Author Archive | Lawrence

First the disclaimer – your results will vary. Maybe greatly. I don’t have a clue. But what I’m about to share with you is definitely working for at least one individual, and he’s doing it simultaneously in 3 different niches, too.

This fellow (we’ll call him Joe) is a techie guy. He’s not a writer, he doesn’t consider himself to be a marketer, but he has latched onto a method that allows him to make money on autopilot, once he has his system set up.

Here’s how it works:

He chooses a niche. So far, he’s in weight loss, make money online and personal development. Actually, his niches are a little more targeted than that, but you get the idea. I have to keep some of this general so as to not step on his financial toes.

Once he’s chosen a niche, he goes digging for evergreen affiliate products that are a good fit. You can use products from any place you please, as long as those products are likely to be around for at least a few months or longer.

Depending on the niche, he chooses either 13 products or 26 products. Personally, I like 26 products, but it’s up to you.

Next, he hires someone to write emails for him – an entire year’s worth – to put in his autoresponder. Each week he promotes one of the products. Once he’s rotated through the list of products, he starts over with the first one again.

He’s sending out 3 emails each week, but you could do as many as you like. Of course, the more emails you have sent out, the more you’ll need to have written.

Or… if you’re good at writing, you can write your own emails. Yes, it takes time, but writing them in your own voice can be truly beneficial. That way if you decide to promote additional products to your list – for example, products that are only available for a short time – the emails will all be written in the same style.

Here’s what I would recommend: Either send out 5 or 7 emails a week via autoresponder and send nothing else to your list. This way you are truly hands off.

The emails should be a good mixture of content, sales, quotes, stories, observations, case studies and anything else that will interest your list.

Include a buy link in every email, even if it’s just in the P.S.

Once you have your emails ready to go in your autoresponder, you’ll need a big, fat, juicy lead magnet to attract tons of subscribers. For this, Joe likes to buy a course, have the entire thing rewritten and presented in an entirely new way (no plagiarism!) and give that away as his lead magnet.

His freebie is wonderful looking and so valuable, he gets over a 70% opt-in rate in 2 out of 3 of his niches. You’ll find your opt-in rates tend to be higher when you’re NOT in the internet marketing niche – hint hint.

Once you’ve got your squeeze page set up with your juicy lead magnet, it’s time to build your list. You can buy clicks from Facebook or where ever you like, but Joe buys all of his clicks from solo ads. Yes, it does take more digging to find solo ads outside of the online marketing niche, but they are available and totally worth it.

Joe spends less about $1,000 a month on solo ads, and he clears roughly $2,850 after expenses. This number is rising as more subscribers come onto his list.

Naturally, you can grow your list as fast or slow as you like, depending on how much money you’re willing to invest. But if you’re clearing $2.85 after expenses for each dollar you spend, wouldn’t you be sending a lot of traffic to your squeeze page? I would.

Notes:

1: You don’t have to write ALL of your emails ahead of time. If you stay one week ahead of your very first subscriber, you can write them throughout the year.

This way you can get started on list building sooner, and you’ll have plenty of incentive to keep writing those emails.

2: I’m using 1 year as an example because that’s how Joe set up his autoresponders, but there is no reason why you can’t continue to send out more emails beyond a year.

You can either write new emails promoting new products, or reuse your old emails. That’s right – send out the same year long sequence twice. Almost no one will ever notice.

I mean, think about it… do you remember the emails you got a YEAR ago? Not likely. You probably don’t even remember some of the products you bought a year ago.

3: There is some maintenance involved. You’ve got to check your links from time to time to make sure they still work. And of course, you’ve got to buy the solo ads or advertising.

4: This takes time to become profitable. You’ll be out of pocket for a bit. It took Joe several weeks to get into profit, but he did outsource his emails. If you write your own, it probably won’t take as long.

5: You could do this in as many niches as you like, as long as there are affiliate products to promote for that niche.

