There’s one question I want you to answer today. The answer might not be one you’d like, but it could be a huge turnaround in your business:
What is your hourly rate?
For example, if you sell products and services online, calculate how much your time is worth. If you’re worth your salt, your time could be worth in the 3 figures.
The point is that you have a hourly rate, and it should determine what you do in your business and what you should outsource.
For example, if you’re stuck doing customer support, outsource it to a virtual assistant. It can get done quicker and cheaper than if you did it yourself.
If your time is worth 100 pounds and you just spend 3 hours doing customer support, you could have just wasted money. Because you could have gotten someone to do it for much less than that, so you can concentrate on the tasks that make you money.
Further, if you mow your own lawn, you need to hire someone to do it for you. You can easily get someone to do it for way less than your current hourly rate.
It’s all about leveraging time and resources. The savvy entrepreneur will recognize the valuable tasks (and their hourly rate) and delegate tasks that don’t match his/her hourly rate.
Yet many beginning marketers do everything themselves. They don’t realize the value of leveraging time and resources so they can concentrate on the money-producing tasks.
What are these tasks? They could be writing copy for your next promotion, working on the next joint venture deal, or preparing for a sales webinar. This is the stuff that’s going to make you money.
Not customer support. While necessary, there are too many marketers who do their own customer support. Of course, this shoudn’t be neglected, but it can easily be outsourced to someone who can do it for way cheaper than your hourly rate.
So the next time you start working on your business, ask yourself if what I’m doing is worth my current hourly rate. You’ll find many tasks that you could delegate, allowing you to concentrate on moneymaking tasks that could boost your hourly rate even more.
There’s one rule when it comes to copywriting and advertising:
People don’t want to believe you!
They’ve already been pitched 10,000 times on how they’re going to lose weight, make more money, and grow hair using your product. Today’s customers are more skeptical than ever and you need to have more “evidence” that you know what you’re talking about if you’re going to woo them over.
The best way to do that is through case studies and testimonials. Here are some testimonial tips that should boost the social proof on your website or other marketing piece.
Make sure you have full name, website, and location.
Frequently people use testimonials with initials like “J.K”, or a first name and last initial. You want to make sure you have full information for each testimonial. The more information the more people are going to believe the testimonial is real.
Stay away from “pat me on the back” testimonials.
These are testimonials that aren’t results based. For example, if you said the following:
“Jim will help you make millions of dollars online.”
…and the following,
“Jim helped me make $3213.23 last year and he could help you too!”
…which testimonial is going to be more believable?
The one on the top is what I call a “pat me on the back” testimonial as it gives no indication the product is going to give the benefits it advertises. There are no specifics or results, just someone saying so-and-so is a good guy.
Video testimonials are the way to go!
You might have noticed that videos are on the rise. More and more people are chucking their dialup connection for broadband. Which means you can put video testimonials on your site, which are a lot more effective than regular ones.
Why is this? People can see and hear the customer. They know it’s a real person, not some Photoshopped image or stock photo that’s fake. The more they know the person is real, the more the potential customer will believe the testimonial.
Thus boosting your social proof.
So take a look at your last promotion and ask yourself, “Did I put enough social proof in this piece?” Chances are your conversions were low if you didn’t put any there.
But next time make sure you have a preponderance of proof on your marketing piece. It will boost your believability, and your sales.
Most people online will assume all they have to do is launch a product and expect to make a lot of money. They think all they have to do is keep driving traffic to the site and watch money flow into their bank account like a Category 3 hurricane.
Well, there is more to it than that. You see, the marketers who are the most successful have a “herd” or following. These are people who have bought the marketer’s products and cannot wait until they get their next newsletter, open their email, or buy their next product.
You see, forming a relationship with your customers is extremely important. You shouldn’t be in it just for the “one-time” sale and have the customer forget about you.
It’s all about personality-based marketing. If you share bits and pieces of yourself and bond with your customers, you will start to build a “following”. And this following will buy from you again and again, keep coming to your seminars, and listen to everything you have to say.
One of the best marketers at personality-based marketing is Dan Kennedy. Everyone knows Dan’s story: he is kinda grouchy, loves horses, and doesn’t like cellphones. He also is very direct with people at seminars and mastermind events. Everyone knows this about Dan and his customers bond with him because of it.
