Increase Sales By Varying Prices
Do you offer more than one product at a time on your website? And if so, are they priced the same? If they are, you might be losing sales simply because they are priced identically.
In one experiment by researchers in Singapore and Yale, subjects were given the choice of either buying gum or not. In the group that was offered two gum options at the same price, 46% of participants made a purchase. But when the second group was offered the exact same two gum options - one priced 2 cents higher than the other – 77% of participants made a purchase!
So if you're offering more than one option one your website, you might want to test and see if pricing those options differently increases your sales. Even if you're simply offering several different ebooks at $7 apiece, for example, try pricing them all slightly different and see if your sales increase.
http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/articles/small-price-differences.htm
What Your “About Us' Page Is Missing
First of all, do you even an an “About us” Page? If you're a one person show, it could be an “about me” page or you might include your spouse and family to make it an “us” page. Regardless, you really do need a page on your website where you can tell visitors a little bit about yourself.
Robert Cialdini has something to say about how you can use your “About us” page to influence your visitors into liking you and yes, buying from you. Instead of a stuffy bio of, “I attended blah blah college and got a blah blah degree and then worked for blah blah,” try adding a more personal touch. He uses PetRelocation.com as an example of what to do, and then takes it a step or two further in this article written by Roger Dooley.
Be sure to read to the end – there's reference to a fascinating study that had pairs of participants negotiating via email. One group revealed personal details, the other did not, and the difference in outcome was staggering.
When you finish the article, go to your own “about us” page and do some tinkering. It will likely take you only a few minutes, but the long term benefits could be substantial.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerdooley/2012/10/24/about-us-page/
Copywriter? Or Copy Listener?
Terry Dean makes a great point when he talks about what makes for a great copywriter. It's not being a brilliant writer, it's being a good listener. As Terry says, 'The best copywriters in the world are the best at listening to their markets, which is why they're also the best at copywriting.'
As Dan Kennedy says, 'You want to enter the conversation already taking place in your prospect's heads.' That's why you've got to really listen to what the customer wants and thinks.
Remember back to a time when someone was really, truly listening to you, versus a time when someone wasn't. Which person would have a better chance at persuading you?
Talk to your customers directly by getting on the phone and asking them why they chose you. What problem are they solving, what desire are you fulfilling? What hooked them and brought them in? Who else were they considering?
Go to Amazon and search for products similar to your own. Find out what is selling the best in your specific niche. Then look at the reviews and find out what people are saying. Why do they like a particular product? Why don't they like a product? What do they say is missing? What problem do they say the product is solving for them?
Terry recommends copying the exact language you find in the reviews onto your notepad. This gives you the exact customer language of why they made a buying decision. (One thing that Terry does not point out is that people will often times buy a product for one reason and justify it with a totally different reason – something to keep in mind as you use this process.)
Perhaps even more important than the review is the votes on the review. People can say whether or not they found a review helpful. If several hundred people are liking that same review, you know there's good information there that you can use in creating your next product and writing your next sales letter.
Dig a little deeper and you'll also discover that there is sometimes discussion on the reviews themselves which can provide you with additional insights. Amazon is a goldmine of information on how to position your product and write your sales copy.
Another place to go is of course the discussion boards and forums. Go to Google and search for your keyword plus the word 'forum', or your keyword and the phrase 'discussion board.' Look for people talking about products and problems. Find the most popular posts that have lots of replies – these are the hot topics. Pull all of the pertinent information onto your notepad.
Use social media for your 'listening' research as well. For example, go to http://tweetgrid.com/ and set up a live feed for your keywords. This will tell you what people are saying about your keyword in real time.
And you can use this research for more than just your sales copy and product creation. For example, you can pull someone's exact quote and make it the title of your next blogpost. You can use this information to create videos, blogposts, emails and so forth.
Once you starting listening to your prospects and finding out what's going on in their heads, you'll have a much better chance of persuading them with your writing. And you don't have to be an ace copywriter to use this trick, either.
Consider Sending Your Emails On The Weekend
While it is true that your emails are more likely to be opened on the weekdays, it's also true that those who do open your emails on the weekend are more likely to actually click the links inside your email.
In fact, by mailing on the weekend, you can get a higher click through rate with a lower number of unique opens, or so says a recent report from Experian Marketing.
