Jason’s Tips
Using Upsells And Backend Sales To Increase Profits
Once you have managed to persuade someone to buy one of your products or services, you should have a good sales funnel in place to try to increase the minimum order value (MOV) as this will make it much easier to be profitable if you are going to use paid traffic.
Then your sales funnels work to add profit to your business.
So, let’s look at a couple of components of a sales funnel which can have a big impact on your profit margins; upsells and backend offers.
Giving More Value with One Time Offers
One time offers are a great way to increase the money you make from each offer. You can get people to agree to purchase a product from you at a lower price that’s only available right that second, making the sale a bit easier.
This is a good way to increase the amount of your sale since they’re already in buying mode. A One Time Offer is shown right after the customer clicks the Buy button. But before they checkout, the OTO is presented for them to consider.
Another great way to offer additional value is to trade OTOs with other marketers. For example, if you have a product that complements another marketer’s product (and vice versa), then each of you would present the other’s products to your customers as the OTOs, either sharing the revenue or giving the owner 100% in exchange for a reciprocal arrangement.
If you can’t find someone who will JV with you on an OTO offer, you can try to find someone with an affiliate program who will allow you to offer their product as an OTO at a discount. Simply tell them you expect a good volume of sales and you’d like to offer their product at a slight discount.
You probably won’t be able to land a deal like this unless you can prove you can do a large volume of business, because it would mean setting up a special sales page (or at least setting up a coupon code that could be easily tracked with your affiliate ID).
The second could be a coaching program that takes the ideas of the product and offers them in a one-on-one coaching system. And the third could be a turnkey solution that goes along with the product you sold. For example, if you’ve sold an eBook about making money with AdSense, you could offer a package of AdSense templates as the OTO.
Membership sites can also have OTOs. When someone joins your membership site, you could offer them an upgrade to a higher access level. Let’s say you have two access levels – silver and gold.
The silver level typically costs $50 per month, and the gold level costs $100 per month. You could offer anyone who joins at the silver level an upgrade to gold for only $25 more, at $75 per month – a $25 savings from the normal gold level price. You can also offer one-on-one coaching as an OTO for membership sites. Since memberships are already a monthly fee, coaching is a perfect complement to many membership sites.
Make sure you test your one time offers just like you test any part of your sales copy or site performance. Replace the offers and see which ones convert better and then tweak that offer until it performs as well as it can.
Have A Plan for Your Backend Sales
Every good marketer knows how important it is to increase the lifetime value of the customer. It’s much cheaper to make a sale to a previous customer than it is to get a new one onboard. The cost of acquiring new customers can be high but getting more money out of existing customers won’t cost you a penny.
Your eBook could discuss what a blog is, how to set one up, and how to make money from it. Your backend sales could come from affiliate items (if you don’t feel like taking the product creation route again) or a new eBook, membership site, or video/audio package you sell.
Whenever you first start selling online, always think of complementary topics you can tack on as a backend. For our example, your backend sales could be about social networking on other networks like Instagram, Twitter etc..
After they’ve begun seeing success, your backend sales could focus on more paid methods of marketing, such as AdWords. You progress your offers with your audience like steppingstones, moving from the first logical starting point to a more advanced stage.
Personal coaching can be expensive, sometimes costing thousands of dollars per month. A lot of marketers offer this as a backend strategy, giving them the potential to significantly increase the return on their investment (ROI) of acquiring the prospect.
If you take care to create backend offers that add value to their needs and which are of top quality, they’ll continue buying from you. If you promote anything and everything just for the sake of cashing in, they’ll lose trust in you.
Just make sure you don’t set yourself up for limited profits by using a single product without implementing a backend strategy that will work to increase your ROI repeatedly. You’re building a business, not dabbling in a few hit or miss sales.
7 Habits That Lead To A Strong Success Mindset
If you want to succeed at anything in life, not many people will realise that the first step to success starts between their ears with what they think because what and how they think will determine how they act in a certain situation and if you don’t have an abundance mindset and the accompanying habits, your chances of success will certainly be much less than someone who does think this way.
A success habit is always evolving.
1 – Make sure what you want is really what you want
Don’t do something just because you should. Check in with yourself every 30 days to make sure that the path you’re on is the one you want to stay on.
Make sure you’re not abandoning something out of fear of failure. There’s a big difference between doing what’s right for you and doing something that feels easier.
2 – Begin every day with motivation
These are things that work to get you to take the next step. For example, if you need to go for a run to clear your head and get some time to think, then do that.
Starting off with motivational reminders is like eating breakfast in the morning – it helps fuel you throughout your day. You also want to spend a minute or two looking back over your day and being proud of what you did accomplish.
3 – Don’t chase success to the point that you stop dreaming
Your success begins with an idea, a hope – a dream. If you go all out, driving hard, keeping your nose to the grindstone, you can reach the point where your mindset becomes fixed.
All you can see is the end result rather than the journey. Remember that on your way to getting what you define as success, you will never have these days filled with learning curves again.
If your goal is to live on the beach in a nice home, make sure your routinely revisit those plans to keep you inspired with your action taking.
4 – Make sure you leave room to grow
You need to have a success mindset that keeps you learning even when you feel you’ve made it.
Seek out new resources online, book, new niche leaders who teach things from a different perspective – anything that helps round your education out.
5 – Answer to someone else
You want to have someone in your life that you’re accountable to. Make time to meet with someone who can help keep you on track for reaching your success.
Sometimes you won’t have a specific person in your life capable of doing that. You can turn to a paid life coach or even join a forum of like-minded, positive individuals all striving for their own success.
6 – Learn to trust yourself
When you go after what you want in life, there will always be someone waiting to tell you that something is either a good idea or a bad idea.
