You are here: Home / 2009 / Archives for August 2009

Info Products Made Easy–Stand Out From the Start

August 27, 2009 7 Comments

I wish I could tell you to just write about what you love and you’ll make millions from it. While it can happen, it’s definitely the harder road to take.

On the other hand, investing a little time upfront to strategically map out your ebook or info product will go  a long way toward making sure you end up with a bestseller.

I generally walk clients through a five-step process for doing exactly that–and one of those steps is positioning your ebook to stand out from the competition before you set fingers to keyboard.

Some ways to do this include:

Target a specific niche. There may be fewer potential buyers in a niche, but they’ll be much easier to find and your ebook will quickly jump from the “nice to have” to the “must-have” category–so you end up selling more overall!

Go deep, not wide. Covering one specific topic in great detail will have a much bigger pay-off than trying to cover it all.  For example, skip the generic “how to improve your relationship” ebook in favor of “how to get your ex back.”

Highlight your personal experience. If you’ve actually solved the problem for yourself, then definitely share that. More experience = more credibility plus your story helps build rapport with your customers.

Emphasize a point others missed. I created my 7 Steps to Creating Copy that Speaks Your Client’s Language for More Clients & More Sales program because many of the copywriting programs out there tell you to make sure you use language that resonates with your clients…but none actually walk you through the process of how to do it.

Mix up the format. An ebook doesn’t have to be a report. Flow-chart type process sheets are hot right now thanks to Rich Schefren’s eMarketingMaps and other gurus promoting products with them.

Interview a rockstar. Getting an industry celebrity to spill their secrets can again boost your credibility–as well as set your product apart from other “unknown” authors.

Add different bonuses. Instead of tossing in everything plus the kitchen sink, focus on what customers will REALLY need to make the most of your information and offer bonuses that will help them do that.

Regardless of which route(s) you choose, starting with a unique info product will save you a ton of time and frustration later–plus bring in loads more passive income for your business!

Want to know more about creating ebooks that sell? Check out my FREE audio at www.myebooksecrets.com!

Share on Twitter

If You Liked This, You May Like:

Adventures in Teleseminar Marketing

August 18, 2009 1 Comment

I was reviewing my recent marketing promotion for the phantom teleseminar on 9 Secrets to Ebook Success and thought it might be interesting to share what I tracked and what I learned.

(Phantom teleseminar=you just sign up for the audio, there’s no actual call time.)

Overall, there was a great response with nearly 90 people signing up for the teleseminar during the month of July. And I’ll admit, I didn’t do nearly as much promotion as I’ve done for others.

But I still got some interesting results…

Sign-up by Autoresponder

This was the first time I’d done registation via email to an autoresponder instead of a web form– and I highly doubt I’ll do it again. Here’s why…

The good about registration by autoresponder–

  • It was super easy–people could just click the email link and hit send. So having one less step to go through could be part of why registrations were a lot higher this time around.
  • It was fun to see the comments people sent along in their sign-up emails.

But on the downside–

  • A whopping 51% of sign-ups did not confirm. With double opt-in, you submit your email address, then receive an email that contains a link you must click on to actually be added onto the list. I suspect two things were at work here:

–The lack of a reminder page to check your email for the link (like you normally get after filling out a web opt-in form)

–And often, you don’t have a double opt-in system when signing up by autoresponder. You just send the email and get whatever document you’re looking for back

  • Also, posting an autoresponder email address on public sites attracted junky sign-ups. At least six sign-ups were clearly sketchy. (Of course, these emails didn’t end up on the final list because they never confirmed.)
  • You can’t track clicks on email links like you can track clicks on URLs. So it was very difficult to track where people actually saw the email to sign-up.

Solo Email

Anyone who subcribes to my Compelling Marketing Ezine and hadn’t registered by July 9 received a solo email with the subject line: “Sorry, you’re not invited to the call.”

The edgy subject line seemed to be a hit–generating some quite funny responses as well. In all, 10% of everyone who received the email signed up, which is great–especially since two previous announcements in the ezine had already gotten a strong response.

Response among those who actually opened the email blast was near 40% but I prefer to focus on overall response since open rates can be wildly inaccurate.

The email had three email “links” to sign-up because some say three links is most effective. I created a different subject line for each of the three email links so I could tell which links were clicked if the click tracking didn’t work. (And it didn’t.)

Surprise–NO ONE signed up from the first link! Since the rule of thumb is that the first link will get the vast majority of the clicks my results totally defied that standard. Instead, 85% of responses were from the second email link and 15% from the third.

It would take more testing to figure out why the big difference from the supposed norm since a couple factors could have been at work. But the key point is that you should always do your own testing to see what works for you.

Overall, the solo email brought the highest amount of sign-ups, accounting for more than 25% of teleseminar registrations.

