Here’s your invitation to a Tele-Interview I’m doing on July 8th with Thomas Power, Chairman of Ecademy, on how to find buyers and network using Facebook and Twitter…

“Can you afford to not to be in a market with 300 million Prospective Buyers?”

That’s the question that THOMAS POWER, Chairman of ECADEMY, asked us at the first #Twalk Twitter workshop recently hosted by Ecademy.

And that’s the question he’s going to answer in a Tele-Interview on Wednesday 8^th July…

Twitter and Facebook are the two KEY markets that are HOT right now and dwarf all the other Social Media sites as the place to win new prospects and build sales.

As Thomas says: “Twitter is growing beyond exponentially, with 1000% growth in the past year and 100% in the past couple of months alone! Projected use should reach 100 million by Christmas and it’s set to explode in the next year, once the school-age generation really catches on.”

And, with 200 million users, Thomas says “Facebook is a huge and active marketplace. So any serious entrepreneur is missing out badly if you’re not using it!

“You need to get into Twitter and Facebook NOW.”

As on-the-pulse entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki says: “Twitter and Facebook are the best way to market your product today – and both are free”.

Only 200 lines are available and are likely to be snapped up fast, so REGISTER NOW at www.ThePowerNetworker.com if you don’t want to be left behind…! It’s FREE!

Talk with you then!

With annual purchases on the Internet well in excess of $100 Billion, I think it’s pretty obvious that there’s a lot of money to be made online.

There are people out there right now raking in millions from Web businesses and Internet Marketing – which should be a major source of motivation for anyone who wants to be successful with an online business!

However, while it’s nice to dream, in reality, success really only comes with hard work.  And you’ll also have to address these 4 crucial success keys…

Goals: The first key for succeeding with any business – Internet or otherwise – is to set goals – both long-term and short-term goals – and then work up a plan to implement them.

Think of your long-term goals in terms of your vision as to what you want out of your business and what it will give you – lifestyle, freedom, whatever. Don’t just say ‘I want to be rich’ – who of us knows what we mean by that? Be specific: how much income a month will give you the lifestyle you want?

Your short term goals or objectives can be cumulative and should all build to you accomplishing your long term goals. If you set your goals and then make sure you work hard to reach those goals then you will be well on your way to being successful.

To make sure you achieve your goals, you need to have a Business Plan that forms an outline of what you’re going to do and how you’re going to do it.

Setting your goals should be a major part of your plan. And your plan will need adjustment from time to time – but I always find that thinking through the business in order to formulate a workable plan is some of the most productive time you can spend on your business!

Belief: Life and business for few of us is a ‘bed of roses’, and you’re going to have to weather the storms that you’ll inevitably face. So you need to ‘keep the faith’ – in yourself and in what you’re doing. You need to have an unshakable belief that you’ll make it and always believe that your plan will produce for you. If you don’t believe in yourself and what you’re doing then without a doubt you’ll fail. No one has ever been successful without believing in themselves. Your belief will help you to work hard, since you know your work will ultimately pay dividends.

Focus. As Humans, we’re pre-programmed to look for the next thing and we love to believe it’s going to be better, even though in reality it rarely is! But that’s how evolution works, after all. Every language I know has a similar phrase to ‘the grass is greener on the other side’. And I’ve seen so many people flit from one idea to another for their business, often abandoning good ideas for awful ones – and I’m the first to raise my own hand and shout ‘guilty’! We all do it, don’t we?

Look – there’s nothing new under the sun! So there’s plenty of experience out there of what works and what doesn’t. Don’t think that your bright idea is going to be any different.

Most successful businesses do the same thing that others are doing but do it better, cheaper or with a different spin on the marketing. And they only succeed by focusing on one thing at a time. Yes, Richard Branson has lots of different businesses in his Virgin empire – but he built them one by one from the ground up, by focusing on one thing at a time!

So it’s absolutely critical that you don’t allow yourself to get distracted by the latest and supposedly greatest ways to make money. Stick with what works and let it work for you. Focus, focus, focus!

And the last key to being successful with Internet Marketing is to always stay the course. Choose how you want to run your business – preferably using a proven method for how you will make your business successful. Then tweak that method as you move forward – but try to stick with the same basic philosophy.

Plan, focus on what you’re trying to achieve, stick to your plan and believe it’s going to work – and you’re 90% of the way there!

And, as Winston Churchill said, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER GIVE UP!

