Internet Marketing Made Simple – Page 21

How To Search Bestsellers

One of the best ways to find out what your audience wants is to see what they’re already buying. Here’s how:

Check Amazon for the bestselling products in your niche.
Search ClickBank.com to see what’s selling well.
Browse Udemy.com to find out what your market is buying.
Research the Apple iTunes store and Google Play.
Seek bestsellers on JVZoo.com.

You should also research any other marketplaces that are relevant to the product you want to sell.

In all cases, you’re looking for two things:

Bestsellers. If a product is selling like crazy, that’s a good sign. Generally, you’re going to want to create products that are similar to these bestsellers (except you’ll have your own twists, perspectives and benefits, of course).

Products with competition. If multiple marketers in your niche are investing time and money into developing a certain type of product, that’s a sign that the product is likely profitable. Better yet, look for products with competition where several of the similar products are also bestsellers in the niche.

Take note: if you see a product that’s a bestseller yet doesn’t have any competition, see if you can find out when the product was released. If it’s a new release, it may not yet have any competition. You then need to determine if it’s just a fluke that this product is a bestseller, or if it’s likely that the product creator uncovered an unexploited gap in the niche.

On the flip side: if you see a type of product that has plenty of competition, yet none of them are bestsellers, you need to ask yourself why. One reason is that the products were released some time ago, and the topic or type of product is NOT evergreen. Thus, they may have all been bestsellers at one time (maybe years ago), but now none of them are.

One way to help you determine if this is the case is to use Google Trends (http://trends.google.com). This will give you some insight as to whether a product or topic has enduring interest or popularity.

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How To Package Your Content

People really do judge a book (or any other piece of content) by its cover. That’s why you’ll want to make sure you create quality packaging. This includes:

Interior design. Use professional templates or have a designer create custom interior templates for you. This includes interior designs for:

Ebooks and reports.

Tools (such as worksheets, templates, checklists and similar).

Multimedia (audios, videos, and webinars).

Dashboards and interfaces for software and membership sites.

Exterior design (product packaging). Your products should have eye-catching designs to showcase your product title. These designs should capture your branding as well as the overall “feel” of the product itself.

TIP: You can hire an ecover designer on a freelancing site such as upwork.com, fiverr.com, and freelancer.com.

Be sure that everything you publish is a high-quality piece of content. As you develop a reputation for creating quality work, you’ll naturally develop a fanatic audience who’s eager to consume everything you create!

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How To Polish Your Content

Good content doesn’t stop with good spelling and grammar. You’ll want to be sure your content is polished by asking yourself these questions:

Does the content solve a problem for the reader?

First and foremost, your prospects and customers are looking for solutions to their most pressing problems. Your content can be really engaging and keep people hooked right to the very end – but if the information doesn’t actually help them in some way, then the user will be disappointed. They’re unlikely to keep consuming your content if it’s not solving a problem.

Naturally, your content not only needs to solve a problem, it also needs to be a solution that your audience WANTS. That’s because what people need and what they want aren’t always the same thing.

For example, a smoker needs to stop smoking in order to protect their health. But we all know that not all smokers WANT to stop. So, if you’d try to push “stop smoking” content in front of the segment of the market that doesn’t actually want to stop, your business is going to struggle.

That’s why you need to do two things:

Know your audience. Don’t guess about who all is a part of your target market. Instead, do some market research, including surveys with your subscribers, blog readers and social media followers. Find out as much as you can about their demographics, wants, needs, hopes, and fears. The more you know about your audience, the better able you’ll be to create content that connects with them.

For example, let’s suppose you find out that your market consists mainly of women in their 30s who are juggling both a family (with an average of two children under 10 years old) and a career. You can then write content that really connects by talking about how hard it is to be a busy mom.

Know what your audience wants. While surveys may give you some glimpse into what they want, an even better way to find out what they want is to check what type of content they’re already consuming. This means checking out what’s selling on marketplaces like ClickBank.com, as well as finding out what topics are popular on blogs and social media pages across your niche.

Does the content use a conversational tone (where appropriate)?

Whenever possible, write your content as if you’re writing to a good friend. This doesn’t mean your content should be sloppy in any way. Rather, it should be an easy read and accessible to everyone (e.g., don’t try to impress readers with big words – focus on accessibility and readability instead).

Is the content engaging?

