Buidling a Relationship with Your List
I've talked in the past about the importance of building a list of prospective customers that you can send emails to when you have something worthwhile to offer. However, don't just focus on getting as many people to sign up for your newsletter as you can. The size of your list is important but worry more about building a relationship with your list so that they trust the offers that you do send out to them and you get a more responsive list. The old "size doesn't matter, it's how you use it" kind of thing.
Honesty
A person's inbox is a private place. If that person chooses to allow you into their personal space then you have to show them respect. The worst thing you can do is lie to them or severely over-exaggerate the offer you are bringing their attention to. Sure, a catchy subject line with an enticing body might increase your open and click through rates on that particular send, but if you fool them once they won't believe you in the future. The subscriber will opt-out and it will be a relationship that is burned for good.
Write to Your Ideal Customer
It's best to think about treating your subscribers like you do your friends. You want to write in a conversational tone, treat your subscribers like you would someone you care about, and connect with them. The best way to do this is to write each email as if you are talking to a single person. Your ideal customer. It's great if you actually have a friend or know someone who is interested in your niche because you can visualize sending the email to them. If you don't have anyone specific in ind then you have to get creative and really think about building a fictional character. Some questions to ask are what is the person's: age, gender, average income, fears, passions, the more details the better.
Relevant Value
It is also important to only offer your list products or services that will show value and are something they would be interested in. If they see you as a nice, good person who is truly trying to help them get to a place they want to be the response rates are going to be great for you. Not just in the short term with one particular send but in the long term as well.
Personal Revelations
You also have to remember that as you start sending to your list your subscribers will start to think of you as a mini-celebrity. You are coming across as an expert and are well-known in their niche (at least they think you are well-known since they know about you, everyone else should too right?). With that status you get this TMZ effect where they want to know more about your personal life and what you are doing. Revealing some information about yourself is important in creating a bond with your readers. Don't fill entire emails with what your eating schedule is like, but starting out with a "just came off the golf course and was talking with some friends about an idea I had" helps build the relationship.
Related Posts:
Finding Related Sites
I have talked about the importance of finding related sites when it comes to buying online advertising, doing niche research, and for finding additional forums that might not be SEO friendly. So today I figured I would offer a comprehensive list to finding similar sites.
Related Modifier
If you search for "related:(domain)" Google will compile a list of sites similar to the one you have already found. This list is compiled by comparing links on pages that also link to the specified page. Some factors in the popularity of the pages containing the links, what position the links are in, sizes, and proximity to the link to the site you are searching for. You can also use this related modifier at Yahoo.
If you enter a domain into Google Trends you will see "Also visited" with ten other sites similar to the one you are looking at.
Amazon's Alexa Toolbar gathers information on it's users. While it's imperfections have been noted on trying to compare traffic of two different sites, it can be a pretty good tool to find related sites. Enter a domain name and then go to "Related Links" and see ten additional sites that visitors have gone to.
A bookmark syncing service that keeps combines your bookmarks from different computers and on different browers, storing them in the cloud. This is also a good way to compare similar sites, seeing what is being bookmarked with the site you are looking at.
Similar Sites uses a Firefox toolbar to monitor users browsing history to improve their results and understand trends.
Another site that gets their information through a Firefox Add-on. The only way to see the results are if you install the it and do a search.
The claim is they take "over 130,000,000 instances of people manually organizing and describing websites and combines this with sophisticated matching and clustering technology." There are also tags under the site so you can search by a tag similarity. It also features two bars for determining similarity and popularity.
There you have it. Seven different ways to find similar sites quickly and easily. Happy searching!
Related Posts:
Creating Content with Questions
One of the best pieces of content that you can write for your site is to answer the questions being asked by your market. The obvious target is your potential customers that you are trying to sell to. If you can answer their questions then you become an expert in their eyes and if you have a product or service that you say can solve their problem then you have built up the trust needed to get them to purchase.
The other group of people whose questions you should target are site owners in general, but site owners in your industry are even better. This group can drive links to your site and if it's a related niche they might be able to drive targeted traffic of prospects as well.
