Nobody Cares About You

Sorry to tell you the bad news, but nobody cares about you or your products. All they care about is what your product can do for them. Yet the vast majority of sales executives still sell by pushing the benefits of whatever shiny object they are promoting.

More successful sales people understand that they can move the sale forward by focusing on the benefits. This is certainly a big step in the right direction, but it still leaves you a long way to go. For example, there is an old saying in marketing that ‘people don’t want drills, they want holes.’

Yes, this is better. If you are selling drills, then people don’t really care if they are tungsten-tipped or even nuclear powered. They want to know if your drill will produce the benefit they want - a nice, neat hole in the right place.

But hold on a second. Is a hole really what you want? Do you lie awake at night wishing you had more holes in your walls? When you buy a shiny, new drill, do you go around your home randomly drilling holes for decorative purposes?

Probably not. 

Focus on the Outcome

But there may well be other issues keeping you awake at night. You may lie in bed thinking:

“The living room is so disorganized, with boxes of stuff all over the floor. It looks a mess, and we have the family coming to stay next week. I wish we had more shelves so we could tidy the place up, and keep everything neat and organized.”

Boom! There you go. You are thinking about the OUTCOME you want. The FEATURES of the electric drill are just what you need to get the BENEFIT of holes in your wall, which you can use to put up shelves. You can then enjoy the OUTCOME of a neat, organized home and FEEL PROUD when your relatives praise you about how great the room looks. 

This is where the disconnect in sales occurs. A salesman in your local Home Depot will be happy to show you the features of the product, and may possibly even mention the simple benefits that the product can deliver.

But when have you ever heard a Home Depot employee talk about the pride you will feel when the job is done? Probably never.

This is because you are expected to connect all the dots yourself. You have to think through a long mental sequence that starts with the features, progresses through the benefits to get to the outcome - and then finally think about the happy emotional state you will enjoy as a result.

That’s a long journey, and most people don’t make it to the end. As a result, they lose interest in purchasing and the deal is never done. But just imagine what would happen if the salesman actually created this ‘mind movie’ for the prospect…

“So the ‘triple-wind’ feature ensures you get a perfectly round hole every time, exactly where you want it. No more messed holes that ruin your project. That makes putting up shelves really easy, so you could have the job finished this afternoon. Then when your Mom and Dad come round tomorrow, they’re going to love how neat and tidy the room looks. They’ll be so proud of you!”

Sold! 

Selling doesn’t have to be difficult, and it doesn’t have to be manipulative. You just need to understand the right system to follow to get the best outcome for you and the prospect. 

What You Will Learn

Bigger Opportunities in a Bigger Market

Things have changed a lot in the world of search engine optimization (SEO). Back in the day, you could slap up a few spun pages of content linking to an offer, fire up your favorite black-hat link-building tool and blast your way to six-figure income.

Not anymore. Google has gotten a whole lot smarter, and such tactics are likely to result in your site being attacked by the Google ‘Zoo’ – Penguins, Pandas and maybe even Possums. These algorithmic updates are designed to weed out the junk, and they are getting better and better at doing it. Low-quality sites are getting down-ranked, penalized and even banned (quite right, too!).

Consequently, many people who relied on their search engine optimization skills to make a living have run for the hills. They have abandoned SEO in favor of the latest shiny object in the online marketing world.

There’s nothing wrong with trying new strategies, of course. But I think writing off SEO is a big mistake. Only search marketing can deliver thousands of hungry prospects who are not only interested in what you have to offer, they are actively searching for it!

Secondly, SEO is far from dead. But it has been re-incarnated. From the ashes of black-hat SEO, a new Phoenix has arisen – an era where ethical marketers can not only survive, but thrive and prosper.

For Ecommerce store owners who do things the right way, this is the best time ever to invest in SEO. Here are 10 very good reasons why you should be making search engine optimization a priority:

#1. Online Sales are Growing Fast

The shift towards buying products and services online is continuing at a frenetic pace. Year on growth is running at over 23 per cent. Ecommerce sales will top $6 trillion in the near future...that’s a huge opportunity!

With such a massive online market, there are unlimited opportunities for marketers. There are more niches than ever to take advantage of with professional search engine optimization.

#2. Search Queries are Growing Even Faster

There seems to be no stopping the continued growth in search. Google now handles over two trillion searches a year, which works out a whopping 63,000 searches per second.

Most of this growth is fueled by rapid growth in the number of mobile searches. This trend shows no sign of stopping anytime soon. In the years ahead, the number of mobile searches will just continue to accelerate.

So a much bigger market…and far more searches than ever – what more could you want?

#3. Greatly-Increased Opportunities to Rank

A decade or so ago, the way people searched was pretty simple. They would typically enter a broad two-word or three-word keyphrase, such as: "bluetooth speaker"

In recent years, though, the way people search has become a lot more complex. We are much more likely to construct detailed queries to find the exact information we need, such as:

‘Where can I find an affordable bluetooth speaker that will connect with my iPhone automatically?’

This has resulted in exponential growth in the number of terms a website can rank for, and SEO has changed accordingly. The old-school SEO method of trying to rank for a keyword that gets lots of searches is increasingly irrelevant.

Nowadays, it is much more important to build an authority site with great content. People will want to link to this quality content, and then the site will naturally rank for a whole host of different keywords.

As a result, there has never been a better time to build a website that attracts more and more search traffic over time.

#4. Advanced SEO Research Tools

The old era of spammy SEO has long passed, and the world is a better place as a result. Webmasters today are lucky to be overwhelmed with an amazing choice of products and services designed to make SEO more productive and efficient.

The SEO tools that we have at our disposal today are simply awesome. Just to make it clear though, I’m not talking about black-hat link-building tools. I am referring to the amazing research and analysis tools we can use to get ahead in SEO.