PS: If you want to see belief in action, check out Susan Boyle on Britain’s Got Talent: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY

PPS: Watch out for your free Business Plan Template an upcoming post on Planning Your Way To Business Success!

Happy Planning!

John Thornely
Internet Tycoons

Urmil and I had a another very interesting 2-on-1 consultancy call with one of the Mastermind Program Members recently, which covered a lot of great insights into how to get high rankings for a website!

And I thought you’d also like to share some of the ‘insider’ tips on linking strategies that emerged – so here goes…

As I mentioned in my recent blog post Linking Tips To Improve Your Search Engine Ranking, you can’t just put up a single website and expect customers to find it amongst all the other billions of websites out there! You need to build you own little net of interlinked websites to catch the traffic you seek – and with billions of searches a day there’s lots of traffic out there to catch!

The linked Hub and satellite Mini-Sites model is about catching free highly motivated and targeted search traffic from Google and the other search engines and driving it to niche product mini-sites and then channelling this traffic through affiliate links on your Hub sites to merchants such as Amazon, collecting a commission on all purchases.

Bear in mind also that there are two types of buyer that you’re looking to capture:
•    Those that know exactly the product they want to buy (eg a Samsung Digital Media Centre – YPK-5JZB)
•    Those that are still looking generically for a ‘Media Centre’

So you’re trying to get the first group to click through the links on your Mini-Site dedicated to a specific product and shepherd the latter group to your Hub Site, where they can compare various models and make a buying decision.

Now, your Hub Site is going to be positioned in a fairly competitive market – I looked at Google search and competition criteria for your Mini-Sites in an earlier Blog Post – Niche Product Strategies For Your Hub And Mini-Sites.

So your ‘web’ of Mini-Sites is there to trawl for traffic from lower-competition keyword searches and send this to your Hub-Site, as well as creating a ‘net’ of inbound links to your Hub sites to improve their ranking.

The major purpose of your Mini-Sites is thus to get high ranking in Google as ‘content-rich’ traffic-catching web pages. Each Mini-Site should thus focus on one product and each Mini-Site page should be focussed on, and optimised for, one keyword (or ‘long-tail’ keyword string) relating to that product.

The primary links on your Mini-Site pages should be contextual (keyword-based) and should link to the relevant product page on your Hub Site, providing in-bound links to your Hub site.

You should also include links on the bottom of your Mini-site pages to other Mini-sites, to spread your ‘web’ and get Google ranking ‘credit’. But make sure your links aren’t ‘reciprocal’ – site A should link to Site B, B to C, and C to A, etc – no two sites should just ‘swap’ links back to each other, as Google discounts these.

Your Hub Site is the portal to your suppliers, so the primary links on your individual Hub Site pages should link to your suppliers, through your affiliate links. Your Hub sites can also carry page-bottom links to other Hub sites, but should not link back to your Mini-Sites.

Other linking strategies you should use include:
•    your internal links between pages – you should particularly make sure that your ‘Site Map’ is properly set up and all the links work properly, so that the spiders can crawl through every page of your site and onward to your other sites using the links discussed above.
•    Your Useful Links page can be used to boost your search engine ranking by linking to other, unrelated websites. Again, the Useful Links on your Mini-site should link to other Mini-sites; those on your Hub-site should link to other Hub-sites. The linked sites need not be on related topics – your ‘media centre’ site can link to your ‘freezer’ site, etc – all you’re seeking to do is provide the conduit for the spiders to find each of your sites and to improve your search engine score by providing in-bound links. Again, no two sites should link reciprocally to each other – always link A to B to C, etc.

This can all get to sound a bit complicated but the underlying principle is Keep It Simple – think like your prospects when writing the text and setting up the purchasing process and think like a search engine when setting up the linking strategy.

Happy linking!
John Thornely
Internet Tycoons

To be successful on-line, as in any business, you need to build three things with your customers – CTR: Credibility, Trust and your Relationship. And there are two further words which should be central to your whole web business approach… but we’ll come to those in a moment!

Credibility: When your prospect reads your ad or your website sales page, you want to make sure he believes any claims you make about your product or service. Because, if there’s any doubt in his mind, he won’t bite, no matter how sweet the deal. In fact, the “too good to be true” mentality will virtually guarantee a lost sale…even if it is all true.

Building credibility is all about showing that you – or your product – have a proven track record. There are many ways of building credibility and this requires you to give ‘social proof’ of the reliability and benefits that you and your product provide.