Does it hold the reader’s attention with things such as humor (use sparingly), stories, inspirational messages and so on?

Is the content factual/accurate?

Always fact-check your work. Even one mistake can ruin your credibility in the niche.

Does the content exude an air of authority/expertise?

People want to follow a strong, confident leader. That’s why you’ll want to create in-depth content (which shows your expertise). You’ll also want to write it in a way that conveys confidence.

Let me give you an example:

If you want to lose weight, you probably should start counting calories.

That line doesn’t inspire a whole lot of confidence, because the word “probably” makes it seem as if the writer isn’t sure. Here’s the same sentence with a more confident tone:

If you want to lose weight, then you need to start counting calories. Here’s why: [insert scientific evidence to back up the claim…]

Next…

Does the content look professional?

In other words, is it formatted nicely? For example, if it’s the interior of an ebook, did you use a professional-looking template?

Does the content share a tip or strategy readers can’t find anywhere else?

If you can provide truly unique content from time to time – even something as simple as a new twist on an old strategy – people are going to view your content as even more valuable. They’re not only going to keep coming back for more, they may share it with their friends.

Does the content include graphics to add value and make the content more appealing?

You can find these graphics on sites like DepositPhoto.com and iStockPhoto.com, or you can hire someone to create them for you. (Check out Fiverr.com for people who can tweak an image or create a simple image at a low cost.)

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How To Proof Your Content

Every piece of content you create should be proofed. This includes:

Products.
Newsletters.
Blog articles.
Social media posts.
Customer service replies.
Help desk FAQs and documentation.
Sales letters.
Web content.
Advertisements.
Press releases.
Guest content.
Disclaimers/terms of services/rules/agreements.
Project briefs.
Interactions/comments/replies on forums, groups and social media.

… And any other business-related communications.

Here are different ways to proof your content:

Do it yourself. This is a good choice for communications that tend to be a little more informal, such as blog commenting, social media commenting, answering customer inquiries, and similar.

Obviously, in all cases like this you want to make a good impression by putting out proofed and polished content. However, it’s simply not feasible to have a third party proof certain pieces of content, like a customer service email that needs to be answered ASAP. So, in those cases, you’ll need to proof it yourself.

Here are tips for when you have to proof your own content:

Use tools. While a spell checker and grammar checker won’t catch all your errors, it’s a good start. Most word processors and even email clients have spell checkers, so be sure to use them.

Read it out loud. Reading your content out loud tends to slow your rate of reading down, which helps you catch errors. This method also helps you catch content that’s poorly worded or otherwise doesn’t read smoothly.

Set it aside. This isn’t always possible due to time constraints. However, if you don’t need to publish the content ASAP, then set it aside for a couple days before you proof it. This lets you look at it with “fresh” eyes, which means you’re more likely to read it the way it’s actually written (errors and all) versus the way you think it’s written. And that means you’ll catch more of your errors.

Generally, proofing your content is the least desirable method, as you’re too close to your work to find all your errors. That’s why you’ll want a third party to look at your content, especially if the content is important.

Here’s the next option…

Ask a trusted friend to proof it. This is a good option if you have a colleague, friend, spouse or family member with a good eye for spelling and grammar. Don’t hand it over to someone who doesn’t have a good grasp of these items, however, as they may make mistakes that can damage your content.

When the content is really important, then you’ll want to turn to a professional…

Hire a professional. This is your best bet for your most important content (such as paid products).

Take note, there are two main types of people you can hire to get your content looking good:

A proofreader. This person generally deals with grammar and spelling errors.

An editor. This person not only deals with grammar and spelling, they’ll also look at your content overall and give you recommendations for better structure. For example, if they’re proofing a book, they might suggest that the content in one chapter be merged with the content for another chapter.

You can pick the type of person that best suits your needs and budget. (Obviously, an editor charges more because they do more.). You can find both proofreaders and editors by searching Google, asking colleagues for recommendations, and/or posting projects on freelancing sites such as upwork.com or freelancer.com.

Next…

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How To Develop Your Product

Here are the steps to creating a successful product:

Decide whether to outsource or do it yourself. Hint: outsource the product if a freelancer could create a better product than you can. You may even plan and then outsource the entire sales funnel all at once.

Create a detailed outline. Be sure your product is designed to solve a pressing problem. In addition, make sure this is a topic that’s already in-demand in your niche by doing your market research.