These tools give us amazing insights into a whole host of search engine optimization topics, including:

#5. Less Spam in the Search Results

When Google first released its Penguin update in 2012, the impact was like the Black Death sweeping across Europe in the Middle Ages. Many thousands of websites were struck down, and webmasters everywhere trembled in terror, awaiting the day when their business would be destroyed, too. The big cleansing was underway.

The end result of this is that the search engine results are now cleaner than ever. Google is very good at working what is useful content, and what is spam. That’s bad news if you are a black-hat spammer…but it’s good news if you create a genuinely useful website.

Now you can rank for keyphrases that are important to you, without facing stiff competition from those who spam their way into the rankings. This is the best time ever to rank real websites with genuine content.

#6. Multiple Ways to Rank

In the early days of Google, the search results pages where somewhat dull. There was nothing on the page expect 10 organic results, shown in plain text.

Now we live in the era of blended search, and that means there are multiple ways we can get our content into Google. Video is huge, and YouTube videos typically rank well. But there are also opportunities to rank using maps, images, news items and tweets.

With more ways to rank, we have more chances to succeed. And that has to be a good thing, right?

#7. Social Media Promotion

Creating great content isn’t enough. Somehow, you have to get the word out so that other people start linking to it. And social media offers a great way to do that.

We take Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter for granted now, but they weren’t around in the early days of SEO. It was much harder to promote content, and to get the initial links needed to get content ranking.

Now we can promote new blog posts and other content very easily through social media platforms. One tweet, one pin or one Facebook share might be all it takes to get the ball rolling.

#8. More Conversions than Ever

The website technology we have access to nowadays is impressive indeed. Even without any technical knowledge, we can create beautiful websites that are optimized for maximum conversions.

We can build high-value products such as training courses and membership sites, and sell these more easily than ever. We have new and better ways to build mailing lists and stay in touch with subscribers.

All of this means more revenue from every click obtained from search. So there is more reason than ever to maximize those clicks.

#9. Win Back Lost Prospects through Re-targeting

Back in the day, there was no way to win back website visitors who had left without subscribing to our mailing list. Thanks to re-targeting, all that has changed.

Now we can use Facebook and Google re-targeting to advertise to those lost prospects as they surf the web. Research has shown this to be a highly-effective way of winning people back, and that customers won this way can be very profitable.

#10. A Huge Return on Investment

So when you put it all together, what does this mean? Quite simply, it means a huge return on investment.

Search engine optimization has always been a strategy that delivers high return on investment. Now that return is higher than ever.

So don’t give up on search. Instead, get good at it – very good.

Then you will be able to tap into an unlimited stream of prospects for many years to come, and turn your Ecommerce store into a profit machine.

The Importance of CTR

When running Google Ads campaigns, you need to pay a lot of attention to Quality Score, which plays a major role in determining:

What You Will Learn

The Google Ads Dilemma

Most business owners have something of a love/hate relationship with Google Ads. They can’t live without Google...but it can be pretty tough living with Google, too!

On the one hand, it’s great to know you can launch an ad campaign and start getting calls within the hour. And if you want more business, you can scale up any time you want. What other marketing opportunity delivers customers so reliably, week after week?

In fact, let’s be honest - there isn’t really an alternative marketing strategy. Nobody uses Yellow Pages anymore. When potential customers needs help, they typically turn to Google for answers.

And now Google is showing four ads above the organic search results, plus another ad in the local pack. So that means there are usually no less than five ads at the top of the results.

Even if you are #1 in the organic search results (and that’s tough), you are still #6 on the page. And on mobile devices, that probably means you are on page two! Ads now totally dominate Google, and they get the lion’s share of the clicks.

So if you want to generate new business from people who are actively searching, you don’t have a lot of choice. You have to be running Google Ads. And as you are no doubt aware, that can be an expensive proposition.

And there's more. For many searches, local service ads (Google Guaranteed) are taking up even more real estate at the top of the page:

Around the world, millions of business owners wince every month when Google dings their credit cards for thousands - or tens of thousands - of dollars. It’s now perfectly normal for even small businesses to spend over $100,000 a year on Google Ads campaigns.

Ouch!

If you are feeling that kind of pain, don’t panic...there are solutions. Let’s look at ways you can get your budget under control and get more bang for your buck...

Halve Your Spend, Double Your Leads

Having studied the Google Ads campaigns of hundreds of businesses in depth, I can tell you one thing for sure:

99% of all Google Ads campaigns are poorly-optimized.

If your business falls into the 99%, then here is the bad news. You are:

So that’s the bad news. But here is the good news - with a bit of work, you can turn all this around and:

The Importance of Quality Score

Whenever you run Google Ads, you need to pay particular attention to the quality score of your campaigns. Google assigns these at a keyword level, they make a huge difference to the cost of your campaign.

Quality scores can be anywhere from 1 to 10, with 1 being the lowest and 10 the highest. A high quality score means that Google finds your sales funnel (ad and landing page) to be a good match for the keyword in question. That is, people who click on your ad are highly likely to be satisfied with the webpage they are taking to.

Google rewards high quality scores by discounting the cost of clicks according. But it also punishes low quality scores by increasing the cost. By increasing your quality score from a mediocre 5 to an excellent 10, you will have the cost you pay for each click.

That’s right - Google gives you a 50% discount for being a good advertiser.

Let’s imagine a more extreme case, where you take your quality score from 1 to 10 (we have actually done this for clients). In that case, you will now be getting clicks no less than eight times cheaper.

So if you were previously paying $8 per click, your cost will now plummet to just $1 per click. That means you can generate eight times as many business leads for the same money!

Saving money is not the only benefit of a high quality score. Your ads also get shown a lot more often, and in a higher position on the page. On mobile devices, an increase of just 1 in your quality leads to you getting 12% more exposure to potential customers.