And six more signed-up when the email was sent out via Twitter (which Aweber automatically does for me)–boosting the total response to 33% of total teleseminar sign-ups.

Next time, I’ll reveal how other teleseminar promotion methods such as the ezine, Facebook and Twitter fared!

Share on Twitter

If You Liked This, You May Like:

Copywriting Hit List–The Superfluous Semi-Colon

August 7, 2009 Leave a Comment

“There’s a 19th century mustiness that hangs over the semicolon,” says William Zinsser in On Writing Well–one of the best all-time books on writing non-fiction. And that quote that pretty much sums up the problem.

Semi-colons (;) reek of mind-numbingly dull term papers. So 99% of the time they have NO business being used in marketing writing. Their very presence makes a sentence look hard to read and understand.

It’s far better to either…

  • End the sentence and start a new one. Short sentences make your copy faster and easier to read.
  • Use a dash. When you have a phrase that either adds to what you’re saying and needs to stand out from the rest for emphasis–using a dash keeps the momentum going.

The 1% of time when a semi-colon is ok is when you have a complex list of items that already have commas in them, and you’re the space you’re working with is too tight to do bullets.  (for example, a directory listing)

In that case, using commas to separate the items would be confusing and dashes really don’t work.

But for everything else, it’s time to kill those semi-colons!

Share on Twitter

If You Liked This, You May Like:

Are You a Taco Stand?

August 5, 2009 1 Comment

Someone shared a hysterical video on Twitter recently about negotiating fees with clients. The facial expressions alone are priceless.

But the words and sentiment behind the comedy–frighteningly familiar!

Here it is if you haven’t seen it–then keep reading to see how you can avoid situations like this in the future!

I’ve written a whole series on pricing strategies for small businesses to help avoid situations like these.

But when you’re faced with a ridiculous request to reduce your fee, the best strategy is to follow Nancy Reagan’s advice and “Just say no…”

  • No, you are not a taco stand
  • No, you’re not interested in any “opportunity” where they pay you a fraction of your fee and and “make it up to you” later
  • No, you won’t work for free until they decide if they like the results

I could share some doozies about the crazy proposals I’ve heard over 5+ years of being in business, but suffice to say they all shared one common theme…the only “opportunity” was for the prospect to get something for nearly nothing.

Good Copy Can Help You Avoid Negotiating Fees

But you can prevent inane conversations like these by learning how to maximize the perception of the value you provide…and communicate it in everything you do. Here are a few ways to do that…

Dare to be different. In our corporate white-washed world, personality can be a BIG differentiator because after all, people buy from people and not companies.

Dan Kennedy is a great example–whether you like him or not, his tough-love “tell it like it is” style attracts legions of members to “Planet Dan” who buy nearly everything he puts out. That kind of loyalty doesn’t come from merely delivering good products and services.

Specialize in a market. It’s simple, if you specialize in web sites for lawyers, it’s silly for any lawyer NOT to choose you–because you already have a good sense of what they’ll need as well as what works and doesn’t work for their market. That will save them both time and money, plus make the chore (in their eyes) of getting a new website much easier.

Compare apples to grapefruit. What could it cost them to get the same type of results? For example, you could point out that your teleseminar series is a fraction of the cost of a live workshop or working with you one-on-one. You can also compare your fees to what the gurus’ charge to do the same thing.

Either way, there’s certainly something more expensive you can use as a benchmark to highlight how reasonable the price tag is for the value they’re getting.

Inundate them with proof. What you say you can do for them is MUCH more believable when other people are saying it for you as well. That’s why testimonials and case studies are such powerful persuaders. Because the more confident prospects feel that they’ll get great results, the less prickly they are about.

Highlight your personal experience. If you’re a restaurant owner trying to drum up more business, who would you trust more–the consultant who’s been in the greasy trenches of owning a restaurant before or someone who hasn’t?

If you have experience in your market, be sure to tell your story on every marketing piece, every teleseminar, every everything you do–even if you think they’ve heard it before (you’d be surprised how quickly people forget)–because it tremendously ups the appeal and value of working with you.

Connect the dots for them. Most websites barely scratch the surface when it comes to talking about the benefits clients will receive. Don’t assume they’ll make the connection on their own–I can promise you they won’t!

Whenever you talk about what you offer or what they’ll get, keep mentally adding “which means that” to the end of the sentence until you get to the essence of how it will ultimately improve their life or business. Because those ultimate benefits are what they’re really hoping to achieve…and are very willing to pay for.

Taking the time now to brainstorm about the full value of what you provide and how to weave it throughout everything you do will go a long way in keeping prospects from negotiating fees and mistaking you for a  taco stand later.

Share on Twitter

If You Liked This, You May Like: