Internet Marketing Strategy

Speak Your Mind

By Christian

I just wanted to thank you all…everyone who has taken a minute to respond to my user survey for Next Level Blogger. One of the key things I preach to clients is to get all the data you can from your visitors, customers and clients…and then don’t skip the crucial next step: FOLLOW THROUGH ON IT!

Don’t just get information from your visitors and then fail to implement it into your plan! You guys and gals are AWESOME for speaking your mind and letting me know what you think about Next Level Blogger. I want to confirm with you that I AM listening to your feedback, and I am already in the process of following through on what you’ve shared with me 🙂

So far, you’ve given me input on what type of issues and concerns you’d like to see addressed here, and you’ve given me some awesome ideas for upcoming articles on blogging, monetizing, internet marketing and more, so be on the look out for them!

If you read my articles or ebooks, and you haven’t submitted a survey yet…please do so! It will take you about one minute. Seriously…and I absolutely WILL read your input, and I absolutely WILL follow through on it 🙂 Speak your mind! Let me know what you love about Next Level Blogger, what you hate and what you’d like to see next. Thanks again!

Take the Next Level Blogger Survey 🙂

How to Make Money Online Without Being a Schmuck or a Spammer

By Christian

One of my readers asked the other day how to “sell without selling”, which I think is a great way of describing the art of salesmanship. Obviously, you can’t sell without selling…if you don’t sell, then you don’t make sales! But the sentiment came through loud and clear. No one wants to come off as a schmuck. No one wants to be a sleazoid salesman, but the concern remains; we all have to make an actual living. So how do you get it done?

I’ve written before on Next Level Blogger that if you want to make money online, you need to learn how to sell. This is the art of asking for the order. You have to do it, but if you want to survive, you need to learn how to do it well. Do it poorly, and you’ll be a schmuck. Do it well, and well…the results are like magic.

Lessons from the Trenches

When I was doing sales training for door to door sales professionals, I would take trainees in a home with me to watch me do product demonstrations. Watching the real thing is the best way to learn. I would go into a home and put on a huge demo for the homeowners. I was Richard Simmons. I was Billy Mays. The homeowners and I connected; we were laughing together, shaking hands…we were best friends by the time I was done. And when we left the home with an order, I would ask the new salesperson what they thought, if they learned anything about how to sell. Seeing as how they just watched a sale made, it stands to reason that maybe they learned something, wouldn’t you say?

Often, the response from the person I was training would be something like “Well, I don’t feel like you really sold them anything. They just bought it. You showed it to them, and they bought it. I didn’t learn how to sell.” And therein lies the lesson. Good salesmanship is not forced or uncomfortable. It’s friendly, genuine and to be perfectly honest…a lot of damn fun.

Most people think selling is manipulative and underhanded. The fact is that the only time sales fits that description is when the salesperson is manipulative and underhanded. Unfortunately, it happens a lot, and the misconception of all salesman being sleazy is understandable, but it’s just not accurate.

Good selling is honest, transparent and helpful. No one has a problem solving one of their own problems for an affordable and reasonable price. What people don’t want is to be manipulated or duped. So if you don’t want to come off as sleazy…it’s easy; just don’t be a sleaze! And if you don’t want to come off as manipulative, don’t manipulate people.

Is it really as simple as that? Yes, actually.

So how do you make a sale without being manipulative?

Follow these steps:

Meet with qualified prospects
Discuss the prospect’s problems in detail
Have the prospect decide for themselves which of your solutions works best for them

Let me elaborate a bit…

Meet With Qualified Prospects

There is something about blogging that I find fundamentally beautiful. It is the fact that by it’s very design, it attracts qualified prospects. Think about how someone comes to visit your blog. Perhaps they found you in Google while searching for information they need. Maybe they follow a link that they believe will take them to information they want. Perhaps they received an email from a friend saying “hey check out this article”. In nearly all cases, a visitor is on the pages of your blog for one reason…because they’re actually interested in what you’re selling.

That does not mean that you don’t need to be good. You do. Your content needs to rock. And what you sell has to be top notch, because people can sniff out crap from a mile away these days. But if you’re the real deal, and you have something of actual value to offer your readers, blogging automatically attracts the right people to you. This takes care of step one automatically. By blogging, you’re already meeting with qualified prospects.

Discuss the Prospect’s Problems in Detail

If you’re trying to be helpful, what do you do? You meet people at their level. Discuss their problems. This is how people are going to find your blog to begin with. They have a problem. They are going to specifically look for someone talking about that problem in the hopes they can find a solution. This is simply how it works. So, talk about their problems.

