Author Archive | Joseph

Long story short – people buy based on the benefits, and then they justify their decision based on the features. That’s why you need both to sell.

No one buys a lawn mower because it has a big engine – he buys it because he can cut his lawn in half the time and spend twice as much time golfing. He buys it because he can cut even the tallest grass without stalling out and making himself look like an idiot for not cutting his grass sooner. And he buys it because something this big and powerful can only make him look bigger and more powerful to his neighbors and his wife (or so he hopes).

But when he’s bragging about his new mower to their next door neighbor, he’s talking about how much horsepower that baby has, how it’s made out of the same metal as the space shuttle, and how a team of 4 inspectors go over the entire mower three times before it leaves the factory.

These features are his justification, and they’re nearly as important as the original benefits that made him buy in the first place. They’re the reason he can justify the thousand dollar purchase to himself and to his wife, and justify why he doesn’t return it for something smaller and cheaper they can actually afford.

Now let’s put this whole features and benefits thing on steroids…

Features are useful, but by themselves they won’t sell a thing. Benefits are terrific, and by themselves they will sell stuff. But without the features, you’ll get a lot of buyer’s remorse and refunds.

BUT… if you add EMOTION to the equation, you put your entire selling process on steroids. That’s because while people think in terms of logic (or to be more accurate, they believe they are thinking in terms of logic) it’s their emotions that weigh in most when it’s time to make a decision.

Emotion SELLS.

Thus, the more you can tap into your prospects’ emotional wants, the more they will respond to your offers.

And the best way to get at their emotions is to go all the way. Don’t stop with just the obvious stuff, dig deeper.

Let’s use an example: You’re selling a weight loss product. You could say, “Take this pill, lose weight.” Losing the weight is the direct benefit of taking the pills. But that’s what everyone in the marketplace is saying. Plus, you’re not tapping into your prospect’s emotions, are you?

Instead, dig deeper and find the indirect benefits. What happens when they lose weight?

• They have more energy
• Stamina increases
• Higher self esteem
• More confidence
• Better dates with sexier people
• More outgoing and social
• Looks better
• Feels better
• Stronger
• Better able to take on life’s challenges
• Less jealous of others (now they’re jealous of YOU)
• Happier
• Healthier
• Live longer
• And so forth.

NOW you’re tapping into the REAL emotions behind losing weight.

Take it one step further, and put them directly into the picture. Don’t tell them they’ll have more confidence. Instead, ask him to imagine what it will be like when his confidence is so high, he can walk into a room of beautiful women and ask the most gorgeous one on a date, and she’ll say YES.

Or ask her what it will feel like when every eye in the room turns towards her – knowing all the men want her, and all the women wish they were her.

Now THAT’s tapping into emotion.

And that will get you the sale every time.

Web directory submission can be a very efficient and cost-free method to build links and drive traffic to your site. It’s the equivalent of joining a club offline just to get exposure and increase your prospects. However, it can backfire badly if it’s not done well. Here are ways you can use link directories to increase your web popularity:

Make sure your website is link-ready. Don’t submit a website if there are pages that are still under construction. Link directories don’t exist for the sake of linking one website to another, they actually have a job to do.

Before submitting your website to a directory, check to see if it’s ready for viewing by other people. Get objective points of view from people you trust or at least allow your website to run for several weeks or months. That way, a number of people should have seen it and could give you feedback about your site.

Check for broken links and old, irrelevant entries. Avoid too many advertisements and pop-ups. And lastly, make sure your website is an original, not some self-replicated site from your affiliate program. Verify with the web directory about their preferences so you avoid any rejection or delays.

Look for web directories Your next step is to find the appropriate web directories to which you can submit your site for link building. Search Google or Try Yahoo! (yahoo.com) and DMOZ (dmoz.org). You can also check out stpt.com and lii.org.

Read their FAQs carefully to make sure you follow certain rules they might implement. Some websites, for example, prefer your list of keywords separated by spaces instead of commas. You might also want to check the type of categories available in each directory, so you’ll have an idea with which group you’ll be listed with.

Prepare your site details. Use your computer’s text editor and type your site information. This will allow you to cut and paste the data and immediately use it for submission. Type your site URL, your site’s heading or title and a short description of what your site is about. Use the third person point of view.

