We all know that having your own list is the holy grail of online marketing and there are numerous articles on this site (such as here and here).
Once you have an email list, it is important to nurture it and provide value to your subscribers before bombarding them with offers.
There is no problem marketing to your list, but you must always have their best interests at heart and treat them the same way that you would want to be treated by a marketer.
Once you have built that rapport, feel free to offer appropriate affiliate offers that would benefit your readers.
And, hopefully you may also have your own products and services that you can put in front of them.
And this is also a way of launching a new product or even relaunching one of your previous products or services.
Let’s say you’re reopening a membership for a limited time, or you’re launching a product just for your list.
Okay, so you’ve got a product you’re going to be offering to your list for a limited time – let’s say three days.
After the three days, either the product is no longer available, or the price goes up.
Yes, there is nothing wrong with offering special deals to your own list on your own product. In fact, I think it’s a great idea, because people on your list should be rewarded with special deals no one else can get (hint hint!)
In this example you’re going to be sending out a total of 6 emails. Yes, you could do 5, or 7, or… but I’ve found this sequence works well, so it’s what I do. Your mileage may vary. 😊
I suggest you write all 6 of your emails ahead of time, and here’s why:
First, you can schedule them and forget them. Nice.
Second, you can see if the entire sequence flows and makes sense.
Your first email will go out the day BEFORE your launch, and it will say something like, “Watch your email tomorrow for a very special limited time offer for my subscribers ONLY. I think you’re going to love it!”
This first email is low key, short, fun, and only sells them on watching for the next email.
On the day of the launch, you’ll send out two emails, one first thing in the morning and one in the evening.
But if the sales page is lacking, then you can do product selling right there in the email.
The first email of the first day of the launch gives all the great reasons to buy, only abbreviated. I like my sales page to do the heavy lifting.
The second email of that first day tells them how the launch is going, how many people are buying… that sort of thing.
Yes, it’s written ahead of time, so yes, you now know one of my secrets – I’m guessing how well it will be going when I write it. 😊
On the next day you should send one email in the middle of the day to remind them that this offer isn’t going to last, and to remind them of the big benefit they’ll get from the product.
On the final day you should send two emails. The one in the morning says something like, “Last 24 hours.”
The one in the evening says, “Last chance, last email.”
The power of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) is very strong in people so don’t underestimate it!
I’ve used this same sequence of 6 emails many times because it’s effective. It works. And it gives me plenty of sales which I can then show to affiliates to get them to come on board and do their own launches.
As mentioned earlier, I recommend you make a special offer that is available only to your own list, but that doesn’t necessarily mean a special price. It could mean a special bonus that only they get. That way your affiliates can offer it at the same price point to their lists, too.
One more thing: If you’re only working with a handful of affiliates, you can make a special page for each one that says, “Special deal for Jane Smith’s subscribers only.”
I’ve found that using this technique boosts conversions by about 10%, depending on the offer and the list.
The thing is to not do this kind of thing all the time or you may end up annoying your readers.
Some marketers do these sorts of “crush campaigns” all the time and it just causes the readers to get angry and unsubscribe and you then need to keep replenishing your list.
Isn’t it much better to actually nurture and help your readers to succeed? They will appreciate you so much more and you can then build a tribe of people who will follow you and buy repeatedly from you and this is the best way to do business as you are building a brand reputation.
By the way if you are interested in building your brand the right way, you can grab a free report called Brilliant Branding by clicking on the featured resource below. If you do download it, please read it and take action and good luck 😊
1000 prospects come to your site or sales page. 1% of them buy a $50 product. You’ve made $500.
You invest 2 days trying a few different ways to increase your conversions, and 3 are successful. You only increased your conversions by 1%, yet you’ve doubled your income, selling 2% of the prospects who come to your sales page.
Now for every 1000 prospects, you make $1,000.
And you send 1000 prospects a day, meaning…
Yet so many marketers never bother to do any of the things I’m about to suggest.
Why? I suppose it’s one of those things they’ll “get around to” but they never do.
So here’s what I recommend: If you don’t want to do any of the following, then OUTSOURCE it. We wrote an entire article on the importance of outsourcing elsewhere in this edition, so I won’t harp on it here.
Let’s get started on boosting your conversions:
Your value proposition can be the number 1 element that determines if people will bother to read more on your page.
And it’s also the main thing you need to test.
In a nutshell, your value proposition clearly states:
Here’s an example from Prey: https://www.preyproject.com/
Rest Safe – We’ve Got Your Back
Prey lets you track and find your phone, laptop or tablet.
Protect what you care for and it’s free.
I could do an entire article on creating a compelling value proposition – and I’ll do exactly that in a future post for you.
