You know those times when you’re not sure what your new product or service should look like specifically… or you want to get feedback on a current product or service you offer to see what you can improve…
… or heck, you just want to see what questions your customers and prospects have so you can help them solve their problems in a cool way by creating what they need.
Have you ever NOT known how you’re doing or what your customers want?
Of Course Not!
We all go through it… the difference is what you do about it.
Okay, so… as you know… the best way to find out what your customers or prospects want or are thinking… is to just ask them. Simple right?
If you’re in 1 on 1 face to face sales thats usually part of the process… asking the prospect some questions to find out what pain points they’re having… then you are armed with specific information to show them how your the one with the solution to their specific problem… right?
Well… the way to do that online is by creating a quick survey and sending your customers and prospects to it… and the cool thing is you don’t have to have any money in the budget to do this… its FREE.
Free Survey Creator – Cool Stuff
I’ve been using SurveyMonkey for a year or so… and they have a great service. It kicks butt actually. But, you’re limited to 100 responses per survey on the free version… and can’t print off the response reports… which is a pain.
So, yesterday I got an email from Google…
Then I clicked the link and it took me to this survey…
… notice at the bottom how it says “Powered by Google Docs”.
The Google Docs Survey… Freestyle
I’ve never seen where in Google Docs where it gives you the option of making a survey and storing the responses on a spreadsheet for you… so I’m sure I’m not the only one that missed it.
So, I did a bit of digging and found the URL for ya to go create your own Google Docs powered survey.
Its pretty damn easy to use… very powerful… and it looks like I’m going to be switching away from Survey Monkey as of today
Cool Google Survey Features
Easy as heck to put together a survey with multiple types of questions, multiple pages, page breaks, different looks/feels, etc.
Great reporting of responses complete with graphs, bar charts… and a bunch of other cool nerdy marketing stuff you’d like
You can embed the survey on your own site
You can email your survey automatically… or they give you a link you can email out on your own if you want
So… next time you’re creating a product or service… or just want to supercharge your current product or service results and customer happiness… just ask them what the heck they want, need, what their problems are… with a quick, simple… and FREE survey from Google Spreadsheets survey maker.
Now you’ve got no excuses for not knowing what your customers want… capishe?
When I was pounding the books in college and “learning” about marketing at OIT (I like to say it’s the “MIT” of Oregon I learnerd all kinds of great marketing stuff.
You know the stuff…
Talk about what separates you from the other competition
Breaking down your customers objections
How to do market research when you create a product or business
How to write up nice looking and fancy fliers and ads
… the stuff that really pulls in the customers in droves… right?
Well… not really.
Marketing To Customers Versus Talking With Customers
The other day I was chatting with my little bro who’s in his sophomore year in college right now working on a marketing/business degree. When I was talking to him about his damn economics test he was working on I had flashes in my brain of what I “learned” in college about running a business and marketing for THE REAL WORLD.
This is what I came up with after remembering what college taught me…
What I learned in college about marketing was more about BRANDING and ADVERTISING… not MARKETING.
I had no clue back when I was in college… I thought I was a friggin’ marketing expert when I graduated.
Little Did I Know…
When I finally got out into the real world and started my own business… as a “Marketing consultant” of all things… it took me a little while to learn what marketing really is… direct response marketing that is.
Marketing TO customers and prospects (as I learned in college to do) is WAY different than direct response marketing and talking WITH customers and prospects…
… and I can tell you with 100% confidence that you build stronger customer loyalty, increase response rates, have happier customers, and have WAY MORE FUN talking with customers and helping them solve their problems than marketing TO customers. But maybe that’s just me.
People Like Conversations…
People are social creatures and like to feel like they’re in a conversation… no one likes to be talked AT all day… they like to be talked WITH.
So, in your marketing here’s a few tips to try out next time:
Talk or write in conversational tones… like you would to your friends. Rather than sending out an email to your email list looking like a complete ad or pitch… write as if you were writing to tell your best friend about this “thing” you are telling them about. Keep it short and personal.
Provide value even in your marketing… don’t push for the sale before you’ve provided value and built trust… you’ll end up far better in the end. So, next time when you get someone in your store or on your email list… how about trying to give them a bunch of value BEFORE you ask for the sale. Give people a ton of great actionable tips, information, etc… then AFTER you’ve done that use the law of reciprocity and say, “now that I’ve helped you do x (or solve x), check this out… it’ll help you solve y (or solve another part of x).”. That’ll close way higher than pushing for the sale upfront without providing value first. (isn’t that what friends do anyhow? )
Ask people what they want… then give that to them. Don’t underestimate the “smartness” of your market. They know way more than you do (most of the time) on what the heck it is they want… or what problems they need solved. So, ask your prospects what problems they have… then you need to go out and create something to solve their problem. Don’t create a product then go out and try to find the market for it… that’s backwards… start with the market, then the problem, then the product.
That’s really about all you need to do in virtually any market and you’ll be better off than 90% of your competitors.
Build A Following… Not A List…
All in all, what I’m trying to say here is what I learned in college is great for building brands and building lists. But when it comes to truly selling and being successful… you need to build followings and that isn’t easily done unless you can make a connection with your prospects… a personal connection.
So, stop building lists… start building followings… and start talking WITH your prospects rather than marketing TO them… you’ll be far better off in the long run and you’ll be wondering why your college professors didn’t teach you that way back when. I did.
This is nothing new… you’ve heard it said a billion times… “the money is in the list“.
I can say that you can make a good bit of money without a list (a site of mine makes almost $2k a month with a list of just over 100 subscribers)… but an email list (or mailing list also!) is another asset that you can leverage big time to create more revenues and repeat customers/visitors to your site.
Like I mentioned, you don’t NEED a list to be successful… but a list makes it a whole lot easier to be successful and keep your readers and customers coming back time and time again.
Before you go out and throw up your Aweber or Getresponse (or whoever else) autoresponder code… read this article to get a few pointers on how to increase opt ins just a bit. FYI… I have both Aweber and Getresponse accounts and like them both… really Aweber is probably the one I’d tell people to use… but Getresponse does the job too.