Research your product. Be sure your information is accurate by gathering information from multiple credible courses. If you get even one fact wrong, people are likely to question the accuracy of the rest of the information.

Develop an engaging product. Use a conversational tone, tell stories, and in general “edutain” (entertain while educating the customers).

Proof and polish. Be sure your product solves a problem in an engaging way, without any unnecessary fluff or filler. You may want to hire a professional proofreader to help you create a polished end result.

Title the product. A compelling, benefit-driven title helps boost sales. E.G., “The Secrets of Getting Rid of Cellulite For Good.”

Create high-quality ecover graphics. If you don’t have the skills or inclination to do this yourself, then hire a designer on a site like upwork.com.

Each product you create should be a useful product that solves a problem, and yet each product should also lead to another product in your sales funnel. These are the keys to a profitable business!

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How To Decide On a Format

The next step is to decide which format for your product will best suit the topic as well as your customer’s needs. Common formats include:

Ebooks.
Reports.
Articles.
Videos.
Webinars.
Audios.
Membership sites.
Checklists.
Worksheets.
Planners.
Calendars.
Swipes.
Lists.
Templates.
Toolkits.
Plugins.
Apps/software.
Coaching.
Done-for-you services.

Note that live events and coaching carry the highest perceived value. Tools (especially apps) also tend to carry high perceived values. This is followed by videos, audios and text (with text-based products possessing the lowest perceived value).

In addition to boosting value, some topics naturally benefit from being in a specific format.

For example, if you’re teaching someone how to speak a foreign language, then you’ll want to consider videos, audios, webinars, and personal (phone) coaching.

TIP: Where relevant, create a package of products. E.G., sell a guide and include a toolkit (worksheets, templates, etc.) as a bonus.

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How To Design Your Sales Funnel

You should never create a single product in isolation. Instead, plan an entire sales funnel around a product idea. Here are the main parts of your sales funnel:

Lead magnet. This is a quality product that you offer for free (in exchange for an email address) to build your list. Even though this product is free, it should be a valuable, desirable product. Indeed, it should be something you could easily sell for $20, $30, $50 or more.

This lead magnet also helps promote your tripwire offer, which brings us to the next point…

Tripwire. This is a high-quality, low-cost product. The idea behind this product is that it should be irresistible. Your prospects should jump on it because it’s such a highly desirable product or service at a relatively low price (e.g., $10 or $20).

In other words, the idea behind this offer is to quickly turn your mailing list subscribers into buyers. Because once someone has made one purchase from you (and had a good experience doing so), they’re likely to purchase additional products from you.

Which brings us to the next product in the sales funnel…

Core offer. This is your main product, and it often has a premium price tag ($97 and up). Depending on how you set up your sales funnel, this is the point where you may start making money.

However, in some cases you may only break even or even still be at a slight loss at this point (due to advertising expenses). And that’s okay, because the real profits in your business lie hidden in the backend.

Which brings us to the next item in the sales funnel…

Backend products. Here you’ll have a variety of products at a variety of price points. For example, you might offer short reports for $20 or so, as well as premium offers such as workshops and coaching that cost thousands of dollars.

Your sales funnel will also include:

Bonus products to boost the value of your paid products and increase conversions. You’ll include these products with all offers, including the tripwire, core and backend offers. These products should enhance the use and enjoyment of the main product. For example, if the main product is a copywriting course, then you might offer a pack of sales letter swipes and templates as a bonus.

Upsell/cross-sell offers to sell on the order form. These are offers you use to boost the average per-transaction dollar amount. Just like the bonus products, these cross-sells should be highly related to the main offer, and they should enhance the use and enjoyment of the main product.

Note: Each product should naturally lead to (and promote) the next product in the sales funnel. E.G., The tripwire product should promote the core offer. The core offer should lead to and promote the backend offers… and so on.

When you’re planning your sales funnel, think about all the problems your prospect has. You can then create a sales funnel of products that address these problems. So, in a sense, each of your products is useful yet incomplete. That means each product solves PART of a problem (that’s the useful part), yet it’s incomplete so your customer will need to purchase additional products to solve their problem.

Here’s an example…

Let’s suppose you’re selling weight-loss products or services. Below you’ll find an example sales funnel. Take note that each product solves part of a problem and naturally leads to the other products in the funnel:

Lead magnet: An overview report that offers dieting tips.