Next, type your name and e-mail address. Use your full name and not your screen name. Include the relevant keyword to help visitors using search engines find your site. If you have more than one, separate each keyword with a comma or a space, depending on the requirement. Don’t make the mistake of promoting your site here so don’t use exclamation marks and no hypes, please. The directory will want to see your site’s description and not your ad.

Web directory services: Are they worth the money? For those who have no time to submit to link directories themselves, using a web directory service may be a good idea. The fee varies, depending on the number of web directories the service will submit to, the time period they will continue the submissions and the type of Page Ranking these directories have. If you’re using these web directory services, make sure they offer you an opportunity to appear in numerous directories. Otherwise, it will be a waste of money.

Using web directories: Web directories are the equivalent of your local Yellow Pages. It gets you categorized and helps people find you. Learn how to use this web resource from The Barking Videos’ ‘Web Directory Traffic’. You’ll find the essential steps on how to submit your site to a web directory and begin enjoying the traffic sent your way through your newly established links.

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One free way you can get more traffic to your website is through the use of forums. Naturally you’ll want to visit forums related to whatever the main nature of your website is about. This can be as narrowed down as visiting forums dedicated to special interest groups, to as diverse as visiting ones that are “general” in nature and only vaguely related to your site to help promote not just the site but interest in the niche it fits into. Whatever the approach you choose, here are five simple tips to follow.

Sharpen your people skills – forums are all about people. Unlike working through impersonal mediums like ad/banner postings and online directories, promoting your presence through forums means you’ll be interacting with people on a constant basis. This means that your communication skills have to be pretty sharp to get your points across and make a favorable impression on people. This isn’t just a matter of proper grammar, but of proper attitude as well.

Know what people want – this is a key marketing focus that most people sadly forget. In their excitement over promoting what their site is about, they forget to see what the site can actually DO for the people visiting them. Instead of shooting off at the mouth about the tons of research and work you had to do to get your site and it’s products/subject up, you should focus on listening to the people on the forums, find out what they’re looking for and want, and THEN offer your website as a possible solution to their needs.

Research your topics – this is another mistake commonly made by people on forums. Before spouting off about a topic make sure that you know what you’re talking about. Starting a thread about a subject matter only to have a REAL expert punch holes in your erroneous facts makes you look like a fool, and can destroy your reputation especially if you take criticism negatively. Be sure to state facts only if you’ve studied them well, and if you’re venturing an opinion or theory be sure to mention that it’s a theory and don’t claim it as Gospel Truth or you’re asking to get shot down.

Avoid spamming and flaming – on the note of diplomacy, be sure to avoid two things on forums: spamming and flaming. Spamming is when you repetitively post about a certain topic. Granted you’re there to promote your website, but if you make several topics all related to it in an obvious bid to get people to notice you, odds are most of your threads will be locked for spamming. And no one likes spammers. No one. Not even their mothers. Flamers are even less liked, as a flamer is a person who, for no reason whatsoever other than perhaps a deep-seated insecurity and need for attention, insult and harass other people on the forums and make disparaging comments constantly. If you don’t have anything useful or polite to say, then keep quiet. If you’re a flamer and don’t like that policy then go shoot yourself before someone else wastes a bullet on you.

Try to get bumps and a sticky – lastly, be familiar with the forum terms bump and sticky. Stickies are rare – they are when a forum moderator likes a post so much that he or she permanently assigns it to the top of the topic lists along with the other stickies. People new to forums generally visit stickies first. If your topic is an especially helpful one, it MAY get stickied if the forum mods like it. Bumping, on the other hand, is simply having people post on your thread. Basically, forum threads with the most recent replies to them are “bumped” to the top of the lists on the forums where people can read them first. You should avoid “bumping” your own threads – let other people do it for you; this is where people skills come in.

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You may have noticed that Internet marketing goes through phases where everyone seems to be jumping on the same bandwagon. That wagon might be the latest, greatest social network. It might be paid newsletters or membership sites or video marketing or…

You get the point. There are times when it seems everyone is coming out with a new product that does basically the same thing as the previous dozen products, and they’re all competing against each other for customers.

