Internet Marketing Business Models
In this chapter, we’re going to cover some internet marketing business models. If you are interested in internet marketing, then you definitely need to know what business models are out there and how to choose the best one for you.
There are many different business models that we will cover in this chapter, and you can make money from every single one of them if you want.
But first you have to choose the right one and that not only will take some thought, it also takes a great deal of information. That’s exactly what this chapter is going to give you.
Introduction to Internet Marketing
Before we get into the business models, let’s talk about internet marketing in general. Loosely defined, internet marketing is any type of business that you do on the internet to make money.
We’re going to go over some the specific methods to do so shortly. Internet marketing got started in earnest when people realized that they could influence where their website landed in the search results.
Since then, the market has exploded to the point where it seems like everyone is doing internet marketing.
Internet marketing is a wonderful business to get in for several reasons.
· First, you have unlimited income potential. Internet marketing has made quite a few millionaires and there are tons and tons of people making six figures with an internet marketing enterprise.
· In addition, internet marketing can be a residual, passive form of income.
That means that you can be doing something else – even having a full-time job – and still be making money with your internet marketing efforts.
Defining the Business Model
Internet marketing is composed of various business models. A business model is simply a method of making money on the internet. There are some standards that have proven very effective for internet marketers, such as Amazon, and others that are less used but still lucrative.
People are also creating more opportunities daily to make money on the internet.
Types of Business Models
Let’s go over ten of the most popular ways that you can make money on the internet, so that you can see each one in detail and understand how they work. Then we’ll give you some advice on how to choose the right one for you. But you must understand the model before you can determine if you want to get into that business.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is the first internet marketing business model we’ll be discussing. Have you heard of the website Clickbank? Clickbank is a well-known place where affiliates can find products to promote. Clickbank is by no means the only website that offers this service, but they are probably the biggest and most well known.
When you do affiliate marketing:
· you get the customer to visit your site
· you use your sales page to convince them to buy
· then you send them to the seller’s website with your affiliate ID attached.
This means that when they buy the product, you get a commission.
The exact amount of the commission varies with each product, but it can be a substantial amount of money.
Amazon Affiliate
The next model that we’re going to discuss is the Amazon affiliate program. The reason that the Amazon program isn’t lumped in with the other affiliate marketing programs listed above is simple: it’s so good that it deserves its own section. Amazon has everything that you could possibly want listed on their website.
It doesn’t matter what product you are looking for, Amazon almost certainly has it. The great thing is: if you send someone to Amazon to buy a product that they were looking for anyway, Amazon pays you a commission.
All you have to do is figure out how to get people to your page, determine what products they are interested in, and then send them onto Amazon to buy that product.
Content Marketing
Next, we’re going to discuss content marketing. Content marketing is a type of marketing where you create content for the purpose of creating keywords that you will be indexed for in the search engines.
This is different than a blog, because this content is designed differently. It needs to inform and be of great value to the reader. It is more formal than a blog post; it is an article.
Content marketing works as long as you remember that content is king – meaning that having good content (and a lot of it) is the number one thing that is going to get your website ranked high in the search engines.
You still need to do your keyword research of course, and you still want to be using linking strategies, but content marketing is all about the quality of the content.
Blogging
Next, we’ll be discussing blogging. Blogging is something that nearly every major company does on their website and there is a really good reason for that – it works. There are several reasons that someone might start a blog for commercial products and services: first, it builds credibility.
If people read a blog post about the industry and you know what you are talking about, then they are much more apt to buy something from you. The second major advantage is that it builds the number of keywords that you’re indexed in the search engines for, which means more traffic.
Finally, it brings visitors to your blog through their own volition. If someone reads your blog and subscribes to your RSS feed, they could come and revisit whenever you create a new post.
In addition, if they commented on a post and someone responds to it, they might come back and read more content – and possibly even convert to a customer.
Drop Shipping
The next model that we’re going to discuss is drop shipping. Drop shipping is very similar to retail in the way that it works. You (as the retailer) buy a product for a wholesale cost, then mark it up and sell it to the consumer.
However, the difference with drop shipping is that when you are a retailer, you normally have to pay for the products upfront and then hope that they sell.
When you do drop shipping, you do not pay for the product until someone actually orders it.
If you want to see an example of a good drop shipping business model, all you have to do is look at Createspace, which is now owned by Amazon.
If you write a novel, for example, you can upload it to Createspace, and when someone orders a paperback copy of your book, then and only then is it printed and shipped out.
Ecommerce Websites
Next, we’ll cover ecommerce websites. Ecommerce websites should not be a mystery to anyone, since nearly everyone shops online these days. An ecommerce website is simply a website that sells products or services.
Usually, these are products that you have purchased yourself (or in many cases created) so it is different from both affiliate sites and drop shipping in that regard.
However, drop shipping sites and many affiliate sites can be considered ecommerce sites if you use the broader definition.
You can either build your own ecommerce website or there are plenty of sites like Etsy, WordPress templates, Shopify and a whole lot more to help you create a website to sell online.
Ecommerce websites do take a bit more work than some of these other models, because you have to be constantly updating your site, marketing it and fulfilling orders, but it can also be a lot more lucrative.
Apps
The next internet marketing business model we’ll discuss is apps. Apps never used to be included in the internet marketing model, but they have become one of the most effective ways to make money online these days. Apps are mobile programs that accomplish a specific purpose.
There are generally three types of apps out there: free apps, free apps with in-app purchases and premium apps (which also sometimes have in-purchases. In addition, there can be two kinds of premium apps – ones that you pay for just once and monthly subscription apps that you keep paying each month to use.
You don’t to be an app developer to be able to make money from this business model; you just have to have a great idea and then hire an artist and developer to create the app for you.
Lead Generation
How about starting a lead generation business? Lead generation is a necessary service in the internet marketing world.
People that have products and service to sell need people to sell to, and people that can gather leads for those salespeople can make a lot of money.
Lead generation can be done in several different ways. You might even classify affiliate marketing as lead generation, although generally when you gather leads you don’t have to work nearly as hard to sell the product. Instead, you are just sending the person through to another site.
You can also generate leads in the form of email addresses. If you can collect a few thousand legitimate email addresses, there are companies out there that will buy them.
Your Own Info-Products
You may also want to create your own products. There are many different digital products that someone could use to make money. You could write an eBook and promote it yourself, or even sell it on Amazon.
You could create a video presentation course on any topic you choose and sell it for a large amount of money.
You can even create audio products that people can download and listen to in their car. In addition, you can put these together to create a lucrative package.
Selling your own products is advantageous because it allows you to charge whatever you want, and you are in total control of the content.
Plus, the customer is yours; they are not just passing through like they would if you were an affiliate site.
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
Finally, we will cover software-as-a-service or SaaS. SaaS is a new business model compared to some of the others listed here. It involves charging someone a monthly fee to use your software.
Of course, it’s a no-brainer that you first have to have some useful software to sell. But if you can create something useful that people will pay for, you will be able to make money each month from all of your customers.
Some of the biggest SaaS services out there include Microsoft Office 365, Adobe’s monthly subscription fee to use their suite of products and several others.
One of the best ways to use this business model is to provide someone something that they can use to make money online, such as a keyword research tool or an article rewrite tool.
How to Choose the Right One for You
So, how do you choose the right one out of all of these business models? You have to decide which one appeals to you the most. You may want to actually start with your product instead.
If you know what kind of products you are going to be selling, you can choose the business model that fits them the best. Find something that you are passionate about and then find products or services that you can pour that passion into.
If you find the right one, then you will find it very easy to create content or market your products online.
Conclusion
We have covered a lot of different business models in this chapter. You now are familiar with all of the major ways to make money online.
People have been able to use these methods to make millions of dollars, and it is not unrealistic to think that you can have a high six-figure income in just a few years by using these methods.
But you need to pick one and get started because none of them are going to happen overnight, nor are any of them going to make money without you putting in the work required.
Getting To Know Your Market through Research
One of the best ways that you can understand your market better is through research. Market research is a great way to find out what your customers want and what you can do better to make sure that they get it.
There are many ways to do market research and we’ll cover all of them in this guide.
But before we can get into the specific methodology behind modern market research, we first need to delve into the meaning behind the term and the benefits that your company will get by doing good market research.
Every major company that is successful today has done some kind of market research to make them successful and it can work for you too.
What is Market Research?
So, what is market research? Simply put, market research is the gathering of information that tells you how to improve your marketing efforts. Market research is done through various methods, some of them quite formal and others very informal.
Market research also varies considerably when it comes to cost and amount of work involved. For example, there are many firms out there that do nothing but conduct market research.
What methods you choose and how much money you spend will depend upon what your needs are, what information you are trying to get and what your budget for market research realistically is.
Benefits of Market Research
Now, let’s talk about some of the benefits of market research. Companies that do market research are much better off than companies that do not, and many small businesses think that they just can’t afford to do it.
The truth is, you really can’t afford not to do it, because the success of your business may depend upon knowing what your customers want.
So, let’s talk about some of the benefits that you get when you do market research.
1. Market research improves communication with your customers. When you get the results of your market research, you’ll know how effective your communication is with your customers currently, what they want to hear and see, what they like and don’t like and many other factors that affect those communications.
2. Market research helps you minimize risk. Are you planning a big product launch? Before you spend all of the money needed to create and market a new product, wouldn’t it be smarter to ask people whether they want the product in the first place? Market research allows you to do just that.
3. Market research identifies potential problems. You can’t think of everything and when it comes down to a product or service, your customers that actually use the product are going to know the flaws much better than you can. If you can figure out those flaws before it is too late, then you can use that research to fix them and have a much better rate of return.
4. Market research allows you to see opportunities where you thought none existed. While doing your market research, you might come across something that you can take advantage of that you would have never thought of normally. Market research has a way of making things clear because it approaches things from the customer’s point of view.
