WorthOverDoing

If you are in a Network Marketing business and you are selling or convincing your prospect to join you are doing it all wrong.

Building a successful network marketing business is not about selling its about education. However many people in the industry make the mistake of applying sales techniques to “Close the Sale” forcing the prospect into purchasing/joining their business and wondering why they are failing. 
 
The Guided Purchase
Going for a guided close takes place during direct, person-to-person conversation which might be on the phone, or at the end of a meeting.
 
They have sat through a presentation, and now it’s your turn to go for the sale and “close” the deal … it’s decision time.
 
Many pros have mastered the guided purchase and they have developed a response for every objection. They have a list of their prospects desires, their wish list, and their emotional triggers which they acquired from the previous “interview” conversations.
 
They will personally “guide” them down a path that leads to a purchase. 
 
If you are skilled at the guided purchase, that prospect is going to “buy” today whether they want to or not. However, it is NOT the best way for keeping sales as the person is buying for all the wrong reasons which always leads to buyer’s remorse shortly after.

There are several reasons why the guided approach doesn’t work and it comes down to one primary piece of psychology:
 
“A person convinced against their will is of the same opinion still.”
 
Many times during a guided purchase, the salesperson will get the prospects emotions flowing and they have no time to think logically which is the recipe that always leads to a sale which is why it’s the primary tool of choice for direct response marketers.

This “heart only” approach is extremely effective, but counter-productive for the Network Marketing industry because you are not making a one-time sale…
 
You are looking for the years of commitment it will take to build a successful network marketing business. 

Unfortunately, when those emotions dissipate and logic sets in, the person may regret the decision they made and they usually end up quitting within days or weeks.

Personally I prefer the voluntary close. This works best for building a successful network marketing business as the prospect “sells themselves” and makes the decision to purchase on their own.

Technorati Tags: Conversations, Decision Time, Direct Response, Emotions, Heart, Marketers, Marketing Industry, Mistake, Nbsp, Network Marketing Business, Objection, Person To Person, Prospects, Psychology, Purchasing, Remorse, Salesperson, Sat, Successful Network Marketing, Wish List

One of the simplest and most overlooked aspects of online marketing is that it’s not complicated. More precisely, there are a lot of “experts” who try to make it complicated. Aside from whatever motivation they might have to do that online profits happen as the result of one simple equation –

Traffic + Conversion = Sales

– performed over & over again

There are MANY ways to get traffic (visitors) to your site and get them to take some action or “convert,” which will either result in more leads or (less frequently) result directly in more sales to your business.

So here’s the other simple rule — you only need to master 1 or 2 traffic methods and 1 or 2 conversion methods, and you will make money. You don’t need to master the entire kitchen to make a grilled cheese sandwich, and you don’t need to know EVERYTHING about internet marketing in order to add revenue to your business.

With that in mind, there are a few basic traffic techniques I’ve implemented in some of my sites and client sites that have universally and consistently WORKED. Here are a few of those methods — but remember, you only need to pick one or two:

Increasing Visitor Count

1) Twitter is a highly effective means of targeting your niche and developing the conversation with your customers and prospects. There really is nothing like it. However, most businesses don’t know how to use Twitter effectively. They spam with “sales tweets” — “Look at the cool new thing I’m selling.” The 80/20 rule is highly effective — 80% of your tweets should be about something interesting, funny or otherwise engaging… a question of the day like “What’s for lunch?”… anything to get people talking, laughing, thinking… Also, keep it consistent and be generous with re-tweets. A few tweets a day go a long way toward establishing a rabid list of followers. The wrong thing to do is to Tweet like a madman for a day or two and then disappear for a month. Or worse, don’t reply when someone direct messages you or @messages you. That’s like ignoring someone at a dinner party when they ask you to pass the gravy. You WON’T get any dessert.

2) Video marketing is a very fast way to rank your site and get lots of inbound traffic. Keep your videos consistent — don’t show up one day in a baseball cap and dark lighting, talking about the rain, and another day bouncing in a jungle gym screaming about business leads. Consistent message, consistent tone, consistent look & feel. Also, be sure to put a call to action in your video’s description, as well as the full URL of your website’s landing page, and use appropriate keywords.

3) Article marketing is an evergreen method for outstanding traffic generation, with one HUGE caveat — mix it up! Putting the same article on 400 article directories will get you nowhere fast. You will get a bump in traffic from all the inbound links until Google figures out they’re all the same article and basically count it as one link. There are content spinners out there that alter the content of your articles automatically, but you have to be very careful here as well. Most content spinners change a word or two to replace it with a synonym, or they mash up the article randomly so the output is basically junk that cannot be read. It has to pass human review. So if you’re looking for a quality content spinner, ideally you want to be able to change the entire sentence many times throughout the article, and then have it spin those into hundreds of different articles. That’s the professional way to do it. At the bottom of your article, have a call to action in the information field; a blurb about you (the author) and a link to a free guide the reader can pick up at your website.

Visitors Taking Action

1) Keep it simple. The landing page has to do ONE thing — get people to ACT. For this reason, it’s been called a SINGLE ACTION PAGE. Pear it down to the bare essence of what you need the visitor to do. Consider placing a video on the page with a very simple message, “Hey thanks for stopping by for my free whizbang. Just type in your first name and e-mail address and I will rush it right over to you. In just a moment after you send your information, you’ll get an e-mail with a confirmation link. Click that link and I will instantly send your free whizbang.”

2) Direct, direct, direct. Notice the video script in #1 above — see how we instructed the user on exactly what they need to do? And then we told them what to expect next, and what they would then need to do. And we closed with a reminder of the benefit — the free whizbang.

