Month: January 2017

It can be tough to keep your sales pipeline full, so that you can keep the revenue rolling in. Use these ingenious lead generation tactics to skyrocket your revenues:

• Create a brief video to illustrate the benefits of your offering.
• Get your opt-in forms to convert better by not mentioning the word “spam” on them.
• Make sure your call to action stands out.
• Give only one choice in your call to action.
• Create a highly valuable piece of content and ask for an email in order to download it.
• Make your about page about how you can help your prospects, not all about you.
• Blog on a consistent basis about things your ideal prospect thinks about.
• Create evergreen content to attract your ideal customers.
• Scan the followers of your competitors to see if they might be good prospects for your business.
• Answer questions relevant to your business on Quora.
• Place your slide decks on SlideShare and point them back to your landing page.
• Watch for people tweeting about the problem your business solves and reach out to them.
• Do noteworthy things and get on TV.
• Find relevant events in your niche and speak at them.
• Do joint ventures or partnerships with non-competitive businesses in your industry.
• Give free copies of your product to influencers.
• Get your existing customers to post testimonials and reviews on review sites.
• Link to your landing page in your email signature.
• Use email solo ads through services like LaunchBit.

Source: http://unbounce.com/lead-generation/32-lead-generation-tactics/

You need more website traffic and links are still the number one ranking factor in search engines. So link building is still the most effective way to increase your traffic.  The problem is getting back links isn’t easy. Here are a few tips to boost your link building efforts:

• Ask for links. Start with people who know you and then expand to people who don’t know you but might have interest in your content.
• Build relationships. Ask more people get to know and like you, it’s easier to ask them to link to you.
• Give testimonials and often you’ll get a link to your site in your testimonial.
• Start a blog and write great content that people want to link to.
• List your website in trustworthy web directories.
• Write great guest posts to get back links.
• Find out where your competitors are getting their links and build links from those places too.
• Find people who are mentioning your website without linking to it and reach out to them and ask for a link.
• Look for dead links on Wikipedia and create a webpage to replace the page that has gone missing then get those links updated to the page you create.
• Locate search websites in your niche with phrases like “write for us” and write for them to get links.
• Launch a scholarship writing contest and require that the essays are posted on a website and link to you.
• Launch a writing contest to win something desirable and require that the essays are posted on a website and link to you.
• Create a compelling infographic that people can’t help but link to.
• Create a engaging list post that people can’t resist sharing and linking.
• Use tools like BuzzSumo to see what types of content are getting links and emulate them.

Source: http://www.linkresearchtools.com/case-studies/link-building-techniques/

You might be tired of trading hours for dollars. Here are a few passive income ideas that will allow you to earn money while you sleep:

• Sell an ebook or digital information product online
• Publish a blog with affiliate links
• Create and sell an online course
• Start an online drop shipping store
• Sell your amazing photos online
• Use Fulfilled by Amazon to sell a physical product
• Launch a monthly membership site
• Come up with catchy phrases or memes and create a t-shirt or merchandise store
• Write one or more Kindle books
• Build an authority website and sell ads
• Create and monetize your YouTube videos
• Buy an existing website and improve it so it makes more money

Source: http://passively.io/12-passive-income-ideas/

Hashtags are an easy way to at least double the effectiveness of your tweets. Here are my notes on hashtags and a tool that can help with hashtag marketing:

• Using a hashtag allows people who don’t follow you to discover your tweets
• Use relevant hashtags or you’ll be flagged as a spammer
• Focus on hashtags that lots of people search for but fewer people use
• Avoid hashtags that are too popular or not popular enough by looking for a Hashtagify score of 25 to 30

Source: http://hashtagify.me/

You want more leads and sales? Are you kidding? Of course you do.

Here are my notes on “How to Leverage Social Proof for More Leads and Sales” by Aaron Lee:

• Social proof is using people’s decisions to influence other people’s decisions
• Collect and use testimonials and reviews of your product
• Find influencers to endorse your product
• Create case studies and customer success stories
• Get mentioned by the mass media
• Show that lots of people purchased your product
• Introduce scarcity to induce fear of missing out
• Display the number of users you have, if it is a big number
• Show that you have a lot of social media followers

Source: https://www.socialquant.net/social-proof/

Cold emails can be an excellent way to to grow your business. Here are a few tips from thestartupchat.com:

• Use them when you have something specific to offer or a request to make.
• Your cold email needs to be opened. For it to be opened it needs a great subject line.
• Cold emails should be succinct.
• Make sure your email has a call to action.
• Always have a followup strategy for people who don’t respond.
• Have another email you use to sign up for emails in your area of interest. Use them for inspiration for your own emails.
• Don’t send the same email to everyone, personalize each email.

