How many contacts does it take to make a sale?

The answer can vary and depend on a number of factors—including the product or service, the price, and the quality of the prospect.

I believe follow-up is key and this is why:

2% of sales are made on the first contact. 3% of sales are made on the second contact. 5% of sales are made on the third contact. 10% of sales are made on the fourth contact. And a whopping 80% of sales are made on the fifth to twelfth contact.

Yet, despite this statistics say that 48% of business owners never follow-up with a prospect. 25% make a second contact and stop. 12% only make three contacts and stop. Only 10% make more than three contacts.

With increasing competition, a simple way to put yourself ahead of the competition is to follow-up more than three times.

The question is, how do you follow up with the 98% who abandon your website before you’ve captured their name and email?

You do this with retargeting (also referred to as remarketing.)

What is retargeting?
Retargeting is a form of advertising that helps keep your brand in front of customers, clients, patients, or prospects after they leave your website. Retargeting keeps track of the people who visit your website and displays your retargeting ads to them as they visit other sites online, thus keeping you top-of-mind.

How does retargeting work?
We place code in your website that tracks potential customers’ browsing history when they visit your site and leave before purchasing or taking the desired action. We use that data to create an ultra-customized audience. This information allows us to display retargeting ads to this ultra-customized audience at appropriate times. In fact, customers can be retargeted just about anywhere they might go online.

To some people this may seem intrusive, but the truth is that when it is done right retargeting ads are not intrusive. They help a user find their way back to your website to take the action they initially set out to take.

The fact is that people are busy and easily distracted. They may have wanted to fill out your form, purchase your product or contact your business, when they were interrupted.
Reminding them is not a bad thing. Remember only 2% of sales are made on the first contact and 80% are made between the fifth to twelfth contact. That means if you aren’t following up with these people, you are leaving A LOT of money on the table.

What are the advantages of retargeting?
1) It brings buyers back to your website. Retargeting increases sales by keeping your brand in front of prospects, ensuring you are there at the precise moment they are ready to buy. Once your potential customer, client, or patient shows interest in your product or service by clicking on an ad, they are entered into your retargeting campaign. Every time these prospects see your retargeting ads, you gain more recognition and remind them of your brand. There is a high click-through rate and increased conversion rate that is typical with this repeated exposure to your targeted audience.

2) Boost sales from a larger group of buyers. If you take orders online, retargeting can extend your sales efforts outside of your business’ physical location and build a larger network of interested buyers.

3) It’s quick and simple to set up. Setting up a retargeting campaign doesn’t take weeks or even days to create. It’s quick and simple to set up which means you can start re-capturing the 98% of people who abandon your site almost immediately.

4) It fits any budget. In the past, spending ad dollars to create name-brand identity was something reserved for big businesses. Small businesses simply didn’t have the budget to create the kind of impact needed to gain recognition from customers. With retargeting, you effectively can afford to advertise everywhere your hottest prospective customers are looking without breaking the bank. Plus we can customize your campaign to fit your budget.

5) It spends your ad dollars efficiently. Creating name-brand identity and recognition for yourself and your small business is wise… when you can do it where it counts, with a carefully selected target audience. Retargeting allows you to do just that—getting in front of only the prospects that have already shown interest in what you offer and are predisposed to buy from you. Plus unlike traditional branding, you can track your retargeting campaign.

Tips to make retargeting the most effective.
• Retargeting is most effective when you segment your visitors. For example, people who look at general dental services vs. braces. Tailor your retargeting ads to each group so they see ads that specifically relate to their needs, wants and desires.
• Remove the people who purchased from your retargeting campaign so they don’t see additional ads.
• The highest performing retargeting ads have a clear call-to-action and promote an offer.
• Different products warrant different retargeting timeframes. People shopping for luxury products or services should be retargeted later whereas people shopping for something such as airline tickets should be retargeted immediately.
• Use these two effective search strategies: 1) Bid on keywords you wouldn’t normally bid on just for the people who have previously visited your website or who have converted in the past. 2)

Optimize bids for your existing keywords for visitors on your remarketing lists. For example, you can increase your bid by 25% for those who previously viewed your website in the last 30 days. Or, you could show a different ad to site visitors who have placed items in a shopping cart but have not purchased them.

Retargeting will keep you in front of that 98% of traffic that you are currently losing. Which means, you’ll be able to build brand recognition in the same way big brands such as Pepsi and Nike do by repeatedly putting your brand in front of customers. When you do this, you’ll bring back the customers, clients, or patients who showed interest, but were distracted or interrupted. Giving prospects multiple chances to buy can’t help but provide a huge boost to your online sales.

Recently I saw Matt Larson from Google ads management give a presentation at Googleplex in Mountain View.

Titled, “Why your biggest opportunities come in the smallest moments,” Matt talked about why business owners and marketers must change their mental model if they want to win over consumers and turn them into their customers, clients and patients.

