By Barry Goss

Today, I’m going to share with you how CAUSE MARKETING comes into play via social media.

First, it’s important to NOTE that my definition and description of ’cause marketing’ isn’t going to be the same as the standard, dry academic one you may be aware of:

“The type of marketing involving the cooperative efforts of a for profit business and a non-profit organization for mutual benefit.”

Nope… instead, what I’m talking about here is all about your REASON for communicating with one of your lists — your open statement of “here’s why this newsletter (or, blog or list you’re asking people to join) exists.”

I can’t begin to tell you how many people online confuse ‘pitch marketing’ with ‘endorsement teaching’ (hell, sometimes I think some folks are trying to be the Billy Mays of Email).

Yeah, sure, I get it — I just made up the phrases above; yet, when you look at how the two words in ‘quotes’ go together, you can begin to see the word play and WHY your readers either run to OPEN your email or instantly CLOSE it.

When I go to look at WHAT some affiliates have been saying to their readers in the recent past, and HOW they’ve been saying it, the commonalities between 4% to 5% sales conversions (which several affiliates achieved) and 1% to 2% conversions (which several affiliates achieved) are pretty clear.

The higher conversions come from lists where the writer, publisher, or marketer spends the majority of their time TEACHING WHAT THEY KNOW about a very narrow and niche-specific topic.

Let me ask you something:

If you create a landing page, or have an opt-in form on a blog, where the verbiage is all about how you’re going to teach traffic techniques, yet you pitch MORE THAN you teach, or you rarely give away your traffic generation knowledge, what d’ya think your subscribers are eventually going to do?

Uhmmm, let’s see: possibly wonder about your intentions, what your agenda is, and just who the hell you are?

Or, if you’re constantly pitching stuff that’s not really related to traffic-generation, what could be the ultimate backlash from the reader?

Let their fingers do the walking to the DELETE key?

Yup, probably.

Here’s the rub about all this:

I constantly see more and more UNFOCUSED pitches and canned endorsements about others’ products (including ours) — products that don’t sync up, resonate, or jive with the marketer’s list.

Whether it’s the need to be seen as one of the cool people who jumped on board a buzz-filled dated launch, or whether it’s just about fast cash, in the long run the shotgun strategy is going to do more harm to your business (hopefully that’s how you look at cultivating and nurturing a list of readers).

I do believe Dave Vallieres said it well when he said:

“A lot of online email newsletters are well nothing but sales machines — full of hype — or pure fiction. Here’s a fact: Of the 372 IM email newsletters I subscribe to, only 12 provide any kind of factual, un-biased advice or news about Internet marketing. I’m not making a judgment here, but those are the facts.”

And, of course, like Dave, I’m NOT slapping the verbal ruler at any M4 affiliate(s) in particular.

What I am saying, however, is this:

It doesn’t matter how spectacular, mediocre, or even bad a publisher’s sales page is (er, forget that — I know we need to present somebody with a proper offer and have compelling reasons to look at that offer); if you’re not open and clear with your list about what they should (and, will) expect from you, it’s all a moot point.

If you’ve got a GENERAL internet marketing list and you’ve been explicit somewhere along the reader’s opt-in path about you being their advocate, their researcher, their investigator for QUALITY products… then, FIRE AWAY and strictly present them with offers.

Yet, do it with YOU behind the pitch. There’s a reason, by the way, I mentioned Billy Mays above.

He wasn’t the most-liked, most respected pitchman on T.V. just by chance.

He became famous and fabulously rich for one reason ONLY:

As his partner, Anthony “Sully” Sullivan, said on the Discovery Channel’s tribute to Billy:

“He was the most authentic guy I know, only pitching products that he had a passion for.

Everybody could see and feel how genuine he is on camera. It’s like he came alive in your living room.”

In other words, like Billy, if you are gonna ‘pitch’ (sell your brains out), do it for all the RIGHT reasons — to serve your subscribers and customers by finding informational products that can make their life better, easier, happier, healthier, and more prosperous!

Now, here’s an excellent blog article about how someone with 2000 Twitter followers can be more powerful than a person with 25,000.

The article will give you two specific examples of how cause marketing (my version) endears YOU, your specific interest, hobby, or fascination, with readers who actually DO want to cheer you on and LOOK at you as their expert and advocate.

Yours truly,

Barry Goss