You create two alternative versions of your page, each with a different headline / color scheme / call to action etc.
You do a split test to see which one works better. When you find out what converts better, then you test something else.
The more elements you test, the higher you can boost your conversions.
Things to test: Headline, page layout and navigation, the offer itself, using different media (such as a video) and even a radical change if you think you might want to start over.
You can use Google Optimize if you’re looking for a free A/B tester, or Optimizely if you want more options.
Sometimes your conversions are taking a hit because you’re asking for the signup or the sale too soon in the process.
If people are still in ‘browsing’ mode, they might not be psychologically ready to subscribe or buy.
If you’re looking to improve conversions on a squeeze page that only asks for their email address, your focus should be on improving the reason why they would want to sign up. Making your offer more compelling – something that will immediately spark their desire – should do it.
But if you’re selling a product, it’s possible that you need to do more to build trust, develop a relationship and prove your expertise.
Remember, the longer and deeper the relationship with the prospect, the more likely they are to buy from you.
No matter what you’re selling or how much you’re selling it for, there will be objections.
If I tried to sell $100 bills for $1, there would be objections (and you know what they are.)
Make a list of all the possible concerns your prospects might have.
And then address each one of those in your presentation / webpage / sales funnel.
People won’t buy from you if they have no need for your product, if they have no money to buy your product, if they’re not in a hurry, and if they don’t trust you.
There’s not a lot you can do about the first 2 items on that list.
You can create urgency by limiting the number of products to be sold or the duration of your sale.
So what makes people trust your website?
Several things:
If I were to give you a value proposition that reads like this…
“Revenue-focused sales automation and marketing effectiveness solutions unleash collaboration throughout the revenue cycle,”
…would you have a clue what I was talking about?
Because I sure don’t. It’s not useful to the person reading it, unless your goal is chase them off of your page. Then I suspect it’s highly effective.
Just remember, clarity if key. If they don’t understand exactly what you’re saying, they’re not going to convert.
Your goal is to get people to focus solely on the action you want them to take and nothing else. Take a look at your page for anything that might divert the visitor away from what you want them to do. Minimize distraction, unnecessary product options, links and extraneous information.
And ask yourself if there is anything else you can remove that is not contributing to the conversion.
Increasing your conversion rate isn’t hard, but it does take effort…
Effort that will be well-rewarded in increased sales and revenues long after you’re done making the necessary changes.
If you’re wondering why your landing pages aren’t making you as much money as you had hoped for, you might be using common landing page copywriting techniques the wrong way.
While the six copywriting techniques we’re about to cover have been proven to work, too many marketers use them in a way that cancels out their otherwise potent conversion power.
This really is too bad because your landing page could be raking in larger profits if you only paid closer attention to how you implement these proven techniques.
The key is to become aware that you’re using them the wrong way in the first place.
Storytelling is one of the most powerful landing page copywriting techniques you can use. Not only do you pull your reader into the scenario your offer addresses, you also create emotional urgency with your offer.
Awesome, right?
Well, sadly, too many marketers tell stories that are simply worthless.
They are duds.
They seem too good to be true. They show extreme conditions. They simply fail to convert.
What went wrong?
The stories most marketers tell in their landing pages fail to focus on putting a human face on the problem the reader is facing.
Instead, these low converting landing pages tend to present almost ‘too good to be true’ situations.
If you want your landing page stories to convert, take the most probable circumstances faced by your target audience members and base your stories on these.
These realistic stories are more believable because more of your audience members can relate to them.
Questions are very powerful ‘centering’ devices because they draw your prospects attention to one central concept or a small set of concepts. Questions help narrow and define the problems and situations your offer addresses.
If a question is well-defined, it is easier to present your solution and it is easier for the prospect to see the value in your solution.
To fix this problem, figure out the primary concern of your target audience members and pose relevant header questions.
When you’re talking to somebody, you normally change your tone of voice when you are trying to emphasize certain things. By the same token, text in bold or italics or larger, ‘special’ fonts tend to be noticed more.
To maximize the impact of special fonts when emphasizing key points in your landing page text, make sure you use them SPARINGLY.
Keep special fonts to a minimum so when you do emphasize certain words, they truly STAND OUT.
One of the most powerful selling tools you can use is social proof. People are more likely to buy whatever you are offering if they see that other people have had positive experiences with what you’re selling.
Pretty simple, right?
In fact, this is so simple that you’d think this would be hard to screw up.
Wrong. Marketers actually blow this all the time.
The key problem is RESTRAINT.
Make sure you only use REAL testimonials on your landing page.
Real testimonials are grounded in reality. This means there’s a mix of both positive and not-so-positive elements in the testimonials.
