Hopefully you are the exception to these mistakes. If you’re not, take heart: 9 out of 10 online marketers make these very same mistakes. Here’s how to rise above your competition and increase your bottom line simply by NOT making these 5 mistakes…
Spamming on social media. You opened your Twitter account with the best of intentions to Tweet valuable content and answer questions, but now nearly every tweet you send out is a link promoting a product. If this is you, then it’s time for a change. Promotion is fine as long as it makes up only 20-30% of your tweets at MOST. The rest should be content rich and helpful to your followers. And this goes for every social media network, not just Twitter.
Not testing. You create a new squeeze page but you don’t test one headline against another. Result? Every day that goes by, you are losing money. Test everything and eventually the exact same effort will yield 1.5, 2 or even 3 times the results.
Not asking for the sale. Whether you’re looking for an opt-in, a share or a sale, tell them exactly what you want them to do. If you don’t make your call-to-action clear, you will get less than stellar results every time.
Ignoring your current customers. Are you so busy looking for new business that you forget to pay attention to your most important asset – your current customers? These are the people who already trust you enough to have purchased at least one of your products. That’s why your current customers are actually your best future prospects in the world – treat them like gold.
Talking about you, you and YOU. Do you know who your customers care about? Themselves. They don’t care about you, only about what you can do for them. This sounds harsh, but it’s true. Yes, you can tell them an anecdote about what happened to you last weekend, but it better have something in it for them. Your customers don’t want you or your products. They want solutions to their problems. Remember this and you can’t go wrong.
“Find out what people want and sell it to them” is advice you’ll hear time and time again. Why? Because it generally works. After all, if someone wants breakfast cereal made out of toads and frogs and you’re the only one selling it, you can command your own price.
But what if there is massive competition in the toad and frog cereal niche? Then you’ve got to differentiate yourself. You’ve got to find a way to stand apart and above the others selling a very similar product.
Or you can go a different route, the way companies like Apple roll, and that’s to find out what people WILL want. You see, all of the greatest products were at one time non-existent. No one knew you could ride in cars and so they used horses and maybe buggies. Then along comes the car – something no one had seen before, and people quickly realized they wanted it. Decades later consumers didn’t know they wanted computers and the Internet. Nor did they know they wanted cell phones and then super sophisticated cell phones, but once they were introduced, people desperately wanted them.
So if you can find a want before it even exists, you’ve got no competition – at least for the first few weeks and even months.
And you can take this even one step further. It’s not just a matter of finding out what people will want, it’s also a matter of finding a way to offer it to them that takes the work out of it. Imagine if Apple sold its products as kits that had to be put together – would they sell as many phones and tablets as they do now? Doubtful.
There was a time when computers were basically sold as kits. You get the plans, you buy the parts, you put together your computer. So who had computers during this time? A relative handful of people who liked to tinker on electronics. It wasn’t until several years later when computers were sold ready-made that the market took off.
If we were looking at this as a tiered system, with each subsequent tier being preferable to the previous, then the first tier is the old standby of offering customers what they already want. The second tier is offering what they want before they even know they want it. And the third and final tier is to offer what they want before they know they want it, and take all of the work out of it for them.
Sell them the ready made solution where the only action they need to take is to make the decision to buy. Make them feel good for taking that action, like they made a real contribution to getting the solution you’re offering. In essence you’re giving them the satisfied feeling that they really accomplished something important when they hit that order button. But in fact YOU are doing the actual, real work, whatever that might be.
If you’re offering a revolutionary new WP theme, install it for them. If you’re offering a complete business solution, set the whole thing up for them. If you’re offering an irrigation system or an automobile makeover or even an exercise program, make them feel that all they have to do is make the decision. That’s it. Then you will do the rest.
Now of course you and I know that in many cases, they will have to do work. But that’s not something they want to think about during the sales process. In the example of the exercise program, all they have to do is show up and then you will guide them step-by-step. They don’t have to think about a thing, they just follow along. You’re making it appear as though you do the work, when in reality they are the ones actually working.
Is this deceptive? Not in the slightest. If you say you will build them a website and then you send them instructions on how to do it themselves, then of course that would be deceptive. But if you build the site for them and then they have to update it themselves, or if you show them exactly how to exercise but they have to actually move their own bodies, you truly are taking the lion’s share of the work of thinking out of it for them.
In the sales process when you are romancing the customer, it’s okay to make them feel 10 feet tall for simply “taking action.” And it’s also a very smart move to continue to congratulate them for their wise decision, since this will make for happy customers who don’t cancel.
Find out what people want, or better still, what they WILL want, and then remove the work as much as you can and you will have a winning business model.
Have you tried offline marketing yet? If not, why not?
Odds are you’re hesitant to offer offline services because you’re afraid of sounding less than super intelligent when talking to business owners. Maybe approaching them makes you nervous. Maybe you just don’t feel like enough of an expert.
Whatever the reason, take heart. Business owners are just people who need help, and you are there to do exactly that – help them. Treat them like they are your new friend and you can not only eventually turn them into clients, you can also keep them as clients for years and years to come.
