ROB RASKIN - Business Owner, Sales Trainer, Consultant, and a die-hard Patriot!
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Marketing Techniques

This is normally the most disappointing part of every Course I have reviewed. Quite simply, what you want to know at this point is

“EXACTLY WHAT DO I DO TO PROMOTE MY SITE AND GET TRAFFIC TO IT?”

Because we know very well that: NO Traffic = No Sales!

Well, there are a TON of Marketing Techniques. We are going to CONCENTRATE on the BEST ones, explain them ONE AT A TIME and when we’re done with this Section, you will be able to execute a MARKETING PLAN that will drive Traffic to Your Site.

First, we need to break the Techniques into the THREE CATEGORIES that we discussed in Chapter Eight:

  • COLD MARKETING,
  • REFERRAL MARKETING, AND
  • REPEAT MARKETING.

COLD MARKETING:

Its called COLD MARKETING because these are Visitors that you are trying to attract that have never before been Visitors. You will want to cap your TOTAL initial COLD MARKETING advertising expenses at 10% of the GROSS SALES Amount. Some of the Marketing that you will do to attract Visitors are FREE through different types of programs, which we will discuss.

Remember, you have a TWO-DIRECTION APPROACH TO YOUR MARKETING PLAN to attract New Visitors: COLD MARKETING, and REFERRAL MARKETING. This means that you do not need to RELY SOLELY on COLD Marketing to attract Visitors, but rather, to supplement your effort to add Visitors to Your Site.

Technique Number One – PAY PER CLICK ENGINES:

A “KEYWORD” is a word that a person searches by in order to find Sites that address the issues that he/she is looking for. There are a lot of strategies for being ranked highly in Search Engines in order to attract Traffic to Your Site. We will discuss these shortly.

There are Search engines however, that allow you to BID on a Keyword in order to get your ranking in the Top 10, or even number one. Pay-Per-Click engines are easy. There’s no magic, really. You just go to a Search Engine, such as Google.com, enter the keywords “Pay-Per-Click” and MANY choices will appear for you. The Pay-Per-Click Search Engine will tell you what the Top Bid Price is for a click from that Search engine for that Keyword.

If you want to be the TOP choice for that particular Keyword, just bid slightly more than the current Top bid. Its that simple.

Once you have some actual Statistics as to how many clicks it takes for you to get a Sale, then you can calculate EXACTLY what the cost of the Advertising is and whether it is effective for you. If it is not immediately cost effective, there’s a LOT of adjustments that can be made. We will explore of this in more detail in PART THREE of this Course.

Google also has something called “Ad Words”. This allows you to place an ad in the Keyword Location that will bring you QUALIFIED VISITORS. A thorough review of your options in this area, and a well-placed and well-worded ad, can do wonders to generate traffic.

One great feature that Google has is that they allow you to limit your daily budget. Otherwise, if it was $0.25 per click, and you had 10,000 clicks for the day, your bill for that day would be $2,500!! If you generated $10,000 is Sales for that day, you probably wouldn’t mind J

But its always better to start a little slower, limit your advertising budget to what you have to spend, and then as you start making Sales, allow 10% for your overall Cold Marketing Advertising Budget, and proportion the money to the Techniques that work Best for you.

The advantage of the Pay-Per-Click Technique is that its simple, it will develop traffic to Your Site, and you are only paying for Visitors that have an Interest in Your Site. Plus, you can limit the amount of money that you want to spend to start off with; adjusting for the next month based on the Gross Sales from the prior month.

Technique Number Two – UTILIZING EXISTING LISTS

Until you build your own list of Prospects and Customers to reach repeatedly, when you just start out you don’t have them! Not to worry.

There are numerous companies that RENT Targeted Opt-In-Lists so you have a pool of folks to contact to start off with. These Companies charge based on the number of delivered messages, so for all that aren’t delivered, they should be replaced or credited. Once again you must be conscious of costs, because if they charge $0.10 per delivered message, that’s $100 per 1000. You should try 1000 at a time, and remember that your message needs to GRAB THEIR INTEREST AND CREATE URGENCY.

If you aren’t getting the desired results, then work through your ad, changing ONE KEY ITEM at a time. Try your headline FIRST, then your Offer, etc. At the end of this Section we will discuss the benefits of DIRECT verses INDIRECT Marketing and the effects they may have on your response rate.

To find Opt-In list rental companies, simply go to Google.com and enter the keywords “opt in email lists”.

Before we go any further, let’s make this point clear: NEVER ATTEMPT TO SEND OUT UNSOLICITED MAIL TO LARGE GROUPS OF UNSUSPECTING PEOPLE! This is called SPAMMING. You DO NOT WANT TO DO THIS FOR TWO REASONS: Not only is it NOT COST EFFECTIVE because most people ignore unsolicited messages, BUT YOUR HOST WILL SHUT YOUR SITE DOWN FOR SPAMMING, which means NO SALES until you relocate to a new host!

YOU WANT TO MATCH YOUR OFFER TO PEOPLE WHO HAVE AN INTEREST IN YOUR OFFER.

Technique Number Three – UTILIZING SERVICES THAT GUARANTEE A SPECIFIC NUMBER OF HITS FOR A SET FEE

There are numerous companies that will advertise for you and drive traffic to Your Site. This increases your effectiveness and the nice thing about these Services are that you know for certain how many Visitors you will receive. Some of these services count a return Visitor within 24 hours as one Visitor, not two. Just make sure you understand who they are contacting. You definitely want a guarantee that they are NOT spamming, and you want them to be TARGETING an audience, not just sending out to addresses that may get you Visitors, but no SALES. Remember, if you spend $100-$200 for every $1000 or more in business that you generate for COLD MARKETING, you are doing WELL!

Always work with a small sample first and test your ads before you go to a big package. Not only will you save some money if the campaign is a bust, but you don’t want to send an Ad out to a large group of people that isn’t overly effective. It’s MUCH BETTER to KNOW that your ad is pulling BEFORE you send out the ad to a HUGE amount of Prospects!

To find services of this nature, go to Google.com and type in the keyword “targeted traffic.”

Remember, attracting non-interested Visitors has a Negative effect on your PROSPECT-TO-SALES RATIO and it skews the Statistics. Your Site may show a very small of Prospects to Visitors, because a higher percentage of your Prospects were really just CURIOUS VISITORS, not QUALIFIED VISITORS.

ALWAYS CONSIDER WHETHER OR NOT YOU WILL ATTRACT QUALITY VISITORS WHEN YOU ADVERTISE.

There are two major factors that affect the percentage of Visitors that are QUALIFIED VISITORS, which we call PROSPECTS. One of the factors is the Quality of the folks you attract in the first place. If your ad is:

  • In the wrong place, or
  • If it is misleading

You may very well attract Visitors, but these may not be the people that you want to attract! When you are planning to place an Ad, consider WHERE you are placing it and WHAT the ad says. If you are attracting people just for the sake of attracting people, then you’ve lost sight of your NUMBER ONE PRIORITY – WHICH IS TO GENERATE THE DESIRED AMOUNT OF PROFIT!

IN ORDER TO MAXIMIZE THE SALES-TO-PROSPECT RATIO, ONE OF THE MOST CRITICAL ELEMENTS IS THE NUMBER OF PROSPECTS THAT YOUR SITE DEVELOPS. WHENEVER YOU BUY A LIST OR PLACE AN AD, MAKE SURE YOU KEEP THIS IN MIND!

The other factor that will affect Your PROSPECT-TO-VISITOR RATIO is Your Site itself. If Your Site doesn’t follow all of the fundamentals that Your Site needs to follow in order to help “turn” a Visitor INTO a Prospect, then the Visitor will lose interest and exit early. We will discuss this in GREAT DETAIL in Chapters Eleven and Twelve.

Technique Number Four – PLACING CLASSIFIED ADS

There are Thousands of places on the Internet that display Classified Ads. This is a VERY INEXPENSIVE way to develop Traffic. The Classified Ads are all FREE! There’s an easy program to use that submits your Ad to over 2000+ Classified Ad Web Sites and Databases – AUTOMATICALLY!

This saves you weeks and weeks of wasted effort by AUTOMATICALLY SUBMITTING THE ADS – all with the click of a few buttons.

It’s just that simple! All you need to do is:

  1. Type in your ad …
  2. Pick the categories and sections of the classified ad sites that you would like your ad to appear in …
  3. Press Start
  4. And then WALK AWAY!

At the rate of 30 ads PER MINUTE it will automatically place your ads, leaving you free to look after other aspects of Your Business!

The program is inexpensive and will be listed in the “TOOLS” Chapter of PART THREE of this Course.

One of the things that drove me crazy about the available materials that I purchased was that there was seemingly no order to anything. For programs that I needed to purchase, I had to look through 100’s of pages to find them. For Marketing ideas, I had to do the same. I would have LOVED to have had the benefit of THIS COURSE!

At the end of this Chapter, you will have a SUMMARY, which you can use as your MARKETING PLAN.

When you get to Chapter Twelve, YOUR SITE, you’ll know EXACTLY WHAT TO DO AND HOW TO DO IT to Create a SUCCESSFUL SITE.

And when you get to the Chapter 15 on TOOLS in PART THREE, you’ll know EXACTLY WHAT TOOLS TO BUY AND WHAT THEY DO.

WITH THESE THREE SUMMARIES:

  • YOUR MARKETING PLAN,
  • YOUR SITE, AND
  • YOUR TOOLS,

PLUS THE FOUR THAT WE CREATED IN PART ONE:

  • YOUR DREAM,
  • YOUR BUDGET,
  • YOUR GOALS, AND
  • YOUR POSITIVE AFFIRMATIONS,

PLUS THE THREE THAT ARE STILL TO COME IN:

  • YOUR DAILY, WEEKLY AND MONTHLY TASKING,
  • YOUR BUSINESS PLAN, AND
  • YOUR WORKING MODEL,

YOU’LL KNOW EXACTLY WHAT TO DO TO START YOUR BUSINESS AND TO GENERATE THE PROFITS YOU DESIRE!

And you’ll be WAY AHEAD of ANYONE who DOES NOT have THIS COURSE and instead has to fight through a SEA OF PAPERWORK to work through Sales Presentations and tons of unnecessary information to try to figure out WHAT TO DO AND HOW TO DO IT!

Technique Number Five – SEARCH ENGINE RANKING

A sizeable portion of your Traffic will come from Search Engines. This is a complicated topic, one that I can easily drone on about for 20 pages. But the bottom line to Search Engine ranking is to answer this question:

WHAT’S THE BEST WAY TO GET THE HIGHEST RANKING IN THE SEARCH ENGINES SO I CAN GENERATE THE MOST QUALIFIED TRAFFIC FOR FREE?

For this you need to purchase two programs that work together to submit Your Information to the Search Engines in the appropriate format for the Search engines to accept, and to then Monitor Your Position and know what adjustments to make to Your Site to move up in ranking. This is simply an impossible task to do without the right Tools, submitting manually to 100’s of Search engines and having no idea what to do. And hiring a professional is not only way more expensive than the Tools that are available, but you have more control over what is done and when it is done because its in your hands.

The first program will submit Your Site to the TOP 150 Search engines, Directories and Indices including the TOP 50 SEARCH ENGINES and the TOP 100 GENERAL BUSINESS SEARCH ENGINES. It is not expensive but it is CRITICAL in order to get the best Placement.

The second program monitors your placement in all of the engines and offers you an incredible amount of features to help you make it into the TOP 10 So Your Position GENERATES TRAFFIC. As you probably know, if you are not listed in the first page or two, the odds are you will not generate Traffic.

Both of these programs are very affordable, and absolutely essential.  Trust me when I tell you that if they were NOT essential, I absolutely WOULD NOT be recommending them to you!

Note that while some of the Search Engines will list you fairly quickly, others will take weeks, so this is NOT an immediate traffic generator. But this is an ESSENTIAL PART of your 5 point COLD MARKETING PLAN, because for just the Low Cost of the two programs, worked properly, you could be generating INTERESTED, TARGETED TRAFFIC!

Remember to NEVER LOSE FOCUS OF YOUR GOAL, WHICH IS TO

GENERATE PROFIT!

EVERYTHING THAT YOU DO NEEDS TO BE WITH THIS GOAL IN MIND!

Let’s review this Section before moving forward.

IN ORDER TO GENERATE TRAFFIC TO YOUR SITE ON YOUR OWN:

  • Utilize Pay per Click Engines via Google search
  • Utilize Rented Opt-In Lists via Google search
  • Utilize Services that guarantee a certain number of hits from a TARGET MARKET LIST via Google search
  • List Your ad in 2000+ Free Classified Ad locations via program in TOOLS Chapter of Part Three
  • List Your Site in the TOP SEARCH ENGINES and utilize the Software to get you a TOP RANKING via 2 programs in TOOLS.

One-Third of Your Marketing Plan is now complete. There are 5 simple processes. No magic to them at all! I hope your Confidence is building! By the time you are done with the Course, YOU WILL KNOW EXACTLY WHAT TO DO TO GENERATE THE PROFITS THAT YOU DESIRE TO REACH YOUR DREAM!

THAT’S MY PROMISE TO YOU!

REFERRAL MARKETING:

I refer to this type of Marketing as REFERRAL MARKETING instead of COLD MARKETING because these are Visitors that are being REFERRED to Your Site by other Sites. Remember that we said that there are 2 ways to attract NEW VISITORS to Your Site. One way is for You to generate them DIRECTLY by utilizing the 5 Techniques in the COLD MARKETING Section.

Now let’s look at a second and VERY POWERFUL WAY to DRASTICALLY INCREASE YOUR SALES WITHOUT ANY POTENTIAL ADVERTISING LOSSES.

You can probably see that by working ONLY the 5 Techniques in the COLD MARKETING Section, you are limiting the amount of Traffic to Your Site to the amount of Traffic that you can generate utilizing these methods.

Once you have ads that are pulling, you can increase the size of the Opt-In lists that you rent, and you can employ the services of more than 1 company to guarantee more hits by purchasing bigger packages. And with more profits, you can make sure that you rank number one on the pay per click engines as long as they are financially feasible.

You can also branch out to paid classified ads, sponsored links, and other Marketing methods that are available to you once you are up and running.

And of Course you are building YOUR OWN OPT-IN LIST, which we will discuss in more detail in the REPEAT MARKETING Section coming up next.

BUT THE POTENTIAL FOR EMPLOYING AN ARMY OF SITES THAT WILL GENERATE TRAFFIC TO YOUR SITE FOR YOU THAT YOU DO NOT PAY ONE CENT TO UNTIL SOMEONE PURCHASES YOUR PRODUCT, IS ENORMOUS TO YOUR GENERATION OF PROFIT.

Think of it. Imagine that there are 100 Sites that have established Opt-In lists of 10,000 each. That’s 1,000,000 – ONE MILLION TARGETED, QUALIFIED, TRUSTING PROSPECTS. NOW IMAGINE THAT THOSE 100 SITES WANT TO GENERATE TRAFFIC TO YOUR SITE TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF YOUR OFFER!

What’s their Motivation? MONEY OF COURSE! COMMISSION! Is it better to make 100% of EVERY SALE, but only generate the amount of Sales that YOU PERSONALLY CAN GENERATE? OR, Is it better to pay a 30% commission and have 100 SITES GENERATE TRAFFIC FOR YOUR SITE FROM THEIR COMBINED LISTS OF 1,000,000 according to our example?

