Copywriting + Traffic = Successful Online Business

Thou shall have an automatic follow-up system in place

Last time we discovered the importance of an automated lead generation system. Now I’m going to reveal what to do with all those leads you’ll be generating.

You may not realize this, but, depending on your market, you may have to have 7 to 14 contacts with a prospect before they become a client. It’s been estimated by Jay Conrad Levinson that as much as68% of sales are lost because of poor follow-up methods.

It’s insane. And it will stop you from being a success online. Dead in your tracks.

==================
But here’s the good news:
==================

If you’ve been struggling with getting clients, putting an automated follow-up system in place can give you (up to) a 68% boost in sales!

Here’s how to put one in place:

1. Get an autoresponder service. I’ve had good luck with both Aweber and 1ShoppingCart
2. Create minimum of 7 follow-up emails enticing them to come to your sales page.
3. Load them into your autoresponder, so that when  the opt in, one goes out per day until your sequence is exhausted

Also, if you are having any kind of special, consider a “blast” to your entire list.

You should be sending out a blast to your entire list of content with a link to your product at minimum once a week – possibly twice a week.  Email guru Matt Furey, perhaps the best in the business, recommends daily emails. When I was one of Perry Marshall’s email copywriters for his Autoresponder seminar, he recommended segmenting your list by how often your readers open your emails.  There is software that does this automatically – Lyris email will do this, as well as Infusionsoft, but both are VERY expensive.

I started with 1ShoppingCart, because I could start small, and they grew with me.

But the important thing is to get started, and get this in place. Without a proper follow-up system, you’re only offering your prospects one shot at your product or service.

And leaving 68% of your money on the table for someone else to grab.

-Kevin Dawson, Copywriter

Yesterday, I wrote of how a major marketing guru was only offering a 3 day guarantee on his video skinning product.  And how I was of the opinion it showed he didn’t trust his own customers, given the response to my email.

Look, the bottom line on guarantees is something we call “risk reversal.”  We reverse the risk from the buyer to the seller.  If you take away all risk from your buyer, by offering an unconditional money-back guarantee, you are making a strong statement:

1. You unconditionally believe in your product
2. You believe it is the best product FOR THEM
3. You stand behind it
4. It is not a scam
5. You are trusting your customer to “do the right thing” by not asking for a refund, even if they use it and duplicate it, then return it, etc., and therefore, you give him or her a subtle compliment, believing they are worthy of such reliance and confidence

And here’s the most important item – you will sell one heckuva lot more of  your product with a solid guarantee.  More than enough to make up for the few that do try to game the system.

Look, contrary to popular belief, there are not herds of serial returners out there, lurking under bridges, ready to reach out and snatch your product and return it the next day.  The overwhelming majority of prospects reading your sales page want your product, and want to make money with it.

Yep, there are a few that are downright dishonest, but they are far fewer in number than you may think.

Let me offer you a small challenge…

Take one of your lesser products, some front-end giveaway, and charge $17 for it in a Google AdWords campaign.

Do the first 400 clicks with no guarantee.  Count your total take.

Do the next 400 clicks with a 30 day unconditional guarantee.  Again, count your total take.

Next, do the same for a 90 day, 6 month, and one year.

95% of the readers of this blog will actually make more money total, despite returns, with longer guarantees.

Now, if that seems counter-intuitive, check your premises. This is a mind-set exercise.  Are you suspicious of your market?  Do you see them as some sort of a threat?  Do you feel when you sell to them you must sneak it under their radar, or use other borderline devious means to persuade them?

If you have such a negative mindset, it likely comes across somehow, somewhere in your marketing.  Whether in your ad copy, your offer, your customer service (as I sensed it in my episode), or even in guarantee.

This is a people business.  So, if you don’t feel good about people in general, you need to work on that attitude if for no other reason than to increase your own success.

Yesterday I talked about a marketer who had everyone and their brother mailing for him on a launch – and he offered a 3 day guarantee on his product.  No, that’s not a typo – he only wanted to give a three day guarantee.

I got an email from him asking why I abandoned the shopping cart after giving my email address.  It’s because I couldn’t find a guarantee.  In fact, it wasn’t until he sent out his email that I was aware he had one.

Well, for some reason, I decided to give the guy a tip. It invited me to write tech support if I had any questions, etc.

I told them there were many reasons I might need more than 3 days to evaluate it.

Can you think of any reasons your customers might need more than 3 days for a guarantee?

