Nett Knowledge Blog

Your "target market" is the sub-niche of people you are aiming at reaching, and the way you do this is by creating excellent content aimed right at solving the problems their searching for a solution for online. One of the main elements you need to know how to do effectively, is knowing how to research your target audience online, so you know what their drivers are and what will cause them to either become a lead for your business, or to buy something you offer right there and then.

The best thing you can do to research your key target market online is to use a tool called www.Website-Buildit.com (the company SiteBuildIt) they have an entire suite of tools that allow you to uncover sub-markets of tight, reactive and ready to buy customers. So instead of creating your website first, and having a message that basically talks about "who you are, what you do and why you're so good!" and hope that some of the visitors to your site end up buying or inquiring, you need to work with much more savvy to get results.

As a business person you probably understand the principal of target markets and that "not everyone" is going to be interested in buying your product or service. So it wouldn't make any sense to marketing to everyone out there would it?

What are the two most important things you need to know for targeting your ideal niche market?

1. Who is your target market exactly?

Here are some just some of what you need to identify for your target market (the more specific you are here, the better your results are going to be), try identifying what gender they are, their age, location, income bracket, what their culture is, are they religious, and also their political views.

So during this entire process, you need to take each general area and really break it down into micro areas, in essence you want to understand them so well, that you feel like you've walked a hundred miles in their shoes so you can talk right to their problems and push their hot buttons.

2. What are their main motivations?

The next step you need to know, and I would go as far as insisting that you "MUST" know these details are: Are they driven by pleasure or pain? fear of love? What do they need most and why? Are their hot buttons purely desire? Or are they emotional, purely functional or a mixture of both to achieve a certain outcome? And probably the most important of all questions you need to nail here (and once you understand this and use it well, you will have a thriving business... THRIVING!) what are they willing to do, sacrifice, give, overcome or endure to get what the solution to what it is you offer, what does it mean to them to have it?

When I do a market analysis of any online (or offline) market niche, what I've found works and is indeed imperative for your success in understanding your market place is to firstly, try and become the "perfect client' who would buy or strongly qualify as a hot lead for your product or service. Create an exhaustive list of what you think the characteristics would be and then we go onto step two.

The second part of identify and really solidifying your target market so that you don't address to wrong niche is to create a survey and then go out to the market place and start asking the real market place. Be thorough, don't breeze through this phase, and a great place to get numbers and results fast and thoroughly is by using online advertising like Google Adwords, that's right, throw a few hundred dollars at a campaign and send them to a web based survey that you create with an online program such as www.SurveyMonkey.com
If you take this information above and use it the right way, right down to the deepest levels and follow it through you cannot fail in the long run, if you do it means you've either not been thorough in your research, or you have given up along the way or not used the tools as described.

So go out and get stuck into micro-niching your exact target market for every single service and product you offer, you WON'T be sorry!

You know it really surprises me how many online business owners try and get completely "unknown" people into their business!

Only today I logged into my Facebook account and wasn't surprised when I opened an email directly to me from a guy called Nick, explaining that I don't know him and then going on to try and get me to look at his business.

Actually, I wanted to make a lesson out of this today, so here is the message directly from him (if you're in Facebook, you might have received emails like this too)...

Article marketing strategies are a very important element in any internet marketing strategy for any business to be found online and be seen as offering "real value" for your visitors. You see, the process of article marketing (also known as "information marketing") is critical in showing your visitors how well you can address what their looking for when they search for it in Google or Yahoo etc.

The process of what is known as C-T-P-M (Content, Traffic-Pre-Sell, Monetize) by Dr Ken Evoy of www.website-buildit.com is a massive oversight for a lot of marketers. But if you really adopt this strategy seriously, and begin implementing it, over time, with a bit of consistent work you'll see "ROCK SOLID" results in targeted traffic and real online leads.

To help leverage your efforts with your information marketing strategy, there are a number of article marketing services and softwares that make your efforts much more effective.

For starters there is a free version of a program called "article submitter" by Brad Fallon and also a paid version of it, this can be very useful if you want to get a quick start. However, for the undisputed best results you need "submit your article" which actually acts as on online distribution platform.

It allows you to submit your articles and many, many different versions of them to hundreds of the top article hubs. It also shows you how to write articles the "right way" and then trickle them out over a period of time, so it appears more "authentic" and like a real human is submitting articles in a natural way, rather than some automated article submission software that blasts out articles fast and risks you getting band or blacklisted in Google.