If you’ve been in business for a number of years, you can point to this and your hundreds or thousands of satisfied customers, providing testimonials from customers to whom your product has brought specific benefits or success.

But even if you’re just starting out and don’t have a ‘track record’ yourself, you can use a variety of ways to build credibility and increase the perception of believability – because, after all, it’s the perception you need to address up front!

Here are some tried and tested methods that will help boost credibility:

• Avoid baseless ‘hype’ – make sure your copy is accurate and truthful.
• For existing customers, who already know you deliver as promised, emphasize that trust.
• Include testimonials of satisfied customers – include full names and locations, if possible.
• Use 3^rd party testimonials (endorsements of the product type or solution by industry experts) or “lift notes” (brief notes or letters from a person of authority, possibly a celebrity).
• Pepper your copy with facts and research findings to support your claims (credit all sources).
• If you can swing it, adding a celebrity endorsement will always help to establish credibility.
• Give your own credentials or background (and photo) – or those of an expert if you’re using her/his real or ‘implied’ expertise (relating to your product or service, of course).
• Cite any awards or third-party reviews the product or service has received.
• Tell them a lot of your widgets have already been sold – “10 million people can’t be wrong”.
• Include a GREAT Guarantee or return policy and stand by it! You may give more refunds, but if you sell three times as many widgets as before, it may be worth it – crunch the numbers!
• Reveal a ‘flaw’ about your product (that’s minor or isn’t really a flaw). This helps alleviate the “too good to be true” syndrome and builds trust and your reader will start to subconsciously believe that you are revealing all of the flaws…
• If you advertise a deadline, don’t keep changing your deadline – you’ll reduce credibility.

Trust: There are two simple words which should be absolutely central to your whole approach to marketing on the Internet: Underpromise and Overdeliver.

Just tell people you will give them one thing and then give them what you promised plus a little bit more. The results of adopting this simple philosophy and incorporating it into your Internet business can be truly remarkable.

What makes this concept so incredibly powerful for Internet Marketers is that it doesn’t really take a whole lot of additional effort to give people more than what they expect. The huge value we deliver on our training courses and to the Internet Tycoons Mastermind Group are examples of this.

But by spending just a little bit of extra time giving you a few things you did not expect we established ourselves as someone who not only delivers what we promise but gives you even more. Ultimately this translates into a rock solid reputation and long term customers (you) who will buy from me over and over again. All of which equals more value for you and more profits for us!

Basically, you need to be kind and generous – and to do this genuinely. But in this business being consistently generous results in more than just a personal feeling of satisfaction, it results in huge profits. The benefits of practicing the underpromise and overdeliver philosophy far outweigh the extra effort and expenses on your part.

Kindness really does pay – and on the Internet it pays in a big way!

Relationship: The third pillar of your internet business is your relationship with your prospects and customers.

You’ve probably heard it said many a time that ‘the money is in the list’. Well, this isn’t the way of the world. People buy from people – people they Know, Like and Trust. So just think ‘KLT’.

So the key is to build an excellent relationship with your customers – and ‘the money is in the relationship’ is a rather more appropriate approach to your business.

How to do this? Well, there is plenty of free advice on the web about building your relationship with your customers. But the crucial thing is to get in touch – and keep in touch at least once or twice a month – with your customers and prospects.

Make them know you value both them and their business – but do this in a genuine way, without hype and fluff. Give them value!

It’s amazing that less than 10% of businesses actually follow up with their customers! When was the last time you had an email from your local shops, dentist or hairdresser?

Web technology provides a wonderful platform from which to develop your relationship with your customers.

You can set up your own web log, or Blog (see ‘Blogging For Profit’ on page 14) and you can personalise email very effectively using autoresponders to stay in touch with your customers (more on autoresponders in an upcoming issue of ‘Web Biz Insider’).

But you need to make it personal in order to build your relationship – there are any number of companies that send you their standard brochures and expect you to be ecstatic, aren’t there (perhaps your bank comes to mind)?

Two of the easiest ways to generate greater profit in your business are to get your customers to buy from you more often and to increase the average value of each purchase!

And, if your customers appreciate your relationship with them, they are much more likely to do both!

So, get inside your customers’ minds and think how you can build your relationship and boost your profits!

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

“My website looks very nice — but I don’t get any enquiries or sales from it”.

How many times have you heard that?