This is when you can be a copycat or smart cookie. Let’s say the newest, greatest thing is $10 a month paid newsletters. (Yes, I know that was a number of years ago, but this is just an example.)

The copy cats observe that courses on how to write and sell little newsletters for small prices to lots of people are selling like hotcakes. And because they’re copycats, they create their own courses and jump into the selling fray. The competition gets stiffer and stiffer and soon underhanded techniques are being used, prices are being slashed, and everything is downhill from there.

Just like the copycats, the smart cookies watch to see what’s happening in the market. But instead of jumping in like everyone else, they sit back and ask, “What do these people need that I can provide?”

In the case of the paid mini-newsletters, there are now tons of customers who bought or are about to buy the newsletter courses who are going to need:

• Membership software
• A list of profitable topics
• A list of places to find their prospects
• Content for their newsletters
• Sales copy for their sales letters and sales videos
• Etc.

And this is what the smart cookie does. She doesn’t try to compete with the dozens of people selling the “how to” courses on mini-newsletters. Instead, she looks to see how she can complement what everyone else is doing.

In this manner every customer of ANY product teaching how to run these newsletters becomes her target prospect. She’s not competing with the course sellers. In fact, she’s often working hand in hand to provide their customers with exactly what they want and need to make their new businesses work.

The customers are happy. The people selling the courses are happy. And she’s rolling in the dough because she took a step back from the fray and asked, “What can I do to complement this trend, rather than compete in it?”

Next time you notice a trend, don’t compete. Instead, find ways to help both the sellers and the customers of this trend, and watch your bank account grow as you fulfill customer’s needs and desires.

Link building is important online, especially when you consider how expensive popularity can be. In general, link building is getting more people to link to you. The more people link to you, the more you will be noticed by the search engines; the more you will be noticed by the search engines, the more popular you will be; the more popular you will be and the higher your popularity ranking (as assigned by the search engines), the easier it is for people to find you when they start using any of your keywords as their online queries in the search engines. This means that more people can visit you, and you will have more prospective customers, not to mention profits!

So how can you build your links? The old way is to engage in reciprocal linking: that is, ask someone to link to your site while you link to that person’s site. Such reciprocal linking can be easily effected when people submit the addresses of their websites to link exchange directories. This can increase search engine rankings. However, such a method can be abused: some people may ask for people to link to them, but these people often do not link back. Some people may ask for reciprocal links from smaller, less important sites, but these sites count very little toward site ranking. This has prompted people to engage in much larger web link building by joining web rings.

Web rings are also referred to as three-way linking processes. In one example of three-way linking, a site on diamonds and diamond mining can link to a site on diamond jewelry. This site on diamond jewelry can then link to a site on the science of diamond formation, and how diamonds are fashioned for jewelry. This site on the science of diamond formation, and how diamonds are fashioned for jewelry, can link back to the first site on diamonds and diamond mining, thus closing the web ring. Sometimes, web rings can be larger than three members: fan sites will often have large web rings, and will have features on individual websites that allow website visitors to go from one site to the next in the web ring.

The three-way linking process appears to be a more natural link exchange versus the two-way, or reciprocal linking process. In reciprocal linking, two people exchange links the way they exchange calling cards. In three-way linking, people are part of a larger community and start linking to each other. This can be viewed as more legitimate on the part of search engines, and for the most part, search engines assign higher popularity values to sites that are part of a web ring, or that are engaged in three-way linking. This is because a three-way link can be a sign of popularity in a much bigger group, which can translate into bigger popularity than two websites linking to each other.

These are only a few important aspects of the three-way linking process. To explore possibilities for three-way linking, do a search on websites that are related to your website, business, products, or services. Offer invitations for a group link or a web ring, and present your case on how you can increase your individual popularity. This web ring might even be the road to much higher, more profitable things. Offline, all three of you can engage in business, or form a conglomerate and thus earn more money. Not only will you be popular through three-way linking, but you might be richer, too, with just the right blend of diplomacy and business mettle.

