The Power of Pass Along Marketing

This is a guest post by Srini Saripalli. Srini is a Info-marketer, speaker and above all a blogger dedicated to helping entrepreneurs succeed online. Srini spoke at the Bay Area Mastermind in July 2009 and practically mesmerized everyone with his knowledge and energy. You can read more about Srini at www.SriniSaripalli.com

It was indeed a pleasure and honor speaking at the Bay Area Mastermind. Even though I was there to talk about how offline marketers can benefit from taking their business online, my entire presentation was focused on three specific areas.

• Internet Marketing & Changing Dynamics
• How to attract a lot of traffic to your website, build lists and make money in the process
• The self discipline needed to build a thriving online business 

If you missed this live presentation no worries. This post is more or less like a 10 minute digest of the 3 hour presentation. Also below you will find a small video that pretty much encapsulates what I wrote here.

The Changing Dynamics of the Internet

If you are just thinking of starting a business online and you are exploring to learn more about how to go about it, I have bad news for you. You will be inundated with information along your journey. There is too much information out there. Over time, people are often caught in the crossroads worried, perplexed, confused and puzzled as a result of information overload.

The internet is changing and it’s changing fast. Many established solo marketers are finding that money is not flowing through domains anymore. This is also my observation, a point that I made heavily at the live event. Money is in referral marketing, email marketing and other derivative forms of “Pass Along Marketing”. 

Pass Along Marketing is the main reason why social media sites are thriving. Imagine this: you want to hire a baby sitter for your kid, Where would you find the baby sitter? Would you go to google or facebook? Certainly facebook because that is where your friends are, that is where your connections are and a referral from a friend is more valuable at this time and in this context. You see the power of this.

I know folks at google are brain storming how they can go social with their search. So expect some big acquisitions from the giant.

Does it mean that you cannot create products and sell online or take your offline businesses online? Absolutely NOT. The opportunity to create, market and profit from your products online is bigger than ever. Its just that your products have to be authentic, solution driven and timely. Needless to say they have to bring tremendous value for your customers.

List Building

We internet marketers are always under a push to make offers. We have little or no patience to nurture our lists. In the process of making an offer we tend to make wrong offers. Making NO offer is better than making a wrong offer. This is the primary reason why 1% of marketers seem to make 99% of the money online. They understand the pulse of their list to such an extent that they can practically predict the outcome of their launches.

Self Discipline for Success

The single most important skill that is need to succeed online is “Self Discipline”. The good news is this can be learned. The bad news is that nobody can teach this skill to you. There are a ton of techniques, strategies, and blueprints that if you follow you will become successful. 

The problem is many marketers do not go the entire 9 yards. In other words, they don’t do what it takes to become successful. 

The need of the hour is volume. You need a lot of traffic, you need to have a bunch of products to offer, you need to exhaust every traffic source. Above all, you need to saturate every available channel to promote your products or services online.

Here is a small video snippet of the recording of the presentation I did at the Bay Area Mastermind networking event in July. Hopefully you will find this educational and informative.

I look forward to sharing more of my thoughts at the Bay Area Mastermind in near future.

Hear more from Srini and an incredible line up of speakers at this month’s Internet Income Summit taking place right here in Santa Clara, CA on August 14, 15 and 16.

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Jeremy’s Take on Pass Along Marketing for 2022

Beyond just traffic saturation, as we look at the percentage of people who see your offer, visit your site, and opt-in or purchase, you’ll typically likely find that there are a number of places you can improve your funnel. And in turn measure the results of your changes.

Sure, word of mouth marketing is good for your business and companies like yours certainly can grow organically from people referring their friends. But that’s just one traffic source.

What Srini is sharing above goes beyond word of mouth marketing. He’s talking about sourcing traffic from the web at large. This will typically include all your social channels, ranking well for the search terms that matter most for your business in paid search, creating original content on your site that will attract your audience, sharing related posts on your articles, and more.

The message Srini is really driving home here is you typically need to have a clear message about your web offers – even if it’s not perfect – include the right terms on your web pages, connect your related products, and then “fire ready aim” send traffic to your offers.

This may sound counter-intuitive to the “perfectionist” mindset that many entrepreneurs – especially “technicians” – have. But… once you come to terms with the importance of launching your offers and perfecting later, you just may find that you can get a result with a substandard offer, and that beats failing to launch the perfect offer.

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