One term that describes this is being an “attractive character”. Letting some of your personality come through so people will bond with you. And also always taking sides on issues, you should never be neutral.
What you’ll find out is more and more people will start following you and bonding with you. And when they do this, they will trust you and, most importantly, buy from you.
And this will go beyond the usual “one-off” sale. They will buy from you again and again because they’ve bonded with you as a friend.
These days, just having an awesome product isn’t going to cut it most of the time when it comes to long-term income. If you or your company has a personality that people will bond with, then they’ll keep buying from you since customers like to buy from those they trust.
So let your personality shine through in your marketing. This will allow your customers to bond with you and you’ll form a herd that will buy from you again and again.
One of the things that is necessary in order to get the most out of your Google Adwords pay-per-click campaign is to do proper keyword research.
For example, it doesn’t really matter if a keyword gets a lot of traffic. What really matters if they are ready to buy something!
Here’s an example: if you are selling a diet that teaches you how to eat bananas and lose weight, the last thing you want to do is bid on a general word such as “diet”.
First of all, it’s going to be way too expensive. Second of all, Google Adwords is going to raise your click price and could easily run your account way over your budget.
The highest converting keywords are “buying” keywords.
For example, instead of “diet” you can bid on “banana diet”. This is more specific and indicates the searcher is looking for something about the banana diet, and thus, is closer to buying something.
The best keywords are “banana diet course” or “banana diet book”. These are the best “buying” keywords and is indicative of the fact the searcher has already done his/her research, they are looking to buy a book or course.
Further, let’s say your course is called, “Lose Weight Fast With The Banana Diet”. What a great keyword to bid on! This is the most specific keyword you could ever use, and it ensures you’re going to get a high conversion.
In general, the more specific the keyword, the better the chances the searcher is a buyer. In the example above, they’ve already researched the diets and they’re looking for specific information on the banana diet. And some have even found out about your course and are searching specifically for your product name.
This is critical in Google Adwords, as you’ll need higher conversions to make your campaign profitable. Especially with rising click costs and increasing competition everywhere online.
One of the things marketers don’t very often is upsell their customers. They are happy just getting that initial sale and plan on just selling that one entry-level item over and over again.
However, what expert marketers know is that most of the money is made in upsells, or a related item that’s more expensive than the initial product.
For example, if you’re selling an ebook, you can easily create a more expensive version of that ebook, or a related item that would complement the original purchase.
Let’s say you have a product that teaches people how to make money with stocks. It’s a simple ebook outlining how to invest in the stock market. You can easily create a home study course out of that ebook and sell it for 4-5 times as much after they purchase your ebook!
Why is this effective? Because when they purchase your initial offering, they’ve already yanked out their wallet and bought. This is the time to hit them with your upsell offer, while they are in the buying mood.
The most effective way to upsell your customers is through what is called a “1-click-upsell”. Basically this means after they purchase your initial product, customers are automatically hit with an upsell offer. If they want the offer, all they have to do is click on an “Add To Cart” button and the upsell is automatically added to their order without having to enter their credit card information.
Shopping carts such as 1shoppingcart.com allow you to do this. However, even if your customer has to enter their card information again, you’ll still make more money.
So don’t be like most amateur marketers who are only in it for that initial sale. The experienced marketers know the importance of upselling their customers either during the sales process or via email follow-up.
Ask yourself: How can I upsell my customers today?
It’s common knowledge that the headline is the most important aspect of any sales letter. But do you know the 2nd most important part?
The Introduction!
This is where you roll into your sales pitch. Most marketers really botch this up because they start on some kind of tangent that doesn’t make sense, and end up losing the reader as a result.
One thing you can do is to borrow a version of the introduction that famous copywriter Gary Halbert used over and over again. It goes like this:
“If you’ve ever wanted to lose weight fast, than this will be the most important message you’ll ever read!”
The reason this is effective is because it gets straight to the point. You need to imagine yourself going up to your prospect in a bar or restaurant, sitting down in front of them, and beginning your pitch.
When you do this, you cannot imagine yourself going into a boring pitch that’s going to lose your target audience’s interest. When you modify the above Gary Halbert opening line, you automatically know what the pitch is going to be about.
And anyone whose experiencing that problem is going to pay attention!
Further, you need to take your target audience into account. Most people have boring jobs and look forward to plopping down in front of the TV every night. Your sales letter need to be the most important thing they’re going to read all day.