This is where real expertise comes in. You have to actually know your business. If you’re just doing something to make some cash, it ALWAYS comes through in your content. However if you really know your subject, and if you really do have a valuable solution for people, you will have no problem writing at length about the problems that your product or service can solve.

Don’t talk about yourself or your product. Talk about your prospect and the problems they face.

Case in point: have you been reading this post this whole time thinking “man this guy is such a sleaze; he’s just trying to sell me on why I should hire him as a consultant, to help me take my business to the next level by improving my sales and marketing tactics online”?

If you’ve read this far, I’d wager that’s not what’s on your mind! You’re most likely reading the post because it connects with an issue you’re having. Why in the world would you be reading this post if you weren’t interested in learning how to make more money online or market your business more effectively on the internet? And as luck would have it…if you happen to want a more personalized and one-on-one solution for your business, I can help you with that. Big coincidence, huh? 😉

Have the Prospect Decide for Themselves Which of Your Solutions Works Best for Them

Online, asking for the order is simple. All you have to do is make your solutions easily available. By focusing on the prospect’s problems, you’ve drawn them in. You’ve attracted qualified and interested visitors. And now, consider why they’re there. To solve a problem, correct? And your entire page happens to be filled with links and additional resources that they can explore. All of which solve their problem, and all of which add to your bottom line.

Perhaps your article is all they needed for right now. Or perhaps they’re not quite ready to purchase anything just yet. That’s totally fine. That’s why you give them many opportunities to easily subscribe. And that’s why you offer enticements and invitations to revisit your blog regularly. And that’s why you keep your content coming regularly. And that’s why you keep the quality high. If you know your stuff, and if you continue to connect with them, at some point one of your solutions will connect with them as well.

The Number One Reason Blogs Fail

By Christian

Most of the readers of this article are people who are actively involved in blogging, internet marketing or social networking for business…or people who are looking for a good way to GET involved in these activities. One of my biggest goals is to communicate the fact that there really isn’t a hardcore secret to making it work. You need to be purpose-driven and work hard at it.

I suppose I could sell you a book on how to make a million dollars in your first year while only working a few hours a day, or I could charge you $97 for a “proven, guaranteed program” on how to get 10,000 followers on Twitter in the next 90 days. But I’d rather just tell you the truth.

Here’s the motivation for me: if I tell you what really works, then some of you will turn away and not come back, because I’m not telling you what you want to hear. To me, that’s a good thing. The reason it’s good for me to run some people off, is because I sell stuff. I sell sales training and consultation, and I sell information products. If you’re looking for a fast fix or a get rich quick deal, you either won’t buy what I’m selling, or you’ll complain when you get it, so me just giving it to you straight really is better for all of us!

The Reason Blogs Fail

That said, what IS the reason most blogs fail? This is my honest assessment: the reason most blogs fail is because they were improperly researched to start. Probably very little or NO research was put in at the beginning, and as a result the blogger failed to get any meaningful results. Then they quit.

I would quit too if I got no results! If you’re getting no results, it’s smart to move on to something else. It’s important to know the difference that a failed blog doesn’t mean you’re a failed blogger! I hope these bloggers are not giving up on blogging altogether. I hope they are picking up the pieces and learning from their mistakes…and moving on to more successful projects in the future.

But the idea stands: if you want a successful blog or internet marketing plan of any kind, you need a fully detailed plan to start off. As you know, I consult with sales people all the time, and you’d be amazed at how many people have no business plan of any kind. No written goals at all. I’m sorry, but you cannot run a meaningful business and achieve meaningful results without a plan.

The Magic of a Business Plan

The magic of writing up a business plan is NOT in the finished project. You can throw the business plan in the trash for all I care (figuratively speaking; it’s best to keep it, refer back to it and continue to revise it at least quarterly). The real power in writing a business plan comes from the writing process.

What is your target audience?
How will you target them?
What will be your main source of traffic?
What steps do you plan to take to ensure you get the traffic you need?
How do you know these steps will be effective?
How will you measure the success of your blog?
How do you know that getting those results will create a meaningful impact on your business?

Answering questions like this put you in the hot seat. Will your idea for a blog work? I don’t know, but don’t you think it’s better to find out before you spend the next several months working on it?

Failure to plan properly is not the ONLY reason a blog can fail of course, but it’s the number one reason. It’s amazing how many businesses are out there operating with no plan whatsoever. If you take your success seriously (why wouldn’t you?), do the necessary work to write a proper business plan. You’ll be doing yourself a serious disservice if you choose to skip it!

