What do most people like least about buying tangible goods online? I think it’s the shipping costs. Sure, you’re ready to pony up that $20 for the item you’re dying to have, but do you really want to pay the $7.99 shipping fee? Maybe not.
Then there’s another factor we might want to look at – remorse. Not the remorse that comes from buying something and then regretting it, but the remorse that comes from NOT adding something to your order.
Sure, you got the Super Duper Widget and the Super SUPER Duper Widget Accessory, but darn it, why didn’t you get the Super Duper Case to go with it? Blast it all, now you feel like you blew it. Except…
Except there is a company out there called Zulily that has an innovative solution for both of these obstacles. When you place an order with Zulily, you can order again anytime in the next 2-3 days and pay NO additional shipping costs.
This means you can go back and get the items you wish you’d purchased in the first place, and it won’t cost you a dime in additional shipping.
Zulily also offers to split your payment in half. You pay half now plus shipping and the other half in a month. They have your credit card on file, so the risk to them is extremely low. And I’ll bet the increase in business is substantial.
Is there a way you can apply these super consumer friendly practices to your business, and increase your bottom line in the process?
I couldn’t find the download anywhere. I checked my email, I clicked all the links and went to all the pages, I set up my new, free ‘membership’ and still the download wasn’t there. But they kept telling me to be sure to download it as soon as I watched the video. So I watched the video, but the download still did not appear.
Do you know what DID appear?
An email.
“We noticed you still have not downloaded the XYZ Document. If you need help, just click this button and someone will call you to assist.”
Ah-Ha!
Sneaky clever, don’t you think?
Here’s what they’re doing:
They’ve created an outstanding video that teaches a marketing technique. To get you to watch the video, they promise you a free download of one of their internal documents that’s made them millions.
But you can’t get to the document until you watch the video (it’s a long one) all the way to the end. You watch the video and… WHOOPSIE! Haha!
No download.
Next comes the super nice, super helpful sounding email. This is where they get you on the PHONE and sell you on their expensive program.
It’s a bit diabolical, but still I have to acknowledge their creativity.
I’m gonna wring this guy’s neck and I don’t even know who the heck he is. Gimme a second to decompress…
Deep breaths…
Okay, here’s what happened.
I get an email with a topic that sounded good. Real good. “Go check out the product,” it says. So, I click it. I’m trying to read the sales page. I mean I’m REALLY TRYING TO READ THE SALES PAGE but he, whoever this guy is…
… WON’T LET ME READ THE SALES PAGE!
I am his prime prospect.
I want the benefit he so eloquently offered in the email.
He’s worked hard to get me on his list, get me to open that email, get me to click the link…
… but the result is I wanna strangle him.
Why?
Because every two seconds there is another pop-up that says:
JOE BLOW JUST BOUGHT THIS PRODUCT! SUSIE Q JUST BOUGHT THIS PRODUCT! JEDI MASTER JUST BOUGHT THIS PRODUCT! FREDDIE KRUGER JUST BOUGHT THIS PRODUCT!
Sigh.
I closed the page and came here to write you this note.
While it’s terrific to show your prospects that your product is flying off the shelf, I’m not so sure that continuously interrupting them while they read your sales page is the way to do it.
Plus, between you and me, I’m not sure I even believe he’s making all those sales.
It comes out to about 1 sale every 2 or 3 seconds, and that just doesn’t seem likely, does it?
But here’s where I advise you to not take my advice…
(Wait… let me think about that a moment…)
Those super annoying pop-ups that tell you everyone and their brother are buying the product… (I hate to even admit this)
… actually increase sales.
Yup.
I am the exception here and NOT the rule.
People are naturally influenced by what other people do. It’s the herd instinct, and it’s hardwired into us for reasons of survival.
People see that others are buying the product and so they buy the product, too. I’ve seen data on sales launches where there is a big surge at the opening bell of people buying. This is typical behavior in a successful launch. Most people buy the first day or the last day, and in between sales sharply taper off.
But when these annoying sales notifications are added on the second day, suddenly sales go up again. More people who visit the page are buying right then and there rather than putting the decision off.
You can get the software to do this at fomo.com or other software providers. Just sign up for an account, implement the code, set your parameters for how you want the software to appear and act, and if all goes as planned, sales will increase.
But please, please make the notifications unobtrusive. The idea is to gently let prospects know that other people are buying the product.
