200-Proof Marketing

Alot of Niche Marketers move from one market to the next like they’re stoplights on a highway. But I prefer to dig a little deeper into each Market I enter.

If you’ve been marketing for awhile and you sell quality products, you’ve probably had customers email you and ask for more products related to their market. Many customers aren’t satisfied after just one purchase even if they liked the product.

If you sell a Ebook about how to improve your golf swing, you should also develop a product about how to putt better, how to fix a slice, how to drive further, and so on.

Once you have more than one product you can start selling multiple items to each customer.

I’m selling 3 products to one of my markets and in a recent test I put a little ad for my related products on my thankyou pages and noticed some surprising results.

Of all the people that clicked that ad after making their purchase, over 40% of them bought one of my other products.

Here are some practical ways to implement this multi-product marketing strategy:

1. Do like I did and advertise your other related products on your thank you pages.

2. Use an Upsell and offer your customers the other products before they make it to the Order Page.

3. Collect their email address at the Thank You page and offer them the related products with a auto-responder.

I recommend you test all of these to find which one is most profitable for your market. I would give you some indication but I’m still testing it.

With Clickbank you can add extra products to a order by designating different Item Numbers, Prices, and Thankyou Pages for each combination.

For example: $20 for product 1, $70 for 1 and 2, and $130 for all of the products. You’ll need to create thankyou pages for each of the possible combinations.

If you already have multiple products in one market and you’re not promoting them to each others customers, your missing out on some very easy money.

It’s much more profitable and maybe even easier to add new products to a market you’re already selling to than it is to go out and sell new products to new markets.

I’ve also been seeing some good results from downselling to build trust, but I need to run some more tests before I write about it.

Alot of people obsess about their headline and one fad that thankfully seems to be ending is the use of “Who Else” in headlines.

At first it was praised as a sure-fire way to boost conversion rates by a couple guru’s.

Most people just threw it up on their sales page without even thinking twice, even if it didn’t fit their product. Almost no one tested it, and I’m sure alot of people lost sales because of it.

I’ve seen decent ones like “Who else wants to learn to drive the golf ball further and straighter in only 2 days?” and I’ve seen terrible ones(I actually found this one) like “Who Else Wants To Create Profitable Customers Quickly?”

How do you create profitable customers? Is there a special Lego set for that?

Actually what the hell is a Profitable Customer? I have profitable products but not customers. If I was a pimp and my customers were my Ho’s they could be profitable.

Funny enough when you do a Google search for “who else wants” you get 480,000 results with quite a few funny ones.

Alright back to the topic… When this all started I decided to test it, unlike everyone else. What did I find out? It converted about .6% less than my current headline.

That’s not bad considering I had tested my headline quite a bit but it demonstrates why you should test every change you make to your sales copy. What works for one product may not work for another.

Don’t ever blindly take someone else’s advice.

“Test all things and hold fast to that which is good”
1 Thessalonians 5:21

It’s in the Bible people…

Wow, I should make that my new slogan for this site. It’s crazy how that applies so well to marketing but I guess it really applies to everything in life.

If you want to sell to people, it helps to have some understanding of how they think.

Thankfully there are a ton of psychological studies on buying behavior that we can look at and use to our advantage.

First have a look at this quote from an article in The New York Times:

“Corporate executives are the first to admit they do not really know how advertising works.

They spend $117 billion a year on advertisements, but most people do not remember what product is featured in a given commercial. Four out of five new products flop. There is no conclusive evidence that advertising ever causes sales to go up.”

Wow!

The one thing I focused on was: “There is no conclusive evidence that advertising ever causes sales to go up.”

Now, I assume they’re talking about “Brand Advertising” or “Image Marketing,” which is mostly useless. The one advantage these people bet on is that people will develop a brand loyalty.

That’s great if you’re selling Soda but it stinks for most small businesses.

With Direct Marketing, we know that correct advertising does cause sales to go up. The process we follow leads people to a buying decision.

But, with conversion rates averaging between 1 and 2 percent across the internet, our process still hasn’t been refined as much as it could be.

In my opinion, direct marketing has the potential to convert nearly 100% of it targeted market. Obviously that’s unrealistic, but I believe it is possible.

If you’re selling “Wrinkle Reducing Cream” to women that are insecure about their wrinkles, you should be able to(theoretically) convert damn near every one of them that see’s your copy.

Since this doesn’t happen we must conclude that our “process” is flawed. It’s still the best available but it has alot of potential.

If we want to improve our process we must first better understand why people buy.

Most human behavior is either reward seeking or pain avoiding. That response is one of the most primitive and basic there is. Get more rewarding stuff, stay away from unpleasant, or painful stuff.

That’s why we use benefits and not features. We want the customer to see the potential reward they will get or the pain they will avoid when they buy our product.

So the next time you write sales copy remember to make the reward of buying your product clear. But be careful which rewards you focus on…

The reward of using Wrinkle Cream to eliminate wrinkles isn’t getting rid of the wrinkles.

The reward is most likely one or more of the following: More self-confidence, compliments from others, becoming more attractive, envy of others, or any number of other things…

The reward is rarely the actual effect. When a man buys a Ferrari, the perceived reward isn’t just the thrill of driving a high performance car. The perceived reward is hot young women, respect of others, recognition of success, etc.

