Step 3
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Step 1. Take Ten Minutes to Define What You Do (And Hopefully Like to Do) Best Step 2. Create the offer by thinking about your customer. What do they want to buy? Step 3. Target your natural market. What success stories are out there? Step 4.Test proven methods of advertising. Find the one that works best for your market. Step 5. Follow up with your customers via direct mail, email, fax, and telephone. Step 6. Look for endorsements from other businesses. When you research your market, did you find someone you could joint venture with? |
Target your natural market. The best place to begin selling is with the people you're most familiar with. Let me give you an example. A Web developer sold a site to one attorney. From that job he ended up designing several more sites for attorneys. Soon attorneys were flocking to him because he had worked with a number of them. To the attorneys, the developer was worth more than his competition simply because he knew their business. He had been through it before. The Web developer had created a natural market. Natural markets don't just have to do with what you know. You can develop the knowledge. Check out Step 1 and see which natural markets you know. For instance, you might like fly fishing. You could target fishing or sporting businesses. Fly fishing is a seasonal industry; you could apply what you know to target this natural market. You can apply the same logic to any business you have worked for, or related businesses you have worked with. Make sure you know the cost of the problem; if it is greater than the cost of your Web solution, you've got a sale. But if you don't identify the problem, its cost, and provide a solution that fits it, you'll be spending your time looking instead of selling. No Natural Market? Look for Success Stories Let's say you don't have a natural market, or any business experience. Don't worry. Find success stories in different industries, especially if they have to do with the Internet. Interview successful people and publish their story. Allow them to distribute it and pass it out to your customers. For instance, I contacted dentists with some basic research on the most successful sites. You could interview the dentist who created the most successful Web site and pay for the time. It's easy to arrange to give someone free publicity of their success story. Then you can approach a target market and sell to them. People don't buy Web sites; they buy solutions. |
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