Yaro Starak Launches “Blog Profits Blueprint”

Here’s an imporant announcement if you’ve ever wanted to make your blog more effective or profitable, OR you don’t yet have a blog and you’re interested in learning more about how blogs add value and make money.

My friend and colleague Yaro Starak has just released his Blog Profits Blueprint.

The Blueprint is a content-rich 55-page report that Yaro has put together to teach the core concepts and ideas that go into building a successful and profitable blog. It’s the culmination of what he has been through over the past two and a half years of blogging and reaching the point where he makes a full time income from blogging part time.

I read through the entire report yesterday – here are some of the highlights from my perspective as someone who is primarily interested in using a blog to enhance the reach and effectiveness of my exisiting business.

• What is a blog and why are they so popular? – pages 9 to 12
• How blogs make money – page 12
• Yaro’s “Pillar” strategy for creating blog posts that generate buzz, backlinks and pre-eminence – pages 18 – 23
• How to generate high-quality traffic for your blog faster and easier than you’re doing now.
• How to convert your blog traffic into value – either straight revenue from advertising and other sources, or pre-eminence for your business.

Bottom line: the Blog Profits Blueprint contains tonnes of usable information that you should at least be aware of, even if you’re not interested in direct revenue generation from blogging.

Yaro is also just about to launch a mentoring course called Blog Mastermind whereby a limited number of mentorees will be coached by Yaro in order to build their blogs up into serious cash-generating concerns. If you may be interested in this program (but even if you’re not), then the next step is to download the Blog Profits Blueprint.

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Your Wealth Profile, and, The Biggest Problem With Being Smart

I attended a very interesting presentation by Roger Hamilton last night on the recommendation of several people I respect [thanks Kris, Ray and Therese <-- no website?! What are you like?]

Roger has developed a fascinating and instructive “Wealth Profiling System” that combines
Jungian psychological models (think MBTI tests etc) and the I Ching as it relates to individuals’ wealth attraction styles. I have done my wealth profile here and discovered that I am predominantly a “Mechanic”.

Roger also shared a couple of seminal distinctions that resonated with me. Here they are:

On taking action:

To know, and not to do, is not yet to know.

On traps for smart people:

One of Roger’s mentors once told him,

You think you’re smart. You try to do everything yourself. That’s why you’ll never be really wealthy. I know I’m stupid. That’s why I employ smart people like you to do everything for me.

Food for thought…

Two Types Of Leverage

I have recently been focussing on employing two types of leverage to increase my personal effectiveness and productivity.

Systematic Leverage: Using systems to do the heavy lifting for me. These include CRM automation, automatic billing systems, automated data backup systems and so on.

Personal Leverage: Engaging people who are much better qualified to do specific tasks than myself – designers, bookkeepers, technical people and so on.

So far the results are pleasing — I’ll report back with some more detailed results at a later date.

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Do You Nurture Leads, Or Do You Just ‘Follow Up’?

Brian Carroll recently made an interesting post on his B2B Lead Generation Blog that draws an important distinction between nurturing leads and merely “following up” with periodic, are-you-ready-to-buy-yet? calls.

My company’s focus is on improving the profitability of our clients’ online sales channels, but I’m becoming increasingly aware of the need to ensure that lead gen efforts are tightly integrated into the sales process as a whole.

Front-end lead generation activities tend to receive a lot of the marketing “glory” and can be a source of great leverage (especially online, where you can test, track and optimise everything in real time), but it’s just as important to pay attention to what happens after the lead has been generated.

“Lead Nurturing” vs “Following Up”

The more complex (read: expensive) your product or service, the more lead nurturing has to be done, especially in a B2B environment.

Nurturing needs to go beyond your CRM-system reminding you to make an are-you-ready-to-buy-yet call. While followup calls are better than nothing, complex sales processes demand more subtle solutions.