5. Market research gives you information on your online identity. You’ll be able to know much better how people look at your company through market research. You’ll see how customers regard you and find out what your reputation really is. If you find out that your company has a negative perception, then you can take steps to fix that problem.
6. Market research establishes your position within the market. Do you know what your current market position is? Are you closer to the top or closer to the bottom? If you don’t know the answer to this question you will have a hard time improving that position. Market research can tell you where you stand.
7. Market research also helps you create trends. If you do market research regularly, and analyze the information gathered carefully, before too long you will be able to see trends coming or create them yourself. Then you can capitalize on those trends.
8. Finally, market research allows you to plan ahead. If you can figure out how a product is going to be received, and how much advertising budget should be allotted to it, then you will have a great deal more success because you are prepared. Market research gives you the information that you need to plan far ahead in the future and strike with more accuracy.
What You Are Trying to Learn
Now, let’s talk about some of the things that you are trying to learn by conducting market research. You need to be aware of what your goals are before they begin.
They should be something like the following:
Is there a niche for my product or service? If you are planning on releasing a new product or service to the market then the first question you have to answer is whether there is a need for it or not.
If there is a need for the product or service, does your actually fulfill those needs. You might have approached a product or service in a unique way looking to distinguish yourself from the competition.
While this is a solid tactic, you do want to be cautious that your product still meets the need of the customer.
For example a person opening a restaurant needs to take into account that in modern times there are low-carb, vegetarian and several other types of diet, and the restaurant has to meet those needs as well.
Finally, you want to find out if your pricing is competitive. If you price yourself too high then everyone is going to go to your competitors instead. Market research can tell you exactly what you should set your prices at to be competitive.
Market Research Methods
Now let’s go over some of the actual methods of market research that you can use. These are not the only methods out there, but they are all of the major ones, and 99.9% of companies use one of these methods to conduct research.
Personal Market Research
Personal market research is often done by small businesses that do not have a huge budget for doing telephone surveys or hiring a big market research firm.
Personal market research means that you spend time personally trying to find out more about your market. You can do this in a number of ways.
First, you can simply talk to people that you know and maybe ask them to get opinions from people that they know.
You can also use the internet. The internet is an incredible resource for just about any type of information you are seeking and market research is no exception.
Internet polls can give you nearly as much information as conducting a telephone survey might, and in many cases, polls are free.
You can also visit forums within your industry and find out what people are saying, and try to find out the information you need by posting on those forums.
Interviews for Market Research
You can also do individual interviews for market research if you want. One of the ways that this is often done is by hiring a group to go door-to-door in an area where you think that those in your market might live.
However, you can also do informal interviews with your current customers and you can even poll your own employees and get their opinions.
The benefit of doing personal interviews is that people have a lot more freedom to speak their mind than they would on an internet poll or a pre-designed telephone survey.
They can tell you things that you might not have thought to ask, and since it is a personal interview, they often feel a lot more comfortable talking about their needs and expressing opinions, especially if your interviewer is good at their job.
Focus Groups for Market Research
Another thing that you can do is conduct a focus group. A focus group is a small group of people, as few as three or four and usually no larger than ten, who are getting paid to give their opinions about a specific product or service.
Focus groups are easy to set up and they can give you a great deal of valuable information because the people involved can give you their opinions firsthand.
Focus groups definitely have the advantage over personal interviews, because they are able to be completed in about the same time as an interview, but you get the opinions of several people at once, which can give you a much clearer picture.
In addition, you usually save money by doing a focus group instead of an individual interview. But focus groups are not without their disadvantages as well.
For example, when you have several people in a group, some of them may not feel comfortable expressing their opinion if it is contrary to what everyone else in the group has expressed.
You have to make sure you find the right people that are going to give you real opinions.
Competition-Based Market Research
Next, we’ll discuss how you can do market research by looking at the competition. If you are new in business, then your competition has the advantage over you.
But if you can take advantage of their knowledge and use it to improve your own marketing efforts, you will be able to turn the tables.
Of course, you’re probably wondering how you can get this information, since it isn’t likely that your competitors are just going to hand over their own market research. The thing is, you don’t have to talk to competitors directly to find out what strategies they are employing and what research those strategies are based upon.
All you have to do is look at those strategies carefully. The way that your competitors market their products or services will tell you a great deal about the market in general.
Telephone Surveys for Market Research
Finally, we’ll be discussing telephone surveys. Telephone surveys used to be one of the most popular ways to do market research, but with the Do Not Call List and everyone carrying mobile phones instead of a landline that is listed in a directory, they have become less effective.
However, they are still employed by many organizations for lots of different purposes, including political polling, market research and more.
Telephone surveys do cost money, and you usually have to hire a firm to do the surveying for you, but if you come up with the right questions, it can be an extremely effective way of doing market research.
Internet Market Research
Using the internet for market research has sort of replace telephone surveys as the new norm. This is different than the methods discussed in the section under personal market research.
Using the internet can be pretty involved, and there are companies out there that have experience in researching markets using advertising, internet polling, email campaigns and a huge number of other methods.
Internet market research can be more effective than some other methods like focus groups or telephone surveys, because many people feel more comfortable expressing their options through writing rather than verbally.
Conclusion
The bottom line is that you have to do market research if you want to survive in today’s business world.
Guessing about the market is not enough, and if you are investing money into a business that provides a particular product or service, it only makes sense that you should research beforehand if there is even a need for that product or service.
You can choose whichever method you want, depending upon your budget and your particular needs. But market research should be conducted regularly and you should analyze the use the information gathered to base your business decisions on.
You will be much better off for it than someone who simply plunges forward without any idea of how the market will respond.
Creating Your Online Identity and Brand
If you are in the internet marketing business, the retail business, manufacturing or nearly any other type of enterprise, then you must be concerned with your online identity and branding.
This should be the number one priority of any company that relies on the public to buy their products and services. But if you are new to business or even new to web marketing, then you might not know exactly how to build your online identity and brand.
In this chapter, you will learn everything that you need to know to become a master of building your brand online.
What is an Online Identity & Brand?
The first question that must be answered before you can learn anything about the how’s and why’s of branding is what exactly an online identity is; as well as a brand.
Your online identity is the overall picture of your company online.
What you have to understand is that people don’t buy from companies. They buy from brands.
As a company, you are a faceless and soulless entity that wants to take their money. But as a brand, you are a familiar presence and a trusted partner in their value proposition.
Your online identity encompasses everything that you are online; everything that people see, hear or feel about your company. Your brand includes both physical aspects like your logo and slogan, as well as less tangible ones such as your reputation, tone and more.
Companies spend millions of dollars building their brand online. of course, this is unrealistic for most people, but even if you are a small business or a sole internet marketer you can build a brand online that is going to give you the relationship that you need with the public to turn a visitor into a buyer and then into a loyal customer.
Why is it Important?
So, why is your online identity so important? There are several reasons why this is the case. We’ve already discussed the most important ones, namely that your company success and bottom line depend upon them.
But an identity is especially important online because you need some kind of digital avatar in order to interact with searchers and online shoppers.
You need to create a brand that they will recognize and trust and then come back to again and again. Your online identity is the most important thing that you will ever do online.
Setting Up Your Brand
Now we are going to discuss some of the things that go into creating an online brand that can represent your company. We will start with the basics, much of which you may already know, and then move on to more advanced strategies.
Creating Your Physical Identity
The first thing that will discuss is creating your physical identity. These are tangible things that people are able to look at or listen to. Of course, since this is mostly digital content, they aren’t actually tangible, but it simply means that they are physically there.
The first thing that you need to do is create an amazing logo. If you are just starting out in business, you are likely on a pretty tight budget. When businesses don’t have a lot of money to spend, owners may try to design a logo themselves or find a discount graphic designer to create one.
But the logo is the most important part of your physical identity because it must be instantly recognizable and easily remembered by anyone who has seen it. This means that it needs to be the right balance between simple and well-designed, with the right colors, shapes and fonts.
Your physical identity also includes your website. If your online identity is the face of your business online, then your website is your business address.
When people want to find out more about your company, as well as when they want to buy your products and services, they will visit your website. Your website needs to display your branding, logo, description and tell people what to look for when they come across you online.
Of course, physical branding also includes various other applications of that same logo such as social media profiles, business cards, letterheads and basically, anywhere that your business is listed.
Your logo is just the outermost image of your company of course. You also have pictures of executive management, descriptions, origin stories and various other elements making up your physical identity online.
Creating Your Intangible Identity
When it comes to your non-physical identity, there is still a great deal of importance attached to it. Your non-physical identity is what people believe about your company, what sense they get from reading your company story and what philosophy and values you present to the public.
None of these things are accidental. Each one of these intangibles is carefully crafted by you and your staff.
Your reputation, your philosophy and your values are all things that you create and then ensure gets into the hands of the public. But before we get into how to disseminate these things, we have to cover how they are created in the first place.
Some of these elements are published to your website, or at least, the information published to your website should infer these elements.
For example, suppose that you published a blog, and you spent a great deal of time writing about the families of people who worked for you, and what kind of policies your company is creating to benefit those families.
Someone would rightly infer that families are important to you; that they are one of your values.
You also want to build the impression that you are an expert in the field. That means that you’ll have to spend time online actually promoting that image.
Some of the best ways to do that is by answering questions on websites like Quora, visiting the relevant forums in LinkedIn and maintaining a membership on bulletin boards and other sites within your industry.
However, you do want to make sure that you have all of your physical identity elements in place, because when someone comes across your expert advice, you want them to associate it with your company and remember you in the future.
Branding & Propagation
The next thing that we’ll discuss is propagation. Once you have built a brand identity, then you have to figure out some way to get the information out there.
Your logo, company story, philosophy and values can all exist on your website, but unless someone has a reason to go there, you aren’t going to be able to spread your message very far and if you want your online identity to affect your bottom line, you have to do some marketing.