Throwing Up An Opt In Box On Your Site
First of all, if you aren’t collecting email subscribers to a newsletter on your site (no matter what kind of site you have), you should start doing it today. Even if you throw up a crappy opt in box and get 1 subscriber a week (as I did when I first got started)… that’s better than nothing!
Here’s what you need to do:
Head over to Aweber or Getresponse (they are the most widely used by Internet Marketers) and sign up for an account. Once you’re in there, follow their directions to create an opt in box that captures just the Firstname and Email address (or just email… I’ll discuss later).
Take the code that they give you and, if you’re using WordPress, go to the “Design” tab, then click “widgets”, and insert a “text box” in the right sidebar. Paste your code into there and save it.
That’s the easiest and quickest way to get an opt in box up and running. It might not be the prettiest… but it’s done and you are now at least ready to start collecting opt in subscribers.
I’m not going to go too much more into any technical details of how to do it… I’m going to cover other things based on a quick change that I made to one of my websites.
Making Your Opt In Box Appealing… and Boosting Conversions
As you might know, I finally got done launching the new design for a real estate investing website that I run (I am a real estate investor also… this site is actually what got me started in internet marketing). I like WordPress so that’s what the entire site is built from.
Anyhow, in the previous version I had an opt in box that looked like this:
This isn’t a bad form… but it didn’t produce a very good opt in rate. You’ll notice that I give many benefits of what people will get by opting into my newsletter… had that “nice” red arrow drawing the eye over to the form… but it just didn’t produce the results I was wanting.
I’d love to tell you the conversion rate on this form, but I really have no clue (I know, a cardinal sin in internet marketing).
Then, we relaunched the new site design and updated the opt in box with a few elements that have shown a huge increase in opt ins (like… more than 500%!!).
The New Opt In Box – And Results
Instead of the same tired looking opt in box on every page of our site, I decided to mix it up a bit and vary the placement/look of the opt in box in different places in the site.
Here’s the new opt in box on our home page:
The home page opt in box is placed in the middle of the home page right at the bottom of the fold (I wanted it above the fold but it just didn’t work out that way… I’ll have to do some tweaking to the set up of the page.
Here’s the new opt in box on our article pages:
This opt in box is placed in the TOP of the right sidebar of all of our article pages. It is of course ABOVE THE FOLD and really stands out to the eye.
Here’s the new opt in box on our blog home page:
Okay, for the blog I wanted the opt in box to be ABOVE THE FOLD also and be right in the middle of the page so people had to look right over it to see the articles below. It’s right next to the “popular articles” section and is very prominently placed in the structured of the blog.
The Elements Of An Effective News Letter Opt In Box To Increase Conversions
There are a ton of elements that go into an opt in box that can make it convert more effectively. I’m not a guru in opt in box creation (I actually made these ones myself… I’m not the greatest graphic or coding guy at all).
Here are a few elements I integrated that I think are leading to the 500% increase in opt in rate almost overnight.
It grabs the eye much better - This opt in box has the nice medium thickness RED BORDER, the big red arrow, and the nice “eye candy” to draw the eye over. If you don’t draw the eye over to the box the chances people will voluntarily navigate over there go down. Think about those annoying inflatable things they have on car lots or in front of cell phone stores that move and draw your attention. Same thing… first you need to get the attention… then give them something they want.
Eye candy - Eye candy is the stuff that makes the opt in box look cool and professional. I used the image of the software box and free report (to show that the things they are getting are real… and of higher value) as well as the big red arrows to jazz up the box and make the offer present as a higher value to the prospect.
Give Them Something Specific – In the past I’ve tried to just get people to opt into my newsletters by telling them benefits they’ll get and things they’ll learn. For me, that just didn’t work all that well. What works well is by giving people something specific (the software and ebook downloads free) in exchange for their email address. Imagine going into a restaurant and reading a menu that said “you’ll be satisfied, it’ll taste good, our price is good, and you’ll walk out happy”… but didn’t give you specifics on the food that you’ll actually get? That would be weird huh? How likely would you be to actually make an order? Probably not too likely. People like specifics, and like to know what they’re getting (exactly) before they make a move.
So, give people a free report, an audio download, a piece of software, etc. that is of REAL VALUE and that could be sold on it’s own if you weren’t giving it away.
Use Our Preprogrammed Colors – I’m not all that sold on my choice for the use of the red submit button. But, with this button… I have it programmed to turn green when someone hovers over the top of the button (head over to the site to check it out in action). With our society the color green means go… and people are more apt to gravitate toward taking a specific action when they are given “permission” to go with the green color.
I’m going to test out using a different color as the default color (other than red) to see if it makes a difference… but I’ve seen in other tests that the color red w/ a green color change upon hover works well. We’ll see after I get done testing.
Make It As Easy As Possible For Them – It’s been a debate recently among internet marketers whether or not it is better to collect firstname and email… or just email. Technically, all we really need is their email address to send to them; however, the firstname helps us to personalize the message to them… which is pretty darn effective as well. But, I put in just the email so it would be as easy as possible for people to submit. They only have to enter one thing and click submit… and don’t need to fret over giving their real name… or making up some fake name (like a lot of people do).
Some people argue that the firstname is necessary… I disagree. While the firstname is good to have, you can write very personal emails to people that give your personality that don’t include their name. Think about it… when you’re writing to your close friends, do you start the email with their name? I don’t. Also, having their firstname can backfire sometimes… like when people put in a fake name… their last name… their firstname in all capitols, etc.
What’s worse, writing an email full of your personality and not including their name? Or writing an email that starts with, “Hey VERIONICA,” or “Hey asdfatl,”? I’d venture to say that I’d rather put no name at all than blow my cover and SHOW THEM that this message isn’t personal at all.
Revamp Your Opt In Box Today
Okay, that kind of gives you a good idea of what you can implement in your own opt in boxes today to squeeze some more subscribers into your list. Sometimes the smallest changes can be huge (like my 500% increase in opt ins)… sometimes it may be small. But, changes might only take an hour to do and will feed extra customers into your funnel every day of the week forever.
