Internet Marketing Made Simple – Page 3

Why Creating a Multipart Course Is Such a Powerful Lead Magnet

When it comes to choosing what sort of lead magnet to create, you have a lot of options. Your typical infoproduct-style lead magnet can take the form of ebooks/reports, videos, audios, access to membership sites, webinars and more.

But there’s one type of lead magnet that tends to particularly effective: a multipart ecourse delivered by email.

Here’s why it works so well:

It carries a high perceived value. Your subscribers will tend to view a course as more valuable than some other types of lead magnets, especially ebooks/reports. In turn, this can help boost the conversion rate on your lead page.

It trains people to open your emails. Sometimes people insert “throwaway” emails into opt-in forms just to get a lead magnet, and then they never check those email addresses. If your lead magnet is delivered over time by email, then people are more likely to give you a good email address. And once they see how awesome your course is, they’re going to keep on opening your emails (even once the course is complete).

It gives you multiple opportunities to sell a backend offer. Every email lesson you send gives you an opportunity to pitch a related offer.

So, with all these benefits in mind, let’s quickly go over the process of creating an email course:

Step 1: Decide What to Sell on the Backend

The first thing you need to do is decide what main product you want to sell within your course. That way, you can construct your course in such a way that it naturally leads to the paid offer. As always, selling your own product will be the most profitable, but you can sell an affiliate offer instead if you so choose.

TIP: Be sure to choose an offer that’s in-demand among your audience. If you’re not sure what your audience wants, then do your market research to find out what they’re already buying.

Next step…

Step 2: Determine the Course Topic

Now that you know what you’re going to sell within the course, you can decide what sort of course to create. The key is that your course and the paid offer should be highly related, so that anyone who requests the free course will naturally want the paid offer as well. Indeed, the two products should work well together if possible.

The second key is that the course should be useful yet incomplete. This means it should solve part of your prospect’s problem, but ideally customers need to purchase your paid offer to solve the rest of the problem.

For example:

Your course provides an overview of a topic. For example, if you’re selling a weight loss product, then you might create a course that shares an overview of the nutrition and exercise guidelines people need to follow to lose weight. Your prospect gets plenty of helpful tips, but they’ll need to buy the product in order to get in-depth details, meal plans, recipes, etc.

Your course provides in-depth information on one step of a process, and your paid product picks up where the free product left off. For example, your course might teach people how to set up a blog and start populating it with good content, and then your paid product shows them how to monetize the blog and generate traffic.

Your course provides in-depth information for an entire process, and then you sell a tool on the backend. For example, you might offer a free copywriting course, and then sell a set of sales letter templates, checklists and swipes on the backend.

Point is, think about how to create a course that is useful to the user, but leaves room for them to purchase your offer to solve the rest of the problem.

Step 3: Develop Your Course

Now you need to create your course, starting with deciding how many emails (AKA “lessons”) to crate. A good guideline is somewhere in the neighborhood of five emails. For example, if you have a five-step system to share, then you’d share one step in each email. Or if you have seven tips to share, then you’d create a seven-email course and share one tip per email.

Keep these tips in mind:

Craft benefit-driven subject lines. One big key to getting people to open your emails is to have an enticing subject line, so invest some time in creating these. E.G., “The dieting secret that melts fat like crazy!”

Provide quick wins. Each email you send should include actionable information, particularly those that will provide a “quick win” (quick results) for those who take action.

Impress your subscribers. This means offering engaging, high-quality and useful content. You want subscribers to be so impressed with your free content that they’re eager to purchase your paid offers.

Now a few parting thoughts…

Conclusion

As you just discovered, a multipart course is a high-value lead magnet that trains prospects to open your emails. It also gives you multiple opportunities to promote your offer, which boosts conversions. Just be sure to create an evergreen course so it works effortlessly for months or years to come to put money in your pocket!

Now let’s switch topics and take a look at how to get traffic to your lead pages and other web pages…

Keep Reading: How To Create Content That Boosts Your Visibility In The Search Engines

Previous: How To Find And Use PLR Content To Create Stunningly Popular Products

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How To Find And Use PLR Content To Create Stunningly Popular Products

If you’re primarily selling your own offers through your newsletter and elsewhere, then you’ll quickly realize that you need to create quite a few products. That’s because hardly anyone builds a thriving business with just one product. In order to maximize your profits, you need to create a sales funnel with a variety of offers you can promote to your existing customers.

Here’s what a typical sales funnel might look like:

A free lead magnet to bring people into your sales funnel.

A low-cost, high-value tripwire offer to turn your prospects into cash-paying customers.

A high-ticket core offer.

Upsell/cross-sell offers.

Bonus products to offer alongside paid products.

A variety of backend products to sell to existing customers.

Phew – and that’s just one sales funnel!

It’s time consuming to create all these products yourself. It’s expensive to outsource it. But fortunately, there’s a way to create all these products that’s both inexpensive and fast. Namely, you purchase PLR (product label rights) content, quickly modify it to suit your needs, and you’re ready to start taking orders!

Sound good? Then let’s take a look at how to do this…

Find PLR in Your Niche

The first step is to locate PLR content in your niche. You can do this by searching Google for your niche keywords (such as “dog training”) alongside the following types of words:

PLR
PLR content
Private label rights
Private label rights content
PLR ebooks
PLR articles
PLR reports
PLR courses
Content licensing

For example, you might search for “dog training PLR” and “dog training PLR ebooks” (without the quotes). Be sure to use multiple searches in order to get as many results as possible.