Don’t sell a Ferrari with a commercial of it speeding around a track. Sell it by showing a middle aged, average looking man driving around with a good looking young model while people on the side of the road stare and talk about how rich and successful the driver must be.

Alright let’s move on to some Buying Triggers(things that increase the likelihood someone will buy)…

One of the most well known triggers is Scarcity. Which is when there is a limited supply of something. This can make demand go crazy. However most marketers fail to use this correctly because they don’t make it believable. If you say only 10 people will get a product, stand by that limit. Then release a similar product with a limit and watch the product disappear at an astonishing rate.

The next trigger is based on other people. If you see everyone else doing something you are more likely to do it yourself. Home Shopping Channel’s use this and Scarcity to their benefit with the little “Amount Remaining” tickers. It starts at a set amount of say 10,000 then as they present the product, it rapidly drops down to zero. The viewers see this and are triggered by scarcity as well as seeing so many other people buying.

Another trigger is based on like-ability. If someone you like asks you to buy something, you will be more likely to buy it, simply because you like the person.

The Expert Factor also plays a role because people want to buy from someone they believe is in a position to help them.

Then there’s Reciprocity or the desire to return a favor. If your customer thinks you’ve done him a favor, he will try to repay you in some way.

There ya go… That information is potentially more profitable than most $97 ebooks out there. The right combination of the above can make you rich but because your getting the information free you probably won’t realize it until you pay for it.

I’m actually supposed to be working right now, but I’m putting it off because I don’t feel like it.

So I figured I’ld come write a article here and then maybe I’ll feel like working.

Do you want to increase your conversion rate?

Of course you do…

Before I tell you how, let’s talk about why people don’t buy.

1. They don’t want your product(if that’s the case they shouldn’t be looking at your copy - target your advertising better)

2. They don’t trust you or believe your product will do what you say it will.

3. They plan on buying but procrastinate(like I’m doing now) and never get around to it.

Like I said #1 shouldn’t be a problem because you know not to advertise Wrinkle Cream to teens looking for the latest Rap CD.

Now I’m going to tell you how to get your customers to like and trust you within the first few paragraphs of your copy.

How?

Most of you have heard the phrase: “People like people that are like them”

They’re also more trusting of people like them.

I think I first heard that on a Tony Robbins cassette way back when I was kid and it’s the truth. It’s basic Psychology for people to gravitate toward others that are similar to them.

If we want to use this to our advantage in our sales copy we have to first learn who are customers are and what they want(you should already know). The more you know about your customers the better.

Let’s say we’re selling a new Diet Product.

Don’t tell the customer you’re a professional body builder or model. If you do that, they will see you are not like them and you’ll lose alot of sales right there.

Fat people might dislike or envy people who’ve never had the same problem they are trying to fix.

You should tell them that you’ve also had trouble with your weight for most of your life. Tell them you know how it feels to be ignored or to have people laugh at you because you’re fat.

Try to hit on emotional experiences they’ve had and let them know you’ve had the same problems.

You want to make them think you’re just like them. Then, once you’ve done that you can move on and tell them how you overcame the same problem they’re facing and sell them the product.

So build trust before you try to sell your product. Provide proof that you are qualified to solve the persons problem. Give proof that you have solved other peoples problems.

Just do yourself a favor and change your copy so it builds trust like that and test it against your old copy. I’m not saying it will always boost your conversion rate but in some markets it can make a huge difference.

First of all, I’m shocked by the amount of people that are coming to this blog. I had over 1,500 visitors to it last month. Evidently, you’re all just to lazy to leave comments and discuss what I write about.

Since I’m getting decent traffic I will post some more marketing info here soon.

Alright on to the crappy weekend… You may have noticed that this site, as well as all of my other websites have been down since sometime Saturday. Unfortunately I didn’t find out about it until sunday morning when I noticed I had made no sales for the day.

I’ve had the same webhosting company for a few years now and I’ve never had any problems. But this weekend my traffic exceeded my bandwidth limit, so my webhost shut all of my websites down and locked my webhosting account.

I could go on a rampage about this because it cost me HUNDREDS of dollars in wasted advertising and lost sales but I’m not because it won’t help anything.

Oh yeah, I also lost a lot of money playing poker friday. I’m good and usually make money pretty consistantly but I got hit with a feirce streak of a bad luck for some reason.

So it’s been a crappy weekend, I had planned to launch a new product this weekend but that has now been put off until I have time tonight or tommorow.

There is a upside to it all though… I stumbled on a new Niche a few days ago. It’s not really new, just new to me because I had never considered it.

What I noticed was a huge market of highly passionate, almost desperate customers. The market is huge but even the biggest competitors (some minor celebrities) have weak marketing.

Digital products wouldn’t be too effective for the market since they are buying DVD’s and physical items. That’s actually good because I want to get away from clickbank with some of my products so my entire income won’t fall victim to the “Clickbank Rollarcoaster” of sales fluctuations.

The most popular product in the market doesn’t even do what the customers want, it’s just the best option available. That “half working” product costs maybe $5 to make and ship, yet sells by the thousands for $500!

With some pre-launch hype, that would spread easily on it’s own in this market, I could probably make over $250,000 in sales the first week and over a million in the first year.

How did I find this Market?

Well I actually became a part of the market(ADD leads me to alot of different things) and after hours of research(and buying a few products) I realized the market was hugely underserved.

Lesson: Be your own customer… Become a part of a market before you sell to it, so you can better understand what the market wants.