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This is “Part 2” of a 4-Part series we like to call “How To Build A Better Business”. After watching millions of clicks and millions of dollars in sales, these are the 4 things that we’ve seen that the largest and most successful online direct response companies do (and many smaller would-be successes not do). 

After reading through and implementing the last piece, you’re ready for the next step.  Testing is pretty much mandatory, so now we have to test our offer.

No matter how well you know your audience, you can’t with 100% certainty know what they’ll respond to unless you’re testing. Honestly, the best marketers on the planet test heavily and they’ve been doing it for decades.  In this situation, it would be wise to do what they do.

Let’s continue …

How To Test

This is a process generally referred to as split testing.  While there are other ways to test, they’re overly complicated and you need to really know what you’re doing before going any other route.

With testing being such a smart thing to do, it’s becoming a lot easier to pull off.

Built-in

Many “page builders” will have testing functionality built into their system.  If that’s the case, all you need to do is find their training on how to get it setup and put into place.  LeadPages, ClickFunnels, and most others have it built right into their systems.  Use them.

External Services

If you’re using a standard HTML website or WordPress, you’re going to need to use either an external service or plugin to give you the ability to do split tests.  Optimizely is well known and works really well.  Of course, there are dozens of other options out there, too.  Find one that you enjoy using and you can start the process of letting your traffic show you what they need to buy more of your products.

What To Test

Honestly, you can test anything from the littlest thing (colors of a buy button) to the entire page or it’s graphics.  The best way to implement split testing is to test one single piece at a time.  If you add in too many variables or differences, it will be very difficult to figure out why one page is outperforming another.  This becomes important because you should pretty much always be running a split test on something.  You can always improve your conversion percentage, even if it’s by a small piece of a percent.  Every increase is more profit for your business.

Remember, the minimum for your tests is 1,000 visitors unless there is a very obvious difference in performance between one variation and another.  

Now, let’s go over what to test and why:

Headlines

Your Headlines are the most important piece of your sales copy because it’s the piece that convinces the prospect that they need to stay and listen to what you want to tell them.  If it fails, you lose that sale instantly.  If it succeeds, it could be the difference between a sale and a visitor bailing.

Most copywriters would tell you to have 10 different headlines before you put any sales page live.  The truth is that you should have as many as you can come up with.  Choose your 2 favorites and test them against each other.

Offer

Yes, your offer.  Consider different ways you can bundle your product to provide different options and increase sales.  Provide a slight discount for multiple copies of your product.  Try an up front funnel (with every purchase option available on one page).  Test it all, let the traffic show you what they want.

How can your prospect get the most possible value from your offer?  Could you offer a VIP or deluxe edition with extra stuff or access to you?  

Answer these questions by creating a variation of your offer and see how your audience responds.

Graphics

Your graphics should add to your sales process and sometimes it can pull away from it.  It’s a delicate balance.  Keep in mind that graphic heavy pages can take awhile to load and cost you sales.

The truth is that having the most expensive designer on earth throw a page together for you could still under perform when compared to a plain white background with the right words or video.  The key is to find a designer that understands how to transform great copy into something that keeps the visitor reading or watching as long as you want them to.

With graphics, you can test drastically different looks against each other.  You don’t have to limit yourself to tiny changes.  Just make sure the only difference in the page is the graphics and you’ll see which one is better.

Bullets

I rarely test bullets because I’ve gotten good at writing them over the years, but I do generally try moving them around and put them in a different order.

Every bullet you write should hit like a punch in the gut.  You want any visitor that gets that far into your copy to feel physical pain if they leave your page.

If your copy isn’t converting, try out some variations of your bullets.  

Close

Your Guarantee.  Your buy button.  Your words you use around that area.  They should all come together to equal a final “You must have this” feeling in your viewer.  

A weak close can turn away a potential buyer as fast as if you told them to go away.

Make it super clear that you stand behind your product or service and get the viewer to a place where they’re comfortable giving you their money to solve whatever problem you solve.

Every piece of the close should work together to finalize the sale.  Recap what they get.  Explain how you’re going to solve the problem your business solves.  Make it super clear and make them regret it if they leave without buying.

A Secret From A Marketing Ninja

Frank Kern is a marketing ninja genius who taught me one of the coolest copy tricks I’ve learned in all of the years I’ve been online.

Write for 2 readers.

You have the visitor that will rabidly read every word on the page and go through everything.  Sometimes they’ll do it more than once.

Then, you have the reader that scans and barely reads anything that doesn’t catch their eye.

So, how do you cater to both?

You highlight the right places in your copy to connect every idea to the next one.  What this does is allow the reader to go through every word while providing the scanner with the same message.  By connecting one bolded chunk of text to the next one, you serve the message to both types without having to ruin it for the other type of reader.

How To Adjust

Properly testing should leave you with a winning offer that makes you money.  If that’s not the case, adjust one of the items above and continue testing until it does.  Keep at it.  Let the traffic do the work and show you what they need to see to buy.  It’s not complicated, so don’t make it difficult.