6: You can promote additional products to your lists. For example, if your friend Sue is doing a big launch of her new product that will only be available to two weeks, you might promote it to your list. Send those emails on the days when the autoresponder isn’t sending, or pause the autoresponder during this period of time.

7: Set your autoresponder to send out the emails a second time each day to those who didn’t open the first email. This little step can as much as double your income.

After all, not everyone will see your email the first time you send it out, so why not give them a second chance?

While there is nothing earth shattering or revolutionary about this method, it can work regardless of whether or not you’re a ‘marketer.’

Remember, Joe is a technical kind of guy. He doesn’t know much about marketing and doesn’t really want to learn marketing, either. He simply wanted some extra income, and that’s exactly what he’s got.

By outsourcing the writing to professionals if it’s not your cup of tea, you can still enjoy the profits of email marketing, and do it in a way that takes almost no time once you have it set up and running.

Time and time again I see sales copy with one essential element that is completely missing in action. Any guesses as to what that might be?

It’s something that proves what you say is true. It’s the little thing that makes a believer out of a skeptic. Sometimes it’s off to the side, and sometimes it’s featured front and center. And the better it is, the more you need to show it off. It’s crucial for making sales.

Have you guessed it?

It’s PROOF.

Proof that what you claim is true. Proof that your customers get the results you claim they will get. Proof that your product works. Proof that you won’t disappear in the night with your customer’s money.

It’s the difference from almost making a sale to MAKING the sale.

Here are seven different types of proof you can use in your copywriting, regardless of whether it’s an email, blogpost or sales page. Anytime you’re talking about your product, remember to include some proof.

1. Case studies – These are also known as customer success stories, and they tell a brief story about a customer who got results from your product or service.

For example, “Joe Smith uses this software, and in the first 30 days he saw a 22% increase in conversions.”

It’s best to keep your case studies short and concise, focusing on measurable results whenever you can. Remember, numbers are more persuasive than adjectives.

2. Testimonials – These are written statements from your customers or clients, explaining why they like your product or service. They’re typically quotes from people who’ve used your products or services.

The best testimonials don’t just sing your praises, they also explain details of why they customer endorses you or your product. For maximum impact, use testimonials that include numbers or quantitative results.

3. Endorsements – An endorsement is like a testimonial from someone widely recognized by your prospects.

If a well-known blogger or expert in your field endorses your product, by all means add this to your sales copy. People who trust this well-known individual will then trust your product by association.

4. Research studies – If there are any research studies that clearly show the effectiveness of your product or a component of your product, then use this data in your sales copy.

For example, if you sell an herbal supplement that contains 6 different ingredients, and the effectiveness of each ingredient is backed by research studies, you might include each study in your sales letter in the appropriate places.

The key here is to deliver the information concisely and in layman’s terms. Don’t use scientific lingo – you’ll lose your readers.

5. Visual representation of results – An image is truly worth a thousand words, if it’s the right image. You’re familiar with this technique from weight loss products. They use before and after photos of their clients to show the changes in their body sizes and shapes.

If you can use charts, photos, screenshots or other visuals to prove your product or service works, then by all means do it.

Place captions on your visuals. Studies show that captions are read more than almost any other element on a sales page (other than the headlines.)

Make your captions – well, captivating and self-explanatory. For example, a caption that says, “Janet Smith” doesn’t tell the prospect anything about the product. But the caption, “Janet Smith, after losing 42 pounds in 67 days on the XYZ diet” tells the whole story.

6. Press coverage – If you’ve received praise from a media outlet, then let your prospects know about it.

Quotes from well-known sources are best, since your home town paper might not hold much credibility with the rest of the world.

But if a well-known publication or media outlet has good things to say about your product or service, include that in your sales copy.

7. Social Shares – This is useful if you want to show you have a large audience.

For example, if you have a track record of writing blog posts that get thousands of social media shares, you might make the case that you are a trusted source for information in your field.

Next time you write any sort of copy that promotes a product or service, be sure to include at least one powerful element of proof in your copy.

