Carrie Wilkerson amassed a following of over 55,000 listeners, viewers and subscribers in her first year of working online because she believes in personalization.



As part of Dan Kennedy's Info Riches course, Rob Toth interviewed the top information marketers in the world. Carrie Wilkerson was one of them. The series of interviews is called "Future Of Information Marketing."

Carrie had been running businesses as a work at home mom for ten years while raising four children. Then she discovered online information marketing.

Carrie has achieved a remarkable level of success in a very short period of time. It is especially surprising for someone working part time in her very first online business. Carrie says people are making millions at the top while at the bottom, where most people are, people aren't making much at all. There is a lot of opportunity in the middle ground. The competition is heating up. People will need to build relationships to set themselves apart.

First there were pictures on web pages to help personalize. Then there was audio, now there is a big push on having video because it makes it more real. Carrie says "I still think people want more. They want more personalization." She says that people are tired of being just a number. People are tired of their marketers being "faceless and flat behind a screen".

The idea that marketers can wait for people to come to them instead of them going out to serve their customers is outdated. Carrie says "I don't want to be that impersonal, don't want to be unapporachable... don't want to be unreachable or set apart". "I want to be right in the trenches..." "I think it makes me more real. I think it makes me more touchable."

When Carrie was a high school teacher she figured out that different people have different ways of learning things. She says that she "learned that some people are readers, some people are listeners. Some people are watchers and some people are touchers and doers." It's important to connect with people in the way that works for them. "Unless you are touching all of the respective styles of people you are missing 25% of the population."

As a marketer, if you only use emails you will only get the readers of the population. Audios will only appeal to the listeners. In her strategy, Carried decided to create 50 training videos. She reports that the people who actually watch her videos have a clear sense of her as a real person. "It's a rapport builder".

When Carried runs into someone who has watched her videos she says they feel like they know her personally. If one of her viewers runs into her on Twitter they treat her like a friend. It's a real, personal connection for people who have seen her on the videos.

Trying to touch the learning styles of people through the various marketing media that she uses "has been great for lowering trust barriers and creating a following". Once the trust barriers have been lowered people will buy from you over and over again, they will stay on your mailing list and continue to interact with you.

As a marketer, that's your goal. You want to have such a good relationship with people that despite the competition, your customers and contacts will want to keep in touch with you and do business with you on an ongoing basis.