Of course, we have already discussed a few ways that you can do this in the sections on creating your online identity, such as answering questions on “expert answer” websites like Quora.
We will go into these methods in a lot more detail below. But keep in mind that you have to set up your online identity before you do any marketing work.
That includes uploading your logo and company information to all relevant social media profiles, registering with the appropriate forums and adding visual aids and signature links as well as any other activity online that will place your brand in the public view.
Maintaining Your Brand
The next step after ensuring that you have a social media presence is marketing and maintaining that brand. These are seemingly two separate things on the surface, but in a way, they are nearly the same.
Most or all of the steps listed here are done for both purposes simultaneously – both to market your company’s identity and maintain it so that you have a good reputation as a strong, trustworthy brand.
The Importance of Googling Yourself
If you want to find out what the current state of your identity is, there is no better way to do so than by googling yourself regularly. Type your company name into any search engine and see what comes up.
You might come across some positive customer reviews from sites you didn’t even know existed, or you might find that there are some negative reviews out there that you can address.
Finding out what is going on with your business online is quite easy with internet search engines, especially if your company name is something unique that isn’t going to bring up a bunch of non-relevant results.
Blogging
Blogging is one of the best ways to market your company online and any IM guru will tell you so. Blogging does several things at once for your company. First, it presents you as a human being or group of human beings. When people read your blog posts, as long as they are well written and personable, they will see a person behind the words.
Also, blogging helps to establish your credibility. People will see you as an expert if they come across your blog post and it answers some industry question they had.
Finally, blogging continually adds keywords that the search engines will index you for, meaning that you’ll get more visitors to your website.
Professional Associations
Professional associations can also give you a great deal of credibility on the internet. If you belong to a professional organization that is recognized by others in the industry, then you will be seen as more of an expert in the field, and more people will want to buy from you because of that recognition.
Google Alerts
You should also set up Google alerts so that you can get notified whenever you company name comes across the Google news wire service or the other locations that the alerts notifications will monitor.
This will allow you to stay in the know and respond quickly should a negative piece be published.
Domain & Social Media Names
You also want to claim domain and social media names as much as possible; and as quickly as possible. This includes variations of your company name with your .coms and social media profiles, as well as your actual company name with all of the standard extensions out there.
This will help you build brand dominance over your name.
Signatures & Descriptions
You also want to use email signatures, forum signatures and any other listing online to your advantage as much as possible. Maintaining these can take time out of your undoubtedly busy day, but it can be worth it.
For example, when you change your forum signature to reflect a new product or any other changes to your company, the changes are reflected across the entire site, on every post that you have ever made.
This means potentially thousands of eyeballs just for changing a single forum signature. That’s also another reason why being active on forums is such a good idea.
Forums and Q & A Websites
We have already discussed why forums are a terrific place to market your company and build your online profile. What forums you choose will depend upon the industry that you are in and what kind of expertise you want to build.
But there are other websites that you should focus on as well; those are the question-and-answer format sites. Yahoo Answers is an example of this, although that service is mostly defunct now, but the most popular out there is definitely Quora.
Quora has questions on every single topic you could think of, and the number of unanswered questions likely number in the millions. Quora is a great place to build your expertise, because you can put your company information in every single question you answer.
Conclusion
The bottom line is that you simply have to create an online identity if you want to make it in the world of retail or internet marketing.
People don’t just visit the internet anymore; they actually live on it, doing most of their shopping online, using the web for entertainment and in many cases, working online.
Your identity needs to meet them where they are because they won’t come to you.
Setting Up Your Marketing Website Hub
Setting up a marketing hub is one of the best ways to manage your entire online portfolio. In this chapter, we’re going to discuss how exactly you set up that hub, as well as all of the elements that surround the hub.
You should be able to see how the entire portfolio fits together to create an unstoppable marketing package.
When it comes to internet marketing, you definitely need a centralized website to act as the anchor for all of the other things that you have going, but the hub elements are just as important as the hub itself so we will be spending a little bit of time on each of them in turn as well.
What is a Marketing Website Hub?
So, what exactly is a marketing hub? Your marketing hub is the central location that all of your hub elements are connected to. In other words, the marketing hub is your home base.
Most of the time, this is your company’s home page, although it doesn’t necessarily have to be the case. Your marketing hub can be any website that you choose, but it does have to meet the requirement of being the central location for all of your marketing efforts.
Your hub goes out to all of your other hub elements, marketing channels and the like, and in return, those same elements connect back to your hub.
Traditional Marketing vs. a Marketing Hub
If you think about traditional marketing as standing on a street corner using a megaphone to advertise your products and services, then think about a marketing hub as more like a focus group.
When you have a marketing hub, communication is a two-way street between your hub and the other marketing elements. But you aren’t just communicating with elements, you are communicating with customers who populate those elements; social media is an example of a hub element.
A marketing hub is much more effective than traditional marketing, because you aren’t just using one megaphone, you are using several, and to extend the metaphor further, you are also getting feedback from the ground so you can change the messages that those megaphones are broadcasting.
Why You Should Have a Marketing Website Hub
There are some really good reasons that you should have a marketing hub. Today, consumers buy differently than they did in the past. People used to be convinced by television, radio and newspaper advertising. Now consumers are a lot smarter.
Now they actually research products and look for trusted brands to partner with. The relationship between the buyer and the seller is much more complex and a marketing hub is more important than ever. Here are some reasons why.
1. You need a place to send your web traffic. Your job as a company, whether you are in retail or an internet marketer, is to get traffic. But what do you do with that traffic once you have it?
You need a quality website to send traffic to, because that’s the place consumers will get their first impression of you – and that impression is usually pretty difficult to overcome.
2. Your hub website is the central location for everything that you are doing online. You absolutely need a home base, whether it is for adding to a social media profile, or sending web traffic that is ready to buy. Your website is the central location of your hub, but the center is not where the people are.
The people are elsewhere on the web. You need to reach out and meet them where they are, like on social media sites. But your content will usually reside on your website. Your hub elements are cross-promotion for your central hub content.
3. Your central hub website is an information source for anyone looking to find out more about your company, particularly for those looking for information during the buying cycle.
If you do not have that central location, not only do you lose a little credibility as a trusted partner in a value proposition, but you also lose the chance to answer the customer’s questions. They probably aren’t going to work too hard to find the answers they need when your competitors are just one search result over.
4. Finally, your marketing hub website is a part of the team. Your website has just as important of a job as anyone that works in your marketing department. In fact, your website has to work harder because it must be available 24 hours a day, ready to answer any questions that a potential buyer must have.
How a Hub Works
Think of a marketing hub website like a general sending his troops out to battle. The first step in the process is reconnaissance. You need to find out what is going on out there in the field.
Luckily your troops (your hub elements) are there to provide you with on-the-ground feedback. This will allow you to change your website so that it is more receptive to those that visit.
This communication is two-way communication. You send out messages to people on the web, they send messages back to you through their comments, buying decisions and more, and then you take that information and try to determine how to shape your products, services and marketing for them so that you’ll have the best chance of making a sale.
Setting up Your Hub: Step-by-Step (200)
Now, let’s discuss how you get started setting up a hub marketing website. We’re going to start with the very basics, in case anyone is just barely getting into the internet marketing business.
Some of this stuff more experienced internet marketers will undoubtedly know how to do, but a refresher course is never a bad thing. Let’s go through this step-by-step.
1. First, choose a domain name that is going to be relevant to your brand. This can be challenging for several reasons. First, you have to strike the perfect balance between a unique name that is going to come up first in the SERPS (search engine results pages) so it has to be unique.
However, it also has to be short enough and memorable enough so that people will be able to remember the address and type it into their browser or a search engine.
Another thing that can create a challenge is that the name that you want may not be available. This is especially true in the case of “premium” names – which are basically domain names that someone has already purchased because they know that someone will want it and they will be able to make money from it.
2. The second thing that you need to do after you choose the perfect domain name is get website hosting. There are several things to consider when it comes to web hosting. First, you want your traffic to be unmetered.
You don’t want to have a sudden surge of traffic and then get charged outrageous fees for going over your bandwidth. If the choice is only a few dollars, you also should go with the plan that allows you unlimited domains and subdomains. Your marketing hub website may be the focal point, but there are plenty of elements that may require a separate domain.
3. Finally, you are going to need some kind of framework for your website. In ye olden days of the internet, you had to build your website from scratch using HTML. But today, content management systems (CMS’s) are not only trendy; they are also more functional and fully-featured than just about anything you could build yourself.
The most popular on by far is WordPress, and it comes with nearly every webhosting cpanel out there. From a basic installation, you can add widgets, plugins, themes and much, much more.
Hub Elements
So, let’s discuss some of the hub elements that are going to make up the spokes of your hub. We will cover these just briefly so that you will know what they are and how they fit into the entire hub network.
Infographics: Infographics can be a terrific tool for one of the spokes of your hub. Infographics have a way of communicating with people that few other mediums do. You can use infographics on your website or post them elsewhere to draw in traffic.
Images: Images should definitely be part of your marketing hub website. Pictures break up the monotony of the text and often can make a point that text cannot. However, you can also use social media image sites like Instagram to bring visitors to your hub site.
Webinars: Webinars can be a great way to get people to visit your website. If you are an expert on something, and you have a couple of hours to spare, consider offering a free webinar that will demonstrate your expertise and make people want to look up your company.
Social Media Posts: It goes without saying that you should have social media accounts and posts that are interconnected with your website. You should have, at minimum, accounts at Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest.
Blog Posts: Blog posts can be part of your website or a subdomain. They can even be posted on an entirely new website if you prefer. Make sure you link the two naturally whenever you can.
Events: Holding events can bring people to your hub site. If you can get your name out there at an event, then you might be able to get visitors to your site from it. Events do take some effort so they are only a small part of the marketing hub network.