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Site traffic is a big issue nowadays: nearly all webmasters and web developers will not be content with great text and graphics on their site. Besides, the adage “build it and they will come” does not work with the offices of the online arena. After building a website, the work has only begun: marketing has to proceed quickly and smoothly, with the site URL getting exposure both online and offline, and with the site undergoing updates nearly every week in order to speed up data collection by major search engines. All of these are done in an effort to turn the site into the equivalent of an offline popular store, but all of these efforts will look like hard selling methods if you as the website owner have no strategies to help your visitors have easier, better lives.

By building relationships with your prospective clientele, you can end up making them listen to you and buying your products and services. This time, an advertising adage applies: people don?t care about what you know until they know that you care. This means that you can give them some things for free, such as downloadable wallpapers and screen savers, free games, or even cash coupons. However, if you are expecting an international clientele, not all wallpaper or screen saver designs will apply to all cultures, not everyone likes free games, and you can probably ship cash coupons only to your immediate region. A versatile way for you to reach out to your clients, however, exists in marketing articles.

Marketing articles means having articles written in an engaging tone, and with subjects that will appeal to your clients, and meet their needs in life. For instance, if you are running a t-shirt store online, you can have articles on how to clean up different stains on different kinds of cloth. If you are a web designer, you can have articles on what kinds of sections a website should have, and what these specific sections should contain. The articles should be informative, and they should be short and snappy: your clientele will have only a few minutes to read anything online before they start getting headaches, and you have only a few seconds to catch their attention.

There are article marketing sites online that will allow you to post article snippets: you only need to provide great titles and a good excerpt of your articles, and then a URL to your site. Make sure that your articles are written in an engaging manner, and with correct grammar and punctuation. The better written your articles are, the more inviting they will be: think of your snippets as tickets to your website, and you are selling them off to prospective clients whom you want to benefit from more things at your website.

Post only a few articles at these article marketing sites, and then have more at your website. Provide links that will allow your customers to share your article with their family and friends: these links could contain your URL, which could allow people to visit your site more often to get more information. Moreover, keep adding articles: the more frequently your website is updated, the more that people will keep coming back for more.

These are only a few tips on article marketing. If you have a healthy number of articles, and a lot of good marketing sense, you can make it big in the online arena.

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If you’re selling big ticket items, you’re leaving a tremendous amount of money on the table if you’re not sending your prospects something in the mail. Think about it – anyone and everyone can send an email, but how many sellers reach out via the postal mail to give their prospects something tangible they can hold in their hands?

Better still, “snail” mail can’t be deleted at the click of a button. And if you make it enticing enough, physical mail gets read and acted upon.

So what should you send to your prospects? According to Dave Dee, you should send a packet of info that includes the following:

– A checklist. For example, if you’re selling a service then you would send a checklist entitled: 7 things you should look for when hiring a _____. This way YOU set the buying criteria and you tell the prospect what to look for.

Now here’s the trick – at least ONE of those 7 things must be something that ONLY YOU do. Maybe you provide a service no one else provides, or you do it in a way like no other. Or perhaps your guarantee is unparalleled. Or you offer a free bonus service that everyone else charges for. Or perhaps you have qualifications or proven results that no one else has.

Whatever it is, it has to be something that only you have, so that when they go to compare you to others, no one else measures up to you.

– Include a newsletter of your own. It should be 2 pages long, customer oriented and include:

• Bullet point tips – these could come from your website or your book – no need to write new ones
• 1 article which could again come from your website or your book
• 1 cartoon (get someone on Fiverr to create this)
• 1 big mistake that people make and how you correct it
• Your picture

– A micro sales letter that sells them on the next step in the sales process, whatever that might be. If it’s making a small order, making a phone call, visiting your website – whatever it might be, you want to move them along in the sales process.

If they don’t respond to this package, Dave Dee follows up with these 3 sequential mailings.

First, he sends a gourmet cookie and a letter in a box. He uses a box so the cookie doesn’t get crushed. His letter begins, “As you can see, I’ve included a cookie. Why have I done this? I wanted to catch your attention. As you can see this is a gourmet cookie. It’s different, just like not all (Your profession, service or product) are created equal…” And then he reiterates his offer. This engages all of their senses and who doesn’t love cookies? Is anyone going to throw this in the trash without at least reading it? Highly unlikely. Are they going to remember it (and you) in the days to come? You bet.