If you need any help getting your opt in box up to snuff… let me know and I’d be glad to give you a few pointers. I’m not accepting any new clients until the end of August because of my workload on my own projects and the clients I already have… but if you have a project you want me to look at quickly let me know.
Recently Mark Joyner shot all of his affiliates (which I’m one) an email that he’s launching a thing similar to simpleology … but to teach integration marketing to help people grow their businesses. If you used Simpleology… you know that Mark provides huge value (especially since most of Simpleology and this new Integration Marketing thing are free!).
Anyhow, I was watching Mark’s videos for the Integration Marketing re-realized just how important it is to use integration marketing in today’s business (both online and offline)… but too many people still don’t do it!
If you have an online (or offline for that matter) business… and are looking for the quickest way to instantly add new revenues to your business in less time than it takes to make a PB & J sandwich (maybe a bit longer than this… but not much)… you need to learn about “integration marketing”.
I’ve heard the term integration marketing a few times but really didn’t understand it fully until I met Mike Filsaime and heard him speak in Orlando at Rich Schefren’s event this past February. When you hear about integration marketing you’ll be wondering why you hadn’t been doing it already… and be counting up the bucks you could have earned if you had implemented it just even a bit.
What Is Integration Marketing?
In simple terms, integration marketing is simply where you take your current business and integrate other products/services/offers, etc. (yours or someone elses) into your current sales and marketing funnels.
Here’s an example:
Let’s say that you own an online dog toy store and your current sales process looks like this.
Person lands on website and browses through products
Person finds a product they like, add it to their cart, and click “check out” to purchase
Person fills out the purchase form, clicks submit, and are taken to a nice thank you page where you say how much you appreciate their business and hope to see them again
That’s a pretty standard online sales process for most businesses… don’t you think? Let’s say your average sale in this process is $25.
Now, how about a little bit of integration marketing infused in the process:
You have the same dog toy store. Here’s the new and improved sales process.
Person lands on your website and you offer a newsletter to get discounts, free products, and an informational package on “how to train your dog to be smarter than Lassie”.
Person opts into the newsletter and gets a thank you page that says something like, “Thank you for subscribing! To show our appreciation, we’d like to give you a one-time coupon for $10 off of a purchase of $40 or more… but this coupon expires in 24 hours.” Then give them a link to browse the popular products.
Person browses the products (w/ this coupon in hand) and finds the products they want… but it only adds up to $25. So, naturally… they realize that for only $5 more they can get $40 worth of stuff. No brainer.
Person goes to check out with their $40 in products (of course they have the $10 off coupon), enters their coupon code, and completes the purchase.
Person is taken to a one time offer page (thank you + another offer) for an in-depth ebook and 60 minute DVD that normally sells for $37… but is on sale “this one time only” for $19… on “How To Train Your Dog To Do Tricks In 3 Days Or Less” (not your product… it’s someone elses!)
Person sees how great of a deal it is… and with one click… they upgrade their order to include the training product.
Persons order is now complete and they are taken to a thank you page with a message that says, “Thank you for your order! It will be in your hands in no time flat. Since you love dogs, we thought you’d also like these websites and products. Check them out!”.
Okay, that was actually a pretty simple integration marketing strategy. Did you see what happened?
Here it is…
Right off the bat the prospect was funneled to your newsletter (so you can keep in touch with them more easily) and given an incentive to order today… and to increase the overall order over your average order.
Then, the prospect did end up increasing their order a bit because “it’s a no brainer”… which gives them more value and gives you a higher average sale.
Then, the customer isn’t just taken to a plain ol’ thank you page… but instead to a “one time offer” that let’s them grab a highly related product (not your product… it’s an affiliate product) for a big discount.
Last, they are taken to a thank you page that nicely shows them more resources that they would probably be interested in anyway… and of course… you have found a way to monetize these resources by joining the affiliate programs for each company in case your customer goes through to purchase a product from their site.
The Integration Marketing Results…
In this case… of course this is an example… but you added several new revenue streams to your sales process… without hardly any extra effort or cost.
You made an extra $5 (of course you have product costs involved) on the initial purchase and gained goodwill
You made a 50% commission on the ebook and DVD sale, so that’s another $9.95.
Then, let’s say 1 out of every 25 customers clicks through the thank you page and buys something generating an average revenue for you of $5.
Following this example, you would have increased your average revenue per order from just $25 to between $35 and $45. That’s an increase of about 40% to 75% in revenues with no extra costs involved other than the cost to pay someone to add in that extra page or two (which shouldn’t be more than $100 in total).
Can You Use An Increase Of Revenues Of Mid To High Double Digits??
That’s kind of a stupid question isn’t it?
Well… it really is a no brainer… and the process of integration marketing is pretty simple.
Instead of having a plain ol’ thank you page for your purchases and email list opt ins… make the thank you page a “one time offer” or something that provides something to your customer that is very high value for the price… and that they can only get that ONE TIME (there has to be scarcity involved or it won’t work very well).
Look for products and services that are complimentary to yours. Talk to the product/service owners and strike up a deal with them where you show their product on your thank you pages… and you split the revenues. Who would say no to that?
Always give your customer/prospect a chance to “upgrade” to something a bit better... for small price difference. If you offer a service that costs $500 a month… create an extra bonus or two (30 minutes of time w/ you, etc.) and create a platinum version of the service for just $699… then give them the option of upgrading for that small price difference.
Really, it doesn’t matter how you choose to integrate your other products… or products from other people… into your sales process. But, the important thing is that you DO IT.
Here’s Your Action Plan
Look at your current sales process and find out where you can offer people something complimentary (or an upgrade).
Find products that people would be likely to use before or after purchasing your product… and see if you can strike a deal with them where you show their product on your thank you page (preferably for a small discount or w/ an extra bonus involved)… and have them show your product on their thank you page (or offline equivalent such as an insert into the shipping package, etc.).
Rinse and repeat
Enjoy!
I’ll go over some more specific examples of how integration marketing is used on some real world websites here in the next few weeks.