So where do you find the questions that need answered? There are a couple of different sources that I look at.
Yahoo is a great resource. You can either type in your keywords into the search box and see what comes up or you can navigate down into a specific category if one covers your niche. These are real questions from real people and if the questions are current enough, you can even write the post on your site answering the question, then respond to the asker by giving a summary with a link back to your site.
Forums
People also ask their questions in forums. Some forums even have a section with frequently asked questions, which is a great place to get content ideas that can bring you some search traffic. Look for how many times and different ways a question is asked. Take a look at any replies to make sure you know the answer that the poster is looking for or if there are any different angles to consider.
How do you find the forums? Do a google search for "(keyword) forums" and see what comes up. Not all forums are optimized for the search engines though and some high traffic hangouts can go under the radar. You can find these sites by looking at related sites to the forums that you do find. SimilarSites, Google Trends, and the related links section at Alexa are ways you can find other forums.
You can use the Twitter search feature or their advanced search to find questions people are asking right now. What's great about answering questions on Twitter is if you give someone an answer, they are likely to become a follower. Plus, you give a short answer with a link back to your site. This gets potential customers to your site and at the start of the sales funnel.
WordTracker
Just type in a keyword into their Keyword Questions tool and it will spit out the 100 most popular questions asked around the keyword using the question modifiers of who, what, where, when, how and other question-related terms.
The best questions to answer are presell questions. How to use a product or service, which one is better for a certain feature, and how well it solves a specific problem are all good answers to provide.
Related Posts:
Right Way to Do Article Marketing
Most people who do article marketing write a lot of articles and then submit them to as many directories as possible. These articles are boring and of low-quality, but since they do get links passed from the directories these webmasters feel like they have accomplished their goals of getting a few one-way links.
There is a better way to do article marketing. What I recommend you do is to start out writing an interesting article that is of a higher-quality. Find topics that speak to your audience and excite people.
Then post that article to only the top two or three directories, possibly more if you can find directories specific to your niche. Here is what you have to wrap your head around: the links from the actual directories do not matter as much.
The real goal here is for your content to get syndicated or republished by real websites that are interesting in posting the article, and your link, on their site. Not only do you get more links this way, but the links you get come from better sites, not just spam-filled robot sites or the article directories themselves.
Do not write articles that focus on your company or products or about the directories themselves. You need to be thinking about giving quality websites the decent content that they want. If you get a link from a respected website, it doesn't even matter if it's in the same niche, you are still going to get a lot of juice out of that link.
One of two things are going to happen next. Either sites are going to contact you directly asking you to write some content specifically for their site, or you are going to monitor your incoming links to see who is posting your content and you are going to get in touch with them. Offer these publishers more of your content and you'll see a snowball effect. Other sites in the niche might see you posting guest articles on these sites and then contact you to see if you are interested in writing for them as well.
By giving the sites that publish the content from the directories what they want, you'll build up a following of publishers who will be asking you for more content. These are the relationships that you want to be building as you will get far more out of the links from quality sites than you will by focusing solely on the article directories.
Related Posts:
Review Landing Pages
One of the best converting landing pages you can create are product review posts. The visitors to this pages already have some familiarity with the product. Most will have found your site by searching "(product name) review" and want to make sure that the product really is going to solve their problem and is a good buy. Now it's up to you to push them over the edge and get them to complete their purchase.
Expert Advice
The image that you want to come across to the visitor is that you are an expert in the field. You know the products in the niche inside and out and can list the pros and cons for each. You need to spend some time on these landing pages so they look professional. Nobody is going to trust an expert who doesn't put the time into his review to spell check his work.
No Hard Selling
Hard selling on review pages isn't going to work very well. You have to soft sell by accentuating the positives and even pointing out that the product won't be a good fit for some people in certain situations. You do want to make sure that you add your affiliate link to several different points in the copy. No sense getting the visitor interested and have them leave your site to search for the product they want to buy because they couldn't easily click through to purchase.
Limit to 3-7 Reviews
You can either do a review of a single product, or you can do a comparison of several different choices. When comparing products, you should limit yourself to 3-7 different options. If you do fewer than that, it appears that you only know or researched a limited number of options. If you go with more than seven you will most likely overwhelm the visitor and see your conversion rate drop.
