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Guest post by: Steve Chittenden Become an Author

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One of the best secrets of marketing isn't really a secret at all, it's just a proven strategy that doesn't get used nearly enough. It is the strategy of warming up your customers before they buy. It is also called "pre-selling" which is the term I will use as I lay out some ideas on how to use it effectively.

To keep things short, I will focus on pre-selling online, but the principles certainly apply to offline, traditional marketing too. Many web site owners use things like search engine optimization (SEO) and pay per click (PPC) to drive traffic to their sites. They hope that this traffic will result in sales, and quite often, it results in disappointment.

One reason for the dismal results is when the order of things gets reversed from what it should be, and that seems to be a widespread error. Think about the way people generally use search engines. Although it is true that people use search engines when they are at the buying stage, it is more likely they are researching or seeking information.

This is where pre-selling becomes so important. In fact, you may find yourself laughing when competitors try to get one over on you using SEO and PPC backwards, while your traffic arrives already pre-sold. SEO and PPC both have value, and both work, but only when the customer is ready to buy.

Ways to pre-sell are limited only by your imagination. The most important thing is to make sure you have a pre-selling strategy that works for your situation and business model. Pre-sold traffic to a web site is much more powerful than "targeted traffic" so let's cover a few principles for creating pre-sold traffic.

We'll start with pre-selling you can do yourself through your marketing efforts.

An effective strategy, especially if you are in a service business, is to establish yourself as an expert. To do this, you would either find an established information source, or create your own if an appropriate one does not exist. Keep in mind that people use the Internet to research and get information, so you are simply providing information with this strategy. When you provide good, reliable information, you build trust; and trust leads to sales.

To illustrate this strategy, I will use a plumber as an example. If the community this plumber serves has a consumer advocate organization that is well known and trusted, the plumber in this example could help that organization by contributing valuable information, and build consumer confidence in his services as a plumbing expert. Inviting people to "Ask the Plumber" about their questions adds even more value.

It's very important to not be self promotional using this strategy. Doing so is not only unnecessary, it would be counter productive. Yes, you want to let everyone know who you are so they can contact you, but you should avoid sales talk. In my example, the consumer advocate organization would not be interested in featuring a self promotional plumber, but they would be interested in useful information that truly benefits their readers. Visitors to this plumber's site would already be pre-sold after reviewing helpful information on the consumer advocate site.

You can also pre-sell by utilizing a successful informational site.

With all the informational sites available, you may be able to find one which already pre-sells your product or service. Let's go back to our plumber since he makes a great illustration for this strategy too. Suppose that visitors to a certain web site were seeking ways to reduce their energy costs. Our plumber friend then notices that the advertisers are electricians and no one is addressing the plumbing solutions.

By featuring plumbing products and services that cut energy costs, the plumber would be providing more solutions that visitors are looking for. Any traffic coming to his site would now arrive pre-sold. The owners of the informational site are further meeting their goals too, so a successful, mutually beneficial arrangement has been created.

Because people use search engines to seek information, good informational sites are very powerful, and they generate a lot of traffic. When you find sites with pages that pre-sell the product or service you are providing, you may be able to "affiliate" with these sites and discover the real secret to successful Internet marketing.

You could even create your own pre-selling site.

I mentioned above that if an appropriate information source does not exists, you may be able to create one. All the great ideas for web sites came from needs that were not being met, and many opportunities still exist. You may have an opportunity that's wide open, and the only reason it hasn't been discovered yet is because everyone in your industry is so focused on selling that no one has noticed the pre-selling opportunity.

What problem can you solve? What information would people look for to solve that problem? Once you discover an opportunity you can seize, it will most likely help other businesses, and you can profit from that too.

Suppose our plumber friend discovered that a lot of people were searching for information on solar water heaters and no one was providing it (this is just a random example). He could answer all their questions with an information site. He could develop a network of plumbers who install solar water heaters and get advertising fees. He could earn income from companies that manufacture the systems using affiliate programs and drive pre-sold traffic to their sites.

Although this has been a brief overview of how pre-selling works, I hope it was enough to inspire you to put more conscious effort into pre-selling strategies. Many site owners seek ways to drive more traffic to their web sites. If your efforts focus on pre-selling those visitors first, your sales could even exceed sites with much higher traffic volumes.

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