competent. They produce nice looking websites. But in most cases, the website is an end unto itself.

Our pitch has always been Results. In other words, “we don’t just build websites, we provide you with an automated revenue-generating tool”.

Then we back up what we say with plenty of useful online marketing information and online marketing case studies that reinforce this claim.

Many business owners appear to be attracted by this pitch. It’s a lot more effective than saying “We’re wizards at PHP, XHTML, Java Script and tonnes of other acronyms that you probably haven’t heard of, but we’re not exactly sure whether or not your website will pay for itself.”

2. Educate. Educate. Educate.

Especially with a “high trust” sale such as marketing consulting, prospective clients need to understand the value that they’re getting and the benefits of using your product or service.

I publish a marketing newsletter and free online marketing guide to first educate prospects about our area of expertise and some of the solutions that are available to the problems that they may be facing.

If a newsletter subscriber finds that our approach meshes with what they want to achieve, they normally contact us to talk about doing business together.

This policy of “education before selling” is a lot more effective than the traditional sales pitch alone. Use newsletters, white papers, evaluations, and case studies to offer value to your market. If your information is of high-quality, this will turn into sales leads.

Again, there’s a great deal of free information available on the Internet. It can be hard to get traction. To make this strategy work, your subject matter either has to be truly unique or of very high quality. I try to give away information, strategies and advice that prospects would normally have to pay for elsewhere.

3. Test everything

Many of the marketing activities we’ve tried such as banner ad services, paid link exchange and PPC search engines such as Overture have produced sub-par results. But we’ve always known they weren’t working and cut them off before they costed too much money.

On the other hand, some things have worked very well such as Google Adwords. We’ve continued to optimize and expand what’s working to generate ongoing success.

If you know what’s working and keep on expanding on it, it’s actually very difficult to fail.

4. Take charge of your education

Especially on the Internet, it’s important to stay abreast of new developments. One of the best ways to do this is by reading blogs and investing in education products such as ebooks, software and courses. There’s a lot of junk out there, but there’s lots of fantastic profit-building tools as well. Rather than learn by trial and error for yourself, it’s much quicker and easier to pay $50 or $100 to learn from someone who has “been there, done that”.

I spend at least $300 - $500 a month on info products and other self-education resources.

5. Understand the elements of online success

To build a successful online lead generation channel, you need to stay abreast of four things:

1. Strategy - how your sales process is put together. This is particularly important if your product or service is relatively complex or expensive.
2. Design - not flashy graphics and animations, but design that is dead easy for users to understand (for more info, see this article about webpage layout recommendations)
3. Sales copy - you need content that motivates users to act and contact you for further information. The quality of your sales copy can have a significant effect on your lead generation results.
4. Targeted traffic - the more targeted traffic you have, the more sales you’ll generate.

On a regular basis I examine each of these areas and action improvements.

Ongoing improvement

It’s easy to become discouraged or impatient when things aren’t moving fast enough and your lead generation efforts are producing meagre results. But the key to improving your results online is consistent effort over time. You can also beat the learning curve by engaging a pro to do this for you, especially if your core business is not Internet marketing.

The above points are some of the things that have worked for me. Why not test them in your own situation? Also please feel free to comment about your experiences using these or other online marketing tactics.

Will Swayne

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