1. I need to check it out to see if it’s right for me, and I may not be able to dive in head first, giving the next 3 days of my life total focus on this one item.
2. What if something doesn’t work right on my computer, and I need to go back-and-forth with technical support for a week – I loose my guarantee?  No promises in their response.
3. I may not be able to determine if I can get a strong response with this video/affiliate program in just 3 days.  I’ll bet it’ll take the better part of at least one day to get it launched.  And I’m going to be able to make an accurate evaluation in just 2 days after?  I’ll tell you this – if you can sell a product that will have people raking in a strong income stream in two days, you’ll own the Internet – and probably the Eastern Seaboard, too.

But here’s what really bothered me…

The answer I got back was something to the effect of that they didn’t want people using the software, then asking for a refund.  That shows what they think of their customers.

I’ll tell you this much – I’m very honest with my clients.  I expect them to be just as honest with me.  I genuinely like the people I deal with, or I won’t deal with them.

Now, if I’m selling a product, and I expect upfront that clients in this market may be cheaters by nature, I’m not going to sell in that market.  I don’t swim in shark-infested waters, nor do I have anything to prove by being more vicious than the other sharks.

So here’s my question to the marketer – and neither of the two answers are flattering…

“If you don’t trust the people you are doing business with, either you are a small and insecure  person with a suspicious mind, or – if you are right, and the people you do business with are NOT trustworthy – then why in god’s creation are you doing business with them, dummy?”

My suspicion is he wants to market to people he doesn’t like,  respect, or trust.   But ohhh, he’ll sure take their money, won’t he?

(Conclusion to this tomorrow)

This drives me crazy. Absolutely nuts. A guy who claims he’s worth millions, and he makes a rookie mistake.

Here’s what this is about:

I got pelted by affiliate emails about this supposed great “video skinning” system from this great guy that will build me incredible wealth, etc. etc.

Since I know and trust a couple of the gurus affiliated with it, I figured, what the heck, let’s check it out.

Well, I got to the landing page, and recognized the marketer. But – his pitch was horrid.

Let me put it this way – if it was scripted, he should fire his copywriter, right after he beats him. On the other hand, if the marketer did it spontaneously, off the cuff, with a few sprinkled in power words, he needs to tape his own mouth shut, for fear of an over-running mouth.

What, 20 minutes to explain a simple system isn’t enough? People, if you’re talking for 20 minutes and barely saying anything, you need to either drastically cut back to the bare bones in your pitch…

…or find a different line of work. Still, these were not the most egregious sins committed by this expert…

The worse part was his guarantee. I searched his site in vain for it, re-watching the final 10 minutes or so of his (yawn!) video, hoping to discover it.

Look, at $500 or so, it’s not going to kill anyone (even thought it was startlingly similar to Anik Singal’s method he gave away for free.) Facts are, I want to know if I can get my cash back if it’s a dud.

I even went to the “step one of three” ordering page to find it.

Nothing.

Well, fast forward to two days later. This guy was professional enough to follow up with cart abandonment. Meaning, on the first ordering page, the “step one of three,” he had captured my email address in a form.

Okay, this is good, I thought. He’s got it together enough to go after the sale a second time (the principle of autoresponders, by the way, is that it takes 7 – 14 contacts for most buyers to buy).

Anyways, the email said that I should consider ordering, that he’d give me a 72 hour or 3-Day guarantee.

Wha- are you kidding me? You don’t believe in your product enough to give it any more than a 72 hour guarantee?

There’s tons of reasons people may need more than 3 days to evaluate your product.

(Continued Tomorrow)

Thou shalt have an automatic lead generation system in place

This is real simple.

In order to get customers, paying customers, they start out as leads. Once they’ve had some contact with you, they become prospects. When they buy, they become customers.

Or clients, if you want to be more upscale about it. (Works for me.)

Again, it starts with leads. You must have a way of generating leads. And, of course, today’s most used lead generation system is the name-squeeze page, where you capture their contact information.

Why? So you can follow up, and convert them into customers. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Okay, Time Out

I assume you know the heart of making money online is in your email list… more specifically, the relationship you build with your list. But for now, I want you to realize that the time-honored way to make money online is through the building of an email list and marketing to them.

We Now Resume Our Regularly Scheduled Commandment

A name-squeeze page is a page where your lead lands. You can drive them there with Google AdWords, links from other sites, banner ads, or wearing a clown suit on a street-corner, jumping up and down, holding a sign with your web address. (Don’t laugh. I’ve seen a company in my town do it for months – it must work for them.)

So when they land on this page, there’s something you offer to give away free – a special report, a white paper, a sample of your product, etc. But there’s a catch – they must fill in the email address so you can send it to them.

And that is how you start building your email list. Create something of perceived value your target market wants, give it to them free, and collect their name and email address.

Once you have their name and email address, they now become a “prospect.” They’ve shown some interest in you and something you have to offer.  Now, you must follow up with them to convert the prospects into customers.

More on that tomorrow.

But remember, back at the beginning, I talked about an “automatic” lead generation system. What’s this auto stuff?

Well, now we’re getting into something a little more meaty. It’s called an “auto-responder.”

What happens is that you sign up for something called an “autoresponder,” which manages and automates nearly all of your email marketing. Yeah, you still have to write the emails, but you don’t have to do much more.

The “auto” part of the “auto-responder” means it automatically generates a form for you to capture email addresses on your website. It asks you a few questions, and *poof* – and HTML coded form pops out the other side, ready for you to paste onto your landing page.

If you are not comfortable with HTML coding, you can go to rent-a-coder, and get someone real quick and real cheap. Or contact me, and I can get someone to set it up for about $50 or so.

Anyway, the lead enters their name on your form, presses the button, and your auto-responder takes over from there. It stuffs their contact info into a database, and follows up with a series of emails you’ve pre-written.

What? You haven’t got a few follow-up emails pre-written? I’ll bet you will after tomorrow’s post.

- Kevin Dawson, Copywriter

Commandment #1: Thou Shalt Know Thy Customer if Thou Desires to Make Money

Guess what – it’s all about them.  The customer. Here’s a simple truth, one that’ s hard to accept. But if you don’t, you’re doomed:

Your prospect doesn’t give a damn about you. You are an intrusion on their life. They don’t want one more advertiser screaming at them to buy something from them, and they’re looking for an excuse – any excuse – to click off your page.

This is what you must accept, and overcome, to be successful.

How do you do that? Simple. By understanding your customer, what they want, and giving it to them.

Sure, it may be tempting to wander into image building techniques, and bragging about one’s business to make one’s self feel good, but remember –  it’s not about you.

Unless you are GM or GE, image does not get you paid. And that’s what Direct Marketing is about – getting paid, and proving the best strategies to do it.

To use your business name as a headline is a common mistake for a business not familiar with direct marketing. To say all your accomplishments, impress people with your size and ability, and to generally show how much better you are than the other guy might get you a few sales…

…but not very many.

It’s understanding what your customer’s needs are, and providing it to them in a way that captures them. And makes you the only choice.

To understand them, you have to be able to put yourself into their shoes, to role-play, to feel what it would be like to be them.

Once you start looking at your business through the eyes of someone who doesn’t know who you are, doesn’t particularly care who you are, just has a need they want filled… then you’ve taken a huge step past most of your competition, and made a tremendous stride towards becoming the “choice of one.”

Dominating your marketplace. Being the last one standing.

- Kevin Dawson, Copywriter

Today’s online business needs to be more than the efforts of a single person to succeed UNLESS you know how to automate or outsource.

Chances are, you’ll do a combination of both.

There’s just no way you can master the most important skill – copywriting – and also be a master designer, php coder, video producer, and article submitter, all at the same time.

There’s only 24 hours in a day.

Besides, it wouldn’t pay. Make your cash doing what you do best. If you have to spend hours struggling with a new skill, chances are the result will come out with the quality of something someone struggled with.

In the amount of time it takes me to write an email, I can make enough money to hire someone to configure a membership site, or design a web page, or even set up a WordPress blog for me.

It just doesn’t make sense for me to do all these other things.

Automation is the second piece here – and when you’re first starting out, it’s probably the most important.

In the next few articles, I’ll unveil the Ten Commandments of Direct Marketing. In doing so, I’ll be giving you a baseline knowledge of getting a successful Internet business off the ground.

But there’s something you must be prepared to do.

You must get and learn how to use an auto-responder, such as Awebber or 1ShoppingCart. Hey, FTC – those are affiliate links, and I get a consideration for them. But there are other auto-responders out there that are good. I just think these two are the best – otherwise, I’d affiliate with those others.

Regardless, you have to know your auto-responder good enough to make it generate an email capture form for your website (which is pretty easy), how to load in follow-up emails to be automatically sent out (even easier), and how to broadcast an email to your entire list (easiest yet).

You must also learn a shopping cart system, such as PayPal. Now by “learn” PayPal, I mean you must learn how to set up payment buttons. That’s about it for starters.

You get both these systems in place, and you have nearly everything you need for an automated web business. Whip up a product, write some fancy ad copy, drive traffic, and you’re making money!

-Kevin Dawson