I would recommend you take a long hard look at www.submit-your-article.net and then take it for a decent trial run, put 6 to 12 months of solid effort into it and I assure you (especially now that you can submit as many articles as you want with this online program) that you'll end up getting amazing results.

I hope that this article marketing strategies video helps you with new and fresh ideas and allows you to "get real" about internet marketing the correct way, as there are no "Silver Bullet" fixes with internet marketing... It takes work, a lot of real and hard work, but the rewards are well worth it.

WOW... The internet really is becoming a supermarket for local shoppers, researchers and sellers alike! My question to you is, "are you a part of, what is going to be the way to buy, sell, research and even date online?"

I've just been looking over some of the latest research about online behaviour as there is a lot more research now being conducted to help businesses understand the trends of usage and the main sites that are being used (including the major search engines).

A lot of the studies come from the US, but a fair percentage of it also comes from countries like the UK, Australia and New Zealand along with some others that are the main sources for results being obtained.

How do users typically find new websites?
The Georgia Insitiute of Technology in the US which has some very dated results back in 1998, but are still quite staggering it's over 10 years later. It showed that 85% back then found informatino through search engines and over 58% used online directories. Now while that is quite out of date, a similar study done in the UK this time in the year 2000 found that 81% of users online found new websites by using search engines (a lot of them major ones) and the latter research was conducted by Forrester Research.

The Importance of Having a HIGH Ranking?
Here's some more very interesting results... A further study from the US done by NPD showed that searchers quite rarely go past page 3 of the results listed when doing a search. It was noted that over 90% of the results we recieved by the top 3 pages for any search phrase, so the top 3 pages area where you need to be if your serious about business online.

What's even more fascinating is the top 10 results (page 1) receive over 80% greater traffic to their websites than those on page 2 and 3. The thought provoking element here is, that another study done by Penn State University back in June 2003 reflected the same sort of results, but this time with the added notations that only one in five searchers actually stays on any one site more than 60 seconds (and even less on a site with other links to outside websites).

How Useful Are The Major Search Engines?
A survey was done by US based NPD Research to monitor the effectiveness of search engines in generating the results that web searchers wanted. So using a sample base of 30,000 web searchers, the results come out at 81% of people searching found the answers they wanted every single time they used a search engine.

The 77% of those who didn't find the answer to their questions in one search engine simply used another one to get the answers. Of the search phrases used 45% of them used multiple-keyword phrases (what we refer to as the "long tail" keywords), and 28% used only one word phrases, 18% used a pre-defined option, for example, a specific directory category and finally 9% of searchers typed in a question to get their answer.

So as you can see, internet marketing research is becoming wildly popular and what I got out of the above was give people what they want online, which is an answer to their problem... Just simply address a problem to a question they ask...

Don't sell... Educate... Because when you educate your market on something they specifically are looking for and you give them in depth information on it, they will stick around longer than the statistical 60 seconds that the average 4 out of 5 don't do.

I hope this has been helpful for you and you can now get stuck into your internet marketing, with a touch more knowledge and direction.

My advice to you is, whatever industry, niche or market sector you operate in, start now, the ones who start now will have a "Distinct" advantage in the coming years when we become a fully integrated, digital society... So heed the warning statistics :-)

Have you ever decided to undertake and plan a cold calling campaign for your business? If you answered yes to this, then my assumptions would be that in the planning phase you probably spent a LOT of time, thinking about what you were going to say and scripting how you were going to say it right?

You might have even gone as far as to role play it with a colleague, or record your message into a tape recorder so you could ensure "it was smooth" and sounded professional. If you have a grin on your face at this point and have a knowing nod, then you know what I'm talking about!

Unfortunately, when you finally get to making your calls, and you've gotten over all those neves, sweaty palms and been and made yourself a cuppa, had a toilet break and done all the paperwork (you absolutely HATE) you eventually make a call or two. Very quickly you realized that you planned in vain, becuase the people on the other end of the line simply don't want to talk about how good your services and products are.

If you're lucky you get to have a decent conversation with about 1 in 20 people you call, and out of that 20 you call, 1 is rude and hangs up, at least 3 to 5 are obviously not wanting to communicate but aren't rude, 5 say they'll get back to you and never do (thus enticing you to "chase" them, a cardinal sin in any form of selling), and the remainder talk politely but with no intent of buying (and most likely wonder how they can get this darn salesperson off the phone!).