TIP: You can also search for PLR in the ClickBank.com marketplace. Again, search for your niche keywords alongside “PLR” and similar search terms.

Next…

Do Your Due Diligence

Now that you have a list of potential PLR offers to purchase, you need to do some research to determine which ones are a good fit for you. Ask yourself these questions:

Is this a package of content? If you’re looking to create an entire sales funnel, then look for PLR packages. That way, you can create your suite of offers quickly, and each product will be consistent in terms of writing style as well as the information it provides.

Is the content well-written and engaging? If the vendor doesn’t provide a sample, be sure to ask for one from the package you’re considering.

Will the content need a lot of revision? While you do want to modify the content to make it unique (which will talk about in a few moments), you don’t want to be rewriting every bit of it. As such, choose content that’s so good you could use it right out of the box with minimal revisions.

What are the licensing terms? Next, check the PLR license to ensure you can use it for your intended purpose. Are there any limitations or requirements with regards to modifications? Can you both sell it and give it away?

Are there any extras included? For example, does the package include things such as sales letters, web templates, emails to sell the content and similar? If so, and if they look professional, this is a big plus when choosing PLR content.

Based on the answers to these questions, you should be able to fairly easily select good content for your needs. Buy your chosen offer and then move onto the next step…

Make it Unique

Even though you’ve chosen content that’s so good you can use it as-is, it’s a good idea to modify it to make it unique. This ensures you have virtually no competition, since no one will have a product exactly like yours.

Check out these ideas for making the content unique:

Rewrite Pieces of the Content

You can start by creating a fresh introduction and conclusion for each piece of content. You can also tweak the content to make it sound more like your writing voice.

Delete Unnecessary Content

You might delete a paragraph here and there, or entire large sections (such as a chapter an ebook).

Change the Format

The idea here is to take content in one format and turn it into something else. For example, you can turn a PLR report into a video. Or you can turn a set of PLR articles into a multipart ecourse.

TIP: You can also simply pull excerpts out of larger pieces of content to create something unique. For example, you pull a couple chapters out of a PLR ebook and use it to create a short report that you use as a lead magnet.

Next…

Compile Multiple Pieces of Content

Another great way to create something entirely unique is to compile multiple pieces of PLR content. You can even add in your existing content, such as inserting some of your blog posts, lead magnets, or sections from other products.

For example, you might create a course using a combination of your own existing content and PLR content by compiling a dozen articles, a report, and a couple excerpts from one or more ebooks.

Insert Your Own Unique Bits of Content

Finally, you can put the finishing touches on by inserting your own unique:

Title and subtitle.
Examples.
Tips.
Stories.
Case studies.
Graphics.

Now a few parting thoughts…

Conclusion

As you just discovered, using PLR content is a great way to create one product or even an entire sales funnel. That’s because it’s cheaper than outsourcing, and it’s a whole lot faster than creating content from scratch. You can even outsource the PLR tweaks, which still keeps costs down while speeding the process up even further! Just be sure you start well-written, engaging PLR content, which will make the process a whole lot easier.

That’s it for this time. I’ll see you in the next Three to Thrive issue soon!

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Previous: The Four Essential Keys For Creating Viral Content

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The Four Essential Keys For Creating Viral Content

It goes without saying that every piece of content you create should be well-written, engaging and high quality. But if you want to make the most of your content, then you should also consider ways to make it go viral.

Let me give you an example. Let’s suppose you have a blog post that’s optimized for the search engines to bring in Google traffic. Now imagine if certain percentage of this Google traffic also shares your content with their friends. Now you’ve got a post that’s generating traffic in two ways, which is always a good thing!

Now, elsewhere in these newsletter issues we talked about creating content for social media. The strategies you learned there apply here as well. Here’s a quick recap of the qualities your content should possess if you want it to go viral:

Unique: even just one fresh tip or a unique way of presenting “old” information.
Easy to consume (in just seconds or two or three minutes).
Easy to share (no hoops such as an opt-in form).
Seeks to generate positive emotion (even an “oh wow” gets people sharing).
Eye-catching, benefit-driven and/or curiosity- arousing title that’s intriguing enough to get people to click.
Includes a call to action telling people to share.

It’s also a good idea to reverse-engineer viral content in your market (such as on your competitors’ blogs and social media pages) to get a feel for what your audience wants. If they share videos like crazy, then you might want to create a video. Or if infographics are their thing, then you might seek to create infographics.

Now let’s fill in the blanks with the other keys for creating a viral campaign…

Distribute it Widely

Sometimes marketers drop their viral content on Facebook and Twitter, and then sit around waiting for the views and shares to start rolling in. However, you have a much better chance of having your content go viral if you initially get it in front of as many targeted visitors as possible.

To that end, promote your viral content in the same way that you’d promote anything else. For example:

Post it everywhere. This includes telling your newsletter about it, posting it on your blog, and posting it on all your applicable social media platforms.

Share it in communities. Obviously, you should post it in your own groups or forums. Where allowed (ask first!), you can also post it in other relevant groups/forums.

Get it in front of influencers. There are some people in your niche who are respected and tend to influence others. Build relationships with these folks and send your content to them.

Ask your marketing partners to share it. This includes your affiliates as well as your joint venture marketing partners. Coordinate with them to announce the content at the same time. (See the next section for more info on this.)