——————-
One quick note… Mark Joyner (one of the top online and offline entrepreneurs I know) just put out a great free “Integration Marketing” tutorial and business package for you to use in your business. I’ve signed up for a free account and love the info in there including the free Integration Marketing ebook he has in the free members portal.
While I was doing a bit of research and trying to analyze why some sites are ranking high for very competitive search terms…
… I ran across a site that is currently ranking #1 in Goolge for the search term "Cheap Viagra " .
While digging through some of their inbound links I quickly found that a very popular tech website is actually helping them rank #1 because the link spammers pushing this site up to the top slipped a link into one of the Techcrunch web pages.
The Techcrunch post dates back to the summer of 2006… and this link spam was made in early 2007 and blatantly includes 2 links back to their website. (the bottom comment).
(t looks like comments are closed on that post now (as far as I can tell)… but I wonder why Techcrunch hasn’t taken it down yet. It’s probably that they get so many comments on posts they might not manually moderate comments anymore… but instead use spam filters to do the bulk of the work (this is just a guess though… )
Anyhow, this is a good lesson to put the term "viagra" in your Askimet spam filter.
So… technically… without knowing it … Techcrunch has helped this site get to the top of a huge money term and I’m sure rake in thousands of sales each and every day (Clarification… Techcrunch isn’t raking in thousands from this, the Viagra site owner is).
Just to be clear, I don’t write this post to implicate Techcrunch on anything or insinuate that they even know about this comment on their site… I’m positive they probably don’t have a clue the comment is even on their site. It just goes to show that ANY website can let spam comments slip through… and we all need to be sure to monitor the comments we approve to keep our company image and professionalism intact. You never know if a comment like this could turn off prospect reading your website… and cost you real dollars.
Is blog commenting still working for SEO?
Yep… sure is…
Just ask the comment spammers behind the "Cheap Viagra" Google leaders. Pretty much every inbound link I found going to their site is from comment spam… but not in a way that is blatant URL stuffed generic spam that we all see in our Askimet spam folders everyday.
It seems that a lot of the comments left on blogs from this URL do somewhat reference the post and/or the blog writers name… so they aren’t overtly spammy. So, I guess you can call this spamming with a personal touch .
Seems to work (but I wouldn’t be able to tell you from first hand experience .
I’m sure you’ve seen the videos of this guy named Matt Harding doing his crazy "gumby-like" dance all around the world in front of well known monuments and landmarks in pretty much every country known to man.
If not… you really NEED to check the videos out for yourself… they are simple… but you’ll instantly see why millions of people have viewed the videos over the past couple years. Actually… his most recent video (check it out below) was uploaded into Youtube on June 20th (3 days ago) and already has almost 2 million views… wow!
Anyhow, Matt did it again and just put out his most recent "Dancing Video " with a bunch of new locations… but he put a different twist on this dancing video.
What twist?… you say…
A new dance? NOPE… the same crazy (or stupid… ) dance as before.
A new sponsor? NOPE… Stride sponsored this one too.
The twist that Matt put on this most recent Where the Hell Is Matt "Dancing Video" is a twist of humanity. Rather than Matt dancing alone… in every stop around the world Matt had big groups of people from that country joining in on the dance enjoying themselves each and every second.
Here’s the most recent video if you haven’t already watched it:
Making a viral video isn’t an easy task… but new viral videos are created virtually everyday… usually by people who didn’t intend it to go viral… and didn’t expect to attempt to make a profit from it. That’s part of what makes a video viral… it has to be genuine… remarkable… relevant… and pull on one or more of the psychological triggers that compel us to be drawn toward certain things.
If you’ve watched Matt’s other videos you can see that they all are similar and play on the same wants/desires/ and core identities of human beings.
What’s The Hook?
Just like in advertising and direct response marketing Matt’s "Dancing" videos didn’t become a big hit because they were dull, overused, and uncompelling. The videos worked because they had a "hook" that worked so well with people that people could identify with the video and the message that it sent.
In Matt’s first videos there were a few hooks that drew people in:
People desire to live life to the fullest … even though 90% of everyone alive isn’t living the life they truly want to live. Traveling the world is a dream that many people have deep down in their core because they know that life has more to offer than what they’ve seen and experienced so far.
Matt’s Story … Without the story behind the story these videos probably wouldn’t have had the affect and reach that they did. People identify with stories better than facts… and like to relate what we’re seeing to the story behind what we’re seeing… it becomes more real and genuine when we can peer behind the curtain a bit. Matt worked his ass off for a few years and one day realized that this isn’t what life is all about. There’s no way we were created to slave away in cubicles for 40-80 hours a week and be forced to start living our lives when we retire. So… quit his job… packed up… and spent the next year and a half traveling the word. Really… who the heck wouldn’t want to do that? I’d venture to say that almost everyone deep down in their core wants to do that… whether you think you do or not.
Going against the grain … Matt could have made that trip and did what every other tourist does… take a few pictures or a video of himself standing in front of cool stuff in each country. But, that wouldn’t have gotten even 1,000 views on Youtube probably. Instead, Matt does this crazy "dance" in front of recognizable places around the world… and completely melds the "usual" (the locations) with the "unusual" (the dance)…
In Matt’s newest video (the one on this page)… it plays on the same "hooks"… but Matt knew that a 3rd trip around the world doing the same thing wouldn’t get much legs on the internet. So, he added in the element of getting locals to join in on the dance… truly making it a joining of nationalities across all language barriers.
The added hook of humanity has so far helped this newest video to go viral again.
So, Let’s Break Down The Triggers and Success Elements
Any marketing promotion, advertising campaign, or video has to tug at one or more of our psychological triggers.
I think that the Where the Hell Is Matt video series play on the EXACT same triggers as Tim Ferriss’s book "4 Hour Work Week ".