What To Do With A Total Loser

Sadly, it happens.  Sometimes you end up with an offer that just doesn’t work.  It’s Ok to move on from an offer if it’s not working.

The key in this situation is to do everything you can to maximize the situation.  Can you take that product and transform it into something new?  Can you add it to another product as a bonus?

With good copy, you can make that product more valuable to your company in another location or by combining it with something else.  Winning in business doesn’t mean you don’t take losses.  It means you make the most of them.  

In the next post, we’ll be going over the best 3 traffic strategies to focus your energy on.  Once you understand why (which you will), you’ll know exactly what to do.

This is “Part 1” of a 4-Part series we like to call “How To Build A Better Business”. After watching millions of clicks and millions of dollars in sales, these are the 4 things that we’ve seen that the largest and most successful online direct response companies do (and many smaller would-be successes don’t do). This is the difference between your website becoming a business rather than a hobby.

There are two primary pieces to any business.  The offer and the audience.  Once you have those two defined, there are a series of steps any business should implement to ensure they’re setup to make every cent they deserve.

This series is going to walk you through the 4 major parts and help you set them up so you see massive success.

The first thing you have to do is ensure that you’re protecting yourself while advertising to reach your audience.  If you set this up right, the odds of wasting your advertising budget goes way down.

What to test

What we’re going to be talking about here is not what you normally hear about testing.  We’ll be addressing that in another post in this series, but for now we’re focusing strictly on ensuring your traffic sources are producing revenue and income.  

Sales are important, but that’s not the only thing a business is looking to measure.  A business has to have profit.  If you’re spending a dollar to make a dollar, that’s not the kind of business math that works.

For this kind of testing, we’re going to be ensuring we’re getting what we pay for with any form of advertising.  Specifically, we’ll be measuring this via link tracking and split testing ads.

For this to work, you have to understand how and what to measure, so let’s get right to that:

Testing Sources

You’ll first want to understand that each traffic source needs to be tested separately from each other. Just because your landing page does well for traffic coming from a Dedicated Email Broadcast, does not mean the same is true for the same landing page coming from a Facebook Ad. So, you’ll want to really isolate your results tracking from Email Traffic vs Facebook Ads vs Google Search vs Instagram vs Each and Every Individual Traffic Source you may want to work with.

Testing Lists

Buying email drops or clicks via email is tracked a bit different from standard advertising.  It’s a traffic source you should be using as long as you can find decent lists in your market.

When you first start out with a list, your best bet is to start off small to ensure that the consistency is there and conversion is where you expect it to be.  If the smaller amount of clicks performs, double your budget every week and continue using that list for as long as it’s performing with your offer.  

Even better, order a blast to the entire list.

How to measure

When it comes to your business, there are specific things we want to measure:

EPC = Earnings Per Click.  With your EPC, you need to know what every single click is making for your company.  If your traffic source is consistent and you know your EPC, you should be able to go into an advertising scenario knowing exactly what kind of income you should make based upon how many clicks you’re getting.

The EPC formula is Sales/visitors = EPC

If you’re paying on a PPC (Pay Per Click) basis, you have to make sure the amount you’re paying per click is below the amount you make per click (your EPC).  

The easiest advertising to track is the one that has the least variables (or spots you can make mistakes).  This is why TrafficForMe only requires your landing page URL.  We use emails we have that are proven to work and you simply pay for clicks.  As long as your offer is setup to convert, you should get solid results when you buy email clicks from us.

If you can make this work, you have a functional business.  Yet, there are other pieces to this puzzle that you also want to track and adjust as necessary:

Links

Link tracking is actually quite simple.  The only thing we need to avoid is over tracking.  If you have too many services tracking a link, it can delay the process of getting someone that clicks on it to the location you want to send them to.  Never use more than one link tracking system at a time.

Depending on what your website is built on and how many links you’re tracking, you might be fine with the Pretty Link Lite plugin for WordPress.  If you’re not heavily into email or affiliate marketing, that should be plenty.  Create a special link for any traffic source you want to track and you can access your info in your wordpress dashboard.  If you find you want more detail or more features, they have a pro version, too.

If you’re going to need to track a lot of links, you’re going to need something a little more robust.  While there are dozens of different services for this sort of thing, the current industry favorites are:  ClickMagick and Quality Click Control. (YES, these are affiliate links. T4Me will be paid a commission if you sign up through either of these links.)

Email

Buying Email traffic is unique and has to be tested differently from the kinds of advertising you’ll find below.  

There are 3 basic steps:

1. Test a small amount of clicks from a list.
2. Raise your budget if it works.
3. Dump it and move on if it doesn’t.

Why start small?  Many email traffic sellers are full of it and before spending a large chunk of your advertising budget, you want to make sure that the list converts for you.  

How to raise your budget:  The safest bet is to double your budget each week and let each buy make you some money to reinvest.  If you’re very confident in the validity of the list and how well it will perform, feel free to raise your budget higher and faster.