Advanced technique: Use your proof as part of your headline or sub-headline.

For example, “Ex-Beautician Gets Four $100,000 Job Offers thanks to Our Job Getting System.”

I don’t know about you, but if I was in the market for a new job, I would be super excited to read that sales letter!

It used to be that when I went to the doctor, I would find my favorite magazine in the lobby and read it until the doctor was ready to see me. But this last time, I couldn’t find a single issue. I asked the lady at the desk about it, and she explained that the magazine was so popular, patients were taking it home, so the doctor stopped buying it.

Now there’s a business strategy I don’t recommend – find out what your customers want and then don’t give it to them…

Personally, I would have ordered more subscriptions, not less. Because not only do his patients like the magazine; it also keeps them occupied instead of watching the clock when the doctor is running late (and he is always running late.)

Many businesses do this – they find out what customers want and then don’t give it to them.

I used to have a restaurant I really liked, and one of the things I liked best was they would swap one side dish for another. Then one day they told me they couldn’t do it. It was too difficult to swap baked potato for French fries, or broccoli for green beans, even though they had all four in the kitchen.

I figured if they couldn’t swap sides to give me what I wanted, then I couldn’t eat there. And I don’t.

Another restaurant used to cook their ahi tuna all the way through if you asked. Then they got a new chef who insisted that patrons only eat food the way he liked to prepare it. In other words, I could eat raw tuna or I could go elsewhere. Now I go elsewhere.

The trick to a successful business is to truly understand what your customers want and then give it to them, and keep on giving it to them.

It’s not that difficult. Yet so many marketers and business people get this wrong.

And when in doubt, just ask. One time I was going to consolidate all of my courses into one big course and actually ship out a physical product, because I’d heard this was the thing to do.

But first I asked my customers how many thought they would buy it. The answer was, only about 1% would even consider it. Thank goodness I didn’t do it.

One last tip – develop your products or services based on what your customers really want, and not what they should want. Maybe your customers should want to learn how to do an easy task in their business, but they’d rather hand the task over to you to do.

Ok, so your customers have told you about another product they want to buy from you, and you can be obliged to sell it to them!

Giving customers what they actually want may be the greatest business secret of all.

I’m going to try and NOT go on a rant here about how, “These days” no one in marketing is telling the truth, everything is exaggerated or an outright lie, lies of omission are so common they’re expected, and so forth.

Okay, maybe that was my rant.

My point is, there are plenty of marketers out there streeeeeetching the truth until the truth is completely lost. And yes, these marketers often do experience short term success. If a person wanted to make money and run, this is the method they would use.

But they better keep running, because government agencies are getting a lot better at not only monitoring what happens online, but also apprehending and charging people when they out and out lie to customers.

In my opinion, a far better strategy is to look at the long picture and tell the truth.

Marketers and businesses who tell the truth might not make as much money up front, but in the long run their businesses will survive while so many others fail.

They’ll get recommended by their clients to other prospects. They’ll get more repeat business. And their proprietors can sleep at night, too.

“The most powerful element in advertising is the truth.” – William Bernbach, cofounder of international advertising agency Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB), director of many breakthrough ad campaigns.

I don’t know when William said this quote, but I do know he died in 1982. Yes, truth has been scarce in advertising and marketing for a long time – perhaps as long as its been around.

Yet people want the truth. They crave the truth. And when they find someone who will tell them the truth, they will do one of two things: Either look elsewhere for the “quick fix,” and eventually come back to the person who told the truth, or recognize the truth as being what they need in the first place.

Either way, if you’re in it for the long term, the truth is the way to go.

Here’s a classic example: You teach people how to make money online. You tell them it doesn’t happen overnight. It takes work. There is a learning curve. They’ll need to invest both time and money. They’ll make mistakes along the way and get discouraged, and that’s okay, because it’s part of the process. But if they stick with you, and they do the work, in a year’s time they’ll have a very real, viable business that replaces their current income.