My first website — a property site — cost me far more than it should have, because I didn’t really know anything about selling on the web. I put the site before the customer.

I hunted around until I found someone who seemed to offer the kind of site I was looking for. She produced a nice-looking website (she was a graphic designer!) — but one that was subsequently described to me by a copywriter as being ‘typically corporate in approach’ — all about ‘us’, with no great appeal to a visitor, no single focus and no convincing call to action.

A bit of a put-down, heh?

And — more importantly — no great traffic as a result! Even though the site eventually reached a Google page ranking of 3 (by reason of the large amount of information I put up on it), it didn’t bring in the punters.

Was this the web designer’s fault or mine?

The answer is — both! It was a case of ‘the blind leading the blind’. I hadn’t really worked out who my targets were and how to win them over, and she didn’t understand enough about commercial marketing to make me do this before even starting out on formulating the website. She ‘did’ corporate brochures!

All About Us – Not You!

The typical website out there is ‘all about us’ and little or nothing about the visitor or what they actually want. Never forget that someone only visits your website because they are looking for information or to solve a problem or need. Think about it — what are you looking for when you browse the Web?

This is why the standard ‘corporate style brochure’ on a web page really doesn’t work. Your website needs to capture your visitor, entice him/her to stay and browse further — no matter what business you’re in!

You can actually do this very easily: create a site which is full of information — full of ‘nuggets’ the visitor gets an immediate benefit from — and where they’ll want to return.

Mouthwatering Detail

Develop a site that describes, in mouthwatering detail, how your product or service

creates the exact results they’re looking for.

It doesn’t matter what business you’re in — whether you are directly selling a product, building a list of prospects or a public service website — you still need to fulfill your visitors’ needs and involve them, if you want them to return to your site and find it valuable.

The Big Myth

And here’s a BIG MYTH. Most businesses’ websites will not make a sale on a prospect’s first visit — unless you make them an ‘irresistible offer’ so compelling that your visitor just can’t go without buying (which many single-page sites can do, with good copywriting).

Typical ‘conversion rates’ that the experts achieve are only in the range 1 to 5% of visitors — so 95 to 99 of every 100 visitors to your site are likely to leave without buying.

So your website should focus on starting a relationship with your prospect, so that you can convert perhaps another 20 – 30% of your visitors over time. You need to engage with your visitor and make it worthwhile for them to do two things:

· Opt in to your ‘free offer’ and

· Return to your site later to buy.

If you succeed in getting your visitor to opt in, you can build your relationship — and this is primarily about building his/her trust in you — and encourage him/her to return to your website, for instance using a series of emails sent out by autoresponder. Tests typically show that it may take anything from 5 to 10 contacts with a prospect before they trust you enough to buy.

Clear Site

One of the most successful commercial website styles is one that looks like a letter. It can be a single site or multiple-page site (each ‘page’ can be hundreds or thousands of words long).

Each page should look like a letter and each should aim to promote a single product or service — gently but inexorably leading your visitor through to a specific action, whether it be to opt-in, download a free report that contains more information or to purchase.

Unless your site is purely for information, it should not have numerous links and buttons at the top or down the side of the page, which can distract the reader and lead them away from your site.

The exception to this (for example, see the diabetes site mentioned above), is where the whole of a multi-page site acts as a carefully crafted sales machine, focused on getting the visitor to opt-in and return again.

Lead Your Prospect

Interwoven into the text (‘copy’) on your site, you should have links to request your free report or whatever is being offered. These links, scattered throughout the letter, lead to a form for the visitor to complete, so you capture (as a minimum) their first name and email address, with permission to stay in touch.

Getting this permission (hence ‘permission marketing’) is absolutely necessary if your visitor is located in a country that has ‘data protection’ or privacy policies, such as the UK.

And don’t worry about what to give as a ’free report’. This can be distilled sections of a few chapters of your information product (if that’s what you’re offering) — some marketers simply adapt sections of the sales letter on their web page!

You can use this direct response website approach to identify your target audience — visitors literally ‘hold up their hand’ by requesting your free report (although there are quite a few ‘freebie seekers’ out there, too).

Once you have your visitor’s contact details, you can nurture a relationship with informative emails until he/she is ready to purchase from 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

WARNING: YOU HAVE 3 SECONDS!

That’s right! Research indicates that you have between 3 to 8 seconds to get a searcher to click on your listing or to make your visitor decide to stay on your website, rather than ‘click on’ and go elsewhere.