REMEMBER, ONCE YOU HAVE THAT CUSTOMER, YOU CAN THEN PROMOTE ADDITIONAL PRODUCTS AND SERVICES TO THEM FOR LIFE! FOR FREE! We’ll get to that in the Next Section on REPEAT MARKETING.

The reason why I chose to call it REFERRAL MARKETING is because it makes sense to me. Your Site will get REFERRALS from THEIR SITES. They in turn get paid an agreed upon commission ONLY when Your Offer Sells.

Having 100 Sites that promote Your Offer gives you 100 times the power of promoting Your Site on Your own. And actually, maybe more, since some of these Sites have HUGE Opt-In lists of their very own!

And CERTAINLY, you are NOT LIMITED TO 100 Sites! These Sites, which are the equivalent of a SALES FORCE WORKING ON COMMISSION, could number in the tens of thousands as time goes on! It just depends on whether once they generate Traffic to Your Site, Your Site SELLS Your Offer. Otherwise, they’re not making any money, and like any commissioned Sales Person, they’ll quit! In Chapter Twelve, WE WILL MAKE SURE THAT YOUR SITE KNOWS HOW TO CLOSE SALES!

In “Internet Lingo” these Sites are called “AFFILIATES”. And REFERRAL, or AFFILIATE MARKETING, is estimated to be responsible for 25% of ALL INTERNET SALES.

Axiom Number Fourty THE BIGGEST SALE YOU WILL NEED ON THE INTERNET IN ORDER TO BE SUCCESSFUL IS TO CONVINCE ESTABLISHED SITES TO PROMOTE YOUR OFFER.

Luckily, as with the TOOLS for placing the Classified ads, and the TOOLS for Search Engine Ranking and Tracking, there are TOOLS available for AFFILIATE MARKETING that are CRITICAL to YOUR SUCCESS.

I get angry when I see all of the “hype” Ads that are telling people that all you have to do is “click here” and you’ll be up and running in 5 minutes. FIRST of all, NOTHING EVER TAKE 5 MINUTES!

With NO MARKETING PLAN, NO DISCUSSION OF THE LAYOUT OF THE SITE, FOLLOW UP, or ANYTHING ELSE THAT IS SO CRITICAL TO THE SUCCESS OF ANY BUSINESS, MAKING THAT CLAIM IS REDICULOUS. It actually insults your intelligence!

First, you need to have an AFFILIATE TRACKING PROGRAM. From my Research, there is only one on the Market that I chose for My Site. It has a ton of features that we will discuss in detail in the TOOLS SECTION in PART THREE of this Course.

Then you need to have the program that goes through all of the Sites that are related to Your Site by Keyword, Identifies those Sites and ALL OF THEIR AFFILIATES, and captures ALL OF THE INFORMATION SO YOU CAN SEND THEM A SERIES OF LETTERS TO JOIN YOUR AFFILIATE PROGRAM! I’ll bet you did not even know there IS such a TOOL! J

You will need a Third program that takes the List that was just created, and after you write your letter ONCE, it will AUTOMATICALLY send the letters to everyone on Your List with one click!

Axiom Number Fourty-One BUILDING AN ARMY OF AFFILIATES TO REFER QUALIFIED VISITORS TO YOUR SITE IS THE SINGLE MOST CRITICAL PART OF THE PROFIT GENERATION OF YOUR BUSINESS!

BOTH Your Own individual efforts, AND the efforts of the ARMY that You assemble, will combine to DRIVE TRAFFIC TO YOUR SITE!

I hope that I have made CLEAR to you the CONCEPT of BOTH COLD MARKETING AND REFERRAL, OR AFFILIATE MARKETING.

BY TESTING YOUR ADS AND YOUR SALES COPY, TO MAXIMIZE YOUR RESULTS, YOU’LL BE ABLE TO SHARE THOSE SAME ADS WITH YOUR AFFILIATES, AND THEN YOUR SITE IN TURN WILL HAVE THE SAME SALES-TO PROSPECT RATIO FOR THEM AS IT DOES FOR YOU!

AND NOTHING BUILDS A SALES ORGANIZATION FASTER THAN SUCCESS!

Since the programs that you will be using to launch and manage your Affiliate Program will be explained in more detail in the TOOLS Section of PART THREE of this Course, there’s no need to have an in-depth discussion here. What I wanted to do is to make the MARKETING TECHNIQUES that you will be using to promote Your Site as easy as possible so you understand the CONCEPT of WHAT you are doing and WHY you are doing it.

The “HOW” to do it is easy because the programs were designed for beginners. So there’s no need to worry about “HOW”. At least, for NOW! J

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REPEAT MARKETING:

Axiom Number Fourty-Two – THE SINGLE MOST CRITICAL ELEMENT OF YOUR MARKETING SUCCESS IS ACHIEVED BY BUILDING YOUR VERY OWN LIST OF PEOPLE WHO HAVE AGREED TO HEAR FROM YOU.

This is called Your OPT-IN List, because the folks that are on it are there because they are Interested in something that you offered to them, so they Opted In to participate. A better name would be the “Voluntary Participation” List, but it’s probably NOT worth the effort to change the “Internet lingo”!

The LARGER you build this List, the More people that you will be able to approach to either CONTINUE TO MAKE YOUR OFFER, or, OFFER NEW PRODUCTS OR SERVICES.

Just as one of your Goals is to build an army of Affiliates to help you to promote Your Offer, it is also CRITICAL that you have some products that You can offer to Your Customers and Prospects aside from Your Unique Product.

If you do not have a Unique Product, or if you want to Add Products to Your Site, there are two ways of doing so.

The First way is to go to Google.com and do a Keyword search for “Resell Rights”. This will give you Products that you can Resell and keep ALL the Profits. The reason why people allow their E-books to be given away is because there are links in those E-books that direct the reader to Offers that result in generating Profit for the Author. So the Author allows the E-book to be sold to get it into the hands of a Target Market.

This means that you make the Profit for the Sale of the E-books, and the Author makes the profit for anything that gets sold through the links in his E-book. Unless the E-book is competing with you for all of the products that you are trying to sell, this is a great way to build your income.

The Second way is to go to Google.com and do a search for the Keyword “Affiliate Programs”. This will open up a whole New World of Products for you to Sell for a Commission without ever handling the Product. Remember that in the case of Affiliates, you may earn a commission of 20%-50%, whereas when you have Resell Rights to E-books and/or Software, you keep 100% of the profits. It’s best to have Your Site set up so that you can accommodate both of these types of offers. While E-books are 100% profit, they may only sell for $20. At a 30% Affiliate Commission on a  $200 Course, on the other hand, your profit on a Sale is $60!

So both have value, and by having additional Products, whether it’s an E-book Set that you put together for Your “Special Price”, or an Affiliate offer, you can repeatedly offer these items to YOUR OPT-IN LIST.

Let’s say you have 100 Visitors to Your Site per day, and Your Site’s Sales-To-Prospect Ratio is 1/50. This means that you are making 2 sales per day, which means that you are NOT MAKING 98 Sales per day! Now, how beneficial would it be to at least have the Email Addresses of those 98 people so you could contact them again and again and again for free?!
NOW YOU CAN SEE THE IMPORTANCE OF BUILDING YOUR LIST!

Once you have Your List you have a ready-made group of people that you can REPEATEDLY MARKET. You can:

  • Invite them back to Your Site for a “Special limited time offer”,
  • Give them a Coupon or a Special Link to go to for a “Discount for acting in the next 3 days”, and
  • Offer them your unique product, a product to which you have the resell rights, or an Affiliate product.

You will NEVER run out of products to offer!

Axiom Number Fourty-Three – THE REPEAT METHOD, DONE PROPERLY, COULD RESULT IN GENERATING AS MUCH PROFIT AS YOUR GROSS NEW SALES VOLUME!

Your contact with Your List that will include both Prospects and Customers is done through your own Electronic Magazine. This is called an “Ezine”.

By publishing one twice a month, for example, you are INFORMING your List by providing Valuable, Free Information, and at the same time Promoting a New Offer.

There is a program required for creating the layout of the Ezine and merging it with Your List, as well as keeping track of Subscribe/Unsubscribe requests, which needs to be a part of every Ezine issue. This program is already one of the Tools that were needed to send out your mail to recruit Your Affiliates, so you will already have it! In addition, its also one of the Tools that will be required in order to automate much of your Business with the use of Autoresponders, which we will talk about in more depth shortly.

If you are not a proficient writer, do not worry! Just go to Google.com and do a search for the keyword “free content”. You will find a lot of content available out there that you can use for your Ezine. The thing to watch out for is that the free content comes with the requirement that you do not alter the link from the Author, which of course invites people to his Site. If his Site is in direct competition with you, don’t use it! You don’t EVER want to direct people AWAY from Your Site to a Competitor’s Site!

By sending out an Ezine twice a month, of leaves you the two off-weeks to send out some kind of “Special Offer”. You want to treat Your List like GOLD, because that’s what its worth to you! And because the folks on Your List BELIEVE IN YOU. So you don’t want to wear out your welcome. Contacting them once a week is as often as you should go.

You are probably personally subscribed to more than one Ezine, or Newsletter. I am sure you are receiving mine. You will want to follow a similar layout in terms of the Header, Footer, Content Space, etc. so it’s consistent each week. You wouldn’t want your local newspaper to have the Sports Section be Part A one day, Part B the next, Part C the next, etc.

Axiom Number Fourty-Four – CONSISTENCY BUILDS A COMFORT LEVEL WITH YOUR LOYAL FOLLOWERS, AND CREATES AN AIR OF PROFESSIONALISM AND CONFIDENCE.

Now let’s discuss HOW TO GET THE EMAIL ADDRESSES of people that have visited Your Site to build the list of those folks to continue to Market them.

Axiom Number Fourty-Five – OBTAINING THE NAME AND EMAIL ADDRESS IS A CRITICAL PART OF THE AMOUNT OF PROFITS THAT YOU GENERATE.

MAKE SURE YOU CLEARLY UNDERSTAND THIS CONCEPT!!

The reason why you want the Prospect’s First Name and Email Address is because the program you will be using will personalize the Email that you send to them, putting their First Name in the Subject Line of your message. This INCREASES the percentage of time that an individual will open a message.

Personally, whenever I get a message in my private mailbox that starts off “Friend”, I immediately report it as Spam! I never open it because I don’t know who sent and I don’t want to risk introducing a virus into my machine.

So, we have established WHY WE MUST HAVE AN OPT-IN LIST, and we have established WHAT INFORMATION WE NEED in order to maximize our Success Rate. Now let’s take a look at some of the ways to entice the Prospect to give us the information!

One of the very first ways is to simply OFFER THEM SOMETHING OF VALUE in return for their First Name and Email Address. This could be an Ezine subscription, or you can call it a Newsletter, a Special Report, a Handbook, an Audio Book, or anything that is inexpensive if not free to you. Some Sites will mail an audiotape to the Prospect, for example. I prefer to keep it simple and work with something of value that is downloadable, such as the specific items listed above. This way the cost to you is free, and there is no labor involved in producing or handling a Product.

At the Site, if the folks PURCHASE YOUR OFFER, you automatically have their Name and their Email Address, as well as what they have purchased, as long as Your Site is set up properly to capture this Information. Heck you even have their City and State to personalize follow-up Emails with!

Just add to your Sales Presentation: As one of the BENEFITS of PURCHASING TODAY, I AM INCLUDING A ONE YEAR SUBSCRIPTION TO “MY FABULOUS EZINE”, a $119.40 Value, ABSOLUTELY FREE!

Axiom Number Fourty-Six – IF THEY DO NOT PURCHASE YOUR OFFER, YOU CANNOT LET THEM LEAVE YOUR SITE WITHOUT OFFERING THEM SOMETHING OF VALUE IN RETURN FOR THEIR NAME AND EMAIL ADDRESS.

You would then offer Your Prospect something of Value in order to get their First Name and Email Address. Here are some GREAT WAYS TO DO THIS!

First, when the Prospect attempts to exit Your Site, a pop-up comes up that presents Your Offer:

SUBSCRIBE TODAY TO OUR NEWSLETTER- A $119.40 VALUE FREE FOR THIS LIMITED TIME OFFER ONLY!

Or SUBSCRIBE NOW TO OUR NEWSLETTER – A $119.40 VALUE -ABSOLUTELY FREE!

Instead of “NEWSLETTER”, you can say “SPECIAL REPORT” – a $19.95 VALUE – ABSOLUTELY FREE!

OR OUR “AUDIO BOOK”, FILLED WITH INCREDIBLE, VALUABLE, MUST-HAVE INFORMATION – A 29.95 VALUE – ABSOLUTELY FREE!

You get the idea. Give them some reason to NOT LEAVE without taking you up on your ENTICING OFFER! Once you have their First Name and Email Address, you have the potential of Years and Years of Sales to this Prospect!

Now let’s talk about one of the MOST IMPORTANT ASPECTS OF SALES, because this is a CRITICAL TIME in Your Site’s interaction with Your Prospect.

What I just described to you is what MANY SITES do and do effectively to capture the information that they need in order to build their lists.

But if Your Site is advanced enough, you can employ a Series of TWO POP UPS, having the “SIGN UP NOW FOR OUR NEWSLETTER” Pop up be SECONDARY to the SURVEY POP UP.

Axiom Number Fourty-Seven – IN SALES, THE SINGLE MOST CRITICAL PIECE OF INFORMATION, THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CLOSING THE SALE 100% MORE OFTEN, IS FINDING OUT WHAT THE OBJECTION IS.

The REASON why Your Prospect didn’t buy, in Sales Terminology, is called the OBJECTION. Getting the OBJECTION IS CRITICAL because it allows you to design an Autorespond message that SPECIFICALLY ADDRESSES the issue of the Prospect’s OBJECTION.

For example, let’s say that the Prospect came to Your Site because they were interested in Your Offer, but they didn’t buy. Was it because the Price was too high? Was it because the Offer wasn’t clear? Was it because they were Skeptical that it could live up to its claims?

Would this information be HELPFUL to you? YOU BET IT WOULD!

You’d be able to design an Autorespond message that said:

Jim, thank you so much for visiting our Site on Thursday 2/8 to inquire about our Widget X-100. I understand that you were looking for a Product that will not only do Tasks A, B and C EFFORTLESSLY, but will also do TASKS D and E just as effectively!

(This is known as a RECAP of the benefits, which is a form of using what is known as a SUMMARY CLOSE; much more on Closing techniques later)

“As I understand it, You LOVED the Widget X-100 but the price of $198 was a little steep right now, eh?! Don’t worry, your secret’s SAFE with me.”

(This is another Sales technique – “AGREE. And then DISARM”)

“Well Jim, let me put your mind at ease, because I’ve got GREAT NEWS FOR YOU! I am sure you KNOW the BENEFITS of OWNERSHIP of the Widget X-100, and frankly I’d LOVE for you to own one! So here’s what I have done.

I have created a “SPECIAL LINK” for you to be able to take advantage of purchasing the Widget X-100 TODAY. Clicking on this link will take you to a SPECIAL PRIVATE SITE that will allow you to purchase the Widget X-100 today, but instead of billing your credit card for $198, Jim – We’ll do just $33 a month for the next 6 months!

Jim, HOW’S THAT FOR GREAT CUSTOMER SERVICE AND CONFIDENCE IN OUR PRODUCT!! J

I only ask that when you tell your friends where you bought your Widget X-100, PLEASE KEEP THIS SPECIAL OFFER UNDER YOUR HAT! If we were to try to sell EVERY Widget X-100 this way, we just couldn’t do it!