Or, you tell them they will make a gazillion dollars by Tuesday with no work… But they don’t make a gazillion dollars, or whatever you promised them. And they’re mad. They want their money back.

Hopefully at that point you’ve pulled up stakes and you’re running (just kidding) or you still have their money and refund it (that’s the right answer.) And when they get their money back from you, where are they going next? To the person who told them this takes time, effort and money. Because that person told them the truth, and they realize that’s exactly what they need.

Look, I understand how tempting it is to stretch the truth, to lie by omission (yes, that is a lie when you don’t tell them something they need to know) or to make things “rosier” than they are. It’s all a part of marketing and advertising.

But should it be? Only you can decide.

… And see what your best competitors are doing, too. When you look at a marketing campaign from the outside in, you miss a lot. But when you join competitor’s lists and let them sell to you, you’ll get to dig beneath the surface and see what’s REALLY happening.

Read their emails, subscribe to their membership sites and buy their products. Take note of their entire selling process from start to finish. You might do screen capture for upsells, download pages and so forth.

I am NOT advocating that you copy what they’re doing – at least not blatantly. But if you notice a step they take that seems to be working, you might add that step to your own funnel as well.

For example, I bought a product the other week that had sales offers on the download page. There is nothing new about additional sales offers in general, except these offers were increasing in price by a penny every 7 seconds, right on the download page. It was instantly clear these products were being sold, and the price was going up.

I forgot about downloading my product and instead went immediately to the sales page of one of the products, where I found the same thing – the price was increasing by a penny every 7 seconds.

The counter wasn’t obnoxious, but it was in plain view in the upper right-hand corner the entire time as I scrolled through the sales letter. And I never would have seen this if I hadn’t purchased the product.

So if you want to increase your own sales and profits online, find the top selling products in your niche, enter their sales funnel, buy the product and learn everything you can along the way that you can apply to your own business.

Do this, and instead of re-inventing the wheel, you’ll leverage the experience of other successful campaigns and businesses for your own benefit so you can grow your business faster, and help more people by ensuring your products and services are sold to the most buyers who will benefit from them as possible.

You know what a lead magnet is – something given away for free in exchange for an email address. You join their list, you get their free report / video / book / software etc.

I recently ran across a lead magnet that blew my mind. And I didn’t even realize I was being set up to join a list – or that it WAS a lead magnet – until I was hooked like a prize fish at the end of this master marketer’s line.

Here’s what happened:

I was on this marketer’s site when a headline caught my eye. This was a headline you might find on a book or a paid product – in fact, if it had been a book, I probably would have bought it on the spot. It promised a big benefit and had a curiosity element to it that immediately got my interest.

The headline was on an article and I started reading it. It was giving me methods to accomplish a certain task, but it was doing it in story form. I didn’t even realize until later that it was telling me what to do, but not how to do it. And the story was captivating, as good as any fiction you might read.

I was fully engrossed in the story when it was about to come to a climax and it suddenly – stopped.

It just stopped. There was no more to read. I was left hanging. But of course, there was a subscription form, and a note that said only subscribers of this website would be given the secret information contained at the end of the story.

Yes, I filled out the form. By that point, I would have paid money to get the rest of the story.

I’ve purposely kept this vague because it’s probably not a good idea to copy this marketer’s story. What he wrote works for him and his site. What will work for you and your site is likely to be far different.

But what I can tell you is that no matter who your audience is, they love stories.

And if you can weave the information they want inside of that story and insert a cliffhanger point that compels them to join your list, then I suspect a very high percentage of people who read the beginning of your story will subscribe to your newsletter.

Be sure to have a title so good, people would pay for a book with that title, even if you didn’t give them a book description.

Keep the story intriguing and entertaining, while giving the lessons promised.

And in the portion they read prior to subscribing, only give them the secrets of what to do, not how to do it.