The reason why the above scenario happens and we as salespeople decide that we're never going to do cold calling again because "it simply doesn't work!" is due to the way we make these calls. Becuase we're talking about ourselves and using the old school (and quite out of date) way of connecting with prospects (if you could even call them that, as a prospect is someone who is "Interested")... a natural guard goes up on the other end of the phone, and once this barrier is put up, it's often too late for us to get bring it back down... No matter HOW NICE we come across on the phone!

Below are 4 points that will help you transition softly and elegantly into your prospects world and communicate with them on "their terms" and not yours:

1. Create the Oppotunity For Them To HELP You
When you make your calls start with a low tone, and gently ask for their help... This was a valid point that Dale Carnegie from the book "How To Win Friends & Influence People" has used successfully a hundred years ago or more and it's still as valid today as it is back then, because we all want to feel important (even secretaries who screen calls).

So by positioning yourself in the area of requiring help (and you really do when you cold call, becuae you have "no idea" who to talk to) your sub-conciously warming up your reciever to really wanting to assist you.

You might gently say something like this after the receptionist answers the phone and says their name, "Hi <Name>, you might be able to help me out?"... <Be sure to pause here and let them say "yes">. 

What this does is make them want to say yes and reach out to assist.

2. Speak Like You Would To a Friend
Remember that when you make your calls, don't try and turn into someone, or something that you're not!

A lot of the time we try and become so scripted and professional in our calls that we end up hiding who we really are and that's why we're screened out of the call early on.

So be yourself, talk half-pace, half-tone and relax.

3. Don't Try And Manipulate A Sales Outcome
You might think that this doesn't make sense as that's the whole reason we're making these calls right?... WRONG!

What we're doing by making these calls is an attempt to connect with our reciever, we want to know about them first before we ever try and talk about solutions.

Why might we do this?

Well have you ever been in a car yard and wanted a particular colour and model of car, say it's a Black, Holden, Station Wagon... And the salesperson was to come over to you and instantly start trying to sell you a pink, VW, Convertible... Would you stay around long?

The same is true if they were to make small talk with you, find out about what you, your family, their needs and then all of a sudden turn the talk around what he wants to sell you.

You'd become supsicious from that moment on and probably not trust that salesperson, so instead, try and re-align yourself with the essence of your connection with that person, and that is to just learn about them and focus on the conversation at hand, because once they like you and know that you're not likely to pounce on them with a forced (or even un-forced) sale, they'll open up to you.

4. Help Solve Their Problems
I can hear you wondering... "What do we talk about and do we only make small talk?"...

Not entirely, what will naturally progress from an open conversation is what their looking for, either directly or indirectly. And it's from this source that you can then genuinely attempt to help them (without mentioning your products or services).

Just try and authentically connect with them and solve a problem for them. This will be quite a shock to a lot of people and they'll think it's some form of sales technique you're running on them, and this isn't a technique, it's a genuine need from your heart to help that person, company or business.

Once people know you're genuine, you will learn things that other conventional sales styles people will ever learn.

So in the end, remember you're a human being connecting naturally with another human being who may or may not have a problem to solve!

If you enjoyed this piece, I have written a lot more like this at my site specifically written for sales people who wish to connect and prospect in a more authentic way, so go ahead and visit www.NaturalColdCalling.com it's more than just cold call training, it's about connecting authentically with others.

As businesses migrate online, your customers won't be able to see your face as easily. They won't be able to hear your voice when you are recommending your products, and they won't see the emotions on your face when you are telling your customers what benefits they can derive out of your products.

The Internet is a level playing field for every Internet marketer, merchant and business owner out there. The sheer connectivity means that you can reach every individual in the world. You are not limited by geographic constraints and anyone can be your customer or client.

This is precisely why you should overdeliver. When every competitor of yours has access to everyone in the market, your only way of winning the battle is to overdeliver, again and again. When you overdeliver, you present yourself as a person with the customer’s interest at heart. You become a trusted friend and not a greed-driven marketer out looking for their money. Overdelivering is simply your only way to differentiate yourself from your competitors.

You can start overdelivering by providing superb support for your customers. How many times have you been turned away with rude answers when asking about a certain product you purchased? Compare that with the number of times you have been provided very good service, as if you're being helped by a personal friend. The ratio is just off balance, proving how scarce good customer support is. By providing excellent support to your customers and answering to their every needs patiently, you will gain customers that are fiercely loyal to you because they know you have their best interest at heart.