Utilize paid advertising. For example, you can create a Facebook ad campaign on launch day to help with that initial big push.

Next…

Launch at the Right Time

There are certain days and times that your audience is most active online. You need to determine these times, and then seek to launch your viral content during these time periods. This helps create that initial surge of shares that will (hopefully) reach critical mass and turn your regular content into viral content.

To determine the best time to launch, first check your traffic data. In particular, pay close attention to the following:

When you tend to have the most traffic coming to your website, particularly engaged traffic that has the time to do things like comment on your blog posts.

When your social media content tends to get the most engagement.

The days/times when you tend to get a lot of newsletter subscribers.

If you can detect a pattern, then you have a good starting point with regards to the best days and times to launch content. However, the best way to know for sure is to test and track your campaigns to see when your audience is most active and responsive to your content and offers.

Include Social Buttons

When you post viral content on your blog, you want to make it super-easy for people to share the content on social media. That’s why you should include social share buttons on your blog. You can get a plugin to make this easy (such as https://wordpress.org/plugins/sassy-social-share/).

Many plugins let you display dozens or even 100 or more social media badges/buttons. Don’t do this, as it will overwhelm visitors. Instead, select a handful of the top social media platforms where you know your audience is active, and only display those buttons. Be sure to include a call to action (e.g., “Your friends will love this too, so share it with them now on your favorite social media page using the buttons below!”).

Incentivize People to Share

The final tip for getting a viral campaign moving is to give people a good reason to share your content. Here are two ways to do it:

Create rebrandable content. This is where you let other people change the links in your content to their affiliate links. People love the opportunity to make money simply by giving something away to others. (You may reserve this for your existing affiliates only, or you can let anyone rebrand it.)

Give people something valuable in exchange for sharing. For example, you can give them a discount coupon or a free product when someone shares your content. You can use an app like PerkZilla.com to handle all of this automatically.

Now a few parting thoughts…

Conclusion

Creating a viral content is a bit of an art and a science. Even those whose sole job it is to create viral campaigns for big companies don’t always get it right. However, if you take into consideration all the tips you just learned, then you have a much better chance than the average marketer of creating content that gets shared!

And now let’s look at a surprisingly simple way to create products…

Keep Reading: How To Find And Use PLR Content To Create Stunningly Popular Products

Previous: How To Create Email Teasers That Get Clicks

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How To Create Email Teasers That Get Clicks

Many times when you’re sharing content with your list, you may not put the entire piece of content into the email. Here are a few different reasons why:

The content is too long. In this case, you may ask people to download a PDF rather than read it inside an email.

The content is on your blog. Perhaps you want people to click through to your blog, read the content, and then perhaps read other content on your blog, do some commenting, share it on social media, etc.

The content is in a different format. For example, maybe you want people to watch a video or look at a slide-share presentation.

For these reasons (and perhaps others), you need to get people excited enough to click on your link. And that means you need to develop the fine art of crafting effective teasers.

Check out these steps and tips…

Determine the Big Benefit First

Before you craft a single word of your teaser, you need to figure out the big benefit of the content. Your reader is going to be thinking, “Why should I click on this link?” – and your teaser needs to answer that question.

Remember to Keep it Short

A teaser may be as short as one line, all the way to perhaps a paragraph or so long. You want to keep it short so that even the most time-pressed subscriber or the person with the shortest attention span will read and act on the teaser. You’ll get examples in just a few moments.

Hook the Reader

A good teaser captures and holds interest, and often it arouses curiosity too. This starts with your email subject line, as it needs to be intriguing enough to get your audience to open your email. Then your short teaser needs to be intriguing enough to get readers to click on your link.

Craft a Call to Action

Your reader is hooked, so you drop the link in the end of the email. But don’t assume they’ll click the link. Sure, some people will click on it. But in order to get the highest conversion rate, you need to specifically tell people to click the link and take the desired action.

Now let’s put all these tips to work with a few examples…

Pull It All Together: Examples

Here are a couple examples that show you how to create short, benefit-driven teasers with calls to action:

Example 1:

Let’s suppose you want people to click through to your blog to learn about copywriting. Here’s an example teaser email…

Subject line: The secret of million-dollar sales letters…

Hi [Name],

There’s one little thing that the world’s best copywriters do that no one else does (not even you). And this one little thing is what creates million-dollar sales letters.

What’s the secret? That’s what you’ll find out in today’s blog post. Read it here:

[link to blog post]

[sign off]

P.S. Some people say I should charge for this information. Maybe I will. But if you’re quick, you can read it now for free on my blog at:

[link to blog post]

This example presented a big benefit (learning how to create a million-dollar sales letter), and it aroused curiosity to get people to click through. The curiosity started in the subject line with the word “secret.” It continued in the body of the email by using the word “secret” again, and arousing curiosity about what that “one little thing” is that the best copywriters use.

Finally, this example also created a sense of urgency at the end to get people to click the link now (rather than put it off for later). This works if the sense of urgency is genuine. In other words, don’t create “false” urgency just to get the click. Always be upfront and honest with your audience. As I like to say, offer HOPE, not hype.

Next…

Example 2:

Let’s suppose you’ve created a video that shows beginners the easiest way to set up a blog. Here’s an example of what your teaser may look like:

Subject line: Set up a blog in five minutes?

Hi [Name],

Every time someone talks about setting up a blog, they throw a lot of technical mumbo jumbo at you. It’s confusing and overwhelming, especially if you’re not a techie.

