4 Things You’re Probably Doing Wrong and Don’t Even Realize
You probably know about my 3 Pillars of Guaranteed Success (if you don’t, you should 
.
All of my business efforts are aimed at the Pillars so that I keep focused on only those items that will bring success and don’t get seduced into all those other attractive but distracting opportunities.
In this series of blog posts, I am going to show you 4 things you’re probably doing wrong that can accelerate the success you can get. They work very well with the 3 Pillars but they also work well if you don’t have the 3 Pillars foundation, just not as well as with that foundation.
So, it may shock you to see that I’m talking here about something that is only, if you squint hard and turn your head just so, indirectly related to the 3 Pillars.
You may ask “Why is that? Why look at things other than the 3 Pillars? Aren’t I losing my focus and slowing my success?”
The answer is simple, the 3 Pillars guarantee success but they are NOT always the fastest ways to achieve success and keep it.
The Pillars are just the foundations of success but once you’ve achieved success you need to build onto that to retain it. There also are additional things you can do that will speed the success the 3 Pillars bring.
Like a house, once you have built the foundation and secure structure you still want to improve it with all the modern conveniences and cool stuff to make it as pleasant and satisfying as possible.
So what I’m talking about here is about ways to more quickly achieve success and improve that success with “cool stuff”
The old chicken and the egg has an, admittedly weak, analogy in Internet Marketing. That is, what is the important Pillar to start with: Traffic or Product?
In truth, it doesn’t matter as long as you have both.
You can be starting to generate traffic while getting the product or you can create the product and then generate traffic.
I would say, if you do it right, generating traffic first while finding or creating a product will produce faster results but ultimately you must have both to succeed.
So let’s start with traffic and see how we can achieve success faster and easier.
You want to do that don’t you?!?!
Traffic has one purpose, to get people into your sales funnel. Without that, what you have is a lonely, empty “online store” and that leads to failure not success.
Once you get that traffic then you need to do something with it otherwise your online store is packed with people but there is nothing there for them and they’ll leave and won’t come back without extra work on your part.
The Conversions Pillar and the Product Pillar are meant to deal with that but there are other things you can do; they don’t guarantee success but they sure can help make it easier and faster.
The one you hear about most frequently is List Building. Of course, list building by itself is like information, worthless if you don’t use it.
So while you SHOULD do list building, it actually is just another way to get traffic, you MUST use your list if you want to have faster and easier success.
If you don’t use your list then don’t waste the time and money building it, that time and money could be used better elsewhere.
What should you do?
Well, the best thing to do is do what I am doing now, that is, e-mail marketing.
1. E-mail Marketing
E-mail marketing is, at its most basic, just writing to your list on a consistent and somewhat frequent basis. There are a lot more advanced techniques but we’ll stick with the basics here.
While you may know about this or feel you know how to do this I still find so many people, including myself at times, not doing everything the best way possible so let’s go through a list building/e-mail marketing example. It will be simplistic to make it understandable but the key points will be touched upon.
First you need to entice people onto your list.
Unless you’re a “celebrity”, which has it’s own intrinsic value, you’ll need to have an “offer” to add people to your list; that is to convert — you’ll find a lot of similarities to copywriting which is a key aspect of the Conversions Pillar.
The Offer
The days when you could throw together a quick couple page “report” that was half sales material and get hordes of people on your list are long over, particularly in some niches.
Yet I still see so many experienced marketers do it and they tell me it’s been “working for years”.
Certainly it has but times change and there are ways to do better.
Just last week, a very experienced and successful marketer told me he wanted to use a 2 page report of, to my mind, worthless information as the offer for people to sign up to a list.
Would that get some people to sign up? Maybe, probably. Would it be possible to get a lot more subscribers with little extra work? Absolutely.
The truth is, the more value and the better information you give, the better you will convert and the more likely someone will be to remain on your list and go further down your sales funnel.
So provide a “report” that provides a lot of value or an e-mail newsletter or some free products or an e-course or discount coupons or … use your imagination and what is applicable in your situation. You can even use a combination of things.
One thing that I’ve found to work really well is to give away a sampler of the “offer” without any sign up required.
For example, if you have free report “7 Best Ways to do whatever”, give away without requiring any sign up your best way.
Some of the ways I have done this are: providing a full chapter or two from a book; providing a graphics sampler from a graphics product; providing templates from a templates product; providing lessons from an e-course; providing a limited time access to a membership site; etc. (meaning I know there were other things I’ve done but I can’t remember them now
I found when I started giving a piece of the free offer without any sign up, my conversions went up over 230%.
Just remember, you must be giving value that exceeds the expectations of the person for the situation.
Doing that is why my conversions improved so much.
People didn’t expect such good information for nothing, not even asking for an e-mail address. Then they did not expect to find so much value in the free thing they received for giving the e-mail address.