You’ll feel it as knots in the pit of your stomach or as a sense of unease. When you begin trusting yourself in these situations, it helps you develop a sense of self-confidence and strength.
7 – Understand that roadblocks are going to happen
You have to determine ahead of time that you won’t give up – you won’t surrender a growth mindset to a fixed one. Roadblocks can often be used as character builders.
They can strengthen your resolve and help you learn to become more resourceful as you find another way to do what you want to get done. If you become too comfortable with your efforts, you often don’t achieve the ultimate success that you’re after.
Whenever you do something that you start to feel a bit of shame over (like quitting on a project), ask yourself if you’re doing it because you don’t believe enough in yourself to succeed.
If that ends up being the case, take the task and break it up into micro-sized mini goals that you can work on to see if you’re capable of making progress that way. Sometimes, it’s the simple fact that a project seems too big that ruins many of the best plans.
It’s also a good idea to surround yourself with action-taking, positive people. Take inventory of the kinds of people you’re currently surrounded with. Do they always complain about everything?
Do you find yourself commiserating with people stuck in the same boat as you? If so, jump out and swim to shore – because that boat is sinking fast, and you don’t want to be swallowed up by the pity party they’re throwing for themselves.
Seek out motivational experts whose thoughts align with what you find inspiring. Tune in to their messages or read their books daily as if you’re taking a vitamin designed to prevent illness.
Over time, you’re going to become someone who others look to for support, and you’ll notice they come to you with fixed mindsets. They’ll be attracted to the positivity you project. Make sure you turn their mind around, rather than letting their limited thoughts infect you.
By the way, if you want to learn more about this, download this free report, How To Develop A Strong Mindset which includes this article and much more information.
Just click on the Featured Resource image below.
Which Type Of Blog Should You Create To Make A Profit?
So, you have decided that you want to make money online and want to start with blogging. That’s great but do you know what type of blog you should be creating if you want to monetise it?
And if you have an existing business, why not incorporate a blog into that too to boost your earnings 😊
There are several different types of blogs out there. Not all will earn you money… and even those that you think will generate an income, might not – if you commit a few cardinal errors.
This article will shed light on a few types of blogs and what you can do with them. Instead of pigeonholing the blogs into specific categories, it’s important that you view them based on their income-generating possibilities rather than the purpose for which they’re built.
OK, let’s crack on…
Personal Blogs
These types of blogs have very low income-generating potential. Generally, they’re nothing more than online ramblings where you write about your thoughts and feelings on what’s going on in your life, etc.
For example, a lady who has a personal blog may decide to write about make-up tips and so on and start promoting cosmetics, skin care products, etc. It’s possible – but difficult to make money with this type of blog.
Niche-Specific Blogs
These are the most common types of blogs which are created to target a specific audience. If you wish to do affiliate marketing or sell your own products, you’ll want to create these niche blogs.
It’s important to get an umbrella domain for the market while you niche down. What does that mean?
Let’s assume you wish to create a blog on ‘homemade dog food’, buying a domain that’s too closely related to the niche such as DogFoodZone.com will stifle your growth. What if you wish to blog about dog training in future?
Instead, you may buy a domain such as HealthyPaws101.com (this domain is probably taken, but you get the idea).
Well, with the HealthyPaws101 domain, you can start blogging about puppy training. It will be a new category on your blog. As time goes by and you start going deep into each different and related category, you’ll have an authority site.
This is how authority sites are built. They’re just a niche sites that grew big.
Journey-Type Sites
These sites are similar to personal blogs, but they have a purpose here. Let’s assume you’re overweight and decide to go on a weight loss journey. So, you start a blog to journal your progress and let people know what you’re doing.
When you have progress, you can share what tools and methods you’re using. If you’re following a program such as P90X, and losing weight, you can share your affiliate link to the Beachbody website and make commissions when others sign up.
Herein lies the crux of this type of blog – You MUST be making progress and succeeding for people to trust you.
It doesn’t matter if it’s an online marketing blog or a keto blog or even a calisthenics blog. You MUST have results for people to trust you. Your success and progress will spur them to trust your journey and do what you’re doing – and buy what you’re using.
Curation Blogs
These are blogs with different topics that you’ll curate content from different sites.
Beginners would do well to steer clear of these types of sites. You’re better off targeting one niche and building a brand and an audience.
Guest Post Blogs
Similar to curation, but you’ll be vetting the different guest posts and only posting what’s relevant to your niche. This is more of a technique than a type of blog per se. Some blogs are totally made up of guest posts… while others have lots of content created by the blog owner and the guest posts are also thrown into the mix.
You’ll need to decide if you need guest posts to supplement your content marketing efforts or if you’d rather have a blog where all content is proprietary (with no need for outbound links).
Besides these types of blogs, there are blogs that are dedicated to teaching… or the pursuit of a certain lifestyle, etc.
The profitability of a blog is dictated by its ability to sell. You’ll do that with affiliate links, product links, ads, and also build a list that you can re-market to in future.
While you don’t need all these components in place, you definitely need the list building and the links that translate to sales. Your blog only makes money when people buy from or through you.
Create a blog that people love because of its value… and they’ll trust you and buy whatever you recommend.
“Successful blogging is not about one time hits. It’s about building a loyal following over time.” – David Aston
4 Ways To Increase Sales Right NOW
Are things not going the way you’d like? Want more sales? Feeling kind of helpless?
You’re not alone. As marketers, sooner or later we’ve all been there.
I’m sure you have heard of the phrase “fail forward” and it is a good mantra to stick to when running an online business (in fact, any business really).
Don’t let fear of failure stop you from taking action because that is a sure fire way to fail.
OK, with that being said, here are 4 ways to increase sales and increase your income right now.
