Part 4 - Marketing Through Newsgroups

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Newsgroups can be very profitable because they are demographically targeted, easy to access, and read by millions of users each day (the word "newsgroups" is slang for the "Usenet groups". I refer to everything in this part as newsgroups, but technically, they are really known as Usenet groups.).

But be sure you realize that newsgroups users are very different for the average web surfer. They have been known in the past to be long time internet users, information junkies, and therefore good to sell to!

In my opinion, newsgroups are an easy way to get a large amount of sales instantaneously (compared with such things as search engine promotions where you have to wait weeks before you're listed).

I will discuss in this section "polite" ways to use newsgroups, "tricky" ways to use newsgroups, and some very "controversial" ways of using newsgroups.

I strongly suggest that you monitor some newsgroups and experience the type of posts there before you post something yourself. You will be able to see what type of responses people are generally giving.

Another great advantage of newsgroups is that you will find like minded people, a great resource for information gathering to create products, or question you need answers for.

Also, make sure you keep posts relevant to the subject of the newsgroups. There is nothing that will get you into hot water quicker than posting to newsgroups that have no interest in what you are writing about.

When posting, use short sentences and short paragraphs, it keeps the reader focused and makes the reading interesting.

There are a few ways to use newsgroups to your advantage. When its comes right down to it; you are looking for any legitimate reason that will give you an opportunity to post in order to get your message out there.

There is a general FAQ for all newsgroups available at news.announce.newusers

As easy way to find newsgroups to go to www.groups.google.com or www.teranews.com on teranews you will need to download a newsreader, go to section of the web site called client newsreader and download one of these. Newsparrott is free.

Seven Ways to Promote on Newsgroups!

1.            Posting regularly to a few newsgroups you monitor.

By staying active in a few newsgroups and answering people's questions, you not only get a chance to advertise your products, but you may get recognized as an expert in the field as well. (It goes without saying, you can only do this on subjects you know about, or do research into). This gives you credibility and will bring you loyal customers and a strong following if you have the patience and consistency to post on a regular basis.

This method can generate a lot of sales. If you are not willing to commit a lot of time on a consistent basis to become known in the groups, I suggest you monitor the groups, but do not post to often.

2.            Posting Informative Articles.

Article posting is one of my personal favourites and one of the fastest ways to get instant sales from newsgroups. This is when you write an informative article that has something to do with the product you are selling. The article you post must give valuable educational info for you to get any respect or credibility.

For example, if you were selling a book on gardening, you could write an article called "What fertilizer will grow your plants twice the size in half the time?" This article would not be hype, but would include statistical info on what is in other fertilizers, what makes them work, and the pros and cons of different types.

The idea of an informative article is a simple process of educating your customers about your products. This is extremely effective because most of your competition will not do this. People believe and trust companies that make an effort to help and educate them, not just "pitch" something at them. It is so simple that any new business can use it to step their profits up to an extremely high level.

Ensure that at the end of the article, the potential customer knows how to get hold of your products. You can direct them straight to your web site. Or better still use an auto responder to give them your sales message.

3.            Posting Articles AND Capturing Email Addresses of Prospective Customers.

If you write a long article that is more than 10-12 pages long, you could have an entire sales letter at the end. (If you are thinking I can not write an article, you can just use part of your eBook you are selling, or look for articles in newspapers, magazines, in ezines and adapt them to your product). In other words, the more info you give (i.e. the longer your article is) the bolder you can be towards marketing your products at the end of the article.

For my diet book, I use half a chapter as the article give-away. This article is over 20 pages long so I put a lengthy sales letter at the end of it that flowed right from the article. People don't even know they were reading a sales letter until they were near the end because it flows so nicely from the article.

The most profitable way of using articles in newsgroups is that you don't actually post the article direct into the newsgroup. You just post an announcement on how to get the free article via auto responder. (So you can capture their email address to follow up on later).

4.            Site Update Postings.

When you add new products to your web site, you can announce it in the newsgroup related to that subject.

Just post a short note in newsgroups related to your product and invite them to visit your site, or auto responder.

