Apply these seven secrets to your mar­keting and see a 200-400% increase in sales per lead.

According to one industry publication, over 99% of small businesses do not consistently follow up with their prospects and customers. Why? Because they don’t have a system, they don’t have time, they don’t know how valuable it is, or they don’t know how to follow up!

Learn from the best minds in direct response marketing, peo­ple like Dan Kennedy, Gary Halbert and Jay Abraham. These guys are masters of the direct response marketing profession and they know how to maximize sales.

There are only three factors that influence the profitability of any marketing effort. The smartest mar­keting minds on the planet have sifted these factors down to this simple, but powerful formula:

1. Send The Right Message… To The Right Market… At The Right Time

Most businesses miss one, two or all three of these factors, and as a result, their marketing and ad­vertising results are ineffective. This costs millions in missed sales every year!

It is CRITICAL that you follow up with your leads repeatedly, incorporating a va­riety of media such as mail, phone, fax, e-mail messages, and voice broadcast­ing!!! Automate your system to methodically, repeti­tively and consistently follow up with your leads – or you’ll be wasting a lot of leads or a lot of man hours!

2. The Three Types Of Leads

Your market­ing campaigns will produce leads in three broad categories:

· Hot Leads – those that are ready NOW

· Warm Leads – those that aren’t ready now but will be soon – these leads are CRITICAL to your success; and

· Cold Leads – that may never be ready

But how do you know which is which?!!! Most businesses follow up every lead once or twice and focus on leads that look like they’re going to close – ie they ‘cherry pick’ the ‘low hanging fruit’!

That’s fine, but the problem is that, too often, all those warm leads slip through the cracks! You must have an automated system to follow up with these leads like clock­work. And with an on-line business, you can use an Autoresponder very effectively.

3. Timing Is Every­thing

Never forget the simple truth: “People will buy when THEY’RE ready, not when you’re ready to make a sale.”

So you have to be in front of folks when they’re ready to buy – in other words, you have to follow-up with them… religiously! Because if you don’t, some­one else will land that business.

So, again, you must follow-up if you are to ‘be there for them’ when they’re ready to buy.

4. Transform Your Sales from Out­bound Hunting To Inbound Harvest­ing

This secret is critical to your success be­cause it increases conversion rates and lands customers quicker. When you’re always chasing prospects in “hunting” mode, there’s resistance at every turn and you can waste tons of time working with leads who simply aren’t ready.

On the other hand, when you’re in har­vesting mode, you’re working smart and focus on leads that you have already ‘warmed up’ with your earlier follow-up. If you close the gap between “getting the lead” and “closing the sale”, you’ll make the shift from hunting mode to harvesting mode… and your profits will skyrocket.

5. Maintain A Living, Breathing Customer Database

You can do this most effectively by sending relevant, valuable information to EVERY PROSPECT on a scheduled, recur­ring basis – using a variety of methods – communicating efficiently and logging all contacts with the prospect in an organized fashion.

6. Use Education, Repetition and Variety In Your Follow-Ups

Education: Your follow-ups must inform and educate your prospects. You need to provide valuable information and convince your prospect that you are on their side and deserve to be trusted. Customers WANT to trust you, so give them information they need and you’ll earn their trust.

Repetition: Human beings have to hear the same thing over and over before it ‘clicks’. Your customers may not “get it” the first time they hear your message – and don’t make the mistake of thinking that if a prospect heard the pitch once, they understood it. Chances are, they didn’t. Tell them again, and again and again.

Variety: You need to consistently tell your message, but your follow-up delivery needs variety. Different people respond to different stimulae, so follow-up with a multi-step sequential campaign that incorporates e-mail, di­rect mail, phone, fax, voice broadcasts, and other media!

When you begin to properly follow up with your leads and customers using Ed­ucation, Repetition and Variety, your numbers will abso­lutely shoot through the roof. You will be completely amazed!

7: Personality, Genuineness and Entertainment

Your prospects and customers need information. They need repetition. They need educa­tion. They need variety and frequency. They need to hear the right message at the right time.

That’s what they need. And if you provide it, if you practice the six secrets, you’ll see great improvement in your business.

But if you want phenomenal results, you need to give them what they want.

What they want is YOU! They want your personality. They want you to be real with them. They want you to be straight up, helpful, sincere. They want your spin, your angle, your advice, your perspec­tive. They don’t want corporate dribble. They want YOU!