Rankings
A lot of affiliates arrange the products in order of commission percentage when doing a review page of several different products. They are thinking in the short term, trying to grab a small amount of additional money up front while not caring about the end user.
My approach is to do an honest review, even if that means putting the most profitable product last on the list. Your visitors will trust your opinion and be more likely to come back for your advice in the future.
Design Template
Again, make sure this page is clean and professional. You want to put your reviews high up on the page with a small amount of text, then have the longer copy below the reviews. This converts best. Someone wanting a quick answer doesn't want to have to read through a bunch of text to figure out who you are recommending.
Related Posts:
Landing Pages
When you talk about search engine optimization (SEO) or Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising the term "landing pages" comes up quite a bit. So what exactly is a landing page? Technically, it is any page on your site that a visitor arrives at after clicking through on a link.
However, landing pages normally are targeted by the site owner as a place where you want your traffic to be sent in the hopes of either earning a purchase or capturing the visitor's information. Here are a few examples:
- PPC ads - The traffic you are buying is sent to a specific landing page depending on the keywords the user searched for.
- SEO - you are targeting your landing pages with your link building campaigns using the specific anchor text you want the page to rank for.
- Email Blasts - You send newsletters to your email list driving them to landing pages that are designed to encourage purchases.
- Organization - A landing page can be used on your site as a navigation tool to organize specific posts around a central topic.
If a user clicks through to your site then you have their attention, but only for a short period of time. Your landing page then needs to get them interested quickly in what you have to offer, build a desire in that offer, and then get the visitor to take your desired action.
The best way to use landing pages is to tailor them specifically to the visitor's desire. You need to know what the searchers issue, problem, or question is and why there are searching for it at this time. What do they expect to find when they click through to your page? You need to show them how you can provide the answer or solution. A quality landing page is very targeted and tailored to what the visitor wanted to find.
Homepages are not good for this. Only small niche sites are targeted enough to have a homepage tailored to specific requests. Generally your index page should be built to allow visitors to easily navigate to different sections of your site and will appeal to a more general audience.
Your landing page copy should drive the user to a specific action. Ask yourself "what do you want them to do?" This can mean a purchase but it doesn't necessarily have to be. You could also drive the reader to sign up for your newsletter, subscribe to your RSS feed, like your Facebook page, or follow you on Twitter. It is VERY important that you get some kind of response out of them so you can contact them for follow ups in the future. Buying traffic only to have it bounce off the page is wasteful and will have you leaving money on the table. If you can gain an email address from the visitor it is very easy to build a relationship with that person and continue to send them quality offers that you can make additional money off of over and over again.
Addtional Resources:
Related Posts:
Effective Landing Pages
You have heard how great landing pages can be for capturing leads and increasing the amount of money you make online so you are ready to start writing. If you want to get the most out of your landing page then follow these best practices:
Testing
The single most important thing that you will learn is to test everything. If you read about a new trick online that increases conversions, DO NOT put it into place immediately. Instead, test it against what you are already doing. Some changes that you make will work out great, some need tweaked a bit, and others will leave you worse off than before. You know the only way you can be sure? Test everything.
Limit Navigation
You want your users to take your desired action. Visitors are easily distracted so you must keep them focused on your copy, visuals, and the offer. Menus and links give them a chance to leave your landing page never to come back again. Hide your site navigation on landing pages and increase the number of leads that you capture.
Deliver Value
Your landing page has to match up well with your visitor's desire. You should write in the second person (you) to make it clear how you can solve their problem, answer their questions, or benefit them in some way. The more you can demonstrate that you can do that, the better your landing page will convert.
Provide a Clear Call to Action
Tell the visitor what exactly you are expecting them to do. Do you want them to submit their email address in order to download a free ebook? Do you want them to purchase your product for x amount of dollars? Let them know, over and over again.