How To Nurture Leads More Effectively

1) Timely response

The best time to convert a lead into a sale is as soon as possible (assuming that a lead has been properly qualified). In more complex sales situations or when dealing with large organisations, sales cannot necessarily be closed in days, but quick response times (e.g 4-hours) to initial calls and subsequent followup enquiries create an excellent impression and are unlikely to be matched by competitors.

Timely response is even more powerful for cheaper and/or less complex products, where “convenience” forms a larger part of the purchase decision.

2) Regular, value-added communication

Keeping in touch with prospects on a regular basis with relevant, value-added information is critical. This may include newsletters, white papers, technical updates, audio interviews or video presentations, invitations to events and so on. The key is to stay on message with high-quality information that is offered as a service to prospects.

3) Strategic conversion process

Your methodology for converting prospects into clients is another key levearage point. The 80/20 principle tells us that certain steps in your conversion process will produce a far greater effect than others.

One client was who was selling six and seven figure software systems for an international software company in a past career made the very interesting discovery that ALL new clients had at some point attended a 2-hour evening workshop. Getting bums on seats in those seminars thus became the focus of lead generation activities, yielding exponential results.

What step or steps of your conversion process are responsible for most of your completed sales? What could you add to boost your conversion rates and speed up your sales cycle? What could you take out without any loss of results?

4) Multi-modal contact

If leads are of sufficient value, experiment with varying your contact methods. Go beyond a monthly newsletter to include phone calls, hard mailings, webinars and face-to-face events.

Although newsletter lists and autoresponders provide huge automation benefits, they do have limitations – not the least of which is the sheer volume of emails that are competing for your prospects’ inboxes and mental bandwidth.

There is just one word you need to keep in mind: VALUE. Most DM communications that I critique are professional-looking but ultimately self-serving. By focusing on providing value your communications will be enthusiastically received.

5) Appeal to different VAK Learning Styles

Different people process information in different ways according to their VAK (Visual, Auditory, Kinaesthetic) profiles.

Some people are “visual” – they learn best by seeing.

Others are “auditory” – they learn best by hearing.

Others are “kinaesthetic” – they learn best by doing.

Varying your communications to appeal to different learning styles is another way to increase the overall effectiveness of your lead generation activities.

Use diagrams, charts, powerpoints and video to appeal to Visual types.

Use audio programs, video (with audio) and live presentations to appeal to Auditory types.

Use interactive webinars, surveys and live workshops to appeal to Kinaesthetic types.

In the past, my own lead nurturing activities have been mainly print-based (specifically, wordy newsletters and articles). While these have produced good results, there’s no excuse in this day and age not to offer other delivery formats including audio and video, which is what I’m doing now.

Where to start

In a sense, “lead nurturing” covers a good proportion of the entire sales and marketing process. If you know you could be nurturing leads a lot more effectively, but are not quite sure where to start, here are some ideas:

1) Do you have a functional CRM system that integrates your sales and marketing efforts?

Without this, you can’t begin to nurture leads effectively. We use and work with Salesforce.com which offers a range of pay-per-seat solutions to suit all sizes of organisation. Many other industrial-strength CRM systems will do the same thing.

2) Have you instituted “closed loop tracking”?

That is, are you able to track your marketing progress right from the lead through to the sale and lifetime value of each client? Depending on the size of your organisation, this can either be relatively easy to set up or a major IT project, but the value that this provides is enormous – it allows you to concentrate on the lead generation activities that lead to the greatest number of sales conversions.

3) Do you have a organisation-wide lead definition that everyone in sales and marketing understands and uses?

Unqualified leads frustrate salespeople and waste your time, money and energy. Defining exactly what a qualified lead looks like is a great first step toward knowing exactly whom you should be nurturing.

4) Have you identified where your leverage points are?

If you know the key drivers for qualifying and closing sales (e.g. a seminar, an onsite demonstration, a product trial), you can focus your marketing efforts on driving these high-yield activities.

5) Do you have all your prospects’ contact details?

Do you know all your prospects’ email addresses and physical addresses? If you don’t, start a database-cleaning exercise (e.g. handled by well-trained telemarketers). By making some kind of offer at the same time as cleaning the database, you can turn this into a self-liquidating exercise or even turn a profit.