But on a LIMITED BASIS, for a LIMITED TIME, to folks who would honestly benefit from owning one, it just seemed like the Right Thing to Do.

So Jim, Click Here Right Now to go the SPECIAL SITE for the SPECIAL OFFER, and Your Widget X-100 will be in your hands before you know it!”

Sincerely,
John Smith

Widget Master

P.S. Jim, “I want to make sure to mention that you DO STILL RECEIVE the THING-A-MA-JIG X-100 ATTACHMENT, THE WATCHA-MA-CALL-IT AND THE DO-HICKEY EVEN WITH THESE SPECIAL TERMS!

AND, DON’T FORGET, THERE IS STILL ABSOLUTELY NO RISK FOR YOU BECAUSE THE ENTIRE PACKAGE COMES WITH A FULL ONE-YEAR, NO QUESTIONS ASKED, MONEY BACK GUARANTEE!

 

 

CLICK HERE RIGHT NOW TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS INCREDIBLE OFFER WITH OUR COMPLIMENTS!”

Now, can you see how VALUABLE having the Prospect’s First Name, what Offer they were interested in, and what their OBJECTION is, can help you to CLOSE SALES?!  I thought so!

This is known as “Back-end” Sales. As opposed to COLD AND REFERRAL MARKETING STRATEGIES, which are Sales to NEW PROSPECTS, done on the Front-end of Your Site, REPEAT MARKETING TAKES PLACE ON THE BACK END OF THE SALES PRESENTATION.

So, when a Prospect attempts to exit, Your Site would be the MOST POWERFUL if the FIRST POP-UP offered something of VALUE in return for filling out a 6 or 8 Question SURVEY.

Let’s explore EXACTLY HOW to Set Up Your Survey to work in conjunction with Your Autorespond Program.

One of the questions of the Survey will be:

What Offer were you interested in Today:

Followed by a drop down menu of choices of product or product lines.

And One of the Questions of the Survey will be:

What was the reason why you didn’t buy today:

Followed by a drop down menu of choices, such as “skeptical”, “too costly”, “not enough time”, didn’t have credit card handy, etc.

Then your program gathers the information, and knows that Jim, at Email address JimTheProspect-@-Example.com wanted the Widget X-100 but couldn’t afford it right now. And the next thing you know, your Autoresponder AUTOMATICALLY sends a message like the one that we just reviewed!

Let’s say that you have 4 Products that they could have been interested in, and 5 reasons why they may have chose not to Purchase the Product today. If the Prospect chose Choice One on the First Question, and Choice One on the Second Question, then a message from the Survey would be generated to a Specific Mailbox that you could name 1,1. Likewise, you would set up 1,2, 1,3, 1,4, and 1,5, then 2,1-2,5,  3,1 – 3,5 and  4-1 – 4,5. You would then set up 20 SPECIFIC AUTORESPOND MESSAGES to go to the folks in these SPECIFIC mailboxes to address their SPECIFIC OBJECTIONS!

If the Prospect refuses to fill out the Survey, and instead exits the Survey, THEN the Second pop-up offering a free Ezine, newsletter, or a $19.95 report, etc. should Pop up to give you a SECOND CHANCE to obtain the Prospect’s First name and Email Address. You won’t have the OBJECTION, but at least you will be able to continue to contact the Prospect.

To review, there are Two ways of obtaining the First Name and Email Address if the Prospect does not make a purchase. The BEST WAY is the Survey Pop-up and the Second Value-for-Info Pop-up upon exit by your Prospect. You should also have the Option for the Prospect to EASILY voluntarily sign up for your Newsletter or Ezine on every page that is feasible so you have their information and you can add them to Your List. When we get to Chapter Twelve, YOUR SITE, we will see in Detail exactly how these two pop-ups fit in to the STRUCTURE of YOUR SITE!

IN ADDITION TO OFFERING SOMETHING OF VALUE TO YOUR PROSPECT ON EXIT FROM YOUR SITE WITHOUT PURCHASE, YOU CAN ALSO OFFER SOMETHING OF VALUE IN YOUR ADS!.

THIS IS A CRITICAL PIECE OF MARKETING TECHNOLOGY SO PAY CLOSE ATTENTION.

INDIRECT MARKETING WITH A TWIST!

When you run your ad, say in Classifieds, instead of whetting their appetite and then directing them to click on a link to Your Site, which is DIRECT MARKETING, you can have them click on a link to obtain a FREE REPORT- VALUE $19.95.

THIS REPORT PRESELLS THE IDEA OF YOUR OFFER AND DIRECTS THE PROSPECT TO YOUR SITE.

This is an EXCELLENT EXAMPLE OF INDIRECT MARKETING because it involves going to Your Site indirectly through the invitation in the Report that they are retrieving. HOWEVER, IN ORDER TO GET THEIR COPY OF THE REPORT, THEY MUST PROVIDE THEIR NAME AND EMAIL ADDRESS!!!!

AND JUST LIKE THAT, YOU’VE GOT THEIR INFORMATION BEFORE THEY EVER GET TO YOUR SITE!

BOTH DIRECT and INDIRECT MARKETING have their plusses and minuses. If you entice a Prospect to come directly to Your Site, and they do not buy, at least you got them to Your Site and you have two opportunities upon exit, the “SURVEY” screen and the “VALUE” screen, to obtain their information.

But sometimes, if they weren’t “Warmed up”, or “Pre-sold”, Your Site’s Sale-To-Prospect Ratio will be lower than if the Prospect WAS warmed up first.

On the other hand, if you attempt to get their First Name and Email Address before they can open the “FREE REPORT -$19.95 VALUE”, here’s the concern. Unless it is a TRULY COMPELLING OFFER, you will lose potential Prospects who may have come to your Site but now do not know what Your Site even is.

One Solution to this dilemma is to put both the link for the Report AND the link for the SITE in Your Ad. This way, if a Prospect goes to retrieve the Report, and sees that they have to enter information, and gets cold feet, they can return to the ad and have the opportunity to go directly to the Site.

Only by trying different ads and tracking Your Results will you know which type of Promotion works best for you. Fortunately, one of the programs that we will talk about further in the TOOLS Section of Part Three tracks the ads FOR YOU! So you will KNOW which ads were Successful and which weren’t. This will allow you do stop running the ads that do not produce the desired results, and run more of the ads that are productive as well as to try new ads.

Once you have a few Successful Ads, then you can move to the next level, which would be strategically placed PAID Classified ads, as opposed to only free ones. This expands your COLD MARKETING Campaign, helping you to personally develop more Traffic to Your Site and earning the full Sales Price less the cost of the ad, of course. But there’s no Affiliate to pay a percentage of the Commissions on Business that you generate yourself.

Now there are TWO THINGS that will help you to build the Army of Affiliates that you need. One is MONEY. There’s no substitute for it. You need to pay a reasonable commission, or other Sites won’t participate. And you need to make it a TWO TIER Affiliate Program, so that Your Affiliate can in turn recruit Affiliates so that the Army continues to grow! Your hope is that in time you have THOUSANDS of AFFILIATES sending TONS OF TRAFFIC YOUR WAY!

But here’s a NEW TWIST on SELLING YOUR AFFILIATES ON PUSHING YOUR OFFER. SHARE THOSE WHO SIGN UP FOR YOUR OFFER WITH YOUR AFFILIATE!

In other words, let’s say that Your Affiliate has a link to Your Site on their Site, and a Prospect clicks on that link. If the Prospect BUYS, the Affiliate earns a Commission. But if the Prospect does NOT buy, the Affiliate doesn’t earn anything. In time, without Sales, the Affiliate will most probably choose to utilize the space on his Site for another Site’s Offer since yours isn’t making money for him.

Now the BOTTOM LINE is that Your Site MUST Make Sales with a reasonable Sales-To-Prospect Ratio. But the point that I am making is this: If the Affiliate sends Traffic your way, that Affiliate not only earns a Commission IF the Prospect BUYS, the Affiliate ALSO RECEIVES the First Name and Email Address of this Prospect to ADD to their list as well!

THIS AFFILIATE WILL BE MUCH MORE EXCITED TO DO BUSINESS WITH YOU AND TO RECOMMEND YOUR PROGRAM TO OTHERS!

Just think of it this way. The Affiliate is now helping himself to BUILD HIS LIST AND GET PAID FOR IT because in the process of referring Traffic to you, he is gaining access to the First Names and Email Addresses of the Traffic that he generated!

WHAT YOU NOW HAVE ARE A BUNCH OF EXTREMELY MOTIVATED AFFILIATES THAT WANT TO SEND YOU TRAFFIC BECAUSE YOU NOT ONLY SELL SO THEY MAKE MONEY, BUT YOU ALSO HELP THEM TO BUILD THEIR LISTS. PLUS, YOU ARE MAKING THEM LOOK GOOD TO IN THE PROCESS BECAUSE THEY ARE GIVING AWAY VALUABLE INFORMATION.

SO YOU ARE NOW THEIR HERO!

When it comes to Repeat Marketing, this should be Clear:

Axiom Number FourtyEightIT IS MUCH MORE COST EFFICIENT TO SELL AN EXISTING CUSTOMER, THEN AN EXISTING PROSPECT, OR A NEW PROSPECT, IN THAT ORDER.

A CUSTOMER WILL BE MORE APT TO TRUST YOU AND BUY ANOTHER PRODUCT BECAUSE THEY HAVE AN ESTABLISHED RELATIONSHIP WITH YOU.

If a customer has purchased something from you, they have received it, and they’re happy with it, when you make a new offer to them, Statisically, Your BEST CHANCE for a Sale is from an EXISTING CUSTOMER.

The next most Cost-effective group to Sell to are your EXISTING PROSPECTS. These folks haven’t purchased anything from you, but they Opted In at some point to receive your Ezine or Newsletter or Bulletin. They know who you are and have somewhat of a comfort level with you. Approaching this group with a New Offer will not be as cost-effective as that of Your Customers, but it will still yield better results than “Cold Prospects” will.

This leaves “COLD PROSPECTS” in the third position, as the least cost-effective of the Three Groups.

However, even though Your OWN Opt-in list to Your Customers and Prospects are the Most Cost-Effective, when you are first starting out, YOU DON’T HAVE ANY! That’s why COLD MARKETING TECHNIQUES are so CRITICAL to get started, as is the DEVELOPMENT OF AN ARMY OF AFFILIATES TO HELP YOU TO SELL YOUR OFFER!

Since BOTH Cold Marketing AND Affiliate Marketing are the Two Sources for the generation of NEW BUSINESS, it is CRITICAL that you ALWAYS DEVOTE TIME AND EFFORT TO BOTH COLD AND AFFILIATE MARKETING!

You now have a good idea of exactly what to do in order to get QUALIFIED TRAFFIC TO YOUR SITE!

Remember the “funnel” concept that we talked about earlier. By driving Qualified Traffic to Your Site, you are over the first two hurdles. You have Driven VISITORS to Your Site, and, you have driven QUALIFIED Visitors so you have maximized your PROSPECT-TO-VISITOR RATIO.

In terms of Profit, let’s say that you generate 100 Visitors per day from your Cold Marketing, and another 300 Visitors per day from your Affiliates. That’s a total of 400 visitors. Now lets say that you are selling something for $100, and that 1/50 Prospects buy your offer. Let’s say for example that all of these Visitors are Prospects for illustration purposes:

This means that for the 100 Prospects that you generated through COLD MARKETING, 1/50 purchased, so you have 2 Sales at $100 each, totaling a Gross Sales Volume of $200.

Affiliate Marketers drove 300 Prospects to Your Site, and at 1/50, Your Site closed 6 Sales. At $100 per Sale, this totals $600. If you are giving out a 40% Commission, then the Affiliates earn $240, and you earn $360. ($600 in Gross Sales minus $240 in paid commissions to Affiliates equals $360).

So for this day, you had Gross NEW SALES of $200 + $600, which equals $800 for the day. This does not include any BACK END SALES through the use of the Autoresponders, which we will talk about next, and it doesn’t consider The Value That Your Business Gained By Adding to Your List.

If 1/50 purchased, then 49/50 DID NOT! That means that out of your 400 Prospects, you made 6 Sales, while 394 DID NOT PURCHASE! BUT, if you were able to obtain 1/2, or 200 First Names and Email addresses out of the 394 who did not purchase, then you will be able to continue to contact these 200 Prospects. This provides you with the Opportunity to either Sell them Your Offer, a Profitable AFFILIATE OFFER or a Product for which you have the Resell Rights.

Autoresponders are an INVALUABLE TOOL. As I HOPE you are starting to see, PROMOTION is the KEY to GETTING TRAFFIC. Without Traffic you’ve got a dead Site. So Traffic is CRITICAL! The MORE TIME AND EFFORT you put into BOTH Cold AND Affiliate Marketing, into finding Affiliates, into making sure that your ads are placed, and that your Search Engine Ranking is as good as it can be, etc. is CRITICAL to the GENERATION OF THE DESIRED AMOUNT OF PROFITS!

NEVER FORGET YOUR GOAL, WHICH IS TO GENERATE THE DESIRED AMOUNT OF PROFIT!

As part of the setup of Your Site, you will have NUMEROUS MAILBOXES. The Autoresponder is set such that whenever an Email comes into a specific box, the Autoresponder sends a pre-set message. At the bottom of that message you should insert the following. “In the event this message did not answer your question, please feel free to contact me at Mysite.com”.  This automates all mailboxes except for the ONE that you need to check daily to answer customer inquiries.

LOOK FORWARD TO THESE MESSAGES- THEY ARE AN EXCELLENT SOURCE OF FUTURE CUSTOMERS BECAUSE YOU ARE DEVELOPING A PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP WITH THEM.

In addition to automating your mailbox responses so you are not answering Emails all day instead of promoting Your Business, the Autoresponders can be set up to:

  • Send an automatic message confirming their order
  • Send password information as required for access
  • Send the correct rebuttal message based on survey response
  • Send a series of messages based on a pre-set schedule to introduce new products and services
  • Send your Ezine, newsletter or bulletins
  • Send special limited time offers to your prospects

One word of caution though. Do not attempt to SELL in the email. All you want to do is whet their appetite and entice them to click on a link where you can THEN Sell them on Your Offer in accordance with The Sales Principles that will be discussed in detail in the coming Chapters.

REPEAT MARKETING IS INCREDIBLY COST EFFECTIVE because with the click of a button, through the use of Autoresponders, you can Continually Market Your Opt-In List, MAXIMIZING THE AMOUNT OF PROFITS THAT YOU CAN GENERATE From Your EXISTING Base.

Well, CONGRATULATIONS! You now have something that I didn’t have when I started out. With so much Information Overload, I couldn’t figure out EXACTLY WHAT I NEEDED TO DO IN ORDER TO GENERATE TRAFFIC TO MY SITE, AND WHY!

You can take a copy of the Summary of This Chapter, and have the FIRST CRITICAL PIECE OF YOUR BUSINESS PLAN IN PLACE!

YOUR MARKETING PLAN!

IMAGINE, WITH ALL OF THE STUFF THAT IS AVAILABLE TODAY ON THE INTERNET, HERE’S EVERYTHING YOU NEED FOR YOUR MARKETING PLAN TO DRIVE TRAFFIC TO YOUR SITE, SUMMARIZED ON ONE PAGE!

IS THAT COOL, OR WHAT?