Above all else, use testimonials from happy customers who got results that are not outliers.
Otherwise, your testimonials might seem too good to be true and won’t carry much weight with people you’re trying to convince.
One of the most common, yet powerful, copywriting tips you’ll ever come across is to write out benefits of your product, not features.
People buy based on benefits not features. Benefits solve their problems. Benefits are easier to understand. Features, on the other hand, tend to degenerate into so much sales talk and technical jargon.
Your landing page shouldn’t read like a laundry list or check list. Instead it should be focused on a very small set of benefits which were strategically selected to appeal to your target readers. To figure out which benefits to focus on, ask your target audience members.
Of course, you need to cross reference this information with the landing pages of your competitors to make sure you’re operating in the right ballpark.
.png)
One of the most useful copywriting conversion tricks you could ever learn involves pairing a call to action to a specific benefit the reader wants.
For example, instead of relying on the tired and weak “Click Here” try using “To finally get rid of the high costs and headaches of random outsourcing, enter your email here to take your labor sourcing results to the next level!” See the difference?
Well, marketers tend to blow this technique when they end up listing a ton of benefits with the call to action. Not only does this result in horrible run on sentences, this dilutes the conversion power of your call to action.
The reader is simply too confused to take any action at this point.
The solution?
Focus on one central benefit and pair that with the conversion action.
This is quite risky because your target audience might be looking for a number of benefits instead of just one.
This is where split testing comes in. Test different landing pages with different action-tied benefits and see which pages produce the best results with your traffic.
Make no mistake about it, the landing page copywriting techniques we’ve just covered can turn your landing pages into quick winners.
However, you have to use them the right way. Avoid the common implementation pitfalls outlined and truly take your landing page conversion rates to the next level!
If you are a marketer of any description you will know that traffic is the lifeblood of any business.
Simply put: No traffic, no business!
A lot of marketers get so caught up in tracking their traffic stats that they forget to make the most of that traffic. Tell you what, traffic is worthless if your visitors aren’t buying what you’re selling, joining your list, or taking some other important action.
So how do you make the most of your traffic and monetize it?
First off, make sure you are indeed bringing targeted traffic to your site. You don’t want just anybody visiting your website or hitting your sales/squeeze pages. Do this and you’ll wonder why you’re getting a lot of visitors but no sign-ups or sales!
So, whatever methods you are using to drive traffic to your website, make sure you have your targeting dialled in and you know your ideal customer is to make the most out of your website traffic.
And secondly, use this little “traffic checklist” to monetize that traffic…
The first thing you need to do is figure out the primary goal for EACH page of your website. Depending on the page, this primary goal (and monetization strategy) might involve getting your visitor to:
Here are two best practices when it comes to monetizing traffic:
Next…
Now you need to design each page of your website around your primary goal.
For example:
Next…
Despite your best efforts, people are going to hit the back button on your site and bail out without joining your list, without buying a product, and without clicking on any ads.
That doesn’t mean that they’re poor-quality visitors who’ll never buy anything from you. Instead, it could mean they just didn’t see the right offer, or they’re in a hurry, or you didn’t sufficiently persuade them to take action.
For example, redirect your exit traffic to a highly enticing lead magnet so that you can get people on your list before they leave your site. For best results, create multiple lead magnets so that you can offer the lead magnet that is directly related to the page the visitor was viewing before they tried to leave the site.
For instance, if your visitor was reading a blog article about how to set up a Facebook ad campaign, then offer them a lead magnet (such as a report) that gives in-depth instruction and “done for you” ad templates.
TIP: Don’t know how to redirect exit traffic to another page or create an exit pop? No problem. You can search for “exit traffic scripts” in your favorite search engine, or you can use a service such as Thrive Leads or Conversion Gorilla.
Many folks will say that they don’t like exit pops or redirects, especially marketers, but the simple fact is, they work but use them sparingly.
And finally…
One of the best ways to monetize your traffic is to test and track all parts of the process to find out what really works.
Specifically:
Let’s wrap things up…
So there you have it – a quick and effective checklist for making the most money with your traffic.
To recap:
As you can see, this “traffic checklist” is pretty simple, but very effective! So put this plan to work for you today to start making more money from all your traffic.
If you want to make more money with your business, one good place to start is on your order forms.
Think about it…
You have a prospect with a credit card already in their hand. They’re in a buying mood.
So how do you create a backend or upsell offer that gets your prospects clicking the “Yes” button? Like this…
The very first thing you need to do is make sure any upsell offer is tightly related to the main offer. In fact, not only should it be tightly related, ideally your upsell should enhance the use or enjoyment of your main offer.