6) Do you have a documented lead nurturing system?

Even if your sales nurturing system is one 6-monthly followup call, that’s a starting point. Which one or two things could you do to add the most value to the customer experience?

Here are some suggestions:

• Send a white paper in print or electronic form.
• Send or stream a video of a relevant presentation by your CEO or other executive.
• Conduct an industry survey and report back on the results.
• Hold an event or seminar.

7) If you do have a documented followup system, are your salespeople following it?
Compliance with a documented followup system is just as important of having the system in the first place. Many CRM systems have “compliance” functions built-in, but ultimately having a system that works effectively is the surest way to get salespeople to stick to the system.

Will Swayne from Marketing Results specialises in lead generation and online sales funnel optimisation. He can be contacted via this contact page.

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7 Simple Productivity Tips

I’ve recently come to the realisation that the concept of “productivity” is especially vital for professionals, consultants or indeed anyone involved in time-for-money income generation.

Where your time is your main productive asset, getting more done in less time – and having more than enough time for fun and relaxation – is hugely important (then there’s the issue of shifting from a time-for-money model to a more scaleable model, but that’s a whole other discussion).

In the past 2 weeks I have literally doubled my productivity by following a few simple rules.

I now work fewer than 40 hours per week and am earning 300% more than the same time last year, when I was working 60 hours per week.

Here are my…

7 Simple Productivity Tips

1) Only check email at 12 noon and 4pm (thanks to Tim Ferriss for this tip). This one simple step has been massively powerful and liberating all at the same time. This one saves me an hour a day, minimum.

2) Every evening I write a “For Action” list for the next day, outlining my 20% items that produce 80% of the results for the next day. Every day I attack my most important item first.

3) I keep my “For Action” list on my desk and when small “to do’s” or distractions pop into my head I make a side note so I can deal with small items in batches later on and not break my focus from the task at hand.

4) When checking email or attending to other smaller tasks, if a task will take 2 minutes or less I do it then and there (thanks to David Allen of GTD fame for this one)

5) I’ve replaced my mobile phone message with the following:

“Hi, you’ve reached Will Swayne’s phone. I’m unable to take your call right now. Please leave your name and number, plus the reason for your call so I can get to work on it before I call you back. Thanks for calling.”

This simple distinction avoids the common scenario of playing phone tag just to find out the reason for a call before you even get around to doing something about it.

6) Being mindful of non-value adding steps in processes and working to reduce or eliminate them. In the past, when I was working on, say, a 5-step process, I might have been responsible for sequential steps A, C and E and a designer responsible for B and D.

I would often find myself supplying step A only, creating an extra communication loop in the process when C was required later on. Now I try to supply ALL information to eliminate the non-value adding steps in the middle.

Obviously this can’t always be achieved (for example, proofreading has to take place at the end), but just being mindful of this and taking action where possible has yielded some positive results and cut down on wasteful back-and-forth emails.

7) I’m in the process of implementing David Allen’s Getting Things Done system. While this is very much a work-in-progress (and something that I’ll write about in greater detail in future), some of the concepts have already come in useful for freeing up mental RAM. For example, I’ve closed off a few outstanding projects (what David Allen calls “open loops”) that had been occupying my headspace for some time, leaving more mental bandwidth for the important stuff. I even surprised myself the other day when I located 4 separate documents for my accountant in less than 5 minutes!

Try the 7 steps

I’ll wager that these 7 steps will yield big results for you too when you try them. Do you have any additional low-effort, high-reward productivity tips you’d like to share? Leave a comment!

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Recommended Copywriting Books

Reader Carlos Cabezas emailed me this morning asking which direct response copywriting books I could recommend.

Rather than reply via email I decided to post a reply for all to see.

Most copywriters seem to be voracious readers with a large collection of reference books in addition to a “swipe file” of copy examples.

Although I don’t write much copy any more, here are some of my favourite reference books (in no particular order):

Tested Advertising Methods by John Caples

A magnificent “how-to” manual that explains the most important and timeless principles of copy that sells. If I could only read one book on DR copywriting, this would be it.