Chapter Eight Review

In this Chapter we learned Eleven Important Axioms:

Axiom Number Twenty-NineTHE TOP PRIORITY IS TO MAXIMIZE THE QUANTITY OF THE VISITORS YOU ATTRACT

THE REALITY IS THAT YOU NEED TO GO AND FIND THEM, AND ENTICE THEM ENOUGH TO COME AND VISIT YOU!

Axiom Number Thirty WHERE ARE YOUR POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS RIGHT NOW?

First, you need to consider all the places that you can think of where Your Potential Customers are right now. They’re not all only in one place, waiting for you. Depending on what subject your Information, Product or Service is, there are certain places where there are bound to be a HIGHER CONCENTRATION of Potential Customers than in other places. What you don’t want to do is to waste your time advertising in areas where the people most probably have NO interest in what you are offering

Axiom Number Thirty-One DEFINE YOUR TARGET MARKET TO BE AS WIDE AS POSSIBLE AND STILL BE CLEARLY DEFINED

For example, “HOW TO PLANT AZALIAS” might better be changed to “HOW TO PLANT AND CARE FOR PLANTS AND SHRUBS”, because it widens the Market for the product. However, “HOW TO CARE FOR EVERYTHING OUTDOORS” waters down the Market, so that while there are more things outdoors to care for than Plants and Shrubs, the TARGET MARKET is no longer clear.

Axiom Number Thirty-Two – PERSISTENCE PAYS

Your message needs to be CONTINUAL. Consumers need to gain a COMFORT LEVEL by hearing about you over time. If you put out an ad, get your 1% response, and stop advertising, then even if you do have a Large Market, what will you do AFTER you send out that ad? The answer is simple: DO IT AGAIN, AND AGAIN, AND AGAIN, AND AGAIN!

Axiom Number Thirty-Three SEND THE SAME AD TO THE SAME GROUP A MINIMUM OF THREE CONSECUTIVE TIMES

Send out the ad to the same group a MINIMUM of THREE CONSECUTIVE TIMES. Keep track of the results and if the fourth time is giving you diminishing returns, THEN you might want to run it once more, or move to another area, depending on whether or not the return has diminished to the point where it is no longer Profitable.

Axiom Number Thirty-Four THE THRILL OF THE CHASE!

“ULTIMATELY, YOUR SUCCESS OR THE LACK THEREOF WILL BE DIRECTLY RELATED TO THE AMOUNT OF TIME, EFFORT AND ENERGY YOU SPEND MARKETING YOUR BUSINESS”

Axiom Number Thirty-Five THE REASON WHY FOLKS WILL VISIT YOUR SITE IS BECAUSE YOU ATTRACT THEM TO YOUR SITE.

THE AMOUNT OF TIME THAT YOU SPEND SUCCESSFULLY ATTRACTING VISITORS TO YOUR SITE IS DIRECTLY RELATED TO THE AMOUNT OF PROFITS YOU GENERATE.

Axiom Number Thirty-SixTHE FUNCTION OF MARKETING IS TO CREATE VISITORS TO YOUR SITE IN SUFFICIENT QUANTITY AND TO BE COST-EFFECTIVE IN THE PROCESS!

THE COST-EFFECTIVENESS OF ANY MARKETING TECHNIQUE IS DETERMINED BY THE PERCENTAGE OF THE COST OF THE TECHNIQUE AS IT RELATES TO THE AMOUNT OF PROFIT GENERATED FROM RESULTING SALES.

Axiom Number Thirty-Seven – YOUR ADVERTISING COST, WHEN DONE EFFECTIVELY, IS YOUR FRIEND, NOT YOUR ENEMY!

LOTS OF TIMES THOSE WITHOUT A LOT OF BUSINESS EXPERIENCE THINK THAT IF THEY CAN HOLD THEIR ADVERTISING COSTS DOWN TO NOTHING, THEY ARE MAKING THE MOST PROFIT. THIS IS NOT NECESSARILY TRUE!

Axiom Number Thirty-Eight – TIME IS CRITICAL ELEMENT TO THE GENERATION OF PROFITS:

GENERATING $10,000 IN GROSS SALES FROM $2,500 IN ADVERTISING COSTS IS SOMETHING TO GET EXCITED ABOUT IF YOU CAN DO IT EVERY DAY. IF HOWEVER, YOU CAN ONLY DO IT ONLY ONCE A YEAR, THAT’S NOTHING TO CELEBRATE ABOUT!

Axiom Number Thirty-Nine – THERE ARE THREE POOLS FROM WHICH TO MAKE SALES: COLD MARKETING, REFERRAL MARKETING AND REPEAT MARKETING.

These THREE SEPARATE AND DISTINCT MARKETING STRATEGIES Are the lifeblood of Your Business. The Successful Understanding and Performance of these CRITICAL FUNCTIONS will MAXIMIZE the amount of Visitors to Your Site.

How To Market

SUCCESSFUL MARKETING IS THE SCIENCE OF ATTRACTING PEOPLE TO YOUR BUSINESS IN SUFFICIENT NUMBERS AND OF THE NECESSARY QUALIFICATIONS IN ORDER TO REACH YOUR GENERATED PROFIT GOALS.

In Chapter Five we discussed KEY ELEMENT NUMBER ONE:

You cannot have a CUSTOMER until you have a PROSPECT. And we defined a “PROSPECT” as being a “QUALIFIED” VISITOR.

Therefore, we have a “FUNNEL” that looks like this:

|   V-I-S-I-T-O-R-S    |
\                                  /
\  PROSPECTS    /
\                         /
|    SALES       |
|                        |

The reason why these three categories are displayed as a “FUNNEL” is due to the number of people in each category.

In other words, you will get MORE VISITORS to your Site than you will get PROSPECTS, because some of the VISITORS are NOT QUALIFIED OR INTERESTED in what you are selling.

You will obviously have MORE PROSPECTS than SALES, because a percentage that is less than 100% will buy what you are selling.

In PART ONE, Chapter Six, we discussed the ratios of PROSPECTS-TO-VISITORS and SALES-TO-PROSPECTS.

Now we are going to go into detail and focus on the FIRST part of the FIRST CRITICAL RATIO:

THE PROSPECT-TO-VISITOR RATIO

The FIRST PART of the Prospect-To-Visitor Ratio is the “VISITOR” part.

The “VISITOR” is FIRST and FOREMOST in terms of IMPORTANCE because before you can have a QUALIFIED VISITOR, whom we call a “PROSPECT”, you must first have A VISITOR!

The FIRST KEY, as indicated at the TOP OF THE FUNNEL, is to ATTRACT AS MANY VISITORS T O YOUR SITE AS POSSIBLE

Note: Keep in mind that there must be some correlation between the number of Visitors and a Reasonable LEVEL OF INTEREST! We will discuss this issue shortly.

Axiom Number Twenty-NineTHE TOP PRIORITY IS TO MAXIMIZE THE QUANTITY OF THE VISITORS YOU ATTRACT

There’s a saying that goes:

“RUNNING A BUSINESS WITHOUT ADVERTISING IS LIKE WINKING AT A GIRL IN THE DARK. YOU KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING, BUT NO ONE ELSE DOES!”

If you do not advertise, how will anyone know that you are there or what you are doing? You can never assume that just because you have an INCREDIBLE Site, offering INCREDIBLE Information, Products or Services, that people will beat down your “door” to find you. THE REALITY IS THAT YOU NEED TO GO AND FIND THEM, AND ENTICE THEM ENOUGH TO COME AND VISIT YOU!

Let’s break this down into the two components: (1) FIND THEM, and then (2) ENTICE THEM.

Axiom Number Thirty WHERE ARE YOUR POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS RIGHT NOW?

First, you need to consider all the places that you can think of where Your Potential Customers are right now. This will take some thought and some research. After all, they’re not all only in one place, waiting for you.

Depending on what subject your Information, Product or Service is, there are certain places where there are bound to be a HIGHER CONCENTRATION of Potential Customers than in other places. What you don’t want to do is to waste your time advertising in areas where the people most probably have NO interest in what you are offering. In Chapter Nine we will address this issue in Great Detail.

Now let’s talk about the flip side of this point for a second, because it’s one of the many small but CRITICAL pieces that are a part of the formulation of your Success.

While Your Offer is most probably NOT universal in appeal (like Pepsi or Coke for example!), if your product appeals to TOO SMALL of a group of people, you are severely limiting yourself on the amount of Visitors that you can drive to your Site.

The lesson to be learned here is this. While you do not want to make your Offer so generic that it doesn’t have a TARGET MARKET, you also DO NOT want to make your Offer SO SPECIFIC that the Market is too small to give Your Business a chance to Generate the Desired Profit.

Axiom Number Thirty-One DEFINE YOUR TARGET MARKET TO BE AS WIDE AS POSSIBLE AND STILL BE CLEARLY DEFINED

Let’s take my Course as a simple example. If I wrote my Course and Marketed it as “HOW TO BUILD A SUCCESSFUL GARDENING INFORMATION BUSINESS”, instead of “HOW TO BUILD A SUCCESSFUL INTERNET BUSINESS”, the size of the Market of Potential Customers would have been CONSIDERABLY SMALLER. On the other hand, if I had Marketed my Course as “HOW TO BE SUCCESSFUL IN ANYTHING YOU DO” I would have watered down my TARGET MARKET, because the Course is SPECIFICALLY GEARED towards BUSINESS, and not just life in general.

Within these confines, from defining too tight of a Market for your Offer, to watering down your Market too much, you need to find the BIGGEST MARKET you can find without crossing the line to watering your Market down too much.

For example, “HOW TO PLANT AZALIAS” might better be changed to “HOW TO PLANT AND CARE FOR PLANTS AND SHRUBS”, because it widens the Market for the product. However, “HOW TO CARE FOR EVERYTHING OUTDOORS” waters down the Market.

While there are more things outdoors to care for than Plants and Shrubs, the TARGET MARKET is no longer clear.

Defining Your Market is Critical as we begin to develop YOUR MARKETING PLAN to attract the maximum amount of Qualified Visitors. Your Site will require these visitors in order to generate the PROFITS called for in your Business Plan. Also remember that:

  • The PRICE of your Offering,
  • The QUANTITY of Sales,
  • The existence of COMPETITION, and
  • The strength of AFFILIATE PROGRAMS,

Are all CRITICAL FACTORS in the Ultimate Success of Your Business.

At this point, you should be thinking about Several Potential Offers, either INFORMATION, PRODUCT, or SERVICE, that you feel has a TARGET MARKET that may be SUBSTANTIAL ENOUGH to be able to generate enough QUALIFIED VISITORS to make ENOUGH SALES to GENERATE YOUR DESIRED PROFIT.

As you can see, ALWAYS KEEP YOUR FOCUS ON YOUR ULTIMATE GOAL, WHICH IS TO GENERATE THE DESIRED PROFIT!

Before we get into the various Marketing Techniques that you will use to Reach your Potential Customers, let’s talk about some Statistics. This will give you a good idea of what in part, the task of Successful Marketing is all about. You’ll also be able to see why so many Businesses fail, just from this One perspective. There are LOTS of reasons why Businesses fail, but faulty Marketing, or a lack of the understanding of the Critical Nature of the task before them, is often a big contributory factor to their demise.

When you are doing “Cold Marketing”, meaning that YOU are making the INITIAL CONTACT to your Prospective Customer, the percentage of time that they respond favorably in general terms is 1% of the time. This is not to say that that aren’t things you can do to increase this return. But I don’t want you to think that if you have a Market of 1000 people that may have an interest in your Offer, that you’re going to have 500 sales. That’s a 50% Saturation Rate and that’s probably NOT going to happen!

If you have 1000 people and 1% of them are interested in your offer; you are going to generate 10 Visitors to Your Site.

Ideally, you’d want a market that is a million or more. It’s a fact that the bigger your market, the bigger your numbers at the Top of Your Funnel.

If you put 10 Visitors PER DAY into the Top of your Funnel, of which 9 are PROSPECTS, and your Sales-To-Prospect Ratio is 1/45, then you are going to get 1 Sale every 5 days, because it will take 5 days to get 45 Prospects at the rate of 9 per day.

If however you have a big enough market to generate 100 Visitors per day, then based on 90% you’ll have 90 Prospects and at 1/45, you’ll have 2 sales per day.

As you can see, there is a HUGE DIFFERENCE to Your Gross Sales Volume, isn’t there? At 10 Visitors a day, you make 1 Sale every 5 days, whereas at 100 Visitors a day, you make 2 sales PER day. Taking it one step further, at 1000 Visitors per day, you’d make 22 Sales per day!

Always keeping the funnel concept in mind, you will want to have the WIDEST POSSIBLE MARKET to attract the LARGEST QUANTITY OF VISITORS, to fill up the TOP of your Funnel. This is a CRITICAL part of Your Success!

Axiom Number Thirty-Two – PERSISTENCE PAYS

Another place in which Businesses often come up short is in the area of PERSISTENCE. Your message cannot go out to people just one time. Or two, or three.

Your message needs to be CONTINUAL. Consumers need to gain a COMFORT LEVEL by hearing about you over time. If you put out an ad, get your 1% response, and stop advertising, then even if you do have a Large Market, what will you do AFTER you send out that ad?

The answer is simple: DO IT AGAIN, AND AGAIN, AND AGAIN, AND AGAIN!

Statistics shows that the FIRST TIME you send out your ad, is NOT the highest percentage of response. Typically, the first time people see your ad, they may or many not even notice it. The second time, maybe they DO notice it. The third time, maybe they give it a moment’s thought. They fourth time the idea is growing on them. The fifth time they meant to call but didn’t. The sixth time they called.

In this case, it took SIX TIMES to get this particular person to respond to your ad.

A lot of times Businesses will send an ad to a particular group of Potential Customers, and then send an ad to A DIFFERENT GROUP, and then yet a THIRD GROUP, and so on. WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!

PERSISTENCE PAYS!  THE SQUEAKY WHEEL GETS THE OIL!!

Axiom Number Thirty-Three SEND THE SAME AD TO THE SAME GROUP A MINIMUM OF THREE CONSECUTIVE TIMES

Send out the ad to the same group a MINIMUM of THREE CONSECUTIVE TIMES. Keep track of the results and if the fourth time is giving you diminishing returns, THEN you might want to run it once more, or move to another area, depending on whether or not the return has diminished to the point where it is no longer Profitable.

If at this point you do not have a solid idea of what you are Offering to sell, that’s okay, because at this point, at least you know what the best Characteristics are for your offer.

You know that you want an Offer that appeals to a sizeable, reachable market, where there is a need that you are filling. And then you know that other factors such as the Cost of the item as it relates to the Sales price, Competition and the Strength of related Affiliate Programs, are all factors.

If you do not know what you will be offering, you can certainly narrow it down to something that you are familiar with, and then spend some time searching for Sites that carry related items to see if there seems to be a Market for Your idea. There are plenty of chat rooms and forums in which you can participate, and ask those folks what they think of your idea.

FREE Market Research in the areas that you will ultimately be advertising in is an EXCELLENT way to determine if there is a Market for your Offer.

Once you determine WHAT you are going to Offer and WHERE you are going to Market it, you have taken a HUGE STEP FORWARD to building the Foundation to Your Business.

In Chapter Nine, we will discuss the BEST WAYS to Market Your Offer to attract as many Visitors as possible.

Always keep in mind that we need to attract QUALIFIED Visitors, whom we call, PROSPECTS.

After we discuss the many different methods of ATTRACTING VISITORS, then we will explore how to design and write the ads themselves.

