People do what they see other people doing. It’s mass psychology. It’s very rare when someone will go out on a limb and be a pioneer. Early adopters are important, but the mass of buyers are waiting for proof. Proof that they product works. Proof that people like the product. Proof that the company is ethical and honest.
Proof can easily sway a potential buyer who’s currently sitting on the fence. If you can provide them with proof of all the other people faced with the same problem who bought your product or service to solve that problem and were happy about their purchase, you’re golden…literally!
So, how do you do this?
Think about your past customer interactions. Testimonials you’ve received, for instance. How about metrics like the number of units a certain product has sold. A lot of this can be done through social media. Taking comments about a product or service you offer from your Facebook page and showing that on your website is one way of using social proof. Something as simple as including testimonials in your outbound email campaigns is another way.
If you’re going to leverage social media, think graphically. People scroll through newsfeeds rapidly. You’ll want to catch their attention. Having a graphic link to a blog post that contains the social proof and talks about it in more details is an excellent idea.
Find all your past testimonials, whether in written form or online. Start asking customers for testimonials. When you post online, either on your website or on social media, start asking for comments. Hire a graphic person to create a catchy graphic for you. If you need help, just pick up the phone and call me! I’ll be happy to explore this whole avenue with you!
If you would like help implementing these marketing tips, or would like to discuss the many ways that we can help you make “More Sales Now”, visit our “Contact Us” page and let us know how we can help you!
How would you like an easy to implement way to make more sales of any product you offer today? Oh, and all with doing hardly any new work. And, that work will be used over and over again, too!
Product Demonstrations are great sales tools. They show off your product. They answer questions. They help prospects gain familiarity with your product. And, the increase the know, like, and trust factor between you and your prospects exponentially!
If you sell physical products, a quick three to five minute product demonstration would work great. Nowadays, most smart phones can take videos in high enough quality to serve for this. If you want to splurge on a more expensive video camera, fine. You could also hire a production team to film your videos. Not necessary, but perfectly fine to do. You’ll find that your return on investment for this particular idea will more than cover even that level of cost.
Your product might not be physical though. If it’s a digital product, something you only seen on a computer, then instead of a video camera, you can use screencast software.There are several alternatives for this, ranging from free to costing in the neighborhood of $200.
If your product is something harder to quantify like consulting services, then get one of your recent clients to do an interview with you. Treat this just like a product demo, and you’ll help prospects understand what you bring to the table in a much deeper way. More sales, and more money per sale will be the result!
Make a list of the benefits of one of your products. Next, take your smart phone, video camera, screencast software, and make a short video explaining how your product addresses that benefit. Remember, the needs of your audience match up completely with your product’s benefits. (Otherwise, there wouldn’t be a benefit.) For just one product, you can make several demo videos. Choose the one you like the most and start emailing that out to interested prospects!
If you would like help implementing these marketing tips, or would like to discuss the many ways that we can help you make “More Sales Now”, visit our “Contact Us” page and let us know how we can help you!
Hopefully you blog for your business. I know it’s a lot of work, and I know you don’t get immediate results, but I’ve got some news for you. The Internet is here to stay! Your smart competitors are stealing the online real estate, which should belong to you!
How are they doing that? Well, they’re doing things like snatching up domain names that naturally associate with your geographic market and your business type. They’re putting out content on YouTube, SlideShare, all the social media platforms. And, they’re securing their position in Google by blogging.
There’s a lot to know about blogging, and I’ll be happy to talk with you about that. But, for the purposes of this one email, let’s talk about a particular type of very important blog post. It’s called an Anchor Post.
Anchor posts are normally long. 2,000 words is not unusual. For a business, they’d take a particular product, for instance and talk about it in detail. They’re kind of like white papers online. Perhaps slightly shorter. What anchor posts do is they deepen the relationship between you and your potential customers. What they do in Internet terms is they get ranked and they stay ranked.
Anchor posts are very valuable pieces of online real estate to create. So valuable in fact, that you’ll want to create a whole campaign behind the post just to promote it. Think social media, SlideShare, YouTube, other video platforms, for instance. A lot of the techniques you’re learning form me in these emails would be used to promote an anchor post.
You’re going to need a product or service that’s fairly complex. Or, something like case study material with a project for a client. An anchor post needs to do the following: state the problem the customer had; state the benefit (solution to that problem), which your product offered; and then show in detail how you delivered the benefit. Of course at the end of the anchor post, you’ll want a suitable call to action!