Scientific Advertising by Claude C. Hopkins

Timeless principles of successful advertising and marketing. Because this book is out of copyright and is freely available, I have seen a few people treat this book with less respect than it deserves, calling it “simplistic” and “outdated”. But the principles contained inside are timeless and just as effective as ever, when used judiciously.

Advertising Secrets of the Written Word by Joe Sugarman

This book is a pleasure to read. Sugarman’s prose is sheer elegance. The book also contains dozens of real direct response ads that were successful sales-magnets (plus a few approaches that flopped). Sugarman’s use of short, 1 to 3 word “grabber” headlines is also instructive, especially when working with print media.

Positioning by Al Ries and Jack Trout

Not so much a book on copywriting per se as a book on how to pitch your product or service offering to the market. Pure gold.

2,239 Tested Secrets for Direct Marketing Success ed. Hatch

As the title suggests, this book contains thousands of tips, takeaways and “rules of thumb” that can make your copy sell more.

The Copywriter’s Handbook by Bob Bly

Most of the tips on copywriting in this book are also in other books (after all, there are only so many timeless principles), but the section on how to get work as a copywriter is useful if you are thinking of copywriting as a profession.

Million Dollar Mailings by Denison Hatch

A veritable encyclopaedia of the most profitable and longest-running direct mail control pieces in history. Fascinating reading and very useful for constructing your own mailings.

Other Great Resources

For online copywriting, I’m a big fan of Michel Fortin’s stuff and I also subscribe to his membership site. And of course, for advice on melding sizzling copy with killer marketing strategy, you can’t go past Jay Abraham.

Do you have any copywriting or marketing books that MUST be included in a Best-Marketing-Books-Of-All-Time Hall Of Fame? If so, leave a comment!

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1 Minute Productivity Tip: Don’t Check Email Until 11am

Like many people, I’ve fallen into the bad, bad habit of over-checking email. A While email is a great tool (although some people like Dan Kennedy would argue, a non-essential one) – it is a huge time-waster if not managed carefully.

Over the last couple of days I’ve been experimenting with a new email management strategy:

Don’t open your email program until 11am

The theory behind this is that if you check email first thing (as I used to do), you tend to get caught up in a range of non-essential, non-urgent busywork that can take up most of the morning and get your day off to a bad start.

By getting started on your most important item first thing, you make real progress and build up unstoppable momentum for the rest of the day.

Although this tip sounds simple, I estimate this one idea alone has boosted my productivity by at least 10% (although I was a heavy user to start with Your mileage may vary.)

Give it a go and let me know how you get on. A  If you have other simple 1-minute productivity ideas, leave a comment.

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The Most Important Lead Generation Tips You Never Heard Of

I recently finished re-reading Brian Carroll’s excellent book, Lead Generation for the Complex Sale. Unlike most books on lead generation, this book doesn’t feature an in-depth look at the tactical side of lead generation (it’s been done to death anyway, right?).

Rather, it covers the “organisational” side of lead generation from a 30,000-foot perspective.

This includes defining what a lead looks like (and getting sales and marketing to agree), instituting closed-loop tracking (tracking a lead from the first contact through to the sale) and ensuring that lead generation and sales capacity are closely aligned.

I have always focused on the marketing side of lead generation – getting qualified leads in the door in the first place – but I’ve realised that the approaches outlined in Lead Generation for the Complex Sale are just as important for producing outcomes and another source of leverage in your sales and marketing process.

If your sales and marketing process involves multiple contacts, I highly recommend that you read and apply the information in Lead Generation For The Complex Sale.

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Attend 2-Day Business Seminar For Just $1

I’ve previously mentioned the upcoming Business Mastery Secrets seminar series in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

Tickets went on sale a couple of weeks ago at the introductory “Early Bird” price of $197, but a new twist has been added over the last couple of days…

You can now attend the entire event for *just $1*

(Yes, there’s a catch, but I think you’ll agreee it’s very reasonable.)

