OmniKick Blog

The day I released my first product on the web, I got five sales.

It was a book about currency trading.

My first blog was about currency trading.

My blog was just a way to document my journey in the FX world.

When I made my first sales through my blog, I couldn’t believe seeing the funds sitting in my Clickbank account.

While the funds were tiny, it was a big deal to me.

I’m talking about something around mid-2006.

Today, I’ve learned a lot about internet marketing.

And yes, I don’t do forex trading anymore because my entire savings got burnt in it, including my first ebook earnings.

Since then, I’ve been amazed by the opportunities presented by the web, so I decided to learn more about digital marketing instead.

Before then, I thought the world was a big place.

The web proved my wrong.

So I talked about making five sales on the first day I released my currency trading e-book even though I was a beginner just like many who bought it.

Those buyers were more than just customers.

They see me as their mentor. As someone who can put them through.

These buyers have been reading my blog. They would watch each of my moves on forums. They read every email I sent summarizing the trades I made during the day.

They were about 39 people in total who were on my email list. But 5 of them decided to buy.

Before then, I saw them as strangers. But there were more than that.

They would vouch for me when they see me on forums.

They would attack anyone who tries to insult me.

I’ve managed to turn them into lifelong fans, but the problem is I didn’t understand how I do it.

So I decided to find out…

Since then, I’ve managed to sell many more books in different niches until I stopped and moved to services.

Today I can easily turn strangers into customers and loyal fans at will.

I’ve watched many people do it.

I’m going to show you how to do it with ease.

There are some stages strangers must go through before they can become a customer.

While it’s possible that a stranger may jump through one of these stages, most of your loyal and best customers would have to pass through all these stages.

So what are these important stages I’m talking about?

They are:

1. The Stranger stage
2. The Reader stage
3. The Subscriber stage
4. The Engaged and Loyal Fan stage
5. The Customer stage

The question is:

How can you take strangers through these stages before they become customers?

They are four steps you must follow:

Step 1: How To Turn Strangers Into Readers

Strangers are people who haven’t heard or come across your name before.

They don’t know how you look like.

They don’t know where you live.

Strangers are everywhere on the web.

Except you start getting your face in front of strangers, they’ll never find you.

You should care about strangers because they are your future customers.

They may not be buying from you now, but it doesn’t mean they won’t buy from you in the future. In fact, they may even refer all their friends to buy your products and services in the future.

But you can’t wait till the future to have them.

You need to go after them now.

A stranger today could become a customer tomorrow.

It’s never late to start going after those strangers.

I’m sure you’re about to ask me this question:

How can you get your name in front of strangers?

There are many ways, but I consider these to be very effective:

• Guest blogging
• Appearing high on Google search engine
• Become active on 3^rd part platforms and communities like Medium, Slideshare, LinkedIn, Quora, etc.
• Social media e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Snapchat
• Appearing on podcasts

You can get in front of a lot of strangers by using these strategies.

Okay, let me expand on each one.

Guest Blogging

According to Ramit Sethi, personal finance blogger and the author of I Will Teach You To Be Rich, and New York Times Bestselling author, “guest blogging is one of the best and fastest ways to get traffic on the web.”

Here’s the image he shared:

“Besides writing really good content, the easiest way to get traffic to your blog is to write something interesting for another blogger who has more traffic than you.”—Ramit Sethi

I agree!

Appearing High On Search Engines

For a long time, search engines have been the best way to get consistent traffic on the web.

It works because if you can get like 10,000 visitors from search this month, you’re more likely to get something similar to that or more assuming Google didn’t do anything to their search algorithm.

Search engines traffic are very consistent. They build up over time and are more likely to keep growing if you continue putting out valuable contents on the web.

Google traffic builds up much like this:

You may not want to focus too much on search traffic when you are just starting out because it requires the minimum of 6 months before you start seeing any worthwhile results.

Becoming Active On Third Party Sites and Communities

There are lots of 3^rd party platforms and communities like Quora, LinkedIn, Slideshare, and Medium – just anywhere people hang out online and share contents with each other.

I’m a big fan of Medium.

I’ve made some cool friends on the platform.

I’ve also had some success on a marketing community like GrowthHacker.

GrowthHacker alone sent about 4,000 visitors to one of my blog posts. It was crazy. That connected me to more strangers.

A friend of mine who runs a driving school in Brooklyn also gets businesses from participating in communities.

Quora is much like a Q & A website, but it also has a community feel to it. You can connect with real people on the platform.

Writers like Leonard Kim and Oliver Emberton enjoyed tremendous success on the Quora platform.

Even a successful angel investor like David S. Rose is very active on Quora.

Social Media

Chris Brogan likes to connect with people.

He takes his skills and passion for socializing to social media.

He’s now a top social media influencer.