Forget all that – now you too can set up a blog fast and easy… in as little as five minutes from now.

Ready to take the first step towards your profitable blogging career? Then click here to watch the free video:

[link]

[sign off]

P.S. It’s easier than you think. See for yourself by watching the free video now: [link]

This example showcases the benefit that technophobes really want – an EASY way to set up a blog. The email starts off by empathizing with the reader, and then goes on to say there’s a fast and easy way to do it, and the reader can learn about it for free by clicking the link.

Conclusion

As an email publisher, there will be plenty of instances when you need to craft a teaser that gets people to click through to your blog, to a PDF, to a video, to social media or to some other page. Use the tips you just learned to start creating more effective teasers that get the clicks!

Now let’s switch topics and take a look at how to generate more traffic…

Keep Reading: The Four Essential Keys For Creating Viral Content

Previous: The Sales “POP” Formula For Selling a Lot Of Affiliate Offers

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The Sales “POP” Formula For Selling a Lot Of Affiliate Offers

One of the keys to a profitable list is to put popular offers in front of your audience. It’s usually best if you sell your own offers, as these tend to put the most profit in your pocket. However, if you don’t yet have your own offers, then you can certainly sell affiliate offers.

However, you can’t just run over to ClickBank, grab any ol’ offer, and expect an avalanche for sales and commissions. If you want to make your affiliate sales “P.O.P.,” then check out this simple formula:

Pick the Right Product
Offer a Bonus
Presell the Offer

Let’s take closer look…

Pick the Right Product

A little research upfront will save you frustration down the road. That’s why you’ll want to follow these steps and tips when deciding what to promote…

Choose Something Popular

Affiliate sites like ClickBank let you specifically choose popular products that are selling well, so be sure to do your research and choose an in-demand offer.

Review the Product Yourself

Even if the product sells well and gets good reviews, read and use it yourself to be sure it’s something you’ll be proud to promote.

Research the Vendor

If you’re unfamiliar with the seller, search their name and business name in Google to be sure they have a good reputation in the niche. Avoid anyone with red flags such as poor customer service, poor quality products, not paying affiliates, using black hat marketing and so on.

Check the Sales Page

Now you need to take a look at the sales page. First, check that it looks professional and is well-written. You might also ask the vendor what sort of conversion rate it’s getting.

Secondly, be sure there aren’t sales leaks or attempts at commission hijacking. These are any unnecessary links or promos that are likely to dampen conversions.

For example, if a popup window appears that offers a discount if someone clicks a link, check if that link still rewards you (the affiliate).

Another example: if there is a one-time offer or other upsell/cross-sell, be sure your affiliate link doesn’t get stripped if people take advantage of these offers.

Another example: check the sales page for payment options that don’t track and credit affiliates.

If the product checks out, then move to the next step…

Offer a Bonus

If you look around your niche, you’ll notice that you certainly aren’t the only person to promote this particular offer. Indeed, there may be dozens or even hundreds of others all promoting the same thing. And while the vast majority of these folks aren’t really “true” competition (since most just stick a banner up and call it day), you definitely do have SOME competition. If you want to generate sales, then you need to stand out from this competition.

How? By offering a bonus to anyone who purchases the affiliate offer through your affiliate link.

TIP: You should also seek to stand out in a broader sense, by becoming a trusted “gatekeeper” who only promotes solid offers and who only sends the best content to your list.

The keys to a good bonus are as follows:

It’s in-demand. As always, do your market research to see what your audience wants.

It’s valuable. This should be something that your market would eagerly pay for (in some cases, it may even be something that you currently sell that you’re offering for free)

It’s easy to deliver. Ideally, it should be a digital product that you can deliver to your customers automatically.

It’s highly related to the main offer. This is key – ideally, your bonus should be something that works with the main offer.

For example, if the main offer is an organic gardening guide, you might offer a pest-identification video. Or if the main offer is a dieting membership site, you might offer a free set of low-calorie cookbooks that fit in with the dieting guidelines being taught inside the site.

Your bonus could take a variety of forms, including membership site access, private group access, ebooks/reports, videos, audios, tools (such as worksheets, checklists, templates and similar), software/apps, and similar.

Note: High-value bonuses like personal coaching are likely to create plenty of conversions, but they may also create a time crunch for you. If you do decide to offer a service, then make sure you only promote it with high-ticket offers, and you may also limit the number available so that you don’t fall behind.

Now the final step of the “P.O.P.” formula…

Presell the Offer

Even if the product has a pretty good sales page, you still need to warm your audience up to the offer. You do this by telling your audience about the benefits of the offer as well as the benefits of your bonus.

Here’s the key: don’t just send out one email and expect a bunch of sales. Instead, create a series of three to five emails promoting the affiliate offer.

For example, you might send out a series that looks like this:

Email 1: Introduces the offer, shares the benefits, and promotes your bonus. (Note: oftentimes product vendors will create “copy and paste” emails for you to use. Go ahead and use these, but tweak them to personalize them a bit.)

Email 2: Share proof that the product works. You might share your own case study of how well the product works.

Email 3: “Last call” email. If there is any sort of special offer going on (such as a launch special), then send out an email reminding people the special ends soon. Otherwise, you can use this email to cover benefits not mentioned elsewhere or answer frequently asked questions about the product.

TIP: For best results, analyze the product to determine what objections may have to purchasing the product, and then raise and handle those objections within this email. Whenever possible, offer a bonus that helps handle the objections.