Best time of day to send your emails? Between 8 am and noon.
http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/whats-best-time-day-send-email-148113
101 Ideas For Hacking Social Media
Here are tips, tools and technology that will take your social media marketing to the next level...
http://www.razorsocial.com/social-media-tools-and-technology-tips/
Movement is Better Than Meditation
Joe Polish tells a great Gary Halbert story about the power of taking action, even when you're not sure of what you're doing.
And if you sell big ticket items or ever plan to, this story also has a great strategy for quadrupling your sales as well.
Gary visited Joe at his office in Arizona one day and gave Joe some advice on a profitable mailing campaign Joe was running.
Gary told Joe that if he would simply follow up with phone calls to each prospect, he would quadruple the amount of sales he was making. And since it was a very high-priced item they were selling, it would be insane for Joe NOT to do it.
Joe agreed it was a good idea, but did Joe do it? No.
So a month later when Gary comes to visit again, he instructs Joe to withdraw $21,000 in $50 bills from the bank, which Joe does. Obviously Joe trusted Gary a great deal for him to simply withdraw all of this money in cash and hand it over to Gary.
So what does Gary do? He calls a team meeting of Joe's people. With everyone gathered around the table, Gary starts ripping the bands off each stack of bills and throwing them up in the air and screaming, “You might as well piss away this $1,000, you might as well piss away this $1,000, and just keeps throwing money up and screaming. “Everyday you sit here and you don't make phone calls, you might as well throw away $1,000, so get off your ass and make these calls and that means every single one of you, and don't be bitching about how you need to make more money when you're sitting working on all kinds of other crap that isn't making you any money. All you have to do is just simply pick up the damn phone and call the people that you sent the letter to and say, “Hey, I sent you a letter, would you like to buy ___?” If you do that, and that alone, you're going to increase your sales.”
Gary was always rather direct in his communication. :-)
So Joe rented a hotel room and stuck three temporary employees in there making phones calls. Result? They made a bunch of sales and a ton of cash.
See? You don't have to know everything before you do something. It's better to jump on that phone and say something stupid to a prospect than to never speak to that prospect at all.
I once read the autobiography of an insurance salesman who was perhaps the shyest, quietest person in the world. But what he could do was pick up a phone, call somebody and say, “I don't suppose you want to buy any insurance, do you?” The guy made millions. I've also heard similar stories about new car salesmen who copied this same technique: “You don't want to buy a car, do you?”
Of course they could have waited until they had more confidence, until they got their sales speech down perfect, until they had an answer for every objection. But instead, they simply got to work without over thinking anything.
Movement is better than meditation.
So get moving – you'll be surprised by the doors that begin opening for you when you do.
Have You Considered Podcasting?
I've noticed that some marketers dismiss podcasting as something too retro to consider. After all, everything is video now, right?
Actually, no. Many people love to listen to podcasts while they're doing other things like driving, exercising, doing chores, etc. because it's a convenient way to consume content.
Doing a frequent podcast can help to establish your expertise, distinguish your business from the competition, build credibility and establish professional connections. Really, it's difficult to see a downside to podcasting. It doesn't even take long – a podcast might be as short as 10 to 30 minutes,- just enough time to convey great content and keep them coming back for more.
Here are some podcasting tips from Entrepreneur to help you get started:
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/226298
Powerful Idea for Free Blog Photos
Tests show that using at least one photo in each blog post helps to keep the reader on the page longer because people are attracted to photos.
Plus, you want to brand your business. You want to make it stick in people's minds long after they've left your website.
So here's the idea: Create a sign that incorporates your logo and URL, and take it with you when you leave the house. Snap pictures of your sign on various buildings and landmarks. Have strangers in the street hold the sign up while you take their picture.
And you can take this further: If you go to the beach, write your logo and url in the sand and take a photo. If you're eating alpha bet soup, spell out your URL and take a photo. If you garden, trim your hedges or arrange flowers in the shape of your logo and (you guessed it) take a photo.
You're accomplishing 3 things here: First, you're getting free, relevant, unique photos for your blog. Second, no photo distribution website is ever going to have their lawyers send you a nasty letter saying you're using a photo without their permission and demanding a payment of $3000 (this has happened to unsuspecting bloggers before.) Third, you're branding yourself and helping to hard wire your URL in your customers' brains.