Click here to find out how you can attend for just $1.

(This offer is also a very interesting example of total Risk Reversal - one of Jay Abraham’s foundational marketing principles.)

What you’ll learn at Business Mastery Secrets

Business Mastery Secrets follows a unique format that brings together 6 business experts over 2 days.

Dr Marc Dussault – entrepreneur of the year finalist, Managing Director of Jay Abraham Asia Pacific, Business Development Manager for an International software firm’s sales team that sold more with a staff of 3 than any other worldwide office with staffs of 50+.

Peter Sun – founder of the Better Business Institute, $1 Million personal income per year working from home with 1 employee.

Ed Dale – 0 to $5 Million in 36 months on the Internet. Enough said!

Garry Kewish – superstar salesman, consultant to Brian Tracy, Jay Abraham and many other business luminaries. Garry is also Brian Tracy’s head honcho in Australia.

Richard Evans – CEO of Imagine Essential Services, credited by the Australian Financial Review for creating an entirely new industry in essential services cost reduction. Imagine can save the average business $500+ per month at no cost.

Dymphna Boholt – one of Australia’s foremost tax minimisation / asset protection experts who specialises in showing business owners how to save tax.

Venues and Dates

SYDNEY [Apr Sat 28 - Sun 29]
Venue: SMC Conference Centre
99 Goulburn Street
Sydney NSW 2000

MELBOURNE [May Sat 5 - Sun 6]
Venue: Melbourne Convention Centre
Corner Spencer & Flinders Streets
Melbourne VIC 3005

BRISBANE [May Sat 12 - Sun 13]
Venue: Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre
South Bank
South Brisbane 4101

Who else lets you attend their entire conference for just one
dollar, then gives you seven full days to decide if the event was
worthwhile or not, and you only pay if you think it was? NO ONE!

Reserve your seat now for just $1

See you at the event! Literally, if you’re in Brisbane!

Will

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Website Optimisation Part 7: Keyword Conversion Of Natural Search Campaigns

This is the 7th instalment of a 7 article series on how to accelerate your online sales using the Marketing Results ’hybrid’ approach to website optimisation.

See Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

How Well Are Your Natural Search Campaigns Converting?

Once the fat has been trimmed from your paid search campaigns and your website content is performing well, the next step is natural search engine optimisation.

Most Search Engine optimisation campaigns deal with the question of how to generate more traffic to a website and this is certainly a worthy goal. But it’s just as important to remember that you also want to target the right kind of traffic. That is, traffic that leads to more opt-ins, leads and sales.

Another useful application of Google Analytics is that it allows you to distinguish between traffic generated via natural search and paid search.

When deciding which keyword phrases to target in your SEO efforts, it’s useful to know which keywords are already converting via paid search. You can use conversion tracking within Google Adwords (and/or more advanced tools within Google Analytics) to establish this.

The next step is to establish how competitive your target keyword phrase is – are there dozens of well-ranked competitors in the space already, or are there no strong competitors?

Assessing the strength of your competition can be complicated, but one of the best resources for simplifying the process is the SEOmoz Page Strength Tool.

If the websites who already occupy the search engine rankings you’d like to occupy have high Page Strength scores, it may be wiser to start with less competitive key phrases and work your way up.

Above: output from a ‘CPC vs Organic Conversion’ report within Google Analytics. [cpc] refers to paid search and [organic] refers to ‘free’ search engine traffic. In this example, two conversion goals called G1 and G2 are being tracked. The system also allows drilling down to get a clearer picture of what’s going on.

N.B. This screen can be accessed via the Marketing Optimisation > Search Engine Marketing > CPC vs Organic Conversion menu within Google Analytics.

Google Analytics is a surprisingly powerful platform, especially considering that it’s free! The danger lies in falling into the trap of thinking that data = knowledge.

Conclusion

In a previous post I wrote about the democratization of web technologies. In years gone by, companies spent their online optimization budgets on either media or the “widgets”, software and systems to drive their website. Now, those technologies are becoming freely available – now smart organisations are shifting their focus to invest in clever people.