In a recent Conference Call, we discussed how you need to ensure the key elements of your website ‘grab’ your visitor and make them decide to stay, as well as eye-tracking studies that reveal the way that searchers view Search Engine Results Pages (‘SERP’s). So here’s a bit more about how to grab your visitor and make him/her stay…

Eyeball It!

We are becoming ever more internet-savvy and impatient for results… Recent ‘heat map’ eye-tracking studies of search behaviour described by thinkeyetracking.com indicate that – in the last 3 years – we have gone from reading every line of the search results (the old ‘F Pattern’) to reading mostly just the results in the top left corner of the screen.

A study by eyetools.net similarly shows up the ‘Golden Triangle’, in the top left corner of the SERPs, dominantly viewed by searchers, with a brief glance at the top sponsored results at the top right.

And you should watch the video below, and view Google Blog page Eye-tracking studies: more than meets the eye, to understand just how fast the average person searches a web page to check whether it has relevant information!

And this applies to Landing and Sales pages too! As the eyetools study comments… “People don’t always realize that they can optimize their landing pages using eyetracking results to better convert their traffic into sales. If you’re paying for traffic, you can make a huge improvement in ROI by optimizing landing pages (30% boost in sales!)”.

Google Page 1

In the thinkeyetracking study, “87% respondents replied that they would modify the search terms or refine the search by category” if they couldn’t find their desired search result on the first page of Google, rather than go on to further pages.

So being in the top 5 to 10 listings on the fist page of Google results really does matter – whether for Organic or Search results!

Grab Your Visitor by the (Eye)balls!

Within 3 seconds of your visitor arriving on your website, the page needs to have convinced him/her clearly that they’ve (at last!) come to the right place!

Some of the key elements that will help convince your visitors stay on your website – and hence reduce your ‘Bounce Rate’ (people leaving from the page they arrived on) – include:

• Easy viewing of key information ‘above the fold’ in the ‘golden triangle’  – ie visible in top left corner of the first screen.
• A strong headline that includes the Keyword they used to reach your site
• A graphic that mirrors the Keyword
• Few distractions
• A clear reason to go on reading…

You can read more about background and strategies for this at the following websites

• Five Tips for Writing Effective Web Headlines
• 3 Match Types With The Same Quality Score

Don’t worry about the ‘Adwords’ angle etc – focus on what these tell us about how we need to grab visitors’ attention and lead them through our web pages by KEEPING THEIR INTEREST!

So the moral of the story is ‘think like your prospects’ – as they say, “walk a mile in your customer’s shoes!”

Grab your visitor by the eyeballs, take him/her by the hand and lead them briskly through your page sequence, feeding their excitement as you go, till you make them a ‘no-brainer’ offer they can’t refuse – what Mark Joyner calls the ‘Irresistible Offer’.

Happy copywriting!
John Thornely

Great sales copy – and an ‘irresistible offer’ – are essentials for success in any marketing campaign.

And your copy just has to engage people if you are to have any chance of getting that sale… or whatever action you want them to take.

Avoiding The Bin

You have around 3 or 4 seconds to grab your prospect’s attention and avoid the bin… So just how do people view a Website or Mailing Piece? Well, there are two key elements here…

Firstly, their perception will be coloured by their own circumstances and experience – they will be pre-conditioned before they arrive at your page. So you’ll need to think about your target prospects and how they may perceive the look and content of your page – it’s a case of reality vs. our perceived reality.

And the timing of when your prospect receives your contact may be important to their perception – or even their availability or willingness to look at it.

First Things First

What is the first thing they see….? The headline on your email or web page; or the Envelope? What impact does it have? What frame of mind does it put your prospect in? Does it make them want to open it or read on? You don’t want their first action to be to bin it or click away, do you?

But there are no ready answers to what works and what doesn’t – so you need to find a happy compromise between using formats that you know have been successful (or, failing that, ones you think are good) and being different enough to stand out and shout “open me” or “read me”! And test, test, test!

Great Copy

So what makes great copy? What makes people read on and take the ‘most desired action’?

Well, here’s the little-understood secret of great copywriting… Are you ready?

· The purpose of the Headline is to make the prospect want to read the next paragraph…

· The purpose of each paragraph is to make the prospect want to read the next…

· The purpose of every sub-header is… You guessed it!

· And the purpose of the whole piece is to make your prospect want to take the ‘most desired action’

Cunning, heh? Well no, not really! Just think how you read a sales letter and what makes you want to take the ‘most desired action’. So it’s simple, really, isn’t it?