Then we will proceed to Chapter Ten where we will discuss how to best SELL THEM on Your Offer.

As you can probably see, SUCCESS IN BUSINESS comes from mastering ONE BUILDING BLOCK at a time. There is no such thing as rushing into Business and being Successful in the long term with the exception of the luck of one person in a million.

Success comes from Knowledge, Motivation, Persistence, and Desire, to name a few. What you are learning right now is DETAILED KNOWLEDGE, STEP-BY-STEP, from a 25 year pro, as promised!

Okay, NOW we’re to the FUN and MOST CHALLENGING part of the Business!

Axiom Number Thirty-Four THE THRILL OF THE CHASE!

“ULTIMATELY, YOUR SUCCESS OR THE LACK THEREOF WILL BE DIRECTLY RELATED TO THE AMOUNT OF TIME, EFFORT AND ENERGY YOU SPEND MARKETING YOUR BUSINESS”

THE IDEA IS FOR YOUR BUSINESS TO TAKE AS LITTLE TIME AS POSSIBLE TO DO ALL O THE TASKS THAT ARE NOT DIRECTLY RELATED TO MARKETING YOUR SITE.

When Your Site finally goes “LIVE”, that’s a VERY EXCITING MOMENT for you.

BUT, YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE THAT KNOWS ABOUT IT!

There’s well over a million Sites on the Internet – why would ANYBODY visit YOURS?

The answer is this:

Axiom Number Thirty-Five THE REASON WHY FOLKS WILL VISIT YOUR SITE IS BECAUSE YOU ATTRACT THEM TO YOUR SITE.

THE AMOUNT OF TIME THAT YOU SPEND SUCCESSFULLY ATTRACTING VISITORS TO YOUR SITE IS DIRECTLY RELATED TO THE AMOUNT OF PROFITS YOU GENERATE.

One of the BIGGEST MISTAKES a person who is in Business can make is to not recognize THE MOST IMPORANT TASKS. While there are MANY tasks that have to get done, one thing is AN ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY:

IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A POTENTIAL CUSTOMER, YOU WILL NEVER HAVE AN ACTUAL CUSTOMER!

No matter WHAT KIND of Business it is, that Business needs to ATTRACT POTENTIAL CUSTOMERS, and then TURN THEM INTO CUSTOMERS!

For many years, I have explained the Division of the Work Force as being represented by two groups:

JOB CREATORS AND JOB MAINTAINERS

Both groups, Job Creators AND Job Maintainers, are CRITICAL to the SUCCESS of the Business.

In a Conventional Business, The Job Creators are composed of two groups: The Marketing People, who FIND THE PROSPECT, and The SALES PEOPLE, who turn the Prospect into a CUSTOMER.

Once the Business has a CUSTOMER, The Job Maintainers go to work. The Maintainers go about making sure that the products and/or services that were sold to this Customer are delivered.

Product may need to be ordered, manufactured, assembled or delivered. Service personnel may need to follow up with the Customer to be certain that the Customer is satisfied. There may a Collection Department, a Human Resources Department, and an Accounting Division to MAINTAIN the ebb and flow of the day-to-day Business Operations.

As you can see, BOTH Job Creators AND Job Maintainers are CRITICALLY IMPORTANT to the OVERALL SUCCESS of the Business.

But CLEARLY, UNTIL THE JOB IS CREATED – THAT IS, UNTIL THE BUSINESS HAS A CUSTOMER – THE JOB MAINTAINERS HAVE NOTHING TO MAINTAIN! No product to deliver, no services to render. Nothing to do until the JOB CREATORS, MARKETING AND SALES, FIRST CREATE A CUSTOMER!

THIS IS A CRITICAL LESSON TO LEARN!!

ALWAYS UTILIZE THE MAXIMUM AMOUNT OF YOUR ENERGY WITH THE FOCUS OF FINDING A POTENTIAL CUSTOMER, AND TURNING THEM INTO A CUSTOMER.

DO EVERYTHING POSSIBLE TO AUTOMATE EVERYTHING YOU CAN AUTOMATE that is OPERATIONAL IN NATURE. YOUR PRIMARY FUNCTION MUST BE TO CREATE PROSPECTS, AND THEN HAVE A SIGHT THAT CAN MAXIMIZE THE SALES-TO-PROSPECT RATIO.

Chapters 10, 11 and 12 are devoted to How to Sell, Verbiage and Closing Techniques, and the layout and flow of Your Site. The ULTIMATE GOAL is to be able to AUTOMATE virtually EVERY ASPECT of Your Business. But ONE of the ABSOLUTE MOST CRITICAL POINTS IS THIS:

THE MORE EFFECTIVE YOU CAN BE IN GENERATING PROSPECTS, THE MORE TIMES YOUR SITE HAS THE OPPORTUNITY TO SELL YOUR OFFER.

Let’s review the concept of the “FUNNEL” from Chapter 8.

|   V-I-S-I-T-O-R-S    |
\                                  /
\   PROSPECTS   /
\                         /
|    SALES       |
|                        |

Remember that we said that we start by creating VISITORS, which is the LARGEST of the Three Groups by Quantity.

Then a certain percentage of the Visitors are PROSPECTS. We defined “PROSPECTS” as “QUALIFIED” Visitors.

And then we said that the combination of the NUMBER OF PROSPECTS and THE SALES-TO-PROSPECT RATIO determines Your number of Sales.

So, if you have 100 Visitors per day, and 90% of them are PROSPECTS, which is 90 PROSPECTS, and your SALES-TO-PROSPECT RATIO is 1/45, then you will make 2 Sales per day.

If you have 500 Visitors, and 90% of them are PROSPECTS, which is 450, and Your SALES-TO-PROSPECT RATIO is 1/15, then you will make 30 Sales per day.

Remember, we said that depending on the AMOUNT OF PROFIT that You Desire to Generate to Achieve Your Dream, that the Profit per Sale times the number of Sales determines Your Gross Profit. This means that if you have a Gross Profit of $98 per Sale, and you have 2 Sales per day, then Your Gross

Profit is $196 per day, or $6,000 per month.
Based on 30 Sales a day however, at the same $98 Gross Profit per Sale, you’d generate $3000 per day in Gross Profit, which is $90,000 per month!

We will address all of the issues that go into the MAXIMIZATION of the SALES-TO-PROSPECT RATIO in the next Four Chapters.

FOR THE PURPOSES OF THIS CHAPTER, WE WILL EXPLORE ALL OF THE MAJOR MARKETING TECHNIQUES TO MAXIMIZE THE NUMBER OF VISITORS THAT COME TO YOUR SITE.

A MARKETING TECHNIQUE is simply a method for attracting a Potential Customer. There are NUMEROUS Techniques that we will talk about in Detail.

But before we do so, let’s talk about the CONCEPT OF WHAT WE ARE TRYING TO ACHIEVE.

WHAT WE ARE NOT TRYING TO DO IS TO SELL THE OFFER!

THE PURPOSE OF MARKETING IS TO INTEREST THE POTENTIAL CUSTOMER ENOUGH TO CHECK OUT YOUR OFFER!

There’s a HUGE DIFFERENCE between TRYING TO SELL THE POTENTIAL CUSTOMER ON CHECKING OUT YOUR OFFER, AND TRYING TO SELL THE POTENTIAL CUSTOMER ON BUYING YOUR OFFER!!!!!

Its CRITICAL that you CLEARLY UNDERSTAND YOUR PURPOSE WHEN YOU MARKET!

You will have a SITE that SELLS YOUR OFFER.

When you Market, you are Selling Your Prospect on coming to Your Site.

MAKE SURE YOU ALWAYS REMEMBER THIS DISTINCTION!

Axiom Number Thirty-SixTHE FUNCTION OF MARKETING IS TO CREATE VISITORS TO YOUR SITE IN SUFFICIENT QUANTITY AND TO BE COST EFFECTIVE IN THE PROCESS!

THE COST EFFECTIVENESS OF ANY MARKETING TECHNIQUE IS DETERMINED BY THE PERCENTAGE OF THE COST OF THE TECHNIQUE AS IT RELATES TO THE AMOUNT OF PROFIT GENERATED FROM RESULTING SALES.

Let’s say that you can generate Prospects to Your Site for a cost of $1 each, you are selling products with an average per item profit of $25, and it takes 50 Visitors to make 1 Sale. In this case, obviously this Marketing Technique is not Cost Effective because the net result is that it cost $50 to generate enough Prospects to make 1 Sale with a Profit of just $25. NOT GOOD!

However, if the average Profit per item is $100, and the cost per Prospect is $.25, and you make 1 Sale for every 45 Prospects, then for every $11.25 that you spend Marketing Your Site, you generate $100 in Gross Profit, of which $88.75 is Net Profit before taxes! This is a VERY COST EFFECTIVE MARKETING STRATEGY!

So if a Marketing Technique costs $100 but generates LESS than $100 in Profits, it cost too much for this technique. But, on the other hand, if it cost $500 for a Marketing Technique, but it generates $5,000 in Profits, then this technique was WELL WORTH IT!!

You will want to have your Cold Marketing Costs be 10% AT THE MOST in Relation to Generated Profits. This means that some Marketing Campaigns may cost 20% of the Gross Profits generated, in which case spending $200 to generate $1000 in Profits is still a good investment. There are Marketing Campaigns that you will run that are FREE advertising, and therefore generate PURE PROFIT. And there are those that will be in the 5%-15% range in terms of MARKETING COSTS VERSES PROFIT GENERATED.

But it is NOT necessarily the case that the LOWER the percentage of Your Marketing Costs, the more profit you make!

Axiom Number Thirty-Seven – YOUR ADVERTISING COST, WHEN DONE EFFECTIVELY, IS YOUR FRIEND, NOT YOUR ENEMY!

LOTS OF TIMES THOSE WITHOUT A LOT OF BUSINESS EXPERIENCE THINK THAT IF THEY CAN HOLD THEIR ADVERTISING COSTS DOWN TO NOTHING, THEY ARE MAKING THE MOST PROFIT. THIS IS NOT NECESSARILY TRUE!

We will discuss the 3 Main Marketing Categories in Great Detail in Chapter Nine. For now, let’s define one of the Three Main Categories as “Cold Marketing.” Cold Marketing is the Marketing that YOU PERSONALL DO to attract Visitors to Your Site through Your Own Direct Marketing Campaign.

As part of designing Your Business Budget, we will be dedicating 10% of Gross Sales to be used for your Cold Advertising Budget. This will be achieved by a combination of FREE advertising, with of course some PAID advertising.

If it’s the case that your Cold Advertising Costs are 10% of your Gross Sales, then that means that by spending $10 for advertising, you have generated $100 in Sales.

See the illustration below:

ADVERTISING                  DOLLAR AMOUNT

COSTS AT 10%                  OF GROSS SALES

$     10                                  $     100

$   100                                  $  1,000

$1,000                                  $10,000

 

ADVERTISING                  DOLLAR AMOUNT

COSTS AT 25%                  OF GROSS SALES

$    25                                  $     100

$  250                                  $  1,000

$2,500                                 $10,000

As you can see, even when spending $25 in Advertising to generate $100 in Gross Sales, or $2500 in Advertising to generate $10,000 in Gross Sales,

Accordingly, if you spend $25 instead of $2500, did you SAVE $2475, or did you LOSE THE PROFIT ON THE DIFFERENCE OF $9900 IN GROSS SALES?!

OBVIOUSLY, assuming that there is a PROFIT to be made in the GENERATION OF GROSS SALES, the MORE GROSS SALES YOU GENERATE, THE MORE GROSS PROFIT YOU ALSO GENERATE!

As you will see in the NEXT Table, if the COST OF COLD ADVERTISING is 50%, and the Cost of ALL OTHER EXPENSES is 40%, and the COST OF GOODS IS 33%, then the TOTAL of these THREE IS 123%! Since this is MORE THAN 100%, which is MORE THAN THE GROSS SALES PRICE, THIS RESULTS IN A LOSS !!!!

ADVERTISING        DOLLAR AMT                  GROSS LOSS BASED

COSTS AT 50%       GROSS SALES                   ON EXPENSES OF 123%

 

$     50                                 $     100                                       $     23

$   500                                 $  1,000                                       $   230

$5,000                                 $10,000                                       $2,300

As you can see from the illustration below, the LOSS of $2,300 results from having a 50% Advertising Expense, 40% For All Other Expense, and a 33% Cost of Goods.

Sales Generated         =   $10,000

Less Adver Expense  =   $  5,000  (50%)

Less Oper Expense    =   $  4,000

Less Product Cost      =   $  3,300

—————————————-

TOTAL LOSS           =     – 2,300

CLEARLY, THE COST OF ADVERTISING CAN RESULT IN GENERATING PROFITS, OR GENERATING LOSSES! THIS IS WHY IT IS SO CRITICAL TO ADVERTISE, TO GENERATE GROSS SALES, BUT TO BE AWARE OF YOUR COSTS AS THEY RELATE TO THE GROSS AMOUNT OF SALES THAT YOU ARE GENERATING TO BE SURE YOU ARE GENERATING A PROFIT AS WELL!

We need to discuss one last element of importance before we look at individual Marketing Techniques. That element is TIME.

Axiom Number Thirty-Eight – TIME IS CRITICAL ELEMENT TO THE GENERATION OF PROFITS:

GENERATING $10,000 IN GROSS SALES FROM $2,500 IN ADVERTISING COSTS IS SOMETHING TO GET EXCITED ABOUT IF YOU CAN DO IT EVERY DAY. IF HOWEVER YOU CAN ONLY DO IT ONLY ONCE A YEAR, THAT’S NOTHING TO CELEBRATE ABOUT!

The point here is that you must have a big enough Market, a big enough Marketing Campaign, and big enough THINKING to GENERATE PROFIT RELATIVE TO TIME. By putting in your Effort, your Money and your ingenuity, you need to not just generate Sales, but rather to Generate the NUMBER OF SALES that you NEED TO GENERATE in a SPECIFIC TIME PERIOD in order to GENERATE THE DESIRED AMOUNT OF GROSS PROFITS.

Assume for a moment that Your Dream requires a $10,000 per Month Gross Profit. Based on a 25% Advertising cost, by spending $5,000 in Advertising for the Month you can generate $20,000 in Sales. If $5000 for the month is the Cost of your Operating Expenses, then you have generated $10,000 for the month in Gross Profit.

If however you spend $5,000 PER QUARTER, generating $20,000 in Sales PER QUARTER, then you are generating $10,000 in Profit PER QUARTER. This means a MONTHLY PROFIT OF ONLY $3333, WAY SHORT OF THE DESIRED PROFIT.

Here’s a very serious situation that occurs when your Gross Sales decrease as in the example above. The more that your Gross Sales decrease, the HIGHER the percentage of OPERATING COSTS are against the Gross Sales. We will discuss this in more detail in Part Three.

YOU SHOULD BE AWARE, HOWEVER, OF THE CRITICAL NATURE OF GENERATING SALES IN A PARTICULAR TIME FRAME WITH THE CORRECT PERCENTAGE OF THE COST OF ADVERTISING AS IT RELATES TO THE OVERALL SUCCESS OF YOUR BUSINESS.

We have an understanding of the Principles of Advertising, which are:

  • ADVERTISING GENERATES SALES
  • MAKE SURE YOU ARE ALSO GENERATING A PROFIT and
  • GENERATE YOUR PROFIT WITHIN A SPECIFIC TIME FRAME

Now let’s take a look at Different MARKETING TECHNIQUES and the affect they may have on Your Business!