For example, let’s suppose you’re promoting a dieting guide. And let’s further suppose that one common objection is that busy parents say they don’t have time to cook healthy meals. You can offer a cookbook with quick, easy and delicious meals – not only does this cookbook make a great bonus, it effectively handles the “too busy” objection.

Conclusion

Selling affiliate offers is a great way to make money with your newsletter, especially if you haven’t yet created your own offers. Just be sure to use the sales POP system to pick high quality products, offer a bonus, and presell the offers.

That’s it for this issue. I’ll see you in the next issue soon!

Keep Reading: How To Create Email Teasers That Get Clicks

Previous: How To Craft Social Media Content That Gets Clicks

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How To Craft Social Media Content That Gets Clicks

Are you using social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to build relationships with your audience and drive traffic back to your site? If not, you should be – and this article will show you how to do it. Plus, if you’re using it but not getting great results, then you’re also going to want to pay close attention to the next couple pages.

Here’s what we’ll cover to help you optimize your results:

Choose Your Platforms
Consider How Social Media Works
Craft Content That Gets Clicks

Let’s jump in…

Choose Your Platforms

The first step is to choose which social media platforms you’ll focus on. Some of the top options include:

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
YouTube
Instagram
Pinterest

The idea is to focus on two or maybe three platforms that will be most beneficial to your business. You need to consider two things:

Where does your audience congregate? This is the most important factor to consider when deciding which platforms to use. You’ll need to do some research, such as finding out the key demographics of people on the various platforms, as well as looking at your competitors’ pages on these sites to see where they get the best results (shares, comments and other interaction).

What type of content do you intend to post? For example, if you intend to post a lot of videos, then obviously YouTube should make your list. On the flip side, if you’re not interested in posting photos, then Instagram isn’t a good choice.

Once you know where you’re going to post, then move to the next step…

Consider How Social Media Works

While your newsletter is basically a monologue, social media is different because it works best when you create a dialogue with your followers. This means you can’t just blast out content and then ignore any interaction you receive. On the contrary, you want to encourage people to engage and interact, and then interact directly with your followers.

This means doing things such as:

Liking replies to your content.
Replying to comments. (As your followers grow, you won’t be able to reply to everyone, but you should seek to post a few replies on every post.)
Sharing/retweeting your follower’s content.

In other words, build relationships by engaging with your audience in a real dialogue (instead of a monologue).

Next…

Craft Content That Gets Clicks

Now that you’re on the right platform and prepared to engage with your audience, the next thing you need to know is how to craft content that gets clicks, shares, and comments. Take a look at these tips…

Give People What They Want

In order to figure out what they want, you’ll need to do some market research to find out what sort of content your audience tends to respond to the best. In addition to your regular market research (such as seeing what topics people are buying), you’ll want to check out your competitors’ social media pages.

Pay attention to two things:

The general topic for the content. Do you see any sort of pattern? For example, if you’re in a dieting niche, do people tend to respond best to nutrition-related posts versus exercise-related posts?

The general format for the content. For example, does the audience seem to like memes? Videos? Infographics? Tips posts? Etc.

Next…

Ensure It’s a Quick Read/View

People on social media don’t have time to read the “War and Peace” version of your content. That’s why you want to create content that people can read/view quickly, ranging from a meme that takes a second or two to read, to a video that perhaps takes two or three minutes (tops) to watch.

Craft an Enticing Title

People often decide whether to view something based on the title, which is why you need to develop benefit-driven titles. If you can arouse curiosity, that’s good too. E.G., “The Conversion-Doubling Trick That Takes Just Two Minutes!”

Create Something Unique

People aren’t going to share your content or click through to your website if you’re sharing content that looks like every other piece of content on the web. That’s why you need to create something unique.

This can be as simple as sharing a unique story (such as an inspirational video), or even just a single little-known tip. It doesn’t have to be groundbreaking – it just needs to be somewhat uncommon.

Generate Positive Feelings

Content that goes viral and gets other interaction (such as clicks) tends to generate emotion, especially positive emotion. A good goal is to create something that makes people say “Wow!” or “Awww!” or “That’s heartwarming!” or “That’s awesome!”

Encourage People to Interact

If you want people to share and comment on your content, then provide a call to action.

For example, if you’re looking for comments, then ask questions or encourage people to share information. E.G.,

What do you think?
What’s your favorite tip?
Have you ever had an embarrassing moment like this?

If you’re looking for people to share, then center your call to action around that goal. E.G.,

Share this with your friends, because they could use a smile!
Know someone who [needs some benefit]? Share this now!
Be a hero among your friends and family and share this now.
Please do me a favor and share this on your page – I appreciate it!
Share this if you agree!

Now a few parting thoughts…

Conclusion

The big social media platforms are really useful when it comes to your business, but you need to have a plan in place in order to make the most of these platforms. That’s why you’ll want to put the above tips and steps to work in order to build better relationships and generate more traffic.

Now let’s take a look at how to make more money with your affiliate offers…

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How To Use Email Personalization To Boost Response

One of the sweetest sounds in the English language is a person’s own name. That’s why personalizing an email to your audience using someone’s name can help boost your conversion rates.

But there’s a catch: you need to walk a fine line, because over-using someone’s name can also feel like an invasion of privacy. A person’s name is very personal to them, so if someone uses it a lot, the red flags go up.

