First let me say that I have little to no experience with offline business. The principles are the same but it’s still a different type of business from what I’m used to. Therefore any advice I give on the subject should be taken lightly.

Here’s the question:

“I have a very unique situation.

My husband and I recently sold our Quiznos Sub to another couple and the husband was a crook and was called FELON on front page of the large Sunday paper, plus a second article the following Sunday.

Bottom line is we are getting the store back any day and will resell it to someone else. But we have to get sales up because they have plummeted because of the bad publicity of this man.

I was very active with the local community and chamber. We have to have a grand reopening but what would be a good approach to take to get the sales up up up until we sell again to good folks.

Please note I will be away until Tuesday and look forward to your response then.”

Hi Ro,

There are some strategies you should start using if you’re not already. The first is to encourage repeat business and the second is to try to drive business from stores targeting similar customers (Joint Venture).

To capitalize on the customers you already have, you should find a way to collect some contact information from them. This could be an email address, or a physical address. (more…)

You can view the question by looking at the “Ask Chad” page.

The question was based on the fact that stats for most Niche sites show that 90% or more of the visitors who land at the websites leave immediately (or Bounce).

The question goes on to ask whether it would be better to try to convert more of the visitors who stay or to try to get more people to stay.

First I need to say that the web stat that shows 90% of visitors leaving immediately is not accurate.

I use Google Analytics for these kind of stats and there’s a good chance that Aaron uses it also. Or at least another Web Stats service that suffers from the same problem. (more…)

Because it cost $997, affiliates were begging for a chance to promote it. A $500 dollar commission is a powerful incentive to promote someone’s product, despite the content.

But that’s not the only advantage the price gave him. The price also set the perceived value of his product.

Naturally, people perceive a $997 product as being more valuable than a $97 product.

Having the highest price among your competitors is actually a good thing when the customer is looking for the best available product.

High Price Advantages:

1. Higher Perceived Value
2. More Attractive to Affiliates
3. You can pay more in advertising for each customer

Obviously, a high price demands a quality product. But the price it’s self often makes the product appear more valuable.

If you pay $7 for a Marketing Course, you are less likely to use the information given and thus get less value from it.

If you pay $997 for a Marketing Course, you will most likely try to get everything you can from the product and apply more of it to get your moneys worth.

In many cases, its the price that sets the value of the product. Not the other way around.

This is a crucial part of marketing strategy. Price is often the deciding factor in whether a product succeeds or fails.

After thinking about it more I realized that it’s not so much about Trust as it is about Comfort.

They are similar, but I believe Comfort describes whats going on better.

By making your visitors feel comfortable about their purchase, you can increase your conversion rate to utterly insane levels.

So from this day forward I declare AIDA obsolete. Taking it’s place is AIDCA…

We all know AIDA stands for:

• Attention
• Interest
• Desire
• Action

The new C stands for Comfort.

• Attention
• Interest
• Desire
• Comfort
• Action

While Comfort building seems to fit best between Desire and Action, it should not be confined there.

You should be building comfort from beginning to end. With everything you write you should ask your self: “Will this make the reader more or less comfortable about buying from me?”

Here are some ways you can Build Comfort:

1. Give them what they want for free in your copy. Not everything but enough to show them you know what you’re talking about and can help them.
2. Write your copy so it looks more like a helpful article than a traditional sales letter.
3. Provide as many testimonials as possible. The more the better.
4. Add audio or video to your testimonials.
5. Link to and reference supporting work you’ve done (such as other books in the same market).
6. Say how many people have bought your product if it’s a large number. People will feel more comfortable buying after many others already have.
7. Test adding a picture of your self.
8. Let them know you will be there to help them if they need it.
9. Make it easy for them to contact you if they need help.
10. Assure them their order will be secure.
11. Portray to your visitors that you care for them and care about what happens to them.
12. Expose vulnerabilities. Show them you have weaknesses. Example: “I couldn’t count my fingers without a calculator.” or “As a child I was horribly over weight, even my parents made fun of me. (for a weight loss product)”

Test some of those and let me know what happens. My guess is that most of them will increase your conversion rate.

That section is the Contact Information. A little line at the bottom of my copy that says something like:

“If you have any questions please email me at: email@address.com”

The test was to see what effect removing it would have.

Why did this one section become statistically valid so much quicker than all the others?

Because removing it had such a huge effect on my conversion rate.

How much?

Removing the contact information reduced sales by over 300%!

I knew it would hurt sales, but I had no idea it hurt them that much.

You may be thinking “why would he test something he knew would hurt his sales?”

Because I wanted to quickly find out how important this part of my copy was.