There are THREE COMPLETELY DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS from which to Market Your Business. Each has its own TARGET group to whom you are Marketing. Since there are 3 different groups, there are three different approaches that are necessary in order to address each group. Within the Marketing Effort for each group, there are different Techniques that can be utilized to attract Visitors to Your Site. Some Techniques will be more cost effective than others will. Others may cost a bit more but are made up in Volume and in your ability to continue to Market your Customers.

Axiom Number Thirty-Nine – THERE ARE THREE POOLS FROM WHICH TO MAKE SALES: COLD MARKETING, REFERRAL MARKETING AND REPEAT MARKETING.

We will look at these THREE SEPARATE AND DISTINCT MARKETING STRATEGIES SEPARATELY so you can CLEARLY UNDERSTAND EXACTLY what you need to do in each area to MAXIMIZE the amount of Visitors to Your Site.

COLD MARKETING:

COLD Marketing consists of MARKETING DIRECTLY TO YOUR POTENTIAL VISITOR.  In other words, you are placing ads to find Prospects to visit Your Site. Depending on the technique, this can be the more expensive of the two ways to Market. However, there’s a rule in Business that says:

20% OF YOUR EFFORTS WILL GIVE YOU 80% OF YOUR RESULTS, WHILE 80% OF YOUR EFFORTS WILL GIVE YOU 20% OF YOUR RESULTS. BUT YOU NEED BOTH TO MAXIMIZE YOUR RESULTS.

Examples of Direct Marketing are Pay-Per-Click engines, Classified ads, etc. COLD MARKETING includes all of the Techniques for you to Directly motivate Your Potential Customer to take action. We will discuss these shortly.

REFERRAL MARKETING:

REFERRAL Marketing consists of Marketing to those who will in turn Market to Your Prospect.  In other words, you are in effect recruiting a Sales Force to find Prospects for you to visit Your Site. Depending on the technique, this can produce sizably more results. It is not without its costs, however. But this approach is critical to the amount of NEW TRAFFIC to Your Site.

You will attract some traffic via COLD Marketing, which in effect is you working on your own to build traffic to Your Site. REFERRAL Marketing allows you to build and ARMY of Sites that PROMOTE YOUR OFFER in return for a Commission, which is in lieu of the Advertising Costs of COLD MARKETING. There are several advantages of Referral Marketing:

  • You only pay commission when Sales are generated!
  • More Sales will be generated by the efforts of many than by you alone and
  • You now have a Customer that you can continue to Market for life for free!

REPEAT MARKETING:

REPEAT Marketing Consists of Marketing to Existing Prospects and Customers. With COLD Marketing and with REFERRAL Marketing you are Marketing to find a FIRST-TIME Prospect.

With REPEAT Marketing, you CONTINUE to Market EXISTING PROSPECTS whether they did or did not purchase anything. If they DID purchase, you now have a relationship with them and can sell them another product or service more easily than the first Sale because now they trust you. If they did not already buy from you, by continuing to Market them, you are interacting with them and building a comfort level with them.

Now let’s discuss the principles of DIRECT and INDIRECT MARKETING.

DIRECT MARKETING:

DIRECT Marketing consists of your attempts to Sell Your OFFER. If for example you want the folks to come to Your Site, you are Selling them in Your Ad to come directly to Your Site.

INDIRECT MARKETING:

Indirect Marketing consists of PRE-Selling Your Offer. This means that instead of advertising to direct Visitors to Your Site, you advertise to direct Visitors to Your Giveaway. Then you whet their appetite enough so that from there, they want to go to Your Site to get ALL of the information because the partial blurb of Information was SO EXCITING!

CHAPTER SEVEN REVIEW

In this Chapter we learned Four Important Axioms:

Axiom Number Twenty-Five DETERMINE WHAT TO SELL BASED ON THE ANTICIPATED AMOUNT OF GENERATED PROFIT

Keep yourself focused on the amount of PROFIT you want to generate and make sure that your ideas are CONSISTENT with that PROFIT.

Axiom Number Twenty-Six YOU DREAM BIG, YOU THINK BIG!

In order to achieve Dreams that have a sizeable price tag, you need to THINK BIG in terms of the INFORMATION, PRODUCT, OR SERVICE that you will provide so Your Business can in fact GENERATE THE DESIRED AMOUNT OF PROFIT.

Axiom Number Twenty-SevenIF YOU CAN’T REACH YOUR POTENTIAL CUSTOMER, YOU WILL NEVER HAVE A CUSTOMER!

Make sure that you have a SOUND PLAN for REACHING your TARGET MARKET. There is NOTHING WORSE than have a GREAT PRODUCT or SERVICE and NOBODY to SELL IT TO!

Axiom Number Twenty-Eight YOU ARE LIMITED ONLY BY YOUR IMAGINATION

Identifying a Reachable Market and creating or matching a useful, wanted, or needed Offer for that Market takes Imagination, Ingenuity and Creativity. From the inventor of the Paper Clip, to Ray Kroc recognizing that one small Hamburger Stand could be a Gold Mine, LET YOUR IMAGINATION GO!

In this Chapter, we explored WHAT TO SELL as it relates to the GENERATION OF PROFIT.

There’s no end to the CREATION of new INFORMATION, PRODUCTS, or SERVICES, and there is also no end to the creation of NEW WAYS of MERCHANDISING, and offering EXISTING INFORMATION, PRODUCTS or SERVICES in a FRESH WAY.

We reviewed 4 Different Scenarios, one of which may form the basis of the Foundation for what will be Your Business Plan.

  • A UNIQUE INFORMATION PRODUCT
  • A UNIQUE PRODUCT
  • A DROP SHIPPED PRODUCT
  • A HANDLED PRODUCT

We discussed the advantages and disadvantages of each Scenario as well as how the FOUNDATION OF YOUR BUSINESS PLAN is such a CRITICALLY IMPORTANT factor of Your Success.

The factors that we discussed are:

  • The type of item, INFORMATION, or PRODUCT,
  • The SIZE of the Market,
  • The REACHABILITY of the Market,
  • The PRICE of the item,
  • The amount of GROSS PROFIT of the item,
  • The amount of COMPLIMENTARY products that can be offered,
  • The average PRICE of those products, and
  • The average PERCENTAGE the Affiliate Programs are offering to you in return for generating Affiliate Sales.

And we pointed out that:

THE SINGLE MOST SUCCESSFUL RESULT WILL OCCUR IF YOU CAN FIND A SIZEABLE, REACHABLE MARKET FOR INFORMATION, A PRODUCT OR A SERVICE, AND THEN YOU CAN PROVIDE THAT, AS WELL AS RELATED INFORMATION, PRODUCTS OR SERVICES THROUGH AFFILIATE OFFERINGS.

In the coming Chapters, we learn EXACTLY how to do this!

What To Sell

In PART ONE we explored two examples of expense structures.

In the case of Structure One, we allowed 50% of the Gross Sales Volume for expenses. We saw that if we were selling electronic information, there was no additional “Cost of Goods” over and above the expenses, which we will go into more detail on later.

In the case of Structure Two, we saw that if there was a “Cost of Goods” involved, that cost affected the Gross Profit because the cost of the product was over and above the 50% cost that we are allowing for all other Overhead and Operating expenses.

To refresh your memory, let’s review the following three illustrations that we went over in Chapter Six:

INFORMATION” SALES PROJECTION:

In the case of the Sale of Electronic Information, such as an E-Book, or an E-Course, there are no costs for the Product or for the Delivery. Therefore, the Gross Sales amount is ALSO the Gross Profit amount. See the projection below.

Dollar amount of Sales per Day:          $700

Number of Days per Month                  x 30

—————————————————–

Gross Sales per Month                   $ 21,000

Total Percentage of Expenses 50%

Gross Sales per Month                    $21,000

Estimated Percentage of Expenses    x 50%

—————————————————-

Gross Profit per Month                   $10,500

Gross Profit per Month                  $10,500

Number of Months for theYear           x 12

—————————————————-

Gross Profit for the Year             $126,000

Gross Profit for the Year             $126,000

Estimated Tax Liability               $  26,000

—————————————————-

NET PROFIT GENERATED =  $100,000

“PRODUCT” SALES PROJECTION NUMBER ONE:

In this Projection, we take a look at what happens to the Profit if you have Gross Sales of $700 per Day but you have a 33% Cost of Goods to Factor into the equation:

Dollar amount of Sales per Day           $700

Less 33% for Cost of Goods                $233

————————————————–

Gross Profit Per Day                            $467

Gross Profit per Day                            $467 instead of $700

Number of Days per Month                  x 30

—————————————————–

Gross Profit per Month                  $ 14,010 instead of $21,000

Total Percentage of Expenses 50%

Gross Profit per Month                   $14,010

Estimated Percentage of Expenses    x 50%

—————————————————-

Net Profit before Tax per Month    $ 7,005 instead of $10,500

Net Profit before Tax per Month   $ 7,005

Number of Months for theYear           x 12

—————————————————-

Annual Net Profit Before Tax     $ 84,060 instead of $126,000

Annual Net Profit Before Tax    $  84,060

Estimated Tax Liability @ 25%  $  21,015

—————————————————-

NET PROFIT GENERATED =  $ 63,045 instead of $100,000

“PRODUCT” SALES PROJECTION NUMBER TWO:

To compensate for the Cost of Goods at 33%, Gross Sales need HIGHER than the $700 per day in Projection Number One by the AMOUNT OF THE COST OF GOODS, so that when the Cost of Goods is deducted, there is still a $700 per day Generated Gross Profit.

Dollar amount of Sales per Day:        $1050 instead of $700

Less 33% for Cost of Goods               $ 350

—————————————————–

Gross Profit per Day                            $700

 

Gross Profit per Day                            $700

Number of Days per Month                  x 30

—————————————————–

Gross Profit per Month                  $ 21,000

 

Total Percentage of Expenses 50%

 

Gross Profit per Month                   $21,000

Estimated Percentage of Expenses    x 50%

—————————————————-

Net Profit before Tax per Month    $10,500

 

Net Profit before Tax per Month   $10,500

Number of Months for theYear           x 12

—————————————————-

Annual Net Profit Before Tax     $126,000

 

Annual Net Profit Before Tax    $126,000

Estimated Tax Liability               $  26,000

—————————————————-

NET PROFIT GENERATED =  $100,000

As a reminder, these three illustrations are based on the assumption that Your First Goal is to generate a Net Profit of $100,000, based on a 50% Overhead and Operating Expense.

The “INFORMATION” illustration shows that you need to achieve a Gross Sales Volume of $700 per day to generate Gross Profits of $126,000 for the Year, and thus generate a Net Profit of $100,000.

The first “PRODUCT” illustration shows that if there is a 33% Cost of Goods in ADDITION to the 50% Overhead and Operating Expense, the generated Net Profit for the Year would only be $63,045 instead of $100,000 with the Gross Sales amount as in the “INFORMATION” illustration.

The second “PRODUCT” illustration shows that assuming 50% Total Expense PLUS a 33% Cost of Goods, in order to achieve a $100,000 Net Profit, you’d have to INCREASE Gross Sales from $700 a day to $1050 Per Day to cover the Cost of Goods.

This does NOT mean that a Site that sells “Product” will be less profitable than a Site that sells “Information.” It DOES, however, mean that you MUST take this factor into consideration as you decide WHAT to sell on your Site!!!

Remember, the ENTIRE PURPOSE of what we are doing here is to do one thing:

GENERATE THE DESIRED AMOUNT OF PROFIT

 

In order to do this; one of the MOST CRITICAL thoughts that go into your SUCCESS is what we are doing RIGHT NOW –

Axiom Number Twenty-FiveDETERMINE WHAT TO SELL BASED ON THE ANTICIPATED AMOUNT OF GENERATED PROFITS

Let’s assume that you are selling a Widget for three times what it cost you to buy it. If you buy a Widget at a cost of $49, and you resell it for 3 times this cost, or $147, your Gross Profit is $147 – $49 = $98.

If 50% of the Gross Profit, which is $98, is the Total Cost of Expenses, then this means that out of $98, $49 is the Gross Expense Costs and $49 is the Profit.

See the Illustration below:

 

$ 49 Your Cost of Widget (This is known as the Wholesale Cost)

x  3  Based on a Mark-Up or Resell amount of Three times the Cost

—-

$147 Gross Sales Amount (This is known as the Retail Cost)

 

$ 147   Gross Sales Amount

– $49 – Cost of Goods

– $98 – All Expenses Totaling 50% of the Gross Sales Amount

——

$49 – $49 out of $147 equals a 33% profit margin

 

This means if you choose to sell PRODUCT, instead of INFORMATION, you will generate a Gross Profit of $33 for every $100 of Gross Sales.

If you sell INFORMATION, because there is no additional 33% for the Cost of Goods, 50% of the Gross Sales Price is Profit.

This means that if you sell $100 worth of your own INFORMATION, 50% is Gross Expense Cost, and 50% or $50 is the Gross Profit before taxes.

Whether the Net Profit before Tax is 33% of Gross Sales ($49 out of $147) or

whether the Net Profit before Tax is 50% of Gross Sales ($49 out of $98), the amount of Profit generated per Sale is IDENTICAL. So it is NOT to be said that a PRODUCT Site is necessarily LESS profitable. There’s a LOT of factors involved, which we will talk about now as we consider:

Axiom Number Twenty-Six YOU DREAM BIG, YOU THINK BIG!

 

One of the biggest things I see so often is that even when people dare to DREAM BIG, they don’t expand their THINKING to THINK BIG!

Remember, right back on the FIRST PAGE of Chapter One, we said that ultimately, Success begins where?

That’s right. BETWEEN YOUR EARS!

IF you THINK SMALL, you will get SMALL RESULTS. And SMALL RESULTS DO NOT BUILD BIG DREAMS!

What I am trying to get across to you is that whether you sell INFORMATION, or whether you sell a PRODUCT, you need to sell ENOUGH of them at the RIGHT PRICE so that the Profit comes out to what YOU DESIRE for them to come out.

In other words, let’s say that you feel that you can write an INFORMATION piece that you feel you could sell to a particular market for $98.

Now, let’s say that you feel that you can sell a particular PRODUCT to a particular market for $147 and it cost you $49.

In the first example, selling an E-book Set or Course of your own origin for $98, assuming a 50% Gross Expense, you are generating a Gross Profit of $49 for every Book Sold.

In the second example, selling a $147 Widget, less the $49 Cost of Goods, leaving $98 in Gross Profit before expenses, and less a 50% Gross Expense Allowance, which is $49, you are generating the same Gross Profit of  $49 for every Widget Sold.

Accordingly, for every 100 Books Sold, you generate $4900 in Profit. For every 100 Widgets Sold, you generate $4900 in Profit.

So it is not necessarily the case that INFORMATION is better to sell than PRODUCT. Only ONE of the many Variables is the DOLLAR AMOUNT OF PROFIT that you can generate from each Sale.

The next variable to consider is HOW MANY units you can expect to sell.

Let’s say that the WIDGET has UNIVERSAL APPEAL. There’s COUNTLESS Prospects for this Widget! You can Post your Advertisements in accordance with Your Marketing Plan and never run out of potential Prospects!

Let’s say that the E-book, on the other hand, is only for a very small niche market. Your feeling is that you will sell WAY LESS books than you will sell Widgets.

In this case, the Widget is the BETTER CHOICE, isn’t it!