Because of this, it is critically important that you work on improving your quality score across all your keywords. You should also work on other making your campaigns more efficient in other ways.

Here are 10 ways you can take action to halve your click costs and double your leads...fast:

1. Improve Click-Through Rate

We’ll start with click-through rate (CTR) because this is the factor that has the most impact. Remember that Google doesn’t make any money until someone clicks on an ad. So there is a strong incentive to reward you for ads that get clicked a lot.

Your CTR can account for up to 60% of your quality score, so it is the factor that deserves the most attention. You need to create ads with compelling headlines, informative body copy and a strong call to action.

Improving your CTR across all your ads should be an ongoing process. There is always room for improvement! The effects can be a dramatic. Simply changing one word in your headline can result in a big increase in CTR, and therefore a significant reduction in your cost per click.

2. Enhance Ad Relevance

Ad relevance is the second major factor affecting quality score. This is good news, because it’s something that can easily be improved.

Your ads should be as relevant as possible to the searchers’ queries, and provide all the information they need to make the decision to click. Your keyword should certainly be included in your copy, and it may be a good idea to use dynamic keyword insertion.

Stay focused on what is important to the searcher. Consider what the intent of the searcher is. Are they ready to buy, or still at the research and consideration stage? Your ad copy and call to action should reflect where they are in the buying cycle.

Make the most of the opportunities offered by the expanded text format. Many of your competitors will be running old ads that do not make the most of the possibilities. You can beat them by writing copy that uses the available space to full advantage, as well as leveraging extensions to the fullest extent.

3. Improve Landing Page Experience

Landing page experience is the third major factor in assessing quality score. This is one area where most advertisers fail badly, which means you have a real opportunity to do better.

When searchers click on an ad about ‘blue widgets,’ they expect to land on a page that is all about blue widgets. They will be disappointed if the page turns out be about red widgets, blue articles, or widgets in general. You should have a landing page that is focused on that keyword, offering highly-relevant information, products and services.

The biggest mistake advertisers make in this respect is funneling all clicks to their home page. You should have a dedicated landing page for every ad group, with copy that reflects exactly what the searcher is looking for.

4. Optimize for Mobile

With around 80% of clicks now coming from mobile devices, you have to focus on getting the best results with mobile. This is even more important now that Google has made mobile optimization a quality score factor.

You can check how quickly your landing pages load using tools such as Pingdom and GTMetrix. You should also check that your pages are mobile-friendly in design.

A load time of under 3 seconds is acceptable, but you should aim to do better. The most successful advertisers have pages that load in under one second.

5. Set up Conversion tracking

Research shows that over half of businesses advertising with Google have yet to set up conversion tracking. This is a major omission that is costing them a lot of money, both in unnecessarily high ad spend, and in missed opportunities.

With conversion tracking set up, you have a wealth of information and opportunities at your disposal. You can calculate how much it costs you to acquire a lead or a customer, and identify your most profitable keywords.

You also gain access to advanced strategies such as smart bidding. These are designed to help you get more bang for your buck by bidding in the most cost-efficient way possible.

Set up conversion tracking today, and you will have an immediate head start over your competitors.

6. Deploy Single Keyword Ad Groups

Another huge mistake made by most advertisers is lumping too many keywords into one ad group. Managing keywords is a lot of work, and it’s tempting to just dump them all into a few ad groups.

But you can gain a huge advantage by getting more granular with your keywords. Your ultimate goal should be to have Single Keyword Ad Groups. That way, each keyword has its own ads and landing pages, precisely tailored to the searcher’s requirements.

For sure, setting up all those ad groups is hard work. But the investment of time will be repaid through a significant improvement in the quality scores for each keyword.

7. Steal from Your Competitors

Why reinvent the wheel when your competitors have done all the hard work for you? If your rivals have been running the same ads for months - or even years - that suggests these ads are working well for them.

Similar ads are likely to work for you, too. So don’t be afraid to get good at analyzing your competitors ads and seeing what they are up to. After all, they are probably studying yours!

There are many great tools you can use to get insights into ads run by rivals. Some of these tools are expensive, but they often have a free trial period for new subscribers. That may be enough to glean some valuable information.

SEMRush provides great ad data, allowing you to pull hundreds of ads from your competitors campaigns, plus info on cost per click, search volume and much more. You can also get detailed ads information from sites like Spyfu.

8. Split Test Your Ads

Here’s another way to get a step ahead of your competitors. Split testing is something that all advertisers should be doing, but few actually are. So if you take testing seriously, you will give yourself an unfair advantage.

You should always have tests running to see if you can improve on your existing ads. Don’t assume you know what your potential customers want. The only way to find out for sure is to test, test and test again.

Test every element in your ads, from the headlines to the call to action. Test your landing pages, too, and try different extensions. You may be surprised at how a small change makes a big difference.

9. Set up Re-marketing Campaigns

Re-marketing allows you to reach out to people who visited your website, but didn’t take the required action. It gives you a second chance to target them as they browse websites where your re-marketing ads appear.

As well as bringing lost prospects back into the fold, re-marketing can also bring you cheap leads. on re-marketing campaigns, and conversion rates can be much higher.

If you are not running re-marketing campaigns, make it a priority to set things up asap. Letting prospects slip away is a criminal waste of your investment in their initial click.

10. Hire a Google Ads Pro

What You Will Learn

Get a Higher Return on Your Ad Spend

When people think about online advertising strategies, Google is usually their first priority. Their main focus is to be on page one of Google…and Google Ads is the quick and easy way to achieve that goal.

Google Ads is a fantastic platform, of course, and it should be part of almost every online marketing strategy. But things change quickly in the online world, and Facebook has come a long way in the last few years.