Tripwire: A set of two weeks’ worth of meal plans and recipes that people can put to use immediately to begin losing weight.

Core offer: A comprehensive weight-loss program that includes in-depth information on nutrition and exercise. The bonus package includes three months’ worth of meal plans and a low-calorie cookbook that covers the recipes listed in the meal plans.

Cross-sell offers: A meal-planning app to make it quicker and easier to lose weight; a report that shows people how to substitute ingredients in their favorite recipes to make them healthier; access to a private support group.

Backend offers: Custom coaching so that dieters can get a custom nutrition and exercise plan based on their lifestyle and needs; a product that shows people how to maintain their good results once they’ve lost the excess fat; a guide to eating out (e.g., healthiest meals at all the most popular restaurants).

So, you can see how one product naturally leads to the next product in the funnel, as they all solve pieces of the same overall problem.

You’ll cross-promote your offers all throughout your sales funnel, including:

Inside your lead magnets and paid products. This includes links and calls to action inside reports, videos, audios, app dashboards, membership login pages and so on.

On download pages. This is a good place to sell a backend offer. Your customer’s credit card is probably still out, and he or she is probably still in the buying mood, so this is a good time to offer them a related product or service.

As upsells on order forms. The order form is a good place to offer a one-time offer. As the name suggests, customers can ONLY get this good deal if they order now. They may still be able to order the product or service at a later date, but they’ll need to pay more.

For example, let’s suppose you offer personal coaching as a cross sell on your order form. You may offer this at a really good deal, such as $400. If your customers don’t take advantage of this offer, they can still get coaching from you later… but they’ll need to pay $600 or so.

In follow-up emails that you send to prospects and customers. This is one of the best places to promote additional offers. That’s because you can send a series of emails to build relationships and introduce your prospects and customers to a variety of offers.

TIP: Train your mailing list subscribers to open your emails by consistently offering high-quality content inside your emails. If you can offer them information they’re not finding anywhere else, you can bet they’ll keep opening your emails – and they’ll click on your links and buy your products too.

In private groups. If your offer includes access to a private group, then be sure to cross-promote your offers from within this group. You may use “sticky” posts to promote the offers, as well as occasionally creating posts in the group whose sole purpose is to promote an offer.

Next…

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How To Start At Right Time

In order to create a perfect offer, it must come at the right time. This means two things:

Your audience is ready for this type of offer. If you’re pioneering completely new products, then market timing is crucial. Note that being the first to a market isn’t always beneficial, as those who are first with new products often need to invest a lot of time educating the market.

Your audience is ready for your marketing message. This is a matter of getting your offer in front of an audience that’s currently thinking about their problem. For example, using pay per click marketing is a good way to get an offer in front of an audience who’s actively seeking a certain type of solution.

As you can see, you need to really understand your market before you create the perfect offer. Do your market research first, and creating perfect offers becomes a whole lot easier!

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How To Set Right Price

If your price is too low, your audience will think the offer is junk. If it’s too high, they’ll say they can’t afford it. That’s why you need to create the right price using these steps:

Check your competitors’ pricing on similar offers. Take note of the price range across all products, as well as the median price (the particular price point where most products fall). For example, you may find a range of $10 to $100 for a particular product, but perhaps most products are right around $27.

Decide what makes your offer worth more or less than similar offers. Factors that can make an offer worth more or less include the bonus package, whether the product is aimed at beginners or more advanced users, who created the product, and how the product is positioned.

For example, if a weight loss product was created by an established, certified personal trainer, that person may be able to charge more than Joe Blow who creates a similar product without any experience or verifiable track record.

Review how your offer’s positioning may affect pricing. E.G., do you have luxury branding and positioning? Is your branding about saving money? Not all positioning will affect pricing, but you’ll want to take positioning into consideration if it should be reflected in your pricing.

Select a price based on your research. Now that you know what your competitors are charging, and you know whether you can price on the low end, middle range or high end of the price ranges, you can pick a price.

For example, if the median price in your niche for a product like yours is $27, but your bonus package is superior and your positioning makes it easy to charge more, then you might charge $47, $67 or more.

Which brings us to the last point…

Test your pricing. You can research pricing until you’re blue in the face, but the only way to tell for sure what price will be most profitable for you is to test a variety of prices.

In keeping with the above example, you might test the following price points: $47, $67 and $77.