Source: http://thestartupchat.com/ep014/

Email is one of the most effective ways for SaaS Starts (and everyone else) to get new clients. It is also the biggest platform that no one owns, so you’ll never wake up one day with your account shutdown and your audience gone. Here are a few important takeaways:

• You should be using email more, you might think you are using it enough, but you aren’t.
• Don’t A/B test until you have at least 100 conversions per variation.
• Treat email as an ongoing conversation with your prospects and customers.
• The biggest mistake you can make is building an email list and not using it.
• The most effective popup is an exit intent popup
• Send an email at least once per week
• Let your customers know you are taking care of them and improving your product.
• Write like a human being, not a robot.

Source: http://thestartupchat.com/ep164/

You probably want to grow your business, but you don’t want to work more. So how do you do it? Here are my notes on a few resources that will help you:

HOW TO GROW YOUR BUSINESS WITHOUT WORKING MORE | Marie Forleo

• Start by designing your business to grow without you
• Determine exactly why your business exists
• Then hire people are just as passionate as you about your business
• Hiring people who share your values is the only way to grow your business without working more

35+ ways to grow your business (without working more hours!) | Cailen Ascher

• Create products and services that can be sold without you having to work more
• Sell a digital product
• Host an online webinar
• Sell real products (you don’t have to manufacture them yourself)
• Teach an online class
• Create a monthly membership program
• Sell affiliate products

3 Proven Ways to Grow Your Business Without a Lot of Money | Sujan Patel

• Focus on marketing then you don’t have to work more to generate more business
• Build a customer persona so you know exactly who you are selling to, what their pain points are, and why they want to buy from you.
• Create content to educate your customers before they enter their buying phase
• Build an email list from the very beginning
• Leverage existing customers for growth: ask for referrals and reviews

How to Grow Your Business Without Hiring a Full-Time Employee | Alyssa Gregory

• Hire people so that they can do some of the work for you
• Hire a part time employee
• Hire family and friends
• Hire an intern
• Hire independent contractors

 

These are my notes on “How I Win 1000 Signups/mo. by Hacking Social Media” by Tara Reid. In it she shows you how to:

• 10X your traffic using Twitter
• Use Pinterest to get 1,000 subscribers per month

I think this is a highly effective method to hit 1,000 signups per monthly. My only reservation about it is that it will cost you at least $679 per month to replicate.

But, I’ll tell you how to implement most of this strategy for free.

How to 10X Your Traffic using Twitter

Socedo Strategy

• Reid used Socedo to increase traffic from 1,000 visits per month to 10,000 visits
• Socedo works by targeting people that use keywords that demonstrate interest in your product
• Then following them, adding them to an “Art Lovers” list, liking their tweet 24 hours later and then direct messaging them if they followed back
• Example direct message: “[first name]! Saw your tweets on art. If you’re interested in art, checkout Art Collecting School! Get started for free at Kollecto.com”
• How Socedo drives traffic
  • They click your link in your direct message
  • They click your bio link
  • They click a link in one of your tweets
• Of course you can do all of this manually or you can use Socedo
• Socedo’s cheapest plan costs $300 per month

MeetEdgar Strategy

• Reid used MeetEdgar to increase link clicks from 267 clicks/month to 3,500 clicks/month or more than 13x
• Reid had 25 blog posts on her site and wanted to send one tweet for each blog post per day for 14 days
• This meant writing and posting 350 unique tweets over two weeks
• You could do this by hand, but that is a lot of work.
• Instead she chose to use MeetEdgar
• How MeetEdgar works
  • Write your tweets one time and put them into a queue
  • Schedule when they go out
  • Edgar posts the tweets and when it runs out of tweets, it starts over from the beginning of the queue
• Edgar costs $79 per month

How to Hack Pinterest to Reach 1,000 Subscribers per Month

• The Twitter strategies got Reid to 540 signups per month and the Pinterest strategy took her to 1,115 signups per month
• Everyone is running ads on Facebook, Google and Twitter, so ad costs are high
• But fewer people are running ads on Pinterest, so ad costs are low
• Reid used a budget of $10/day and learned the following things:
  • Keyword targeting was better than interest targeting
  • Vertical images converted better than horizontal images
  • The best time to run ads was the afternoon and evening
  • People respond well to humor
• Pinterest ad cost at $10/day, $300 per month

How to replicate most of this for free using elbow grease

• First, you’ll need to skip the Pinterest advertising unless you are able to generate $1 in revenue for get $1 spent on Pinterest.
• Next you can do everything Socedo does by hand.
• After that you can do everything MeetEdgar does by hand.