5.            Posting Issues of Your Newsletter.

Another method to get subscribers to a newsletter if you wish to do one is to post a part of your newsletter to related newsgroups. I don't do a newsletter, to much like hard work to me, but some people like to do them and they are usually good money makers. But one way to hook people into your database is to do a free newsletter.

6.            Post a Request Asking For Feedback on Your Web Site.

This is another method for giving you an excuse to promote yourself without it being considered spamming or blatant advertising. But to make it work you need to offer something for free for them to download to make it work.

Make a post asking newsgroup readers to visit your site and give you feedback on it. You want to come across as a successful web site looking for help in how to improve even more.

7.            Answer Questions and Use Your SIG File.

If you go to a newsgroup and see question being asked on a subject that could relate to one of your products. You could post an answer to the question with a free article or report. Which could be part of one of your ebooks?

Note that the purpose of newsgroup marketing is to use short "teaser" ads or posts and then "bounce" that person to your auto responder or web site. You are only at this point attempting to "hook" the person's attention, not to sell them anything directly from the newsgroup.

How Do You Find Relevant Newsgroups For a Marketplace You May Be Interested In Marketing To?

Use the find feature found on most newsreaders to find the newsgroups you are interested in.

To find more details about newsreaders see the teranews web site below. You should already have them in your system; you just didn V know you had them.

Newsgroups comprise of people with shared interests, such as sports, hobbies and professions, running into many thousands of people, who can be accessed quickly and at very low cost. The closest thing to the direct marketer's dream!

Marketing to newsgroups means looking for groups of people with shared interest and, most importantly, whose needs can be filled with one of your products that you will create by spending some time visiting newsgroups to look for topics and ideas for creating information products. It's called niche marketing and represents perhaps the very best way to ensure every single penny of your advertising budget and every ounce of your energy, is focused one hundred percent on people who are almost certain buyers for your products. You should already be realising what a great opportunity this represents for target marketing (probably the surest way to success in any business).

The millions using the Newsgroups have specific interests, wants and needs; you can simply decide which groups interest you the most and fit an information product to fulfil those interests, needs and wants. Do this and BOOM. It will be like having a cash dispenser right in your own home ready to do business 24 hours a day.

For an easy way to find newsgroups go to www.teranews.com or www.usenet.com or www.groups.google.com

Why marketing through newsgroups is Niche Marketing of the Finest Quality!

Imagine, for example, I'm selling a copywriting report, specialising in creating mail shots and catalogues for mail order and direct marketing companies.

I could advertise in a writer's news-stand magazine, hoping the odd customer might buy the publication in the hope of finding someone to create his next mailing. Or I could advertise in the Mirror, Express or Mail hoping for much the same lucky encounter. But how many prospective customers might I attract using this scattergun approach? Not Many!

How much better then to advertise in a publication targeted at advertising executives. Yes I am now going to a targeted market, but at what cost? Many hundreds of pounds that may only last a few days before it in most paper bins.

Or how about making contact with thousands of regular subscribers to newsgroups specialising in these very same subjects? How about doing all this almost for free (just the costs of staying online long enough to place my adverts, announcements, advice and free articles!) How about the chance to keep my successful promotions going day after day, while binning those that don't work, and how about the amazing ability to change my ads, when I want to change them, place them when it suits me best, do anything I want, in fact- within reason- without paying some advertising person a large fee. How about doing it all online, in minutes, watching my ads appear within hours, rather than days, weeks or even months as is typical with papers or magazines. How about receiving orders within hours, not next week or next month but today!

Yes, this sounds much better!

It is very important that you understand this next point before you go flying off to start placing ads everywhere. You have to be bit of a James Bond, to be able to slip in and out with out people really knowing what you're up to. Promoting to newsgroups has to be discreet, almost unnoticeable. Break this unwritten rule and wait for your email box to be full of complaints and insults etc.

Most newsgroups do not allow the posting of blatant adverts. So how do you place ads or get responses to promote your products in newsgroups? You do it by posting free articles, announcements, offering a free service, asking for help, by using email extraction software to remove their addresses etc.

But once you have got people responding to your free article offer you can then add on a sales letter to the free article to sell more products. You are using bait to hook them.

The skilful marketer looks for subtle, unobtrusive ways to promote on the newsgroups using the soft sell approach.

