How To Stand Out From The Crowd

In today’s world where everyone and his company are trying to sell you something, people are getting more wary about being sold to these products and services.

According to CBS News, the average person is exposed to up to 5,000 ads per day. And that figure is in 2006. In 2008, you can expect that number to be even higher.

Wow! Can you imagine that? 5,000 ads per day?

This explains why as time progresses, more and more people are becoming more immune to these ads or marketing messages.

For example, if you are watching a TV program and the commercial comes in, what do you typically do? Switch to other channels or go to the bathroom or do something else, of course!

How many people do you think actually sit down and watch the commercials? Granted, there are people who do that, but I strongly believe that number is very insignificant.

“Now what has this got to do with us Internet Marketers?” you might ask.

Well of course it has everything to do with us, especially if we make money by selling products and services to people.

It doesn’t matter if its Internet marketing or offline marketing, as long as you sell products and services to people, this has everything to do with you.

If you just follow along with what everyone is doing or has already done, then you will not stand out from the crowd and nobody is going to notice you, unless you have already established a brand of your own in your niche.

If you are unique and stand out from the crowd in a positive way, people will notice and recognize you. This, in turn, will make it easier for you to sell your products and services to them.

So how can you be unique and stand out from the crowd? Well, here are 2 ways:

1. Give value first, receive second

This is one of the best advices I can give to any marketer out there. Like I said before, this does not apply only to online businesses; it very well also applies to offline businesses as well.

When everyone is doing their sales pitches to prospective customers, you give value to them without expecting anything in return.

Well, actually you are expecting something in return, and that is to hope that they find value in what you have given them so that they trust you and eventually buy from you.

But my advice is you should really expect nothing in return, and just give value to them first, regardless of whether they will buy your products or not.

Have you heard of the saying “Give and you shall receive”?

Well this couldn’t be truer!

Once again, just concentrate on striving to give value first to your prospective customers, and they will buy from you eventually.

2. Provide excellent customer service

Most business owners and marketers fail to realize the importance of providing great customer service to their clients.

Sadly, once their customers have bought something from them, they neglect their customers by providing poor customer service or no customer service at all.

After customers hand in their money, these marketers say “goodbye” to them.

These business owners and marketers are only concerned in making new sales every day, which means they have to find new customers every single day.

They fail to understand that to get a happy, existing customer to buy again is much easier and cheaper than acquiring new customers.

This is because to get new customers, you first need to convince them that you are the authority in your field and you also need to convince them to trust you. This requires effort and time.

Compare this with a customer who has previously bought from you and are satisfied with your product and the great customer service you have provided.

Which one do you think is easier to convince to buy your just-released product?

There is probably, another method for us Internet Marketers that we can use to stand out from the crowd of all other Internet Marketers in your niche.

Now for the sake of beginners, let me just explain what an opt-in form is. Intermediate and advanced marketers, please bear with me a little okay?

If you take a look at the upper right area of this blog where it says “Free Internet Marketing Scoop”, you will notice that there are two fields where you can enter your first name and email.

This is known as an opt-in form. The purpose of this opt-in form is to collect the data (first name and email) of this blog’s readers, so that I build a list of prospective customers on a consistent basis so that I can contact them later on.

If you have been marketing online for a while now, you should know that most marketers ask for your name and email when you opt-in to become their subscribers.

Now, just a few days ago, Ryan Deiss explained a trick that you can try to increase your opt-in rate. The trick is to ditch the name field so that people only need to enter their emails in order to opt-in. There is no need to enter the first name.

For his case, he managed to increase his opt-in rate by 5-8%. Of course this figure may not apply to you because different niches respond differently.

As for myself, I have not tested removing the name field yet because of other more important tasks at hand that I need to complete.

But it never hurts to try! So if you have the time, go ahead and test it out for yourself. Me and my blog readers would appreciate you sharing your results here, so if you do try it out, please let us know your results okay?