You might balk at one or two of them. All I can say is try them before you pass judgment.
1: Get More Affiliates
And I mean LOTS more affiliates. How much time do you spend creating products? Or getting new people onto your list? This is also how much time you should be spending on recruiting more affiliates, and especially GOOD affiliates.
If you can afford it, I highly recommend getting an affiliate manager. If you can’t yet afford it, then become your own affiliate manager. Watch launches and see which affiliates do well, as well as which product owners are building a list that’s perfect for your offer.
Recruit bloggers who are list building. Ask your list and especially your product buyers if they want to be affiliates.
Then cultivate relationships with these people. Don’t just approach them and forget them. Send them personal emails, comment on their blogposts and act as though you are friends, because that’s the best way to MAKE friends.
And don’t discount little affiliates, either. I once had a new affiliate who made exactly ONE sale. However, that sale was to a super affiliate who contacted me, asked to promote my product, and sold 420 copies in one week. You just never know.
2: Grow Your Lists
Yes, this is obvious, isn’t it? We all know that the money is in the list, right?
Well, I know marketers who aren’t aggressively list building, and they wonder why they’re not making sales.
On a typical list, you’ll have attrition. And I don’t just mean people unsubscribing, either. The person who is hot to buy your product today will have forgotten who you are in 6 months, or they moved on to another interest, or whatever. You have to be continuously building your lists – all of them.
Do more guest posting, more webinars for other people’s lists, more JV’s and anything else that will further fill your lists with prospects.
3: Increase The Number Of Marketing Messages You Send To Your Lists And Prospects
If you’re placing ads, place more and better ads. If you have a Facebook group, send them more marketing messages. If you’re doing webinars, do more webinars for your lists.
And by all means send more marketing messages to your lists. A lot of people are scared silly to email their list more than once or twice per week, but here’s what happens when your list doesn’t hear from you every single day:
They forget about you.
They even forget who you are and why they subscribed to your list.
Yes, you will get a few more unsubscribes from your list when you email daily, or even twice per day.
But that’s okay, because you will also keep the rest of your list engaged and interested, and you will likely double or perhaps even triple your sales.
Email daily. Email twice a day if you can keep it interesting. But only do this sparingly and if you are email marketing correctly i.e. you are providing value upfront before ever promoting anything to them.
Some marketers take this to extremes during a launch and do a “crush campaign” which really hammers your poor subscribers when they get 5+ emails the same day about the same promotion. I don’t treat my list like this but there are those who do; I normally unsubscribe when I get hammered like this because I don’t think the marketer really cares about their subscribers by doing this.
4: Raise Your Prices
If your sales page is converting well, then raise your prices and see what happens.
Even if you wind up converting at a lower rate, you’ll likely still be making more money because your prices are higher. Consider a $20 product converting at 7%, versus that same product priced at $35 and converting at 5%. You’re looking at $140 versus $175 per 100 visitors, or a $350 increase for every 1,000 visitors. It adds up.
When you raise your prices, some of your steady customers will stop buying. But you’ll also get new customers who want to pay for quality, and you will make more money.
When marketer Dan Kennedy advises any business owner on how to increase revenue, the first thing he tells the owner is to raise prices. Nearly every time the business owner will balk and tell Dan it’s a terrible idea. And nearly every time it results in a MAJOR boost in revenue.
And there you have it – 4 ways to increase your sales and revenue right now. These might not be for the timid, but I can tell you from experience that they work.
Becoming A More Effective Affiliate Marketer
If you are reading this post, you must already realise that affiliate marketing is one of the quickest and most lucrative ways to start an online business.
But it isn’t always as straightforward as it seems and we’re going to look at a couple of affiliate marketing strategies that you can use to boost your effectiveness as an affiliate marketer and these are based around the concept of SEO (search engine optimisation).
This may sound like affiliate marketing for beginners, but I reckon most would benefit from these 2 tips.
Sound good? Let’s dive right in…
Basic Keyword Research For Affiliate Marketers
As an affiliate marketer, you want to learn the best ways to use keywords to help build your business. But if you don’t have any experience working with keywords, it can be a little confusing.
These helpful tips should assist you in being able to learn the best keywords and how to use them. First, you need the right tools to help you gather the best keywords.
If you’re just starting out, there are some great free and paid keyword tools you can use. One of the good free ones is Google AdWords. You can also use tools like Wordtracker, SEMrush, SpyFu, Ubersuggest, Wordze or Keyword Discovery.
Some of these have all free access, some free but limited usage offers and others are paid.
The Google AdWords Keyword Tool is very easy to use. When you pull up the screen, type the word or phrase you’re thinking of using on your website or blog. For example, if you’re selling acne products, you’d type the word acne in the box where you list the word or phrase.
When the words come up, you’ll see: acne, cystic acne treatment, adult acne treatment, best acne treatment, etc. The tool will show you if the competition is high, medium or low and what the volume of global and local monthly searches is.
One helpful tip is that you also want to cover other terms people would use to search for acne. To get other words people might be using, you can pull up an online thesaurus and type in acne.
You’ll get a response of: blemishes, pimple, skin inflammation etc. – and you can put those words in the keyword tool and see how they rank.
These are words that people use when they’re looking for something but aren’t completely sure what they want. For example, someone might type in the keyword ‘shoes.’
When you’re doing keyword research, you also want to look for exact matches. An exact match is how it sounds. Your keyword or keywords exactly match what someone has typed into the search engine.
For example, if someone types in ‘black lamp’ and you have that as your keyword, it will lead them to your website or blog or ad.
While ‘play guitar’ is an example of a keyword phrase, an example using longtail keywords would be ‘learn how to play guitar’ or ‘how to play guitar notes’ or ‘how to play guitar for kids’ etc.
