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Three Steps to Success in Internet Marketing

Online marketing is much more than putting your advertising online. Marketing online includes such areas as communicating with your customers, promoting your business or product online, and making sure that your website content is useful and up to date. The great thing about online marketing is that you don't need to have a huge budget to put together a marketing campaign that is effective. There are tools that you can use to make your marketing techniques easy and profitable such website templates, shopping cart templates, and online marketing templates.

But before you incorporate any of this, there are some important points to consider for creating a successful internet marketing business.

Step One: Communication - One of the most important aspects of online marketing is response to your customer's inquiries and needs. You don't want to lose potential customers after you've made the effort to have them visit your website and then contact you for more information or repeat customers who have purchased a product and need assistance. E-mail is a very effective and cost efficient way for you to generate more sales and communicate with your customers. But you must be prompt and consistent in your response and maintain a friendly yet professional tone. Efficient websites incorporate a personal touch with a fast response time to customers. Reasonable response time for a business day contact is 24-48 hours. If you wait any longer you risk losing the customer. So consider your work plan well. If you don't have the ability or the man power to return e-mail in two days you need to take another look at your setup and either reorganize your business or hire someone to help you.

Step Two: Products and Services - Before you start marketing online you need to be sure that you have a product or service that people want to buy. Customers need to find value in what you have to offer, whether it be your free report that sells your own product or your direct sales product or service you have to offer. There are two motivating factors when it comes to selling online: cost and convenience. Will your customer find it easier to buy online than finding the same product in a local store? Is it cheaper for your customer to buy this product from you online?

Step Three: Delivery - Is instant delivery a selling factor that can turn the tables for you in offering your product? Would your potential customer be more inclined to purchase from you if you offer your service within 24-48 hours? Convenience, instant access, and quick service are key selling points and can mean the difference in you getting a sale or losing a customer. Test your system. Make sure it is user-friendly, easy to understand, functioning as promised.

Online success starts with the building blocks of business design. Put yourself in your customers shoes. Communicate with your customers, offer them what they need at a great price and with quick, if not instant, delivery and you will have the three keys necessary to open the door to online business success.

Cynthia Mosher has been working online since 1998. She shares her advice on working at home and internet and affiliate marketing at her website http://www.wahmdaily.com

Dealing With Buyers Remorse - Returns and Refunds

Requests for returns and refunds are one of the most damaging aspects in the profits of any direct marketing business. You waste a good deal of your time, efforts and funding on these two courtesies.

Keep in mind that all businesses endure some degree of this problem and many do nothing about it. Many businesses a simply accept returned merchandise and refund requests as a normal business cycle. It is as if they can think of nothing to solve this expensive scenario.

On the contrary, you can do plenty to reduce returns and refunds drastically. I am about to tell you how you can eliminate the majority of them. It is a simple and painless process.

To be able to understand what causes an excess of return and refund requests, you must first know what does not cause them to happen.

Returns and refunds are not the cause of rendering poor service or faulty good, since a little time, care and concern guarantee quality in the services and products you offer.

Dishonest consumers do not cause them, although you may come across a shady character from time to time. The majority of your consumers are those who are searching and satisfied with getting honest value for the price they pay.

Customers searching for a better price somewhere else does not cause them, although, pricing is an element in selecting merchandise for purchase. However, this is rarely the reasoning for a customers decision of returns or refunds.

If none of these aspects is the single, most reason for the largest number of return and refund request, then what is.

The reason is buyers remorse.

Yes, it is true; buyers remorse is the leading factor or returns and refunds. This is enough to send shivers up and down your spine. Buyers remorse is your powerful and rotten opposition.

The explanation for this is that all the reasons mentioned above are reasonable, matter-of-fact problem situations that have logical and practical solutions. They are much easier to overcome. On the other hand, buyers remorse is a more difficult problem with an even more complex solution. Buyers remorse is emotional in nature. Therefore, buyers remorse will not find a solution with any amount of logical and sensible problem solving.

To understand the strong influence of buyers remorse, you will need to understand when it occurs. Buyers remorse occurs the moment, of a completed transaction of purchase.

