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.