So you decide you want to sell health related information products. You do a search on health on say DejaNews. Then look at some of the newsgroups; look to see the topics that people are discussing. Then use my techniques to put a product together, or go to one of the web sites listed later in this book to find a ready made product.

Tens of thousands of newsgroups exist with more appearing daily, most of which can be accessed through an Internet search-find facility such as Yahoo or WebCrawler or by keying into an appropriate section reserved for newsgroups, depending on how your service provider works. Or you can look for other potential marketing areas by using something like WebCrawler. For example, if I wanted to market an information product about UFO's to keen Ufologists, I would type 'UFO' and ask WebCrawler to 'Search'. In seconds I'd have lots of information about Unidentified Flying Objects; including specialist groups I can join to market my book.

In feet Newsgroups are now so diverse that it is almost impossible to keep up with ideas for potential market places.

The area of the Net where you'll find the greatest range of newsgroups is called USENET. UseNet is at present a text only system where your message can be posted and seen by hundreds of thousands of people. Finding your way around Newsgroups is very easy as they have been grouped and sub-grouped for you. For example, a full Newsgroups address might look something like this: rec.sport.soccer Obviously if you want to go to a Newsgroup relating to soccer you will find it in the main Newsgroup headed; recreational (rec) in the Sports section (rec. sports).

Additionally, search engines often reveal newsletters for your specialist group and numerous sources of low cost, even free advertising. Niche marketing in the time it takes to type a few words on your keyboard.

If you can't find exactly what you want by independent means, key in the following search engine requests;

Liszt; this organiser has a magnificent database of tens of thousands of newsgroups for most topics and subjects known to man.

DejaNews; using this engine you list subject topics and you will receive a listing of all known groups for that particular topic. www.reference.com as well for broad search.

Usenet Info Centre Launch Pad; again, key in the subject matter and wait for a selection of known newsgroups participating in the same or closely related topics.

A press release to newsgroups is a good and inexpensive way to promote your products. Your message is seen without members thinking their group has been violated. The wording must be right for your promotion to succeed. Get it wrong and your e-mail box will be full of flames. Look for other press releases in newsgroups to see how other people are doing it. As with any part of this business look for other successful people doing it and copy them. That is all I do.

Newsgroups can be approached in a subtle manner, without it even appearing you are out to advertise your products. Using this approach you search other members entries, look for ways to help advice fellow members and respond with messages to all members of the group in the hope that they will respond to you, giving you an email address and virtually carte blanche approval to add their names to your future promotions.

Imagine, for example, you put together an e-book on dog training. What better place to look for sales than a forum of people tuned into the Internet for the sole purpose of discussing their shared interest in dogs! For example you could offer a free copy of your report. Wait for a few days then email all your responses with a sales letter, but forget about the free bit just sell it to them. Most people will have forgotten about the free bit after a few days. Then mail these people once a week with the same offer until it goes cold, usually about one month. But then you can go back to the newsgroup and do it again because new people log on to these sites every day.

To sell through newsgroups is a simple process. Firstly you study them to spot potential product ideas. When you then have your product, and you have written a sales letter, you then place adverts or offer people free information and invite them to down load your information, which will be your sales letter or marketing piece via an auto responder. When you are ready to start placing adverts or notices, as I like to call them, send me an email and I will have a look at what you are doing, and show you the best way to place your advert and make sure it is written in a way to get the most response.

Before entering newsgroups for the first time, it's a good idea to go to the area marked FAQ - this stands for Frequently Asked Questions. Read them, they will probably answer many of the questions that are at the back of your mind. But the real value of FAQ's is that it will give you instant feedback about the people using those particular Newsgroups.

By studying this area and postings from other users, it will give you a real edge in marketing. It takes targeting to a new level altogether, and that is very exciting.

With normal target marketing we know the type of customer we are approaching. We know his/her interests, but with a little patience and time spent studying the various Newsgroups we can now get a clearer picture of our potential customer's likes and dislikes, wants, needs and fears. From that we can structure the perfect copy, be it an advertisement, article or report. In other words, you'll know just what to say to push the right buttons. This is really what I'd call target marketing working smart.