While contemplating why business owners aren’t making this shift, I questioned my own clients trying to determine what stops them from making this important change in their business. Again and again, what I found was that it had to do with one of the biggest mistakes I see business owners make…

Believing that the consumers who are interested in and purchase their products or services will have the same likes, dislikes, and preferences as them.

More often than not, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Your customers do not think and behave like you—even if they like your product and service as much as you do.

The problem with this thinking is that it can cloud your judgement and cause you to make errors in your marketing decisions. Let me show you what I mean.

An e-commerce client of mine refused to run re-marketing ads because he didn’t like ads following him around. (Remarketing is positioning targeted ads in front of a defined audience that had previously visited your website – as they browse elsewhere around the internet.) He believed that his consumers wouldn’t like it either and therefore wouldn’t respond well to a remarketing campaign.

However, once my team and I were able to convince him to look at the industry data which showed him that re-marketing was in fact very effective, he reconsidered. The results: The multiple points of communication contact he received from re-marketing helped him gain positive ROI and convert more customers.

This kind of thinking is now stopping others from taking advantage of the trend happening today that Larson was referring to in his speech when he talked about “the smallest moments,” mobile marketing.

As a result, many small business owners are missing the boat on this very important opportunity that could put lots of extra cash in their pockets.

Now while some don’t believe their consumers are a part of this trend, I believe others don’t fully understand the trend and why it’s happening.

To help illustrate how critical this is, I want you to think back to when websites were new. If you’ll recall, many small businesses were slow to jump on board. Small businesses didn’t believe they needed to be online. Therefore, they lost out on sales because consumers either couldn’t find them online or found their competitors online and did business with them instead.

Much like websites back in the 90’s, today the mobile platform presents a HUGE opportunity. And yet, so few small businesses are taking advantage of it. This decision to put off building a mobile-friendly site is unfortunately negatively impacting their bottom line in a big way.

Again, based on my conversations with business owners and clients, their reluctance and decisions surrounding mobile often stems from their own personal preferences and beliefs rather than what’s working and best practices.

Why mobile is important and why your mental model surrounding it must change.

1) The advertising landscape has changed. Larson points out that 50 years ago, we lived in “media scarcity”. There were only a handful of channels and a captive audience. But today you have many more choices and a variety of ways to reach your target audience. Everything from tweets and blogs to email and YouTube videos and more. You are no longer restricted to prime time as people look at advertising 24 hours a day, 7 days a week on a multitude of channels.

2) Consumer behavior has changed. Fifty years ago, if you advertised on TV during prime time you could reach 80-90% of your target audience. Today, people spend much more time on their smart phones than with any other media delivering device. In fact, according to a study by Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield, and Byers, the average smart phone user checks their phone 150 times a day. And in Time Magazine’s Mobility Poll, 84% of people surveyed said they couldn’t go a day without their mobile device in their hand.

3) People want immediacy and relevance. People no longer sit at home or wait until they get home to do research on their desktop computers. Because it’s easier and faster, people reach for their smart phones. They use stolen moments to do their research. They look up products on their phone to compare prices while in the aisle at the store or waiting in line. They use their phone to research where to go to dinner, to research a health problem, or read reviews about a product they are thinking of purchasing while waiting for their son to finish baseball practice or waiting for their plane at the airport. And they make purchases from their devices too, in order to check things off their to-do list during these stolen moments.

If they need something, they don’t wait until they are in front of their laptop or desktop, they pick up their phone, which is almost always at their fingertips, and search right then and there. That means when they want to do something, know something, or buy something, they want and expect immediate results and relevant information to appear on their phone.

4) People are making decisions differently. It’s important to remember that while people consume more advertising and media than ever before, with a simple swipe of the hand, people can choose to tune you out.

But what happens when people decide to tune into your brand? Larson says, “When they decide to tune into your product category, THAT’S when you need to be there. When people have the need to learn something, to go somewhere, to buy something…those are the moments you need to be present. Those are the moments that are important to you as brands.”

Google calls these moments “micro-moments”—the moments when consumers are tuning into your brand and want your help in making their decisions about what to do, where to go, and what to buy.

People are not only open to your help, but they want your help. Only they want it when they want it and on their terms. The question isn’t whether or not you should have a mobile-friendly site, but rather how can you be present and relevant during these “micro-moments” to help consumers make their buying decisions.

Larson says, “We are accustomed to apps and websites that tailor their content to our context—whether that’s our location or our identity. And as a result, we expect more than ever that you deliver relevance to us. Brands that don’t deliver immediacy and relevance—aren’t there and they don’t win.”

Recently, while waiting to be seated for dinner, I observed the number of people looking at their phones.

It was more apparent than ever that smart phones have become an integral part of the way Americans communicate, go online and share information.

In fact, according to a new Pew Research Report, for some users it is their primary way for accessing the Internet.