Perhaps you’ve experienced this yourself at some point in the past. When you first meet someone and use your name, that’s acceptable. If they use your name again a little later, you start to feel like you’re building a good rapport. But if they keep using your name, you get those sleezy salesman vibes and it makes you want to get away from the person.

The same goes for your emails that you send to your subscribers. If you use someone’s name once or twice, you build rapport. If you overuse it, the strategy backfires and people feel uncomfortable.

So, with that in mind, let’s talk about the right way (the conversion-boosting way) to personalize emails…

Check Your Email Records

The first thing you need to do is check that your subscribers are giving you real first names when they join your list.

Obviously, if someone’s real name is “Jane” and they use the name “Mandy” when they fill out your opt-in form, you’ll have no way of checking if they’re giving you a real name.

Instead, what you’re looking for are really obvious cases of someone giving you a false name. For example, they might use a name like “Mickey Mouse” or “Anonymous” or “Testing” or something along those lines. If it’s obviously fake, then you’ll want to do the following:

Monitor the contact to see if they’re active. Sometimes a person gives a fake name, but they’re very much interested in your content. That’s perfectly fine (see below for the next step).

If they’re not active – and a re-engagement campaign doesn’t help – the you may remove the entire contact. The person may have signed up just to get a freemium, or if you have a single opt-in system someone else may have signed their friend up for your list.

Remove the false information. If the person is engaged and seems to be a genuine contact, then remove the fake first name so that it doesn’t show up when you personalize emails.

Note: When you personalize emails, be sure that the content will look okay even if a name isn’t included.

For example: “Hi, [Name].” This looks fine even if the name isn’t included.

Another example: “[Name], what do you think?” This would look odd without the name, because of the comma and not having a capitalized first word.

Which brings us to the next point…

Personalize Once or Twice

As mentioned above, you don’t want to overuse the subscriber’s name. That’s why using it once or twice in an email is generally a good rule of thumb.

Here are three different ways to use it:

Put it in the subject line. This is a good way to capture someone’s attention when they’re skimming their inbox. E.G., “Do you know this secret [Name]?” (Note: proper grammar says there should be a comma there, but I left it out for times when we don’t have a first name available.)

Include it in the salutation. E.G., “Hi, [Name]”

Embed it elsewhere in the content. E.G., “What do you think [Name]?”

Generally speaking, you should use it once in either the subject line or in the salutation. Then use it once more towards the middle or end of your content. When you embed it in content, put the name next to the most important thing you want the subscriber to read. That’s because someone who’s skimming your email will likely see their name in the middle of it, so they’ll stop and read the content surrounding it.

And finally…

Use the Word “You”

While you need to use the subscriber’s name sparingly (which makes it more effective), one word you can use generously to great effect is the word “you.” Whenever you use this word often, it means your content is focused on the reader – and that’s exactly what you want to do to keep readers interested and engaged.

Do this: check how many times you use words like “I” or “me,” and see if you can rewrite those sentences to be centered more on the reader by using the word “you.”

E.G., “I’ll teach my best dieting tips” becomes “you’ll discover the best dieting tips.”

Conclusion

As you just discovered, a very simple way to boost conversions is to use your subscriber’s name once or twice within each email you send. When you’re not using their name, then be sure you’re using the word “you” often to keep the focus on your reader, their problems, and how you can help them solve those problems.

Now let’s turn our attention to generating traffic…

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How To Find Out What’s Selling Like Crazy In Your Niche (So That You Can Sell It Too)

When it comes to creating products that sell well (or promoting affiliate offers), the big key is to find something that your audience REALLY wants.

Sometimes marketers look to create a product on a topic that no one else has created before. In many cases, the reason it hasn’t been created yet is because there is no demand for it. If you create something no one wants, then you’re going to be disappointed by dismal sales.

Here’s what to do instead: find out what people are already buying, and then create something similar (yet BETTER). And that’s exactly what you’re going to learn how to do in this lesson. Take a look…

Find Out What People Want

The very best predictor of what people will buy in the future is to look at what they’re already buying today. That’s why your first step is to find out what people are already buying in your niche.

NOTE: We’re talking about evergreen offers here, not fads. Fads are too unpredictable to determine if they’ll still be selling well next week, next month or next year.

To do this, you’re going to look for three things:

Bestsellers.
Products with competitors.
Paid ads for specific types of products.

Let’s take a closer look:

Bestselling products. If a product sells well in your niche (especially over time), that’s a good indication of demand. To that end, you’ll want to check infoproduct marketplaces such as ClickBank.com, Amazon.com and Udemy.com to see what’s selling well in your niche.

Products with multiple competitors. If multiple marketers are creating similar products, that’s another good indication that there’s demand for that type of product. Again, you can search infoproduct marketplaces to find out which types of products have a lot of competitors. You can also run a search for your niche keywords in Google, and check out what your top competitors are selling.

Marketers consistently placing paid ads for a product. Smart marketers don’t keep dumping money into paid advertising if the product isn’t selling well. That’s why tracking ads over time will give you an idea of what’s selling well. One way to do this is to regularly run a search for your niche keywords in Google, and then take note of the paid advertisements. Look for different marketers selling similar offers, as well as marketers investing in advertising a product over time.

You can also quickly test a product for yourself to see if it might sell well before you invest too much time and money creating it. Here are two “quick and dirty” tests:

Promote an affiliate offer. If your audience seems to really like a particular affiliate offer, that may confirm to you that you should create something similar.

