subject: How to Start an Online Business - Phase Three by:Neil Asher [print this page] Phase Three is all about customersPhase Three is all about customers. It comes after you've successfully tested your content and begun developing sales of your information products by using tried and true conversion techniques.
To get more leads and more prospects that I could convert into buyers, I did things like going out and buying banner ads. I also purchased text links on large web sites. I often paid them whatever they were asking, although sometime I haggled and negotiated a good deal with them.
I started doing more general advertising. I tested different creative approaches and graphics. I tested various appeals and landing pages, too.
Testing and analyzing results is the heart of information marketing. It is critical to growing your business online. Your goal is to spend more and more money on what works, and eliminate anything that doesn't.
Another thing I did was to hire a professional to manage my pay-per-click advertising. I got someone who had worked in the industry before. Then, I hired a professional to manage my affiliate programs. Again, it was someone who had worked in the industry before.
Bringing these experienced professionals on board helped us massively scale up our efforts. They greatly shortened the learning curve for me. They knew how to take a system that was working and replicate it and grow it.
As I began to broaden my base of products, lead generation and conversion, my entire business became customer-focused. We started expanding our back end, by doing up-sells and adding more information products. We started leveraging our relationships with customers to increase sales and get referrals.
I've come a long way from that e-book, my first information product. If you come to one of my web sites today, and you want to buy something, even while you are making your purchase, we are offering you other things. We'll introduce you to our continuity programs and other information products.
Then, after you buy something, we are going to follow up with you. We'll offer you the other products and services that we sell. We'll say, "Hey, if you purchased this, you're probably interested in going deeper. You might not even know that our other products are available. If you enjoyed that one, and you enjoyed chapter 6 in the e-book, well this other product over here might work for you."
You could call what we're building a kind of curriculum. We've got a whole series of information products and services, just like college courses, that you go through one after another after another. We put them into a sequence.
Then, our customers come to us for a total education solution. We can really build a relationship together. They can get to know us. They can get to know all of our different information products, our full product line. They can really improve themselves, too, in the process.
And what's the net result of this focus on customers? It has DRAMATICALLY increased our sales and profitability.
So there you have it: the three phases of starting and growing your business online, built upon the three pillars of successcontent, conversion and customers. When you put them together, they have a multiplying effect. They actually amplify each other.
That's how my business was able to scale up over the last few years and reach the $20 million level. Use this as a model, and you can do it, too.
About the author
Neil Asher (http://www.neilasher.com/freestuff.htm) has built five multi-million dollar companies from zero, including one he took to $8 million in sales in under two years. He has created and sold successful franchises in England, Italy, Ireland, Australia and South Africa. Visit his web site for access to 17 FREE videos, 6 FREE books and two hours of audio training, revealing "How To Make BIG Money Selling Information Products On The InternetEven If You Don't Have A Website And You've Never Sold Anything On The Internet Before."