Why You are a Salesperson Whether You Think So or Not

By Christian

Everyone is a salesperson. Just like everyone is an actor. This is a responsibility that most of us do not want to undertake, because it means extra work. It means paying attention to every detail. But even though it’s extra work, it’s worth it. The fact is, we cannot decide how things are; we can only decide whether or not we are going to be effective and successful, given the circumstances.

Running a blog is hard work, and if you’re reading this you are someone who wants to learn to do it effectively. This is a theme that comes up many times in my writing, and I think it’s important to cover it regularly, because there is SO much information steering us down the wrong path…a path that will waste our time. This is information that caters to the little voice inside all of us that is always seeking a shortcut. We need to destroy that voice and get to work!

Why to be a Salesperson

Being an effective salesperson means that you will be effective in getting the results you want out of your readers. It means you will present yourself deliberately and professionally. It doesn’t mean your blog needs to be prim and proper…it means you need to present yourself in a manner consistent with getting the results you want and need to run your business effectively.

Being an effective salesperson means you will not be afraid to ask for the order. Maybe this means you will ask people to comment your posts, maybe it means you will ask them to buy your product or services…but it means you WILL ask for what you want. This is something most bloggers fail to do.

Not only will you ask for the order, but you will study and perfect the craft of asking for the order daily…constantly seeking better and more effective ways to improve what you do. Maybe you need to phrase your requests differently. Maybe you need to use a pop up window. Maybe you need to frame your request in red and put it in the upper right hand corner of the page (the statistically most effective placement for an opt-in box). Details matter. As an effective salesperson, you will care about these details, and you will attend to them daily.

What Happens When You’re NOT a Salesperson

If you’re NOT a salesperson, you will have a much easier time of it. You will simply write what you want, post when you feel like it, and you will expect your readers to do what you want them to do. Some of them will, but most will not. Success will remain a nebulous and mystical phenomenon to you, because you’ll see a lot of other websites and blogs that seem to you to be very similar to what you’re doing. Yet some of them will have vastly more traffic and make a lot more money than you, and you will always wonder why. After all, you will think to yourself, you’re blogging. You’re working every day, so why aren’t you getting the results?

At some point you will decide that it just isn’t for you, and you will quit…not ever having realized that you were a salesperson. You thought you were a blogger. You thought wrong.

Success is in the Details

You are a salesperson, whether you think you are or not. That is the business we’re all in. If we do this for money, then we need to get results…it’s just how it is. A lot of what I write about will be conceptual stuff like this, but it all leads into a detailed analysis of the mundane details. Details which will make many of your eyes glaze over. If you’re one of the ones who glazes over, it will be because you will not want to do the work I’m describing. That is the moat which separates the successful and unsuccessful…in blogging, internet marketing or any business endeavor. Big success is made up of millions of tiny, seemingly insignificant successes. Success is in the details.

Does it matter whether you use Verdana or Times New Roman on your sales page? Yes, it matters. A true salesperson knows this and is EXCITED to determine which one to use. Why? Because choosing the right mundane details is what will create tiny, incremental improvements. And those tiny improvements, done consistently over time…THAT’S what makes you a huge success. A salesperson knows this.

Those of us who are successful at making money online have embraced this fact. And we’ve embraced the work that comes with it. We do what it takes. Are you a salesperson? You better believe it!

Make Money Online by Selling More to Fewer People

By Christian

This is a post in a series which begins here. We’ve talked so far about the 3 Simple, Killer Steps to Improve Traffic, and then we moved on to how to Use a Sales Funnel to Blow up Your Blogging and Internet Marketing Sales. Today, I’m going to talk for a minute about how a tip I learned to make better use of the traffic you’re already getting.

High Traffic Ain’t all That…

We’re all understandably concerned with getting more and more traffic. This makes sense. But look, if you’re getting any traffic at all, and you’re not making money…you’re doing something wrong. If you’re not making ANY money with low traffic, you’re not going to be doing much better with MORE traffic. We’ve already talked about this briefly, but this will come up again and again here: you don’t need massive traffic to make money online. You just need to be smart about what you’re doing! In this post I’ll give you a simple tweak that will help you get better results from the traffic you’re already getting. Make more money without increasing traffic at all…that’s gotta sound at least kind of cool, right? 😉

The Sales Funnel, Again

So here’s the deal, everyone of your visitors is at a certain place in your sales funnel. It’s essential to stop looking at your traffic as just “traffic”. First of all, they’re all prospects. They’re all individual people. Everyone who hits your site is there for a reason. Why? What’s their motivation for being there? How did they find you? What problem can you help them solve? It’s your job to be able to answer these questions. One of my goals in writing this particular series of posts is to hopefully help you with some sales training tips that will help you zero in on these concerns and make better use of your traffic.