Longtail keywords are important because you can get more traffic because you rank well – and you’ll end up with higher conversions.
OK, now let’s look at some ways to optimise your site with some basic SEO settings and we’ll assume that you are using WordPress to build your blog or website.
Basic Search Engine Optimisation For Affiliate Blogs
Some affiliates set up a blog and create lots of content – without ever learning the ins and outs of search engine optimisation. As a site owner, whether you have your own products or promote someone else’s, it’s important that you know SEO.
Make sure the settings allow search engines to index you. Inside the dashboard, you have the option to block access to your site by the search engines. This is under Settings and Privacy, so do a quick check to see if it’s set up correctly.
In the Writing category under Settings, go to the bottom where it says Update Services. Find a good up-to-date Ping list and paste those URLs into this area. That helps other sites know when you have new content.
Categorize your blogs and deliver a good navigation system. When a visitor lands on your website, you want it to be sticky. Sticky means they stay around for awhile, not clicking out after they read one blog post.
Go to the Settings section again and click on Permalinks. You want this option to be Post Name. This means that after your domain and the word blog, the URL will have the name of the post, like this: yourdomain.com/blog/keyword-relevant-blog-title.
Use both broad and longtail keywords in your posts and pages. Some affiliates make the mistake of trying to rank for the broadest keywords in their niche, like “health” or “diet.” It’s much easier to rank well in search engines when you use longtail keywords.
A longtail keyword phrase would be something like this: “the best diet after pregnancy.” Over time, as your blog becomes an authority figure, you may find that you’re also ranking for the broad terms as well.
Use a Google sitemap plugin. This plugin helps Google have quick access to a sitemap, rather than you having to manually create a sitemap that helps guide their robots or spiders around your domain.
Consider an SEO optimiser plugin to give your blog a boost. There are many plugins that help you maximize your blog posts on autopilot. Do some research and see what works best for your needs.
Take Massive Action And Transform Your Life
You Really Can Become Anything You Want To Be
Do you remember when you were younger, and everyone was telling you that you could be anything you wanted to be? It’s strange because many of those people will have turned out to be hypocrites. Tell them now that you want to be the next Bill Gates and they’ll probably tell you to stop daydreaming and get a job. Nice.
But the fact is that they were right the first time. It actually is possible to be anything you want to be and the amazing thing is that it’s easier today than it ever has been. Let’s take a look at why that is…
How To Be Whatever You Want To Be… Tomorrow
Actually, being whatever you want to be is incredibly easy. Want to be a writer? Then start writing tonight. Congratulations! You are now a writer! Want to be a swimmer? Then start swimming. Congratulations! You are now a swimmer!
Once you realize this, things get better right away. You don’t have to make your day job ‘who you are’ because you can make your hobby ‘who you are’ – or your side project. It doesn’t matter if you hate your work and it’s not satisfying as long as you’re doing something else that gives you hope and purpose.
Making It Big
And if you try hard enough, then eventually you will be able to go professional with what you do. The reason is that if you write enough, you will eventually learn how to get good at it and how to find clients. Ever heard of the ‘10,000 hour rule’?
It means that you can put 10,000 hours into anything and become a master of it that way. Do the thing you love every night then and you will eventually be great at it.
What if the opportunity to make it big never comes? Well in that case you can make the opportunity.
And who cares even if it’s successful? Now you’re a writer or a singer and lots of people have seen your work. So honestly… you really can be anything you want to be!
Here’s How You Do Something Amazing And Change The World
Ever wanted to change the world? Come on, be honest…
Most of us on some level would probably like it if we could make a big impact on the world or do something amazing at least but we’re too afraid too because we don’t think that it’s something we can possible accomplish.
But what you maybe don’t realize is that ‘the others’ are people who were once in the exact same position as you but who had the nerve to try anyway. Everyday people like you and me change the world all the time and believe it or not, there’s actually a formula for doing it!
Define Your Goal And Shout About It
The first step to changing the world is to define what it is you want to achieve and then own it. Most of us will never change the world because we don’t think that we’re capable of it and so we keep it to ourselves.
But as soon as you start acknowledging what you really want to achieve and you start going for it, then you will be able to define your plan of action and you will get attention from people who will be moved by your passion, ambition and dedication.
Big ideas will often get attention and a following much quicker than small ones. And that’s how you move on to the next stage.
Find Powerful Allies
This is the part that most people don’t consider. Sure, you might lack the funding or the authority to change the world, but if you have a good enough idea… then you can find someone who does have the power to.
This is what Palmer Luckey did when he decided he wanted to make virtual reality a reality (ironic though that sounds). First he admitted to himself that that’s what he wanted.
Then he shouted about it on Kickstarter and got a huge backing and then he took the idea to powerful people like John Carmack and Mark Zuckerberg. They gave him the funding, the resources and the knowhow and now the Oculus Rift is poised to genuinely change the world.
He started in his basement and he got to where he is in just a few years… and you can do the exact same thing!
The 80/20 Principle – Knowing Where To Put Your Effort In
Going big is often the best way to ensure your success – create enough output, take enough chances and eventually you’ll be sure to have a hit or ten under your belt which for many of us will be more than enough.
But while working hard enough is often the secret to almost guaranteed success, you mustn’t also Underestimate The Power Of Working Smart.
What It Means To Work Smart
What it means to work smart is basically to be strategic in the way that you approach any problem or any ambition. In turn, this means approaching your aims in such a way that you will be able to cut corners and accomplish the most with the minimal effort.
Putting in 10,000 hours is a great way to become an expert – but the quality of those 10,000 hours also makes a big difference.
The 80/20 Rule
The 80/20 rule, also sometimes know as the ‘Pareto Principle’, basically states that whatever it is that you do, 20% of your effort will yield 80% of your success.