We all…
Hate to work a 9-5 job and know there is more out there
Have an ultimate dream to travel the world and/or experience things beyond our little cocoon when we "retire" (in actuality… we’d all rather do all of that now… but have a mixed up view on what life ‘is supposed’ to be like)
Are vulnerable and like to see that others are vulnerable and imperfect like we are (Matt’s dance… he could have said, "I’m not going to put this on the internet… people will laugh at me"… but he didn’t… and people admire that)
Realize by watching the video that we CAN experience the same thing Matt did if we truly want to… all we have to do is step out of our comfort zones and make the decision
With Matt’s latest "Where The Hell Is Matt" Dancing video it’s so successful because it of course grabs at our desires to "live life and see new things", brings the unexpected (the crazy dance in front of well known locations worldwide), and now brings a touch of humanity that we can all relate to.
The idea of filming yourself in front of places around the world, putting music to the video, and putting it on Youtube isn’t anything new. It’s been done before… and didn’t go viral… not even close.
However, a great marketing principle is to take two things that we all know and like… but that are usually unrelated… and combine them into one. Often this synergy makes the difference. Matt joined travel and uninhibited dancing… and it was a hit.
Another recent video that went viral that simply joined two things that we all know and like… was the "Wii Fit Girl " video. This video joined the craze that the new Wii Fit launch caused… and combined it with the voyeuristic look at a hot girl in her underwear using the Wii Fit. This video has got almost 5 million views in the last 30 days.
All In All…
Okay… I’m rambling a bit now (I tend to do that sometimes … so I’ll leave you with this.
There is no hard and fast system that guarantees a video will go viral. All you can do is study the videos that have gone viral, pinpoint why they are appealing, and start to make a list of things. Over time you’ll see that all viral videos play on our own psychological triggers and usually combine 2 or more of those triggers into a "new" thing we’ve never seen before.
So, here it is:
Come up with a new idea that no one has ever explored before (difficult), or
Put a new twist on an "old" idea with a fresh new perspective
Keep your video usually under 5 minutes
Capitolize on a "craze" or trend
Go after 2 or more psychological triggers
Good luck in creating your next viral video and you’ve gotta hand it to Matt for following his dream and putting a new twist on his success to keep legs under it at least for the rest of the summer.
Social media is kind of a confusing term for most businesses today… let alone knowing how the heck to use it to benefit their online presence and profits.
So, I thought I’d give you a quick tutorial on one way to use social media websites like digg.com , fark.com , de.licio.us , twitter.com , etc… to drive traffic to your website very quickly… and build multiple search engine rankings in the shortest amount of time possible.
Well… everyone. Everyone who wants more traffic , more quickly , more often , and for less money and effort . Is that you? If not, I’m going to have to ask you to push the back button on your browser and head over to your favorite news site and not come back here again ( , seriously ).
All kidding aside, every business who has a website should institute this simple Social Media optimization strategy (or one like it) for your important and high quality content.
What Is Social Media and Why Does It Help Your Website?
In simple terms, a Social Media website is a place where a community of people come to share things on the internet, network and connect with others, and find things that are related to their likes and interests.
Sounds simple huh? Well… it is.
Social Media can help your website and business in many ways including:
Monitoring the discussion in your market… and about your business and products
Engaging in the conversation with your market… and building a stronger relationship with them
Networking to find new business joint ventures, partners, etc.
But, in this tutorial I’m just going to cover the part of building links back to your website and content (SEO) and driving traffic to your website quickly and easily.
Social Media Optimization for SEO and Driving Quick Traffic
In simple terms, what we’re going to do here is in 4 simple steps:
Create high quality content worth telling people about
Go to social media websites and let them know about your content, what it’s about, and create a good and compelling headline that piques peoples curiosity about your content
Integrate multiple social media websites together (news and RSS feed aggregators, bookmarking services, and video/podcast posting websites) in a way that best builds a web of links back to your content
Rinse and repeat for new content
Really, traffic can come from a few different places by using a strategy like this.
First , you get traffic from people clicking through to view your content (article, video, picture, etc.)
Second , you get traffic from search engines because the actual "bookmarks" or "submissions" on the social media website often show up great in search results (and very fast!) when you title it with the keywords and phrases that your target market is likely to search.
Third , many people who have websites and blogs read these social media websites every day looking for things to write about. If they see something worth passing along to their readers, they’ll write about your article and usually link back to your website… driving traffic to your site and building high quality links.
Okay, here we go…
Step 1: Create High Quality Content Worth Telling People About
This step is pretty self-explanatory… but not as simple as it sounds. The internet today is packed with more information than the world ever dreamed of just 20 years ago. This means that there are more competing places for your target markets attention. Jeff Widman calls this type of content "wall-able "… meaning we should strive to create content that people would want to print off and hang on their wall because it is so profound, entertaining, valuable, etc.
In order to grab their attention… and keep it… you need to create high quality, high trust, content that is different than the other millions of web pages with similar content.
Whether it be separating yourself by being:
Humorous
More relevant
More detailed
More honest
More cutting edge
More timely
and on and on…
You need to separate yourself from the pack in some way so your target market stands up and notices what you have to say… and cares about what you have to say. You can be mediocre and get noticed at first… but mediocrity does not last for the long haul and is way more expensive than just spending the extra time and effort to concentrate on getting only high quality stuff out there.
Here are some great resources to check out to help you learn how to create memorable content that will get you noticed:
Just remember, when creating content… ask yourself the question, "Why would someone care about this?". If you have a good and solid answer for why someone truly would care about your content… excellent… post it and market the heck out of it. If not, keep writing.
Writing A Compelling Yet Relevant SEO Enhanced Title:
Part of creating great content is to create a great title (or "headline") for your content. Great compelling headlines will likely be read more through the social media websites because people will be compelled to click on them more.
Also, the title of the article, post, video, etc. should contain the keywords and phrases your target audience is likely to type into search engines.
FOR EXAMPLE:
You just wrote content packed article on the in’s and out’s of writing a kick @ss elevator speech.
You want to make sure the title of the article reflects what the article is about, is compelling, and has the keyword phrases that people are actually typing in search engines when looking for the solution your article helps them solve.
So, head over to: (and bookmark this site for future reference)
Once you’re there type in "elevator speech" and see what types of searches people are ACTUALLY typing into the search engines.
