Saturday, April 20, 2013

Start looking for your customers - E-Business Success Blueprint Workshop - Part 8

Customers lining up for goods
Customers lining up for goods
Previous lessons...


Once you determine the product of your choice, I'm planning to introduce you to the concept of product launch. Product launch should be organized as an event in order to make your customers aware about it before it is actually offered.

More on this later.

Anyway, let's jump to the next lesson, which today will be about obtaining tools to test your best selected business. I assume that you have tested your keywords and determined which are most advantageous to start new business. I also assume that you have visited sites of your competition, signed up for their newsletters and joined their affiliate programs.

Have your keywords ready for this step.

You've noticed that part of the subject of this message is "Start looking for your customers"
My assumption also is that you don't have your product yet.

As you know my approach is that you should  have customers first before you develop your product. You need to know that there are people who want your product before you spent time and money on creating it.

Now we will be jumping into real world and do the testing what kind of demand we have for the product we want to offer.

For this we will be using following existing communities.

Yahoo groups http://groups.yahoo.com
Google groups. http://groups.google.com  and G+  https://plus.google.com
Facebook  http://www.facebook.com
Twitter  http://www.twitter.com

and following online communities

http://community.adlandpro.com
http://www.ryze.com
http://www.tribe.net

I will explain the concept in regards to Yahoo groups and you will apply it to all other ones.
What you want now is to access existing interests groups on Yahoo and join them.

1. Access this link. http://groups.yahoo.com
2. In the search box where it says "Find a Group" type your keywords.

e.g. for "piano lessons" I found 16562 groups.
Each of the groups has shown number of members subscribed to it just below the heading for the group.

3. Research all of the groups and look for ones which have the largest number of members. If you see a group with 5 or 2 members, just forget it. Anything bigger than 50 consider as your target.

4.When you click the heading of the group, you will be given option to subscribe yourself to it. Do this by clicking button which says "Join This Group"

5. Set your settings to receive contribution to this group by email as "individual emails" under "Edit Membership" option

6. Read past messages in this group. Join as many such groups as possible. Now do this with Google groups. Remember when you looking for groups within G+, access communities https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities and when searching select "communities" from the drop down box.




On Facebook type your search term in the search box at the top and first results will be pages dedicated to your search topic.  Visit those pages and like them. Ask their owner to become your friends.




On Twitter, search for your term and follow people who you find in search results.


Join Ryze.com, Tribe.net.
This tasks itself can take more than a day of work, I also know that you are asking why you need that.
You will be member of those groups for as long as you are in the business you have selected. You need to follow your competition for as long as you are in this business.

I want you to monitor messages which will start coming from those groups to your email address.

Notice who is most active and visit their websites. This is your competition who knows how to utilize free online resources and how to build trust with others who are interested in the same topics.

This is how I started my company. This was in 1998 and I didn't have all the tools which are available today.
There was also no Yahoo groups, Facebook, G+ and Twitter. 

I used News Groups for that and they was a source of my first customers.
I won't reveal yet other steps so I don't overwhelm you now with information, but that will be your most practical task to this moment where you will actually see results of your work to date paying off.

If you've done your homework properly, you will start seeing some shape to these steps and results will become tangible.

The other important move is that when you join following communities
http://community.adlandpro.com
http://www.ryze.com
http://www.tribe.net

you start learning how to build your network of associates, friends and how to find people related to your business.

Just determine how to do this and don't offer anything to anyone.

No ads. I can tell you now that you won't be placing any ads in any of those communities now or later.
Your goal is to monitor those groups and become their members.
The next step will be very exciting.

Next lesson....

Bogdan Fiedur

Adlandpro.com Copyright 1998 - 2013 - All rights reserved .  

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