How do you know when to dump the list and move on?  You should have a basic idea of how well your landing page and offer will perform.  If you know that 1 in 3 opts into your lists and that 1 in 10 of those will buy, you should expect similar performance from any email clicks you buy.  If it outperforms your standard numbers, scale faster.  If it doesn’t perform, dump it and move on.

If you’re going to heavily invest in email traffic, keep a spreadsheet of all lists you advertise to.  Make sure you’re tracking which ones perform and which ones don’t.  Another key factor are dates.  If you’ve burnt out a list that crushed it for you, it makes sense to go back 6 months to a year later as there will be plenty of new people on that list.

Ads

This part is actually quite easy.  Any forms of advertising you’re using will provide you with data related to the success of any ads you run.  The key is to have a link tracking each campaign separately to ensure you can compare the data they give you with the data you have with your link tracking service.  This will help you find fraud and cut it off before it costs you a large chunk of your advertising budget.

Generally, you’re going to want at least 1,000 clicks before making any major decisions about your ads.  The only exception to this is when you have an ad that obviously isn’t performing.  It’s better to cut out early than to wait and waste a bunch of your budget on an ad that isn’t converting.

Short Ads

With short ads, the only pieces you will be testing will be the headline and the short text you get to use in your ad.  If you go into advertising with a clear picture of the kind of customer you’re targeting, you should also have a clear idea of what they’re responding to.  If you don’t, you need to spend a little time looking around.  

Google is going to show you ads based upon search terms, so search and see what comes up.  You may also want to take a look at their keyword planner to see what the average CPC is.  If it’s expensive, you can be comfortable knowing that they’re either doing well with their ads or wasting a bunch of money on ads that don’t work.  Either way works to your benefit.  Model their ads and use the basic idea to create yours.

When you get your ads written and running, you need to mindful of your EPC and keep your CPC below it.  If your costs are higher than what you make, you need to make some adjustments to your ads.

Try not to get frustrated if your costs are high to start.  It’s a wise investment to make in your business to spend a little and find ads that will perform for you.

Longer Ads

When it comes to longer ads, Facebook is the king.  I’ve seen ads that are brief and simple and I’ve seen others that are the equivalent of a page or two of text.  The cool part is they both work depending on who you’re targeting.  Depending on what Facebook thinks your interests are, your competitors are already probably targeting you.  Pay attention to their ads and see which ones stick around for awhile.  If they stick around, they’re working for them.

Facebook is tracking all kinds of things about you.  Take a moment and look into your interests on Facebook  – make sure it has you interested in the kind of things you sell.  Next, look at the ads others are running.

Banners

With banners, you have to add another thing to test.  The graphics.  Generally, you’re not going to be able to use a lot of words in a banner.  You’re going to have to make your desired impact in a sentence or two at most.

You’re going to want your banners to look nice, but don’t focus too much on making them pretty.  The most important part is to get the attention of your prospect and get them to click.  Everything in your ad should be focused on making that happen.

Don’t hesitate to test huge differences in your banners.  You won’t know what your audience is going to respond to unless you get it in front of them and give them a chance to respond.

Scaling

Should you scale fast or be careful?  Most of that is dictated by your budget, but if an ad is performing your best bet is to scale as fast as you’re comfortable scaling.

If your ad is performing, double your budget and watch.  If it continues to perform, double it again.  Continue doubling your budget until you hit the maximum you want to spend or your performance begins to drop.

You’ve made it through part 1!  In the next piece, we’re going to talk about optimizing and tweaking your offer to ensure you’re getting the biggest bang for your buck with your traffic efforts.

Between 60 and 75% of all email traffic comes from mobile (and with some of our lists it’s 80-90%).

The nice thing about this SMS traffic is:

• You have the person’s attention (not distracted by 1000 emails)
• 98% open rates
• Dollar for dollar, ROI is better than email traffic
• We only text the person ONE time and move on
• Every day is a brand new list of phone numbers for us to text
• 100% USA traffic (better than Tier 1)
• It’s HALF the cost of Email Traffic

We only have 27,500 clicks available per week (and we’re raising prices on SMS soon)

Call me Captain Obvious because everything I’m about to share with you is something that falls under the “absolutely never do” category in my book.  I always thought they would be something everyone else would think are bad form, too.

I was wrong.

My social media world may look different from yours, but I see most of these daily.  Every.  Single.  Day.

Each of the 5 things I’m going to suggest you don’t do are more than bad form.  They won’t work (at least not as well as the legitimate alternative I’ll share with you).

The most common place I see these is on Facebook, but each of these is a bad idea on any social network.

Posting Offers On Ads, Pages, And In Groups

An expert in your field spends months or years building up their audience on Facebook.  They’ve attracted hundreds or thousands of people that want to be involved in their world.

Yet, you’d love to have some of that attention.  It would be awesome if you could just go into the world they’ve built for themselves and pull out as many people as you could.