You will find this true when a customer makes a purchase on an explicit decision rather than that of an implicit decision. An explicit decision is, when outside sources influence your customer, while an implicit decision is one that the customer makes on their own.

Of course this is a completely other topic on its own and we shall now leave it at that, for the moment.

Buyers remorse causes fear in the customer as soon as they have completed their purchase, the moment that money changes hands.

However, the good news is that you can turn this type of scenario around quiet easily. However, you must use the right tools to accomplish this. I am sharing this tool with you now. It is a powerful fast moving tool.

This tool is post purchase reassurance.

Post Purchase Reassurance

Post purchase reassurance indicates you understand that customers will suffer from buyers remorse. It also indicates that you recognize this problem comes from their emotions. Once you understand this, you can take creative action to eliminate the unfortunate influence it has.

To achieve your post purchase reassurance goals, you will need to create and send a very personal follow up letter to your consumers, soon after they have made their purchase. You will also benefit by giving away special reports and bonus products in your letter to your consumers.

You can deal with buyers remorse, while eliminating the amount of returns and refunds you might incur. Do it now!

Kevin Sinclair is the publisher and editor of Be Successful News, a site that provides information and articles on how to succeed in your own home or small business. http://besuccessfulnews.com/

Design Your Offering to Be Friendlier to Do-It-Yourselfers

The people who design offerings are often the worst people to design do-it-yourself directions for beneficiaries, customers, and users. Why? Designers know too much! They can help themselves very easily. But do-it-yourself features aren't going to do much good unless they are easy for everyone to use.

What's a good way to make offerings more do-it-yourself friendly? Prompt the person with what they need to do next.

If you've ever stood behind the lectern at a large event, you may have noticed that the two big sheets of glass at either side of the lectern are actually screens to run the text of a speech. To the audience, these look like slightly unattractive decorations.

To the speakers, there are prompters. If you lose your place in your speech or cannot remember enough to approximate the text, you can glance at the prompter and get back on track. In the same way, you can post prompts for using your offering from beginning to end.

If no one needs the prompts, the prompts will be ignored. If prompts are helpful, they will be eagerly sought out and appreciated when needed.

If possible, make your prompts simple. For example, "yes" or "no" choices help. A computer screen might ask, "Do you want to save the changes you made?" Or for our MP3 player, it might ask, "Do you want to save this recording on your computer?"

If we hit "yes" that would take us into a step-by-step demonstration of what to do next. Each screen would then give us the choice of whether to continue or not. A more advanced set of prompts might allow us the choice not to be asked a particular question again the next time we come through a screen.

A better approach is to make your offering self-sufficient for do-it-yourselfers by designing for simpler use. That may sound like an obvious point, but few organizations put any emphasis on simple use.

Why? Those who work on the project have different objectives. Designers frequently want the offering to appear to be "cool" while the engineers want an elegant design that other engineers will admire. The operating executives want an offering that's easy for them to provide. The accountants want the offering provider's costs to be low. Pursuing such objectives will normally lead to an offering that's unnecessarily complex and time-consuming for beneficiaries, customers, and users to employ.

What's the difference you should seek? Designed-in prompts can take you through a complex process. Make the process simpler to begin with, and you may not need to use any prompts.

For instance, those who want to make voice recordings as their primary use could be offered a different MP3 recorder designed solely for voice recordings that will be e-mailed. This recorder could have buttons resembling those on a tape recorder.

The player's software could then automatically segment the recordings into 15-minute sections for easier handling of the files as e-mail attachments. With the right design a beneficiary, customer, or user would be taking the right steps within a few seconds of popping in the battery. Few would miss going through hours of advance preparation for a recording.

Here's another idea: Have someone who wears reading glasses help design your offering. In the race to miniaturize almost everything, the symbols and words on some devices are becoming microscopic to those who wear reading glasses. All 16-year-olds will do well with the miniaturization, but few people over 50 will be able to make out what's being communicated.

Finally, make your offering more mistake-proof. Have you ever looked at those plug-in sockets at the back of your computer? If not, take a look.