After all, your purpose is to develop a Site that will GENERATE the PROFIT that YOU DESIRE!

The next Critical Element to explore is the amount of RELATED PRODUCTS that you can also offer.

In most cases, there are Related Products available on the Internet that you can offer for Sale on Your Site. You earn a Commission on these products. We will discuss this in much more depth in a later Chapter.

For now it is important to know that most Sites on the Internet offer what is called an “Affiliate” program, meaning that you can link to their Site, sell their product, and earn a percentage of the Sale for doing so.

With this is mind, let’s say that you have an INFORMATION book that you can write in an area in which you can develop yourself as an “EXPERT”. And let’s say that the topic of this book is a topic that has a lot of products available on the Internet that is complimentary to your Topic. If this is the case, you can develop a Site that sells your book, PLUS you can offer a WIDE SELECTION of complimentary Products and/or Services to your Customer.

Can you see that you NOW have the Profit potential from YOUR book PLUS a collection of other products as well?

Let’s take it a step further. Let’s say that you have several choices of what you can write about. Well, the first factor would be the SIZE OF THE MARKET for which you are writing.

If you can write two books, one of which would be interesting to only a few people, and one that would be appealing to MANY, then the book that has a Market of MANY would be the better choice….

AS LONG AS THAT MARKET IS REACHABLE!

Axiom Number Twenty-SevenIF YOU CAN’T REACH YOUR POTENTIAL CUSTOMER, YOU WILL NEVER HAVE A CUSTOMER!

Make SURE when you are considering a Market that you do your homework and find out where people that would be interested in YOUR INFORMATION or PRODUCT are FOUND on the Internet.

Note: In Part Three we will talk about techniques to reach Prospects that are off-line as well. For starting out however, we will confine Prospecting to the Internet due to Cost Considerations.

Let’s say that you have two books that you could write, on two different, UNRELATED subjects. And let’s say they have equal Market appeal. And they both have complimentary products available on the Internet that you can link to as an Affiliate to add to your Site and increase the Profits that you generate. What would be the determining factor?

In this case, the determining factor is the Price, Percentage, and Potential Number of Units you’d expect to sell through the Affiliate programs.

Let’s say that one subject has complimentary products that you can offer, but they are low priced and a review of the Affiliate programs show that you get 20% of the Sale. So the average sales price of the complimentary products are $20 each, and you make 20% on average, which is $4. THAT’S SMALL!!!!

AND WE THINK BIG!

However, the second subject has complimentary products that average $100 each and the average percentage for you as an affiliate is 30% per Sale for every sale you generate by sending visitors their way.

Which makes more sense to you. To refer people to a Site where you can make $4 per Sale, or to refer people to a Site where you can make $30 per Sale?

As you can see, there are several CRITICAL FACTORS to review when deciding what PRODUCT, SERVICE, or INFORMATION to sell.

The purpose of this exercise is to get you thinking about what you are going to be selling within the context of how much PROFIT it will generate. A lot of times, people sell on the Internet, and make money, but NO WHERE NEAR the money they DESIRE to make. One BIG reason for this is a lack of the understanding of the DYNAMICS that go into GENERATING PROFIT.

KNOWLEDGE IS POWER!

The following Variables need to be considered when determining What to Sell:

  • The type of item, INFORMATION, or PRODUCT,
  • The SIZE of the Market,
  • The REACHABILITY of the Market,
  • The PRICE of the item,
  • The amount of GROSS PROFIT of the item,
  • The amount of COMPLIMENTARY products that can be offered,
  • The average PRICE of those products, and
  • The average PERCENTAGE the Affiliate Programs are offering to you in return for generating Affiliate Sales.

Let’s explore several different scenarios with regards to developing a SOLID FOUNDATION for YOUR BUSINESS while keeping in mind the following:

REMEMBER TO THINK PROFIT!!!

What you DO NOT want to do is to put all of your effort into setting up a Site that is limited to low-priced products. Unless you are planning on selling THOUSANDS UPONS THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS of $1 widgets!

THE SINGLE MOST SUCCESSFUL RESULT WILL OCCUR IF YOU CAN FIND A SIZEABLE, REACHABLE MARKET FOR INFORMATION, A PRODUCT OR A SERVICE, AND THEN YOU CAN PROVIDE RELATED INFORMATION, PRODUCTS OR SERVICES THROUGH AFFILIATE OFFERINGS AS WELL.

Let’s take a look at Four different Scenarios, and Critique of them as whether they form the basis for the Foundation of a Sound Business Plan.

Scenario Number One: UNIQUE INFORMATION

  • You have the ability to write meaningful Information that a Specific, Sizable market, that you can Reach, wants and/or needs
  • You have looked at competitive Information and you feel confident that Your Information can compete.
  • You have reviewed the Affiliate Programs in this Market and you see numerous products with attractive pricing and percentage

Note that there are two ways to go about finding Affiliates. One way to find Affiliate Programs is to type Google.com and then enter “affiliate programs” in the search area. A second way is to enter a keyword instead of “affiliate programs” that is related to your subject and then look at the top 40 or so individual sites to see what you are competing with, and what type of Affiliate Programs they offer with regards to price and percentage.

Critique of Scenario Number One:

While a lot of factors have not yet been raised or discussed, based on the Information supplied, this Scenario provides a solid basis for the development of a Successful Business Plan because of a Competitive, Unique Information Product with a Sizeable, Reachable Market and Attractive Related Affiliate programs.

One of the points to consider is the Sales Price that you can charge for your information. As we saw in our tables, in order to generate $100,000 per year in Net Profit, you needed to generate $700 per day in Gross Sales. If the Information that you are trying to sell can be competitive only if it is sold for $9.95, you may not be able to generate enough traffic to make enough sales to generate 70 sales per day in order to reach a Gross Sales Volume of $700.

However, if your Information’s Sales Price is $98, you’d only have to sell 7.4 per day to have a Gross Sales Volume of $700. We’ll talk about Merchandising and Building Value later on in the Course.

Scenario Number Two – UNIQUE PRODUCT

  • You have the rights to a unique Product that a Sizable market, that you can reach, wants and/or needs.
  • You have looked at competitive Products and you feel confident that Your Product can compete.
  • You have reviewed the Affiliate Programs in this Market and you see numerous products with attractive pricing and percentage

Critique of Scenario Number Two:

While a lot of factors have not been raised or discussed, based on the Information supplied, this Scenario also provides a solid basis for the development of a Successful Business Plan because of a Competitive, Unique Product with a sizeable, reachable Market and attractive related Affiliate programs.

One of the points to consider is the Sales Price that you can charge for your Product. As we saw in our tables, in order to generate $100,000 per year in Net Profit, you needed to generate $1050 per day in Gross Sales based on Mark-up of a multiple of 3.

If the Product that you are trying to sell can be competitive only if it is sold for $19.95, you may not be able to generate enough traffic to make enough sales to generate over 50 sales per day in order to reach a Gross Sales Volume of $1050.

However, if your Product’s Sales Price was $147 for example, you’d only have to sell the same 7.4 per day to have a Gross Sales Volume of $1050.

Before we go any further, let’s review Scenario One and Scenario Two from the perspective that 7.4 E-Books at $98 will generate the same amount of profit as 7.4 Widgets at $147. If you have a choice of which one of these two to start off with, you can see how some of the other factors that we discussed; namely:

  • Market size,
  • Market reachability,
  • Product want/need, and
  • The attractiveness of Affiliate programs

Play an important role in your decision as to which is a better opportunity.  There is one more CRITICAL ISSUE TO POINT OUT HERE!

MARK-UP FACTORS:

If you can mark-up the Widget that you are selling by MORE than 3 times your cost, then based on the $147 retail price, you will of Course generate MORE than $98 in Gross Profit, because Your Cost will be less than $49.

But if you can only mark-up the Widget by 2 times, instead of 3, then Your Cost, based on the $147 retail price, at 50% is $73.50 instead of $49. This means that in order to generate the same $700 a day, you will have to sell MORE Widgets to make up for Your Higher Cost.

See the illustration below:

BASED ON A MARK-UP OF 3. YOUR COST OF $49, RETAIL PRICE 3 TIMES $49 = $147

$   147 – Retail Price

7.4 – Sales per day

——

$1,050 – Gross Sales

 

$1,050 – Gross Sales

–  33% – Cost of Goods

—————————

$700 Gross Profit for the Day

BASED ON A MARK-UP OF 2. YOUR COST OF $73.50, RETAIL PRICE 2 TIMES $73.50 = $147

$   147 – Retail Price

7.4 – Sales per day

——

$1,050 – Gross Sales

 

$1,050 – Gross Sales

–  50% – Cost of Goods

—————————

$  525 Gross Profit for the Day instead of $700

THIS MEANS THAT INSTEAD OF HAVING TO SELL 7.4 WIDGETS PER DAY, YOU NOW HAVE TO SELL 9.5 WIDGETS AT $147 TO GROSS $1400, SO THAT AFTER A 50% COST OF GOODS, YOU STILL GENERATED A GROSS PROFIT FOR THE DAY OF $700.

See the illustration below:

BASED ON A MARK-UP OF 2, YOUR COST OF $73.50, RETAIL PRICE 2 TIMES $73.50 = $147 WITH THE INTENT TO GENERATE $700 PER DAY IN GROSS PROFIT:

$   147 – Retail Price

      9.5 – Sales per day instead of 7.4

——

$1,400 – Gross Sales instead of $1,050

 

$1,400 – Gross Sales

–  50% – Cost of Goods

—————————

$  700 – Gross Profit for the Day

 

Obviously, the LOWER Your Profit Margin is, the MORE SALES you must make in order to generate the Required Amount of Profit. As you will see when we get to generating Traffic to Your Site, the More Sales that are required in order to generate the Desired Profit, the more challenging Your Task of generating Traffic to Your Site will be.

Scenario Number Three – Drop Shipped Product

 

  • You have an arrangement with a supplier to Drop Ship Product to your customer so you do not have to stock any product or spend any money on inventory. You do not have exclusive rights to a unique Product, and it is a market that has this very product already offered.
  • You have looked at the Identical Product(s) and you feel confident that there is enough room in this Market for more than one Site to sell this product.
  • You have reviewed the Affiliate Programs in this Market and you see numerous products with attractive pricing and percentage

Critique of Scenario Number Three:

While a lot of factors have not been raised or discussed, based on the information supplied, this Scenario provides a more challenging basis for the development of a Successful Business Plan because though there is a sizeable, reachable Market for this product, this product is already being offered.

 

However, one of the points to consider is that McDonalds, Wendys, Burger King and Jack-in-the-Box can often be found within a few yards of one another! The notion that there is already another Site with the same product, so you shouldn’t “waste your time” is only for those that are beginners! And, the idea that the only way to compete with these other Sites is to be the lowest price, in which case you will have a more difficult time generating the desired Profit, is a MYTH!

What it WILL TAKE, however, is INGENUITY! YOUR OFFER will need to STAND OUT, in IMAGE, in MERCHANDISING, and in EXPERTISE! We will deal with ALL THREE of these issues shortly.

The bigger issue with regard to this scenario is that you have NO CONTROL over the Product. What happens if you get a bunch of Sales, and the Drop-Shipper is out of stock for two to four weeks?! In order for this type of scenario to work, you need to have a CREDIBLE SUPPLIER, someone you can speak with directly, a discussion of how much inventory of an item that they will keep in stock for you, and a guarantee on your price as well. If you are ordering products out of a catalog, with no guarantee on price or availability, no agreement and no rep to speak with, you are NOT on solid ground!!

Scenario Number Four – Purchasing and Reselling Product

  • You purchase product, and then you ship to your customer. This gives you control over distribution. You do not have exclusive rights to a unique Product, and it is a market that has this very product already offered.
  • You have looked at the Identical Product(s) and you feel confident that there is enough room in this Market for more than one Site to sell this product.
  • You have reviewed the Affiliate Programs in this Market and you see numerous products with attractive pricing and percentage

Critique of Scenario Number Four:

While a lot of factors have not been raised or discussed, based on the information supplied, this Scenario provides a more challenging basis for the development of a Successful Business Plan because though there is a sizeable, reachable Market for this product, this product is already being offered.

The bigger issue of Scenario Three, with regard to the fact that you have NO CONTROL over the product, has been resolved by taking control of the product here in Scenario Four. This means you can control the quantity that you keep in stock. And you can control the shipping time.

The offset to the Quality Control, of course, is the cost of laying out the money to purchase the Product, and expending the manpower to physically ship the Product. If it’s a small item, storage won’t be as big of a factor. But if it’s a big, heavy item, you may need space, which may translate into rent, plus equipment, etc. And then you may get into employees, insurance, theft, breakage, etc. All of these ADDITIONAL COSTS need to be calculated into Your Cost of Goods and THEN the 3-times Mark-up needs to be done, in order to cover all of the expenses incurred in this Scenario.

One way that this Scenario would be effective would be if the price per item were large enough to justify the expenses. Let’s say for example that you are selling motorized beds for $2000 each. If that were the case, depending on how many units you can sell, you may not need a 3-times Mark-up in order to generate SIZABLE PROFITS.

Obviously, this Scenario requires a LOT more work than writing your own E-book and selling it so that it is automatically delivered! But, it is a Scenario that will work so long as the Target Number of Sales can be achieved. If for example, you can sell 1 bed per day, based on a 2-times Mark-up, you would generate approximately $126,000 Annually in Net Profit.

See the illustration below:

PROFIT BASED ON 2-TIMES MARK-UP OF A HIGH TICKET ITEM

$ 1,000- Wholesale Cost of Bed PLUS all expenses to purchase, store & ship

x   2 – 2-times Mark-Up

———

$2,000 – Gross Sales Amount

 

$2,000 – Gross Sales Amount

-1,000 – Total Cost of Goods

——–

$1,000 – Gross Profit before Expenses

 

$1,000 – Gross Profit before Expenses

x  50% – Total Expenses

——–

$  500 – Net Profit before Taxes

 

$  500 – Net Profit before Taxes

x 30 – 30 Days in a Month

——-

$15,000 Monthly Profit

 

$15,000 Monthly Profit

x 12 – 12 Months in a Year

———

$180,000 Net Profit before Taxes

 

$180,000 Net Profit before Taxes

x 30% Estimated Tax Liability

———–

$  54,000 Dollar Amount of Estimated Tax Liability

 

$180,000 Net Profit before Taxes

– $54,000 30% Estimated Tax Liability

———-

$126,000 NET INCOME based on the Sale of 1 Bed per day at $2,000 with a 2-times Mark-up and 50% Expenses verses Gross Profit

In this Chapter, we looked at 4 different Scenario’s for establishing the Foundation of Your Business. We discussed the differences, the plusses and the minuses of each Scenario and we correlated our findings with their effect on the PROFIT that will be generated based on each Scenario.

When it comes to offering INFORMATION, PRODUCT OR SERVICES, remember this:

Axiom Number Twenty-Eight YOU ARE LIMITED ONLY BY YOUR IMAGINATION

We discussed that the best way to be Successful is to IDENTIFY A MARKET, AND THEN FIND OR CREATE INFORMATION, A PRODUCT, OR A SERVICE THAT FITS THE NEED OF THAT MARKET. Remember that the Market must be REACHABLE.

As we continue through Part Two, we will go over many Marketing Techniques to Drive Traffic to Your Site. And, we will discuss the difference between Traffic and “QUALIFIED TRAFFIC”.

We will also discuss the many different ways to maximize your Sales-To-Prospect Ratio so that once you get a Prospect, you CLOSE THE SALE!

