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To build and maintain a successful web presence, you need to follow and expand on the roadmap I am going to outline for acquiring customers online.  Your ultimate goal is to join the online conversation.  You can do this by leveraging a blog, Twitter, YouTube, and other social media tools.

Here is a roadmap for effectively acquiring customers online:

1. Get on the right people’s radar screen in multiple locations
2. Draw their attention by demonstrating value
3. Make your value proposition accessible and relevant

Get on the Right People’s Radar Screen in Multiple Locations

“Identify the people you want as customers and know why you want them.”
-Jim Cecil (Founder of the Nurture Marketing Institute)

Keeping with the theme, you then need to plant the right seeds to generate the right crop.  Yes, both Jim and I are implying that you can actually grow customers.  Once you know who you want, the next step is ascertaining what radar coverage they have.  For example, listed in order of priority, my radar primarily covers my mastermind group (close business friends), my inbox (Gmail, weighted by the sender), Twitter, LinkedIn, and RSS feeds (Google Reader) weighted by the author.

A personal introduction from a member of my mastermind group trumps everything!  This is because word-of-mouth is still the most powerful form of marketing, and Social Media is a medium of it.   Since getting to my mastermind group would be nearly impossible – for one there is no legal way for you to find out who they are – getting into my inbox, tweeting to me, direct messaging me on LinkedIn, and my RSS feed are your only real options.

Image Credit: M. David Peterson.

So, the flow would go something like this…  You would follow me on Twitter and I would most likely follow back.  I usually scan the last few tweets of each person and check out their website—I do this to determine how much I should listen to what you have to say.

Side note: I am currently using both TweetAdder and CoTweet to manage my Twitter activity. TweetAdder automatically adds and follows and I use CoTweet to manage my tweets.

In addition, if your end goal is a higher ticket item that warrants a more personal touch, you could direct message me on LinkedIn—the easiest and cheapest way to do this is to join a group that I am a member of and like magic, you now have access to me.  The next step would be to start leaving awesome comments on my blog; they’re the ones I read.  You would then be on my radar in a big way!  If you do want to get in contact with me, the irony is that a simple phone call to the jiveSYSTEMS customer support line and a well-articulated reason is all it would take—this would get you in the door, nothing more, and the type of attention you would receive would be quite different.

Draw their Attention by Demonstrating Value

This is the part where you need to individualize the message.  This doesn’t necessarily mean to a specific individual.  More likely than not, your ideal customers have many things in common.  In my experience, relating to pain and/or passion is the key to drawing attention.  I alluded to there being different types of attention at the end of the Get on their Radar section and understanding of this becomes critical when getting attention.  For example, I used to own a personal training business focused on corrective and functional exercise.  You would draw my attention by tweeting about the institute I am certified through, the CHEK Institute.  However, if you are representing a client relationship management (CRM) company, you would then need to transcode my attention from one type to another—in this case from my personal passion to business related activities.

Side note: Since we are a video email and web video marketing system, my brain is full of video related terminology. Transcoding is the process of converting a media file from one format to another. For example, taking and converting a MPEG to a Flash file.

While there are no rules, it adds an extra and often unnecessary step if you start by drawing your target markets attention with a topic that is unrelated to your end goal.   However, if the relationship is too close, people may not value the content.  It’s a fine line—with a little time, energy, and creativity you can find and walk it.  If I owned a CRM company, I may tweet about ways to use any CRM more effectively.  This would draw the attention of any CRM user.  Content developed in this regard has a high relevancy with almost every CRM users.  As long as the content is primo, you are going to draw my attention to a high degree, for quite some time, based on that one piece of content.   Also, if your eBook, video series, or whatever the case may be, is top notch then I am going to retweet it, digg it, blog about it, etc….  Alternatively, you could start a blog for non-CRM users to understand what a CRM can do for their businesses.  Regardless, good content can spread fast on the internet.   The key to unlocking the power of viral marketing is constant, continuous education, and communication with your qualified prospects and customers—a blog should be the foundation of your online presence!

Side note: Twitter is not a one-way channel. In many respects, Twitter is an evolved form of email—the key to success is about joining the conversation!

Make Your Value Proposition Accessible and Relevant

This can often be the trickiest part, especially if you are not proficient in thinking outside-of-the-box.  The important thing to realize is that your value proposition depends on the prospect.  For the purposes of this article, we are going to continue with the flow and focus on the people that have downloaded the hypothetical eBook on using any CRM more effectively.  Anyone who uses a CRM (and even more so, those who have migrated from one CRM to another) knows that it is a nightmare to switch providers.  So, it would be wise to compound your value proposition based on your unique benefits and features with migration assistance to make your transition as easy as possible.  Also, it bears to mention that you need to tie your unique benefits and features into something measurable.  For example, we have a unique multi-pronged split-testing tool that we guarantee will increase the effectiveness of your email marketing.   Once you setup your split-test and send the initial emails to your list, our tool will automatically create and send the best version of your email to your entire list and email you the a detailed report.

Initially, you should create a squeeze page that will appeal to a broad spectrum of your target market.  However, as you grow, you should develop landing pages for each isolable market segments. For example, for our service, we created a landing page just for real estate agents.  On this page, we offer them an eBook, access to an on-demand webinar, and 7 tips for leveraging web video in their business.  The cost is nothing more than their email address, and it’s quite appealing and very relevant.  The content of course very tastefully explains our value proposition, and we use our service to deliver the 7 tips as video emails.

Closing Thoughts

Generating sales is a process. You can’t perform a couple of actions and hope to get results.  Use the 7 P’s: Prior Planning and Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance.

At the foundation, you can also use Jim Cecil’s approach to keep you on track; the foundation for Nurture Marketing is to: Identify, Individualize, Interact and then Influence.  Jim and I are also big believers with being in sync—being compassionate.  This is about more than understanding their pain and/or passion.  You need to talk their language—you do this by identifying their style.  The Personality Plus system by Florence Littauer is a sound choice for understanding interactions between people which will help you connect with the vernacular that will appeal to them.  Here is a link to table of many of the schools of thought in respect to personality typing.

The roadmap for acquiring customers has three main parts: 1) getting on the right people’s radar screen; 2) drawing their attention and demonstrating value; and 3) making your value proposition accessible and relevant.  The result of following these steps is customers, not just any customers, the customers you want and need to grow your business.  Not all customers are created equal.  You can choose who you attract by defining the people you want.

Do you have a process for attracting the right customers?  What has been working for you?   Please take a moment to share your thoughts below.  If a specific part of this article grabbed your attention, let me know.