Sometime when your system is off, take out the various wires and inspect how the sockets vary for different devices that are attached to your computer. It looks like someone with a weird taste for modern art has been at work. Actually, the reason is far more practical.

If you make the sockets unique enough, no one will plug a device into a socket that will cause harm to your computer. To speed finding that unique receptacle, you'll usually find that the plugs and sockets are color-coded to aid those who aren't color blind.

In other words, the computer makers realized that most people would be putting their computer systems together on their own. You need to make such a do-it-yourself step foolproof. Otherwise, manufacturers know that they will simply be receiving back a lot of computers that have been destroyed during the installation process.

How can you make using your offerings simpler, more fool-proof, and more fun?

Donald Mitchell is an author of seven books including Adventures of an Optimist and The 2,000 Percent Squared Solution. Read about creating breakthroughs through 2,000 percent solutions and receive tips by e-mail by registering for free at

http://www.2000percentsolution.com .

Make Doing-It-Yourself Faster Than Getting Help in the Usual Way

What benefits can come from having beneficiaries, customers, and users doing more for themselves? In our harried lives, most people favor doing things themselves when that action saves their time.

That observation seems like a paradox. How can do-it-yourself be faster than having a service fully provided?

Part of the answer is that many offerings with full service are provided inefficiently. Here's an example: Half the gas stations and vehicle repair shops near our home prominently advertise low-priced oil changes.

Go for one of those oil changes, and you'll probably end up waiting two hours, even if you have an appointment. Be sure to bring a book or pick a location near where you can do some useful shopping.

Every 5 miles or so we drive, however, we'll pass another choice -- a quick oil-change emporium. If no one is waiting at the quick place, you can drive right into a bay designed to make oil changes fast. Unless you decide you want some other service, you'll drive out of the bay again in about 10 minutes and be on your way.

What are the do-it-yourself elements? First, the quick emporium makes the timing of oil changes an impulse buy through allowing passing drivers to see when fast service is available because no customers are waiting. That aspect of the business model is like being a mass merchandiser. The customer helps himself or herself to an offering based on noticing the offering, rather than having a prior intent to purchase.

Second, the drivers never leave their cars. In essence, it's like an improved version of a drive-through lane at a fast food restaurant.

We are often reminded of that comparison when we end up waiting in line longer for fast food in a drive-through lane than for an oil change. In part that's because quick change places usually have at least three bays while fast food drive-through lanes usually have only one line served by a single window.

For the customer whose time has an economic value to herself or himself, the quick oil change emporiums offer a good value. You save almost two hours over standard "full service" by spending an extra $10 to $15.

Do-it-yourself time savings can be even greater for accessing a physician to help you solve a medical problem. Let's look at an inefficient method first.

In the United States, seeking most such health solutions begins by visiting your primary care physician who is usually a general practitioner, an internist, or a pediatrician (for children). Primary care physicians are busy people, so you won't get to see them for at least two weeks unless you are experiencing a near-emergency. Once there, you are sent out for tests.

Depending on the test results, you either come back to the primary care physician or are sent on to a specialist. If it's still not a near-emergency, you will wait one to six months to see the specialist. The specialist will then examine you and order more tests.

Once the second round of tests is done, you'll have another chance to make an appointment and see the specialist again in one to six months. At this point, you've been pursuing this health issue for more than two months, and no one has started to treat what's wrong with you.

When you return for your second specialist visit, you can expect in some cases to be referred to one or two other specialists. Of course, unless it's a near emergency, you cannot get into see them either for another one to six months.

After those visits and tests are over, you make an appointment to see the first specialist again. Once again, you wait one to six months. Chances are, too, that each time you visit one of these physicians, you wait to be seen.

Between travel, tests, waiting time, and more travel, you may have invested four days of your time by now. Hopefully, your medical problem has gone away on its own. Otherwise, you're on a three-month to two-year treadmill that may or may not lead to a solution.

What's the alternative? One choice that many people favor is to visit one of the famous diagnostic clinics. You'll be poked and prodded continually for two to three days, and you'll pay quite a lot out of your own pocket for the visit.

