This is a play on a famous line from one of my all-time favorite movies, “Field of Dreams”. In this movie, Kevin Costner hears a voice tell him, “If you build it, he will come”.
GREAT line, great premise, but for you the entrepreneur, let the voice you hear in your head say, “If you know they will come, build it”.
This means, don’t build your business before you know people want to do business with you. Let me explain….
I’m getting a lot of questions from people who are dipping their toes in the waters called, “Information Marketing”, so I thought I’d summarize the steps I’m telling people to take before they market anything. As always, I’m available to coach you through these steps when you are ready.
Let me caution all of you, first and foremost, that if you are already creating products, structuring membership sites, and designing coaching programs, you are WAY ahead of yourself and in for a rude, expensive awakening.
Before you go through all that work, I want you to nail 2 things – your market and your message. If you get these 2 things to match, you have a chance at a winner. Until you can produce several quality leads in a market, you have no business. Period.
So, here’s what I suggest to my clients:
1) Grass Root research – talk to your market – (1) In Person (2) On The Phone (3) or Online find out what they need, better yet, find out what they want.
2) Survey if you can. Whether it’s an informal survey or formal, you need input. For online surveys, I suggest using http://SurveyGizmo.com
3) Set up a blog. Get Aweber or some other way to capture names and email addresses. You need a home base to send people to that you speak with. I’d love for you to be able to collect names and emails so you can maintain contact with people you speak with and possibly market products and services to them later on.
4) From your research and experience, develop a 45-90 minute talk that resounds with your audience
5) Find a place to give your talk – at an event, in person, on a teleseminar or webinar. Alternatively, break up your talk into smaller written articles that you can syndicate to other blogs and newsletters.
6) Collect leads, survey leads, continue to talk in other forums
7) Develop the product or service they want
8) Sell just 1 product first, then…
9) Create a lead generation and sales funnel .
I’ve got detailed information on this in my Big Ticket Blueprint.