Facebook advertising started out as an interesting curiosity, something to spend some test dollars on. Now it is a giant money-making machine that is snapping at Google’s heels. More than that, it is a highly-sophisticated advertising system that offers mind-boggling opportunities.

If you are still stuck in the Google Ads-only mindset, here are 10 very good reasons why should test the waters with Facebook advertising:

#1. The Ultimate in Granular Targeting

Without doubt, this is Facebook’s trump card. Everything changed for Facebook in 2013 when the company started forging partnerships with major audience data providers.

These deals gave Facebook access to a vast wealth of information about hundreds of millions of users – transforming its ability to target the right people in the right places.

This development spawned entire new industries. T-shirt platforms such as Teespring grew in leaps and bounds, with their sellers targeting very specific audiences by demographics, age and interest – and then creating products especially for them.

In just a few minutes, you can create a T-shirt aimed only at women aged 25-35 who live in San Francisco but love the Dallas Cowboys. Then thanks to Facebook’s granular targeting, you can run ads to that precise audience. It’s no surprise that the conversions can be astounding.

Whatever your business, you can be sure that your audience is hanging out on Facebook. With precise targeting, you can address your ads only to those people who are likely to be interested in purchasing. Is that a game changer or what?

#2. Lower Cost per Click

Google Google Ads is awesome at reaching people at the moment when they are actively searching for your product or service. But it’s a very competitive business, and you have to pay through the nose to keep your ads visible. Can you believe that the cost per click for some keywords is approaching $1000? Ouch!

Right now, Facebook ad clicks are still considerably cheaper than Google Ads clicks overall. In 2016, the average CPC for Facebook ads was $0.28, while a typical Google Ads click would cost you $2.32, making Facebook clicks 88% cheaper.

That’s a little while ago now, so the numbers may have changed, but Facebook is still likely to be a much more cost-effective option.

#3. Rapid Innovation

The pace of innovation in the Facebook advertising platform is astonishing. Just a few years ago, the system was a little clunky and limited in scope. Now it’s the most advanced marketing platform on the planet…and the changes keep coming.

Facebook continues to launch new ad formats, new placements and new features at a dizzying pace. Google continues to innovate, too, of course – but the changes in Google Ads don’t match the frenetic progress in Facebook.

It’s clear that Mark Zuckerberg and his team clearly understand that their success depends on helping advertisers achieve maximum ROI.

#4. Scalable Advertising

If you have ever tried to scale an Google Ads campaign, you probably know that things can go wrong very quickly. You may have a campaign that converts brilliantly when you stick to tightly-focused keywords.

But when you try to scale by including broader keywords, conversion rates go down the toilet. The same problem occurs with placement ads. Once you get beyond websites that are clearly focused on your niche, the results may become dismal.

By comparison, scaling is much easier on Facebook. Once you have a campaign that converts, you can create a Lookalike Audience of people with similar interests and demographics. Facebook does an excellent job of figuring out who your potential buyers are.

While the conversion rates probably won’t match the original campaign, these audiences can still be very profitable. What could be better than a marketing partner that actually goes out finds good prospects for you?
#5. Re-targeting on Steroids

Yes, Google Ads has re-targeting – or re-marketing in their jargon. And it’s a useful feature, for sure. But the basic Standard Re-marketing system is…well…basic, while getting to grips with Dynamic Marketing takes a bit of work – and your options are still limited.

By comparison, the Facebook re-targeting system is a cornucopia of wonderful options. And the whole system is easy to use and understand. You can use a wealth of parameters to create the perfect custom audience to re-target with your ads.

You can narrow the audience down to the prospects most likely to convert. For example, that may be people who meet ALL of the following:

Talk about hot prospects! Heck, if you can’t sell to that audience, you might as well pack up online marketing and get a job flipping burgers.

#6.  The Ability to Target Fans

We all know what happened to Google Plus. That is, not very much at all. The mighty Google turned out to be pretty hopeless at creating a social network. And the upshot of that is that Google has nothing that compares with Facebook Pages.

When you run ads on Facebook, you are likely to pick up some likes as you go – creating another valuable asset that you can advertise to. Once you have a reasonable number of likes, you can turn them into a custom audience and run ads to your most engaged fans. These are likely to be among your best converting audiences.

#7. Free Sharing of Your Ad

If you want free ad impressions from Google, you are going to have a long wait. It’s never gonna happen. Things are different on Facebook, though. People who see your ad can share it in the same way they share any other content on Facebook.

That means possibly thousands of ad impressions for free. Thank you, Facebook! But it gets better. When your ad is shared, you are getting an endorsement from the sharer.

Now your ad has been upgraded from a commercial to something that comes with a personal recommendation – that’s a massive improvement that will bring you more clicks and conversions.

#8. Find Customers Who Need You…But Don’t Know it Yet

If you are a plumber who offers emergency repair services, then you need to be advertising in Google search, for sure. Google Ads will bring you customers exactly when they need you, and that’s awesome. Google is the undisputed of matching hungry buyers with providers who have a solution.

But what happens if the phone doesn’t ring? If nobody needs emergency plumbing this week, how are you going to pay the bills? That’s where Facebook advertising comes in.

Now is the time to target hot prospects in your neighborhood – choosing the demographic that is most likely to respond. Advertise to people interested in Bed, Bath & Beyond and offer them a discount on a new bathroom.

There’s a whole universe of prospects ready to buy from you if you have the right offer. With Facebook advertising, you can figure out who they are and make that offer today.

#9. Fewer Problems with Ad Blocking

There’s no doubt about it, ad blocking is becoming a serious problem. Hundreds of millions of people already block ads, and the numbers are rising rapidly. Ad blocking software easily spots the ad code on AdSense sites and stops them from being seen.

Google simply has no answer to this, except to cave in and pay millions of dollars in extortion to the ad blocking companies. That gets some of their ads whitelisted.