You could join, then immediately post a spammy message about what you do!

You should find their page, too.  Leave a comment on their page screaming about your awesome offer.  Even better, just post a link to your offer on your website.

Said nobody.  Ever.

With groups, you’ll be either destroyed by the members or banned and booted immediately.  You don’t own that group.  You didn’t put in the work.  You have no authority in that little world.

With pages, your post will end up in some weird corner of the page that 99% of people would never look at in the first place.  In other words, even if it’s not instantly deleted by the page owner, it doesn’t work.

A company is paying to advertise and you take the opportunity to post your offer on their ad.  How long do you think they’ll leave your spam there?  This happened to use this week and it lasted under 60 seconds.

Instead of trying to hijack somebody else’s audience, you could target them with relevant ads.  If the audience is large enough, you should be able to target them with ease.

Start small and build your own audience of people that respect you.  If they respect you, the odds of them buying what you sell go way up.

Ridiculous, Unbelievable Claims

Cousin Johnny made 40 Bazillion dollars from his computer without having to do so much as click his mouse!  How would you like to make more than Bill Gates without ever having to do anything at all!  It’s perfectly legal and legit, too!

Comment with “I love stuffed animals” below and I’ll private message you my secrets!

I don’t know if it’s the excessive usage of exclamation points, but that statement just isn’t believable.

The overall strategy seems to be this:

1. Add hundreds of random people that are connected to other “business opportunity” types of people.
2. Post something similar to what’s above.  Be ridiculous.  Promise that it’s legit.  Tell people they have to “comment” with some weird statement to get access to your secrets.
3. Have most of those random people you just added dislike you forever and unfriend you.
4. Rinse and repeat.  Over and over and over again.

The saddest part about this is that it works.

Out of every thousand people you add (which will take you many hours to do in the first place), you will find a few gullible saps that will fall for your ridiculousness.

However, it’s a horrible way to sell yourself and your products.  Plus, you’re making everyone else angry.

Instead of following this path of wasted time and destruction, your best bet is to use social media the way it was meant to be used.

Talk to people.  Share your wisdom.  Be kind.  Most importantly, be cool.

Yelling About Yourself

Bob has a business based upon holistic medicine.  He adds hundreds of people that he hopes are interested in what he has to say.  Bob goes “Live” on his network of choice and begins telling people how badly they’re hurting themselves by living their lives the way they want.  He has the better solution and all you have to do to get it is pay $497 right now to get access to his training program that teaches how to do it the better way.  His way.

The truth about this is that Bob will never get more than 10 – 15 views on his live video.  Plus, he’s making people feel bad about themselves which does the opposite of what he wants to do:  It pushes everyone away from him.

Once again, this comes back to finding people that will like what you have to say.  

This starts with where you find your friends.  How you talk to them and treat people in general.

If you start talking about your very specialized business with people that may or may not be interested, you turn people off more than you turn them onto your awesomeness.

Instead of adding random people, join a couple of groups.  Add value and comment on things other people are posting.  Become friends with people that can truly value what you have to offer.

Then, when you go “live”, focus on what they need.  If you help them, some will want to sign up with you.

Tagging Everyone In A Post

You decided to be a weirdo this morning, so you go and grab an affiliate link for generic viagra and decide to tag every single person you can in a post to make some quick cash.

Doesn’t work.  Ever.

The goal with this strategy is to extend your reach beyond your network into the network of 50+ others.

Generally, those that know they can will remove the tag quickly.  Those that don’t will just block you.

The only time to tag someone else in your post is if they are aware you’re going to do it and would approve.

Bating Comments

What’s your favorite color?

This is a relatively new one.  The idea is to post a random question that anyone can answer in the hopes that they do.  Once they comment on one of your posts, the network will see that they like you and show them more of the stuff you post.

While this does work, it’s annoying.  It’s also very obvious.

As this is done repeatedly, it loses the ability to draw in people.  The same few people that would have seen your posts will be the ones commenting and your reach won’t go any further than it would have without the lame questions.

Instead, ask pointed questions that directly apply to someone that needs what you sell.  The best way to do this is to have a clear idea of who you can help best.  Not “who you can help”.  Who you help best.

Once you know who you want to attract and focus on their needs, they’ll flock to you.  

Smart Social Marketing

Social selling is as much an art as a science.  The key will always be to help people.  The more you help people, the more money they’ll throw at you.

Never resort to spam, no matter how easy some others make it look.

Legitimately build your following and you’ll be able to sell much easier.

One of the easiest ways to speed up the process is to drop an email to your list and suggest that they connect with you online.

At TrafficForMe, we can send the traffic you need to grow your list faster.  Click here to see if we’re a good fit for your business.
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Most strategies that will drive the right kind of traffic require a fair amount of work or monitoring.  None of these do.

None of these 3 strategies require software or extensive monitoring.  Plus, they’re applicable to any market, any product or service, and almost any business:

Simple Swap

In many markets, it’s standard to promote a competitor using an affiliate link for a cut of the sale.  That’s not what we’re doing here.

This is normally referred to as an ad swap.  If you’re on a limited budget, this is the easiest way to build your audience.

You and another person who services the same audience as you will exchange an email to send on the behalf of the other party.  That’s it.  No crazy tracking necessary.  It’s as simple as looking at how many new subscribers or customers you get out of the exchange.

You’re going to need to follow a few undefined rules to make this strategy work:

1. Try to only swap with someone with a business at a similar point to yours.  It’s not fair to do a swap with someone with a huge customer base if you only have a few hundred subscribers
2. Be honest.  If you have a smaller customer base, someone with a larger one can control how much they send to you via email list segmentation.  If you mislead them, word will get around that you lie and nobody will want to work with you.
3. Don’t cheat.  Do whatever you can to provide exactly what is expected of you.  As time goes on, you’ll gain a positive reputation and people will be asking to work with you.

While I’m referring to growing an email list above, this can be applied to anyone in any location where authority matters.  Social media, forums, and groups can provide huge bursts of traffic.  Be creative and watch the traffic flow in.

If you want a structured environment for ad swaps, this site is for you.

Influencer Hijack

What if you could throw a few dollars at an influencer and have them “recommend” you?  You can, but I’m not talking about Kim Kardashian level influencers.  I’m talking about the ones that have no idea what they’ve created for themselves.

Follow the steps below to find the “diamond in the rough” influencers that will be thrilled over any money you’re willing to give them:

1. Throw keywords that apply to  your audience into Social Mention.  For your first search, use the “all” option, but you’re going to find better results by selecting “video”.
2. For videos, make sure their primary source of revenue is advertising.  You can do this by fast forwarding to the end and checking out their call-to-action.  You’ll also want to look for monetized links in their description.
3. If you find monetized links, move onto the next one.
4. When you find one that is only monetized with advertising, drop them a variation of this note:  Hey NAME, I have a product that is a perfect fit for your audience.  I don’t need you to create anything, I was hoping you’d simply post a link at the beginning of your description of this video:   LINK.  If that sounds like something you’d want to discuss, you can reach me at EMAIL OR PHONE.

This is great for YouTube and other video sharing sites, but it also works very well in forum signatures.  It takes months to build up authority and respect in a forum, but you can throw $50 to someone to post your link in their signature.  Most random people online have no idea how valuable this is, so take advantage and enjoy the traffic you get from it.

Amped Up Content

Content is still king, but the days of creating garbage with the hopes of winning over Google are long gone.

What if you hate writing?

What if you need killer content and don’t want to pay your right arm to get it?

What if you don’t know anything about a topic and have to create content for it?

“Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.” ~ André Gide

The goal here is to take something somebody else said well and say it better.  Add more detail.  Make it clearer.  Follow the steps below to make that happen:

1. You need to gather data.  It all starts with a simple google search for the baseline term you’re writing about.  The “baseline term” is going to be the most generic way of saying what you’re content is about.  For me, “traffic” or “website traffic” is going to be what I’d look for.  For dog collars, it would be “dog collars”.  For video editing software, it would be “video editing software”.  I think you get it at by now.
2. Create a new document using whatever word processing software you generally use and start gathering questions and answers based on what you find.  
3. Go through the content you find on page 1 of Google.  You can dig into page 2 if you’re not finding much that gives you the key problems facing people looking for info on your topic.
4. Next, start checking the vertical search engines.  The blog search, the news search, the video search.  Keep building your document out with questions they’re asking and the answers to them.
5. Your primary goal is to get to at least 10 questions and 10 answers, but the more you can gather the better.
6. Arrange the answers you’ve found into a cohesive order that provides tons of value to the end reader.  Rewrite every word.  Add to it to make things clearer.  Make it completely yours.
7. Post this content on your blog, Medium, LinkedIn Pulse, or as a Facebook Note.

You MUST rewrite every word and reorganize the content to make it your own.  If you just change a word or two, you’re plagiarizing.  If you change every word, you’re doing research.

This is definitely sneaky and borderline unethical, but if you have to create content in a market you don’t know much about, it works.

These 3 tactics require a bit of work, but once they’re setup they will pretty much run on their own.

If you’re looking for a traffic easy button, we can help you with that.  Give us your landing page URL and order the amount of clicks you want in your market.  Within a day or two, an influx of targeted traffic will begin.

 
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We all want to sell more of our stuff.  The single best way to do that is to prove that what we sell does exactly what we say it does.

Your voice and the story you tell matters, but the voice of your customers matters far more.  It’s the difference between you whispering and your customer screaming into a megaphone.  What your customers have to say about you can be the difference between someone buying or leaving your website.

It doesn’t matter if you’re selling coffee mugs or a business opportunity.  The faster you can sell someone on how awesome your products are, the faster they’ll buy.

Considering how important proof is in any sales process, we figured it would be a good idea to share our tricks to get people to tell you how amazing your products are.