EBooks & Guides: EBooks, guides, reports and other such materials can help your credibility in the industry and provide you with a terrific opportunity to link back to your main site. You can either distribute these freely or you can charge money for them and make an extra income.
Landing Pages: Landing pages function as sales funnels; these pages are very useful, especially when you are trying to convince someone to buy.
Microsites & Subdomains: Microsites are small sites that support your larger site. They usually focus on a single keyword or a small group of them. You can also set up subdomains as hub elements. These sites can target traffic more effectively for those keywords than your main site can and you get the bonus that comes from backlinks from a relevant site.
Video Content: Video content can be terrific for getting people to visit your website. YouTube is a very useful tool for this purpose, but you have to know how to create a good video that people are going to want to watch, plus you’ll need to know how to target keywords within YouTube to get it seen by enough people to make it worthwhile.
Email Marketing: Email marketing should be part of your strategy. Not only should you be using email marketing to get people to come to your hub center website, you should also be using your hub and hub elements to collect those email addresses for future marketing.
Press Releases: Press releases may not be the easiest method of getting traffic to your website, but they shouldn’t be abandoned by any means. If you can get a media outlet to run a story about you that gets seen by a lot of people, then you will see traffic from the article or story, and that could mean a pretty significant amount of traffic.
Research: You definitely want to include relevant research whenever possible. It increases your credibility when you are able to cite actually studies that support your claims. Many larger companies even do their own research, although how unbiased that research is, it is impossible to tell.
Forums: Forums can also be a great tool for your hub site. You can put your site link in the forum signature and then build your credibility by answering questions and being useful on the forums in question. There are hundreds of forums for every industry out there.
How to Create Downloadable Products
One of the biggest markets out there today is the digital product market. Digital products can be found in every corner of the internet, and if you are considering getting into the business, you will be joining a very lucrative and exciting industry.
In this chapter, we’ll define exactly what a downloadable – or digital – product is and why you should be using them for your internet marketing efforts.
We will also be looking at some of the ways that digital products are created, along with great advice to help you create some downloadable products of your own. You’ll discover how amazing downloadable products can really be in this chapter.
Defining a Downloadable Product
It seems rather obvious, but the first thing that we must do before moving onto the how’s and why’s is to cover the “what.” What is a downloadable product, sometimes called a digital product?
Well, sometimes the simplest answer really is the best: a downloadable product is something that you can download.
This includes:
· Music
· eBooks
· video content
· basically anything digital that isn’t a physical object that you can hold in your hand.
If it exists only in the digital realm, then you can consider it a digital product.
Typically, a digital product will include several different products in one package, and eBooks are one of the most popular downloadable products out there.
Why Digital Products?
So, why should you get into creating digital products? There are actually a number of reasons why digital products are the way to go when it comes to internet marketing.
Here are a few reasons to consider if you are wondering whether to get into this business or not.
1. Digital products cost nothing to manufacture. Now, keep in mind that the word manufacture here means duplicate. A digital product may cost money to create if you are talking about the original.
But once you have that eBook, podcast or video presentation, you can sell multiple copies at no cost to you. Unlike a company manufacturing toilet seat covers, it costs you nothing to create duplicate products.
2. There is amazing income potential. The income potential from downloadable products is extremely high. There have been people that have become millionaires from doing nothing but selling digital products. There are tens of thousands of internet marketers whose income extends far into the six figure range. It is simply a terrific industry with unlimited income potential.
3. The income is passive rather than active. This means that you don’t have to complete a specific action to earn money, such a freelance writer or graphic artist might have to do. Your income will still come in from digital products whether you are there or not, as long as you have done your marketing correctly.
4. Digital products can help you to establish your expertise. Even if you aren’t selling your own products, the fact that you have been working within a specific niche in the downloadable product industry will give you some credibility with buyers.
5. You have a great deal of control. Since you are creating these digital products yourself, you control what information they contain and what level of quality they are at. You also control things like price.
6. Speaking of price, when you sell your own digital products, you have a great deal of control over the price of the product. Since you essentially pay nothing for duplicate copies, you can lower your prices pretty drastically and still make money.
Type of Digital Products
Next, we’ll go over four different types of downloadable products that are out there and how they can be created and used to give you an internet marketing career.
Creating an eBook
The first type of digital product that we’ll be discussing is the eBook – which stands for electronic book. EBooks are meant to be read on some kind of digital device and they can be converted into many different formats for that purpose.
For example, many eBooks are simply PDF files, which can be read on any computer that has a PDF reader installed on it. Other popular formats include the .mobi for Kindle and .epub, which is used on several different readers.
The beauty of creating an eBook is that it can literally be about anything, as long as there is a need for it. EBooks can be about weight loss, carpentry, aviation or any industry that you can think of. They can even be fiction. They also can be just about any length.
Even a short eBook that is only 10,000 to 20,000 words can be used for internet marketing. You just have to be able to cover the topic and give people the information that they wanted by getting the eBook.
So, how do you create an eBook? Well, they are really easy to write. All you need to do is sit down and gather the information that you need, create a chapter outline, and then write the book.
But not everyone is a writer. Some people don’t even like to compose emails. For those people there is the freelance world.
You can hire someone else to write your eBook for you. There are tens of thousands of writers on the internet from nearly every country in the world.
Prices vary, as does the quality that you’ll get, but you can easily find someone to write your eBook for you.
After that, you just need to convert it into a form that you can use, such as a PDF file or converting it to display on the Kindle, Nook or any mobile device out there.
Creating a Video Presentation
Next, we’re going to discuss creating a video presentation. A video presentation is a video or series of videos that teaches you something. A video presentation can be created by anyone.
All you have to do is have someone to give the information, presumably yourself, and a camera to film with. You don’t need an expensive camera either. Many mobile phones have cameras that are of sufficient quality to create a video presentation if the right background and lighting setup is used.
The question is: how do you create a video presentation that is going to be of use to someone. That’s where many people fail at this particular downloadable product.
They put a great deal into the production value of the video presentation, but fail to research the market carefully and find out if a large enough need exists to be able to justify such a production.
So, you want to begin working on a video presentation with an idea. Suppose that you have an idea for an informational product that you really think people need.
How can you be sure that it is going to be well received? The only sure way to do that is by doing some market research and determining what the market is like for that particular product. Are there other people already offering a similar product?
Are they booming in popularity or barely scraping by? Can you offer something better at a competitive price? These are all factors that you need to take into consideration as you are planning your product.
If you have a solid idea, and you can create a video presentation that you know will be of value to people, then all you have to worry about is how you are going to market it.
Creating a Webinar
Next, we’re going to discuss webinars. Webinar is a pairing of the two words “web” and “seminar” because that’s exactly what a webinar is – a seminar conducted on the web.
Webinars are one of the greatest downloadable products there are because you get your income from two ways: you can charge the people who actually attended your webinar, which pays for all of the time invested and then some, and then you can charge to download the webinar.
If you can market your webinars successfully, you can create a very lucrative business that gets visitors to your site and sells them on the idea of a webinar about a specific topic, and then allows them to download that webinar for a nominal fee.
Every dime you make from that point forward is just extra money, but with the right marketing and a large number of webinars, you can create a business of downloadable webinars that makes more than the money that you get from doing one live.
So, how do you know what to create a webinar on? Pick something that you know a lot about and then do some research to find out how much interest there is around it.
The nice thing about webinars is that you will know how many people are attending before you hold it, and you’ll even have the money from attending before you give the webinar, which is the perfect way to gauge interest.
Creating an Audio Presentation
Sometimes, creating an audio presentation instead of a video presentation is the way to go. This will depend upon the information being passed on. For example, you may want to create a presentation that people can listen to while they are in their car.
This is obviously unrealistic with a video presentation. Another reason that an audio presentation might be preferred is if you don’t like being on camera. You can record your voice instead of a video and many people are much more comfortable with that.
But what kind of information lends itself well to audio presentations? There are actually quite a few – probably more than you think. One audio presentation that tends to work really well is a companion is the eBook that we already discussed.
In fact, most downloadable products come in package that might include eBooks, reports, audio files, video presentations or anything you like. The more items you can add to your presentation, the more value it will have for the buyer.
Another is a podcast, which is simply a presentation much like a talk radio program where you might interview an expert in the industry. There are many uses for audio presentations if you wish to create them or include them with your package.
Choosing Your Method
So, which of these methods do you choose? That’s the tough question for any internet marketer to answer.
In addition, instead of creating your own downloadable product, you have the option to promote something that someone else has created, a practice known as affiliate marketing.
There are some pretty big advantages to creating your own if you can manage it however.
So, if you have decided to create your own, then you need to decide on which method you are going to use. The first question that you should ask yourself is: what are you passionate about?
If you can create a business around something that you are passionate about then the work involved will not seem like work at all. Creating content, videos, audio files or whatever will be fun instead of work.
But you have to determine two things – if you can make a product out of what you are passionate about and if you can make money from it.
If you love the idea of vlogging and have always wanted to be a YouTuber then you might be best suited for video productions. If you are a great writer, you might be better off creating eBooks.
If you love teaching others in a classroom setting, then webinars are definitely the product for you.
Conclusion
We have looked at a lot of different products in this chapter. Hopefully, now you have a better idea of what kind of downloadable products that you can create, and more importantly, what kind you would be good at creating.
No report, book or presentation can tell you whether a specific idea will make money. You’ll have to figure that out with your own research.
But now you have a place to start and a game plan for setting up your own downloadable products.
Setting up A Solid Sales Funnel
In this article, we will be discussing how to set up a sales funnel. A sales funnel is arguably the most important part of any internet marketing effort.
You can do everything else right in your internet marketing efforts and if you don’t create a really great sales funnel that actually works, your entire endeavor could collapse.