When you provide excellent customer support, you're already ahead of most of your competitors. Take it a step further and think: in what other ways can you over deliver to your customers?

One very good way is to give your customers a pleasant surprise when they make a purchase from you. For example, if a customer buys your cooking utensils, you might throw in a bonus recipe book for them. However, do not use the bonus as an incentive for the customer to buy your products. Your products must be good enough to make the customer buy it in the first place, and the bonus must serve as a surprise element; you must not announce it in the product catalogue.

The final way is to build a long-lasting relationship with your customers. If a customer buys regularly from you, you should send greeting cards during birthdays and on every holiday, be it Christmas, New Year, Easter, even Chinese New Year! Your customer will again remember you as a friend, not a business associate, and will favour you above other merchants because of the warm relationship.

So, remember to start overdelivering today!

To many of you, marketing means the activities you carry out to enhance and promote your businesses exposure. Activities like creating articles and submitting them to newspapers, PR Sources and online article hubs, creating free give away promotions and adding your website to directories and search engines online.

However to those of us who know and understand Guerrilla Marketing it’s much, much more than just weekly improvements on our website or offline business promotion. Here’s where you might want to begin jotting down some notes, or better yet, print this information out (and send it to your colleagues) so you absorb it thoroughly!

Marketing Is Every Single Contact, Communication And Exposure You Have With ANYONE About Your Business!

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a one person start-up, or a multi-million dollar organisation, every single phone call, message, fax, email, newsletter and conversation you have, whether you advertise in that or not, you’re marketing your business.

You need to really take this next section to heart, and it’s this “Marketing both online and offline is a never ending loop” and it needs to become a PERMANENT way of life for you no matter where you are, what you’re doing, or who you’re talking to, every interaction you have is either a positive or negative learning process from those who don’t know or understand what you do.

It’s YOUR Job To Make Every Interaction A POSITIVE One For Your Business!

Even the negative aspects of your business, for example, how you’re product / service might disgruntle the opposition needs to come out in the end, as a shining positive light for your prospects, clients and colleagues. And this is a skill that is learned like anything else, you’re not born a natural “Guerrilla Marketer” it’s an acquired technique and that takes time.

So what exactly is Guerrilla Marketing?

Guerrilla marketing is a way of strategizing and using non-conventional tactics to reach a conventional end result. And we both know that the end result in business is to increase profitability, and profit increase is the single-minded goal of guerrilla marketing, so everything you do MUST be geared around increasing your profits.

When I say everything you do must be geared around increasing your profits, I will add to that and say that every action you take and strategy you implement must also be highly principled and highly ethical.  So in essence, when you look at your marketing strategies, you only take those that are working, and those that are working in a way that HELPS others achieve what they want. All the superfluous, time wasting, profit sapping activities automatically become weeded out as part of the process in Guerrilla marketing.

I will also turn your attention here to the fact that I’ve mentioned profits and NOT sales per se, and the reason I have done this is, guerrilla marketing savvy students are not focussed on high turnover, high ticket sales. Because it’s not what you make on each sale, it’s what you keep that makes you successful as a business “PROFIT” is what it’s all about. So high sales turnover and profit-loss due to marketing that isn’t working, would simply not happen with guerrilla marketing processes and systems.

How is Guerrilla Marketing Different from Conventional Marketing?

You’re going to find there are at least 10 to 15 major differences with the guerrilla marketing processes, and here they are (take extreme notice of the last one on this list):

1. Guerrilla marketing is highly effective tactics that you can implement on a shoe-string budget and still beat the conventional, larger companies who have more money than they know what to do with when it comes to marketing.

2. It’s not a scary process for small start-up and medium sized businesses to use guerrilla marketing. The conventional marketing process is perceived as highly-complex and can be extremely expensive, guerrilla marketing attack plan is only several sentences long and incredibly effective.

3. Guerrilla marketers only need time, energy and creativity as their weapons for marketing, whereas conventional marketing requires the addition of money and complex strategies.

4. Guerrilla marketing is the most simple forms of marketing, as it’s ONLY yardstick to success is PROFITS. Conventional marketing talks about testing and measuring, conversion rate, response rate and gross sales as their yard sticks.

5. The guerrilla marketer uses psychology and the laws of human nature to create sales, the conventional marketer uses guess work (also known as trial and error) to make sales and this as we all know can be quite costly and with very little results.