That’s why you need an introduction that’s going to cut through all the clutter that’s going on in their heads and get them to take action!
One more thing, you can easily take the above introduction and modify it so it says something similar. Here’s an example:
“If you’ve ever wanted to lose weight than this message will cut to the chase and give you the answers you’re looking for!”
It’s just another variation you can play around with. But make no mistake: the introduction to a sales letter is extremely important. You need to cut right to the chase!
Everyone knows that having a high-converting squeeze page is critical to building your list. However, most marketers fall short when it comes to creating a squeeze page that pulls in email prospects like a vacuum on steroids.
Here are 4 ways you can boost your squeeze page conversion:
1) Offer An Irresistible Ethical Bribe
Do you have an irresistable offer in exchange for a prospect’s name and an email address? Most people have the usual 7-day ecourse or newsletter signup as a bribe for entering their name and email address.
Why not spice things up and offer a report that solves an urgent problem the prospect is having?
For example if you’re in the golf market and your ethical bribe was a report called, “7 Tips To Boosting Your Drives by 50 Yards Or More!”, you’re going to get more optins than if you offered a generic ecourse or newsletter.
2) Make Sure Your Opt-In Form is Above-The-Fold
In case you are not familiar with the term “above-the-fold”, it basically means the first screenshot people see when they go to your site.
This is extremly important as people will see the optin form right away and enter their name and email address to collect their bribe.
This might sound obvious but some marketers have their optin form hidden on the page or at the bottom. Big mistake!
3) Make Sure You Have A Strong Call To Action
Many squeeze pages don’t have a call-to-action telling people to submit their name and email address. The call-to-action needs to be in the optin box and several times in the copy in order to be effective.
An example of a good call-to-action would be:
“Enter your first name and primary email address below to claim your FREE report and start impressing your buddies on the driving range today!”
That’s it. You’ll also want 1-2 more call-to-actions in your copy that asks the visitor to enter their information for the free report.
Don’t leave it up to your prospect to figure it out herself, tell her explicitly what to do!
4) Make Sure Your Headline Grabs Your Target Audience
I talk about how to write a good headline in this post last week. In short, your headline literally has to jump off the page and grab your prospect!
You’ll want to write at least 25 headlines before you decide on the one you’re going to use. The headline’s just that important.
If your squeeze page needs a little help, you’ll want to make sure you implement these 4 squeeze page tips to boost your optin rate. Your optin rate will thank you!
As most of you know, Google Adwords has cracked down on advertisers who drive traffic to pages that aren’t relevant to a search query. To combat this, Google instituted the “Relevancy Score”, a measurement of how relevant your landing page is to the keyword query.
If your landing page is relevant, you’ll get a better ad placement and your Google Adwords click costs will be higher. If you get a low score, then your bid prices will go up, and your placement will be at the bottom of the page.
Definitely not what you want if you’re looking to make money online.
Here are 4 ways to boost your relevancy score. Implementing these could lower your click costs below your competitors that don’t know what they’re doing.
1) Make Sure You Use A High PageRank Domain.
Google will generally give a high relevancy score to an aged domain with high PageRank. Whereas the website that was thrown up yesterday is going to take a hit in relevancy score.
2) Make Sure You Have Your Keywords In The Domain And Elsewhere In Your Adwords Ad.
If people type in “golf shoes” into Google, you better be sure the words “golf shoes” are in the headline, body copy, and domain. Also make sure you landing page is about golf shoes. I’ll tell you next how to do this.
3) Make Sure You Have Your Targeted Keywords In Your Meta Tags And Title Tags.
Relevancy Score will increase if Google sees the search query on your pages via the Meta tags and title tags. So in our hypothetical scenario, you’ll want to make sure “golf shoes” are in these tags.
4) Make Sure The Site Has A Little Depth.
If you have 10-15 pages on the website, Google may give you a higher relevancy score than a single squeeze page. You can easily add a privacy policy, terms of service, customer contact, and other standard pages to beef up your site a little bit
Now all of these things might seem like a lot of work. But if you’re targeting a specific term on Google Adwords that converts well for you, you’ll want to make sure all this is included. Even purchase a new domain if you have to!
Because having a low relevancy will cost you more money in the long run. Google’s job is to send the most relevant results to the user when they enter a search query. Taking these steps will ensure Google evaluates your site correctly and assigns a high relevancy score for you.