In this chapter, we will be covering the entire buying cycle, so that you see what happens to the customer as they go through your funnel, and we will also discuss some of the most common sales funnels out there and how to use them on your own website.
What is a Sales Funnel?
So, you might be wondering just what exactly a sales funnel is. Sales funnels aren’t complicated, but they can be a little confusing to anyone who is new to the internet marketing business.
Basically, a sales funnel is simply the process that someone goes through to buy a product or service from you. The reason that it is called a “funnel” is that everything within the process is geared towards them making a purchase at the end.
The Sales Process
In order to understand the sales funnel, the first thing that you need to understand is the sales process, which is essentially the framework of the funnel. We will go over each step of the process below and explain it in detail.
Awareness
The first step in the process is the awareness phase. Remember, every sale that you make is not only a value proposition – it is also a solution to a problem.
The customer is looking for a solution and you need to be there to provide it. So, the first step in the process is them becoming aware of the solution. You don’t have to worry about the problem; they are already bringing that part with them.
So, suppose someone gets online and opens up their favorite search engine, then types in “sleeping bag for 20 below weather.” They are looking for a sleeping bag that is going to keep them warm.
If you know that they are looking for that sleeping bag, then you can get them to come and check out your site. All you need to do is get their eyeballs to land on your listing in Google and have an HTML title that speaks to them.
In this case it might be something like: Sleeping Bags for Extremely Cold Weather.
Interest
So, now you move onto the next stage in the process. Now, you have their interest. They want to know what you have to say, and find out whether or not you really have the best solution to their problem. But you only have their interest temporarily.
They are not yet invested in your sleeping bag website. They are just a casual visitor. It’s your job to groom that interest and make it grow.
So, for example, if they get to your landing page, and you have a number of sleeping bags with the temperate rating listed on each one, they’re probably going to take a closer look.
But they might also take a closer look if you had an eBook titled: “How to Choose the Perfect Cold Weather Sleeping Bag,” or an article titled: “10 Tricks to Make Cold-Weather Sleeping Bags out of Average Ones.”
Evaluation
Next, they’ll move onto the evaluation phase of the proposition. The evaluation stage is where they compare your product against what they were looking for in the first place, as well as other products.
For example, suppose that you had the aforementioned cold weather sleeping bags listed on your site. A visitor might see them and buy, but they could just as easily think: “What if I can get a lower price somewhere else?”
Now, imagine that you had some way of convincing them that they won’t be able to get a lower price anywhere else. Do you see how drastically that turns the odds to your favor?
Of course, the trick is to actually convince them. Just putting the phrase: “You won’t find a lower price anywhere!” is probably not going to do it. People are savvy when it comes to advertising, so you’ll have to get creative.
Decision
So, the next thing that will happen is your buyer will make a decision. They will decide one simple thing: whether to buy your product or not. If you have done a good job and convinced them that your product will solve their problem, then they are likely going to buy. If not, they will go elsewhere.
Making that decision depends upon what you have presented them with in the evaluation stage. If you have made a good pitch then they will make the buying decision.
But when it comes to a sales funnel, them saying “no” doesn’t have to be final. For example, you could have a pop-up when they close the browser window that offers them a discount.
Purchase
The next step in the buying process is the purchase stage. You need to make it easy for them to buy at this point. They are committed but that doesn’t mean that they can’t back out. For example, think about purchases that you have backed out on.
Just one example: if you purchase something that seems like a really good deal and then find out that the buyer is charging four times what the shipping should be, you’re probably going to back out.
In addition to making it as easy as possible for the buyer to complete the transaction, this would be an excellent time for you to get their email address and permission to send them valuable emails on future products and services.
They are already excited about buying from you, so it’s the best time to ask.
Common Types of Sales Funnels
Next, we’ll go over each of the different types of sales funnels in detail. Every one of these is a little different but each of them can be great if you use them right. You just have to be able to learn the system and which products work for that particular system so that you can use it effectively.
Each of these funnels has a different structure and purpose. You should understand how to set up the funnel by the time you finish each section, what the purpose of that funnel is, and how you use it to sell your own products and services.
The Email Opt-in Funnel
The email opt-in funnel is the simplest of all of the funnels listed here. You just need three things to create this funnel. The first is some kind of landing page that will allow people to submit their email.
Ideally, you just want them to be able to submit their email and be done. If you add other fields to the form, there is a chance that they might change their mind.
You are probably good with one more, as long as it isn’t too personal; the first name might be fine for example. The second thing that you’ll have to create is a thank you page that they will be sent to immediately after they enter their email.
Finally, you are going to need to set up an email responder to get them to verify their email so you know it’s valid.
The Webinar Funnel
The next type of funnel that we’re going to discuss is the webinar funnel. This is where you get people to sign up for a webinar. The webinar can be the product here, because you can charge attendees a fee to be part of the webinar, but the webinar can also be a chance for you to sell the attendees on the product.
In addition, there is a market for the auto-webinar, where they pay a membership fee or a nominal individual download fee for past webinars.
To set up this funnel, you need a webinar registration page and a thank you page immediately afterward. Then, you’ll send a series of 3-5 acclimatization emails to remind them of the upcoming webinar or remind them that you have webinars to download.
Finally, you send them either to the live webinar area, or the auto-webinar area. Afterward, assuming that you have a product, you send them to the order page.
The Product Launch Funnel
Next up, we’ll be discussing the product launch funnel. This type of funnel is pretty simple to set up as well, although some production definitely has to go into it. It consists of several product launch videos, which we’ll get into in a moment.
First, the reason that this funnel is used is when a company is launching something brand new that people can get excited about. For example, suppose that you had discovered the secret to eternal youth and you had an eBook explaining how people could live forever.
You would use this type of funnel to launch that product. That example is unrealistic of course, but you understand the point.
As for how to set this funnel up, you simply need a series of product launch videos as part of a sales page that explains the product thoroughly.
You can do these videos through whiteboard presentations or with you on camera. However you produce the videos are fine, but videos are definitely the best way to launch a product.
The Tripwire Funnel
The tripwire funnel is sort of like fishing. You set up the bait, which is usually something free, and then get them to cross to the “tripwire” page, where there will be an offer for something that they can buy.
It isn’t bait-and-switch exactly, or at least it shouldn’t be, because you do want to give them whatever free thing you promised. It is more like bait-and-offer.
So, what you’ll need for this funnel is a page where they get something for free, probably by entering their email address. Make sure that it is something worth giving up your email address for.
Second, you’ll take them to the page where you’ll offer them something even better that costs money. This is called the tripwire page. From there you want to take them to the offer page.
If they refuse the offer then you can take them to the downsell page, where you lower the price. Finally, you’ll take them to the last-ditch effort – the OTO page, which stands for one-time offer.
The Membership Funnel
The last type of funnel that we’ll be exploring is the membership funnel. This is pretty simple; depending upon what the membership is that you are trying to set up.
For example, if it is a paid membership, then you may have to expand your sales funnel to include offer pages, downsell pages and the like. But if you are simply offering a free membership and plan on selling to them later, then all you need are two pages.
The first is your membership registration page, where they will enter their information and become a member. Obviously, you’ll want to verify their email after that, before you take them to your second page.
The link from their email should take them to the member’s area, where you can deliver whatever benefits you offered to get them to join.
Upselling & Cross-Selling
Another thing that you want to be aware of when it comes to sales funnels is that you want to be making use of upsell pages as well as downsell ones. If someone buys a product, they might be interested in buying a better or more expensive one.
Also, use cross-selling whenever possible by offering related products that they might find useful.
Conclusion
Now that you are more familiar with sales funnels, and you have seen some of the common ones in action, you can build your own funnels to whatever specifications you need.
Sales funnels work, as long as you use them correctly, and the ones listed here can be the basis for your own internet marketing.
Quickest Way to Get Visitors to Your Site
So, you are looking for the question way to get people to come to your website? That’s a tough thing to do and something that everyone who has started a website, blog or even social media accounts, has to worry about.
But there are some terrific methods out there to get people coming to your site quickly. Some of them cost money while others are free. Some of them take a lot of work and some of them take almost none.
All of them should be employed by anyone who has a website and needs traffic right away – at least until you find what works best for you.
Getting Visitors to Your Website Organically
Of course, it would be nice to get visitors to your website organically, but this does take some work. It certainly isn’t something that can be done quickly; the term ‘organic visitors’ simply refers to visitors that get to your site through organic search results.
For example, if your site was ranked on the first page for the keyword “best power tools” then the traffic that you got from visitors who click on your site would be organic.
The problem is: it takes a great deal of time for most websites to reach that front page. Most new sites never reach it at all and instead rely on upon what are called “long-tail keywords” to get traffic to their site.
That means that they might be able to find you if they were to type “best power tools to give Dad as a Christmas present” your site might come up on the front page.
Luckily, you don’t have to rely on organic search to get traffic to your website. There are other techniques that you can use to start getting traffic within as little as a couple of hours.
You still want to work on getting organic search results of course, since this will be your long-term strategy and results in totally free traffic, but you can do other things in the meantime to drive visitors to your site.
Fastest Methods of Getting Visitors
Let’s discuss some of the ways that you can get visitors to your site quickly. We will take each method separately and explain how it works and what strategies can be employed that will get the most traffic and the most returns.
Here are nine of the fastest ways to get people to your site quickly.
There are two aspects to Facebook that you want to be thinking about. The first is the actual Facebook page for your business. You definitely want to maintain one, because when people look up your company, Facebook tends to be one of the top listings in the search engines.
The site has a lot of authority, and in many cases, a company’s Facebook page might outrank their company page, especially when your name isn’t entirely unique.
The second thing to consider is Facebook advertising. Facebook advertising is extremely effective and will get visitors to your site really fast.
You don’t need a Facebook page in order to advertise with the social media giant, but it does help. Facebook advertising is expensive but well worth the money if you know how to use it effectively. Learning how to use Facebook advertising can be a bit of a learning curve, but it is well worth it in the end.