In there you find…
These phrases are the actual phrases that people are typing in to search engines to get information on "elevator speeches". The numbers to the left of the phrases is the estimate of "daily" searches for that specific search phrase. Keyword Tracker doesn’t include Google in these estimates, which accounts for 2/3 of all searches on the net… so if you multiply the number on the left by 3… that’ll give you a decent idea of the search volume (still, this is just good for an overall look at phrases and volume… not 100% accurate).
In this search you see that the most searches are the phrases:
"elevator speech"
"elevator speech realtor example" (this shows that you might want to write an article specifically about elevator speeches for realtors)
"elevator speech examples"
another is "how to write an elevator speech"
So, now sit down with this new found knowledge and try to integrate one of these phrases (ideally one with more searches) into your content title.
For instance, if your article is on how to write an elevator speech… but you also include 7 examples of great elevator speeches… you might write something like:
"7 Elevator Speech Examples From Millionaire Entrepreneurs and How To Write One Yourself "
or
"How To Write An Elevator Speech That Actually Loses You Money "
Ya, I admit… the first one is a bit long… but you get the picture. With the second title, I used the reverse psychology principle. People will want to read the article simply to make sure their elevator speech isn’t one of the one’s that "lose money".
Notice how I integrated the "elevator speech examples" phrase and added some elements that will hopefully pique the interest of the reader.
Anyhow, that is a quick primer course on writing headlines for SEO and to make them compelling for readers to click on. For more info on writing headlines and content head over to copyblogger … he usually has some pretty darn good content over there on writing online copy.
Step 2: Let Social Media Websites Know About Your Content
The first time you do this step it will take you a bit of time… mostly because you need to go and set up free accounts at each site before you can post content. After your free accounts are all set up (usually takes no more than 5 minutes to set up free accounts on each site), you can really automate the posting process pretty easily.
There are a lot of places to find great social media websites that you can post your content to… and I’m not going to make a full list of social media sites (there are hundreds… maybe thousands), but we’ll just use a solid base of 20-50 social media sites to get the word out.
Rather than redoing the work that other people have already done… here are a couple links that have great lists of social media websites that are great for driving traffic and building great links and buzz for your website.
Tropical SEO’s List (good list as well… he’s got some that I hadn’t heard of)
At first, pick 20-30 social media sites (just go w/ the first 30 Dosh Dosh lists or the ones that socialmarker.com has)… and use them for your first batch of social media optimization. I like starting off small so you don’t get overwhelmed by the process and give up because it seems like too much work.
How To Get The Word Out:
There are a bunch of different ways to get your content onto these social media websites. One approach is to do each submission one at a time, which is good just so you learn the process… but takes way too much time if you do it every time.
I prefer to use services that help speed up the "bookmarking" and "submission" process like:
Socialmarker.com is a "semi-automatic" social media posting service that lets you post your content to about 50 of the top social media websites in probably about 25% of the time it would take you to go to each website individually. I use it a lot of the time because it’s easy and is free.
Onlywire.com is pretty much the same as socialmarker… but with a few different bookmarking sites… and about half of the choices. Really, they both do the same thing (socialmarker supports more sites though) so check them both out and use the one (or use both) that you like the best.
Really, it doesn’t matter how you end up submitting your content to these social media websites… it just matters that it is done… and done correctly. If I were you, I’d start off doing it yourself the first couple times so you can then train someone else to do it in your company… or hire a Virtual Assistant to do it for you (which is what I do).
Submitting Your Content:
Head over to Socialmarker.com and fill in the box in the upper right hand corner of the page with your:
Content title (optimized for SEO as I wrote above and compelling)
The link to the content
Text explaining the content in a compelling way. You are looking to persuade people to click on your article.
Tags. Basically, type terms that are related to your content. So, if you’re writing on elevator speeches you might use, "elevator speech, how to write, marketing, personal branding" etc.
From there, of course click "submit" and the social marker site will take you to each social media website to submit your content. The first time through you’ll have to set up accounts at each site… so it may take a little while… but after that it shouldn’t take longer than 15-20 minutes to submit to more than 40 social media websites.
Advanced Social Bookmarking:
I won’t go into depth on this because this is a whole other article… but when you really get into social bookmarking your content… you’ll want to create multiple accounts at each social media website.
The reason for this is to of course provide more links to your content … but also to spread the submissions out across multiple accounts so it isn’t obvious that you are only submitting your own content… which social media sites tend to not like. Newsvine.com actually is pretty strict on this and my first time through I got my account canceled in just 3 weeks because I only submitted my OWN content.
And, it is important to bookmark content other than your own periodically to make it look like you aren’t only on their site to submit your content.
In addition, multiple accounts lets you leverage all of the accounts together to form a big web of links between your content and your websites… resulting in better search rankings (that’s the idea anyway).
But, don’t worry about these techniques yet except for the one about being sure to bookmark other articles other than your own periodically to throw off the social media sites from "thinking" that you are only bookmarking your own content.
The Aftermath (RESULTS):
After you bookmark your content with the targeted title, you should begin to see traffic coming in within 24 hours.
How much traffic?
Well… that depends on the quality of your content and how compelling your title was written.
Also, by submitting your content to the social media sites… the search engines (especially Google) will follow the links back to your website and index your content almost immediately. I’ve had my content show up in Google within 2 hours before… which is huge.
Here is a screen shot of the results of one article (with a video I created) after I optimized the article and video in social media. This was taken just 2 days after I did the submissions. This is the first page of a search for the name of a pretty popular product. The first two results are #1: the manufacturer of the product and #2 Amazon.com. After that, I take up 7 or the 8 remaining spots with either my website or social media pointing back to my content.
I didn’t post that screenshot to brag… just to illustrate the point that social media optimization really works when done correctly.
Step 3: Build The "Web" Of Links That All Lead Back To Your Company
The whole aim of social media optimization is to lead people back to you and your company in some way, shape, or form.
Really, I don’t care how people get back to my website… I just care that they do .
The best way to ensure you attract the most visitors back to your website is to cast the largest "web" out on the net.
You can do this by integrating social media and other internet marketing techniques together to get your content out to as many places as possible.