Some other findings worth considering are:
• As of April 2015,nearly two-thirds of U.S. adults own a smart phone, up from 35% in 2011.
• Younger adults, as well as those who are more affluent and have a higher education, are among the groups most likely to own a smartphone.
• 7% of U.S. adults are smartphone dependent for Internet access, meaning they do not have home-based broadband service and limited options for going online other than their mobile phone.
• 46% of smartphone users say their smartphone is something they couldn’t live without.
• 89% of smartphone owners used the Internet on their phone at least once during the span of a week according to Pew surveysWhat all this is leading to is that if you don’t have a mobile strategy in place yet, it could be hurting your PPC efforts.

Here are five steps to put a mobile strategy in place to maximize your PPC efforts.

Step 1: Evaluate your mobile presence. A key component to your mobile strategy is website mobile friendliness. This is because in February, Google announced a “mobile-friendly update” that would boost the rankings of mobile-friendly pages — pages that are legible and usable on mobile devices — in mobile search results worldwide. Conversely, pages designed for only large screens were warned they might see a significant decrease in rankings in mobile search results.

A free tool that Google provides to test your website for mobile-friendliness is located at https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/ You’ll also want to take a look at what your ads and organic listings look like from your mobile phone. Do a few searches from your phone to see what both your ads and your competitor’s ads look like.

Make note of things such as:
• The use of mobile-friendly language. For example, “Shop from your phone”, “mobile-friendly” or “customize from mobile device.”
• Which ads stick out most at the top of the page?

Looking at your website from your phone…
• Are the buttons big enough to press with your fingers?
• Is text easy to read and images clear?

Step 2: Evaluate your mobile performance. Segment your current PPC campaigns by device by looking at results of clicks, impressions, click-thru rate, cost, conversions, etc. for computers, mobile devices with full browsers, and tablets with full browsers.

Which are performing better and which is the main revenue driver? For example, if your mobile campaign is performing better but isn’t the main revenue driver, testing mobile specific copy apart from desktop copy might help improve the performance.

Step 3: Look at your Google Analytics to Evaluate Mobile Behavior. There are a variety of reports you can look at including custom reports for mobile queries. This will give you a feel for what users are looking for at the precise moment they’re searching for something from their phone. Take a look at how searches are different on mobile phones vs. searches on computers. For example, are the searches more urgent or the result of a problem that suddenly occurred?

Step 4: Create an action plan. Once you’ve gathered information about how mobile-friendly your website is, what your target audience is searching for on their phone, what could be improved in your mobile strategy and how you stack up against your competition, it’s time to create an action plan. Break it down into steps and create a timeline for when each step will be completed.

Here are key points you’ll want to address in your plan:
• Is your website mobile-friendly? This will need to be addressed prior to running a mobile campaign. A bad mobile experience can leave a lasting sub-standard impression with your prospects and clients.
• What are the major things mobile users are searching for from their phones? Are they searching for an immediate fix to a problem?
• Do you need to re-write your copy to make it mobile-friendly with relevant messaging?
• Do you need help optimizing your mobile site or need to discuss adjusting your mobile bid modifiers for your PPC campaign?
• Where are you running mobile ads? Does it make sense to expand to mobile-friendly platforms such as Facebook?

Step 5: A plan for continual optimization and testing. The mobile landscape is continually changing. Once you have a mobile-friendly website and addressed the other key points you’ll need a plan for how you will continue to evaluate and test your mobile strategy.

Some of the things you’ll want to continually evaluate are:
• Is your mobile copy still performing or does it need to be adjusted?
• Is your website still technically performing well on mobile devices?
• Have there been any big changes in your mobile ad performance?

You should always be testing copy and other drivers and continually optimizing in order to get the best results.

If you don’t have a mobile-friendly website yet, and it doesn’t make sense for you to create one right now, avoid sending traffic to a site that will “bounce” (Traffic that visits one page, leaves abruptly that you may never get back).

Once you do have a mobile strategy in place, make sure you’ve thought it all the way through. Get help if you need it. And finally, don’t forget to test, test, test. Test your copy, your landing pages, your targeting and your messaging. Test everything.

At the end of May, Forbes Magazine published an article about how small businesses can compete with big businesses.

Noting that big businesses routinely have much, much larger budgets for advertising, the article said that by using Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising properly, small businesses (without the aid of a big marketing budget) CAN compete against much larger businesses. .

In order to compete, Forbes mentioned six things you need to do:
1) “Target keywords with high conversion probability.”
2) “Target high-volume keywords, within limits.”
3) “Make your offer too good to refuse.”
4) “Create a relevant, persuasive landing page.”
5) “Do not run competitor campaigns.”
6) “Test.”

When running your PPC campaigns, I take care of most of these for you so you don’t need to worry about them.

However, there are two items that, unless you hire me to do them, fall on your shoulders and can have a huge impact on the success of your campaigns—and not just for your PPC campaigns. In fact, these two items can potentially affect EVERY advertising campaign you do, no matter what medium you use.

What are they?

Your offer and your landing page.