Both of these methods can get visitors to your site quickly, but obviously, advertising with Facebook is going to yield much faster results than setting up a Facebook page, getting people to subscribe to your page updates and funnel them towards your site.
Next, we’ll cover Twitter. You are likely familiar with Twitter already. Most people have a Twitter account that they use for social purposes.
You can also use Twitter to promote your website and get some pretty fast results but you want to be really careful because people that promote commercial products on Twitter without providing value to people soon find themselves without any followers.
But Twitter has its own advertising program as well. The minimum audience requirement is a little bigger with Twitter, but the features are basically the same as Facebook.
You can target potential visitors to your site via Twitter advertising, and you can even choose who specifically you want to target; based upon the demographic you think will be interested.
Twitter is definitely a tool that you could implement to bring visitors to your site, but any social media advertising is going to cost you money. Building a social media following is definitely the least expensive way, but you won’t get visitors very fast.
Other Social Media
Now, let’s look at other social media out there. There are a lot of social media sites and each of them has their own strategies and pitfalls when it comes to advertising and promotion.
But we are going to discuss two sites in particular: Instagram and Pinterest. These are two sites that are particularly well suited for promoting products and services.
Instagram is great, because you can post pictures of what is going on at your company, whether it be an exciting event, a new staff member or a product launch, and people that get interested in your story and the humans behind your logo will check out your pictures and see what is going on. Many of them have the potential to become customers.
As for Pinterest, this site allows you to make list of product pictures and other online assets that people can look through.
Pinterest is all about collections, and if your products are included in a collection, then you get social media promotion at no cost. Plus, both Pinterest and Instagram offer advertising programs.
Google Advertising
Next up, let’s discuss Google advertising. If you have typed something into Google search and seen the results on the sidebar, then you are familiar with Google advertising. Google has several different things going, but the main program is a pay-per-click (PPC) service called Google Adwords.
Basically, the way that Adwords works is that advertisers choose a keyword and the bid to compete for the top spot in the advertising results. Theoretically, if you were willing to spend enough money, your site could be ranked on the first page for something extremely lucrative with high conversion rates like “buy life insurance online.”
Of course, you probably won’t be able to compete with the huge corporations targeting those keywords, but there are millions to choose from, some money-making ones with almost no competition.
So, to use Google Adwords, you simply sign up for an account, then create an HTML title and description and a price you are willing to pay for each click – or visit to your website. It is up to you to convert that traffic once it arrives at your site.
Advertising on Related Websites
Next, we’ll discuss advertising on related websites. Related websites are ones that are in your industry. For example, if you had a website that sold pet products, then you might want to advertise on websites that give pet advice or forums where people discuss their pets.
Just as an example, the Kindle discussion forums offer banner ads for authors who want to advertise their books. These are so effective because nearly all of the people who visit the Kindle boards are readers, and if they think that the book looks good, there is a good chance of them buying it.
You can do the same thing with banner ads, PPC ads or any form you want on a website relating to your products. As a bonus, if you have a link from an related authority site to your own, you’ll get some juice from that backlink and get ranked a little higher.
Press
Another tool that you might be able to make use of to get visitors to your website quickly is the press release. The press release isn’t going to be a viable solution for everyone. In fact, the press release will really only work for certain industries and websites.
Media outlets don’t publish press releases just because they are sent to them. In fact, they throw away nearly all and only use a few newsworthy ones.
What this means is that you need to make sure that if you create a press release and send it out, that you have a newsworthy event that the press is going to want to report on.
It doesn’t have to be a major press outlet; it might even be a small trade publication within your industry. But it does have to be newsworthy. In addition, the press release has to be well crafted so that it will grab the attention of the person screening releases.
Offline Marketing
You can also do offline marketing to promote your site. This is particularly effective if your website caters to people within a specific region. You can do television ads, radio promotions, newspaper advertisements and much more. You can even pass out flyers if you want to save some money. If you want people to start visiting your site, then you should get creative and try to come up with some ways of advertising offline.
Of course, on national television networks you see websites advertised all the time. These are being advertised to millions of people. But network television spots are extremely expensive and not feasible for most internet marketing businesses or websites.
Luckily, there are still plenty of things that you can do both offline and online to get visitors to your site. You’ll just have to think outside the box.
Email marketing is one of the most effective methods of getting people to come to your website. People read their emails even when they don’t check the latest social media posts or visit blogs, YouTube subscriptions or other regular haunts on the web.
People regard their email inbox as a sacred thing and if they allow you to send them emails then you have established a relationship of trust already and they are well on their way to buying something from you.
However, what you do need to keep in mind is that email marketing is only a fast way to get visitors to come to your website if you already have an email marketing list.
Building an email list can take a really long time. If you were to use email marketing as a strategy for quick traffic without an email list, you would be doing twice the work; because if you can get the traffic to sign up for your email list then you could have just funneled them to your site in the first place.
Signatures & Descriptions
Finally, we will discuss signatures and descriptions. First of all, make sure that all of your social media profiles have information about your company in the description.
When you post something funny or useful on social media, people will often look at your description to see who you are. If your company information is there – especially a link to your website – then you will be able to get traffic with those social media profiles.
However, you should also be using forum and email signatures to get traffic. With an email signature, each and every time you send an email to someone you get a free advertisement. With forums, every post you make can have a link to your website and that means that you can generate traffic every day.
Conclusion
So, now you know some of the best ways to get visitors to your website quickly. There is a method for every internet marketer out there, from someone who has money to spend on marketing but no time of their own to those who have some time but a limited budget.
No matter what your website or situation, you should be able to use one of these methods to get traffic to your site fast, and using more than one is definitely recommended.
The Art of Building a List of Buyers
In this chapter, we’ll be delving into the world of email lists. An email list can be one of the most useful things that an internet marketer ever builds because if you build the right list, and have the right products, you can use that list over and over again to make sales.
But most people are a little intimidated by building an email list, both by the technical process of doing so, and by the prospect of asking people to provide their email.
That’s why this chapter is going to explain the entire process from beginning to end so that you can feel more comfortable with it.
What is an Email List?
Let’s start by defining what an email list actually is. An email list is simply a database of email addresses that you build specifically for marketing purposes.
You see, you can’t just send unsolicited emails to anyone. That’s called spam, and not only is it the absolute height of bad business etiquette; it is also illegal in many parts of the world. In order to send someone an email, they must have consented.
So, when you build an email list, you must get consent beforehand so that you won’t get into trouble for sending people emails they didn’t ask for.
Why an Email List Is Important
So, why is an email list so important? There are several reasons, but the primary one is, because they work. If you send someone an email, it has a greater chance of being read than your latest blog posts, social media posts or anything else you might use to communicate with a customer. In fact, it might have a better chance of being read than an actual letter delivered by the postal service these days.
Basically, when someone allows you to put their email address onto your list, there is a great deal of trust there. People regard their emails as sacred.
After all, you can just unfollow someone on social media if you don’t like what they are saying. Emails are different, and you should be aware of that responsibility if you are building a list.
Not only will the email be more apt to be read, those on your list are also more likely to be buyers.
The Basics of Building an Email List
So, how do you go about building an email list? There are several different facets of this tactic that you need to understand before you begin. We will be going over each of them in some detail below.
Your Website
Let’s start with your website. Your website is one of the most important elements of building an email list, although it doesn’t actually have to be fancy.
We’re just talking about the landing page here. When someone gets to your landing page, and you are trying to get an email address from them, you don’t need to bombard them with too much information; in fact, in most cases, the less information the better.
All you really need on a landing page is a form to collect email addresses and a reason for someone to give you theirs. We’ll discuss promotion a little later in the chapter.
The Funnel
Another thing that will make a difference is what kind of funnel you have set up; a ‘sales funnel’ – or in the case of an email an ‘opt-in funnel’ – is a series of pages that are all geared with making sure that the customer accomplished the end goal. In this case, it is all about getting that email address to add to your list.
So, you need to set up a funnel to ensure that they don’t leave without accomplishing that goal. That might require that you send them to a second page to offer them something better if they start to bounce from the page or whatever creative way that you can come up with to get them to give you their email.
Email Verification
An email verification is a big part of the process. You need to ensure that the email addresses that you are getting are valid, but that is only one of the reasons why the verification process exists.
When someone enters their email, you want direct confirmation from their email that they have given you permission to send them marketing emails.
Of course, you certainly don’t want to word your welcome email that way, but you do want to get them to click the verification link before you send them the free eBook or whatever promotion you were offering.
Autoresponders
Autoresponders are the main tool of the email list building toolkit. You want to send an instant response when someone signs up for your email list, and you want to immediately deliver to them that free thing that you offered to get them to sign up.
You also want to be able to send out regular emails on a schedule, and an autoresponder can help with that. Generally, if you sign up for a web hosting package, some kind of autoresponder will be included in your cpanel tools and these can be quite useful.
Email List Services
There are also a number of premium services out there that help you collect email addresses and build a mail list. If you have a WordPress website, there are several plugins that will help with this task.
There is also a very popular email list service called MailChimp that is used by many major companies and lots of successful internet marketers. These email list services often charge a nominal fee, so you will have to decide it if it worth it for the features that you get with the service.
Promoting Your Email List
Next, we’ll discuss promoting your email list. There are several ways that you can get people to give you their email list.
The ones that are listed here are kind of the standards in the industry, but you are more than welcome to come up with some of your own “out-of-the-box” approaches to getting people to sign up.
Social Media Posts
So, the first thing that we’ll discuss is social media posts. Facebook and Twitter can both be great tools when it comes to building an email list. But you have to approach both of these methods in the right way.
For example, you need to have a history of providing valuable or entertaining content to your social media subscribers before you can start asking them for their email. People can smell an account set up solely for marketing a mile away.