For that, along with the story ending, they’ll need to join your list. 😉

For those of you who remember or have heard of Earl Nightingale, you may recall his recording about “Greener Pastures.” He made the point that every patch of grass, or pasture, looks greener from a distance.

When you’re standing on your own lawn, you see every weed and brown spot. But when you look across to your neighbor’s lawn, it looks lush and green like a golf course.

But the fact is, grass isn’t greener on the other side of the fence – it’s an illusion. Just as it’s an illusion that the next customers you get will be the best customers who spend the most money and so forth.

This might be one of the greatest secrets of making money via marketing of all time.

Nearly every business owner fails to fully mine the gold in his own customer list. They’re running around trying to get NEW customers, instead of focusing on their current customers.

Jay Abraham made a fortune simply by going to existing businesses and showing them how to fully utilize their most under-valued and neglected asset – their own customers.

Here are some ideas for extracting maximum value from your own customers.

• Offer more products and services.
• Make offers to your list more often.
• Communicate consistently.
• Create VIP groups and memberships with special privileges.
• Let your list know you reward frequent purchasers as well as high volume purchases (if applicable).
• Identify and focus on the hyper responsive customers and give them more opportunities to spend money with you.
• Create and sell continuity programs, or sell affiliate continuity programs.
• Sell renewable products or services.
• Learn about your customers and tailor offers to match their needs and wants.
• Communicate frequently with information, education, and even fun stuff.
• Incentivize greater usage.
• Analyze your customers and separate them into A-B-C groups based on their responsiveness. Then develop strategies to upgrade the C’s to B’s and the B’s to A’s.
• Become the resource in your niche for your customers, offering discounts on other people’s products through joint ventures.
• Ask your customers what they want and what you can do for them as well as what they want to buy right now.

You could even take this one business idea – extracting maximum value from a customer list – and help local businesses to increase their own incomes while paying you a nice percentage of the additional profits.

In marketing, your target market must be small enough that the resources you’re able to commit will have a big impact.

Imagine carrying the heaviest rock you can hold and dropping it into a small pond. The splash would be huge, loud and noticed by anyone around, and the ripples would cover the entire surface.

Now imagine dropping that same rock into the middle of the ocean. No one would even notice. Imagine dropping a rock 100 times that size in the middle of the ocean. Again, no one would notice a thing.

The rock, of course, is your resources.

When new marketers come to me looking for advice, I ask them who their target market is. Nine times out of ten, it’s, “Everyone who wants to ___.”

It might be everyone who needs to lose weight, make money or whatever. It doesn’t matter. Their market is too big and they’ll never get noticed.

But if they target teachers who want to make extra money online, or nurses, or fast food workers, they’ll probably make a killing.

Still not convinced? Think of the pond versus the ocean, and the rock as being your marketing. How much marketing will you have to do to get noticed in the ocean? You’ll need the resources of a Coca-Cola to do it.

Now imagine getting noticed in the pond. Heck, if you just stand up and say, “I’ll teach everyone in the pond how to lose 10 pounds this month, or how to make $1,000 a month online,” you’ll get noticed right away.

When someone describes their market too broadly, I know they’re going to fail. But when they know exactly who their audience is and how they’re going to reach them, I know they’ll do fine.

Gary Halbert once said at a seminar, “If I offer to set you up in the fast food business with a hamburger joint, and you can have any one special advantage you want, what will it be? A clown? Special sauce? Great burgers? A big ad budget?”

This is the point where the audience was shouting out their answers. I don’t know if anyone got the answer right, though.

Did you? What special advantage would you want?

Gary’s answer was, “A starving crowd.”

If the people are starving, and you’re there with burgers, do you really need any of those other things?

Look at a roach coach – those food wagons that come around to factory parking lots, special events and so forth. Their food is often bad, overpriced and unhealthy. Yet they get swarms of eager customers. Why? Because they go where the starving crowds are.

What is a “starving crowd?”

It might be people with a pressing problem, like a certain health crisis or being overweight.