Because often when it comes to making sure your offer is too good to refuse or ensuring your landing page is relevant and persuasive, it comes down to the decisions you make.

In the past I’ve discussed landing pages, plus, the one true element that impacts EVERYTHING you do, the offer. So today, I’m going to focus on how to make an irresistible offer that your ideal client, customer or patient can’t refuse.

For small businesses, THE best way to compete and win against a big company is to create a killer offer that is compelling and practically forces people to take notice.

7 Important Things An Irresistible Offer Does

The offer …

1. Is clear. If you want to create an offer that gets people to buy your product or service, you absolutely must give a clear, easily identifiable, tangible result. In other words, people must be able to understand what you are offering instantly. It’s simple: confused people do not respond. For example, half off is better than 50% off and a lot better than 35% or even 60% off. People have difficulty understanding percentages. Two for one is usually better than half off.

2. Delivers good value. People want to know they are getting a good deal—that they are getting their money’s worth. The value or the perceived value should outweigh the cost. You can do this a couple of ways. First, by giving more value (or potential for value) than what a customer invests in your product or service. For instance, offering them a way to save time or make or save money has high emotional benefits.

Another way to do this is to offer a product or service that helps clients get results easier and/or faster. For example, a periodontist might create an offer for treating gum disease using new technology that requires little or no pain and no downtime compared to traditional procedures.

A word of caution about this: percentage off coupons rarely work well because people are suspicious. They think as soon as they see a coupon that the business just raises prices to recover the discount. The exception is when your prices are well known, then a percentage off coupon can work well such as restaurants, auto services like oil changes, or movie tickets.

3. Involves either a discount or a premium or preferably both. Sometimes premiums work much better than discounts. A premium is something you give away as a free gift to someone who comes into your store or who makes a purchase from you. For instance, I just saw an ad for a bank that offers $400 in gift cards when you open a checking account.

Of course, a premium doesn’t have to be expensive. One of the most successful promotions for an investment broker offered a premium where buyers were given a free Swiss bank account. It cost nothing to open the Swiss bank account at the time but people perceived it as having a huge value attached to it.

4. Compels people to act immediately. Do this by creating emotionally driven offers. People don’t buy for logical reasons. Even the most logical purchases are driven by some deep desire or pain or underlying emotion. Figure out what that is…then satisfy that desire or alleviate that pain (or both) and you’ll have a good offer.

5. Focuses on the customer who is ready to buy NOW. With any offer, you can target the person who is actively seeking the solution your product or service offers OR you can target the person who needs your product or service, but doesn’t know it yet or isn’t in the market for it quite yet. Centering your offer around the person who needs what you offer RIGHT NOW will be more successful than trying to convert someone who isn’t ready yet.

6. Has a logical reason behind it. You won’t have room for this in your PPC ad, but this should be included on your landing page. Especially if you discount or give something away. Because when you do this without an explanation you create skepticism and suspicion. People have been told all their lives, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” You have to explain. For example, “We’re doing this as an introductory offer in celebration of opening our new store.” Or “In honor of our anniversary, we’re having a customer appreciation sale.” Just about any explanation will do, but there needs to be an explanation.

7. Creates urgency. A good offer creates a sense of urgency to get the customer to say “YES” today, not a few days or a week or a month from now.
Even if you hire someone to create an offer or landing page for you, it’s important for you to understand what elements need to be included for it to be effective.

Because you are not the only one vying for your customer’s business.

Your competitors are too.

In fact, chances are they are doing everything they can to make their business the most appealing. Plus, big businesses have brand recognition on their side to stack the deck even more, whereas your business is probably unknown to many of your ideal prospects.

So if you want to compete, you’ll have to step up your game, use the ammunition provided in today’s email and create an offer that your prospects and customers simply can’t say no to.

Recently I read about a pretty savvy marketer. He had an idea for a new product and felt sure it would sell.

He spent thousands and thousands of dollars creating a sales letter, video sales letter, website, landing page, emails, and ads.

He hired the best copywriter he knew. He had designers involved in the project. And a whole lot more besides.

When he went to launch the product, he didn’t blow his whole ad budget at once, but he spent a healthy amount of money on his first campaign.

The results were dismal.

He only made back about a third of his ad spend.

So what went wrong?

Well, a number of things, most of which he could have determined would go wrong without having to spend so much money.

And that’s what I want to talk about today so you can avoid making the same mistakes.

5 Tips To Help You Avoid Wasting Time And Money On Marketing
(That will lead you to a well-converting marketing funnel creating
more leads and sales for your products and services.)

1) Observe your market. Don’t reinvent the wheel. Before you start investing in creating and testing a campaign, look at what is being done, what is working, and understand why. You might discover that something has already been tested.

For example, in one split test I read the company paid for and had tested both female and male voices to record their sales letter video for a weight loss product. The male voice converted better. However, later after asking around, they found out that male and female voices had already been tested in that market.

Don’t make the same mistake. Check in with marketers who work in your niche before you waste time and money on a test that has already been done.