Converting analytical data into actionable strategies is why companies retain consultants such as Marketing Results.

This article concludes this 7-part series. What did you think? What did I leave out that you think should have been included? Leave a comment and I’ll respond to your feedback.

Will Swayne
Website Optimizer

7-Part Website Optimisation Series

• Part 1: Advanced Conversion Tracking
• Part 2: Cross Channel Tracking
• Part 3: Getting Your Emails Opened And Read
• Part 4: Retaining Email List Subscribers
• Part 5: Boosting Website Conversion
• Part 6: Visualising Where Users Are Clicking
• Part 7: Keyword Conversion Of Natural Search Campaigns

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Website Optimisation Part 6: Visualising Where Visitors Are Clicking

This is the 6th instalment of a 7 article series on how to accelerate your online sales using the Marketing Results ‘hybrid’ approach to website optimisation.

See Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

Visualising Where Website Visitors Are Clicking

In a previous post I commented on a service called Crazy Egg which allows you to visualise where users are clicking on your website. This post expands on the use of Crazy Egg as a data visualisation tool.

Above: Crazy Egg generates an easy to understand ‘heatmap’ image of the Jay Abraham Asia Pacific website, revealing exactly where visitors are clicking.

Why do you want to visualise data anyway?

The first thing you may want to know is – with so many analytics packages and tracking tools on the market, who needs one more?

Here are 4 reasons:

1. When an easily identifiable “conversion” is difficult or irrelevant to track.

On many types of website that you may wish to optimise (e.g. a blog), an easily identify “conversion action” such as a sale or enquiry doesn’t occur. Crazy Egg provides meaningful information by showing you where users are clicking – what’s how and what’s not.

2. When you want a detailed picture of how users are engaging with your content.

Many services including Google Analytics offer some visualisation functions that reveal where users are clicking. Crazy Egg‘s output is much more detailed than other services I’ve seen. Rather than just telling you that a graphic or link was clicked, it shows you exactly where it was clicked. It also reveals when unlinked content was clicked (e.g. a graphic with no link).

3. When you want to decrease bounce rates and optimise clickthrough rates.

One effective technique of website conversion optimisation is to use your homepage bounce rate as a proxy for the effectiveness of your homepage in general. (Bounce rate refers to the percentage of visitors who leave your site without clicking onto another page. An ineffective homepage will have a high bounce rate.) Crazy Egg allows you to quickly identify what’s working and what’s not on your homepage so you can optimise accordingly.

4. When you want to quickly understand and communicate what’s happening.

Let’s face it – a picture is worth a thousand words. Not everyone thinks in terms of figures and data. A visual summary of user behaviour is a useful way to communicate what’s working and what’s not without resorting to long reports or reams of data. (This can come in handy if you’re forced to engage in internal battles about what content to have on your company website).

Generous “free” plan plus paid plans

Crazy Egg offers a number of service plans, starting with the free plan, which is more than sufficient to test drive the service (or as a complete solution for relatively small or low-traffic websites). The fee-based plans are big enough for enterprise applications.

Conclusion

Many companies have no formal process for deciding how content is organised on their website (often it’s either by decree or by committee). Tools such as Crazy Egg give you the power to make informed decisions on what works so you can optimise accordingly.

Crazy Egg is also a simple, visual alternative to data-driven tools that many people find either too boring or too difficult to interpret.

If you could get just 10% more visitors to click deeper into your website than they are now, what would that mean to the profitability of your online channel? For many websites, this would translate into a significant increase in results.

Will Swayne
Data visualiser

7-Part Website Optimisation Series

• Part 1: Advanced Conversion Tracking
• Part 2: Cross Channel Tracking
• Part 3: Getting Your Emails Opened And Read
• Part 4: Retaining Email List Subscribers
• Part 5: Boosting Website Conversion
• Part 6: Visualising Where Users Are Clicking
• Part 7: Keyword Conversion Of Natural Search Campaigns

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