We will discuss the ways in which you can continue to Market the Customer once they have purchased your key product or products.

We will explore the ways in which you can continue to Sell to your Prospects that didn’t buy Your Offer the first time they visited.

We will discuss Merchandising so that when we DO make Sales, we make the Biggest Dollar Volume Sales that we can make to that Customer!

We will also discuss DUPLICATION, which is of CRITICAL IMPORTANCE, as well as AUTOMATION so you can maximize the time you spend on PROMOTION and not ADMINISTRATION!

I am giving you EVERY BIT of the Knowledge that I have learned in my lifetime to give you the BEST POSSIBILITY OF SUCCESS. So long as you are absorbing the information, making notes, and building your Confidence through your newly acquired KNOWLEDGE, you have the BEST OPPORTUNITY FOR SUCCESS that you can POSSIBLY HAVE because you are learning from someone who has ACTUALLY DONE IT!

Chapter Ten Review

In this Chapter we learned Seven Important Axioms.

Axiom Number Fourty-Nine A SALES SITE’S JOB IS TO SELL!

You must have an understanding of both the DYNAMICS of Making a Sale AND the PSYCHOLOGICAL Aspects involved in Order to Build Your Sales Site.

Axiom Number FiftyTHE STRUCTURE AND THE VERBIAGE OF YOUR SITE ARE THE TWO BIGGEST CONTRIBUTING FACTORS TO THE PERCENTAGE OF SALES YOUR SITE WILL CLOSE.

Your SITE must be STRUCTURED and the VERBIAGE must be CONSISTENT with the PRINCIPLES AND DYNAMICS of the MAKING of a SALE.

Axiom Number Fifty-One MAXIMIZE YOUR SALES-T0-PROSPECT RATIO

ONCE You have a PROSPECT at YOUR SITE, YOUR SITE IS RESPONSIBLE FOR MAKING THE SALE. YOUR SALES-TO-PROSPECT RATIO WILL IN LARGE PART DETERMINE THE AMOUNT OF GROSS PROFIT THAT YOU GENERATE.

Axiom Number Fifty-Two – EACH AND EVERY STEP OF A SALE IS CRITICAL TO THE OUTCOME OF THAT SALE.

There are TEN SALES in EVERY ULTIMATE SALE, and You need to make SURE that EVERY STEP CLOSES THAT DOOR AND LEADS YOUR PROSPECT DOWN THE HALLWAY TO THE ULTIMATE SALE.

Axiom Number Fifty-Three- THE DYNAMICS OF A SALE ARE BASED IN TWO AREAS – LOGIC/REASON, AND EMOTION/FEELING.

YOU MUST ADDRESS BOTH SIDES OF YOUR PROSPECT AND ANSWER BOTH QUESTIONS:

WHAT DO THEY THINK OF YOUR OFFER and

HOW DO THEY FEEL ABOUT YOUR OFFER

Axiom Number Fifty-Four BE CLEAR OF PURPOSE AND DEVELOP INTEREST

In Your Conversation with Your Prospect, they MUST BE TO UNDERSTAND EXACTLY WHAT YOU ARE SAYING and You must say it in a way that is INTERESTING, INFORMATIVE AND ENTERTAINING.

Axiom Number Fifty-Five AS LONG AS THEY ARE WILLING TO LISTEN, YOU MUST BE WILLING TO TALK

WHEN YOU GET DOWN TO THE END OF THE MAIN PAGE OF YOUR SALES PRESENTATION, OFFER YOUR PROSPECT THE CHOICE OF “CLICK HERE RIGHT NOW TO ORDER” or  “MORE INFO”.

This Chapter was an Education in the SALES PROCESS. Part of what goes in to GENERATING YOUR DESIRED AMOUNT OF PROFIT is directly related to Your SALES-TO-PROSPECT RATIO. The purpose of the Information in this Chapter is to give you the KNOWLEDGE that you need in the area of UNDERSTANDING WHAT GOES IN TO THE DYNAMICS OF MAKING A SALE.

Once you understand the Dynamics of a SALE and the Psychology of the thought process of Your Prospect, you will be MUCH MORE EFFECTIVE in creating YOUR SITE to MAXIMIZE THE SALES-TO-PROSPECT RATIO.

We discussed that SUCCESS comes from several key factors including:

  • HOW MUCH TRAFFIC YOU DRIVE TO YOUR SITE
  • HOW MUCH OF THAT TRAFFIC IS QUALIFIED, and
  • HOW MANY OF THE QUALIFIED ONES YOU CLOSE!

There are TWO CRITICAL FUNDAMENTALS that go into the making of YOUR SALES MACHINE:

  • STRUCTURE AND
  • VERBIAGE

We determined that Your Close rate is the best it can be when your:

  • Site is STRUCTURED properly
  • Verbiage is correct
  • The Market you are attracting are interested
  • Your Offer has Merit
  • All of the Components of a Successful Site are present.

We said that these components include:

  • A Secure Site
  • Enough Credibility for a Prospect enough to buy
  • A sound money-back guarantee
  • A professional and competitive Site
  • Links to and from Credible Sites

We said a Sale can be represented by a long hallway with a bunch of doors, and the job of the Sales Site is to CLOSE THOSE DOORS.

  • WHAT ARE YOU OFFERING?

You have 3 seconds to IMPRESS and CLEARLY ANSWER WHAT YOUR SITE IS ALL ABOUT

  • PERSONAL CREDIBILITY

YOU MUST BE BELIEVABLE AND CREDIBLE IN ORDER FOR A PROSPECT TO WANT TO PURCHASE FROM YOU

  • CLEARLY IDENTIFY THE SITUATION THAT IS OF CONCERN TO YOUR PROSPECT

DO NOT RUSH INTO THE SOLUTION BEFORE YOU HAVE CREATED THE NEED FOR YOUR INFORMATION, PRODUCT OR SERVICE

  • PROPOSE YOUR SOLUTION

Make sure the timing of the Proposal of Your Solution is in accordance with the Principles of the Dynamics and the Psychology of Sales.

FOUR ELEMENTS OF YOUR SALE IS TO IDENTIFY WHY:

  • YOUR OFFER HAS MERIT,
  • YOUR OFFER HAS VALUE,
  • THEY NEED TO ACT NOW, AND
  • WHY THEY HAVE NO RISK

We then identified the Five most common OBJECTIONS:

  • CREDIBILITY
  • NEED
  • COST
  • SKEPTICISM
  • RISK

We determined that Need and Cost appeal to a Prospect’s sense of LOGIC and REASON, while Credibility, Skepticism and Risk appeal to a Prospect’s sense of EMOTION and FEELING.

We determined that we need to be sure that our Sales Site addresses both sides of an individual, the LOGIC/REASON side and the EMOTION/FEELING side.

The Two Psychological Aspects that drive the making of a SALE can be represented in TWO QUESTIONS:

  • “WHAT DO I THINK ABOUT THIS OFFER?” and
  • “HOW DO I FEEL ABOUT THIS OFFER?”

In Chapter Eleven, we will discuss taking the Principles we have learned here in Chapter Ten, and tying them in with the verbiage that is needed in order to create a Site that is CAPABLE of CONVERTING PROSPECTS TO SALES!

Part 2 Overview

Part Two is dedicated to the actual mechanics required for the Successful Day-to-Day MARKETING AND SALES OPERATIONS of Your Business.

We will begin with a discussion of some of the different types of Products or Services that you can offer.

Then, we will deal SPECIFICALLY with EVERY ASPECT of MAXIMIZING Your PROFIT Generation.

One of the differences that you will find between the Information that you are about to read and what you may have already been exposed to, is the amount of Variables and Adjustments that can be made to improve the performance of Your Business.

In order to be able to make adjustments and gauge their Success, you will need to have a WORKING MODEL of Your Business so that you can make adjustments to one Variable at a time and SEE the Effect of that adjustment on the Bottom Line.

This comes from Many Years of Experience in the Business World and it will help you as you build Your Business. When we formulate Your Business Plan in PART THREE, you will understand more clearly how valuable a Working Model is to the Success of Your Business.

One thing is for CERTAIN. When you are done with PART TWO of this Course, you will be VERY CONFIDENT with regards to EXACTLY what it will take in order for you to Create a SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS that generates the PROFIT that you DESIRE in order TO ACHIEVE YOUR GOALS AND TO LIVE YOUR DREAM!

Review: Part One

The intent of PART ONE is to create a SOLID FOUNDATION of KNOWLEDGE with regards to all of the NECESSARY ELEMENTS that are a part of a SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS PLAN.

We discussed that the ULTIMATE GOAL is to GENERATE PROFIT and that the amount of PROFIT that you generate is UNLIMITED and IN YOUR CONTROL.

We started in Chapter One with a look at OURSELVES.

We went on to Chapter Two, where you thought about YOUR DREAM of how you would like to see your life.

We then defined some specific “REWARD GOALS” and Your POSITIVE AFFIRMATIONS in Chapter Three.

In Chapter Four, we QUANTIFIED Your Dreams and Goals to make them REAL.

We then went on to Chapter Five, where we identified the 10 KEY ELEMENTS that are present in EVERY Business.

This brought us to Chapter Six, where we defined the Gross Sales Amount based on the desired Profit Generation amount taking expenses into account.

We then took a look at how three KEY VARIABLES – Price, Prospect-To-Visitor Ratio, and Sales-To-Prospect Ratio, affects the Gross Sales Volume.

PART ONE PROVIDES A SOLID FOUNDATION OF KNOWLEDGE UPON WHICH TO BUILD A BUSINESS PLAN AND A BUSINESS MODEL TO GENERATE THE AMOUNT OF PROFIT THAT YOU DESIRE TO LIVE YOUR DREAM AND TO ACHIEVE YOUR GOALS!

At this point, having completed PART ONE, you should have an Excellent Idea of what the makings are of a SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS, both on a PERSONAL LEVEL, where SUCCESS STARTS, and through INCREASED KNOWLEDGE of the factors that strengthen the FOUNDATION of BUILDING A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS.

SPECIFICALLY, you should now know:

  • THE PERSONAL QUALITIES AND TRAITS that you need to be SUCCESSFUL,
  • You should have YOUR DREAM AND YOUR GOALS QUANTIFIED, you should be able to see the dynamics behind getting YOUR BUSINESS TO GENERATE PROFITS.

AND YOU SHOULD BE GETTING MORE AND MORE EXCITED BECAUSE YOU ARE CLOSER THAN EVER TO LIVING YOUR DREAM!

In PART TWO we will discuss all of the mechanics and nuances of the Business. We will go into detail in each area. When you are done with Part Two, you will have an EXCELLENT FOUNDATION OF KNOWLEDGE upon which to build Your Business.

Then we will move on to PART THREE where you will learn all of the Business Administration issues necessary to Operate as smooth running of a Business as possible.

When you have COMPLETED the Course, you will have the following:

  • Your Dream
  • Your Current Budget
  • Your Reward Goals
  • Your Positive Affirmations
  • Your Marketing Plan
  • Your Business Plan
  • The Tools You Will Need
  • An Understanding of HOW what you Sell affects the Profit You Generate
  • You’ll know HOW to Set up Your Business
  • Tasking for Day-To-Day Operations
  • How to set up Your Site
  • How to Write the Copy
  • Detailed Information as to EXACTLY WHAT ADJUSTMENTS
  • What to do with the Profits to protect Your Assets
  • Tax planning, Retirement Planning, and Estate Planning
  • Exit Strategies

WE WILL LEAVE NO STONE UNTURNED!

The Next Page contains material from “Additional Sources”. In any areas that you feel you are in need of more knowledge, be CERTAIN to pursue additional information from any of those sources or any of your own. The NUMBER ONE MOST IMPORTANT THING for you to come away from this Course with is this:

  • The Confidence,
  • The Knowledge, and
  • The Desire

TO BUILD YOUR BUSINESS AND TO REALIZE YOUR DREAM!

It is truly my pleasure to help to guide you. I am confident that my years of experience will prove beneficial to you in YOUR JOURNEY TO SUCCESS!

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

When you feel CONFIDENT from Inside, that your SUCCESS is GUARANTEED and CANNOT BE DENIED by any other force, you’ll be AMAZED at how POWERFUL you become and how much more CONTROL you have over YOUR OWN SUCCESS!

On the BUSINESS TOOLS Menu at www.All-about-Business.com you will find a Section on MOTIVATION in the E-LIBRARY Category, and you will find Additional Motivation Tools under “COURSES” in the BUSINESS TOOLS Category.

HERE’S AN OVERVIEW OF THE BUSINESS TOOLS MENU:


E-LIBRARY:                         YOUR SITE:                        CONSULTING:

 

Sub-Categories                         Sub-Categories                         Sub-Categories:

Marketing                                    Sales Site                                    Business Plan:
Sales                                           Shopping Site                              Ads, Affiliates, Auto Responders
Operations                                  Assistance Site                           Sales Copy
Motivation                                  Site Development                       Site Development
Site Assistance                           Turn-Key                                     Turn-Key
E-Bay

BUSINESS TOOLS:            BUSINESS PLUS:                BUSINESS NEEDS:
Sub-Categories                         Sub-Categories                         Sub-Categories:

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PART ONE AXIOM REVIEW:

Whenever we arrived at a CRITICAL TRUTH, we defined that truth as an Axiom. For Part One, there are Twenty-Four Axioms:

 

Axiom Number One THE SINGLE MOST CRITICAL TRUTH ABOUT SUCCESS IS THAT IT BEGINS IN YOUR OWN HEAD AND NO WHERE ELSE.

Axiom Number Two A POSITIVE ATTITUDE IS A CRITICAL ELEMENT TO YOUR SUCCESS.

Axiom Number Three CONFIDENCE, ENTITLEMENT AND DETERMINATION

Axiom Number Four NO LIMITS

Axiom Number Five DEFINE YOUR DREAM

Axiom Number Six ASSUMING RISK

Axiom Number Seven RISK IMPLIES THE POTENTIAL FOR FAILURE

Axiom Number Eight UNLIMITED PROFITS OUT THERE FOR YOU

Axiom Number Nine NEVER TRADE TIME FOR MONEY

Axiom Number Ten ACHIEVING YOUR DREAM

Axiom Number Eleven FOCUS, COMMITMENT, AND DESIRE

Axiom Number Twelve URGENCY

Axiom Number Thirteen THE POWER OF POSITIVE THINKING

Axiom Number Fourteen POSITIVE AFFIRMATIONS

Axiom Number Fifteen WHAT DOES MY DREAM COST?

Axiom Number Sixteen YOU ARE TRULY LIMITED ONLY BY YOUR OWN IMAGINATION

Axiom Number Seventeen THE SAME BUSINESS PRINCIPLES ARE PRESENT IN ALL BUSINESSES

Axiom Number Eighteen THERE ARE 10 KEY ELEMENTS OF BUSINESS

Axiom Number Nineteen YOU ARE NOW A PROBLEM SOLVER

Axiom Number Twenty YOU ARE ENTITLED TO YOUR DREAM

Axiom Number Twenty-One KNOW YOUR BUSINESS INTIMATELY

Axiom Number Twenty-Two BUSINESS IS A SCIENCE

Axiom Number Twenty-Three TEST YOUR SALES PRICE

Axiom Number Twenty-Four THE PROSPECT-TO-VISITOR RATIO AND THE SALES-TO-PROSPECT RATIO

© 2019 Rob Raskin | All Rights Reserved