Here are some methods to build your "web":
Social Media Marketing (as described in this article)
RSS Feed Syndication
Video Marketing / Content Producing
Podcasts
Press Releases and Articles (I won’t cover these here)
And on and on. Once again, this is a whole other article… so I’ll go over it briefly.
RSS Feed Syndication:
An rss feed is simply a way that people can easily read the content from your website without actually going to your website. For example, you can "subscribe" to a feed and read the articles in your Google Feedreader or other feed reading service. Yahoo news (and most other give news aggregation sites) use RSS feeds to gather the news and put it on their own website for their visitors to see.
The first step is to head over to www.feedburner.com and set up a free account. Once you have your account up and running "burn a feed" (video instructions here ) for your website/blog, etc… and you’re done.
Now, whenever you write an article, your RSS feed is automatically updated. Now, you can use this "new feed" provided by Feedburner to submit your feed to website and blog directories like Technorati.com , Yahoo News, and www.pingomatic.com which will get your content out to multiple websites automatically every time you write new content.
Pretty slick huh? There is more to RSS feeds than this… but this gives you a good idea where to start and why to use RSS feed syndication.
Video Marketing / Content Creation:
Another pillar of your "web" should be video. Video is a very effective way to drive people back to your website, teach online, provide great value, and generate more traffic.
Film a video of you talking about how your target market can solve a particular solution (that you help them solve)… or do a powerpoint presentation with your voice over… title your videos using the tips I mentioned earlier… place your website URL in the video to drive people back to your site… and submit the video to multiple video sharing sites like Youtube.com , Revver.com , Viddler.com , and others.
This is essentially the same concept as the social media marketing … but you are now creating video as your content and submitting the video to video sharing websites.
The same thing goes with submitting the videos…
You can do them one at a time yourself… or use websites like the ones below to "automatically" submit your videos in 5% of the time.
Tubemogul.com – Free video submission service. I use this one quite a bit and it works great… but it doesn’t support a lot of the video sharing website I like to use. Great for free though.
Trafficgeyser – Membership based automatic video submitting service that supports many more video sharing sites than Tubemogul. The plans run between $50 and $97 / month and have a ton more features in addition to just submitting your videos. I’m pretty sure they still have the $1 30 day trial . I used to be a member but now I go with Tubemogul quite a bit and my Virtual Assistants who do the video posting for me using my systems.
Either way, I suggest you either hire out the video submitting or use one of the automatic posting services above.
That screenshot you saw earlier where I dominated many of the top 10 spots in google for the product name… most of those results came from these video sites.
Podcasts :
I haven’t gotten into podcasts a whole lot… but I do know that they work great for getting out your message and converting people into clients.
Since I’m not an expert on using Podcasts… I’ll point you over to Paul Colligan who is one of the top business podcasting experts in the world.
Bottom line… podcasts are just another way to get your word out and grab more attention.
———-
Whew!
I know this article was a tad bit long… but I wanted to go into as much detail as possible on the overall social media optimization process that I use to easily generate:
More traffic to my own (and my clients) websites
Traffic more quickly
More links to my websites
Better search engine rankings
Really, the process sounds somewhat daunting at first… but once you go through the process the first time you’ll see how easy it is.
The really important part of making this work for your business is systematizing the whole social media optimization process so it is as hands off for YOU as possible. Have a secretary or intern in your office take over the system… outsource it to a Virtual Assistant… hire a consultant (like myself) to take it totally off of your hands… etc.
Your job is to focus on creating quality content and serving your customers better… this social media optimization process simply helps you get the word out on the internet much more quickly, efficiently, and cheaply.
Any Question On The Value Of This System?
I know a social media marketing plan like this one is very valuable to my business and the businesses of my clients. However, many small and medium sized businesses fail to see the value… until they see the targeted traffic coming in as a result.
Social media marketing / optimization works in all markets . From ecommerce sites like Amazon.com… all the way to mainly offline businesses like attorneys, insurance salesmen, consultants, etc.
Develop a social media marketing and optimization plan (use mine to start) and get going! You can have more targeted traffic later this afternoon if you want!
——
Social Media Marketing combined with traditional direct response Internet Marketing strategies and SEO are truly a killer combination for driving more traffic and converting it better. If you’d like to hire Trevor Mauch to help you get the most out of your small or medium sized business website for the highest ROI possible … contact him to schedule a consultation today .
**UPDATE**
I am currently booked out for the next 60 days with project based and retainer clients. I do have 2 projects scheduled to be completed soon… so email me so I can place you in my consultation cue and get your project moving asap. I look forward to doubling your online ROI today!
"Mr. Mauch, now please click the ‘upgrade account’ button on the left side of your account page ", the polite gal says in a slight Indian accent.
"Well… I truly wish I could but it’s not there… but I do know where it is. Let me go there and click it ", I said in a mildly perturbed tone.
"Okay Mr. Mauch, please do. Then, click the ‘upgrade my account to a business account’ link on the right side and complete the short form and click ‘submit ‘", explained Remzi who is very good at doing exactly what she was trained to do as a Paypal customer service rep.
"Alrighty, I’ve done this same thing about 16 times in the last 24 hours and it takes me to an error page (actually a ‘Page Not Found’ page) every time… I’ve followed the 4 responses from email support with no success… changed computers… changed internet networks… but I’ll try it again for one last college try ", I said in a quasi-sarcastic way that I tend to do.
As I filled out the form once again as I had already done 16 times, I got to the bottom of the page and that corny movie suspense filled music crept into my mind as I hovered my mouse pointer over the "submit" button praying that this ordeal would finally be over.
Click…
"Yep, same thing. Big fat error. Is there anyway you can upgrade me over the phone rather than me wasting another 2 hours of my time trying to do a 5 minute task on your website? ", I pleaded to Remzi.
"No Mr. Mauch, that is ALL I can do for you from here… that sounds like a technical problem to me. Here’s the technical support number… they SHOULD be able to help you. "
And the saga continues…
Customer Service Isn’t Customer Service… It’s Marketing In Disguise
As I type this, the ordeal I just played out (by the way, that is a real situation) is still in mid plot.