You need to make sure that you develop a relationship first, because remember, giving someone your email is only done after some trust has been established.
Giveaways
Next, we’ll discuss giveaways. This is probably the most common way of getting someone to sign up for an email list. There are many different things that you could give away, but whatever it is, you have to market it as something really valuable.
Note: you should also follow through with that value promise or they are going to unsubscribe from your email list in a hurry.
You can give away things like checklists, reports, eBooks, video presentations, audio podcast downloads, memberships to a restricted part of a website or many other things. Whatever you can create that your visitors will want is something you can use to build your email lists.
Business Cards
Don’t forget about the traditional methods when it comes to building your email list. Lots of people still use business cards and if you interact on a person-to-person basis with people often, you may want to put a link on your business card and some kind of offer that will entice them to visit the link.
From there, you can funnel them through to your squeeze page and convince them to give you their email address. If you are solely an internet marketer with very little personal interaction, then this strategy may not work all the time, but you should still consider it at events and the like.
Signatures & Descriptions
Signatures and descriptions are another great method for getting email addresses. The descriptions are usually something like what you would find on a social media site.
Nearly every social media site has a place for your “About Me” description, and most of them allow you to place a link. This link can go directly to an opt-in page that will collect email addresses. You don’t even need to mention the link or description. It should just be there in case someone wants to find out more about you. Forum signatures can also be terrific sources of email addresses.
Whenever you make a forum posts, you forum signature may contain a link to your squeeze page, and so even posts that you made weeks or months ago could bring you traffic.
Blog Posts
We’re also going to discuss blogging because it can be an amazing source of email addresses. This is another area where WordPress can be a huge help.
If you can put an opt-in form on your WordPress sidebar, then every time someone finds one of your blog posts online, through various long-tail keywords, they will have the opportunity to enter their email and get whatever free thing that you are offering them.
Blogging can bring in lots of traffic to your website, convince people that you have expertise in the industry, and then give you the chance to get an email, all with a single blog post.
Events
Events can be a terrific way to network and sign up for things. In fact, if you have a major giveaway at an event, you can just set up a physical entry box that will allow you to collect email addresses.
The main problem with this method is that by the time that you have entered the email addresses into your list software and sent out the welcome email, they might have forgotten that they signed up.
However, you can remind them in the email what the prize was and make it sound as if you are taking them to the next step in the content by confirming their email address.
Contests
The third thing that you can use to get an email list is some kind of contest. This is different than a giveaway.
A giveaway is when you give each person that signs up something for free – like an eBook. In a contest, you usually only have one prize, or perhaps as many as three.
These could be gift cards, they could be electronics, they can be personal mentoring services or whatever the people coming to your squeeze page will find valuable.
You do want to make sure that the prize is something related to your products and services, otherwise, you are going to have a lot of people subscribing to win a free iPad and then unsubscribing as soon as they know that they didn’t’ win.
Direct Mail Marketing
Direct mail marketing isn’t out of the question either. The problem with this method is that it can get costly depending upon how you approach it.
One method to reach potentially hundreds of thousands of homes is to place an advertisement in a big city local newspaper. That way you get sent to all of those houses for a fraction of what it would cost to actually do a direct mail campaign.
Conclusion
The bottom line here is that building a list of buyers isn’t that difficult.
If you can get people that are actually interested in the products and services that you offer, and have a little bit of trust in your brand, it shouldn’t be too difficult to get them to sign up for your email list.
Once they are on it, you can carefully groom them until they are ready to become customers, and the nice things is, those same people may buy over and over again if you provide them with a solution each and every time.
Using Competitors Products to Your Advantage
In this chapter, we’re going to discuss ten ways that you can use competitor products – and your competitors in general – to your advantage.
Every business has competitors, and most people are always working against them, trying to outperform them, even if they don’t have the tools or experience to do so.
But it doesn’t have to be that way. In fact, your competitors can be one of your most valuable resources, as long as you know how to leverage them for your own benefit. These strategies will help you do exactly that and gain an edge over those same competitors as a result.
Who Are Your Competitors?
The first thing that you have to do is identify your competitors. Your competitors are defined as the businesses that are fulfilling the same need that you are. They are the people who can attract your customers because they have a solution to their problem.
Competitors online can range from huge corporations to tiny little e-commerce websites.
In the brick-and-mortar world, only competition that is available to your customers is a threat to you. So, a furniture store in Seattle would not be considered a competitor to a furniture store in Boise, Idaho, unless there was some extremely compelling reason for people to travel to Seattle just to buy furniture.
You’ll have to determine who your competitors are before you start. The way to do this when you are a website is to simply type in search words that you are targeted or ranking for and see what other sites come up. Those are your competitors.
The websites that are above you in the SERPS are going to be your major competitors and those are the ones that you want to be targeting when you implement the techniques in this chapter.
What is Your Market Position?
You have to determine what your market position is if you want to improve. Are you competing with the major brands in your industry? Are you at the very bottom of a huge list of competitors?
This will require some research, but it is something that you have to figure out if you want to compete.
What Products Are Offered by Your Competitors?
Finally, you need to determine what the products actually are that your competition is offering. If you want to use them to your advantage, you must become intimately familiar with what products your customers are buying from those businesses competing with you.
There are some pretty specific things that you’ll want to figure out.
1. What is the entire catalog of products being offered by your competition?
2. How many of those products are you planning to offer?
3. How do your products stack up to theirs? Are your products higher quality? Are your prices lower than theirs? Is there any reason why someone would choose yours over theirs and vice versa?
4. What kinds of customers are buying those products? What are the demographics? What kind of a problem are they trying to solve with the product?
Eight Ways to Use Your Competitors Products to Your Advantage
Now that you know more about the products being offered by your competitors, then it’s time to use them to your advantage. There are eight really good ways to do that here.
Each of them will be described below, followed by an example of how the tip can be used.
ONE: Use Them for Inspiration
This strategy is to use the products that your competitors have as an inspiration for your own. This can work no matter what kind of products you are planning on offering.
If you are writing and marketing an eBook, look at the books that your competition is selling. If you are selling computer parts, look at companies that sell computer parts for inspiration on how they set up their website.
Even if your product is something a lot less tangible – like content that you are using to draw in traffic for advertising, Google Adsense or other monetization – look at what your competitors are doing and become inspired.
EXAMPLE: Bob wants to write an eBook that would be really useful to beginner gardeners. Bob checks out some of the books that he can find online about beginner gardening and notices that they are all too advanced, assuming that the gardener already has the tools and land set up.
Bob decides to write his book for the person who has never even seen a garden before.
TWO: Copy Them
While the last tip only suggests that you get inspired by what competitors are doing, this one actually encourages you to copy them directly. This will not work all of the time, but for certain types of companies, this can be a really great strategy.
If someone is doing everything right and having success in your industry, then you might be able to do exactly what they are doing, employ every technique that they do and have the same success.
Of course, there is also the chance that you won’t, because luck plays a part, but your chances are good of achieving some level of success.
EXAMPLE: Jan wants to start a blog about floral arrangements. She finds a blog that covers this topic and has thousands of visitors every day.
Jan goes through and finds out what topics they have covered, she sets up her website in a similar fashion, and then goes to work trying to duplicate the blog’s success.
THREE: Create Something They Didn’t Think Of
Next, try coming up with some kind of product or service that your competitors didn’t think of. Innovate. Look for things that they missed.
Think way outside the box and you may be able to come up with something that will set you above your competitors in the eyes of the customer.
EXAMPLE: Michael is starting a vape monthly gift box business. Michael checks out his competitor’s products and notices that they are shipped in plain brown boxes. He decides to spend extra money to create custom designed boxes for his products.
Customers love the look of them and everyone who sees them asks what they are for.
FOUR: Use Their Biggest Weaknesses against Them
This next strategy can be extremely effective if you are good at figuring out where your competitors are weak.
Examine their entire sales process, from the way that their products are listed to the customer services after the sale and try to figure out where they are lacking.
Look at the prices that they charge, the shipping carrier that they use, the website layout they have and everything in between.
Make a list of all of the things you find where they could do better and then rank them in importance from most to least important.
Then you can use that list to blow them out of the water by addressing all of those weaknesses in your business.
EXAMPLE: Mark is writing a blog about making your own beer. He checks out his biggest competitor and notices some things that they could definitely improve upon. Mark’s list looks like this:
1. They use automated Amazon modules which don’t always show relevant products.
2. They don’t have any section on their site for someone who wants to brew beer for the first time.
3. They have adsense on their site, but it is advertising beer from major brands like Budweiser.
Mark can use these things when he creates his own blog. These are simple fixes that will mean a lot to readers of the blog.
FIVE: Keep Track of Their Dissatisfied Customers
Another thing that you can do is keep track of dissatisfied customers. You should research the company’s products by looking up online reviews and figure out what people are complaining about.
Find out what the product reviews are like, and even if they are mostly good, look at the bad ones and see what people are complaining about.
EXAMPLE: Jason sells baby cribs on his website. He checks out his competitors and find out that many of the negative reviews that people are leaving on cribs are about the fact that the crib requires an Allen Wrench to put together and they don’t have one.
So, Jason decides that he is going to include the right size Allen Wrench with each crib sold. It costs him an extra $0.80 per crib, but the customers love him for it.
SIX: Partner with Them
If you can’t beat them, join them. That old saying can certainly be applied when it comes to your competitor’s products. But what if instead of trying to compete with someone who is leading the market already, you partnered with them and earned a commission whenever someone bought one of their products through you?
This is a great way to add some extra income and avoid going out of business because you are trying to compete with someone who has a huge SEO team and lots of experience in the field already. Let’s take a look at an example.
EXAMPLE: Trevor has a website that sells fishing rods. But he can’t compete with the site that is always outranking him for the keywords that he is targeting. He also can’t compete with their prices.