So if you sell 100 products, chances are that 20 of them (or even fewer) will make up the vast majority of your cash.
The moral of this story is that if you ‘throw enough paint at the wall’ some is bound to stick.
In the case of a business providing a service, it will often be that the company makes the vast majority of its money from just a few clients while the others serve as nothing but a distraction really. In other cases, it might be that a small number of clients cause the vast majority of the problems.
In such a case, it would be wise for that business to lose the 20% causing the 80% of the problem and even to get rid of some of those clients that aren’t bringing much to the table.
Instead, focus purely on the ones that are generating the most income and actually life will be easier and you’ll earn much more. Then you can put in huge effort and see huge rewards for both them and you!
The Art Of Failing Fast
If you want to achieve a lot in life, sometimes the secret is to stop trying so hard and to put out lower quality work.
Wait… what?
That’s not what they told you at school right? And it probably goes against pretty much everything you’ve been brought up to believe as well. But in fact it is very often the case when it comes to really being successful so let’s take a look at why.
What It Means To Fail Fast
What I’m talking about here is ‘failing fast’. In business, this means creating your ‘minimal viable product’ or your ‘MVP’ and releasing that as quickly as possible. So a company will create a product that is really sub-par in many ways and that certainly could be better and then they’ll release ten more.
In the same time another company that doesn’t take the fail fast approach might only release a single product that’s much better quality.
Well it comes down to the fact that these ‘minimal viable products’ require smaller investment and allow you to get something out the door faster. That means that you can beat the competition to market and it means that you don’t lose out on such a big investment as you otherwise might do. More importantly, it means you can quickly release something else again next week as well.
As a result you’ll be able to rapidly test the market and get an idea for whether or not people want to buy your product. If you get lots of interest and lots of sales then you know that it’s worth your while to invest even more time and even more effort into that particular version because there’s a market there to buy it. If you don’t get any interest? You move on, having taking the minimal financial hit.
Meanwhile, the company that invested all their time, effort and money on creating one fantastic product might risk that product failing and costing them huge amounts, possibly ending the business.
Applying It To Life
The ‘fail fast’ technique can also be applied to other areas of your life. Basically this means releasing a ‘beta’ version into the public and you can do this in all kinds of situations.
Some people will look the other way, but when someone finally smiles back, then you can go over and invest the time.
See what other areas you can apply the fail fast approach to!
How Playing The Numbers Game Can Help You To Succeed At Everything
Want to increase your likelihood at success? Then simply try more often.
In gambling this isn’t a good idea because it means you’ll lose a hundred times before you win and go broke. But in life things are different. In life, you can ‘fail’ thousands of times and bounce back stronger than you were before… But you only need one win. If you ‘play the numbers’ then, you can effectively rig yourself to succeed no matter what you do.
In Dating
I have a friend who applies this logic to dating. He’s a funny guy and every time we go on a night out, he will set off to approach lots of women.
If you’ve done the math, then 9/10 fails means that on a typical number he’ll succeed with one or two women… which means he’s basically getting more action than all of us put together. Now that’s success!
In Making Money
You can also apply this to making money, as I once did.
When Kindle first came out, there was something of a ‘gold rush’ as people clamored to upload e-books to Amazon. I started out by uploading a book or two and it got a couple of downloads a month – I was happy, if underwhelmed.
Can you guess what I did? For one year I uploaded an e-book or two every single day and by the end I had hundreds of e-books in the store. All of them got at least two downloads a day and two of them went massive… the result? A huge ‘passive income’ that would pay my wages travelling for the whole subsequent year.
The moral of the story? You make your own luck. Play the game enough and you will win and make it big!
Using Personalisation To Get Higher Conversions
It’s amazing what a little personalisation can do.
Quick example: You go into a store looking to buy something. A salesperson helps you, but you leave without making a purchase. You go back a week later, and the salesperson greets you by calling you by name.
How do you feel? Maybe respected, appreciated and memorable? And do you want to do business with someone who cares enough to remember your name? Of course you do; it makes you feel special doesn’t it?
Personalisation – when used properly – can double your conversions.
Here are 10 ideas on how to personalise not just words, but actual images – and how you might use these ideas in your own business…
1: Inactive Customers Or Subscribers
Re-engage with customers and even subscribers who are no longer active.
For example, for customers who haven’t made a purchase in 90 days, or subscribers who haven’t clinked a link in a month, send them a photo of you in front of a whiteboard looking sad.
The whiteboard has a simple mathematical equation with your business name, minus their name and a frowny face, like this:
Your Business Name – Your customer’s name = ☹
2: New Customers And Subscribers
Create life-long customers and communities by taking the time to welcome someone when they join you. For example, you might send them a picture of you holding a sign that says, “Welcome Paul!”
Is it a little cheesy? Perhaps, but it does work so why not give it a go?
3: Product Sales
When your customers buy a product that you are shipping out, keep them engaged by sending them an email with a picture of their package.
This keeps them excited and tells them it’s on the way.
You could even do this with a digital product such as a course. Most courses will have a generic welcome video but you could easily personalise this and welcome them to the course by name. How cool is that?
4: Webinar Attendance
Get people to show up for your webinars by sending them a personalised reminder email in the form of a photo of a handwritten note, or of you standing next to a whiteboard with the written words, “Are you coming to the webinar, Joan?”
Once again, this takes a little effort (but not much) and it really does make a difference.
5: Cart Abandonment
If someone goes to buy one of your products or services but doesn’t check out, you should be following up with them as soon as possible to try to save the sale.
Send out a photo of an empty box with their name on it, such as, “Order for Bob Smith.”