How to replicate most of this for free without wasting your valuable time

• We’ve built software that does what MeetEdgar does and we’re letting a select group of people use it for free for one year.
• We’ve also built a prototype that does what Socedo does and we’re letting an even smaller group of people use it free for one year.
• Combined you’ll have to pay at least $379 for MeetEdgar and Socedo per month forever. That is $4,548 per year.
• And it’s probably worth it to get 12,000 signups for your business over the next year.
• But if you want a chance to save $4,548 over the next year and get the same benefits, signup to our email list, reply to one of our emails and tell us why you’d like to use our software. If you have great reasons, we might give you the opportunity to use it for free.

To read Reid’s full article and see exactly how she got 1,000 signups per month visit: https://blog.appswithoutcode.com/2016/06/10/hacking-social-media/

Frank Kern created a $175,000 per month consulting business. Here are my notes on his book “High Paid Consultant: How I Created a $175,000 per Month Consulting Business”.

There’s a ton of money in consulting

• According to Forbes, there is $100 billion per year
• This is way more than in internet marketing ($19 billion) and direct mail ($48 billion)
• Expected to grow 83% by 2018
• Has a high profit margin, you can work from home and minimal equipment is required

Why do consulting?

• You can make recurring monthly income.
• You can start quickly. Kern took only 90 days to get to $175,000 per month.
• You can control when and where you work.
• You can generate a lot of profit because fixed costs and overhead are low.
• You don’t need technology skills. Kern has a single opt-in page, PDF report and one email follow up.
• You’ll have happier clients because you can give them the results they are looking for.
• You’ll have an easier time selling because your client ultimately wants results, not to read about how to get the results.

What is consulting?

• Consulting is providing professional or expert advice to someone.
• There are all kinds of consultants like: productivity consultants, sales consultants, dating consultants, and even raw foods consultants.
• To see if your expertise lends itself to consulting, Google [your expertise] + consultant and see if other people are offering the service you are considering.

What is holding you back from consulting?

• You think you need credentials. But the truth is the only credentials you need is the ability to get your clients the results they are looking for faster and better than they could on their own.
• “The secret to consulting is to know more than your client does.” You don’t have to be a world class expert, all you need is to know more than your client.

How much do you want?

• Take your monthly goal and multiply by 12 to get your yearly goal.
• Say your yearly goal is $250K per year.
• Product versus Consulting
  • If you sell a $100 product, this requires 2,500 sales, if you have a 1% conversion rate this requires 250,000 clicks. If you pay $1 per click, your profit is zero.
  • If you charge $1,800 per month and your clients for your consulting service renew for a year, this only requires 12 sales, if you have a 1% conversion rate this only requires 1,200 clicks, versus 250,000 clicks.
• Case Study: Kern ran an ad, got 4,000 clicks, 1,200 opt-ins, 13 immediate client applications, took on 2 clients and the campaign resulted in $234,000 in revenue

How to identify the right clients?

• Identify the right segment of your market to make the most money. For florists it’s simple, men under 35 spent $30 for flowers on Valentine’s day, while men between 45 and 60 spend 350% more.
• Focus on who you can help the most and the fastest. For example a client with a million dollar business can easily pay $10k per month, while a noob with no business or product might not have $10 to spend.
• “You can set yourself up for success by only working with easy wins.”
• Don’t work with everyone, work only with people you can help the most and who are willing to pay the most.

The old approach to getting clients

• The significance model, telling people how great you are, getting other people to say how great you are and saying buy my products to become like me.
• Almost guaranteed not to work
• The amount of money someone is willing to pay you will be in direct proportion to the amount of confidence they have in your ability to get them results. Diego Rodriguez

The Client Centric Model

• The new way to get clients.
• Your potential clients don’t care about you, they care about your ability to get them the results they are looking for.
• Traffic > Opt-in page with compelling offer > Irresistible Intrigue process > Collaborative close

Ninja Tricks for Getting Traffic

• Kern only uses three sources: Facebook, LinkedIn and direct mail
• Focus on Facebook because it lets you target by demographics, affluence and purchase history
• If Facebook doesn’t have the option to target a certain type of business, you can purchase a list from someplace like http://www.usbizdata.com/us-business-specialty-databases.php and use it create a custom audience to target your ideal type of client.