Next he sends a fortune telling fish. It’s simply a little plastic fish that moves in your prospect’s hand. You can find these on novelty sites. Depending on the movement of the fish, it tells you something. The chart that goes with it says if it moves up, it means the prospect is going to call you. If it moves to the left, he’s going to hire you today. If it moves right, he’s going to buy your product, and so forth. No matter how fish moves, it’s a similar call to action

The third mailing is an Aspirin with another letter. This letter starts off with, “Do you still have this problem? We can make your headache go away…”

And if Dave still doesn’t get the response or sale he’s looking for, he then follows up with a year of monthly newsletters.

It sounds like a lot to put together, but once you have the system in place you never have to deal with it again. The newsletter can be timeless, so you can continue to run the same 12 issues. And the sales letters stay the same for as long as you’re selling the same product or service.

Your follow up system doesn’t need to be this elaborate, but one good point to take away is this – acting differently from everyone else and being more creative will get you noticed and it will get you business.

The adage goes, “The best things in life are free,” but on the Internet, free things mean more than just good things. In this age where everything has to be paid for, getting something for free can mean happiness for a customer, a greater web presence for a company, and perhaps profits in the long run. Some companies might look down on giving away free things, thinking that it cheapens their name and takes away their profits. However, giving away free things has its advantages, which include the following:

– If you notice, most of the free things that companies give away will be useful things that have the company’s name on them. These things might include key chains, notebooks, ball pens, gift boxes, gift bags, or even umbrellas. But the point is, the free things will have the company name on them. This can foster name recall much faster than an advertisement on TV that very few people can see in comparison with someone who walks around with a company’s name on something that they own. This person can literally be a walking billboard for the company!

– Who does not like free stuff? As long as it’s not a free shot in the arm or a free dose of poison, people actually like freebies, be they as simple as bookmarks or as useful as golf umbrellas. If you are able to meet this need for free things, you might be able to endear yourself faster to customers than by showing an ad on TV that can end up with them getting exasperated that you are interrupting their favorite show.

– Despite popular opinion, free things do not cost a lot. You can carry out bulk orders on different items such as knickknacks or key chains, have your name printed on them, and worry only about items getting damaged during shipment. Bulk orders mean profit for companies that produce these giveaways or freebies, so be sure to haggle and bargain for a lower price on your large orders. In the world of the Internet, however, it can be much harder to give away freebies, and simply because you have to spend a lot on shipping things to your customers. There are, however, different ways that you can get free things to them, and still have your name up in lights and noticeable.

– Give your customers a chance to download things for free, such as wallpapers or screensavers or eBooks. You can place your name and/or website on these wallpapers or screensavers or eBooks, but make sure that these items are attractive enough to be used. Also make sure the eBook is informative enough and has some value. That way, your customers not only have pretty desktops, they get constant reminders about you and your company name and your website.

– If you want to stretch the desktop idea a bit farther, you can also have software specialists design desktop widgets. These little software programs can sit on a person’s desktop and act as clocks, search engines, computer speed monitoring devices, and other things. Place your name across these widgets, and you not only make yourself useful to your client, you have your name on a client’s desktop constantly.

– If you have a large enough budget, you can mail in free samples to a lucky few, say the first fifty or one hundred clients who visit your site and fill out a survey. The samples are free and you can satisfy your clients. You can have a marketing survey that will give you a glimpse into your market. Turn it into a win-win situation, and you may have greater profits in the future.

These are only a few tips that you might want to follow when you consider what to give for free through your site. If you play into the need for freebies, you not only make your clients happy, you can have a happy bank account too.

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Carl was brand new to his niche. He had no authority, credibility or following. He knew no one. Yet within weeks he had sales, clients and JV partners. How did he do it?

By being just a little bit sneaky, yet still 100% ethical and above board.

Carl knew he needed an incentive to get people to join his list. He also knew he needed something to immediately build his credibility online, so people would trust him and buy from him.

What he wanted was something like an online calling card that would educate, entertain and subliminally sell both himself and his forthcoming products and services.

So he decided to do something that might sound a bit strange – he interviewed himself.