2) Test small first. Keywords, target audiences, offers, headlines, subject lines, guarantees, and many individual pieces can impact your results tremendously.

One test I looked at showed that one email subject line converted significantly better than the other. The subject line that was converting well conveyed a different offer. The problem was the company had already invested in and created a sales letter, landing page, and video sales letter around the idea in the email subject line that was NOT converting.

For a small investment, they could have tested the subject lines and/or different offers through a simple, inexpensive PPC campaign. Instead, they ended up spending more money to revamp their sales letter, video sales letter, landing page, etc.

Another way to test is in smaller regions or in smaller numbers at first. For instance, currently I’m working on a campaign with a major franchisor. To help increase his brand awareness to get new foot traffic to their locations, we are creating a big YouTube video ad campaign.

Rather than creating the campaign and doing a big launch, we are testing small, using a handful of locations to see what works first. Once we know we have a campaign that is hitting the mark and is profitable, then we’ll scale it out.

3) Understand the metrics of your marketing funnel. If an ad campaign looks like it’s going to be a financial loser, it doesn’t make sense to automatically assume the product is bad or that the media doesn’t work. Examine the entire marketing funnel to determine where things are going wrong. There’s a good chance that only one or two elements need to be adjusted.

For example, if you are getting a lot of traffic to your landing page and your landing page is converting at 5.4% but your sales page is converting at 0.51%, then there is a problem with your sales letter or your offer. However, if you are getting a lot of traffic and your landing page is only converting at 0.72%, then in all likelihood your landing page needs some adjustment.

Look at the numbers at each individual component to see what is working and what isn’t rather than labelling the whole campaign a failure. Then spend time fixing the component to get your funnel working.

4) Focus on your top performing landing pages. Testing is important, but quantity doesn’t mean quality. Examine the results from your last ten landing pages. Find your top three performers from this list. Model your landing pages based on these and then create strategic, focused tests that can make a real difference.

5) Test smart. There are a lot of small changes that can increase your conversion rate. For instance, small tweaks such as the button color, font type, and spacing. However, I’ve found that the biggest increases come from testing bigger things such as offers, the flow, copy, upsells and downsells, and follow up sequences.

For instance, one test found that the landing page was putting barriers in the way by asking for too much information from visitors up front. To change the flow, the company let people download their software trial without providing any personal information first.

Then after users had a chance to download and use the software for 15 minutes or so, they were asked to register the software. By changing the flow and giving users a chance to experience the software first, users could see it was valuable and felt more comfortable giving personal information.

The company was so overwhelmed by the huge increase in response that they changed the flow again, only asking for registration after a week of use to get more qualified leads.

The deciphering of the treasure map is in creating a working funnel that converts BEFORE you go big. Because once you have something that’s proven to work well, you can buy as much traffic as you want and quickly scale your business up.

In the 1970’s, a guy by the name of Gary Dahl marketed what he deemed “the perfect pet”: a rock.

Maybe you’ve heard of it?

Complete with a box with holes in it so the rock could “breath” he marketed the rocks as serious pets. It cost him less than a dollar for production and he sold them for $3.95. By Christmas of 1975, Pet Rocks were all the rage and Dahl had made millions.

This is just one of many examples of the principal that how good your product or service is does not determine your income. It’s how good you are at marketing and making sales.

In the world of marketing, testing and keeping up with what is working can make all the difference—it can even be critical to survival.

The Times They Are A’Changin’…

In a time where people are becoming savvier, what may have worked 2 years ago, isn’t always effective today.

For example, in the “good old days” (about 18-24 months ago,) when it came to search, most people relied on Google. If someone was searching for your product or service, they would go to Google, type in what they were looking for, and either find your product or service—or not.

But now, the market has shifted. Google isn’t the only thing people use anymore.

In fact, Stathunter just revealed that for the first time Google dropped below the 75 percent mark for search marketshare. And now that Yahoo is the default search engine for Firefox, they are gaining even more marketshare, growing three times in the past three months. So while Google is still King, Bing and Yahoo now make up just over 26 percent of the search market.

This does not even factor in things such as social media marketing which has become a hot trend to add to the mix, especially Facebook marketing.

So the truth of the matter is that the search marketing environment has evolved and converged. The relationship between marketers and consumers has become more complex.

I will say that one place Google still reigns supreme is when it comes to emergencies and impulse buys. For instance, when your kitchen sink is backed up and you need to find a plumber, Google is people’s #1 go-to source.

Google paid search can also increase impulse buys. For instance, including reminders of specific holidays such as Valentine’s Day or Mother’s Day or showcasing deals relating to your consumers’ search results can trigger fast purchases.

However, in the current market, most businesses can’t rely on emergencies and impulse buying purchases alone.

So if your business typically experiences a longer buying cycle or your customers typically do more research, then to get the sale, you need more than just Google search. You need additional communication touch points across multiple channels that can be seen on multiple devices.

