You write an ad and bid on a keyword.
Someone sees your ad on Google.
She clicks. (And Google whacks your credit card,for 10 cents or a buck or ten bucks... whatever.)
She looks at your website for, say, 10 seconds.
"Nah, that's not what I was looking for," she thinks. Or "Too expensive, I'm going to look somewhere else." Or "Too cheap, must not be any good." Or "That's nice, maybe I'll search again next week." Or "These guys really don't have what I'm looking for" -- even though you have *exactly* what they were looking for, they just didn't spend enough time to see that.
She clicks the BACK button and she's gone. Forever.
Or... if you're lucky, she might come back again, but Google charges you AGAIN when she comes back.
(Good for Google. Not so good for you.)
You know what the problem is?
It's a little bit like planting a tomato seed in the ground with a string attached to it, and yanking the seed out if it doesn't grow up into a ripe tomato plant overnight.
That $1 click is often just a ten second visit and a one-time event, but if you can turn it into a long-term process, you earn three to five times as much.
It would be nice if marketing on the web were as simple as buying a click and hearing the cash register ring, but if that's all you plan for, you're only skimming the thin layer off the top.
So if you want to fully engage your visitors, and really get the most out of all that traffic you buy, the engine that's going to drive everything is:
Email.
Email is the only way you can develop a relationship with the gal who just visited your website 10 seconds ago. It's the only realistic way to guide her through the maze of what you do and what you sell, to the point where she trusts you more than she trusts everyone else.
And it's the only way to make sure that if she needs you six months from now, that you're still on top of her mind.
Web marketing is not an event, it's a process.
[Via Perry Marshall]
Rounding up restless shopping carts
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