Now that I know this is a very important part of my copy, I will test a much more helpful, visible, and easy to use version.

I believe this is an important part of building trust and my past experience tells me that trust is huge.

By making the customer feel like they can get help should they run into any problems, you build trust and make them feel more comfortable about buying.

Take note of these results and start testing different ways to build trust in your copy.

Tags: trust, build trust, test results, contact information

I don’t like many of the “guru’s” because it’s fairly obvious that the only thing they’re concerned with is selling.

They don’t care about helping people, they only care about making money by selling products that are usually hyped up junk.

John Reese sells plenty also. And I don’t blame him because he does something few others even try to do… Help People.

He has been working on his new income.com project for awhile and it looks like it will be a great website for new and veteran marketers alike.

To promote his new project, he has just launched his new blog as well as a free report about the “rebirth” of the internet.

I haven’t quite finished reading it yet, but there’s some great information included and it’s definitely worth reading.

It starts out pretty “doom and gloom” but manages to deliver some interesting insights and solid advice for the future.

What shocked me was that he mentioned something I’ve been preaching quite a bit recently… Helpful article type sales letters (he calls them Advertorials) out sell hyped up hard selling copy.

Here’s a quote:

“Advertorial style copy on the Web does a lot better than over-the-top copy – and the difference in success rates is continuing to grow.

If you are selling something from a web page think about different ways that you can incorporate an educational story or “sidebar” of factual information that will actually deliver some value to your reader even if they don’t buy your product.”

It seems he agrees with me about actually delivering something of value to your visitors and customers.

I highly suggest you go read this report right now…

Here’s a link: http://www.income.com/blog/

Over the course of many tests, I’ve notice one constant. The more obvious you make it you are trying to sell something the worse your conversion rate will be.

In the past I wrote about Gary Halbert and Claude Hopkins who say the same basic thing:

The more apparent you make it that you are selling the more resistance you run into.

One of the great ideas Gary Halbert came up with was the A Pile - B Pile theory. Which basically said that when people go to their mail box, they immediately sort their mail into two Piles.

The A Pile contains personal letters, bills, bank statements, etc. While, the B Pile is for “junk mail” which will not even be opened.

Anything that looks like an advertisement, usually gets a quick glance and then goes to the B Pile (which ends up in the trash).

He used this theory to make his mailings look like personal letters, even going so far as using normal (more expensive) stamps and “fake” handwriting on the outside of the envelope.

What’s cool is that by looking normal and nonthreatening, his letters got more Attention than others that tried to get Attention by putting red writing all over their envelopes.

This is leading me to make big changes in the way I write copy. I’m quickly turning into a “Sneaky Salesman.”

Here are some interesting things I’ve found:

• Black Headlines consistently beat Red Headlines
• Formating a sales letter to look like a helpful article increases sales
• Simple words sell better than fancy sales type words (Ex: Learn seems better than Discover)
• Trust is huge and people seem to trust “normal” people more than salesmen.

Those are just a few of my findings so far.

One thing’s for sure, the next sales letter I write will be as “sneaky” as possible. I will probably make it look like an article throughout and include helpful information that the customer is looking for (to help build trust).

Then at the end, or possibly even on “page 2″ I will hit them with the Call to Action, and Guarantee.

Tags: Gary Halbert, Claude Hopkins, test results, copywriting, article, sneaky, salesman, internet, marketing, conversion rate

The cool thing is that as I’m learning more about customizing this new setup, I’m having some great ideas for making it a better website.

As you can see the first of those ideas is my new “Ask Chad” page. Which will be “members only” soon (more on that later).

That’s something other marketers would charge $100-$500 a month for. But in the spirit of this site I made it free.

When I was getting started… (more…)

My tests tell me this is entirely wrong. Black has always beaten Red in my tests for headline color. I’m currently testing this yet again, and Black and Blue are tied while Red is doing horribly.

Maybe some markets respond better to Red Headlines, but I sell to quite a few markets and not once has Red beaten Black.

I don’t get it… Why are people hanging on to the Red Headline, much less recommending it to others?

Test it for your self and you will see what I’m talking about. If you are currently using a Red Headline, you should immediately test a Black and/or Blue one.

My opinion:

Red screams Ad, while Black looks more like a helpful article. But then how do we explain Blue doing well? That’s a little odd.

I’m testing alot of things right now, and look forward to telling you the conclusive results when I get them. Already, I’m seeing something very interesting that has me excited about what I will test next. I just need to wait for the results to be statistically valid first.

Tags: Red, Headline, Testing, Test, Results, Copywriting

Just click the”Ask Chad” link at the top right of this webpage to find out more…