Priorities

Now, think how you scan a sales letter. Most people read the headline, then flip to the close or order form to see how much it costs, often reading the ‘PS’s next, then the guarantee, and so on. So focus your efforts in that priority.

Headliner

What’s the most memorable headline you’ve ever seen? Did it make you buy? Or was it just memorable? Now here’s another little secret: Memorable Headlines and Headlines which work cannot co-exist 99% of the time! This contradicts conventional wisdom but is a reality of marketing. But if you can achieve both – you’ve just struck gold!

80% of success of the sales page depends on the Headline, so it needs to be catchy and intrigue the reader enough to make them read on. It also needs to capture the flavour of the benefit your product will give them.

Time tested results indicate that enclosing the headline in quotation marks produces a 28% greater response, the use of specific figures has much greater impact and Title Case is most successful format. Best font colours are black, mid-red and blue.

Other ‘checklist’ items for your headline: it must command attention, draw in your target audience, communicate your offer and promise a desired benefit. Effective ‘keywords’ include You, Now, Free, How to, etc. Testimonials make great headlines.

In a nutshell, the headline is the offer in a raw, attention-getting form, so it should contain all 4 ingredients to an extent!

Story Board

We communicate by telling stories – think of your last casual conversation in the pub or at home – it was probably relating a story in some form or other, even if it was just relating what happened to you today.

So use stories. Your body copy needs to build a story to engage your reader and present the truth in a fascinating manner. Provide as much ‘social proof’, endorsements and testimonials as you can to show your product or service works. Avoid entertaining or dullness and don’t use ‘fact-less drivel’. Keep every element relevant – build to the ‘most desired action’ and remove anything unnecessary.

Sub-Headers

As well as making your prospect want to read on, these should allow the ‘skimmers’ to understand the whole of your sales page if they just read the subheaders and also ‘punctuate’ your body copy.

Think of possible objections or second-guessing of headline and neutralize them. The Headline is mainly an attention-getter, so you need to explain a little more.

Bullets

Bullet points should be ‘blind’ – teasing and hinting at the benefits but not should never reveal the content or the secret. In the form of little-known nuggets or unique or privileged information they can give credibility but should be specific and convey urgency in providing a benefit.

Call To Action

This should clearly spell out exactly what you want the reader to do – the ‘most desired action’ – or they’ll do what they always do – nothing! Create a strong, unapologetic close and use scarcity tactics such as ‘time-limited offer’, ‘only 100 available’ (and explain why), etc, to get your reader to take action NOW.

P.S.

The P.S. is the third most read element and can MASSIVELY affect response. So DON’T write it last! It should be a ‘mini-summary’ of the whole offer, re-stating the ‘USP’ and benefits, together with the ‘no-risk guarantee’. But you can also add extra surprises or hidden benefits and emphasize the urgency or ‘limited offer’.

When Is An Order Not and Order?

Never call an order form an order form! Sounds silly, but it has a big psychological effect! Your order device (‘Reservation Certificate’, ‘Priority Booking’ or whatever) should re-state the offer, No-Risk Guarantee and bonuses. It should preferably be on a separate web page (or one-sided sheet if printed) and should CLEARLY state the action you require your prospect to take, including mailing address or whatever.

Including your contact details and a REAL address and phone number increases confidence in you and your offer.

The Lift Letter

A very effective device is to include a ‘lift letter’ from someone the prospect already knows and, preferably, trusts. This should present a dramatic summary of offer and can take the form of a testimonial or actual letter, in a slightly different ‘voice’, and is preferably signed by someone else.

I know of one recent offer that did well when accompanied by a lift letter but bombed when sent to a ‘cold list’. So think of the Lift Letter as a ‘talk-show host’ giving a guest (the main copy) a good build-up. Touch on the offer without giving too much away.

Action Bonus

Bonuses can be used to incentivise speed of response or increase perceived offer value, or ‘Thud Factor’! Attach a specific value to each bonus, so that they carry real weight – some people will buy the product just for the bonuses!

You can also allow purchasers to sell the bonuses too – so each should have a mini-offer all of its own. However, there may be good reasons NOT to dilute your offer with a bunch of bonuses, so think through your prospect’s reactions.