I had one list that more than doubled in size in just 6 months and, no, it wasn’t a list of 10 people to start with!
The Presentation
Another important aspect of building your e-mail list is how you present it.
So many times I see things like:
- Sign up for a free e-mail newsletter on [some topic]
- Receive special offers by e-mail
- Get your FREE report “5 Ways to Make Me Rich” a $97 Value
I can’t express in polite company what I think of them but it isn’t good
How much better is it to say:
“Want more Web traffic in a hurry?
Want to Know All the Guru Secrets of Getting Traffic?
You’ll get that and much more in my weekly newsletter ‘Web 2.0 Traffic Secrets’
Click here to view a sample issue
Sign up now and I’ll throw in my ‘Best of’ report that contains all the best tips from past issues. It’s 100% free and you can cancel at any time.”
Tell me, which do you think will improve conversions?
Then, if the newsletter is better than expected you’ve got a very solid lead and it is very likely they will move down your sales funnel.
This happens, not because you’ve tricked them or psychologically manipulated them but because they have learned that you provide things that truly make some aspect of their life better and they want you to continue doing that.
Build a Relationship
This is such an important part of e-mail marketing that I am tempted to call it the most important part… okay I will, it IS the most important part.
After you have your list you must build a relationship with them.
There are several ways to do this and several motivations behind it.
The important thing though is to do it.
Send them valuable e-mails on a periodic basis. Different people have different thoughts on this but I say do as many as your list wants.
You find that out by sending out more frequent e-mails until you see you unsubscribe rate get too high, then back off. Or you could continue if you feel you want to do it more frequently and just weed out those who don’t want that many e-mails.
Remember too that if you do start seeing a high unsubscribe rate it may mean your e-mails are not really providing enough value and you need to improve them.
Some very successful people like Shawn Casey and Tellman Knudson send out many e-mails every day!
Just let your list tell you when you are sending too many and you’ll doing fine; but keep the value high.
What do I mean by having “high value” e-mail?
Well, that can vary from list to list.
Some lists like lots of valuable information, others like lots of good offers, others want free products, other want entertainment, and still others want a variety.
You need to find out what the list wants and see how you can give them that while still accomplishing your goals for the list. Both these factors are important so be sure to balance them properly.
Caring for Your List
Since it is easier to sell to someone who likes you and who has bought something from you before building this relationship can really help you succeed faster.
You must be sincere and truthful though. If you aren’t it will show through and you will pay the price for that.
I’ve had people write me and say that “you really seem to care about me and want to help me” to which I am both flattered and saddened.
Saddened because they have trouble believing that people would actually care.
I mention this to remind you that we live in a time of distrust and you will need to overcome this cautiousness and disbelief to get to the place of trust and, yes, mutual caring.
Now I know that many people aren’t like me and don’t have my innate caring and helping “gene” (I used to get up in the middle of class to personally help other students who were struggling with a concept that I happen to get — this did NOT make me popular with my teachers!)
But, even if you don’t have this “gene”, you can care if you let yourself.
Before you start thinking this is all “new age-y”, understand it isn’t.
Marketing is all about psychology and the reality is if you have a relationship, even a more superficial one via e-mail and blogs, the more likely you both will achieve your respective goal.
The reality also is that you can’t fake the caring and you can care for the people on your list. You’ve had to “learn” to care for pretty much everyone you’ve ever cared for so this isn’t any different.
One technique that can help you become more caring to your list is to start thinking of them as allies and not prospects.
People do this all the time with people they don’t know. You care more for strangers from your school or from where you live or that is in the same career or is from the same country or the same church or likes the same musical group or all kinds of things.
There is a bond there, they are on your list so you’re all part of one common community, even if it isn’t as strong a bond as you might feel towards your mother or spouse or children.
Tap into that bond and use it in your communications with your list, it will make a difference.
Follow Up
It is very important to follow up with your list.
If you have something useful for your list, write them. Every e-mail doesn’t have to be useful for everybody on your list but it should be useful to a reasonable percentage of them; over time you will provide useful stuff to everyone.
If they write you, respond with a personal reply.
If they purchase something, thank them.
If they have a problem, help them.
If they comment on your blog, respond to them.
Building a relationship is so important but if you ignore the follow up then you’ll have wasted your efforts.
Conclusion
Here we looked at how to add to the 3 Pillars by doing e-mail marketing “right”.
We went from understanding e-mail marketing to creating a good “offer” to entice people to join your list, how to present that offer so it converts well, the importance of building a relationship and caring for your list, and why you should always be following up with your list.
In the next post we’ll look at another important thing you may doing wrong, if you are doing it at all, testing and analytics.
Talk soon,
The “Shameless” (but “Ethical”) Marketer
http://www.8-8-8Sale.com
http://www.MusicForInternetMarketers.com
http://www.SecretsOfGoogleAdWords.com