6. The guerrilla way of marketing uses a little known tactic called “Permission Marketing” and therefore only markets to interested, receptive and reactive parties. Traditional marketing is geared only around making a sale (to anybody) and the funnel process to get someone from cold to warm to raving fan is extremely costly, time consuming.

7. Guerrilla marketing is focussed on the back-end support (after sales service and up-sell) and are passionate about keeping customers happy “Long Term” once they’re in the marketing funnel. Traditional marketing is often a one sale, move on to the next, numbers game type scenario.

8. The way of guerrilla marketing employs “Multiple” methods of spreading their marketing message and they know that certain combinations of marketing messages work better than single shot mediums. Traditional marketing uses these single shot mediums in a standalone way, such as website, advertising, seminar events as their only sources.

9. The arsenal of weapons in a guerrillas toolkit is over 100 marketing weapons and their focussed on small, concentrated groups of targeted individuals. Traditional marketing focuses on the larger, general audience, in an attempt to make mass sales in one hit.

10. Guerrilla marketing focuses on increasing “what they already have access to” and stimulating more sales, referrals and clients from that base. Traditional marketing is focussed on costly new client acquisition most of the time.

11. Guerrilla based companies focus on being “Complimentary” with their competition and helping stimulate growth for their organisations through working together in joint ventures. Traditional marketing mindsets teach “Annihilate The Competitor” which is a flawed mindset to begin with on many, many levels.

12. Guerrilla based marketing achieves its strength and growth through laser focus on being the largest specialist resource in their category or niche. Whereas traditional marketing employs “Diversification” tactics to stimulate growth, thus weakening them from their specialist counterparts.

13. Guerrilla marketers understand that every contact with clients, prospects and partner companies has an “INTENTIONAL” and “SPECIFIC” goal behind it. Traditional marketing often has unintentional results due to their focus on non-relational style of selling that doesn’t permeate the company at all levels.

14. Guerrilla marketers understand the POWER OF GIVING to their prospects and clients, where traditional marketing is based on what it can take from their prospects to make a sale.

15. Guerrilla marketers “EMBRACE” technology with their marketing and use it to its fullest in every way, shape and form. Traditional marketing by and large ignores quite a big proportion of what technology can offer.

I now want you to go away and begin thinking how you can implement what you’ve learned here today, from this new mindset of guerrilla marketing. Believe me, if you implement just some of these ideas (and we’ll be talking certain strategies more specifically in future posts) you won’t be able to avoid not gaining new levels of profit from it.

You may have wondered from time to time with your marketing, “WHY” don’t more people buy what I have to offer? You might have seen or heard of a marketing campaign that has been so successful and then you virtually copied that campaign (barring a few tweaks) to suit your  marketplace and it completely bombed out for you.

WHY?

Well the problem in my professional opinion (and experience) is the fact that about 92% of marketers “Don’t Target” the correct audience!

They go out there and do blanket marketing campaigns in newspapers, radios, networking groups, flyer drops, and the like and Try And CONVINCE everyone and anyone in business that they need what they have, or even worse, create a targeted ad piece and then put it out into a general audience.

Of course, we know that an approach such as this is going to be a big, fat disaster don’t we?

Then WHY does 92% of websites out there insist on copywriting a homepage that focuses on the general population?

What I’m talking about here is those sites that talk about themselves, rather than focussing on “The PROBLEMS They Solve!” and what you need to really absorb is...

Not Everyone wants your product or service!

You might be convinced that everyone needs your product, but whether or not they want it, is completely another issue. Why then, does the prospect who looks at your product, seems interested, gives you all the right signals, then go and buy the exact same thing (or an inferior product / service) to what you could have given them?

It’s called TARGETING!

The competitor product or service was in a position that was more clearly identified by that target market as something “Useful” to them, they were attracted to that product  or service because of the way it was described, positioned and presented... And yours WASN’T!

Now this can be quite a sour pill to swallow, but the sooner you realize that everyone doesn’t want your product or service, and begin to focus on the target group who DOES, you’re business is going to be much better off.

If at this point, you don’t quite know WHO your exact target market is, then you have some research to do and you’d better do it quick because every-single-day you delay, your more aggressive and pro-active competitors are doing these nitty gritty things, learning more and more about their target market and heaven forbid if your target market is theirs, because they’ll have the upper hand.

The one thing I’ve learned from the most successful companies out there is they NEVER stop their quest for a deeper understanding of their target audience so they can fulfil their needs better than anyone else.