If you have trademarked the term “whizbang,” then I apologize in advance.

3) Test, test, test. ALWAYS have two versions of your landing page operating at one time. You can optimize your landing page using freely available Google tools in the Web Optimizer toolbox. You really can’t go on “gut” here — the data will be you every single time. Even on PPC ads, we have literally seen the addition of a question mark in the ad increase conversion by 16.8% So test, test, test.

Conclusion

These methods work on any business in any industry. Here is some social proof –

Local landscape designer increased her traffic by 7,342% (yes seven thousand percent)

 

• Local artist went from three visitors a day to an average of 41 visitors a day

 

• International digital publisher had zero e-commerce and started converting 16% of all traffic to revenue within 72 hours of implementing one traffic strategy and one conversion strategy

 

• Changing a landing page to a simple design on an e-book site turned conversion from an anemic two sales per week to eight sales a day — on the same traffic.

 

I hope this helps your business. The average business fails to do what it takes to drive traffic or achieve conversions to their website. While they exercise 20-30 traffic methods on average, they don’t do a single one effectively.  There are many sources online to learn about effective marketing strategies, including free resources and some almost-free, like the definitive guidebook  750 Traffic Techniques.

Do-it-for-you solutions are also available; experience guides the appropriate strategy for the website and market. The biggest challenge business owners face is knowing which strategy to implement. Experimentation can be very costly in terms of time and lost sales… The key is to find a reputable marketing firm that offers a full range of customized services as well as downloadable products and courses to assist every website owner at every budget level.

http://anyonemansblog.com/blog/

Technorati Tags: Amp, Conversion Methods, Followers, Grilled Cheese Sandwich, Internet Marketing, Lunch, Madman, Money, Motivation, Niche, Online Marketing, Online Profits, Prospects, Question Of The Day, Reply, Traffic Visitors, Twitter

Making money online can be a daunting task. When you’re first setting out you need to find someone you can trust who speaks sense and give great strategies on growing an online business. Susan Owen-Thursfield at Octisage is one.

She advocates that when you’re hoping to make money online, you should ignore your instincts to cast a wide net in an attempt to grab everyone’s money. Instead of targeting a broad niche, you are more likely to find customers by drilling down within a profitable niche. You might think that by targeting a broad niche like personal development, you’d have more of a chance at success than someone who drills down in the niche for something more targeted like stop stress eating .

Not so! Whilst it is true that the number of potential prospects dwindle as you drill down into a niche. It’s also true that those who find a profitable micro niche market and expand from there are some of the most powerful marketers in today’s internet. This is because the more you hone in on your target audience, the more likely you are to find someone who is really ready and willing to spend money for a solution.

For example, someone who types the keyword golf into a search engine may just be looking for basic information – what the game is about, who won the latest tournament, or even online golf games. But someone who types in the brand name of a particular golf club is usually looking to hit the order button right then and there.

Think of your Internet Marketing empire as an inverted pyramid. Start with highly targeted narrow niche markets and build on that success. Your websites and promotional efforts can all be connected as time goes on, but you’ll find it easier to dominate a niche with one area already mastered.

Technorati Tags: Brand Name, Daunting Task, Golf Club, Golf Games, Instincts, Internet Empire, Internet Marketing, Making Money Online, Marketers, Marketing Success, Narrow Niche, Niche Market, Niche Marketing, Niche Markets, Personal Development, Profitable Niche, Prospects, Stop Stress, Susan Owen, Target Audience

	Understand your customers’ searching behavior. Walk in their shoes, and understand the dialogue the searcher is having with the web. Most customers are researching or looking for a problem to solve. If you understand what problem they’re trying to solve (keywords and phrases) you can provide them with a very customized solution to it (your landing page, website…and ultimately your product).
	Decide how you will track conversions. Often this is easy…it’s when you make a sale. Other times it can be trickier. If you’re a real estate agent, you’ll most likely be tracking leads. In addition, you’ll have to assign some kind of dollar value to that lead so you can determine how much advertising to spend in order to get it.
	Decide on autoresponders and set them up. Autoresponders are simply a way to keep in touch with your customers and prospects. Essentially it’s automated email.
	Do the keyword research
	Brainstorm the core ones with a diverse group “spy” on your competitions’ using tools use other tools to expand the core list
	Group keywords by the conversation type (what is the potential customer looking for?)
	If you’re a real estate agent, you’re prospects will be having different conversations if they’re looking to relocate as opposed to someone already in your area looking to sell their house
	Build landing pages on your site for each conversation type
	You’d want the two different potential customers above to go to two different pages within your site, because you want to highlight the different value propositions you’re bringing to the table…to solve their particular problem.
	Set up your own blog
	Set up your adwords campaign using the keywords, groupings and landing pages
	Monitor and test…EVERY DAY
	Split test ads every day Adjust bids every day Get rid of non-performing keywords every day
	As soon as a great “money term” is found, start the search engine optimization process for that term
	Market 2-3 articles per week (or even more) Make blog postings on your blog and others’ Answer posts on forums and yahoo answers
	Move great “money terms” to Yahoo and MSN pay per click advertising engines
	Rinse and repeat this process every 90 days!

Technorati Tags: Autoresponders, Conversations, Conversions, Customized Solution, Diverse Group, Dollar Value, Group Keywords, Groupings, Keyword Research, List Group, Phrases, Prospects, Real Estate Agent, Search Engine Optimization, Searcher, Split Test, Spy Tools, Touch With Your Customers, Using Tools, Value Propositions