If the pop-up is continually stopping the person from reading the letter, you will lose sales to people who don’t have the patience to put up with the distraction. Like me.
First let me say that $3,000 is an ultra-conservative guess. I suspect this guy (we’ll call him Mike) is earning 3 to 5 times that much, but let’s be conservative and call it $3,000…
Mike has found a way to earn residual income that is right underneath all of our noses. In fact, it’s a method that’s been taught for a couple of decades or more, and yet very few marketers do this.
I’m almost positive you already know of this technique. But I’m also pretty confident that you are not USING this technique, at least not to the extent Mike is using it.
On the technical side, all you need to make this work is a squeeze page and an autoresponder.
Remember, residual income is what you earn for work you do ONCE and get paid for over and over again. If you write a hit song, you get royalties every time that song is played. If you sell software as a service or a membership site, you get paid every month until that person unsubscribes.
And if you’re Mike, you do what might be the simplest thing of all: You create specially made autoresponder sequences that last for YEARS, keep subscribers interested and continuously sell, sell and sell some more.
Mike’s ENTIRE business model is built around autoresponders. It’s not just a sideline for him, it’s what pays his bills, bought him a second home and put his kids through college.
Here’s what Mike does:
He chooses a niche. His favorites are weight loss/health, along with making money online. But he works in a couple of others as well.
He writes a follow up sequence that goes on for years. YEARS. Naturally he doesn’t do this all at once. Once he targets a niche, he writes follow up emails for the first couple of weeks prior to going active. Then he adds to the sequence on a regular basis until it’s about 3-5 years long (I’m not kidding!) He sends out about 1 email per day on average, although sometimes he sends out 2 emails if he’s promoting something hard.
If you’re freaking out about writing all these emails, remember two things: You just have to write enough emails to stay ahead of your earliest subscribers. And you can always outsource the work.
Mike’s emails are a mixture of information, content, observations, humor, jokes, quotes… pretty much whatever he feels like writing that he knows will interest his niche not just today but also in years to come. And every single email does something else, too. It sells.
Sometimes the entire email is selling. Other times the selling part comes in about halfway through the email. Once in a while he doesn’t sell until the P.S. But the point is this: He delivers content his readers WANT and he never stops selling, either.
He chooses evergreen products that are likely to still be available well into the future. ClickBank is his #1 source for these.
He sells one product per week. That is, he spends 7 days talking about just one product, what it can do for the reader, anecdotal stories of what it’s done for others, common questions answered and so forth.
And here’s a little trick he uses: Because each week focuses on just one product, he makes it look like a new product launch. Mind you, he never SAYS it’s a new product. Nor does he say that the product will no longer be available after the week is over. But he does give that impression in order to give the reader a sense of urgency.
To create even more urgency, he also offers a bonus that is good for that week only. His bonuses are usually built on PLR that he’s repurposed just for this.
And here’s where it gets even MORE interesting: 5-6 times a year he promotes a PACKAGE of products that are all his. These are the same products he’s been giving out as bonuses, all with big price tags attached so they look high value. He bundles about seven of these together and offers them for one ‘low’ price. And of course he gets to keep all the profits when he does this.
Offering these PLR products as bonuses and then packaging them together to sell is optional to the system, but it does bring in more sales and revenue and it doesn’t take all that much time to source good PLR products and rename them.
Now then, this all sounds great but you’re probably wondering how he gets people to join his lists so he can send them all these emails on autopilot. And the answer is awesome lead magnets.
In fact, this is where he spends his real time and energy, because the better the lead magnet is, the easier it is to get subscribers. Often, he’ll buy the rights to a product that’s sold well and offer that as his giveaway for joining his list. When you can say that a product sold 3,000 copies at $297 but the visitor can get it for free just for subscribing, your conversion rates can get pretty high. For his non-IM niches his conversion rate is over 70%, and for his online marketing niche it’s about 50%, which is still excellent.
By taking the time and expense to get the lead magnet right, he doesn’t just increase the conversion rates on his squeeze pages. He also builds a lot of goodwill and credibility with his new subscribers, which makes it easier to get his emails read and his links clicked.
This all sounds great, right? But what about traffic?
Good question. Mike pays for all of his traffic because he likes being able to turn on the traffic switch whenever he wants for as long as he wants. He already knows what each subscriber on each list is worth for the first six months they’re on the list. Any sales that come in after six months are just gravy.