Ask For Testimonials

While you could simply say:  “How have our products helped you?”, there is a better way.

When it comes to something like this, the reason why you’re asking matters.

Instead of a generic question, try something like:  “After grabbing _______ (product), I’m hoping you had a chance to put it to use.  How well did it work for you?”

OR

“We saw that you had a recently ordered our training program ________ (name of program).  If you’ve had a chance to go through it, we’d love to hear your thoughts.  Your experience matters to us and we want to ensure you get everything we promised from the program.”

OR

“It’s been about a week (2 weeks, 10 days, etc…) since you ordered _________ (product) and we wanted to check in to make sure it arrived and met all of your expectations.”

Feel free to put any of the above into your own words, but it’s a far better way to ask.  Consider things like shipping time, their busy lives, and the products you sell into account here and make sure you ask after they should have had time to experience your product.

You May Already Have Some

Yes, you may already have a few reviews out there.  Between Facebook, Yelp, Linkedin, and dozens of other websites that allow people to review products, make sure you take a look around the web before you start reaching out to your customers.

You may have plenty of proof already.

Use A Referral Program

It is against the law to bribe customers for testimonials, so don’t do that.

Setup a referral program where you’ll give a special discount, product, or referral fee when someone sends you a new customer.

The part where you get the testimonial is when they sign up for the program.  As a “qualifier”, ask them to write down (or type) what they would tell people if you let them refer you new business.  

Make sure you include any legal disclaimers necessary (check with a lawyer to be safe).

Offer A Free Trial or Beta Program

If you are launching something new, the easiest way to get reviews and testimonials is to reduce the barrier to entry.

Between social media and an existing customer base (if you have one), you should be able to get people to play around with you product if you give it to them for free or let them try it out for a limited amount of time.

At the end of the trial time or beta program, ask members about their experience.

Here are few parting thoughts regarding testimonials and reviews:

1.  You will probably get negative ones along with positive ones.  If that happens, take it as an opportunity to fix a bad relationship with a customer and do your best to do right by them.  Negative reviews online are a potential nightmare, so try to solve the problem before it goes that far.
2. Always think about the best interest of your customer and be as nice as possible.  The better their interaction with you is, the more likely they are to buy more of your products.
3. If you put the customer first, you cannot lose.

If you want more proof, you need traffic.  We can help with that.
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Age old marketing knowledge states that choices are bad.  Provide one solution and make it clear why it will help someone viewing your offer.

However, the world has changed and the internet has made it possible to target prospects if they’re interested in something as odd as dinosaurs and building insolation (yes, those are mine…)

Years ago, we could target keywords and attempt to figure out what that person was looking for.  With these enhanced targeting options, we can now target situations.

With the ability to target situations, we can reach the perfect prospect.  Yet, we’re only supposed to give them one option to buy?

Give A Choice Early In Your Process

Choice, when implemented early in a sales funnel, gives us the ability to send a prospect through the right process for them.  Plus, we’ll sell more of our products.

For this to work for you, you either have to have multiple products or a single product that helps more than one specific set of circumstances.  If you have this situation, providing choices to your prospects will have a very positive effect on your profits.

How can you implement choice in your sales processes?

In the beginning.

To make this work, you want to have 2 buttons catered to different situations.  If it’s in an ad, include 2 links.  If it’s a video ad, 2 different buttons.

The key is to have the buttons have very short, clear, and concise statements that will lead the right prospect down the path that applies to them.

Adjust your current promotion process to cater to each of the individual situations and lead the prospect to the product that solves their problem.

Provide A “Choice” At The End

To be completely honest, this is generally a decoy.  The choice is almost always the biggest package option, but there is a choice involved.

I call this the “Up-Front Funnel”, but upsells could be added after the initial sale if you wanted to set it up that way.

See the image below for an example:

As you can see in the image above, there is an obvious winner.  That’s actually the point.

Here is another example:

As you can see above, the obvious choice is the $25 version.  That’s the point.

In the example below, I did a more honest setup of 3 different packages:

In my situation all 3 packages sold almost equally.

Whether you want to set it up as a decoy offer or do an “Up-Front Funnel” is up to you, but the key is to give a choice.

As long as the options aren’t too different, people will choose whatever package works best for them.

Generally, this will become a situation where the question goes from “Do I want this?” to “Which package is best for me”.

I’m not guaranteeing that you will make you more money, but it’s worth testing.  After all, the offer is what matters most when you’re trying to sell anything.

Once you’re ready to start testing, we’re happy to help you with the traffic you need.
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One of the most important things that you have to work with in any business is simple:  Leads.

Lead generation is an important thing, and you need to have more than just “cold” elements. Cold leads are good, but if you can’t close them, they become an albatross on the neck of your growth potential. If you’re starting out, even if you’re working online, you will need to look into lead generation from different sources.

Without focusing on the right elements, you will not be able to gain the upper hand and grow your business. The following shines light on a few things that you can do to figure out how to get people interested in what you’re doing, for the purpose of profit, growth potential and more.