Many marketers get into the erroneous thinking that they have to do everything themselves. That they have to create the website, write the copy, submit all those articles, and learn Photoshop.
This cannot be further from the truth!
Believe it or not you can outsource the most daunting tasks of your business to an outsourcer and let them take care of it for you. And you can get quality work for pretty cheap, that is, unless you know the following 5 outsourcing secrets.
1) Take A Look At Their Portfolio
First thing first, you need to take a look at what they’ve done for other people in the past. There are a lot of providers who have a track record of creating what you’re looking for, whether it’s graphic design, copywriting, or Google Adwords.
Sure you can take a chance on a beginner who doesn’t have any experience. But there are plenty of outsourcers to choose from and you can afford to be picky.
2) Look For Someone Who Answers Your Ad Personally
Many outsourcers will cut and paste a generic message responding to your post. It usually says something generic like, “Our team is dedicated to doing anything for you.” or something similar that makes it obvious they didn’t read your wanted ad.
You’ll want to look for the outsourcers who write a customized response that’s written just for you. They tailored your response for what you’re asking for in the job posting.
These are the people you want to check out–not the ones who cut and paste the same message, hoping someone bites.
3) Take a Look At Feedback They’ve Received
Some sites have a feedback rating system that allows providers and employers to leave feedback. Make sure you check out their feedback before hiring them. If they have a history of not finishing work or understanding the scope of what the client wants, then you should pass over them.
No questions asked.
4) Have Them Do A Small Task To Prove Their Competence
If you’re looking to hire someone, ask them to perform a small task for you before you hire them.
For example, you can ask them to install a WordPress blog or write a blog post so you can see if they’re know what they’re doing if the job involved working with WordPress. This will also weed out other providers who aren’t willing to do a little more to get the job.
The ones who’ll do a small task that’s relevant to what you’re hiring them for will turn out to be the best workers for you.
5) Have A Backup Plan
Let’s say you’re preparing for a launch and your programmers skips town on you and doesn’t finish the work you hired them to do. You’ve lined up people who are ready to promote for you on the launch date, but now that’s in jeopardy since your programmer left you.
Always have a backup plan in place so your project won’t be seriously delayed. For example, you can have another programmer waiting to assist you if one doesn’t work out.
The worst thing you want to have in business is ONE of anything. Because if you lose that one thing, your business goes down the tubes. Unfortunately with outsourcing there is a chance a outsourcer will not finish the work and you need to be prepared.
Outsourcing is your ticket to doing less and making more money. Follow these 5 steps when hiring your next outsourcer and your life will be a lot easier!
One of the reasons most internet marketers struggle at the beginning is because they don’t concentrate fully on listbuilding or email marketing. They create a website, drive a bunch of traffic, and are happy with the 1-2 sales every day they get right away.
But what they don’t realize is, assuming the conversion rate is 1%, 99% of the website visitors will leave the site never to come back again. That’s why you need a method of capturing email addresses on your page to build your list!
You see, it’s a common marketing axiom that your typical prospect has to be exposed to your marketing message on an average of 7 times before they buy from you. That’s why email marketing is extremely important, it allows you to follow up with your prospects if they don’t buy from you the first time!
Further, you could also promote other products to your list as well. Let’s say you have another product they might be interested in, even though they didn’t purchase or aren’t interested in the first one. This is your perfect opportunity to send an email to them and offer your other product!
You can also promote affiliate products as well. One common practice in internet marketing is to joint-venture with other marketers and promote their products to each other’s email lists. Several big-name marketers make a lot of money just doing this, a lot don’t even have their own product!
How do you build an email list? You can drive all your traffic through a “squeeze page” that asks for a prospect’s name and email address in exchange for an ethical bribe, such as a free report or free ecourse. You can also have an obvious opt-in box on your main site where people can sign up for a news letter.
People always say that the money is in the list. For most people who are serious about their online businesses, this is definitely the truth. It’s akin to a mailing list in the offline world, where brick-and-mortar businesses send out direct mail to customers to follow up with them.
So if you’re just starting out in internet marketing, realize that building an email list to follow up with again and again is paramount to having a long-lasting, sustainable business.
Don’t just go for that 1-2 sales every day, go for adding qualified prospects to your email list so you can easily double or triple your sales in the long run.
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