Now you can do the same thing, no matter what you’re selling. For example:
In other words, don’t just toss any ol’ offer in front of your prospects. Be sure your upsell and main offer go together like… well, like hamburgers and fries. J
Next up…
Dropping a related offer in front of your prospect is great. But turning that offer into an irresistible deal is even better.
Take the fast food example again. If you order a burger with a small fries and drink, the clerk will ask you if you want to “biggy size” the order for just a small extra charge. The deal is irresistible. You get a LOT more food for just a tiny bit more money.
For example:
“I usually charge $997 per month for this sort of coaching. But as a valued member of my new copywriting club, you’ll get a special price of just $497 per month for this same high-quality coaching…”
Next…
You’ve got an eager prospect sitting in front of your order form with their credit card in hand. Now is not the time to put another long sales letter in front of them. They’re eager to buy. Putting another wall of text in front of them might just have them hitting the back button and abandoning the order form!
So what you need to do now is simply focus on the benefits of the upsell offer. In fact, your upsell may be nothing more than a benefit-driven headline, a list of benefits, and a call to action.
TIP: As always, test to find out for sure what your audience responds to the best. Test different headlines. Test your bulleted list of benefits. You might even test short-form copy against a short sales video.
Next…
The next thing for you to remember is that you’ve already sold your prospect on purchasing the main offer. They’ve already agreed to whatever price you’re charging.
Let me give you an example…
Let’s suppose you’re selling a home study course for $99, with an upsell offer for $25 for an app:
When it comes time to ask for the order, do NOT do this: “Would you like to add this offer to your order for a total of $125 for the course and app?”
Suddenly that sounds like a lot. The prospect is going to start second-guessing their purchase. And you could lose the entire sale.
Instead, focus on the upsell price only: “Would you like to add this app to your order for just $24 more?”
Ahhhh… that’s better. That sounds doable. And since the prospect is already planning on spending $99, that extra $24 doesn’t sound like any big deal.
It’s all in how you frame it. 🙂
Next…
Nothing gets people clicking the order button like a real sense of urgency. And one great way to create this sense of urgency is by making your upsell offer scarce.
For example, you might create a one-time offer. This is an offer that’s only available right now. If the prospect doesn’t grab it, they won’t be able to get it later. Or if the product is available elsewhere, the prospect will need to pay full price.
A good example of this is when you go shopping on a site like Omaha Steaks. If you spend a certain amount, such as $50, you’ll get a list of “add on specials.”
These are tremendous deals that you can ONLY take advantage of while you’re on the order form. You can still buy the steaks themselves later, but you’ll pay through the nose to do it.
For example:
“Special one-time offer: add this meal-planning app to your order right now, and you’ll get it for 50% off the regular price! If you leave this page, this offer disappears for good… so click here now to grab your discount before it’s gone!”
Next…
The good copywriting rules apply to your upsell just as they do to your main offer. And that means you can’t just drop the order link in front of your prospects and expect them to click it. Instead, you need to provide a strong call to action. This means you tell prospects what to do next, and give them a good reason to do it.
For example:
Click here to add this app to your order – and remember, this special offer disappears when you leave this page, so order now!
Those should be the only two options on the page. Prospects will either add to their order and continue making the purchase, or they’ll skip your offer and just stick with their original order.
Now here’s a little trick you might consider testing and using…
Phrase your “yes” and “no” options in a way that helps persuade people to click the “yes” options.
For example, let’s suppose you’re selling some sort of weight-loss information. Your option buttons might look like this:
“Yes, I want to get ready for the beach!”
“No, I don’t want to get rid of my love handles. J”
See how that works?
The “yes” option is positive and provides a benefit. The “no” option forces the prospect to agree with something that they probably don’t really agree with. That’s going to make them stop and reconsider your offer.
Here’s another example:
“Yes, I want to save money on heating and cooling bills!”
“No, I don’t want to save money.”
Another:
“Yes, I want to boost my conversion rates and make more money!”
“No, I don’t want to make more money.”
One more…
“Yes, I want to run a new marathon PR!”
“No, I don’t mind running as slow as a turtle. J”
And finally…
If you followed all the tips above, then you have a prospect who’s as ready as she’ll ever be to place her order. At this point, your goal is to make it as easy as possible for her to place that order and grab the upsell.
Here are the dos and don’ts to follow:
Now let’s wrap things up…
You’ve heard the saying, “strike while the iron is hot.” When it comes to sales, the iron is about as hot as can be when you have a prospect filling out an order form. That’s why it’s a great time to “strike” by offering an upsell offer they can’t refuse. So boost your sales by inserting upsells on your order forms today – and boost your conversions using the seven surefire tips you just discovered!