But you won't leave until all of your physicians have received strict marching orders from the clinic for how to treat you. If you really need medical treatment, you're now way ahead of the game.

What's the problem? You may have to wait six months to a year to get an appointment at the diagnostic clinic. But that can be a big improvement over two years that may lead to inconclusive results. Some people gain an access advantage by simply scheduling annual checkups at such clinics.

What's a faster, less time-consuming alternative? Conjure up a scary symptom, and you can simply head for the emergency room of the best hospital in your area. If your problem is serious, you'll be admitted to the hospital within hours and you'll have specialists checking you out within 24 hours.

Tests will also be accelerated. Two years of waiting may be compressed into a few days in the hospital.

As you can imagine, this do-it-yourself approach to health care is increasingly popular in the United States. Emergency rooms are overwhelmed with people, most of whom don't need to be seen there. But the appeal of fast service brings patients in, much like the quick lube place with no lines.

Recently, more hospitals are getting smarter about this back door into accelerated care and now locate general-purpose outpatient clinics next to their emergency rooms. As you enter the emergency room area, a triage nurse figures out if you are well enough to go to the outpatient clinic and wait to be seen on a first-come, first-served basis.

This choice does speed things up for the patient by eliminating the need to wait to see your primary care physician when she or he next has an appointment opening. If such clinics can learn to affordably help people track down their health-care solutions faster and by spending less time, many patients will flock to these clinics.

Donald Mitchell is an author of seven books including Adventures of an Optimist and The 2,000 Percent Squared Solution. Read about creating breakthroughs through 2,000 percent solutions and receive tips by e-mail by registering for free at

http://www.2000percentsolution.com .

Add Desirable Do-It-Yourself Features to Lower Costs and Add Customers

I acted and my action made me wise. --Thom Gunn

If beneficiaries, customers, and users can help themselves, costs can fall while satisfaction rises. For instance, some stores now offer the experience of being a potter. Everything you need to make and decorate a pot is there, and your artistic creation can be carried away to use after it has been fired and cooled by the store's staff.

Selling you a decorated pot simply wouldn't be the same. This experiential approach is also a lot cheaper and less time-consuming than taking a pottery course. With plenty of written directions at the work stations and people you can ask for help, customers find it easy and pleasant to create pots.

But many organizations start with the idea of people helping themselves to reduce costs and fail to execute well. Why? Setting up workable do-it-yourself conditions is hard to do.

Here's an example: Promises are sometimes easier made than kept. That's a lesson I learned the hard way when I founded The Billionaire Entrepreneurs' Master Mind.

Members were promised that they would receive recordings of all the group's teleconferences in MP3 format. Why did I promise that? Because the teleseminar-based courses I have taken provide replays in MP3 format. I liked listening to those replays and thought that such recordings must be the best way to go.

After touring more store shelves than I would have liked, I picked up a few boxes from a section that said "MP3 recorders" and bought the version that a wandering teenage clerk told us would serve this application. Since the first teleconference was now less than 14 hours away, I opened up the box and began to read the directions.

Good news! There was a separate owner's manual to make a "fast start" and I soon had the item charged up and running.

But after the fourth "fast start" step, I could never get the control screen to change to the one shown in the manual. Frustration was setting in. More buttons were pushed and different batteries were tried. A flashlight was used to inspect the minute buttons but revealed nothing helpful.

Then I eventually noticed that the "screen" was actually a piece of protective plastic with a printed imitation of a real screen on it. Peel off that plastic, and you could see that the actual screen was showing just what it was supposed to . . . as the owner's manual promised. But there was no mention anywhere of an opaque printed plastic strip pretending to be a real screen that needed to be removed. That item of missing information was strike one against that manual.

In baseball, a batter is out if three strikes are recorded against him or her. Americans often accept three failures from organizations and directions before concluding that there has been unacceptable performance.

Feeling more confident, I decided to test the player to be sure it was recording. I read the manual from cover to cover and learned how to record voices. I next did the "testing, 1, 2, 3" routine as a voice check.

