Starting A Home Business: Step 7

by Ken Leonard Jr

Published on this site: June 13th, 2005 - See more articles from this month...

Now that you have traffic coming to your new web site, it's time to capture the contact information of as many interested visitors as you can. Today you will learn how to get more qualified prospects on your list and how to create a compelling and useful follow up series that closes the deal.

(If you missed the first 6 steps, you can catch up here) http://kenleonardjr.com/step1

While you will create a sales letter web page for your product or service, most of your promotions should not directly point your prospects to it. Instead, create a separate "gate house" for each offer you run. Doing this will build a strong list of targeted prospects that you can follow up with regularly. A powerful follow up message can turn these prospects into customers.

Your gate house is a web page with a short teaser for your sales page. The only way to get access to the information is for them to enter their contact info. Creating a gate house is easy if you can work with simple web pages with an editor like Dreamweaver or FrontPage. You will also need to have an active account with one of the autoresponder services, like this one:
http://followup.ken-recommends.com

First, create a blank web page with a colored background. Next insert a table that is about 600 pixels wide by 1000 pixels tall. Give the table a white background with a black border. Insert your content and the form code that will let your visitor sign up to your email list and redirect them to your sales page.

To get the form code for your gate house page, login to your autoresponder account and open the control panel for the appropriate autoresponder. Click the link that says "generate form code" (or something similar). Then copy and paste the code into the table html just below your headline and content.

The last step to building your gate house page is to add code for a popup that activates when the gate house page is closed. The sales letter web page that they would have been redirected to after submitting their contact info will be displayed in a full page popup.

This method is very effective for building a list of quality, targeted prospects. Your business is not just about making sales, it is about building your "house list" of prospects and customers that you can send promotions to time and time again.

This is the key to the long term success of your home business.

The quality of the follow up series that your list receives will greatly impact your sales. Make each email fairly short and to the point. If you want to provide other information or resources, link to it from the follow up email.

Each follow up message should leave the prospect anxiously awaiting the next. Provide information that is useful to your target customer all by itself. Use compelling email subjects to get your reader to open the email, then use a conclusion that is a teaser for the next part of the series.

As far as how many follow up messages to send to a list, you should think with no limit. Once a prospect has signed up for your specific list, you can send on topic messages to them until they tell you to stop. Gather your leads using responsible methods and sources and you won't have a problem doing so.

A good way to gain the trust and loyalty of your list is to offer them truly useful resources and free gifts, especially unadvertised surprises. If your reader trusts you and likes you, they will be more inclined to buy from you. One of the best ways to get your readers to warm up to you is to write in a personable manner which speaks directly to one reader at a time. Develop a writing style that uses "you and your" instead of "I, me or mine". Use this method along with the personalization features of your autoresponder and your prospect will enjoy reading every message you send.

In case you would like to produce a live newsletter or ezine instead of an autoresponder follow up series, don't miss Step 8 of this tutorial. In Step 8 we will cover the finer points of producing and mailing a weekly or monthly ezine. Do this the wrong way and you will get poor results at best. See you next time...

Home Business Success Coaching... Get the advice and direction you need so you can make a living working from home. If you are serious, see what people are saying here... http://www.kenleonardjr.com