There are so many different types of marketing tools available on the internet, but very few of them really outline concise methods of building relationships with online prospects. One hears about a myriad of methods of getting prospects and leads, but what to do when you get them.

Well, statistics have consistently shown that building relationships are most successfully done through,  personally contacting a lead or responding person. Not contacting to sell them a bill of goods, but to find out key information about their desires and needs thereby establishing a relationship that will be mutually beneficient to you both. That's why forums like this are so GREAT! I Love Them! I've personally seen some network heavy hitters reach top earning positions by using forums and chatrooms. Their success came from back end sales that  came from selling themselves to the constituents first. From that point on, it wasn't necessary to sell, only to inform!

One can say, they don't have time to personally contact everybody. It's a numbers game!  Well, that's true, but you can't possibly do all the numbers by yourself anyway. Adopting friends to help you inform is called "affiliate marketing" or in some cases a form of "viral marketing". The name of the game "getting as many people on board as fast as you can" works for isolated situations (like blasting to millions of highly targeted prospects). However, if you are marketing to under 50,000 prospects at a time, you'll most often end up with a downline composed of 90% inactive people who are for the most part unmotivated. Rather, the key is to get higher numbers of active people who will really work and teach them to get those same higher numbers of prospects who will really work and so forth. 

The easiest way to get your higher numbers of heavy hitting working people are to build relationships. Contact them with key information that could help them. Show them you are serious and ready to personally interact with them according to their needs, not just through an automated machine, but direct! Sometimes it only takes one personal call, or one personal direct mail piece, and/or 1 free gift, etc. . In essence, my experience has taught me that it's better to consistently contact prospects via some direct source, be it mail, ezines,  telephone, chat room, community room, consistently. Make friends, rather than attempt to blast messages to small numbers of people which lowers your percentage of positive results. We all know the principal of the snowball. Let's face it, "world of mouth" still outperforms television, email, and any other marketing tool available today.

When used properly, word of mouth will build your business astronomically. You would not be able to stop it if you tried.