TIP: Don’t hesitate to test prices that are much higher than you think they should be. Sometimes people judge a product based on price – with higher pricing meaning a better product in their minds. This means a high price can actually boost conversions and lower refunds. Test it and see!

Note: when you test your pricing, be sure to test major changes (e.g., $77 vs $97) as well as minor changes (e.g., $97 vs $99).

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How To Create the Right Product

Creating the perfect offer includes these components:

Create something people want.

You’ll need to do your market research to find out what your audience wants. Hint: find out what they’re already buying, and create something similar (but better).

Elsewhere in this guide we’ve talked about how to do your market research on sites like Amazon and ClickBank as well as in Google to find out what your audience is buying. Now here’s the question: how do you make your product BETTER?

Here’s how to do it…

First off, you’re going to want to review and use the product yourself. Using the product is the key point here. Sometimes a product like a video or report can be a really entertaining read, so much that you forget about whether the product actually works. If you’re not familiar with the method (meaning you haven’t tried it yourself), then try it out to be sure it really works.

Secondly, you’ll want to see what your audience is saying about these products in your niche. There are two ways to do this:

Ask them. You can survey their audience and ask them about the pros and cons of the top products in your niche.

Read their reviews. Often times reviewers will list both what they like and what they don’t like about a particular product. Pay particular attention to a strength or weakness when you see multiple reviewers mention it.

Through your research and your hands-on review of the product, you’re going to quickly discover the strengths and weaknesses of each product in your niche. Your goal is to retain a product’s strengths while improving on the weaknesses. As the saying goes, “Build a better mouse trap.”

For example, let’s suppose you’re creating a course on the topic of Facebook marketing. Perhaps you notice that one strength among similar products is that people like if the course includes information that covers all the ways to use Facebook for marketing (both free and paid). That tells you that your course should cover all angles too.

Now on the other hand, perhaps your research suggests that a weakness among similar products is that reviewers would like more tips, examples and templates to go along with the course. You can make sure your product includes plenty of tips and examples for every step, plus you can include Facebook advertising templates that people can use to quickly and easily create ads.

Now the next component…

Create a product in the right format.

Which format will best serve your product idea and meet your market’s needs? Possibilities include:

Ebooks or reports.

Videos.

Audios.

Multipart ecourses.

Tools (worksheets, checklists, templates, planners, etc.).

Membership site (vault, fixed-term, monthly membership, etc.).

Coaching.

Apps/software/plugins.

Again, turn to your market research to determine what people want and need.

TIP: Different people tend to have different learning styles. Some people prefer to read in order to consume information, some people prefer to listen to an audio, and still others prefer to watch a video. If it makes sense for your product, you can offer all three formats – text, video, and audio. That way, you appeal to the widest swath of people in your niche.

Create the right package.

In most cases, your offer isn’t going to include a single product. That’s why you need to ask yourself: what sort of bonus package will you create to increase the value of your offer?

Take note: some marketers create a bonus package as an afterthought. They’ll literally go scrounging around on their hard drive to see if there’s anything they can use as a bonus. Sometimes the products they choose are only marginally related to the main product.

Don’t do this. If you add unrelated products to your package, it’s not going to boost your conversion rate or the value of your offer. Instead, the opposite may happen – a poorly chosen bonus package will cheapen your entire offer.

What you want to do instead is plan out your bonuses at the same time you’re planning your product. Here’s what to consider when planning or creating your bonus or bonuses:

What sort of supplemental information would be beneficial to your customers? In other words, what sort of information can you share in a bonus product that wasn’t shared in your main product?

Let’s suppose you have a dieting product that covers the main topics such as nutrition and exercise. And let’s suppose your information on nutrition mentioned supplements, but didn’t get into the details. You might create a report on the topic of nutritional supplements, if it’s something your audience wants.

What sort of demonstration can you provide? If your main product is a “how to” product, then your customers will probably appreciate tips, examples and demonstrations. You might offer these things as part of the bonus package. For example, you can create an exercise video that shows customers the correct way to perform high intensity interval training workouts.

What sort of tools will help them take action on the information they learned in your product? Here you provide items such as worksheets, checklists, templates, swipes, planners or even apps/software. For example, if you’re sharing copywriting information, you might create an app that lets people input the benefits of their offer, and then the app generates a variety of headlines.

Now the next item…

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