But I could find no place where the operating manual told us how to play back and listen to voice recordings. I could see that something was happening when I recorded my voice, but without hearing a playback I could not figure out how the sound quality needed to be adjusted. That lack of information about voice playback was strike two against that manual.

Feeling less confident, I decided to also use a regular tape recorder for the teleconference in case the MP3 recorder wasn't working properly. With both recorders appearing to function, the first teleconference took place and was recorded. A great sense of relief set in. Now all I had to do was to send out the MP3 recording.


I reread the manual a few more times and couldn't find any description of how to send an MP3 voice recording to someone else over the Internet. Thinking that I had just reached strike three, which would mean pitching the recorder out or going back for a refund, I noticed a 5-inch by 5-inch piece of orange paper that said in large letters: "TOP! Having Trouble? Before you return it . . . Contact our Web site. We Can Help."

Okay, now perhaps I was getting somewhere. I visited the Web site and felt pretty good until I realized that all of the information there was a PDF version of the owner"s manual I had already read more often than the Bible. Strike three was clearly headed for the plate when I noticed in tiny type on the orange sheet a toll-free number to call.

Picking up the telephone with shaky fingers, I soon reached someone who calmly asked what the problem was. I told him, and without pausing he told me the eight required steps. He double checked to be sure the steps worked, and I was off the phone in less than two minutes.

Wow! I was about to score. The MP3 file was quickly loaded onto the computer and I could listen to its lovely quality. Ah! Relief was setting in.

Quickly opening an e-mail program, I began attaching the file to e-mail for the members. After grinding and grinding through the attachment loading process, nothing happened. After six false starts, I noticed that the file seemed to be too big for my service.

No problem. We would just compress the file.

After finding out how to do that, I tried to attach and send the file again. The same problem occurred. Feeling a little panicked, I bought the upgraded e-mail service that allows e-mailers to send huge files. You guessed it. The file was still too big.

Here's what I began to understand. The reason that MP3 files sound so good is because they record vast amounts of sound details. But within 15 minutes, you've got more data than most e-mail accounts will send or accept.

No wonder those course replay MP3 recordings we had been listening to always divided the material into 20 to 25 minute segments. Also, the courses never sent us the files by e-mail. The courses always directed us to sites where we could download the files.

Did the MP3 recorder manual mention this issue? No, of course not. So I had a file I couldn't share electronically unless I posted it to a Web site (not a very secure solution) or burned the file onto CDs and physically shipped those all over the world.

And so I needed a plan B for electronically sending this recording. Thank goodness for that tape recording. I played the recorded tape back in 15-minute segments and recorded each segment as a separate MP3 file.

Then I e-mailed five times to the members to send them all the segments as attachments. Naturally, I overloaded many of their accounts with data, too. One poor fellow had his segments sent to three different addresses before he received a complete set.

But I did succeed in keeping my promise. Fortunately, this story has a happy ending . . . if you overlook the nine hours dedicated to buying the player, learning how to make it work, and sending the eventual files to our members.

Thom Gunn was right. I acted and that action made me wise. But that wisdom came from an unexpected direction. Mainly myr actions made me wise about how to write this chapter to help you avoid the mistakes that many make in adding do-it-yourself features to their offerings.

Donald Mitchell is an author of seven books including Adventures of an Optimist and The 2,000 Percent Squared Solution. Read about creating breakthroughs through 2,000 percent solutions and receive tips by e-mail by registering for free at

http://www.2000percentsolution.com .

Follow the Rules of the Road for Helpful Do-It-Yourself Owners' Manuals

Because of potential lawsuits related to harm caused by misusing an offering, few will decide to avoid providing directions. For elaborate offerings, owners' manuals will be required.

In addition, some of your beneficiaries, customers, and users will want to refer to these directions and manuals whether or not they need the help. Rather than providing directions and manuals that become the butt of comedians' jokes, how can you turn on people to using do-it-yourself features?

Many newer vehicles now have global positioning satellite (GPS) systems that provide driving directions. You input your destination and the system spells out a route for you and displays a map.

