Bob Coleman is the owner and creator of Bob Coleman Recommends. He is also the principal at Rhema Web Marketing, an SEO/Social Media Marketing firm that helps small businesses get results online.
If you have been an Internet Marketer for more than a few days, you have without a doubt already seen a ton of articles telling you about the value of building your opt-in list. What most of the ‘experts’ don’t tell you is that building an EFFECTIVE and profitable opt-in list takes time and effort.
You can have a very long opt-in list with hundreds of names and email addresses and still not be making any sales. There are opt-in lists and then there are EFFECTIVE opt-in lists.
Now don’t misunderstand what is being said here. You will never sell your front-end product or service to every single person that is on your opt-in list. That would be an Internet marketer’s dream come true but it just isn’t going to happen.
The first trick is, of course, getting an opt-in list. Turning it into an effective opt-in list comes second.
In order to get your website visitors to join your opt-in list, you will need to make it worth their while to do so. You will need to give them something that is related to the topic of your website and to the product or service that you are selling. It needs to have value to a potential customer – something that truly helps them.
In recent years this has come to known as a “Lead Magnet”. There are various other terms to describe your “free” offer such as “ethical bribe”, “freebie”, etc.
For example; if you are selling accounting software, you might give them free access to an e-book that gives them information about little-known business tax deductions in exchange for their name and e-mail address. You will capture names and email addresses of those who are the most likely to be interested in buying what you are selling and you are starting to build more than just an opt-in list – you are starting to build an effective opt-in list.
That brings me to the next area of debate which surrounds whether it is prudent to request your subscribers confirm their subscription to your list or not. For many years the standard practice was to utilize what is commonly referred to as a “double-optin”.
When a visitor joined your list, they would receive a message stating that they needed to click a link to confirm their joining your list. The benefit of the added step protected the list owner from potential “CAN-SPAM-ACT” violations if at some point in the future the subscriber made a claim that they were added to your list without their permission.
Nowadays, more and more marketers are not requiring this step. And probably for good reason as more of the public is aware to list building tactics and any kind of friction in the process tends to reduce optin rates.
Also, you will probably notice that fewer optin forms require a subscribers name and only ask for their email address.
Your own results may vary and only through testing (A/B Split Testing) will you determine the best course of action for you as you build your list.
In my own experience, I’ve come to rely more and more on testing as market conditions change. What worked a few months ago may not be as effective today.
Building a an effective opt-in list requires more than just great squeeze pages and an auto-responder service. You will need to learn what works with your target audience and then how to communicate with your subscribers to build trust and authority.
You turn that opt-in list into an effective opt-in list by regular communication. You stay in contact with those who did opt-in and you continue to provide them with related information and incentives to buy your front-end product or service or one or more of your back-end products. To keep them interested and keep your name in the front of their mind, be sure you keep in touch with your list at least weekly, if not more often.
There are those who will tell you that building an opt-in list is quick, easy and absolutely painless. Don’t you believe one word of it! Building opt-in lists that will actually produce sales take a lot of time, effort and energy. If you don’t believe me, go ask one of the top marketers how long it took them to build their massive lists. Every one of them will tell you that they spent years building up those opt-in lists.
Below you can download my guide that walks you step by step through the process. It’s free, just follow the instructions below.
[wpsharely id=”2576″]Click here to download your free guide! [/wpsharely]
Niche marketing is the fastest way to make money online and one of the quickest ways to get started in niche marketing is by creating affiliate review sites. This is an important technique that shouldn’t be ignored. Finding the right niche takes time, but once it is found, the profits could be endless. Most people who use niche marketing choose to promote affiliate products in their niche and review sites are a key way to promote your niche products.
There are several ways to promote your affiliate products but review sites do tend to work very well, as long as they are done in an informative, clear and detailed way. People are always looking for information to help them make a decision about what to buy. So, the first thing you should do is find a few affiliate products related to your niche and then put up a website that compares those products.
