Alice

Many marketing specialists often say that it?s important to have a list, which is a database of interested, like-minded and relevant contacts who would like to know more about you and your business.

This list has a variety of uses, of which the most well-known is for a newsletter. After all, you should be maintaining regular contact with your present and prospective customers, either to educate them about what your business does, or to promote new projects, services or activities.

For appropriate use of this list, it is therefore necessary to understand your customers. Consider what are their problems, what do they need or want at this moment in time? Then write about the solutions you can offer, making sure they are relevant to your customers’ problems. What can you provide to make their lives easier? What would be your customers? immediate question and can you provide the answer?

Adapt your business or your product/service to make it unique. What are you offering that your competitors are not? Why should your customers want to do business with you? Relate this with how these unique solutions can solve your customers’ problems, and don’t forget to include some value-added extras.

Remember to promote the benefits for your customer, not the features. If you relate your marketing to your business, then you are probably listing your features. These are not interesting to your customers, as they only care about ‘what’s in it for them’. Turn these features into benefits by putting them into your customers’ point of view, adapting them so they refer to what the customers can get if they buy your product or service.

Now you will have an improved mindset to appropriately use your list. This is better than churning out something every few months or so with no focus or sense of priority. Your list could educate your customers of the full facts of your company, direct them to specific pages on your website or blog, provide informative articles to help your customers or publicise a new project or event you have created for them. Use your list to make money, rather than something else to clutter up an in-box.

My next post will be about how to create a list, so keep visiting! If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to interact; they are most welcome.