It’s Guaranteed

When framing your Guarantee, think ‘risk reversal’ – take all the risk away and even incentivise them by offering eg “4 times your money back if you don’t get the result” etc. Think like your prospect… They’re looking for the catch in your offer, so defuse it.

The reality is that there are ALWAYS refunds – 10-20% is quite common – but even 40% refunds can be profitable! I’d happily accept 80% return rate if I was getting a 10% response rate! So concentrate on the offer and try to overcome the ‘Fear of regret’ that many purchasers experience once they’ve cooled off a bit.

Go With A Bang!

So, to recap, your sales letter or email needs to include the following elements:

1 – Headline with Unique Positioning Statement

2 – Benefit-Oriented Copy

3 – Testimonials

4 – The Offer, with bonuses

5 – Guarantee

6 – Call to Action

7 – Postscript (PS)

Remember, you need to focus on (and think like) your prospect. So ‘walk a mile in your prospect’s shoes’ – get inside them – where do they live, what do they eat and wear, what do they do in their leisure time and what do they worry about? What makes them tick?

Put 50% or more of your effort into the headline – write 10 or 20 alternatives until you find one that has all the right elements.

Make sure your body copy builds steadily, with suitable sub-headlines, to a resounding ‘call to action’ and that your ‘no-brainer’ offer is supported by an ‘unbeatable’ guarantee and a pile of mouth-watering bonuses!

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

Need to capture screenshots – or even video – from your computer?

Need a simple way of creating ‘news flashes’ or promo videos?

Well, the good news is that there’s a simple-to-use – and free – software system that allows you to do all this – and more!

Those who joined us at the recent Mastermind Workshop saw me demonstrate a free screen capture software, called ‘Jing’, from trusted software company TechSmith – you can check it out at: www.jingproject.com.

You’ll need to register, but you can select the extent of promotional material you want to receive from TechSmith (I get very little).

The Jing software installs a small ‘Sun’ icon onto your screen (see the image below, captured with Jing), which is available whenever you need to capture a screen shot or video.

Jing Screen Capture Software

The small half-sun icon tucks away discreetly on the edge of your screen (and you can move or hide the icon if you want) – I leave mine at the top of my screen away from the busier areas.

To capture a screen shot, just mouse-over the sun icon and control ‘pods’ appear (as in the image above) – click on the screen-capture ‘pod’ and you can set the area you want to capture.

Jing then gives you the option to save direct to your hard drive (so you can retrieve the image for later use) or to the clip-board, so you can paste it straight into a document.

You can also use it to capture video from your screen – and if you take the paid version, you can upload this directly to web pages – or Youtube!

And there are lots of ways you can use the images or video in your business – I suggest you check it out soon! I use it most days.

Cheers!
John

Bundling your products can give you a number of benefits:

· avoids the “you’re too expensive” objection

· avoids direct price/value comparisons with your competitors

· can form a ‘no-brainer’ offer

· can support a ‘time-limited’ or ‘last few’ scarcity offer

McDonald’s does this with their Extra Value Meals — sandwich, fries, and drink, for one low price.

Computer companies offer packages regularly. For example: “Buy a computer — get a free keyboard, mouse, and modem, and $1,000.00 worth of software.”

Add some low-cost bonuses and emphasize the terrific value that your unique bundled offer gives the customer to remove the ‘too expensive’ objection!

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

How does Google rank bidders on its Adwords program?

That’s a perennial question that Google never answers directly – and as a result, leads the web advertising industry a merry game ‘catch-if-catch-can’!

It also leads to much misunderstanding by those who can’t afford to spend their days (and money) researching the actual performance of Google Ads… and find their ads being ranked in strange ways – or not shown at all!

So when a senior figure in Google comes out and clarifies the Google Ad Auction process, and how the ‘Quality Score’ of your ad (and other factors) affect both the ranking and cost of your ad (and whether it’s shown at all)… it’s got to be helpful!

And the video below, presented by Hal Varian, Google CHief Economist, is one of the clearest explanations I’ve seen of the importance of managing Adwords Quality Score and the effect on the Ad auction and your Ad placement.

Consulting Google’s Help pages is a bit like consulting the classical Oracle at Delphi – you never get a direct answer! But this is certainly the most easily understood explanation I’ve seen from Google on the auction process and ranking of your Ad.

If you’re not familiar with the basics of  Google Adwords, you can get a description of Quality Score here. But the video is clearer… So maybe Google does actually realise it needs to clarifyhow it’s rnking system works!

Happy Adword-ing
John Thornely