I prefer to actually use the products I review as it makes the review much more authentic, and you will be a step ahead of the competition because you will be giving an added dimension to potential buyers, that others who haven’t directly used the product will just not be able to provide. In fact, many product vendors will provide a review copy if you ask.
When writing the copy for your review site, you should keep the writing short, yet informative. People shy away from reading lengthy paragraphs of unbroken information online. Two to three paragraphs of three to four sentences in length should be sufficient. Make sure you point out the benefits of each product you’re reviewing, but include minor flaws, as well.
Don’t overdo it on the negatives, unless the product is truly awful. People tend to trust reviews more if there are some caveats listed in them.
Highlight the product you deem the best value for the money, and make it clear this is your opinion and that you are an affiliate of the product that you are marketing. My belief is that people are not put off by this, as long as you are upfront about it and that the information you are providing is factual.
Finally, be sure to include links to the merchant pages of each product, and make sure those links are embedded with your affiliate code. There is no point in making a sale and then not being rewarded for it.
These affiliate review sites can be put together on a simple website, but I prefer to use WordPress blogs as they are super simple to set up. As you start to make some income you can consider outsourcing the building of the websites and thus focus more on writing great reviews.
Before you know it you can have several sites in front of potential customers and the beauty is that all the shipping, downloading etc of the product is handled by someone else. A large share of the profits however is yours, and you can’t get much better than that.
I want to thank Alison Wood and Big Sky Marketing for these tips on using review sites.
Download Free How To Build Effective Sales Funnels
Fundamental to the success of most online businesses (particularly information product based companies), is the idea of the sales funnel. Many of the most successful Online Marketers made their name in a particular market segment and took over by developing a very specific sales funnel procedure; guiding prospects via an optimized and tested channel of sales and marketing.
The sales funnel begins by capturing the interest of prospects. A certain percentage of prospects get persuaded to buy and purchase a basic level product, demonstrating they need to have what’s available and are prepared to invest money to resolve their problem.
A sales funnel will then continue to engage with the very best clients, eliminating mismatches and zoning in on the particular target client, offering them more specific services and products, usually at higher prices.
By the finish of this process, the funnel has identified the ultra-responsive clients who buy everything available and obtain the most value and satisfaction out of every purchase made. It’s from these super-responsive customers that almost all profits are created.
In this free eBook, I will introduce you to the sales funnel using simple language. You will learn, exactly, to develop sales funnels, including an assessment of the front end and the back end, and explain why you have to continually trial your funnel procedure thoroughly to make sure of long-term success. I will also examine the various online marketing methods often utilized as a part of a sales funnel’s operation.
In this Beginners Guide to Video Marketing, I’ll share tips and insight to help you get started with video marketing.
I don’t need to tell you on the power of Video Marketing in your digital marketing strategy. The proof is in the numbers:
50% of Internet users are on YouTube – 1 Billion Unique Visitors a month…
75% of people visit a marketer’s website after watching a video…
Website visitors are 64% more likely to buy a product online after watching a video…
Click-thru rates increase 2-3 times when a video is included in an email.
Video Is A Marketer’s Best Friend
Video is the perfect medium to enhance your existing strategies, says columnist Michael Litt, and will help you nurture leads and close deals.
Video Is Engaging
Buyers have a lot of people vying for their attention. They are constantly bombarded with sales pitches, white papers, case studies, product information, and on and on. Those things take time to read, and they’re rarely enjoyable. As marketers, we risk being so eager to push information at buyers that we forget to think about whether they’ll actually like it.
In fact, Cisco predicts that streaming video will make up 79 percent of all Internet traffic by 2018.
Modern marketers need to think like media companies and create their content like we’re giving the audience a gift without necessarily asking for something in return. Video is perfect for that because you can get your point across quickly and express yourself — dare I say even with humor — in ways that are harder with text. You can evoke emotion and establish a connection with your viewers in ways not possible with the written word.