That’s right. He wrote down a list of questions from his niche that he knew he could answer really, really well.

Then he recorded his answers to the questions. And while recording, he streamlined the questions, deleted one that didn’t work and added two more that he thought of.

Then he found someone on Fiverr who had a voice that could easily pass for a newscaster or radio personality, and hired him to read the questions he’d written onto an mp3.

And finally he hired someone else on Fiverr to put the recorded questions together with his recorded answers, along with 5 seconds of professional fade-in music at the beginning and 20 seconds at the end.

Now he had his interview. And anyone listening to it would think he was most definitely an authority with a great deal of expertise. Plus he sounded a little bit like a celebrity, which didn’t hurt either.

Carl used this interview to build his list. He also sent the interview to potential JV partners and prospective clients, as well as podcasters. As a result, he received numerous invitations to be interviewed, to do guest posting and to do joint ventures.

And because he sounded like a true authority, his list opened his emails and clicked his links, too.

Please note: Carl never misrepresented himself. He never claimed the interview came from TV or radio. Had someone asked, he would have told them he hired someone to interview him. But interestingly enough, no one but his wife ever asked.

That’s another perk of being viewed as an authority in your niche – prospects already view you as the expert, so you don’t need to prove yourself. Instead, you can focus your time on where it belongs – helping your customers solve their problems.

Once again, it has been proven that no man is an island when it comes to the internet. Thanks to social bookmarks, website owners and online entrepreneurs have found an innovative and highly efficient way to promote their businesses through electronic mass distribution. Social bookmarks have also become the avenue of choice for people who want to increase the popularity of their sites. Social bookmarks may be used to drive traffic to a website in three major ways:

Through exposure; In the internet, exposure is key to getting nearly everything, an audience, a market and of course, traffic. Each time a visitor finds a website that he likes, he can use a bookmarking icon to vote for it. The catch here is that he ‘can’, not he ‘has’ to. However, this opportunity can spell a huge difference should a good number of visitors view a website. Let’s say for example a website receives 1,000 visits a day. Out of these 1,000 people, about 100 give the site a vote by bookmarking the page. The figure may not seem a lot but it has the potential to expand exponentially. A hundred bookmarks means that your website was viewed by 100 people who thought it good enough to bookmark it. This gives the website a fighting chance to appear in a bookmarking site and gain even more exposure.

Free promotion; Once a website gets bookmarked by plenty of visitors, it can appear in social bookmarking sites. These are websites dedicated to showing only the best stuff, best web pages, best stories and best websites. To be seen here, a website has to be voted for by plenty of visitors to give it a boost. Social bookmarking sites are not lonely archives where records of favorites are kept. On the contrary, they are active sites, with millions of visitors each day browsing to find the best stories about their field of interest. Anyone looking for an article on affiliate marketing, for example, will find plenty in bookmarking sites, with write-ups ranging from tips to grow an affiliate business to the pros and cons of affiliate marketing. Within a social bookmarking site, it wouldn’t be long for a very useful article to get promoted. When that happens, the article itself becomes a natural beacon to drive immense traffic to a website. Best of all, everything is done Free of cost. No Need to Pay for a service or hire someone to do some special work.

Targeted traffic; Another advantage of social bookmarks over the more traditional means to drive traffic to a website is that they can be used to find targeted traffic. This is the type of traffic which is more attuned to what a website offers since their interests and needs are exactly what the website is about. This is advantageous in many ways, particularly because it makes a website relevant to its traffic, nearly 100% of the time. An internet marketer who gets this type of traffic sent to his website knows that his efforts at marketing and promotion are not wasted on visitors who will not be interested or asked to participate.

Do social bookmarks always work? The most common mistake website owners make when trying to drive traffic to their website is overlooking value. Social bookmarks are not perfect mechanisms. Just like any tool online and off, they only work perfectly if certain factors are considered. The most important of these is quality.

In terms of content, structure and functionality, a web page or a website has to offer value to its visitors. Is it informative? Useful? Does it offer genuine advice and recommendations? Is it fun and entertaining? Social bookmarks may drive traffic to a website but from there, it’s the website owner’s responsibility to make sure the traffic comes back.

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