As a marketer, you should be focused on one and only one thing. Not your company, not your product, but on filling your customer's needs. You have to start out with a clear perception of who your target customer is (the more details you know, the better); what his or her needs are, and how your product or service fills that need better than any other.

99% of us still feel like voices crying in the wilderness. Why isn't anyone listening to you? Because first you need to learn how to listen to others.

There is a listening/learning process that you go through; once you understand that, the doors start opening, and the ears start listening.

Here is what I've learned about listening patterns. We are all life-long learners, gurus and newbies alike. It's a level playing field, or, as I like to picture as I'm standing before a crowded room full of affiliate marketers, ready to make a speech, we're all naked under our clothes. We listen to people that we admire, and then try to make their wisdom our own. How do they gain our admiration? They ask for our questions, our feedback, our own stories, and use the information to determine how we feel. They understand us. They convey this understanding TO us.

They are then able to step into our perspectives and serve us better. That is how great advertising copy is born. But there is another use for this dialog.

I tried this in an online conference marketing seminar recently. There were about 50 people in the room, some of them well-known marketing "experts", others, by their questions, were obviously beginners. I had recently begun a new marketing campaign and so far I had no sales/feedback and few visitors. I began the conversation with two open-ended questions, ones that I hoped would generate ideas, applause, medals of honor, and so on. :-)

The questions I asked were, "I've recently begun an ad campaign for an ebook I've written, using a free report as promotion. I've advertised my salespage in forums and safelists, and I've started advertising in ezines. I haven't been getting much response yet, is there another way that any of you have tried to promote this sort of thing? What do you think would happen if I changed the headline of my salespage to read " xxxx"?

The first thing that happened was, the moderator asked me to show everyone the url of the salespage. So right off the hop, I got 50 or so visitors to my salespage. Then I got various comments, ranging from "excellent page!", "great strategy!" to a whole list of possible changes. I then got a list of other ways to promote my ebook and free report.

I have to admit, most of these ideas were not new to me, but even one new idea is greatly appreciated. I learned a lot about how valuable my product is and how I could add even more value to it. Also, all those people visited my page, some of them bookmarked it (because my stats show that they have returned), and I got three sales that very night.

Most importantly, I gained respect from every person in that room because I listened to them.

I've taken this lesson and now apply it to everything I do. It's hard to get feedback from people, but there's nothing like actively listening to build a relationship, which builds trust, which then builds communication and, ultimately, sales. Used in forums, conference rooms, phone calls and face to face communication, active listening goes one step beyond simply hearing, and engages the attention of the other person.