Perform a service for them, no matter how small. Even if you only charge $100, that token amount is your foot in the door and a slam in the face to all other offline marketers. Now when someone approaches that business person about marketing, they will say, “No, I already have a guy/gal for that.” And once you earn their trust with that first small job, you can get bigger and bigger jobs from them in the future.
So how do you get your confidence up for that first phone call or in person meeting? How do you get yourself in the zone before you even pick up the phone or walk through the door? By talking to yourself or a friend. Literally.
This trick comes from entertainer Kyle Cease who accidentally discovered it on the way to an audition. Normally before an audition he would constantly worry about it. But this time he started talking to his friend about the upcoming audition as though it had already happened, like this: “Do you remember when I went into that audition and I just nailed it? I don’t know what happened but I got into a zone and I started feeling so good.”
By talking about it in past tense, he started feeling really good about it. The stress disappeared and he acted as though it was a done deal, as though the only possibility was nailing the audition, which he did.
Interestingly enough, I’ve been doing this for years without even realizing what I was doing or why I felt so confident in new situations. It took Kyle to point out that this technique isn’t well-known and needs to be shared.
Try this yourself. The next time you are stressed about something you’re about to do, talk out loud about how great it went, how you were positively on fire and totally nailed it, etc. It’s a simple trick that costs nothing but a few minutes of your time, but it can have a life changing impact.
This one technique will allow you to break through old comfort zones like you’re a superhero breaking the sound barrier. You’ll find you can do things and accomplish things you’d only dreamed about before.
Tony Robbins is fond of saying that “Success leaves clues,” and he’s right. Let’s look at how to use this to your advantage so that you can reverse engineer your way to success.
Say your goal is to make $10,000 a month with your online business, since that’s a very popular goal among Internet marketers.
How do you want to make that income? Perhaps you want to create and sell products in a particular niche, or list build, or do CPA, or build a membership site. Your first step is to decide what it is that you want to do and what niche you want to do it in.
I suggest running some numbers as well. For example, if you’re creating products then you need to sell 100+ $97 products a month to reach $10,000 a month. Or sell twice that many if you’re using affiliates and paying 50% commissions.
If you’ve got your niche selected but you don’t know what to do next, then your first step is to find every big marketer in that niche and get on their lists. See what they’re doing, what they’re saying, and especially what they’re selling. This should give you some terrific ideas in less than a week’s time. Write down all of your ideas, even the ones you think are silly or beyond your reach.
Now then, narrow your choices. Maybe you’ve decided to create a blog, build a list and sell affiliate products and your own membership site. Now you have a plan. You can get basic info from the Internet on starting your blog and list building to get you started.
Next, you’re going to analyze what your competitors are doing that’s working in terms of blogging, list building, selling affiliate products and running a membership site in your niche. This is information you won’t get out of any course. It’s been said that if you want to know the real secrets of what the best marketers do, then you should watch what they do rather than listen to what they say. That’s why you joined your competitors’ lists, to see how they’re doing what they’re doing.
Questions to research:
How are they getting traffic? Where do they get their links? Who are their affiliates? What is their content strategy? What is their unique selling point? How do they structure their websites? Who is their audience? What is their website or product missing? And so forth.
There are multiple tools online to help you do this which you can research on Google. This isn’t a tutorial I’m offering you here so much as a mindset:
Success is simple, because no matter what you want to accomplish, in most cases someone has already done it or something very close to it. You don’t need to reinvent anything, you just need to find out what they did and go do it yourself.
Mind you, I’m not suggesting you infringe upon any copyrights. Rather, I’m suggesting that there are no wheels that need reinventing. Furthermore, if someone else can do it, then you certainly can as well. You can outsource anything you cannot do and fill in the rest yourself.
And you don’t want to “copy” when it comes to content. Let’s say your entire strategy for earning $10,000 a month is to build a $97 membership site and keep it filled with 100+ members. Let’s also say that someone else in your niche is already doing that. Should you copy them? Not exactly. By all means use their methods for traffic and lead generation, since those are obviously working. But create your own brand, your own unique selling proposition and your own unique content. Furthermore, whatever it is they’re doing, you want to do it better in some way. This means delivering more results, or delivering those results in an easier way, or something that sets you apart and above the other membership site. This will make it easier to get and retain members.
Focus your efforts on taking care of your customers and you’ll find the money tends to take care of itself. As Zig Ziglar used to say, “When you help enough people get what they want, you’ll get what you want.”
Now then, don’t restrict your reverse engineering to your own niche. Many times you can gain valuable insights from other niches that translate nicely to yours. For example, you might be in the fashion niche and you see a financial membership that sends out a CD every month, or has a hotline, or somehow personalizes content for each member. Is this something you could do in your fashion membership? Perhaps you send out a CD of the latest styles and patterns. Or you have a fashion ‘hotline’ on your site that offers the latest fashion industry insider’s news. Or you have a feature that shows members how each new clothing line would look on their particular body build.
Mind you, I know nothing about fashion, in case you couldn’t guess. My fashion style is simple: If it’s comfortable and doesn’t make me look silly, I wear it. Perhaps there’s a need for a fashion website for people like me.