If you would like help implementing these marketing tips, or would like to discuss the many ways that we can help you make “More Sales Now”, visit our “Contact Us” page and let us know how we can help you!
When you meet someone new, go to a network meeting or a chamber of commerce meeting, or just meet someone new at the golf club, what’s one of the first things they ask you? Yep… “What do you do?”
Your answer to that is what we in the marketing and sales world call an elevator pitch. The original idea is the explanation of what you do, what you sell, what your business is, had to be short enough to be squeezed into a couple minutes elevator ride.
If you’ve been in business for a while, you’ve probably naturally crafted an elevator pitch just from being asked the question enough time. But here’s the deal…why use your elevator pitch only when you’re physically in front of someone?
The Internet has exploded our ability to connect with people. Look at LinkedIn. There are seven or so billion people on this planet. A whopping 400 million plus have LinkedIn accounts. What’s that, around one out of twenty humans on the planet? That’s unreal!
As you start to learn how to use the Internet for your business, wouldn’t it be a great idea for you to have a quick video of you saying your elevator pitch, which you can send to people via email, or direct message them on social media?
This one idea can massively expand your network, and of course your sales and your income!
You don’t need much. Your phone will do for a camera. You do have to be aware of a few things.
You want people to see you in whatever a business setting is for you. If you’re a software business, using your office as a background will work fine. Just make sure you’re dressed just as you would be if you were meeting a prospective client for the first time. If you’re running an auto body repair shop, then using the shop floor as a background makes sense. Don’t confuse people!
Next, do a few takes. Five should do. Pick the best one. When you start talking, introduce yourself quickly. Make it appropriately conversational, appropriate to what your audience expects. After the short intro comes the elevator pitch itself. After that a call to action. Tell people what you want them to do next. Go to your website. Call you. Email you. Direct message you.
If you would like help implementing these marketing tips, or would like to discuss the many ways that we can help you make “More Sales Now”, visit our “Contact Us” page and let us know how we can help you!
We talked about subject lines in another post. In this post, I want to talk to you about the second most important sentence in an email, the call to action!
A call to action is exactly what it says. It tells your reader what to do next. Without this, you’re expecting people to figure out what to do. Do they click something? Do the pick up the phone and call? Is just visiting your website enough?
Buyers are normally very wary. They’re psychologically nervous about the whole process. That’s why they need clear instructions about what to do next. That’s the call to action.
So, figure out what your potential buyers need to do after they read your email, and tell them to do it. Do not make them guess!
Much like subject lines, you need to experiment with various calls to action to see what works best for your target market. You’ll have to have some way to keep track of who clicks what. At the very least you need what we call a click tracker. Better yet, would be email automation software. Let me know if you’re interested in this. I’ll be happy to point you in the right direction.
Some examples of calls to action that work are:
Call today for a free first appointment!
Click on this link for our 20% off coupon!
Call today!
If you would like help implementing these marketing tips, or would like to discuss the many ways that we can help you make “More Sales Now”, visit our “Contact Us” page and let us know how we can help you!
If no one opens your emails, then no one reads the contents. If no one reads, then no one clicks. If no one clicks…well, you get the idea, right? No one buys! It’s that simple. The single most important few words in any email are those in the subject!
So, how do you write a subject line that does all the above, makes people stop scrolling, gets the email opened, and set you up to get people to take whatever action you want them to take in the body of the email?
You use benefits in the subject line, instead of features!
Every product that you sell has benefits and features. A feature is what the product does. So, let’s take a car, for instance. A feature of a car is the engine size, or perhaps the great radio inside.
As opposed to a feature, a benefit is from the point of view of the prospective buyer. Let’s go with the car analogy for a second. So, a benefit of a big engine is you get to drive fast. A benefit of a great radio would be you at least get great entertainment while stuck in traffic.
A benefit is basically a statement of what problem your product solves for the buyer.
If you’ll keep that in mind when you write promotional emails, you’re open rates will not only soar, but you’ll find your click through rate soaring too!
Take one of your best selling products. Take a piece of paper and draw a vertical line down the middle. List the features on one side and the benefits on the other. Every feature has a benefit…otherwise it wouldn’t be a feature!
Next, pick three benefits you think your target market would respond to best. Turn each of those three into a subject line for an email. Great phrases to use are… “How…” and “You…”. Create two subjects for each benefit.
If you know how to split text emails to see which subject line is opened more often do so.
Here are a few examples:
If you would like help implementing these marketing tips, or would like to discuss the many ways that we can help you make “More Sales Now”, visit our “Contact Us” page and let us know how we can help you!