Week 10 – that’s right, we’re 10 weeks into the Big IDEA!

How exciting that we’re entering the ¾ mark - Engaging our Community!

Psssss - Don’t take the ¾ thing too seriously – there’s still loads for us to learn, it just helps to know where we are in the process 🙂

To me, this is where the process becomes truly fun.  Don’t get me wrong – I enjoy defining my Passions, exploring whether they can be Profitable Niches, and Defining my Communities… but there is something about the Engagement process, the building of relationships that I truly thrive on!

To recap our definition for E – it is Engaging our Community - the building of relationships with them in order to eventually Advise them.

"Why, Greg, would I ever want to build relationships with people I don't even know online?" I'm glad you asked! My hope would be that you simply care enough about other people that you want to help them. The business motivation is that the building of relationships creates an environment where people respect your opinion, trust your judgment, and believe that what you have to offer them is of value.

Now, I'm not talking about building a relationship where you're inviting people to your home every weekend, or having them out to tea or coffee twice a week. I'm talking about a relationship that we probably already have dozens of – if have a job, or if you're the member of a church, a club or other organization, you likely encounter people occasionally that you know, you've had some interaction with, and perhaps other friends of yours have known them as well. If this person that you know casually is an auto mechanic, for example, your interactions with him combined with what your friends have shared about him would influence your decision about whether or not to have your car repaired by this person. If your combined experience, gained through these relationships is a good one, a positive one, most likely you will use this person to repair your car. If, however, the combined experience of your relationship community has been negative for the most part, you probably won't be taking your car to his repair shop.

How about experiences with appliances? More than likely, if you're in the market for a new washing machine or refrigerator, you'll be checking with your friends about which models are the most reliable and have the most attractive features.

Once you've done your research, you will likely go to a store, maybe even to the same salesperson that you have used before and had a positive experience with in the past. You'll do this because you have a relationship with this business and/or a relationship with the salesperson.

You see what I'm driving at, right? We prefer to do business with people and places and businesses that we have a relationship with. That's why we return to our favorite restaurant, our favorite movie theater, a particular car dealership. We make decisions about online purchases in the same way – where we buy books, music, software and other items is influenced heavily by the recommendations of our friends and our experience with these websites.

Our prior experiences and relationships influence our buying decisions every day. It's the same for your customers – they are more willing to buy from someone that they have a relationship with than someone they do not. This is precisely why you need to be building relationships with the people in your community.

When you are helping your community by giving them something of value, you are building that relationship. By Engaging your community, the people who are your future customers, you are building relationships. Your community has needs. Filling that need with information now will create in them a greater willingness to purchase from you in the future.

In fact, marketing statistics tell us that you typically have to have 5 or more interactions with a person before they become a customer.  You’ll have to send 5 or more emails, or deliver some form of value to them at least 5 times before they will even consider buying from you.

To help this point hit home, I think Zig Ziglar says it best. "You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.”

This week is running along, but I cannot impress upon you how important it is to establish these relationships with your customers, your community. Hopefully you understand now why we need to Engage our community, and why we need to do that repeatedly before we attempt to sell them something. While we might make a few pennies in the short term, what we're after is a long term customer, a customer who buys our products over and over again because they have a relationship with us.

Think about how the relationships in your life influence your buying decisions, and consider how advice or suggestions you have made to others have influence their buying decisions. Try to remember specific instances where either someone's advice influenced you or your advice influenced someone else. These memories will serve you well as we move forward to Engage our community online.

Please send me an e-mail or leave a comment below if I can help you with anything! I really appreciate the questions I've been receiving these last few weeks, and it helps me to include additional information that will be helpful to you in the future.

Until next time...

Greg