Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Dan Kennedy Information Marketing Secret: Know Learning Styles

By Neeraj Varma

Carrie Wilkerson amassed a following of over 55,000 listeners, viewers and subscribers in her first year of working online because she believes in personalization.

Carrie was interviewed by Rob Toth as part of Dan Kennedy's Info Riches course. Rob interviewed the top information marketers in a series called "Future Of Information Marketing".

She is a work at home mom raising four young children. Before she started her online business she had been running businesses from home for over ten years.

People are surprised that she has achieved so much in such a short period of time in her first venture online. Carrie says that there are the people at the top are making millions and the people at the bottom don't make much at all. The middle ground is where the big opportunity is and that's where the competition is heating up. She says "the place where marketers will be able to set themselves apart is in relationship building."

First there were pictures on web pages to help personalize. Then there was audio, now there is a big push on having video because it makes it more real. Carrie says "I still think people want more. They want more personalization." She says that people are tired of being just a number. People are tired of their marketers being "faceless and flat behind a screen".

A lot of marketers just want to wait for the customers to come to them instead of them going out to provide service to their customers. Carrie says "I don't want to be that impersonal, don't want to be unapporachable... don't want to be unreachable or set apart". "I want to be right in the trenches..." "I think it makes me more real. I think it makes me more touchable."

When Carrie used to teach high school she learned that people have different learning styles. She says that she "learned that some people are readers, some people are listeners. Some people are watchers and some people are touchers and doers." You have to connect with people at their level, the way that's most comfortable for them. "Unless you are touching all of the respective styles of people you are missing 25% of the population."

As a marketer, if you only use emails you will only get the readers of the population. Audios will only appeal to the listeners. In her strategy, Carried decided to create 50 training videos. She reports that the people who actually watch her videos have a clear sense of her as a real person. "It's a rapport builder".

When they meet her someplace they feel like they know her. If they find her on Twitter they treat her like a well-liked friend. People who have seen her on the videos feel like they have talked to her through the videos.

In trying to use all the different learning styles through her marketing Carrie says it "has been great for lowering trust barriers and creating a following". If you can lower the trust barriers in your audience they will buy from you repeatedly. People will stay on your mailing list and continue to give you invaluable feedback.

As a marketer, that's your goal. You want to have such a good relationship with people that despite the competition, your customers and contacts will want to keep in touch with you and do business with you on an ongoing basis.

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