In fact, according to Google’s ZMOT, “the average consumer engages with 18.2 pieces of online content before making a final purchasing decision.” And Marin Software predicts that 50% of Google searches will be done on mobile devices by December of this year.

I’m witnessing this happen with my clients too. For example, one of my clients used to kill it with PPC on Google only. When his results started to decline using methods that had always pulled well, we began testing some new marketing for him.

Your New Winning Strategy

What I found was that using a combination of strategies that included PPC, remarketing, display ads, Facebook ads, and Bing ads did the trick. We also made sure that his ads could be viewed on mobile devices, desktop computers, and tablets. This new combination out pulled his former model.

For your business, it might be that you need PPC, remarketing, direct mail, and Facebook. I can’t say for sure within the space of this article as it depends on your target market, the length of a typical sales cycle, and a number of other factors. But what I can say for sure is that the market has changed and it requires a more sophisticated marketing strategy if you want to cut through the noise and get the best return.

Three Key Takeaways You Can Use In Your Business Right Now:
1) It is no longer enough to rely on a single channel for all your marketing. You must diversify and combine multiple marketing channels if you want to stay on top.
2) Examining your target audience, their behavior patterns and preferred marketing channels, will help determine which marketing channels you should test first.
3) Your ads and content must be mobile, tablet, AND desktop friendly as consumers are doing research and making buying decisions across multiple devices.

Standing still and continuing to market in the same way you have been is dangerous. Keep up with what is working and what isn’t. Test new strategies. And keep your marketing a moving target so you’ll never be left behind.

If your marketing isn’t pulling what it used to or if you want to avoid a decline, contact me for a free consultation. I can help you determine what is working for your particular product or service and target market and help you decide what to test first.

“If you want to be successful, find someone who has achieved the results you want and copy what they do and you’ll achieve the same results.” –Entrepreneur, author and motivational speaker Tony Robbins

The fastest way to success is to emulate someone who has done what you want, and done it well.

And the best way to know WHO to emulate is to look at your most successful competitors.

Because most businesses have a bigger competitor.

A law office that is more profitable. A retail store with more customers. A dentist with more patient referrals.

You can probably tell me who the market leaders are in your niche.

You might have wondered from time to time what they did to get there and what makes them continue to dominate your market.

It wasn’t luck that got them there. Instead it is consistently having a relevant message, a great offer and superior follow-up (among other things.)

If you’ve ever wanted to emulate their success—there is an easy way you can hack into their success and immediately apply it to your business.

In fact, today I’ll show you how to do this in just three easy steps.

Step one: Model your competitor’s website layout. Take a look at how your competitor has laid their website out. Where is their Opt-in box located? Do they include links in the text—if so, how many links? Where is their offer? Where do they have their social media links?
Modeling their website layout gives you a roadmap for what is working for them—and a good guide for what will work for you too.

Step two: Buy your competitor’s stuff and reverse engineer their process.

Purchase their product or service. Write down every step they take in their sales funnel in the exact order they take it, from pricing to upsells to follow-up and so on.
For example, if they offer two immediate upsells, then you should offer two immediate upsells. If they offer free shipping, then offer free shipping. If they send out five follow-up emails, then send out five follow-up emails.

Look at everything they do and exactly how they do it. And make your offers match their offers—at least initially.

There are two types of competitors—your direct competitors and your indirect competitors. For this step, if you can’t buy from your direct competitor, or if they are missing a critical step, then look at your indirect competitors.

Step three: Try to beat the control. Once your sales funnel is set up to match your competitor’s winning sales funnel, you’ll want to try and improve upon it. Choose elements to test.
For instance, you could test a new offer or try inserting three upsells instead of two. Maybe test pricing here. You can also test elements of your website here—such as adding your offer in the sidebar in addition to the bottom of the page.

Keep in mind, the key to this is to make sure you are modeling a business you know is successful. By purchasing their product or service you can see exactly what they are doing and emulate it in your business.

Model what works FIRST, then be creative.

Do some testing on the already successful funnel to see if there are ways to improve it. When you do it this way, you can create success instantly without having to waste weeks, months and years on trial and error.

We are a nation of multi-taskers and now “multi-screeners.”

Whether it’s a smartphone, tablet, laptop, desktop, TV or some other device, we’re consuming, creating, and managing content across multiple devices. Often at the same time.

As such, you aren’t just trying to reach your target audience, but trying to reach them across multiple platforms.

On the one hand, people are more connected than ever. But they are also more distracted. It’s not enough to just show up in a new channel and create a presence in different media. That is only part of the solution.

You need to have a vision and understand how your customer’s engagement takes shape in each channel. Because without this understanding, you might be wasting a lot of money and time.

As people shift between devices, the roles media play overlaps. So despite massive and growing marketing budgets, many businesses find it increasingly complex to identify which media to credit for leads, sales, and so on.

In other words, if a customer first sees your ad on a social platform but doesn’t click through to buy until they are on their mobile phone, which media gets the credit?
This is why I felt it important to discuss marketing attribution.