It could be a market in the midst of change and upheaval, with people looking for answers and help. Health care and insurance in the U.S. might fit this category, since the rules keep changing.

It could be a market in pain, like retail stores trying to survive against internet shopping.

It could simply be people who are hyper-passionate about their particular interest, such as horses, or golf, or investing.

Ideally, you want either one of these starving crowds:

1. A group of buyers with an aggravation that gives them sleepless nights, anxiety, ulcers, rage and so forth, where you can solve their problem or provide something to help. For example, tax problems, health problems, childcare problems and so forth.

2. Or a burning desire for something you can provide. For example, a way to make money, better a golf score, achieve a high mark on an entrance exam, etc.

The two categories can, of course, overlap, which is even better. Worrying about bills or hating a job overlaps with making money from the internet.

Your goal as a marketer is to identify one of these markets and build the right offer for what that market wants right NOW, versus developing an offer and then figuring out who might want to buy it from you.

Yes, I know you might have heard a version of this before, but it’s so crucial to your success, that it bears repeating time and time again.

Choose your market, find out what they want to buy today, and offer them exactly that. When you do, your marketing is already halfway done.

We are all familiar with social proof – placing positive testimonials on your sales pages and websites to show what others think of our products. However, there is a form of social proof used by many marketers that actually backfires and causes sales to drop dramatically, and it’s what they call “negative” social proof.

It works like this: You want to create a sense of urgency, so you say something like, “A lot of people have missed out on this, and you do NOT want to be one of them.” Or “Only a handful of people who read this letter will be smart enough to grab this offer before it’s too late.”

The problem is, you’re indicating that a lot of people are not buying the product. And since people tend to look to others for indications of what to do, this kind of social proof will actually encourage prospects to follow the lead of the majority and not make the purchase.

If you read the book Yes!, you’ll see Robert Cialdini’s experiment where he measured the effects of signs posted in the Arizona Petrified Forest to prevent theft of petrified wood. They tested 3 different signs, and the one that included negative social proof actually INCREASED theft.

The sign read, “Many past visitors have removed the petrified wood from the park, destroying the natural state of the Petrified Forest.” This sign actually TRIPLED the amount of theft because it demonstrated to readers that other people were already stealing, thereby making it seem alright for them to steal as well.

Here are more examples of negative social proof:

“This year Americans will produce more litter and pollution than ever before.” Potential result in thinking: It’s okay to litter, everybody’s doing it.

“35% of sexually active teens do not always use condoms.” Potential result in thinking: I don’t have to use a condom if I don’t feel like it.

“4 years ago, over 22 million single women did not vote.” Potential result in thinking: They didn’t bother to vote, why should I?

“50% of women report being harassed in the workplace.” Potential result in thinking: Lots of other men are doing it, I’ll do it too.

However well intentioned those messages may be, as you can see they are likely to have the exact opposite effect than what was intended.

So for example, if you’re marketing something to enhance the security of a WordPress blog, do not say “80% of WordPress owners unintentionally leave their websites wide open to hacking.” If you’re selling an SEO product, do not say “90% of website owners do no SEO whatsoever.”

If you’re selling a diet product, do not say “90% of overweight people will never lose the excess weight.” And if you’re selling a dating product for people over 40, do not say “Most single people over 40 have given up looking for their ideal mate.”

How can you avoid negative social proof? Don’t focus on how common the undesirable behavior is. Instead, show that it is rare and practiced only by social outcasts. Emphasize (where appropriate) that the behavior is:

– Illegal
– Subject to penalties
– Immoral
– Reprehensible
– Irresponsible
– Stupid
– Outdated and no longer acceptable
– (And best of all) Universally scorned.

By doing this, you can make negative social proof work for you rather than against you.

You might want to look over any sales material you have, and make sure you haven’t inadvertently used negative social proof. Just because 80% of marketers have unintentionally used it at least once doesn’t mean you should. 😉

And if you didn’t catch that last bit of negative social proof, you might want to reread this article again.