So my advice to you, if you find yourself in this position is to STOP trying to convince everyone that they need your products / services and begin honing in on the ones who WANT them, are LOOKING for them and BELIEVE they need them... Your life will be tremendously easier!

Try thinking about how good it was when you dealt with a “PERFECT” client, you know the ones I’m talking about, they paid you upfront or right on time, they didn’t complain, they wanted what you had, were easy to work with and referred a bunch of their colleagues, friends and family to you who were exactly the same as they were “EASY to deal with!”

I want you to FEEL what that experience is like for 10 minutes, really reflect on it.

Now do the same for a client that you really had to work HARD to convince to buy your product or service, then when you finally got them out of their own way, their scepticism died down enough to persuade them, they were a NIGHTMARE client. They didn’t have the money to pay you on time, they wanted you to drop everything and do theirs first, ABOVE AND BEYOND your well paying clients.

Now how does that make you feel and react? And how do we get away from this scenario so it’s NEVER repeated again?

Here are some ideas you can run through to help you target and position yourself a little more clearly for your perfect “A Plus” client.

1. Think about the qualities of your perfect customer and re-write your materials to them only.
2. What sort of resources does your perfect target marketing focus on? Then get your articles, ads
     and materials in those resources as best you can.
3. What age are your perfect clients?
4. What are their hobbies? What do they do in their spare time?
5. How do they dress? Are they highly formal or quite casual?
6. What is their level of education? High school, Uni Degrees or higher?
7. What sex are they?
8. What are they after in life in general? What do they want out of life?
9. What are their biggest concerns, fears, worries, what keeps them awake at night?
10. What is the big benefit they get, and the problem they SOLVE if they work with you?

You MUST be as specific as possible in answering these questions and go back over them over and over. The whole idea of this process is to be “Exclusive” to your target market only, the non-targeted clients you exclude have no problem excluding you from their buying processes so now is the time to be razor sharp with your targeting radar.

Online, the more niche you are, the better it will work for you. For example, you might sell cars and have a general website of all the cars you have, this is your “TYPICAL” everyone type scenario.

The alternate route would be, have many specific pages with groupings of the cars to each specific area, this will make your clients “FEEL SPECIAL” to begin with and it will attract them to the page that suits them, like a magnet. For example, you might have a group of cars that are suitable for students on a very tight budget, then you would have a page on your site that says “Cars for Students” and so on for each “NICHE” you have...

No-one does this, it’s too logical and obvious and it’s costing them thousands in lost sales to competitors because of it.

That’s my rant for day, somewhat brutal I know, but it’s reality for a lot of readers and I’ve just given you the start of how to solve it.

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I've been a student, researcher and advocate of internet marketing sales copy for several years now, and have often found myself asking the question "WHAT" is it that makes a successful website sell so many thousands of dollars worth (sometimes millions) of whatever it is that they sell. These companies are often small mum and dad, or one man band operations too, not the large companies with pockets padded with endless marketing dollars.

The one thing I've found in common of all of successful sales based websites, salespeople, marketers and speakers is they are all wonderful story tellers. Please don't look upon story telling as lying, bending the truth or fibbing in any way, as I'm sure that some of you may link the term "Story Telling" back to the days of school the naughty student would tell a big fib and the teacher (or principal) would say "Nice story, but now tell me the truth son!"

What I'm talking about here is the use of a well constructed, integrious, based on fact story telling. In this context there is nothing better than a well put together story, they work like sales miracles in giving your prospects information and motivate them to act, because they "Relate" to you and the stroy told. The amazing thing that often dumbfounds me is this strategy is very seldom used in copywriting on websites!

Below is the use of a sales letter story that according to the former editor of the Wall Street Journal, Denny Hatch who had a column called "Who's Mailing What?".

Here's how the story starts:

"On a beautiful late spring afternoon, twenty-five years ago, two young men graduated from the same college. They were very much alike, these two young men. Both had been better than average students, both were personable and both - as young college graduates are - were filled with ambitious dreams for the future.

Recently, these two men returned to college for their 25th reunion.

They were still very much alike. Both were happily married. Both had three children. And both, it turned out, had gone to work for the same company Midwestern manufacturing company after graduation, and were still there.

But there was a difference. One of the men was a small department of that company. The other was its president."

****

And here's another example from a famous copywriter in the US by the name of Joe Sugarman and his most famous ad for a company called Blu-Blocker sunglasses.