Marketing attribution is the science that enables marketers to attribute conversion credit across every click in their customer or prospect’s journey and accurately tailor how that credit is allocated.

According to a recent report by Marin Software on marketing attribution, “Only half of all businesses today utilize marketing attribution. And those organizations that use marketing attribution are rapidly emerging as leaders in revenue acquisition management. Advertisers that ignore or downplay the importance of attribution will ultimately be left behind as they will fail to capture the true return on advertising spend and continue optimizing their programs based on flawed data.”

And David Pann, General Manager of Search Network at Microsoft says, “Revenue accountability for online advertisers is not a future state, it is happening now.” He goes on to say that marketers using marketing attribution models and platforms are “better positioned to win the battle.”

There are different methodologies for allocating credit across adverting clicks. For example, the method that began marketing attribution is the method where you credit the last ad that was clicked just before a conversion.

The problem is that the last click might not really be the reason for conversion.

Another method is to credit the first click. However, many believe because of multi-screeners that both first click and last click models fail to give credit to the other ads that may have influenced the sale.

A third method is one that spreads the credit equally across all clicks in the path to conversion. While this helps solve some of the problems with the first-click and last-click attribution models, it assumes every step is equal. This means you might be giving credit to something that would perhaps work better if the credit for each component was adjusted based on impact and relevance.

There are several other models, which I won’t go into here, but the point is models that more accurately analyze data will help you:
• Justify your marketing spend.
• Build an understanding of the customer journey and your audience’s behavior.
• Optimize your media mix based on the understanding you gain from attribution.
While attribution technology is still evolving, the developments are really exciting as to what it can mean for your business should you choose to use it. Ultimately, I believe that businesses who use it and can accurately measure attribution and apply what they’ve learned to their marketing mix will dominate over those who use a trial and error approach.

Three ways measuring and understanding your attribution can help you are:
1) Gain visibility and control across digital channels: By integrating data from all of your systems and measuring attribution, you can better understand performance and optimize your revenue outcomes.

2) Cut through the clutter: By analyzing all the data in real time, you can quickly spot trends and create relevant products and services and offers that cut through the clutter.

3) Find and drive revenue: To win in today’s online marketplace requires advanced optimization techniques that can maximize your return on advertising spend. Attribution allows you to continuously refine your campaign structure and ads to maximize your relevance and the impact your marketing program has.

As small business owners, we cannot afford to waste our advertising dollars. We need to build accurate and effective marketing campaigns. Using advanced marketing attribution models will help you do just that.

One thing I continually monitor is what works when it comes to getting people to say “yes” to online advertising.

As we become more and more inundated with messages, new types of social media and advertising, it becomes increasingly difficult to move people to action.

Which is why you must constantly be looking for ways to improve your marketing delivery and message.

You should think of your prospect as a GIANT bolder. To get that bolder moving, you need a pretty big crowbar to get it started. But once you get the bolder moving, if you keep tapping it, you can keep it moving along much more easily.

Here are three of my BEST tips to “get the bolder moving:”
1) Use multiple types of media to reach your audience. “One” is a dangerous number. If you are relying on only one type of media to reach your ideal target audience, you are not only leaving money on the table, but you are living dangerously. Different types of media serve different purposes. By using more than one type, you will not only reach more of your audience, but you will help protect the flow of income should one media have changes in algorithms or response.

To give you an example of how different medias work together, here is an example of a multi-media campaign:

A PPC ad is used to draw your audience in. SEO helps them find you (instead of your competitor) when they do extra research before buying. A website and landing page provides specific information, a sales message, and a call to action. An autoresponder email series provides the much needed follow up to overcome objections, put your prospect in the right frame to buy, and send them back to your sales page.

2) Learn more about how to create messages that sell or hire someone who does. (My personal recommendation is to do both so that when you hire someone you can tell for yourself if they are supplying you with good or bad copy.)

Too many businesses focus too much on the type of media they are using. Then if they don’t get the results they are looking for, they blame the media. (i.e. “I placed an ad in XYZ Magazine and no one called. Advertising there doesn’t work.”)

Truth is the message you create matters a great deal. The words you choose make a difference. The order you present your ideas matters. The elements in your sales message matter. The architecture or the way your sales message is put together matters.

As an example, the majority of small business websites use copy that is company or product-centric when your copy should be customer-centric. Product-centric copy focuses on the features. Here’s an example from an e-learning website about one of their courses:

“In concise fashion, the series explains essential 401(k) rules and covers the important features and benefits of a 401(k) plan.”

Notice how this tells the reader nothing about why they should take this course.

Customer-centric copy focuses on the customers and gives them “a reason why.”
The same course above could be presented in a more customer-centric way by saying something like this: “Worried about whether you’ll have enough to retire on? Discover the retirement tool that has helped more than 30 million people become disciplined savers (without noticing a difference in income), reduce their income taxes and save more than they could have with an individual retirement account (IRA) in our 401(k) training series.”