Facebook is not immune to ad blocking either, but it is in a much better position to combat it. Facebook delivers the content, including ads, on its own platform. So the ads blend in as just another piece of content, making them hard to filter out.

Ad blockers have to resort to clunky workarounds such as pattern recognition, and these are doomed to fail in the long run. Facebook easily has the resources necessary to play ‘whack-a-mole’ with whatever blocking strategies the ‘enemy’ devises.

#10. Very Few Issues with Click Fraud

I know many advertisers who have abandoned Google Google Ads because fraudulent clicks are driving them crazy. Another guy who spends hours every day monitoring his IP logs for suspicious IPs that need to be blocked.

I suspect he is losing lots of business through false positives, inadvertently preventing real customers from reaching him. Unfortunately, that is the lot of the Google advertiser.

As an Google Ads advertiser, you face two main issues. One is competitors trying to burn your daily ad budget by repeatedly clicking on your Google Search ads.

The other is networks of ‘clickers’ driving up their own revenue (at your expense) by generating thousands of fake clicks on AdSense ads. While Google has measures in place to combat such problems, they are easy to circumvent with proxies, incognito browsers and simple software.

Facebook is not vulnerable to either of these problems. So while the odd story about Facebook ‘click fraud’ surfaces now and again, there is little evidence that you have much to worry about. You can be reasonably confident that your Facebook clicks come from real people who have seen your ads and responded.

Can You Have the Best of Both Worlds?

Clearly, there are many good reasons why Facebook has become such a popular choice for advertisers. But we don’t need to throw the baby out with the bath water. Google Ads obviously still has an important role to play in online marketing.

But for all the reasons listed above, my ad spend on Google Google Ads has more than halved, while my Facebook ad spend has easily tripled. My experience is that a well-optimized Facebook campaign can produce a return on investment that I only ever dreamed of with Google Ads.

So if you are still firmly in the Google Ads camp, maybe this is a good time to check out what Facebook has to offer. You are sure to be impressed by what this platform can do for you.

The End of Email Marketing?

People have been predicting the demise of email marketing for many years, and this is hardly surprising. After all, it’s certainly true that this strategy has become more challenging than ever before.

In the early days of email, in the 1990s, even the dumbest of email campaigns could get an open rate of 80 percent, and produce sales conversions of up to 10 percent. Email was a novelty, and getting one of these new-fangled messages was a surprise that deserved attention..

“Ooh...a Nigerian prince wants to send me 10 million dollars? That’s interesting. Let’s take a look…”

Of course, those days are long gone. Nowadays, we are all deluged with huge quantities of spam. Gmail alone sends over 10 million emails to spam every minute. We have become skeptical of every email we receive, looking for an excuse to delete it, rather than open it.

Email response rates have dwindled year by year, causing much doom and gloom amongst marketers. They complain about deliverability problems, miniscule open rates and dismal response numbers.

But wait. It doesn’t have to be like that. Done right, email marketing can still be devastatingly effective. You just have to be smarter about the way you run campaigns. Here are some of the most common mistakes, and ways to fix them.

Deliverability Problems

One of the biggest reasons for low open rates and poor response rates is simply that emails never even reach the recipients in box. They are flagged as unwanted emails and go straight into the spam folder.

Even if they make it to the inbox, they may still never be seen. Some 1.5 billion people now use Gmail, and by default all Gmail accounts have several tabs, including a Promotional tab. Having your messages go there is almost as bad as having them go straight to spam - they will probably never be read.

The tragedy here is that these poor deliverability issues can be avoided. You need to get good at understanding and managing:

That’s just the tip of the iceberg, to be honest, but getting those things right will help you a lot. 

Low Open Rate 

Even if you can get your email into the recipients in-box, you may find that open rates are below 10 percent, or perhaps even below 1 percent. Clearly, you will never make any money unless you can get a decent percentage of people to open your messages.

Again, there are many issues that factor into this, but here are the main ones to focus on:

Failure to Engage

Don’t assume that just because someone opened your email, they will take the trouble to read it. Unless you keep them interested and engaged, they will delete your message and move on.

This is where good copywriting is critical. Most email marketing messages are a big fail here, and fail to maintain the reader’s interest. Investing in an experienced email copywriter will pay big dividends. 

You need copy that attracts attention, engages interest and keeps the reader scrolling down to read more. There are many different ways to do this, from telling stories to revealing surprising information.

Whichever approach you take, use all your powers of persuasion to keep people reading to the end. 

Low Response Rate

All of the above elements factor into the response rate. But assuming you managed to get people to read to the end of your email, what they see next is critical.

Every email must have a clear call to action. That may seem obvious, but a lot of marketing emails fail to tell the reader what to do next. Don’t expect people to work it out for themselves. You need to spell things out clearly and simply.

Whether it’s to click on a link or to hit reply, people need to know exactly what to do. If they are confused in any way, they will do nothing - and your response rate will be close to zero.

Dealing with List Hygiene

Maintaining and managing your email list effectively is also critically important. Ensure that people can unsubscribe if they want to, and remove emails that bounce. 

There are now many services that will help you verify email addresses before sending to them. The cost for doing this in bulk is low, and it will help protect your list and your email domain. Don’t hold back from spending a little money to do email marketing right. 

Following Up Appropriately

They say ‘the fortune is in the follow up,’ and that’s true - but only if it’s done correctly. 

If you follow up too infrequently, you will lose sales for sure. But if you follow up excessively, your messages will be reported as spam. And once several report your emails as being spammy, your deliverability problems will multiply.

There is no magic answer to how many follow ups are appropriate. This is something you will need to measure on a case-by-case basis. But it is better to err on the side of caution, and keep your domain reputation intact.