Sixty-five percent of viewers watch more than three-fourths of a given video, according to Invodo. Any content marketer would be thrilled with that kind of readership for a piece of text.
Video Drives Lead Generation And Qualification
Compelling video content helps lure your audience and can also be a great way to bring new prospects into your story. Effective video content is much more likely to be shared by your audience than a traditional e-book or white paper, giving you the opportunity to expand your reach and build new relationships through the power of engaging content.
Video can also be easily syndicated across various distribution channels including your own website, your email marketing, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, and more. While “going viral” isn’t likely your goal, video marketing offers a unique opportunity to get your messages out to a wider audience and drive higher click-through-rates and shares than traditional content.
In addition to driving engagement, video content offers a number of ways to bring people into your sales funnel and qualify them as potential buyers. Adding an email gate to the start of your video, or a lead collection form to the end allows marketers to capture new leads, capitalizing on the time when they are most engaged with your brand and messaging.
With the right tools in place, this information can be tied directly to a marketing automation platform, providing a qualified lead that can be tied back to video efforts.
Adding video viewing activities to lead scoring can add another qualification channel to the funnel. If you only score a prospect based on e-book downloads or email views, you’ll miss out on other hints they’ve been dropping you.
Add in video viewing behavior, and you’ll collect data on your prospects from every interaction. More touchpointss means more detailed qualifications, which makes for much warmer sales calls.
Looking at video engagement data lets you see how viewers interact with content from start to finish, and see where they’re dropping off, or re-watching. (Hint: You can’t do this with any other medium!)
It’s A Natural For Nurturing Leads
Now that you’ve expanded your reach and brought more prospects into your funnel, tap video to help nudge them through the buying journey.
Start at the top of the funnel and help them see how brilliant you are, but also that your company is just plain fun to work with. Create playful content that features company culture.
Showcase your expertise with how-to videos and thought leadership interviews. One-on-one interviews with the CEO, execs, or support staff demonstrate not only that they know what they’re talking about, but also that they are real people eager to help their customers succeed.
After you’ve gotten their attention, help move them through the funnel with detailed product demos, customer testimonials, and video case studies. Share videos that show how your solution works with other products and services they’re already using.
To help seal the deal, get more specific, and keep in touch without pushing the hard sell. Know your lead is going to be at an event you’re attending? Send a personalized message to offer a meeting. Show them instructional videos to let them know that you’ll continue to offer support even after the deal is done.
You’ll Whether Your Video Marketing Is Working
So far, I’ve been focusing more on the art than the science of video marketing, but it’s the science that is really exciting. Not to mention, it makes the art more effective. Like everyone else in business, marketers are increasingly expected to show results, preferably in quantitative form.
Wouldn’t it be great to know whether that prospective customer read the white paper you sent him? You might be able to see whether he opened it, but you cannot see whether he actually read it. Odds are pretty good he skimmed the first couple of paragraphs, set it aside to get back to later, and then never did.
With video, you can see exactly how a buyer interacted with it. You can tell how much of the content she watched. Maybe she loved it and re-watched it. Maybe she watched the first few seconds and hated it. Maybe she watched it to the end and clicked on a call-to-action that took her to another video.
“Maybe” is the key word here because, with video, you can make “maybe” a non-factor. With that white paper, you’re left guessing. With video, you can know to the second how much she consumed. As a marketer or sales rep, that is powerful because you’ll follow up with the person differently based on that data.
To make it even more powerful, you can integrate your video viewing data with your CRM or marketing automation platform, so you have the information in the context of every other contact you’ve had with the buyer.
We all need friends, and we all have criteria to help decide whether we want to be friends with someone. It just so happens that video meets the same criteria for marketers. It gives more than it takes. It’s natural and doesn’t feel forced. It’s fun. It gets along well with the friends you already have. And most importantly, it makes you better than you were without it.
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