3) Seek advice, mentoring, coaching about marketing. No doubt you are an expert in your field. And you continually seek to improve your position. What many businesses don’t do is consult experts on marketing. Why? One of the most common reasons I hear is that people are taught that if they work hard at being the best and build their expertise in their field, they will succeed.

But the truth is day in and day out some of the best products and services are beaten by inferior products and companies. Being the best at what you do just isn’t enough.

Sure, you can go it alone and try to figure things out. And you might be successful at that. But if you want to get results exponentially faster…if you want to speed up the process and spend less time (and less money) figuring it out, then seek out help from a marketing expert.

Think of it this way.

Using myself as an example, I have over 20 years’ of experience in marketing…Plus I have been mentored and coached by marketing experts that have at least that much experience. The experts I learned from also have had mentors and coaches that had mentors and coaches…and so on. So what took them 10 years’ to figure out, only took me a year—because they shared what they knew.

In other words when you consult an expert, it’s like receiving 100 years’ of experience!

Remember, your marketing messages are competing with thousands of messages EVERY day. To get a leg up on your competition, you need to be more prominent and stand out. When you use these three tips, you’ll move to the top of the pile faster, stand out more, and get chosen more often. And when that happens, you’ll end up with more money in your bank account.

“Is something wrong?”

That’s how the phone call started last week when a friend’s son called home from college.

It seems that when her son started his car, he had three warning lights go on. Unsure what they meant or what to do, he called home for advice.

Cars aren’t the only things that give warning signs. An ache or pain in your body can signal that you are ill. Buzzers and lights on stoves indicate hot surfaces. Railroad crossings have lights, sounds and gates that all signal the danger of a train approaching.

Ignore the signals and you do so at your own peril.

While there aren’t brightlights or loud buzzers that go off when your business has a marketing problem, there are warning signs which are often ignored or thought to be “not that bad”.

But if you leave these problems unattended too long, just like your car, they can bring to a halt any forward progress that you’re making with your business.

Here are several warning signs to look for that may indicate your marketing isn’t performing up to par.

Warning sign #1: Your traffic isn’t converting. If you are getting tons of traffic to your website from a PPC ad, SEO, Email marketing, a sales letter, etc., but your conversion rate is low, then it’s time to dig in and search for a way to make your traffic convert.

While your conversion problem may be caused by a number of different things, here are a few of the more common reasons why this could be happening:
• You’re sending your traffic to a generic page such as your home page instead of a landing page designed specifically to capture that traffic.
• You are missing some key elements in your copy, such as a call to action or strong offer.
• The message your traffic was driven to doesn’t match the ad the traffic was driven from.
• Your strategy needs an adjustment. For example, maybe your target audience isn’t quite right or your sequence is off.
The point is, if you are getting a ton of traffic and you’re not converting that traffic, you are leaving money on the table. Investing time, effort and money to correct this is a smart business decision.

Warning sign #2: You have a website that converts well, but you aren’t getting much traffic to it. Sometimes your conversion rate is high, so you know your landing page is killer, but you don’t have a lot of traffic coming to your page.

The fix may not be a simple solution. For instance, it could mean your ad copy isn’t doing its job of producing click-throughs to your landing page. Or perhaps the audience you are targeting isn’t the right fit for your ad message. Or maybe there is a different strategy altogether that would work better for driving traffic to your site.
Whatever the solution, you’ve done the hard work (you’ve created a page that converts well,) so don’t delay and get this fixed fast! You’ll discover there is a much easier solution to this problem than the first one and it will pay off fast.

Warning sign #3: You have no idea if your marketing strategies are working or not. This is fairly common among small business owners. We tend to try to do it all ourselves which means we are learning on the fly and trying new things without always having mechanisms in place to measure results. Or we are measuring results, but not sure exactly how to read them.

It is worth it to regularly invest some time with an expert outside your business to evaluate what is working well, where you could improve and what opportunities you are missing. Just like you take your car in for regular tune-ups to keep your car running smoothly, a “business check-up” can give you peace of mind as well as help you lift response and uncover new opportunities.

Warning sign #4: Your open rates and click through rates have declined. Email open rates and click through rates do fluctuate. However, if you are noticing a consistent decline in these areas, you need to act fast. I repeat, do not let this situation continue for weeks or months as this is a severe warning that you are damaging your list.

A damaged list is hard to repair. In fact, you may find that some of your customers are lost forever. However, if you act quickly, you can minimize the damage by using email and copywriting strategies to get your list opening and clicking again.

For example, making your emails more conversational, using copywriting techniques such as the “Four U’s”) or delivering content rich emails in addition to sales emails will improve your open rate.
Watch for the warning signs in your business and when you see them, go for help. It will be well worth your time and investment when you lessen your risk and improve your conversion rates and traffic. Plus, you’ll find it can not only have a huge impact on your profitability, but your overall contentment level with your business.