The Simple Solution

Email can be your killer sales app, but only if you take good care of all the issues discussed above. So you should certainly be leveraging email to add a whole new level of revenue to your business.

But one simple mistake may be enough to sabotage all your efforts. So take the risk. Work with a team that understands how to get your emails delivered, opened, read and clicked. Book a free strategy session with us today, and we’ll be happy to set you on the road to easy extra profits with email.

What You Will Learn

Tell your Story

According to the Content Marketing Institute, only 42% of marketers consider themselves good at content marketing - which means nearly two thirds are failing badly. That’s a great shame, because they are losing out on a ton of new prospects, leads and customers.

In a world where communications is driven by social media, content is the currency of sharing. If you have a great message, and you know how to share it, you can achieve amazing levels of success through effective promotion.

What is Content Marketing?

Before we dive in, let’s be clear on what we are talking about. Content marketing can be defined as:

“Content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and distributing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and acquire a clearly defined audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”

In other words, instead of using paid advertising to drive sales, companies are investing in creating various forms of content for potential customers to consume. These are aimed at building relationships that lead to sales, and might include:

...and more. All kinds of content can be used to engage with potential customers and start a meaningful conversation.

However, creating content is only half the story. Effective promotion is the ‘yang’ to content creation’s ‘ying.’ You need both to achieve any kind of harmony and get results.

And this is where most business go wrong. They have a solid process for creating content, and churn it out on a consistent basis. Often it’s great content - thoughtfully planned, professionally produced and elegantly presented. But without effective promotion, the result is likely to be the sound of silence.

It’s what Brian Dean calls the ‘publish and pray’ approach. You build it and hope they will come. But in most cases, they don’t. And that’s where a good content marketing agency can fill the gap.

The best content marketing agencies don’t just create content - they have a proven strategy for promoting your work to:

 So how do you find a professional content marketing agency that is a good fit for your requirements? Here’s a proven 10-step process you can follow to get results:

1. Define Your Requirements

Before you even start talking to content marketing agencies, you need to know exactly you want to achieve. Define exactly what your business goals are for the project:

In any company/agency relationship, failure often results from poor communication and a misunderstanding of what needs to be achieved. So make sure you are 100% clear on what you want your agency to accomplish.

2. Draw Up A Shortlist

Next draw up a list of agencies who you think could be potential partners. A simple Google search will bring up a whole a whole ton of results, and you can sift through them easily.

Don’t restrict yourself to agencies in your own geographical area. In the age of the Internet, it doesn’t matter where a company is located. Many agencies are virtual companies, with the team distributed all over the world.

In fact, if you hire a local agency, it’s likely that most of the team will still be located elsewhere. So make your decision based on how qualified the agency is, rather than when they can drop in for a chat and a coffee.

3. Get on a Call

Your content marketing agency is a partner you will be working with for perhaps man years to come. So you need to make the right choice, and that means having a thorough understanding of who you will be working with.

Don’t make the mistake of hiring an agency by email. You need to get on a call and talk things through. That’s when you will find out if there is a natural match between you and the agency.

Video is a great way to stay connected with your agency

A voice call is OK, but a video chat is ten times better. Get on Skype or Zoom and spend at least an hour talking to the agency contact. You will soon whether they really know what they are talking about, or whether they are just jumping on the ‘digital agency’ bandwagon.

4. Check Your Writing Ability

While you may need many different types of content in your campaign, everything starts with writing. Every agency should have great writers who know how to produce quality copy that is designed to have real impact.

Blog posts are a great place to start. Just scanning through a few posts will tell you whether their writers are great or just mediocre. And your content has to be great in order to have any chance of success. Even the best promotions will fail if the content is not up to scratch.

5. Ask About Other Services

Many content agencies are started by writers who want to scale up from freelance writing to running a real business. That’s fine, but they need to have other creatives on the team.

Are they able to produce infographics? What about video, or podcasts? A professional agency will be able to deliver quality results in any of these areas. Your agency should be a one-stop shop who can take all of your content marketing problems off your hands.

Many agencies will also be able to offer complementary services in the digital marketing space. Consider what you may need in your marketing campaigns, and find an agency that can deliver.

6. Discuss Promotion Strategies

This is is perhaps the most critical area of discussion. Creating quality content is not easy, but it is simple. Content promotion, on the other hand, is much more complex - and so much more difficult.

Remember that as much effort should be put into promoting content as into creating it. So you need to choose an agency that has a real understanding of how to conduct a content promotion campaign.

Simply sharing on Facebook and Twitter is not enough. You need to have a strategy that goes deeper and gets real results. This is where a good agency can a have real, long-term impact on your marketing efforts, so take this discussion seriously.

7. Start with a Test Project

Before you make a long-term commitment with an agency, you should try a test project. This is a chance for both parties to explore your working relationship, and to see if you are a good fit.

More importantly, it’s a chance for the agency to show that they can deliver the goods. Use a project management system to work on the project, so that you can monitor progress throughout.

If you have the budget, it’s a good idea to give a test project to three different agencies. Then you can see how they compare in terms of both content creation and promotion. However, it’s only fair to be open about this. Let the agencies know that they are competing for your business, so that they back out of the challenge if they wish.

8. Agree a Contract

Once you have decided on an agency, you need to formalize the relationship. Proceeding on an ‘ad hoc’ is sure to lead to disappointment and frustration.

Both sides need a clear understanding of:

9. Be Part of the Team

While you are engaging an agency to take a load of work off your hands, you should not surrender all responsibility.

It’s in everyone’s interest for you to be actively involved in the project on a week-by-week basis. Keep the agency fully informed of developments within your company, especially with regard to news and product updates, etc.

Equally, the agency should update you on changes within their team. If a key team member quits and goes to work for a rival agency (perhaps working for your competitors), you should know about it. Openness and transparency need to work both ways.