Here's his approach:

"I'm about to tell you a true story. If you believe me, you will be well rewarded. If you don't believe me, I will make it worth your while to change your mind. Let me explain.

Len is friend of mine who knows good products. One day he called excited about a pair of sunglasses he owned. "It's so incredible," he said, "when you first look through a pair, you won't believe it."

"What will I see?" I asked. "What could be so incredible?"

Len continued, "When you put on these glasses, your vision improves. Objects appear sharper, more defined. Everything takes on an enhanced 3-D effect. And it's not my imagination. I just want you to see for yourself."

****

You get the idea, and the above story continues to deepen the message as the reader is drawn further into the story.

One thing you'll want to take particular note of, is how Joe's friend mentions the benefits of the sunnies in side the dialogue so potential clients don't have a hieghtened sense of being advertised to, so their "ad defenses" don't go up and it comes across as a natural conversation.

The final example I want to show you today is from an email by a well known internet marketer by the name of Yanik Silver, in this email he uses the story element to great effect to promote a product called the "Power Pause" that was written by a friend of his John Harricharan.

See how Yanik implements the story element below:

SUBJECT:
[[firstname]] - 3 minutes to greater joy, wealth and happiness?

BODY:
Hi [[firstname]]

I stumbled across something unusual recently....

And as a valued subscriber I wanted to let you know about
it.

A few months ago I met a man named John Harricharan at a
seminar, who graciously offered me his material to review.

I smiled and politely thanked him but I knew that I probably
wouldn't get around to reading it anytime soon. (You should
see my stack of reading material to get to and I'm actually
a quick reader.)

But as luck would have it, I was going away on my honeymoon
one week after this seminar and I decided to bring some
'lighter' reading along.

Honestly, I can't remember the last time I read a book that
didn't deal with the subject of marketing or advertising,
but once I started reading John's material on the airplane
and I couldn't put it down.

It was simply incredible!

His manuscript combined every success principle I've ever
been taught and wraps it all up into one succinct exercise
called a "Power Pause". And the best part is it only
takes just 3 minutes and 3 steps to achieve.

Yep! Only 3 minutes!

The truth is, I constantly find myself applying John's
simple (yet extremely powerful) "Power Pause" principles
in my life now and I feel like there is no problem or
situation I can't conquer. (Frankly - I'm not one of
those spiritual 'walk on hot coals' type of guys - but
this stuff really has had a profound effect on my life.)

What's more, other top marketers like Declan Dunn,
Jonathan Mizel, Monique Harris, Joe Vitale and Marlon
Sanders all vouch for John's material (he even has an
endorsement from famed Deepak Chopra, MD).

It's amazing to think there are only 3 steps to solving
almost any problem you'll ever deal with (money, happiness,
relationship, you name it). And John assures me that it
Copyright Surefire Marketing, Inc. All rights reserved.
works for anyone willing to give it a try.

The only thing you need to give this information a shot,
is an open mind. Open enough to take a chance on yourself
and the material contained in the "PowerPause". (Actually,
you don't even need to take a chance because his proven
material is backed by a 100% unconditional, guarantee --
so you really can't lose!)

Do yourself a favor and check out this valuable
information by clicking the link below:
Click Here for details

You'll be glad you did!

Yanik Silver

P.S. Could there really be 3 steps to happiness, joy,
wealth and getting almost anything you really want in
your life? I couldn't believe it either until I applied
the "Power Pause" material myself here:
Click Here for details

****

I hope that you take some of these elements and use them instantly in your own story telling processes for your business, if you can master the art of solid story telling, you'll win the trust, admiration and custom of many clients who seemingly "Just have to connect" and buy from you!

Hi and welcome to the very first grand opening post for the Nett Knowledge blog.

It's been a long time coming and I've been working my proverbial butt off to make this blog and website the most comprehensive, interactive, knowledge base for local, national and international business owners to have their questions answered in a safe, low-pressure environment for internet marketing.

So I invite you all to add your comments to my blog posts on the various topics and posts I'll be adding to this blog, and I'll be doing my best to answer all your questions you ask in the posts that I add.

For more Q&A you can go ahead now and join my VIP Forum for free and in there you'll find the beginnings of a growing community of like minded business owners and entrepreneurs who want to grow their business both online and off.

I wish you all the best and hope to have a long lasting ride to business growth with you.

Warm Regards,
Adam Price