Remember that you don’t know why they abandoned the cart; it could be that their internet connection dropped, doorbell rang, any number of reasons that had nothing to do with your product or service so you lose nothing by following up.
6: Text Messages
If you use text messages for following up with customers, how about adding an image of a newspaper that features their name and the reason for the follow up?
Guaranteed you’ll have their attention.
Also, text messages and instant messaging services just feel more personal than email so if you aren’t using them in your business, perhaps it’s time you looked into adding them to your arsenal.
7: Customer Anniversaries
Send out a personalised image that contains congratulations on their anniversary – perhaps the anniversary of purchasing a product, subscribing to your list, joining your membership site, etc.
You’ll make them feel special and important.
8: Upsells
This is a brilliant idea that can put serious money in your pocket almost immediately – send out an image letting your customer know they forgot something.
Remember it’s much easier to convince someone who has already bought from you once than it is to convince someone who hasn’t bought from you yet so it makes sense to try to increase the average order value as soon as possible.
9: Certificates
Do you offer any kind of courses or online training?
Send out personalised and official looking certificates of completion with their name, the training level achieved, the date, signatures and seal.
You could also use gamification in your courses too.
If they do that, they are more likely to get results, and if they get results, they are much more likely to buy from you again!
10: Online Order Confirmation
When someone places an order, send them a photo of you and your team (if you have one) with a sign that welcomes them by name. It might say something like, “Welcome to the family, Aaron.” Make sure everyone in the photo looks especially happy.
Good question. The answer is, you do – if you get PicSnippets.
PicSnippets creates personalised images for marketing, sales and customer follow-up. You can create your PicSnippet and use it on nearly any platform such as ClickFunnels, ManyChat, Convertri and more.
Just go to PicSnippets.com and register today.
OK, so there are 10 ways you can use personalisation to boost conversions and if you want some other strategies to boost your conversion then grab a free Conversion Boost report by clicking on the “Featured Resource” below.
Target Marketing – A Quick Case Study
We talk about targeting the right people for your product, but just how valuable is it to know your audience?
Well, it is of critical importance to the life of your business and can have a substantial effect on your profits and whether you even get off the ground in the first place!
And, even worse, if you are using paid media such as FB or Google ads you will be wasting some serious money by not targeting the right audience.
So, as you can see, doing the research on your niche needs to be done before you even think about creating and selling a product or service.
And once you have decided on a profitable niche, you need to dial in and really find out what makes these people tick so you can target those specific people who will be most attracted to your offers.
It may not be sexy, but it can have a huge impact on your business, and in an area where so many people give up before they have really started, wrong niche selection and poor target marketing is one of the primary causes for people giving up.
Now we have established that being able to target your market successfully is of vital importance, let’s look at a company that did this right.
Target Marketing Done Right!
Here’s a quick case study of a deodorant that became a top seller through nothing more than pinpoint targeting of its customers:
In Brandwashed: Tricks Companies use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy, we learn how Axe Deodorant took over their market through laser-focused targeting.
Unilever executive David Cousino tells us that Unilever first analyzed the potential male deodorant user by breaking men down into six profiles:
The Predator – He takes advantage of drunk girls, and lies about his job and where he lives
Natural Talent – Athletic, smart, and confident. He doesn’t need to lie to score
Marriage Material – Humble and respectful, he’s the sort of guy you want to bring home to Mom and Dad
Always the Friend – He always hits that glass ceiling
The Insecure Novice – He has absolutely no clue what he’s doing, and things get awkward fast – the geeks and nerds
The Enthusiastic Novice – He has absolutely no clue what he’s doing, but he’s outgoing and tries valiantly anyway
Based on these six profiles, they chose to target the ‘Insecure Novice,’ since these are the guys who need the most help in getting women.
The next step was to create the ads. Research showed that the ultimate male fantasy isn’t to have just one woman at a time – it’s to be irresistible to several sexy women at once. (Seriously, did they really need research to determine this?)
That’s why the TV ads proclaim that if you use Axe Deodorant, you will get the chicks. ALL the chicks.
The result? Axe came out of nowhere to be the #1 male antiperspirant / deodorant brand.
Is this a bit cheesy? Yes. But did it work? Absolutely!
But in the process, they had a great deal of crossover into the other groups as well.
This is an added benefit of targeting that most marketers don’t realize. They think in order to get the biggest share of the market, they must target everyone.
But when you target everyone, you tend to get almost no one. Paradoxically, when you target one specific group, you tend to get customers from all the other groups as well.
One side note: In this case, Axe’s marketing worked almost TOO well. High school kids were completely dousing themselves in Axe, thinking they would get every girl in class to fall all over them.
Instead, school districts complained of kids reeking of the cologne-like smell.
How could Axe have fixed this? Perhaps by cautioning its users that because of the power of Axe, a normal amount was actually more effective than going full coverage.
Instead, Axe backpedalled a bit from their original campaign, and sales declined.
Here’s what you can do:
- Make a list of potential target markets for your next product.
- From that list, choose the market – or demographic – you want to target.
- Create a profile of ONE person in that market – this is your ideal customer.
- Tailor your product and your message to that one person.
- Dance around your office as you see the sales come flooding into your in box.
Stop targeting everyone and start targeting your ideal customer. Once you do, it will become clear how you should market, where you’ll find your customers, and how to get them on board.
And yes, your sales will almost certainly increase because you not only know what they need, you also know wat they want and you can tailor your products and services just for them and they will gladly pay you for them which is win-win for both buyer and seller 🙂
3 Powerful And Surprising Goal Setting Tips You Missed
I once heard a famous motivational and sales speaker tell the story of someone who set some goals.
It seems he wrote down all of his great big goals like getting a super high paying job, traveling the world, starting a non-profit foundation and so forth, folded up the paper and put it in a drawer.