Local Community Groups

The first option that you can pursue is that of local community business meetings. Visit your local chamber of commerce, or their official website and see if there are any meetings coming up soon. You’ll find that you can network with others, discuss your business, and see how you can help others in your community. You’ll be surprised by how well these places work for creating opportunities and getting your business in front of new people. This is a business to business solution that will bring you a great deal of options for promoting anything you’re doing, whether “brick and mortar” or online.

Industry Web Forums

No matter what industry you’re in, there are forums that are online. Industry forums will allow you to communicate with others, and become an expert in regards to your subject matter. If you look into this, you’ll find that you can start to communicate with others and get a flood of traffic to your website. Focusing on the world of marketing, you have to consider the audience that you’re trying to pull. If you discuss things in forums, you can draw attention to your work.

Blogging and Article Marketing

The next option that you will want to consider is simple, blogging and article creation. Content is king, as the old adage may say, and it can bring to you a whole new flood of attention. Working with these options is a good thing, assuming that you’re crafting SEO elements. SEO stands for search engine optimization and it can leverage the power of search engines to your site. Getting people to visit your site is a good thing, as it can create leads through a variety of measures. The goal here is traffic, and education. If you can educate your audience, you’ll find that leads become easier to manage.

At the end of the day, you’ll need traffic. The above elements are just a few things to think about in terms of traffic generation and getting leads. It’s hard to build these elements organically, but it’s not impossible. If you want to expedite the process, you can get traffic from a trusted source. You can utilize TrafficForMe.com to get clean, targeted, 100% real traffic to help pull in leads for you reliably.
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Traffic Exchanges

Traffic Exchanges were designed as a way to “trade traffic” between website owners.  While nobody that knows what they’re doing would ever recommend surfing weird websites all day long, those that do are a great target for business opportunities and traffic related offers.  Most of these services offer the ability to buy credits instead of surfing. 

For this to work, the network cannot be an “autosurf” network.  Every member that doesn’t pay for clicks, needs to click from one site to the next.  They normally use a browser extension to make this work.  If you see the word “autosurf” anywhere, it’s not worth paying them to show up to their customers.  Nobody is looking at the sites and the next one in line pops up automatically.

Test out your offer with a small amount of credits on a non-autosurf network to see if what you sell is a good fit for this kind of traffic.

Launchbit

Launchbit is a cost-per-click (CPC) email service.  You pay-per-click on an ad that gets sent via email.  It’s a very unique network, but they have access to most major niches.  Their lists are pretty huge and the cost-per-click is generally much lower than more mainstream advertising services like Google or Facebook.

With any CPC advertising, you have to have a very clear budget in mind before you test out any network.  Make sure you limit your budget to whatever you’re comfortable with for your first test.

Outbrain

Outbrain is the service that provides those sponsored results under posts on your favorite blogs.  Publishers identify their audience and Outbrain will place links to their content under high traffic, relevant blog posts.  They represent some of the highest traffic websites online, so it’s worth considering.  Even if you have to custom create a new sequence or funnel, this is an inexpensive traffic source.

This kind of advertising works best with high quality content or advertorials.  An advertorial generally shows people how to best use a product or complete an overly difficult task that a product makes much easier.  If your products fall into either of those situations, it’s worth trying.

Sponsoring

Sponsoring someone or something is an easy way to gain access to an audience that should know about your products.  The best part about sponsoring someone is that most times, giving them a simple affiliate link is enough to get a community leader to recommend your products.  As long as you have something of value to offer their audience and they can profit from it, you can get tons of exposure and a large amount of leads and sales from an arrangement like this.

Don’t assume that you can just go in with a financial offer and have someone respond.  You have to cover the value you’ll be providing their audience, too.  Make sure you cover both in your initial conversation and you may be able to make a very profitable arrangement for all involved.

Email Clicks

While we don’t consider ourselves weird, TrafficForMe.com does email traffic in a way that’s unique from most others.  We don’t do solo ads the way most companies do.  With us, you don’t have to do any heavy lifting at all.  No email writing.  You provide us a link to your landing page and we send one of our already proven emails to generate the traffic for you.  That’s why our traffic is usually more responsive than a standard solo ad.  Click here to see if we’re a good fit for you and your business.

Considering how long I’ve been doing the whole “internet marketing” thing (over a decade), I get asked internet business questions all the time.  Whether it’s at live events or via Facebook or another social media website, it’s a fairly constant thing.  A short while ago, I spent over 2 hours answering questions on a call and realized that most of the questions I get asked are the same exact ones.

Assuming you may have some of the same questions, I thought it would be cool to post answers to the 5 I hear most often.

What is your favorite/best way to get traffic?

This is probably the question that frustrates me most.  It’s normally asked like the answer should be a one word response.  The truth is that this is an incredibly complicated question with an equally complicated answer.  The short answer is that it every product or service will have a completely different “best” source of traffic.