My whole point is this: Stop thinking you’ve got to start from scratch, or that every answer is hidden inside the latest marketing info product. The truth is you already have the capability to discover exactly what is working – because success leaves clues. All you have to do is play detective, follow the clues and get busy reverse engineering your own success story.
Every niche has its share of movers and shakers, including yours. So how do you get those big personalities to share your amazing content with their readers?
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First, you should have built a foundation of quality content. Have at least a half dozen posts on your blog, and make sure that each one of them is either chock full of well-written targeted content, or entertaining or both. No one with a reputation is going to send traffic to your site if they can’t vouch that it’s worth their audience’s time.
Now then – make a list of the interesting personalities, experts and big movers in your niche for a blog post you’re going to write. Include background information on them, accomplishments and why they’re important. If you like, rank them according to any criteria you choose – influence, charm, good looks – it’s your post so you can do it as you choose.
For example, depending on your niche, your post might be titled: The Top 50 Flower Bloggers or The Top 25 Movers and Shakers in Finance.
These lists of top people in a niche or industry make for extremely share-worthy content, but you’re going to take it one step further to ensure it gets passed around. Contact each person on the list and congratulate them for making it onto the list. Some of them are sure to tell their own readers about your article through social media and their own blogs and websites.
About ranking these experts – what if some of them are upset with you for not ranking them at the top? First, not everyone can be number 1 – it simply is not possible. Second, even if they are a bit miffed, you can use that to your advantage by gleaming additional blog posts and even publicity out of it. Third, you can write this post annually.
That way, next year those same people may have gone up in the ranking, in which case they are likely to brag about this to their audience. In fact those who are lower on the list may try to curry your favor, and those higher on the list may add you to their inner circle. Really, it’s a win-win no matter what happens, and in the process your content gets shared multiple times.
BONUS TIP: Now that you have the attention of the experts, choose a hot topic and ask them to weigh in. Even if you just get 2 or 3 to share their opinions, you’ll have another piece of great content that is likely to get shared throughout your industry.
BONUS TIP #2: Do a blog post on “What 22 Top ___ Say About ___.” This is easy and practically writes itself. Simply email the experts from your list of experts and ask them for a quote about a current topic or trend in your niche. Then compile their responses into an article or blog post. Be sure to let your contributors know when you make your post, so they can share the link with their audiences, too.
If you’re in the IM niche, you probably get the same emails I do asking: “I need to make money YESTERDAY, what do you recommend?”
Or maybe you need some extra money for a project you’re working on right now, or you’ve got an unexpected bill.
Here’s a method I sometimes suggest for earning a quick $500 or $1,000, and what people seem to like about it is how simple and straightforward it is.
Ask yourself what skills and knowledge you possess right now. Maybe you can write really well, or you’re good at building WordPress sites. Maybe you’re a graphic artist, or a photographer or videographer. Maybe you’ve got great people skills and you can act as an affiliate manager or set up joint ventures. Perhaps you can coach people on how to do something specific, or teach them how to find the perfect virtual assistant. I guarantee you have at least one skill or piece of knowledge that others are willing to pay for.
“But I don’t have a skill!” Really? Then you need to find dynamite outsourcers who do have skills you can market. You must find something that others are willing to pay for, and that’s usually a skill and sometimes simply a piece of very valuable knowledge.
Once you’ve identified your skill, set up a web page offering that skill for hire. A simple blog site will do, preferably on your own domain. Check out other similar websites to get ideas on how to set yours up.
Find blogs that are relevant to your skill and allow guest bloggers. For example, if you’re really good at writing engaging blog posts, find blogs about blogging. If you can troubleshoot antique engines over the phone, then find blogs about old cars. These blogs should have a bare minimum of 5,000 readers a month, and be sure they already allow guest posting.
Now write articles that provide awesome content for these blogs. Study each blog and write an article just for them that solves a problem or tells how to do something that is totally relevant to your particular skill. For example, if your skill is article writing, you’re going to tell them how to write the perfect article. If your skill is photographing products, then that’s what you’ll teach. Don’t worry about giving away all your secrets – some people would much rather hire a professional than do the work themselves. Link back to your website in the author’s box.
Don’t know if you spotted it, but there is a flaw in the steps above and here it is…
It can sometimes take WEEKS to get your guest blog post published. How do you speed up the process? One way is to link whatever you are writing about with something that is current in the news, preferably in the last 12 to 48 hours. You might need to get a little creative here but if you can pull it off then blog owners will be racing to publish your post. For example, if you’re a sales letter copywriter and the FTC just handed down new rules for what you can and cannot say in your sales copy, you’re golden.
Another trick for getting published quickly is to provide dynamite graphics, pictures or even infographics to go with your article. In fact, your infographic could even BE your article. And don’t forget to politely make a good case to the blog owners on why they should consider publishing your article as quickly as possible.
Continue writing articles and getting them published until the orders start coming in or your phone starts ringing.
The entire process could take as little as 48 hours or as long as 10 days, depending on how fast you get those first blog posts published.
Added benefit – you’ll make more business connections which can continue to benefit you in the future.