Then he forgot all about those goals and went about his life.
Fast forward three years, and he’s moving into his new house. Packing up that drawer, he finds the goal list he wrote out, and realizes he has accomplished every single goal on that list, including buying a mansion.
Yeah. Right.
And then a leprechaun jumped out of the drawer and handed him a magic genie lamp, and he made three wishes and married the fairy princess.
As you might have guessed, I’m not buying that story. Are you?
But there are things you can do to help you achieve your goals and New Year’s resolutions – things I’ll bet NO ONE has told you about.
Things that can give you the life you want, if you embrace them.
Things that… well… might just set your goal getting abilities on fire.
Let’s get started:
Goal Setting Tip 1: What Kind Of PAIN Do You Want To Have?
Focusing on what you want usually isn’t going to work unless you also consider what kind of pain you want to have.
Everyone wants a rock hard body and a few million dollars in the bank. But are you willing to go through the pain it costs to get those things?
THAT is the question.
An art fan tells a great artist that she should would do ANYTHING to paint like he does.
To which the artist replies, “If that were so, then you would already be painting like me. I’ve painted every single day since I was seven years old. I painted when my friends were outside playing. In high school I painted when my friends were going to dances and playing sports. In college I painted instead of dating. I’ve taken art courses and studied art until I know more than most of my professors. I’ve traveled the world to sit at the feet of great painters and observe their process. I’ve given everything I have to be a great painter. And if you really wanted to be like me, you would have done the same.”
Ouch.
That artist paid a very big price for achieving his goal.
What pain are you willing to go through to achieve your goals?
What you willing to do?
What will you sacrifice?
What regiment, training, practice schedule and so forth will you commit to doing every day until you succeed?
When you decide this in advance, you multiply the odds of achieving your goal by ten-fold.
Goal Getting Tip 2: The Secret Ingredient
“I want to be a medical doctor.”
Okay, that’s your goal. But what do you do to achieve that goal? Writing it down and stuffing it into a drawer won’t make it happen.
You need systems in place to get you from where you are to where you want to be.
For a pianist, his goal is to give concerts to millions of people. But his system is to practice each day of his life.
For a coach, her goal is to win the championship. But the system is the practices she puts her players through each day.
For an entrepreneur, the goal is to build a profitable business and sell it. But the system is the sales and marketing process that brings in the customers, as well as the system for delivering the products or services.
Without systems in place to reach your goals, you won’t get there.
First, you choose your goal based on both what you want and what pain you are willing to endure to get that goal.
Then you choose the system you’re going to use to achieve that goal.
Goal Getting Tip 3: Goal Assassination
You’ve made your goals and now you’ve got a list – the kind of list a kid might send to Santa Clause – so what’s the delay? Why aren’t you achieving your goals?
Imagine you’re growing roses. On one rose bush, there are a hundred rosebuds. But on the other rose bush, you snip off every single bud except for one.
Which rose flower will be the biggest? The one by itself, of course. And that’s because it gets all of the energy and food the plant can provide, instead of having to share it with a hundred other flowers.
Your goals are all competing for your time and energy.
That’s why you’ve got to ruthlessly eliminate your lesser goals, at least until you achieve your biggest goal.
The exception: If a secondary goal directly supports your primary goal, then it can be best to pursue both at once.
For example, you want to build a business. It’s going to be a lot easier to make good decisions and work hard if you get enough exercise and eat right.
Exercise and proper eating support your goal of building a business, so don’t wait until the business is built to get in shape. Start exercising and eating healthy right away, so you have what it takes to build that business and live the good life.
And once you achieve your first big goal, you just might find you’re addicted to the process.
Guaranteed, the second goal will be easier than the first, because now you’ll know what it takes.
The New Year is upon us. 12 months from now, you can either look back and wish you had achieved that big goal, or look back and be thrilled that you did.
The choice is yours.
How To Create A Great Value Proposition
Your value proposition determines if people will bother reading about your product or close the page.
If you get it right, sales can skyrocket. Get it wrong, and you’ll wonder why all that traffic isn’t converting into sales.
Does Little Guy Joe who just got into online marketing need a value proposition? He sure does if he wants to make sales.
So What Is A Value Proposition Anyway?
Not wanting to rely solely on my memory, I did some research, and this is what I found to be something of a consensus of what a value proposition should be:
A great value proposition incorporates one or more of these qualities:
- Explaining how your product is going to solve your customer’s problem, or how it’s going to improve your customer’s situation. (This is called relevancy)
- States specific benefits your product delivers (This is quantified value)
- Tells your customer why they should buy from you instead of your competition (This is unique differentiation)
But I think we need more clarification. In doing my research, I also found that a great value proposition…
- Targets a specific market
- Focuses on quality, cost or speed, or a combination of two of those
- Clarifies what the company or product does not do
People need to be able to read it and immediately understand it. Which is to say, corporate gibberish created by a committee of eggheads isn’t going to cut it.
For example, if I tell you that my value proposition is:
“Revenue-focused automated marketing and sales closing solutions unleashed through collaboration throughout the revenue cycle”
I’m guessing you’re going to be bewildered. Or you’re falling asleep. Or you’re confused as can be.
And there’s no need to be redundant. For example:
Online Billing and Invoicing Software
Invoice Dude is an online billing software specially designed for small and medium businesses. Thousands of businesses and individuals trust us for their invoicing!
This tries to appeal to too many people – small businesses, medium businesses and individuals.
There is no differentiation from other online billing and invoicing software.
In addition, it says ‘thousands of businesses,’ yet offers no proof. Stating an actual number such as 12,549 would be a great help, and it could be updated automatically or manually on a daily or weekly basis.
Plus, I don’t know about you, but this entire value proposition puts me to sleep.
