The best way to start a relationship with your new lead?

If you're going the standard 'guru' route, don't give away the farm. Show them the ropes but hint at 'higher levels.' That's where paid coaching kicks in.

Still, the best way to build a relationship is to PROVE to them you know what you're talking about. Maybe if you drive real traffic to their pages based on your skills, you'd drum up more paying customers.

Now this is interesting. Let's explore this idea. I want you to think about this: people are suggesting giving high-value info (which I do, just for the record) that will greatly benefit them.

Sounds good.

Except...90+% of people never take any action whatsoever with the info they get--even if they pay for it!!

So what value does giving them this info really have? Appease our ego as the info giver, and possibly set us up as the expert in the receiver's mind?

It really isn't to help the prospect, is it. The prospect, almost every time, isn't going to do a thing with the info we've so lovingly put together and given to them. You can share every detail about every step of what you do, and almost everyone who gets that info will STILL not take a single step with it. More likely, the reason we give all this info is to show them how complicated the thing/process/app is, and set them up to start thinking that maybe buying a "done for you" solution from us is a whole lot easier than the actual work of doing the thing.

"Just ask them" sounds good, too, and I do that as well. But again, 90%+ are never going to take action on what you take the time to share with them. (And many, I'll tell you from long experience, don't even take the time to thank you for doing so.) Also, they don't know what they don't know. So the thing they most need to help their results may be something they'd never ask about because they don't even know it exists. After all, they're not the expert. So why do it? Perhaps because of the answer above.

Look at what the OP said. He'll make a report or video series..."not to sell"...but to "give them a small glimpse of how I can help them." Huh? That's saying we're not selling, so that we can show them why they should buy. Isn't it? This is a pretty good indicator to me that we're confused and have muddy thinking about why we're doing this. (Not pickin' on ya, OP; this is for everybody including me.) I believe we're much more likely to get the results we want, all of us, if we're clear about what we're doing and why.

I haven't thought much about this before, but this thread promoted me to. What do you think?

A very interesting idea brought up in this thread. Contact them and ask them what they would like to see. Get feedback on your list as to the information they want to obtain. Then give it to them.

If I got an email like that, I'd definitely be tempted to open up the next email knowing that it's what us subscribers want, even if it wasn't what I'd suggested.

Building a list is a winning way to grow your business and sustain it. The thing to think about is value. Though you offer value most people won't take action.

How do we get around it?

I'm in the early stages of building a list so I expect I will only get better but I am on some emails lists that offers "education" for me to get better at what I do.

Do I read every email? NO not at all.

But I do read emails where the subject line pertains to what could help me.

For example, I got an email from Dale Calvert today and the subject line was "Facebook stats all marketers should know and profit from".

This was attractive and yes I read the email and followed his email to his blog and took the time to read the post and even comment.

Again, it was the subject that caught my attention.

Manny

To build relationshipd with people on my lists, I do always give them content, but with that content in the email message I always include an offer.

The offer could be toward the bottom of the free content in the email message or in a P.S.

I do want people to realize that I do deliver quality content but I'm also going to promote offers that will be more benefitial than the free content. I want them to know that the paid content will save them time, work, money or all three in the big picture.

Even in my free content that I give away in my reports, I have a 7 day eCourse that the reader can sign up for. I also offer paid products in the resource section at the end of the report.

I also include instructions on how to make the report itself work for them by giving the report away to others.

I have created affiliate software that will automatically rebrand the report with their affiliates links when they send people to the squeeze page that is giving away the report.

Not only that, my software allows the affiliate to connect their autoresponder to the squeeze page so that the affiliate builds the list in their own autoresponder.

I call this process Automatic Income Generators and I have over 100 squeeze pages that do this in several niches, but most are in the IM niche.

When you write your free report I would suggest that you add as many list building and viral components to it as possible.

When the visitor subscribes, they go immediately to an offer in the same topic as the free material they just signed up to download.

You need to work as hard as possible while giving away free content to turn these people into customers.

I do not delay, but start making offers with the free content right from the very beginning.

I hope this has been helpful,
Steve Yakim

You could offer some kind of internet marketing course (or any other course that fits your niche). Every email contains one part of the course and, while following your course, reading your emails becomes a habit for them. And you did build up some kind of relationship.

Conner,

Personally, I start the marketing process before I actually get the lead. You see, too many (almost all) people use the exact same approach when generating leads. Sure, they may target different demographics, but it makes no difference if the bloody landing pages are all the same.

You test different landing pages. Ones that don't scream ADVERTISEMENT, and that makes the visitor feel at ease when they land on it. This, of course gives them a higher expectation on what they're going to receive when they opt in. I'm not going into details about it here, but suffice to say, the more comfortable someone feels when they land on your squeeze page, the more likely they're going to expect a higher quality freebie, and therefore give you their correct email address. Or at least an email address they plan to use.

You get my point, yes? The marketing and relationship building begins long before an email address is entered into an opt-in form. If you put your visitors at ease, they'll expect more from you, and even expect more of themselves, i.e, giving you the benefit of the doubt, not putting you into the same box as every other marketer, and taking the time to read your report/freebie/whatever.

Of course, your freebie must then continue the process by giving incredible value. It's true most people don't take action with the content they receive, but it's also true that the content is usually sub par, and not structured properly.

I see it as a step by step procedure, starting with the traffic, then the landing page, then the thank you page, then the freebie, and then the email messages.

Personally, I don't think there are any good email marketers about these days. It's not that they can't write, they just come across as wet fish with no personalities. I rarely open email messages, and when I do, they're from real people who I'd like to sit down with and have a beer. The rest are pussies with no personality and quite frankly I find them to be cowards who are afraid to speak their minds in case of offending others. Twats.

A great example of this would be Andre Chapron. The guy has a great course on email marketing. But, after getting a couple of his emails he just bores the life out of me. Again, no fricking personality. He writes for the masses, and so does everyone else. They're boring.

Focus on the people that matter, and you can be yourself completely. When you're being yourself completely, you inevitably connect with more people like you. When you connect with more people who are like you, you'll have raving fans who'll not only buy what you promote, but will defend your honor, simply because defending your honor is also defending theirs.

Too many wishy washy cowards out there these days. Personally I hate cowards. And I laugh at people who send me messages trying to give me their opinions on my email marketing. Actually, this is how I treat people who don't like the way I do email marketing...
https://soundcloud.com/royfm/howard-...this-is-how-to

So, I honestly believe the key to building strong relationships is to meet people where they're at, in their heads. And by that I mean connecting with their true personalities. Of course, that means you have to find the people who are a lot like you first. Remember, repeat business is far more powerful than trying to get blood out of a new lead with their head up their own asses. Even more importantly, 80% of your efforts should be focused on 20% of your customers.

I'll give anyone here a great bit of advice, that if you follow, will dramatically get you better results. Sit down and really, really think about Vilfredo pareto's 80/20 rule - and how you can use it with EVERYTHING you do online, and I guarantee you'll get more than a few aha moments. People talk about this principle, but never actually put the damn thing to use.

Jeez, I'm waffling on here aint I?

I've been all over the world, and one things for sure, You're all feckin idiots.

Oh, and one more thing: There's more to life than earning money. Who knew? Greedy feckers always struggle.