NOTE: This will work better if you have a short, catchy URL like Google.com or Yahoo.com. If your URL is howtogetsexierlegsinthreeshortweeks.com this might be a little more difficult, but still somewhat doable. Just sayin'.
Want to take this concept to the next level? Get your readers to submit photos of your URL and/or logo strategically placed somewhere in their hometown, on their house, etc. You might even hold a contest for best photo and award prizes.
Testimonial Photos That Make The Sale
Let's talk about the evolution of testimonials in advertising for a second and then I'll suggest the next evolution that might make a real difference in your bottom line.
First there were written testimonials from anonymous people like A.J. in Tempe, Az. These appeared in mailers and ads in the fifties and sixties.
By the late seventies people were becoming more skeptical of those, and so we started to see more full names, such as John Smith in Phoenix, Arizona. That was a slight improvement, but still – who knew if they were real or not?
Next we saw testimonials with photos. Much better. Real faces going with real names, but of course they still might be faked.
Then came the Internet which went through the same evolution of using initials, full names and then adding photos. Finally came audio testimonials and then video testimonials. Again, each was an improvement in lending credibility to the sales message.
But people's attention span dwindled as they were being bombarded with more and more information and sales messages. Now it seemed like too much time and work to sit and watch half a dozen video testimonials, and so those testimonials actually became less effective.
So do I have a solution? Quite possibly, although as always, you'll want to test to see if this idea works for your site. This idea comes from a photo I saw on a Joe Polish website weeks ago. In the photo was a carpet cleaner holding a sign saying how much more he was earning since he bought Joe's marketing course. I'm sure that was all Joe's doing because Joe is a great marketer who thinks out of the box.
And I got to thinking that something similar could work in almost any niche, so long as it's not a product that might cause embarrassment if its users were revealed. Viagra comes to mind as an example.
When you get a testimonial from a customer, ask if they would be willing to take a testimonial photo for you to help you out. Keep the testimonial short with specifics, such as “With AB Local Marketing we have increased our profits by $8,500 a month!” Add their name and address. Print the whole thing out on a sign (handprinting is fine) and mail it to them. Tell them how to take the photo (for example, if it's a business, have them take the photo in front of the business with the business name clearly seen in the background.)
People love photos and will always pause to look at them, especially if there are faces in the photo. If there is a sign in the photo as well, people cannot help but read them. Seeing the people in the photo holding the sign in front of their business, or in their home, etc. will lend you tremendous credibility.
Try out this idea, and see if it doesn't increase your sales.
4 Powerful Google Tools That Should Give You Plenty of Ideas
How to access a goldmine of information about your website's content, create an editorial calendar and more:
http://businessmakemoneyz.blogspot.com/2014/06/how-to-use-powerful-google-tool.html
How to Make a Quick Product for Fast AND Recurring Income
First, you need a great idea for a live training. Depending on your niche, this can be almost anything where you show people how to get a result they really, really want.
Next, you create a live webinar to sell this live training.
Finally, you charge for the training and you later charge for access to the training via a membership site. So let's say you charge $500 for a series of 8 to 12 trainings via webinar. Once you've got those six trainings done, you should have some terrific testimonials from those who took the training.
Create a membership site in which you'll drip feed the content. You can either make it a fixed term membership site, ending it when your content ends. Or you can continue to create content for the membership and leave it as an open end – that is, people remain members until they cancel.
Use your testimonials and results from the live training to promote the membership. Be sure to include all assignments, challenges, etc., that you gave your live members. Charge by the week, every two weeks or every month.
This way you can earn significant money before you create your product, and once you create your product you can then re-purpose it into recurring income. And if the content is evergreen you can promote this membership site for a long time to come.
You'll be doing the work once and getting paid for months and even years to come.
How To Make Your To-Do List Work For You
There's a fatal flaw in the old to-do list method of getting things done that can actually make it MORE difficult to get tasks completed.
Suppose you have a long list of things you want to accomplish. Not hard to imagine, is it? There might be 20 or 30 things on that list, or there might only be 2 or 3 things, but they're big items that will take days or even weeks.
You sit down to work, you look at your list, and you realize there is no way in the world you will get it all done today. What have you just told yourself? That it's perfectly acceptable to leave things on your list undone for another day.
Here's the fix: Have two lists. The first list is everything you want to accomplish, large and small, quick and long term.