The New Approach to Lead Generation

• Find the questions that you prospects are likely to be asking themselves and offer to answer that question for free.
• Realtor Example
  • Old way that screams I’m going to sell you something: create a free report called “7 Questions You Must Ask Any Realtor Before Selling Your Ocean Front Home.”
  • Instead a prospect most wants to know, “How much can I sell my ocean front home for?”
  • So the better way to reach them is to make an offer like “Thinking of selling your house? Get our report on ocean front home prices for 2017.”
    • Doesn’t scream I’m going to try to sell you something.
    • Only attracts people who want your service.
    • It is truly helpful to them.
• Demonstrate you can help people by actually helping them.

The Risk Reversal Process

• Offer to help for free
  • Thank them for their interest and offer to help for free.
  • Realtor example: In the report you’ll notice that two nearly identical houses sold for dramatically different prices. Would you like me to show you how it sold for way more money and how I can help you get the most money for your house?
• Explain the benefits of your help
  • Realtor example: “I’m happy to help you design a custom marketing plan for your home, identify your perfect target market of prospective buyers and show you how to present your home to them for the maximum price possible. This way you’ll be able to sell your house quickly and get the highest price you can without wasting time or money. There’s no cost to this and there’s no obligation of any kind.”
• Explain why you are doing this
  • Your prospect is thinking that there has to be a catch. So explain why you are doing this.
  • Realtor example: “I offer this free service because I’m a realtor and I sell La Jolla ocean front homes exclusively. And there’s a good possibility I have a buyer who might be interested in your house especially considering the recent demand for properties like yours. So if you find value in the help I give you, you might want me to sell your home for you.”
• Eliminate their sales fear, because people are naturally skeptical about people offering things for free
  • Realtor example: “With that said, please understand that I’m not offering a sales pitch in disguise. I promise not to pressure you or pester you in any way at all, in fact, if you feel like I’ve wasted even one second of your time..”
• Create irresistible intrigue
  • Realtor example: “in fact, if you feel I’ve wasted even one second of your time…let me know and I’ll immediately write you a check for X amount of dollars” or immediately send a brochure about your home to a thousand potential buyers on your behalf on my own dime. Or I’ll pay your realtor’s marketing cost”
• Takeaway non-selling
  • Introduce scarcity and value by starting to takeaway the offer.
  • Realtor example: “Now wait a minute, before you go any further, you need to know that I can’t help everybody. I can only be of benefit to people whose properties are directly on the ocean, in good sellable condition, not under foreclosure, etc.”
  • This eliminate prospects that will waste your time and put you into a position of authority, where they have to prove themselves to you.
• Get them to qualify themselves to you
  • Realtor example: “Here’s what you do next. If you want to schedule a planning session with me, simply click the link below. When you click, you’ll see a form with a few questions about your home and what you’re looking to accomplish. Once I have that information, I’ll do some market research for you and we’ll set up the time to go over it together.”

The Client Conversion Process

• After a prospect has answered the questions in the previous step you should have almost everything you need to determine if you’ll be able to help them.
• Only schedule calls with people that you know you can help.
• Collaborative Bridge Building
  • “If we are having another conversation a year from now and reviewing the past year, what would have needed to happen for you to be happy with your results?”
  • Ask questions about where you client is now and what your client thinks needs to be done to get where they want to go.
  • Ask leading questions to guide your client to the right solution that you offer.
• Prescription
  • Based on what you told me, we should…
  • Ask questions to confirm that your prospect agrees with your prescription
• Pre-closing
  • Does that sound like an effective plan of action to you?
• Closing
  • Would you like me to help you implement this plan going forward?

The Opportunity

• Things that are simple and obvious to you aren’t simple and obvious to your clients.
• If you can help people get something they want faster than they could on their own, you can grab a piece of the $100 billion consulting industry.
• “If you are waiting for someone to anoint you as worthy, then you are going to be waiting for the rest of your life.”

 

To learn the “most dependable and consistent way to generate wealth” visit https://frankkern.com/.