So, Trevor decides to try a different tactic. Instead of going head-to-head with them on every page of the SERPS for major keyword terms, and losing what customers he can attract to his site to the lower prices on their site, he joins the other company’s affiliate program and starts sending people over to their site himself – with his affiliate link attached.
SEVEN: Use Competitive Analysis
Using competitive analysis can definitely give you an edge over your competitors. There may be things that the other company is missing, but you won’t be able to figure them out until you do a competitive analysis on each of the products that they are offering.
This allows you to see a clear picture of how you stack up against them and then make decisions that won’t be futile.
In order to figure out how to do a competitive analysis, you may have to use tools like Google’s keyword research tool, analytics and your own charts and graphs.
EXAMPLE: Steve has a website that sells cat toys, beds and other feline supplies. He is trying to compete with the big name pet stores, but they seem to have cornered the market on all of the major keywords.
So, Steve does a competitive analysis of every single product that they offer and stumbles on one or two keywords from each product that they are not targeting.
Steve does some keyword research and learns to his surprise that each of these keywords brings in a few people a month.
So, he overhauls his entire site and targets just those keywords for each product. He re-launches his site and immediately starts seeing traffic.
Targeting those keywords brings him thousands of visitors every month. The competitive analysis was exhausting but well worth it.
EIGHT: Repackage Them
Finally, this strategy involves presenting your competitor’s products in a very different way so that you can differentiate yourself in the market.
You have to be creative when you use this approach because it can be difficult to come up with ideas on some products and services.
But if can come up with something that no customer has ever seen before, you could potentially draw that customer base that was going to your competitors to your site.
EXAMPLE: Amy is an affiliate for a production music company. Film companies, radio stations and voiceover artists buy production music to use in their projects.
But Amy cannot compete with the affiliates who have been promoting this production music for years before she came along.
So, Amy takes a look at the music and selects some of the ones she thinks will work.
She then redesigns her website and starts selling the carefully selected music not as production music but as meditation music.
The Free Method to Finding New Customers
Have you ever wondered if there was some kind of magic formula out there to get customers to your site for no cost? Well, there actually is a tried-and-true method that just about every internet marketer out there uses to reach customers.
This free method isn’t like advertising with Google Adwords, where you pay for each and every click, and it definitely isn’t anything like banner ads where you might pay for a thousand eyeballs and not get a single click from them.
This method is free, effective and takes very little effort to set up. It’s called a lead magnet, and we’re going to discuss it in great detail in this chapter.
Who Are Your Customers?
But before we get into that, you need to figure out a few things about your business. This information is vital to setting up a lead magnet that is going to work.
If you are new to business – or new to internet marketing in general – you may not have figured this out yet. That’s perfectly understandable, but you do need to have some idea of who your customers are before you can use this method.
A good way of figuring that out if you haven’t been able to do your own research is to look at your competitors and try to figure out the basic makeup of their customer base.
What do Those Customers Need?
The second question that you have to answer is what needs your customers need fulfilled. It starts with understanding who they are and why they would be coming to your site in the first place.
For example, suppose that you knew that your customer base was mostly men, anywhere from 24-60, usually married with children. Now, suppose that you knew one of the things that they were looking for: a toolbox.
You might be able to discern from this information that your customers might want a toolbox that is sturdy and safe, will hold all of their tools, and will lock so that their children won’t be able to pull their tools out.
How Can You Meet Those Needs?
The third question that you have to answer before we get into the lead magnets themselves is how you can meet those customers’ needs. Do you have the products or services that they are looking for or can you get them?
You need to make sure that you can actually solve the problem that the customer is presenting; otherwise, your lead magnets are essentially worthless. So, in the case of the previous example, you should have a selection of toolboxes for the customer to choose from.
This would be perfect for an Amazon affiliate website. You could also offer a free guide to choosing the perfect toolbox in exchange for their email address. The list of possibilities is very long.
The Free Method: Lead Magnets
So, let’s get into the real meat of this chapter – the free method of getting customers to come to your website and buy something from you. The term here is “lead magnet” and it essentially means bait.
When you are in the internet marketing business, you often have to offer something to people to get them to come and check you out.
That doesn’t mean that you don’t have what they are looking for – in fact, you must have what they are looking for if you want them to buy – it just means that you have to work a little harder to get them to take a look at what you have to offer.
So, most internet marketers do this with lead magnets. These are incentives to get a customer to come and check out your company. Usually, these incentives are offered in exchange for something innocuous to the customer, but invaluable to the marketer: an email address for example.
The email address is such an important marketing tool because email subscribers are much more likely to be buyers and the lines of communication are clearer with email marketing. Using a lead magnet may not separate you from the competition, but it does help you compete with them.
Types of Lead Magnets
There are lots of different lead magnets that you could offer someone. What you offer can be anything from the list below, or anything that you can dream up, but it does have to fulfill a couple of requirements: first, it has to be something that you can afford to give away.
For example, if you promised everyone who visited your website a free sports car, you would be crazy. You would get a stampede of traffic and then a rush of disappointed people to the door.
So, your lead magnet has to be something you can fulfill. You can see some examples below. The second requirement for a lead magnet is that it has to be something more valuable than what the person is giving up.
So, if you were collecting email addresses, then you need to offer something that will make the person feel like risking spam is worth the prize. Of course, you should also do everything you can to convince them that they won’t receive spam as well.
Let’s take a look at some of the most common types of lead magnets out there and how you can use them to get people to visit your site, give you their email or buy your products.
Webinars
Webinars are seminars that are conducted over the web, usually through a specific application that is designed for that purpose. You can have hundreds or thousands of people attending a webinar, and access to tools like slides, whiteboards, audio, video and much more.
Webinars are great because when someone wants to learn something, and an expert in the field is offering to teach it to them, there is a great deal of perceived value. Many people make a good living from doing webinars alone.
But if you want to attract new buyers, offering a free webinar that demonstrates your expertise and allows you to build a relationship with a group of people is a really great idea.
EBooks
EBooks are definitely the most common type of lead magnet out there. A book has value. If you go to Barnes & Noble, you will find lots of books that teach you something priced at anywhere from $5 to $50.
People know that books have value, and even if you are offering a digital version, they still see it as having that value.
Of course, you must first convince them that the eBook was written by someone with expertise (either you or someone else), or else that value will drop.
Offering a free eBook is a great way to people to opt-in or visit your website.
Reports
Reports are short little presentations that cover a niche subject. They can be brief or very thorough, but they should always strive to answer the question that the customer has presented.
So, suppose that someone is looking for herbal remedies to treat eczema. A report with a title like “Do Herbal Remedies Actually Work for Eczema” or “25 Effective Herbal Treatments for Eczema” might be worth something to them, especially if they are skeptical about whether or not herbal remedies work.
The great thing about a report is, once you have given them the eBook and convinced them of a certain herbal remedy; you can easily sell them on that remedy.
Infographics
Infographics don’t have nearly the value that an eBook or a report does, because they are available all over the internet for free.
However, they can still be useful as a lead magnet, because you can use them to get people to click on a link. Suppose that you want to convince someone to buy your brand of copier toner.
Getting them to click on a link that promises to demonstrate with an infographic how to buy the best toner can result in a sale. The infographic is both a sales tool and a way to get them to come to your website.
Checklists
Checklists are another tool that can be very useful if used correctly. You have to know how to market them though. For example, suppose that you wanted to know how to get rid of acne forever.
Now, imagine that someone offered you a 10-step checklist called “10 Steps to Getting Rid of Acne Forever.” Would you take a chance on it? Considering that its free, and all you had to do was visit the website offering it, you might very well do so.
Contests
Contests are another great method for getting people to come to your website, visit your social media profile, share your content or simply turn over their email address.
Contests usually involve some kind of major prize that a random person who enters will receive. For example, suppose that you came across a legitimate contest for a $5000 Amazon gift card. All you had to do was provide your email address.
You would definitely do so, right? Even though the chances of actually winning the gift card are slim, they aren’t impossible, and $5000 is a whole lot of clothing, electronics and books.
Video & Audio Presentations
Audio and video presentations can also be amazing tools to attract customers. They can be used in so many different ways that it sort of staggers the mind. Here is just one example of an effective way to use a video presentation as a lead magnet.
Suppose that you are a budding filmmaker, and you come across a free video series that teaches you something specific within the field – such as pulling focus or camera placement techniques.
As you watch the video, you begin to get more and more interested in the camera that the instructor is using, particularly since they continue praising it at every turn. At the end, you are given the opportunity to buy that camera at a discount.
Can you imagine taking that opportunity?
Video and audio presentations take longer to set up, and can be more expensive to create, but they can be some of the most effective tools you have ever used.
Memberships
What about memberships? Have you ever considered offering someone a membership in exchange for them visiting your site or giving up their email address?
The main thing that you have to keep in mind with this type of lead magnet is that you have to have something worth having a membership for. Just offering a membership to another part of your site where they can read more content and more sales pitches isn’t going to work.
They need to be getting something pretty substantial out of the membership or they aren’t going to trade their time, money or email address for it.
Discounts
Finally, the last lead magnet that we’re going to cover is the discount. This is used very effectively by many companies out there.
For example, if you promised someone who orders pizza a great deal discount codes for major pizza chains, they would probably give you their email address.
Just offering a discount on a product that you are trying to sell them isn’t going to do the trick. The discount has to be for something that they are definitely going to buy.
The only way that it might work for your own product is the sales technique where you discount something like 90% off for a “very limited time.” This is known as the OTO or “one-time offer.”
Conclusion
So, we have explored many of the lead magnets that you can use as an internet marketer, as well as what you need to do to prepare to use them.
Lead magnets can be amazing tools if they are used right, and you should carefully think about which to use for each and every product that you are presenting.
Many people use them poorly, and as a result, they get almost no visitors or opt-ins because of it. It just takes research and knowing what your customer wants.
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