Create a tripwire offer. Let’s suppose you have a big product in mind, like a multimodule course. You might create an “overview” of this course, or even just create one module, and offer it as a low-cost tripwire. If your audience likes the “lite” product, then you can take that as a greenlight to create the full product.

Take note that you can also create a “lite” product in the form of a lead magnet that you offer to determine demand (while at the same time building your list). Keep in mind, however, that what people request for free may not precisely determine if they’ll purchase the “full” product.

Once you have an idea of what people in your niche want, then move onto the second step of this process…

Create Something Better

Now that you know what your audience wants, about the last thing you want to do is create something that’s just like every other product on the market. Instead, what you need to do is create something BETTER.

The first step in creating a better product is to review the bestsellers in your market to determine their good points and bad points. This means personally reading/viewing the product yourself. You’ll also want to read customer reviews to see what they like and don’t like about a product.

Your goal in creating a product is to ensure your product has the big benefits that everyone likes, yet it improves on the weak points of other products.

For example, let’s suppose you’re creating a copywriting course. Perhaps the bestselling products in your niche include a lot of real-life sales letters, case studies and examples. If people really like that, then you’ll want to make sure you include your own (unique) letters, case studies and examples.

Now let’s suppose that one thing that is missing from the competitors’ products are worksheets to help people decide what benefits to showcase, as well as audience profiling worksheets and other tools. You can improve on existing products by including these tools in your course.

The second step in creating a better product is determining how to make it unique. You can do this by:

Creating unique case studies/experiments.
Telling personal stories.
Offering unique tips.
Providing unique examples.
Offering unique tools such as worksheets, checklists, templates and similar.
Sharing old information in a new way, such as by creating a formula around a step-by-step process.
Positioning the product in a new way. E.G., how is your product different and better than the competing products? For example, do you provide “take action” tools to help people get results quickly and easily?

The point is, you don’t need to create something so fresh and new that no one on the planet has ever seen it before. Instead, you just need to take your information—even if others are teaching the same thing – and present it in a fresh way.

For example, I often create unique formulas around processes in the form of acronyms, where each letter of the acronym corresponds to a step of the process. E.G., I might create a five-step S.A.L.E.S. formula for optimizing conversions. While others may teach how to optimize conversions, no one else does it using my unique formula—which makes my products stand out from the crowd.

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Conclusion

The bottom line here is that you shouldn’t guess what your audience wants. Do your research, find out what they line up around the virtual block to buy, and then create something similar yet better.

That’s it for this time. I’ll see you in the next issue!

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How To Get Your Affiliates Promoting Your Offers Like Crazy

One really good way to drive traffic to your website is by starting an affiliate program. However, many people start these programs, and then they’re disappointed by the results. Often times it seems like affiliates promote an offer once or twice, and then move onto another affiliate promotion. You get that surge of sales initially –especially during a product launch – but then everything goes quiet after that.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Check out these ideas for motivating affiliates and keeping them consistently promoting your offers…

Train Affiliates

Not every affiliate who joins your program has the knowledge necessary to generate sales. That’s why you’ll want to add training to your affiliate center that’s aimed at beginners and specific to your affiliate offers. For example, you can train affiliates to set up lead pages, drive traffic to those pages, and then close the sale on your affiliate offers.

This training can take multiple forms, including:

A course.
A guide (ebook or report).
A fixed-term membership site.
A video (or a video series).

The key to good training is to be as specific as possible about what your affiliates should do and how to do it. For example, don’t just tell them to “start promoting an offer.” Instead, make a suggestion to them about which offer, specifically, to start promoting. Typically, this should be one of your highest-converting offers, because once affiliates make sales, they’ll be eager to keep promoting.

NOTE: If you can provide them with the tools needed to start promoting your offers, that’s even better.

Which brings us to the next point…

Stock the Affiliate Center

Whether your affiliate program is full of seasoned marketers or beginners, they’ll all benefit from using the sales materials you provide in your affiliate center. Here are the types of materials to create and distribute:

A rebrandable report that affiliates can give away for free to their audience.
Blog posts.
Standalone emails.
Email sequences.
Videos.
Social media blurbs.
Short ads for pay per click platforms and similar.
Graphics such as banners and other graphical ads.

You’ll also want to make sure yourself available for interviews with your affiliates. You can share some of your secrets and then promote the offer using your affiliate’s link. That way, you both make money whenever someone purchases something through the interview (which may be a text interview, audio interview, video interview, or even a live interview via a webinar).

Motivate Affiliates

Another good way to motivate affiliates is to send regular emails to them. These emails can include announcements about new products, sales and other promotions. The idea is to constantly give your affiliates something new to promote (a new product, a new sale, a new rebrandable report to distribute, etc.).

You can also use these emails to showcase successful affiliates in the form of a case study or even a motivational story. E.G., “John Doe had never made a penny promoting affiliate offers before. But today he’s making $3500 a month selling [Products/Brand Name]. Read on to find out how John does it, and how you can too!”

Distribute Coupons

Affiliates love promoting your offers using coupon codes, because a good coupon tends to boost the conversion rate. For best results, be sure to offer coupon codes with a quickly approaching expiration date. This might be a short-lived 12-hour flash sale, a three-day sale, or perhaps a one-week sale.

TIP: Be sure to give your affiliates an early heads up that you’ll be offering coupon codes so that they can plan their promotions well in advance.