His method is to spend as much as 50% of what he will earn in the first six months on advertising. So for example if the average subscriber earns him $3.00 in six months, he’ll spend as much as $1.50 to get that subscriber. But most of his subscribers stay with him for years, so in the end he actually earns a good deal more than just $3.00 apiece.
He buys his traffic from solo ads, Facebook ads and Google ads. He also uses several less well-known methods, two of which I was able to pry out of him. One of these is paying Facebook Group leaders to promote his free offer to their members. And another method he uses is to pay product sellers to offer his free product on their download page. Since everyone who hits the download page is a buyer, these tend to be especially good leads.
Naturally Mike uses a tracking service to find out where his squeeze page traffic is coming from so he knows what’s working.
Once a new subscriber joins one of his lists, that subscriber automatically receives emails for a long time from Mike. But the emails never look dated because they’re written in a style that makes it look current. Mike does have to check and make sure the products promoted in his sequences are still active. If one of them is no longer available, he simply finds a similar product and substitutes out the URLs and the product name.
And Mike does a lot of cross promoting, too. For example, if he has a list of people who use social media for online marketing, he’ll promote his free video marketing lead magnet to that list to see if he can get them on a second and even third list. Yes, this can mean a subscriber is in maybe three different autoresponder sequences simultaneously, but the profits far, far outweigh any unsubscribes.
As you can see the hard work in this business model is getting things set up. But once you do, it takes very little work to keep things running smoothly. And if you decide to take a month off, it shouldn’t affect your income, either.
Here’s maybe the most interesting thing about this entire case study: Mike had no previous marketing or writing experience prior to setting up his first squeeze page – autoresponder funnel. He was good at technical stuff but never did any kind of sales or marketing before.
And I wonder if this didn’t help him to succeed, because his writing is very basic and sounds like it comes from that slightly weird ‘guy next door’. He just writes about what interests him in each niche, because he figures that same stuff will interest his readers. His grammar isn’t great but he tells new subscribers up front that he’s no English professor; he’s just a guy like them who enjoys doing XYZ just like they do.
It works for him. And if you choose an evergreen niche that interests you, then I think you could easily build a hands-free funnel like Mike’s and start earning some of that residual income on autopilot. You set it up, send a continuous stream of new subscribers and get sales. It’s so simple, most people overlook this – but it works.
You’ve got a forum or a Facebook Group or some sort of social media platform that is keeping you super busy. So what do you do? You ask a couple of your most loyal members or followers to act as moderators for you.
Or maybe one of them even volunteers. “Hey there, I’m on this forum all the time and I know you’re busy… how about I act as a moderator to help you out?”
Wow, that’s awesome, right?
You get free help from one of your biggest fans – someone who knows your stuff and wants to help you tell the world about you and your products.
Except…
Except sometimes these helpful moderators are really wolves in sheep’s clothing, ready to take you down, get you banned and even put you into legal trouble.
Yes, I know I sound like a crazy, paranoid doomsayer, but this really happens. In fact, it costs companies millions or possibly even billions of dollars a year in lost revenue.
Take the case of Bob’s* Facebook Group account. Bob runs his own online marketing business, teaching people how to use social media to get new customers.
Bob is a social media marketing expert, and the last person you think would lose his business because of a social media marketing mistake. But that’s essentially what happened.
Bob sold his highly acclaimed $1,997 social media marketing course to someone we’ll can Suzie. Suzie turned out to be something of a pain, pestering Bob several times a day with questions and demanding far more attention than any of his other 300 students combined.
Rather than watch the course and implement what Bob taught, Suzie seemed to think she was entitled to one-on-one teaching 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Essentially, there was no pleasing her. Exasperated, Bob refunded her money and politely told her that the course was not for her.
Suzie was furious. She sent out numerous messages on social media telling anyone who would listen that Bob was a fraud, his course was a waste of money and so forth. But apparently this wasn’t enough for her.
Unbeknownst to Bob, she joined his Facebook Group with an entirely different identity than her own. Keep in mind that his Facebook Group was how Bob communicated with everyone who purchased the $1,997 course.
This identity seemed very friendly and helpful towards Bob and everyone else in the group, so much so that Bob eventually made this other identity a Group moderator. And once she had moderator status, she immediately began subtly undermining Bob and his social media course. She managed to personally contact everyone in the group and lure many of them to her own Group while gaining their confidence.