It’s important to consider this: not everyone is on your site for the same reason. Your friends, your colleagues, people you’ve never met, people who found you on Twitter, through Google…they’re all likely there for different reasons, and you need to tweak your site to make the best use of this information. You cannot use a blanket sales approach and hope for good results. It’s not going to work. You need to sell, as best as you can, to each individual visitor.

Look at where your visitors came from and use that information to make the page they land on as conducive to moving them along the sales cycle as possible. In this post, I’ll give you an example of how to do this with organic traffic (visitors that come in from search engines). In later posts, I will cover more sources of traffic and how to tweak your site out to monetize on those as well.

Tweak Your Page to Monetize on Organic Traffic

Do you have a page that’s getting a lot of traffic from Google or some other search engine? Use your analytics to see what keywords they’re using to land on that page. Search engine traffic is usually pretty targeted, good quality traffic, but if you’re not converting that traffic, what good is it? If they’re landing on your page through a search engine, think about what they means…

They typed in specific keywords for a specific problem they’re looking to solve. They’re looking for an answer, and your site showed up! They’re on your site because Google has told them you likely have a good answer for them. This is a fantastic opportunity to monetize! Yet many sites have a 60% bounce rate or higher. In other words, you have all these targeted leads hitting your site, and 60% of them or more are immediately leaving without even reading a single article, filling out a form or even asking you for more information in any way. Fail! Let’s not let this happen anymore, okay?

Let’s say you have an article on how to grow blueberries on your back porch. Cool. I like this site already! Now let’s say you look in your analytics report and see that people are finding that page by searching “how to grow blueberries”. Here are a few things to think about:

Maybe it’s time to add a free ebook, specifically on this page, called “how to grow blueberries” and offer it as a free download for any new subscribers.
Maybe you can even effectively SELL an ebook on that page.
Perhaps you would do better to increase the size and scope of that particular article and make it more engaging…people are hitting this article for a reason. There is obviously demand for it. Give them tons of information to keep them there longer!
Link the page up really well to OTHER pages on your site or related sales pages you have up elsewhere. They’ve hit your site as a targeted lead. Now, lead them on to a place that will show them even more value, and give you a better opportunity to make a sale. If you don’t ask, you don’t get!
Maybe you can try cutting back on the information you give! Require an email subscription to access the page.

See the point is this…there are a LOT of things you can do to respond to this demand for information. But the WRONG thing to do is to simply appreciate the hits you’re getting and then proceed to wonder why you’re not making any money! Unfortunately this is what most people do! Be deliberate in your approach and keep this fantastically simple rule of blogging for business success always in the front of your mind:

Success comes in tiny increments!

You can always wonder why you’re not getting the huge results that other bloggers and internet marketers get, or you can go about the business of making the small tiny tweaks that make all the difference. It’s up to you! Let’s say you have 100 pages or so indexed on your site. Make a tiny 1% improvement to each page, and you create an overall massive increase in income! These small changes add up; trust me!

A Lesson from the Trenches

When I was out in the field selling face to face, I learned how important it was to dress well. On the surface, and to the untrained sales professional, it doesn’t seem like it should matter so much. I mean, if my product was indeed the best, all I should have to do is show it, and the customer should buy it because it makes sense…because it’s a quality, affordable and necessary product, right? It doesn’t work that way. Presentation is everything. Little tweaks to your presentation make all the difference. A clean, well-tailored suit, a slightly different inflection when you make a certain point or ask a certain question of your prospect, effective body language…it all requires extra work and attention to detail. But when you put all the elements together, it becomes nearly impossible to NOT get the sale! You become a force to be reckoned with. But you must do the work! Internet marketing is no different.

Perhaps you’re blogging or social networking and trying to get better results. Maybe you’re selling real estate, or ebooks, or affiliate products of some sort…you’re in the right place, but always remember there are no short cuts!

Make small incremental changes, and critique the results you get. Go back and tweak more. Lots of work, I know! You can complain if you want, or you can go make a killing…it’s up to you 🙂

Upcoming posts…I will be covering more sales training tips for tweaking and getting better results from more traffic sources. As the series continues, feel free to comment and leave any ideas for future content you’d like to see covered. Thanks and talk to you soon!