Keep it Short & Simple (KISS)
The form that you use to capture leads needs to be as simple as possible. You only want to ask for relevant information. If you ask a visitor for a phone number, they are going to worry that you are going to call them. If you ask them for their address, they will suspect you are going to send them junk. Generally speaking, the more information that you require from them the less likely they are to give it to you.
Additional Resources:
Related Posts:
Hosting Landing Pages
If you are just starting out with Internet marketing then you are probably trying to cut down your costs as much as possible. One way to do that is by hosting your landing pages on Web 2.0 properties that are free. The alternative is to buy a domain and hosting account to set your landing pages up that. You won't see too many of the serious marketers using free sites because there are a lot of benefits to building up your own domain, but everyone has to start somewhere. Let's take a look at some of the advantages and disadvantages of using each.
Web 2.0 Properties
The best thing about using the Web 2.0 properties that are out there is that it's easier to get ranked in the search engines. These sites have tons of incoming links pointing to them, and millions of pages already indexed.
If you are using someone else's site then you are going to have to follow their rules, which means you might have limited options in the look of the site and if you can have an opt-in list. You are giving up some control in order to use their space.
Self-Hosting Sites
You can host your own sites for around $100 per year and with that you get complete control over the look and feel of the design. As long as you don't spam or do something illegal, you can pretty much do whatever you want. You can sell hard, make better use of images, and change the design of your site to increase your conversion rate.
If you have been to any of the free sites you'll notice that a lot carry ads on their site. You could have a great landing page created with an enticing offer and then off to the side there is a banner promoting the same product. If the visitor clicks through the banner and purchases you don't get create for the sale! That kind of thing won't happen if you are hosting your own site. Sure, you can still have the banner, but you'll earn every commission on sales coming from your pages!
I've already wrote about how important I think email marketing with a company like Aweber is. With free sites you don't get to include your opt-in forms, which means that if a visitor doesn't click through your links right away, they are lost forever. While getting visitors to buy the first time they come to your site isn't likely, getting them to opt-in to your newsletter can be. This way you can build a relationship with them, offer them something of value, gain their trust, and promote to them for years down the road! Imagine how much more money you can make per visitor that way.
The problem with self-hosted sites is that they are completely unknown to the search engines. You have to put a little more time and work in to building your site up so not only will it cost more to start, but it will take longer for you to start seeing a return. However, when you do start getting links to your site your authority builds and the longer your site is around, the more content that you post to it, the more traffic you will start seeing flow your way each and every day.
After weighing the pros and the cons, I hope you can figure out why I'm so big on owning my own domains. Sure, Web 2.0 properties have their place in terms of link building and traffic generation, but not for your landing pages. They are too important not to have total control of.
Related Posts:
Creating Landing Pages
We've already talked about the benefits of hosting your own landing pages: complete control, building up authority over time, and starting a newsletter. Today we are going to talk about how you can get started with a landing page on your own site. It's not nearly as hard as a beginner would think.
The first thing that you are going to need is a domain name. A lot of hosts offer free domains if you sign up for a hosting account and while that can be nice, I don't want to be tied to a host any more than I have to be. For like $10 per year you can buy your domain at GoDaddy. See How to Pick a Domain Name for tips on coming up with ideas for your site.
WebHosting Provider
There are a ton of hosting providers out there these days. Some of them are junk and some are great. If you find something that is working for you, then you should stick with it. Myself, I use HostGator and have never had a problem so it's easy to recommend them to everyone starting their own site. I've tried others and seen my site go down, be slow to load, have problems with emails getting through, you name it.
Landing Page Templates
There are a lot of options out there if you are looking for free landing page templates. When you are looking through that list to find what will work best for your offer, just remember the effective landing page tips I offered and use limited navigation and a clear call to action.
Sales Copy
You have to make sure you are speaking to the visitor and relating to them. An easy trick to do just that is speak in the second person (use you or your). Get into their mind, address their worries and concerns, and quickly talk about how you are going to solve their problem. There are a lot of different ways to do this: testimonials, reviews, and videos are just a few.
That's it! Creating landing pages on your own domain is as easy as following the four steps outlined above. Of course, once you get started and visitors start coming to the page you are going to want to test, test, and test again to make sure you create the highest converting page possible.