Many of the Internet marketing ‘gurus’ have been promoting business strategy programs recently.

What use is this when you’re just starting out?

When you’re just starting to build a business, how do you know which steps to take to get to the point where you have to start thinking strategically?

Well, first of all, what’s the difference between tactics and strategies? They’re both military terms, but they are useful in a business sense as well. Tactics are the short-term actions you’re performing with whatever resources are immediately available. Strategy is long term planning, where you define a clear goal or objective and then identify the tactics you will use to get you to that goal.

Pretty much every Internet marketer agrees on the value of one particular tactic. Even in the offline world, it is an important part of every business.

What tactic am I talking about? Building a list of prospects.

When you have a database of targeted prospects, you can promote to them over and over.

There are thousands of businesses which regard their mailing list as their most valuable asset. The late Corey Rudl claimed that his list was insured for a million dollars.

How can you quickly build a mailing list?

Use a squeeze page.

A squeeze page (or ‘name squeeze page’) is a web page where your visitor is presented with only two options – sign up, or leave.

Your visitor is usually given something of value in exchange for their name and email address.

Squeeze pages can be long or short. Many marketers are successful with squeeze pages where the whole page appears ‘above the fold’, so that visitors don’t have to scroll down.

Others create squeeze pages in the form of long copy sales letters, with testimonials, graphics, videos and more.

Your squeeze page is connected to an autoresponder service, which manages the technical aspects of the list – unsubscribes, opt-ins, spam complaints and so on. With a decent autoresponder service, you can decide exactly how often to email your list – every day, every week, once a quarter or whatever. You can send a broadcast message to your list, or to multiple lists, at any time.

You can also have your prospects automatically switched to a ‘customers’ list when they buy something from you.

Once they’re on your list, you can offer a free physical product, such as a DVD or CD, or a printed report or newsletter, for which you’ll need your prospects to give you their physical address. That way, you can build your own targeted list of offline snail-mail prospects.

Once you have created a mailing list of targeted prospects, you can start thinking about long-term strategies rather than immediate tactics.

You should be using email to market to your customers and prospective customers. But how do you design a marketing plan that will lead to sales? And how often should you send emails out?

One answer is to create a business newsletter which you send out regularly. Some companies send out a newsletter once a month, while others choose to do it weekly. You may decide that once every three months is enough. It depends on the type of business you have, the amount of time and effort you can put in and the content you’ll be using.

One of the best ways to get your customers involved in your newsletter is by asking them what they’re looking for. You should always ask for feedback in the form of suggestions, comments and questions. Use some of this feedback in every issue. If possible, use responses about minor problems with your products, and address these concerns in the newsletter. This shows that you care about your customers and about their satisfaction. This is also a great way for your business to find out what works and what doesn’t.

Your newsletter can show different aspects of the company, as well as new products, promotions, upcoming events and sales. Make sure that the newsletter doesn’t read like a sales letter. It should aim to inform – write articles that will appeal to your target audience. You want your readers to look forward to future issues.

You can also offer tips – safety tips, unusual uses for your products and so on. Apart from promoting your business, these will help keep your readers interested. Each newsletter could contain a discount offer or a promotion – just make sure that you specify an expiry date. That will help motivate customers to buy now rather than later.

Email marketing is most effective when you build a relationship with your customer. A newsletter is a great way to do this. Newsletters are non-threatening, and they allow you to email information to your customers on a regular schedule.

A couple of years ago, it was easy to get a single web page – like a squeeze page – indexed by Google. These days, Google is looking for something more substantial – something that will improve their visitor’s experience.

Google’s perfectly OK with squeeze pages – provided that they are backed up by great content. This means, at the very least, a privacy policy, perhaps a FAQ and maybe some articles.

Content is great, of course. If you can get Google to index it, it’s even better. What happens is that people find your content in a Google search, and get taken to your website. Once they’re there, they might read the article, then click on a link to your squeeze page. Or they might ’sidetrack’ – that is, get to your ‘home page’ by editing the url . For instance, this post appears in the URL field as http://squeezepagedossier.com/blog/squeeze-pages-and-sidetracking. If I was curious, I might edit the URL to get just http://squeezepagedossier.com and see where it takes me. There may not be many people with the patience to do this, but those who do get to your squeeze page without feeling “sold” – and that makes them more likely to sign up for your offer. They feel that they got to your page against all odds.

How do you make use of this phenomenon? Well, what I’ve done is I’ve added a blog to the site, which I’ll hopefully fill up with useful posts. I’ll make every effort to get the blog indexed by Google as quickly as possible (I’ll report back on that soon). I’m hoping that people will read a blog post or two and find their way to my squeeze page, either by clicking on a link or by sidetracking.

The great thing about using a blog for this purpose is that blogs draw traffic naturally. Google and the other search engines love them, especially if the content is updated regularly. With any luck, I can build a relationship with a blog reader by providing great information. That pre-disposes my readers to like me, and by extension to be interested in my offer.