Here’s another way to motivate affiliates…

Hold an Affiliate Contest

A good way to motivate affiliates to all promote at once is by holding an affiliate contest. For example, you might offer a five-day contest where the top five or so affiliates who make the most sales are rewarded with generous cash prizes.

TIP: Generally, affiliates who know they have no chance of winning the contest are unlikely to promote heavily during a contest. You can further boost sales by offering random-draw prizes that are available to anyone who makes at least one or two sales.

Want an even bigger surge of sales? Then offer an affiliate contest alongside a coupon promotion. This not only encourages your affiliates to promote like crazy, you’ll also see more sales simply because consumers are taking advantage of the discounts.

Conclusion

The bottom line here is that you want to keep things fresh by sending updated content and specials (such as coupons) to your affiliates. Keep them motivated and promoting for you on a regular basis, and everyone will walk away happy with a pocketful of cash. J

Now let’s change gears and take a look at a key to creating profitable offers…

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How To Create a More Profitable List Using Segmentation

If you’re like most marketers, you maintain two or three lists, including:

The prospect list.
The buyer list.
The list of affiliates and/or joint venture partners.

These are all good lists to have. However, if you’re not segmenting these lists, then you’re not making the most of them. That’s because a segmented list lets you send targeted content and offers to specific groups of people, which in turn means higher conversions for you.

Now before we talk about different ways to segment your list, let’s back up for a second and define segmenting a list. Segmenting a list means you separate your main lists into highly targeted micro lists. You don’t necessarily need to create separate lists, as most email service providers will let you “tag” people, which you can then send out targeted content to people who possess a certain tag in your database.

The most basic segments are the ones listed above: you keep the buyers list, prospects list, and partners list separate. However, you can take this one step further. For example, you can segment your list according to exactly what product a buyer purchased. This not only tells you what interests the buyer, but it also ensures you don’t send out an email promoting a product that the person has already bought.

Let’s take a look at different ways to segment your list and then how to use these segments…

Segment by Lead Magnet

If you have multiple lead magnets (and you should), then one good way to segment your prospect list is by how the person arrived on your list. Specifically, what lead magnet did they request?

For example, you might have a website about getting out of debt and saving money. If someone joins a webinar that’s specific to saving money for a child’s college education, then you can send out highly targeted ads and content that refer to a child. (E.G., “Whether you’re starting to save for college for new baby or a teenager who’s graduating next year, it’s never too late to get started…”

Segment by Product Purchased

Whether someone purchases one product or everything you have, segment your list according to these products. As mentioned, you can ensure you don’t send offers to people who’ve already purchased a particular product. You can also use this information to send highly targeted backend offers.

For example, if someone purchases a membership into your weight-loss site, then you might send them an offer for personalized nutrition coaching.

This information also comes in handy to segment your list by your very best customers (who buy nearly everything) and those who’ve only purchased an offer or two. For example, you can send out a special bonus or sale invitation to reward your best customers.

Segment by Coupons/Sales

It’s useful to know if a person only buys when there’s a sale, or if they buy at full price too. You can segment your list by who takes advantage of sales, and then send out content that appeals to bargain seekers versus those who purchase for other reasons.

Segment According to How Someone Reached Your Site

Sometimes you might segment people according to which affiliate sent them, if they arrived via your social media page, if they came through a paid advertisement, etc.

For example, if you send out an email encouraging people to follow you on Facebook, then you can exclude the people who already do.

Segment Contest Entrants

Many times contest entrants tend to be “colder” prospects than people who requested a lead magnet. That’s why you’ll want to keep your contest entrants separate, and send out a welcome series of emails to engage them.

Segment According to Answers

The idea here is to ask your subscribers what specific topics interest them, and then segment your list according to their answers. That way, you can send out only the content that most interests a subscriber, which will keep them engaged (and keep your list from growing cold).

For example, you might ask online business owners to check off all the topics that interest them, such as: social media marketing, SEO, list building, blogging, guest blogging, JV marketing, viral marketing and so on.

Segment by Demographics

Your autoresponder may capture your subscriber’s location automatically when they join your list. This is helpful because it allows you to send out emails to specific locations around the world when you know your audience is likely to be awake.

Aside from location, you can also collect other demographic data IF you think this will be helpful in sending targeted content. However, you’ll need to think through this carefully, because usually you collect this information by asking your audience when they’re joining your list. Problem is, the more questions you have on your sign-up form, the lower your conversion rate (as any extra “hoop” you add tends to decrease response). As such, only collect extra data if you’re sure it will make a big impact on your conversions.

For example, let’s suppose you’re offering weight loss information. You might want to segment your list by both age and gender, as a 20-something male is going to have different interests and needs when it comes to weight-loss versus a 50-something female.

TIP: One way to collect this data is after someone has already signed up for your list. For example, you can ask subscribers to click one link if they’re a male and a different link if they’re a female, and then give all respondents a free gift just for answering the question. If your autoresponder supports tags, then merely clicking on the link will let you segment the list by gender.

Now a few parting thoughts…

Conclusion

While I’ve given you a good jump on different ways to segment your list, these aren’t the only ways to do it. That’s why you’ll want to sit down and think about your specific list and what specific data would be most helpful to you in sending out targeted content and offers.

Note: if it’s data you can collect automatically (without having to ask the user), then go ahead and collect it. It’s better to create segmenting tags and never use them, then to suddenly want to use them but not have them. Now let’s switch gears and take a look at how to get more traffic to your site…

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