Give them what they want, and combine it with what they need, and you’ve got something spectacular, even entertaining. You’ve got permission to converse freely with your prospects and customers, to help them with the things they need, to offer them the products and services you provide that make their life easier, better, more successful.

Only you know how to be you, how to be real but you can inject personality into your follow-ups using conversational language, not corporate speak; by laughing at yourself and your mistakes; discussing the “stuff” of your personal life with your prospects and customers; talking about what you like, what inter­ests you, what annoys you; and so on. View your prospects and customers as friends.

Now, if you’re telling yourself, “I can’t do that,” then I want you to do three things:

Slap yourself for al­lowing that negative thought to take root in your brain and your heart who knows how long ago;

Resolve to give it a shot, realizing that it’s a learning process; and

REMEMBER that while you’re learning how to do Secret #7 well, the other six secrets will drive tremendous re­sults for your business.

But if you want phenomenal results, you need to give them what they want.

What they want is YOU!

John Thornely
© John Thornely www.johnthornely.com 2008

To learn more about how YOU can
Profit From The Internet – Fast, visit
www.Internet-Tycoons.com

Seasoned Marketer Larry Dotson offers these ideas for increasing your Web sales:

1. When you make your first sale, follow-up with a “thank you” email and include an advertisement for other products you sell. Follow-up every few weeks or months.

2. Upsell to your customers. When they’re at your order page, tell them about a few extra related products you have for sale. They could just add it to their original order.

3. Tell your customers if they refer four customers to your web site, they will receive a full rebate of their purchase price. This will turn one sale into three sales.

4. When you sell a product, give your customers the option of joining an affiliate program so they can make commissions selling your product. This will multiply the sale you just made.

5. Sell the reprint/reproduction rights to your products. You could include an ad on or with the product for other products you sell. You could make sales for the reproduction rights and sales on the back end product.

6. Cross promote your product with other businesses’ products in a package deal. You can include an ad or flyer for other products you sell and have other businesses selling for you. You can do this very effectively on your ‘Thank You’ page.

7. When you ship out or deliver your product, include in the package/web page a coupon for other related products you sell. This will attract them to buy more products from you.

8. Send your customers a catalog of add-on products for the original product they purchased. This could be upgrades, special services, attachments, etc. If they enjoy your product they will buy the extra add-ons.

9. Offer gift certificates for your products. You’ll not only make sales from the purchase of the gift certificate, but when the recipient cashes it in they may buy other items from your web site.

10. Send your customers free products with their product package. The freebies should have your ads embedded in/printed on them. If you’re giving physical products, such as bumper stickers, baseball caps, t-shirts etc, the ads printed on them will allow other people to see your ad and order.

John Thornely
© John Thornely www.johnthornely.com 2008

To learn more about how YOU can
Profit From The Internet – Fast, visit
www.Internet-Tycoons.com

The ability to target your Adwords adverts to particular websites — ‘Placement Targeting’ was introduced by Google in mid-2007. It’s a revolution in online advertising but no-one talks about it — it’s still too new for most people to have tested thoroughly.

However, experts like Armand Morin and Pay-Per-Click expert Gauher Chaudry — who have so many websites out there that they can test every aspect thoroughly — are finding that they can cut their Adwords advertising costs significantly, while improving conversion rates, with placement targeting.

And it’s all about piggy-backing on other peoples’ success! Why do it the hard way?

This — very simply — is how it works:

1. Do a Google search for your keywords — for example ‘Diet’. The search returns will give you the sites that rank highest on that keyword.

2. Check which sites have Adsense adverts on them (there is even software which will do this for you now, such as Adwords Digger and PPC Web Spy – both free).

3. If a high-ranked site suits your strategies, click on the link in the Adsense area ‘Advertise on this site’ and sign up.

4. If you use a TEXT AD, you’ll have to compete with 3 to 4 other advertisers. But you can use other (more expensive) ad types and dominate the advertising on a site. Few people are using image Ads (‘Widgets’) and video Ads to good advantage yet, so now’s your opportunity!

5. You pay on a cost-per-click or a cost-per-impression basis (CPM = cost per thousand), which is far less expensive.

6. Your advertising is focused on highly targeted sites where visitors are already well ‘qualified’ by selecting to visit that site.

7. So your costs are lower and your ‘conversions’ (ie click-through) are higher.

You can learn more about Placement-Targeted Adwords at:

· www.google.com/ads/sitetargeted.html

· https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic=342

Have Fun!