My problem hasn’t been solved
I’ve already wasted more than 2 hours on this stupid little task hoping the solution would be one click away
I’ve now worked with no less than 4 different customer service people
Now instead of "putting up" with this company’s lackluster customer service in the past… I’m actively searching for another option that isn’t such a pain in the ass
I’m not going to spend a ton more time on this issue… but in the time I’ve spent with these very nice and polite… and well scripted outsourced customer "service" reps from Paypal… I’ve really been reminded of a very important fact that many companies completely forget about.
Customer service = Marketing
Customer service isn’t a task that should be put off as merely a "support" task. Customer service truly plays an active role in retaining current customers… and attracting new ones.
Take my situation for instance, I’ve never really regarded Paypal as a company who has award winning customer service… but the products/services Paypal offers are pretty darn good and really the best option for many situations. So, I’ve happily used them.
However, this is the first time I’ve had an issue with Paypal… and it’s not even a very complicated or all that important issue when you really get down to it. It’s an issue with a link not taking me to the page I need to go to… should be simple huh?
So, Here’s My Question…
What would be easier (for me and them), save more time (for me and them), save more money (for me and them), and result in an all around positive experience for both me and Paypal?
Simple really.
When a current customer calls in to support after dealing with email support (multiple times) with no avail… why can’t customer support act like a marketer and take care of the problem FOR ME over the phone… instead of walking me through the SAME steps I’ve already taken (that didn’t work)… then asking me to call another department (not even forwarding the call for me)??
Not sure. Pretty simple business answer to me… and I’m sure Ebay’s(owns Paypal) shareholders would be asking the same question.
Customer Service = Marketing
Bad customer service (this company had great reps, responded quickly, but has never solved the problem) can harm your business… and provide negative PR like this article.
Why not turn that into a positive experience and create a raving fan… which can actually attract new clients?
Last Thought…
Too many companies out there focus so much on getting customer service reps technically proficient and polished rather than empowering them to solve the customers problem at all reasonable cost .
What’s reasonable? That’s for the company to decide.
But, I’m pretty sure Paypal (Ebay) can agree that allowing a customer service rep to upgrade my personal account to a business account (when their website isn’t working) on the phone for me is not unreasonable… therefore making that an excellent opportunity to further "market" their great company to me to solidify it’s already strong position in my mind.
Well, take a look at how your email open rates stack up against industry averages for the month of April (and how they stack up against my own open rates for myself and my clients). No matter what people say… email marketing is NOT DEAD.
For spammers and people who cram offers down subscribers throats everyday… ya, maybe email marketing ain’t what it used to be.
But, for us marketers who focus on building relationships with our subscribers… email marketing is still one of the best ways to communicate with your audience and compel them to take certain actions.
Here Are Email Open Rate Averages for April 2008
According to Aweber (one of the top subscription email/autoresponder services… and yes, that is an affiliate link , Thursdays between 2 and 3 pm were the time when the open rates were the best across their network.
In their article , Aweber shows these open rate statistics for April 2008.
Average Open Rate in April = 13.6%
Highest Open Rate Day was Thursday with 14.52%
Lowest Open Rate Day was Saturday with 12.09%
The Highest Hour Open Rate was Thursday between 2-3pm with 19.1%
Anyhow, this backs up the stance that Tuesdays and Thursdays are the best days to send email according to open rate stats. That’s when I sent my own emails and when I send my clients email newsletters. Those two days have always produced a higher open rate for me and my clients.
Consistently Beating the Email Open Rate Averages…
As I wrote in an earlier article about email open rates , I’ve consistently boosted open rates in my own email newsletters and newsletters for my clients to around 19 – 24% every time (almost every time . In fact, we just sent out a newsletter on Wednesday this week just to retest the results… and so far we are already at an almost 18% open rate and the email went out less than 24 hours ago. So, I think this one will get right around the 20% rate once everyone on the list has a chance to check out the email.
The internet is becoming overloaded with information and people are having a tough time deciding where they should get their information from… so they go where they trust and where they feel they have a bond.
If you use your newsletter more as a relationship builder than a pitch fest, I can guarantee you that people will actually look forward to your emails.
Mix your emails with unexpected elements, humor, high quality content with no strings attached… and watch your open rates climb.
Use email newsletters to build relationships and you’ll see the results paid out in higher reader interactivity and more profits in the end.
Hey, let me know how your email open rates are going. I’m always curious to see what other people are doing find out why their results are the way they are (whether good or bad).
I’m in the tech scene as far as figuring out how to use technology for better and more effective marketing goes… I’m not much of a "techie" when it comes to digging into code to figure things out.
I like to know a bit about the technology I’m working with whenever I use it for marketing purposes… simply for the reason that when you know something and how it works… you might be able to take it to another level with just a few changes or additions that you wouldn’t have thought about if you didn’t know how the thing worked in the first place.
Anyhow, today I was doing a bit of research on flash video because I want to start using branded flash players on my own sites… and on the sites of my clients so we can provide a better user experience for our viewers and to get a few more capabilities out of the video that simply posting on Youtube /Revver /Viddler , etc. don’t let me do.
Well, I came across the next evolution in online video…
AND IT’S COMPLETELY AMAZING!
This technology is truly crazy as heck… and my head is spinning with ways to use it for marketing purposes (once it gets a bit more mainstream… and less expensive!).
Interactive 360 Immersive Full Motion Video
Check out the video below of this stuff. Once the video starts and loads… you can use your mouse to move around the video (360 degrees spherical) while the video is IN MOTION. That means you can look around… but also up, down, diagonal… any direction just like you are IN the video.
This is big time "Immersive video" that gives a whole new meaning to "user experience". This technology is by the same guys who created the Google Street View technology.
There are a bunch of other videos like these that are amazing. Check ‘em out and let me know your thoughts on how this technology will change the online video game for marketing and user experience.
You've found the blog of Trevor Mauch, entrepreneur, marketer, investor... and lover of life. I created this blog to help you get the most of the web, life, real estate, and your biz.
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