He speaks around the world and has been cited by many marketing experts.

Mari Smith is regarded as the Facebook queen, but it wasn’t like that when she started.

She struggled.

But she mastered Facebook and social media.

Today, Mari is one of the world’s leading social media thought leaders.

Social media is a great place to get in front of a lot of strangers and make yourself known just like Mari did.

Appearing on Podcasts

Right now, podcasting is booming.

I think it’s eventually going to replace the radio. Wrong?

With podcasts, people can listen to entertaining, educating, and interesting audios while they do other activities like driving, dining, and walking.

Podcasting is a great marketing channel. Maybe the best.

Here’s what Taylor Pearson, author of The End Of Jobs Book has to say about podcasting:

“The first time I thought podcasting might be the channel to double down on was hearing Pat Flynn say that podcasting was his #1 marketing channel, bar none.

Pat puts out a huge amount of amazing content from videos to books to blog posts, but has said, unequivocally, that podcasting has driven more audience growth than anything else he’s done.

The moment I truly believed it was listening to this Art of Charm interview between host Jordan Harbinger and author Hal Elrod.

Hal did 150 podcasts in the two years since his book came out and he credits it as the number one reason that he now sells twice as many books each month two years after his book came out than he did the year it came out.”

Taylor is right when you see that he’s appeared in more than 40 podcasts, and his book is now a #1 Business Seller on Amazon.

Podcast lets you build even stronger relationships with strangers.

Step 2: How To Turn Readers Into Dedicated Subscribers

There’s a popular phrase in the digital marketing world which I am a strong believer of:

“The money is in the list.”

This phrase has been around for years.

There’s a meaning behind that phrase.

Don’t worry, I’ll explain.

Assuming you have 2,000 people on your email list.

These people care about the content you put on your blog. That’s why they are on your email list.

Now let’s say you decide to create a product, and you charge $350 per piece and a mere 100 people ended up buying your product.

In this scenario, you’ll have made $35,000 just from that product release.

That’s the power of the list.

You can sell to that same list over and over again as long as they are interested in your offers.

That’s why the money is in the list.

You just release a new fantastic product. Tell your subscribers about it. And wait!

You’ll see those emails coming in every 10 minutes:

“You’ve just made a sale.”

Without an email list, a blog is almost worthless.

So how can you turn readers into subscribers?

First, you must publish a lot of quality contents on your blog to expect a good number of people to subscribe to your email list.

If you’re currently publishing mediocre blog posts, people know what to expect, and they would rather not fill their inbox with fluffy contents that add little value to lives.

Publish great contents on your blog and you’ll see people looking for the signup form on your web page.

The next thing is to make sure that your subscription form is visible where people can see it.

For example, when you visit the Groove blog, you don’t have to stress before you see their sign-up form.

Shopify also makes it so easy for visitors to see their sign-up form.

You should keep in mind that people won’t just subscribe to your blog for nothing.

Offer something valuable. Anything that will make them want to subscribe to your email list.

It could be a guide, an e-course or e-book.

Step 3: How To Turn Subscribers Into Loyal And Engaged Fans

I assume that you now know how to turn strangers into readers, and readers into subscribers.

Yes, we are getting there.

So how can you turn subscribers into loyal and engaged superfans?

First, I must emphasize that to turn a lot of subscribers into fans, your blog must be very active.

If you only publish one blog post in every three months, then I’m sorry this is going to be hard.

There are lots of blogs out there.

You have to be very active to keep your name in the minds of readers.

Maintaining an active blog is a must!

So what’s next?

You have to take the relationship to the next level.

You could be sending out subscriber-only emails that make subscribers feels some exclusivity.

You can also start a private Facebook group where subscribers of your blog are the only ones allowed to join and post on the group.

This gives your subscribers a private place to connect with you whenever they want to.

You can also host webinars where only your subscribers can join.

A webinar is free for all, but it also gives you an opportunity to get more subscribers as people must sign-up for your webinar and that automatically puts them on your email list.

Step 4: Sell To Your Subscribers

Selling to your subscribers is pretty easy if you’ve gone through all the above steps.

In fact, you can sell to your subscribers at the end of a webinar.

To turn subscribers into customers, you’ll need to publish some case studies on your blog.

Show how real people are changing their lives and businesses using your product or service.

Case studies show your product in use.

It assures people that they won’t be disappointed if they buy your product.

For example, Visual Website Optimizer publishes a lot of case studies on their site and here’s one of them:

Testimonials are another great strategy for increasing demand for your product.

Ramit Sethi created a separate page to show testimonials.

You’ll feel convinced after reading these testimonials from happy customers:

By following these four steps, you’ll be able to turn strangers into customers and loyal fans of your business.

Please share this article with your friends on social media.

Thanks in advance.

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