John Thornely
© John Thornely www.johnthornely.com 2008

To learn more about how YOU can
Profit From The Internet – Fast, visit
www.Internet-Tycoons.com

Analysis – Ugh! Analyzing your web traffic statistics can be an invaluable tool for a number of different reasons. But before you can make full use of this tool, you need to understand how to interpret the data.

Most web hosting companies will provide you with basic web traffic information that you then have to interpret and make pertinent use of. However, the data you receive from your host company can be overwhelming if you don’t understand how to apply it to your particular business and website.

Visitor Behaviour. Let’s start by examining the most basic data – the average visitors to your site on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.

These figures are the most accurate measure of your website’s activity. It would appear on the surface that the more traffic you see recorded, the better you can assume your website is doing, but this is an inaccurate perception. You must also look at the behavior of your visitors once they come to your website to accurately gauge the effectiveness of your site.

I’m A Hit! There is often a great misconception about what is commonly known as “hits” and what is really effective, quality traffic to your site. Hits simply means the number of information requests received by the server. If you think about the fact that a hit can simply equate to the number of graphics per page, you will get an idea of how overblown the concept of hits can be.

For example, if your homepage has 15 graphics on it, the server records this as 15 hits, when in reality we are talking about a single visitor checking out a single page on your site. As you can see, hits are not useful in analyzing your website traffic.

The More The Better! The more visitors that come to your website, the more accurate your interpretation will become. The greater the traffic is to your website, the more precise your analysis will be of overall trends in visitor behavior. The smaller the number of visitors, the more a few anomalous visitors can distort the analysis.

The aim is to use the web traffic statistics to figure out how well or how poorly your site is working for your visitors. One way to determine this is to find out how long on average your visitors spend on your site. If the time spent is relatively brief, it usually indicates an underlying problem. Then the challenge is to figure out what that problem is.

The Wrong Visitors? It could be that your keywords are directing the wrong type of visitors to your website, or that your layout or graphics are confusing or intimidating, causing the visitor to exit rapidly. Use the knowledge of how much time visitors are spending on your site to pinpoint specific problems, and after you fix those problems, continue to use time spent as a gauge of how effective your fix has been.

Poor Performers. Additionally, web traffic stats can help you determine effective and ineffective areas of your website. If you have a page that you believe is important, but visitors are exiting it rapidly, that page needs attention. You could, for example, consider improving the link to this page by making the link more noticeable and enticing, or you could improve the look of the page or the ease that your visitors can access the necessary information on that page.

If, on the other hand, you notice that visitors are spending a lot of time on pages that you think are less important, you might consider moving some of your sales copy and marketing focus to that particular page.

As you can see, these statistics will reveal vital information about the effectiveness of individual pages, and visitor habits and motivation. This is essential information to any successful Internet marketing campaign.

Exit This Way! Your website undoubtedly has exit pages, such as a final order or contact form. This is a page you can expect your visitor to exit rapidly. However, not every visitor to your site is going to find exactly what he or she is looking for, so statistics may show you a number of different exit pages. This is normal unless you notice a exit trend on a particular page that is not intended as an exit page.

In the case that a significant percentage of visitors are exiting your website on a page not designed for that purpose, you must closely examine that particular page to discern what the problem is. Once you pinpoint potential weaknesses on that page, minor modifications in content or graphic may have a significant impact on the keeping visitors moving through your site instead of exiting at the wrong page.

Keywords And Phrases. After you have analyzed your visitor statistics, it’s time to turn to your keywords and phrases. Notice if particular keywords are directing a specific type of visitor to your

site. The more targeted the visitor – meaning that they find what they are looking for on your site, and even better, fill out your contact form or make a purchase – the more valuable that keyword is.

However, if you find a large number of the wrong type of visitors are being misdirected to your site by a particular keyword or phrase, that keyword demands adjustment.

Keywords are vital to bringing quality visitors to your site who are ready to do business with you. Close analysis of the keywords your visitors are using to find your site will give you a vital understanding of your visitor’s needs and motivations.

Time To Celebrate! Finally, if you notice that users are finding your website by typing in your business’ name, break open the champagne! It means you have achieved a significant level of brand recognition, and this is a sure sign of burgeoning success.

In addition to the information your Hosting company can provide, one of the most powerful – and free – tools for analysing the behaviour of visitors to your website is Google Analytics – see www.google.com/analytics.

John Thornely
© John Thornely www.johnthornely.com 2008

To learn more about how YOU can
Profit From The Internet – Fast, visit
www.Internet-Tycoons.com