The second list is just what you are going to do today. No more and no less. In this way you condition yourself to continue working until you finish everything on your list. Then you make a new list for tomorrow and relax knowing that you had a most productive day. You'll find it's far easier to maintain focus using this method, and at the end of every day you can celebrate your productivity.
How To Have Fun With a Scammer And Teach Your Readers At The Same Time
Gene Pimental has been buying and selling domain names for profit for years now. Along the way he has encountered more than his share of scams, including one he blogged about recently.
It seems that when you're selling domain names, sooner or later you'll get emails from companies that pretend to be interested in buying your domains. The only catch is, they want you to use an appraisal service they either own or profit from in some way. Of course, they never tell you they are profiting from the appraisal, nor do they communicate with you once you've purchased the appraisal. In fact, they vanish into thin air, because they never wanted to buy your domain in the first place. They only wanted you to buy this phony appraisal
According to Gene, “Never, ever buy an appraisal for a domain name to satisfy a potential buyer. In all my years of selling domains, I have NEVER been asked for an appraisal from a legitimate prospect, but hundreds of times from scammers.”
“There are many variations of this scam, and they're out there in droves.”
Good advice. Even more brilliant is the way Gene used a recent email conversation with one of these con artists to demonstrate to his readers that this is indeed a scam.
Read this hilarious exchange between Gene and the scammer and you will never, ever forget his lesson.
One more thing – as you read this, ask yourself how you can apply similar methods to create your own blog posts, to teach something to your readers, and to grab a wider audience. This is content marketing at its finest because it's not only useful - it's also highly shareable.
http://domainprofitsacademy.com/conversation-with-a-scammer-domain-appraisal-scam.html
What Is Your Blog's True Purpose?
Is it to gather email addresses? Sell a product? Sell advertising space?
Whatever it is, go take a look at your blog or website right now and see what pops out at you. If your goal is to gather email addresses, then the opt-in form should bounce right off the page. If your goal is to sell a product, then you should have a banner ad for that product that is more eye-catching than anything else. If it's to sell advertising clicks, then that ad should be what the visitor is drawn to.
So, how did your blog do? If you need to, tone down the visuals on the rest of the blog and tune up that key element that pays for your blog in the first place.
Why You Might Want To Use a Cartoon Avatar
Let's face it – most everyone online who markets any kind of a product or service uses either a company logo or a photo of their face for their avatars.
Company logos are fine if you're Coke-a-cola, but for smaller businesses you really should consider making your avatar more personal. Hence, the widespread use of head shots. So widespread, in fact, that using a head shot makes you blend into the crowd instead of standing apart from your competition.
Want to be remembered? Then you've either got to have a really unique photo of your face, or you could spend $5 on Fiverr and get a cartoon made of your good-looking self.
In addition to standing apart from the crowd and improving the odds you'll be remembered, you'll also be branding yourself and your business. Imagine your cartoon-self on your website, every social media account you have and your business card. Pretty easy to find you, right?
But there's another reason to consider using a cartoon, and it has to do with scalability...
http://www.jonloomer.com/2013/04/02/facebook-page-avatar/
Should I Promote Clickbank Products Based On Gravity?
One of the most common pieces of advice I hear given to new marketers is to choose which Clickbank products to promote based upon each product's gravity score. The higher the gravity, the more desirable it is to promote a particular product. But is that a good way to choose?
First, we need to know what 'gravity' is. Basically it's a score Clickbank gives each product based on factors such as how many affiliates have sold a copy within the past 12 weeks. More recent transactions are given a higher value, and as far as we know Clickbank recalculates gravity daily.
Choosing products with the highest gravity will generally mean you are also getting the highest amount of competition. If your readers trust you or if you can offer bonuses no one else can, this might work for you. But understand that there is an excellent chance your readers have already seen the product at least once and perhaps several times.
Choosing a product with a gravity score of 20 to 100 tends to be a better bet overall. If it's a new product and the score is less than 20 but you like the looks of it, then keep an eye on it and see if the score is rising. If it is, that's a good indication that it is beginning to sell well.
Always look for products with low refund rates. Check out the sales page and ask yourself if you would order from that page. If you want to promote the product, either ask the owner for a review copy or purchase one yourself so that you know exactly what it is that you're promoting. The last thing you want is a nasty surprise. Just because a product has a great sales page does not necessarily mean it's a good product.
0 commenti:
Post a Comment