10. Track Performance

As a bare minimum, you should be getting monthly reports from your agency. But it’s a whole lot better if you jump on a video call with the project leader once a month.

Under-performance can be buried or glossed over in a PDF, but may well be exposed in a deep discussion by video. Simply knowing that the ‘end-of-month’ call is coming up may be enough to spur your agency into greater action and performance.

The Future of Content Marketing

We are just getting started in the world of content marketing. As Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO, points out, this is still ‘day one’ of the Internet. Social media marketing and even search engine optimization are still relatively new concepts, and content marketing is key to making them work.

In a noisy world, you need to get really good at content marketing in order to succeed. And that means working with a good agency that can deliver results. When you hire the best agency you can find, your investment will be repaid many times over in terms of lead flow and customer acquisition.

What You Will Learn

The Amazing Power of Words

Drama was unfolding in Orlando. A man prepared to jump from an overpass on State Road 408,  aiming to end his life on the solid concrete below. He’d made some bad decisions and let his family down. It seemed the only way out was to end it all.

But a woman passing by had other ideas. When she saw what was happening, Cristina Settanni parked up, approached the man and talked to him. She even sang the lyrics of a Linkin Park song to him:

"In a sky of a million stars...who cares if one more light goes out? Well I do."

The result? Cristina persuaded the man to give life another chance. Police were able to pull him to safety, then take him to a mental hospital for help. With the amazing power of words alone, Cristina saved his life.

You, too, can make a big, positive difference in people’s lives with the power of words. That is what copywriting is all about.

Don’t Be Sleazy

Sometimes direct-response copywriters get a bad rap. We can be viewed in the same light as sleazy second-hand salesmen, using tricks and underhand tactics to sell worthless, overpriced junk.

But that’s not copywriting. That’s fraud. If you are selling worthless products that deliver little or no benefit, then shame on you. You deserve all the flak you get. 

Fortunately, you don’t have to do that. There are so many fantastic products for you to promote, and many more that you create yourself. You can market products that deliver value far exceeding the price customers pay. For example:

Don’t Take No for an Answer

If your best friend was about to jump from an overpass, what would you do? Would you make a half-hearted attempt to talk your buddy down, then shrug your shoulders and give up?

“Ah, well - it’s none of my business really. Guess I shouldn’t interfere. I don’t want to seem too pushy.”

Heck, no! You would pull out all the stops, using all the persuasion tactics at your disposal. You would talk, smile, tell stories, paint a picture of a rosier future, remind them of their loved ones at home...and so on. You’d do whatever it took to save your friend from a disastrous decision.

In short you wouldn’t take no for an answer.

The same is true in copywriting. When you’re selling great products, you are doing customers a disservice if you fail to make the sale. If they’ll be better off owning the product, it’s your duty to ensure the deal is done. Otherwise, there may be negative consequences:

There are consequences to not following through. If you believe in your product (as you should), then you should do everything you can to save the prospect from missing out. You must apply the principle that I call:

‘Talk ‘em Down from the Ledge’ Marketing

Don’t give up on your prospects. Don’t be half-hearted about your sales process. And don’t take no for an answer. 

Think of your customers as sitting on an overpass, deciding which choice to make. They can ‘jump’ by abandoning your sales page, never to return. Or they can make the best decision that’s best for them and purchase today.

Sing to Your Prospects

Cristina Settanni persuaded her ‘prospect’ to make the right decision by singing the words of a popular song. Although she probably didn’t realize it, she was leveraging emotion to persuade and convince.

You may not be able to sing a song to your prospects, but you can certainly use all the tools in your persuasion arsenal to get results. Deploy storytelling, proof, urgency and every other tactic at your disposal to ensure that you get the sale.

Talk ‘em down from the ledge, escort them safely to the checkout and secure the deal. Their lives will be improved - and so will your bank balance. 

A true win/win for everyone.

Getting to the Point

Legendary marketer Jay Abraham once said: “Sometimes the best copy to sell a horse is ‘Horse for Sale,” and he’s right!

I know this is true because it’s how my daughter became the proud owner of a pony. We were driving down a rural road close to our home when she called out, “look, Daddy - a horse for sale! Will you buy it for me….please!”

At that point, the sale was as good as complete. All we had to do was haggle over the price. The seller didn’t have to explain what a horse was, or the benefits of owning one. There was no need for an emotional story to engage me, social proof to persuade me or a risk-free guarantee for reassurance.

I already knew what the benefit of horse ownership would be for me - a happy daughter! The seller had the ‘product’ I needed, and there was a pressing need to buy now (“please, Daddy...pleeease!”)

I was already a long way through the ‘buyer’s journey,’ primed and ready to buy. All I needed was the right deal. So all the seller had to do was get to the point.

Join Your Prospects on their Journey

Copywriters and marketers often misunderstand where their prospects in the buyer’s journey, and their campaigns fail as a result. Copywriting courses typically focus on selling to cold traffic. This is a great skill to have, of course, but it’s not always what is required.

Rookie copywriters may end up doing as they have been taught, treating all prospects in the same way. As a result, they may attack the sales problem in completely the wrong way, with a message that fails to resonate.

In Breakthrough Advertising, Eugene Schwartz famously broke the buyer’s journey down into five stages of awareness. Your prospects may be:

You need to identify exactly where your buyers are in this journey. If you are running Facebook ads to cold traffic, they are probably at the ‘completely unaware’ stage. 

But if they are already on your list, they are mostly likely ‘problem aware,’ and may be solution aware, too. And if you are sending Black Friday deal offers, you are targeting people who are ‘most aware’ and just need to know the price.

Another way to look at the buyer’s journey is to consider the prospects ‘temperature’ - measuring their readiness to buy. They may be:

Having the Right Conversation

Connecting with prospects is all about joining the conversation they are already having in their heads. Most marketers understand this, and are reasonably good at addressing the pain points prospects are feeling, and offering relevant benefits.