Long story short, she used her authority as Bob’s moderator as well as her authority within her own Facebook Group to cast doubt on Bob and his course. Refunds began skyrocketing and new sales plummeted. Her final act was to make several posts that were completely against Facebook’s terms of service, thereby getting Bob’s Facebook Group and Bob himself banned from Facebook.
Bob has asked Facebook to investigate and hopes to restore his ability to be on Facebook but restoring his good name and reputation will take a great deal more than that. By becoming one of his Facebook Group moderators, this woman managed to virtually destroy Bob’s business.
And this is not an isolated instance, either. I’ve heard horror tales of social media moderators doing things that created lawsuits, lost sales and put businesses in trouble with government agencies.
If and when you allow anyone else to have moderator control on any of your social media type accounts, you need to KNOW who they are and that you can trust them, because it only takes one moderator from hell to potentially ruin everything you’ve built.
*I changed Bob’s name because the poor guy’s been through enough already.
Why is it when we want to be at our most creative and innovative, we resort to using the most worn-out cliché at our disposal? “We need to think outside the box on this one!”
Ugghhh.
First of all, that ‘box’ is there for a reason. It gives us boundaries and guidelines on what we want to accomplish. For example, if I say I want you to write an article on new ways small businesses can use social media, I’ve just given you a ‘box’.
But if I tell you to get to work and give you no idea what to do, you’re going to be totally and utterly lost.
Second, if we want to be more creative, let’s start by abolishing the “think outside the box” phrase and make a pact, just between you and me. From this point forward, if you or I say or write ‘thnk otsd th* b*x’, we owe $5 to our favorite charity payable immediately.
Agreed? Good.
Now then, what can we say when we want to express our desire to think differently, get off the beaten track, search for an innovative approach, break new ground and take an imaginative leap?
Seriously, I’m asking you for your help on this one. Even the phrases I used in the previous sentence sound worn out and tired.
I did have one thought, but if you’re a Star Wars fan then you might not like it. For whatever reason, people seem to either gravitate towards Star Wars or Star Trek. I’m told Star Wars is for dreamers and Star Trek is for science geeks. This might be wrong, but I can see some truth to it.
Here’s what I do know: In the very first Star Trek series during the opening credits, we hear Captain Kirk saying…
“Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its 5-year mission: To explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, To Boldly Go Where No Man Has Gone Before.” What do you think?
Can we boldly go where no one has gone before?
It beats thinking outside some cliché box.
Whoops! That’s $5 I owe… now where did I put that checkbook… 😉
CTA stands for Call to Action. When you’re talking about an email you’re sending to your list, the call to action is when you say, “Hey Reader, click this link to get a once in a lifetime deal” or some such.
The more you can get your readers to click the links you put in your emails, the more traffic you send to your offers. The more traffic you send to your offers, the more sales you can make. Usually.
Okay, there is an exception to this rule, and it’s if you don’t set up your email and your offer to be congruent. Like if you say in your email, “Click here to discover the best fertilizer for roses” and then you send them to a page that is advertising a cleaning solution for rubber duckies… you’re not going to make sales.
But let’s assume that your email sets up your reader to know exactly what to expect when they click the link. The more people who click the link, the more people you have who can potentially purchase the product and the more money you can make.
Thus the question becomes, how do you get more of your email subscribers to click the links without holding a gun to their head?
By using the CBS method:
• Command • Bolden • Soften
First, you’re going to COMMAND them on what to do. Don’t be subtle here. Don’t slip your link in there and assume they will click it just because it’s there – they won’t.
You’ve got to TELL them to click it.
• “CLICK HERE NOW” • “Go HERE now for full details” • “This is the link to click NOW”
Next, you’re going to BOLD keywords. People tend to scan emails just like they scan sales letters. By bolding the keywords, you can stop a scanner in their tracks and get them to do your bidding.
“The price will double at midnight so to get the discount go here now and check this out before it’s too late”
Read just the bold words above and you’ll realize it’s everything the subscriber needs to know they should click the link NOW.
Finally, you might want to sometimes SOFTEN the language you use.
If you only say, “CLICK HERE NOW” it seems kind of pushy or bossy.
But if you say, “CLICK HERE NOW and see if this is for you” then you’ve softened the language and made it more friendly.
“Click HERE now and see if this can double your income”
“Click THIS LINK now and find out why 2,926 reviewers give it 4.8 stars”
“Go HERE NOW and discover for yourself why grown men blush when they see this”.
Remember CBS to increase your email calls to action: Command, Bold and Soften.