And with a name like Invoice Dude, they could have done soooo much better.
What A Value Proposition Is NOT
It’s not a catch phrase or a slogan.
“Coke, it’s the real thing” and “L’Oreal, because you’re worth it” are slogans, not value propositions.
It’s also not a positioning statement.
“America’s #1 bandage brand, heals the wound fast, heals the hurt faster” is a positioning statement.
These are better than nothing, but they’re not what we’re striving for.
Calling your product the ‘real thing’ doesn’t show one benefit or reason why we should buy it over the competition.
Because you’re worth it doesn’t tell us anything – it just sounds good. And expensive.
Being #1 doesn’t make me want to buy your product, either.
These are all examples of slogans, not value propositions:
- Like sleeping on a cloud (Sealy)
- Milk from contented cows (Carnation)
- Save Money, Live Better (Wal-Mart)
- I’m lovin’ it (McDonalds)
- When you care enough to send the very best (Hallmark)
- Just Do It (Nike)
- Finger Lickin’ Good (KFC)
- Have it your way (Burger King)
- Melts in your mouth, not in your hands (M&M)
- The happiest place on earth (Disney World)
- The best a man can get (Gillette)
- Betcha can’t eat just one (Lays)
- Think outside the bun (Taco Bell)
- “Koo Koo for Cocoa Puffs”
- “Snap! Crackle! Pop!” (Rice Krispies)
- Are you a Cadbury’s fruit and nut case?”
- “Keep Walking” (Johnny Walker Whiskey)
- “Wii would like to play.”
- “I’d rather die of thirst than drink from the cup of mediocrity.” (Stella Artois)
- “We don’t charge an arm and a leg. We want tows.” (From a towing company)
- “Yesterday’s meals on wheels” (From a septic tank)
- “We repair what your husband fixed.” (From a plumber’s truck)
Value Proposition Components
A value proposition is usually longer than a slogan.
In fact, it can have a headline, a sub-headline, one short paragraph of text and possibly bullet points.
And it might even include a visual, such as a photo, graphics or hero shot.
You make notes, try things, think about it, tweak it, ask opinions and tweak it some more.
Headline: This is usually the big end benefit you’re offering your customers, stated in one clear, short sentence. You might mention the product, the customer or both. This is where you grab attention, because if you don’t, then you’ve already lost a fair share of your prospects.
Sub-headline: This is a specific explanation of what your product does, who the ideal customer is and why your product is useful.
One short paragraph: This can be instead of or in addition to a sub-headline, and serves the same purpose as the sub-headline above.
3 bullet points: These are the key benefits or features. Notice we said three, not unlimited. You may or may not need bullets, but if you do, keep them short and punchy.
Visual: Images always communicate faster and generally better than words. You might show the product, the happy customer or an image that reinforces your message.
How To Write Your Value Proposition
This takes time to get it just right. In the beginning, do the best you can, and then adjust it along the way.
There is no reason to delay starting or growing your business just because you don’t have the perfect value statement yet.
Start out by answering these questions:
- What’s your product or service?
- What is the BIG end-benefit of using it?
- Who is your ideal target customer?
- What makes your offer unique?
- How is your product different from anything else available?
NOTE: If you can’t answer why your product is unique or different, then you might want to work on the product itself. Selling a ‘me too’ product that is identical to what’s already being offered can be difficult UNLESS you already have a well-known brand.
Once you have your first draft of your value statement, ask yourself these questions:
- Is it clear and easy to understand?
- Does it communicate concrete benefit(s)?
- Will a customer know exactly what result they will get from using your product?
- Does it say how it’s different or better than the competition?
- Does it avoid hype? (amazing, fantastic, best ever)
- Does it avoid business jargon? (revenue generated resource allocation blah blah blah)
- Can your ideal prospect read it and understand it in a few seconds?
If someone is shopping around, then they’re likely to check out 4 or 5 different options before deciding.
By having your value proposition at the top of your first page, you can easily stand apart from all competitors.
And readers tend to prefer bullet points – they’re easier to understand and remember.
Examples Of Great Value Propositions
Uber: Tap the app, get a ride
Uber is the smartest way to get around. One tap and a car comes directly to you. Your driver knows exactly where to go. And payment is completely cashless.
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Slack: A messaging app for teams who put robots on Mars!!
NASA’s jet propulsion laboratory is one of tens of thousands of teams around the world using Slack to make their working lives simpler, more pleasant, and more productive.
Trello: Trello is the free, flexible and visual way to organize anything with anyone.
Drop the lengthy email threads, out-of-date spreadsheets, no-loner-so-sticky notes, and clunky software for managing your prospects. Trello lets you see everything about your project in a single glance.
iPhone: Why there’s nothing quite like iPhone
Every iPhone we’ve made – and we mean every single one – was built on the same belief. That a phone should be more than a collection of features. That above all, a phone should be absolutely simple, beautiful and magical to use.
Value Proposition Boosters
Sometimes it’s difficult to find ways to differentiate yourself from your competition, so you might try adding one or more of these to your offer:
- Free shipping
- Fast or next day shipping
- Free trial
- Free setup or installation
- Free bonus
- No long-term contracts or payments
- A very clear money back guarantee
- A better than money-back guarantee
- A discounted price
- Customization
- One-on-one personal help
Remember, you don’t need to hit your value proposition out of the park on the first try. But you do need to build one and use it.
Of course, it’s going to depend on your product, your niche, your customers and even your competition.
And most of all, it will depend on how well you craft your value proposition.
It actually makes your job easier, in that you are no longer trying to be a jack of all trades, or trying to make your product fit everyone.
The clarity your value proposition brings can also bring you peace of mind and a better ability to grow your business big, strong and fast.