But you also need to have the right level of conversation. If prospects are completely unaware, then you actually need to initiate the conversation. You are bringing an issue to their attention, and making them think about it.

If they are in the middle of the buyer’s journey, they are already aware of the problem and possible solutions. They are considering which product to buy, and you need to convince them that yours is the right choice.

When they reach the final stage of the journey, your job is to persuade them the best time to buy is right now. You need to answer final objections and offer a deal that makes purchasing a no-brainer decision.

The Long Copy vs Short Copy Debate

Copywriters frequently debate whether long copy is better than short copy. As always, the definitive answer is always to test both and see what works.

But in general, long copy typically works better on cold traffic. The colder the audience is, the more persuasion that’s required. That’s why 10,000 word sales letters and 12,000 VSLs can perform so well.

Yet when prospects are ready to buy, all of that copy just gets in the way, and will usually kill more sales than it creates. If your customers are red hot, you just need to get them to the checkout as quickly as possible. 

As we have already seen, ‘Horse for Sale’ may well be all the copy you need. Sale made, job done...congratulations!

Weak Links Cause Disaster

73 seconds into it’s flight on 28 January 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart 65,000 feet above Cape Canaveral, Florida, killing all seven astronauts on board. The cause of this explosion? The failure of one seemingly-insignificant component - an O-ring in the right Solid Rocket Booster.

This one weak link was enough to cause a disaster that bereaved seven families and brought the US space program to a halt for years. Billions of dollars had been invested in the Space Shuttle, but the poor quality of one, inexpensive component was enough to cause catastrophe.

This tragic example highlights the importance of finding and eliminating weak links in your sales funnel. You can have a great product and a sales funnel that is 99 percent efficient - but the weakness of the final 1 percent can kill your profits.

Applying the Pareto Principle

Even if you have a sales funnel that is profitable right now you are almost certainly leaving money on the table. There are probably several weak links in the chain that are hurting your profits and making it hard for you to scale the campaign.

But here’s the good news. The Pareto Principle applies here, as 80 percent of the problems are probably concentrated in 20 percent of the funnel. In other words, when you find and fix the weak links you get quick and substantial wins. A simple improvement that takes 10 minutes may add an extra million dollars to revenue.

If you haven’t reviewed your sales funnel for a while, it’s time for a revamp. Take a close look at every step of the sequence and identify potential problem areas. Of course, this assumes you have accurate data on what is happening in every step in the sequence. If not, getting that data should be your first priority - you can’t do this flying blind.

Finding the Weakest Link

Every sales funnel is different, so the weak links in your chain may be different from those in other marketer’s funnels. But there are some common areas where weaknesses often lurk, so let’s discuss places you may find ‘quick wins.’

1. Headlines

Everything starts with your headline, both in your ads and on your sales pages. So it’s worth spending time to get this right, yet many marketers are lazy. Simple benefit-driven headlines will get some clicks, but you can do better.

Test adding curiosity into your headlines. This does not mean creating pointless ‘clickbait’ headlines. They will typically get you lots of clicks, but few sales. Instead, test headlines that combine curiosity plus a benefit, such as:

‘Weird Trick Melts 10 Pounds of Fat in 7 Days’

This works because it makes a big promise in terms of the benefit delivered, but also leverages curiosity. What weird trick? Why is it weird, and how does it work? This ‘benefit + curiosity’ combination is hard to beat, so be sure to test it!

2. Email Subject Lines

Many copywriters spend a lot of time crafting great email copy, yet fail to spend much time working on subject lines. But if the email never gets opened, all the hard work invested in the copy is wasted.

Subject lines are critical in email. Keep them short but powerful. You can test the ‘curiosity + benefit’ here, too, and it is sure to work. But you can also test pure curiosity-driven subject lines. You already know that the people on your list are interested in your offer, so you can be more aggressive in trying to get the ‘open’ at any cost.

3. Calls to Action

Once you have fired up your prospect’s enthusiasm, you need to guide them to the checkout. And that means having a call to action that is clear and easy to understand. 

Frequently, however, calls to actions are muddled, vague or confusing. If your customers don’t know what to do, they will do nothing. So take pains to explain clearly and concisely what they need to do next. Then give them a big, bright button to press to make it happen.

No matter how sophisticated your audience may be, you have to explain things clearly, step by step.

4. Checkout Pages

How can the most important page in your funnel be so easily overlooked! The whole point of your sales funnel is to get people to your checkout page and safely through to the other side. So it’s amazing how little attention is paid to this page.

You can get an easy lift in sales by running experiments such as:

5. First Upsell

You do have an upsell chain, right? Assuming that you do, this is definitely an area where weak links can be found. Most importantly, focus on your first upsell, as this is the one that can make or break your offer.

Your upsell needs to be congruent with your main offer and keep the buyer momentum moving forward. If you are selling physical products, offer them more product at a discounted price. If you are selling digital products, help them get results faster or more easily.

Fixing this part of your funnel may require more work, but it’s critical in making campaigns profitable.

6. Abandoned Carts

With two thirds of people abandoning carts without purchasing, it’s really important to focus on winning this lost business back. 

You need an abandoned cart recovery system. Email these abandoners with an extra special offer - an additional discount if they complete their order asap.

Turn Your Weakest Link into Your Greatest Strength

When I was a school student, my mother would often help me revise for exams. When she found something I was weak on - such as French vocabulary - she would test me on it over and over again until it became my greatest strength.

I still apply that principle today, and it’s a great way to approach sales funnel optimization. Turn those weak headlines, subject lines, calls to action, checkout pages, upsells and abandoned carts into powerhouse converters. Then you will be well on your way to greater success.