The $500 figure is arbitrary. Depending on the size of the promotion, you could gain an extra $100 to $2,000, or a whole lot more. Here’s how it works…
Anytime you promote a product, whether that product is yours or an affiliate product, consider adding a one-time deal for your own personal email support for an additional fee. For example, you’re selling a $47 product that teaches buyers how to train their horse. You offer your own personal email support for a fixed length of time to answer any questions they have that are directly related to implementing the information in the product.
The biggest obstacle many people face when learning something new is putting it into action. Having someone they can lean on for guidance can be tremendously helpful both from a psychological as well as a practical viewpoint.
Things to know:
1: You most likely won’t be overwhelmed by questions because only 10 – 15% of people who pay for your support option will use it. People have the best of intentions to use the products they buy, but as you know yourself, people get busy and things get set aside.
2: You’ll be getting paid for something you probably already do, especially on your own products. If people already email you with questions about how to implement information you teach, the difference now is they will be paying you for your answers.
3: Many of the questions will be the same. This is helpful for you in two ways – first, you get to discover what’s missing in the product. For example, if you forgot to include how people will take payments in the system you teach, you’ll know to add it to your course. If it’s an affiliate product, you’ll find the holes and have the option to either create a bonus that covers the missing areas, or even create your own, more comprehensive course.
Second, it’s helpful that people tend to ask the same questions because then you can write the answers once and copy and paste them each time the question is asked. Or you might create an FAQ to send out, or even create an FAQ page you can refer people to. This will greatly cut down on the number of questions you receive.
4: This does not undermine the pricing of your personal coaching. Think of answering questions about a particular product as being a FAQ, not a coach. Your answers will be shorter and more direct, and they generally won’t be tailored to the person asking the question since you don’t know their situation. You’re giving bite-sized answers, not in-depth personally-tailored step-by-step coaching. For that they need to upgrade to your much more expensive coaching program.
5: You’ll set a time limit, and if you want, an email limit. You’ll answer their questions for a set period of time, such as 30, 45 or 60 days. You’re not offering email support for the rest of their lives. Emailed questions are only taken if they are directly related to the product. And if you want, you can limit the number of emails they send to you to one per day. This last one sounds unnecessary and it usually is, but one time someone decided to write to me 4 and 5 times per day. Ever since then, I place the one email a day limit in my offers. You can also limit the number of questions per email to 1 or 2.
6: If you’re selling an affiliate product, you’ll need to be familiar with the contents of that product and how to implement what it teaches.
7: You don’t need to be an expert. The questions are coming by email, which means you can take time to look up anything that you don’t already know. If the answer isn’t in the product, use your friend Google to find it. And if the question is beyond the scope of the product, recommend another product to fill their need. For example, if they’re asking how to get traffic but that’s not covered in the product, suggest your own traffic course or one that you are promoting. If you’re giving them an affiliate link, say so.
Bonus: You’ll build rapport with the people who send you questions. Plus, you’ll demonstrate your ability and willingness to help them, too. When you follow up with these folks and offer your coaching program, you’ll find that some of them are not only receptive but also eager to grab the opportunity to join your more expensive program or service to receive even more help.
I’ve probably made this sound harder than it is. Realize that most people who buy the upgrade don’t use it, and those who do use it will email you 2 to 5 times with questions. It’s actually an incredibly easy way to make some extra money when promoting anything, and it’s an awesome stepping stone to your high level coaching as well.
I received an email the other day promoting contests, telling me how I can become a big winner if I know contesting secrets and so forth. Which is true, there really are methods to winning a lot of stuff through contests.
But here’s the weird part… the email was written by a guy in his early to mid-20’s and judging by the language he used, it was also targeted to that same demographic – 20 something males.
What guy in his 20’s is interested in spending hours a day entering contests to win appliances and gift certificates and what not?
I suspect the target audience for something like this is people over 40, most likely female, who have some time on their hands. You could write about how they can enter these contests while they’re standing in line, while on their commute (assuming they’re not driving) while they’re watching television and so forth. And I’d talk about the vacations they can win, the cash prizes, and yes, the gift certificates and appliances, too.
This 20 something marketer will start making more sales when he starts choosing products to promote that appeal to the type of audience he is attracting to his mailing list – 20 something males.
A marketer has to know his or her audience and know what they want, what fits into their lifestyle, and what will bring them the benefits they seek. Keep this top of mind when you are choosing products to promote, and how to promote them.