Those systems do something even more helpful. When you miss a turn, you can quickly get revised directions.

This capability can help overcome a problem that most people have experienced. With preset directions, you may find yourself driving extra miles simply to arrive back at where you missed a turn.

After not following a direction, a GPS system may locate a new route that will eliminate most of the looping back to where you made a mistake. That iterative quality of GPS directions relieves a lot of frustration as well as saving needless backtracking.

Directions and manuals can be designed to operate in a similar way. As soon as you're stuck or seem to have made a mistake, your directions could be quickly adjusted to tell you what to do next.

That interaction would be a great help. Many people don't realize they've made a mistake until after doing a lot of work that then needs to be undone. The best way to provide these error-recovery messages would be to have the directions or the manual actively monitor the offering and what you are doing with it.

Not everyone prefers the same format for directions and instructions. Naturally, some people will want to have a written manual. They are used to that approach.

What are the lessons? Make that manual's index as complete as possible. Few people other than your proofreaders will examine the manual from cover to cover.

Most people will have a question or a problem with your offering at some point. When that happens, people want to turn immediately to the most helpful page.

One nice feature of some manuals is to have more than one indexing system. For instance, sections may be color coded at the edge of the page for their subject matters. Die cuts may help you find the first page of a section like the ones you use to put your thumb into a physical dictionary to find the first page for a letter of the alphabet.

Other manuals also employ symbols to identify locations. These symbols often match icons on the offering itself such as a stylized image of windshield wipers. Of course, the page that most people latch onto is the index where all of the most common problems are listed along with a cross-reference to where the relevant do-it-yourself details can be found.

With more and more offerings, it's also possible to include an electronic directory inside the offering that can be queried in a manner similar to employing an online search engine. That approach is of great value when you are using the offering in a different location from where you normally keep your directions and manuals.

Many times, it's just not convenient to carry around all of the relevant information because it's so bulky. How many people, for instance, carry around telephone directories in their vehicles?

Think of how many times you've been traveling and needed to contact a certain type of local business for which you don't have any names or telephone numbers. If there's a classified directory near a pay phone, you're all set. But if someone has torn out the page you need or there's no directory in sight, you have a lot of potential frustration and wasted time ahead of you as you work with directory assistance and begin making calls.

Another advantage of electronic directories is that you can inexpensively update and bookmark them. When you become aware of new issues or locate better information for ordinary problems and tasks, you can adjust your directory. Make those updates automatic (such as anti-virus programs do) to bookmarked pages, and you're making do-it-yourself more and more desirable.

But there are times when reading just doesn't make sense. For instance, it's a good idea to stop your vehicle before you read anything other than a road sign.

But you may not be able to safely stop when you need immediate information. That's when voice-based information systems can be a great resource.

A helpful version of such a resource works just like an electronic directory except that you speak to the resource and listen to the answers. Many credit card information lines now have this technology.

General Motors provides this kind of help in another way through its OnStar services. At the push of a button, OnStar allows you to be in voice communication with operators who can assist you with a variety of driving needs. Operators can remotely unlock your vehicle when you've left the keys inside or provide emergency advice and assistance after you've had an accident.

However you provide your information, connect together everything the do-it-yourselfer will need. Switching back and forth among six different information sources or sections in a manual isn't going to do the trick when your vehicle is broken down after dark in a scary location while your eight children in the back noisily demand their dinners.

Here are questions to make it easier for people to succeed in helping themselves with your offerings:

-How can you help beneficiaries, customers, and users save time by doing things for themselves rather than getting help in the usual ways?

-What features will make do-it-yourself solutions easier and more engaging?

-Who can help you design do-it-yourself features for offerings that are very simple to use?

-How many simple ways can you provide helpful directions, manuals, and assistance that fit the needs of a do-it-yourself moment?

Donald Mitchell is an author of seven books including Adventures of an Optimist and The 2,000 Percent Squared Solution. Read about creating breakthroughs through 2,000 percent solutions and receive tips by e-mail by registering for free at

http://www.2000percentsolution.com .