The best source of traffic would provide you with the perfect customer.  Someone that not only wants what you sell, but has a desperate need for it.  This traffic source should provide you with not just customers, but raving fans that love you and want to buy EVERYTHING you sell.

To find this elusive customer, the first step is to identify them.  You need to know exactly who they are.  You need to speak directly to their situation.  Your marketing, sales messages, and any other forms of communication you use need to focus on them.

The first step to identifying them is to think about where they go and use those websites to figure out more about them.  Quantcast can be a gigantic help with this if a site has been “quantified”.  I’ll use TMZ.com as an example:

This helps with language you should be using, the nature of your sales messages (if they’re spending time on TMZ, it would be helpful to match the type of messaging they use), and gaining a better idea of who you serve.

Once you’ve identified them, you need to find them.  Alexa.com will give you ideas.  It’s owned by Amazon and they have a ton of data they’re willing to share with us.  Throw your primary competitor’s URL into Alexa and they’ll provide you with data including what sites are referring traffic their way, what sites link to them, and similar websites.  Some of those sites may offer advertising options or accept content that they’ll post to their audience for you.

Once you have this data, it’s time to start testing strategies.  The first choice is whether you want organic traffic (free) or paid traffic (costs money).  If you’re starting with little money to spend on advertising, organic traffic is going to be your obvious choice.  If you have a budget, paying for traffic provides instant visitors.  Either way, you choose to risk money or time.

Finally, get to testing out different strategies.  I can’t dictate where to start or where you’ll finish.  The path you choose to take makes no difference.  It will take time and testing to get it right and find your traffic “holy grail”.  Never give up and if something doesn’t work it’s just a test that didn’t work out.  Keep at it and you’ll find the one that works best for you, your skills, and your audience.

Why doesn’t my website rank in Google?

Again, super complex question with a long list of possibilities.  It’s nearly impossible to give a precise answer without seeing the website in question.  Instead, I’ll give you a few things to consider that will help you fix the problem:

Is your on-page SEO setup right?  This is where ranking in Google begins and if you do it wrong, it can be where it ends, too.  Images should be named accurately and with keywords where appropriate.  Pages should be named accurately and with keywords where appropriate.  Titles should be accurate and contain your keywords where appropriate.  Highlighting should be natural and focus as much on conversion as SEO.  Notice a common thread here?  Your best bet is to focus on creating a great page.

Is your site socially viable?  Are people spreading around your content?  Is your website valuable enough to your audience that they recommend it to others?  If not, you need to figure out how to make that happen.  The easiest way to do that is to create solutions to any barriers that would get in the way of people buying from you.  That’s the same type of content that gets shared.

Are you getting the right links pointing to your sites?  Socially viable content will also generally attract links just for being awesome.  Building links for the sake of building links is a dead process.  Article marketing, press release marketing, and things like blog commenting as a way to drive links is a bad idea (at least doing it the way we did it in 2007).  Instead focus on getting quality links from quality sources.  The more authority links you get the better.

Is there a penalty against your website?  If you have had your website for more than 2 or 3 years, odds are you used some very “old school” link building strategies that are now frowned upon.  If that’s the case, you’ll want to develop a list of the old style links and use Google’s disavow tool.  Here’s a video showing how to do it right:

What’s the next big thing?

Are you a trend chaser?  If so, I’m guessing that your business is nearly nonexistent…

Trends can be great traffic sources, but a very low percentage of the “big things” you try are going to pan out into real businesses in the end.  I’ve been testing some automated Amazon affiliate products for over a year.  I’ve made roughly double what I’ve spent on the products, but barely.  Also remember that I have a far deeper knowledge base than most people…

Fulfilled by Amazon products, Autoblogs, Blog networks (private and public), Kindle publishing, T-shirt selling, and who knows what else.  Any trend is going to be a goldmine to a small percentage of people.  For most, it will simply be a massive waste of time.

Instead of worrying about trends, find an audience to serve, products and services they want AND need, and a unique selling proposition that speaks to the specific group of people you’re looking to serve.  Not only will you be a lot happier, the odds of you succeeding go way up.

Once you have that sorted out, figuring out a way to take advantage of new opportunities and feed any new customers into your current sales systems is worth trying.

Why aren’t people buying the stuff I sell?

This problem is based upon two main issues:

Crappy offers

AND

Message to market match

Either of the two will kill any chance of making sales.

Your message is the core of what you’re selling.  It’s needs to be convincing to your audience and should enter a conversation they’re already having with themselves.

In my personal experience, the sales copy I think will perform best is almost never the best performing.  The key is to test everything.  The offer.  The headline.  The bullets.  The close.  The post script…

Let your audience tell you what they need to hear to buy what you sell.  Test EVERYTHING.

If your message is wrong, change it.

If you can afford it, hire a copywriter.  If you can’t afford the best, ask one of them for one of their students.  You’ll get insight into your messaging from one of the best at a drastically lower expense.

When you have a bad offer, nobody will buy what you’re selling.  If it isn’t working, change it.

Why aren’t I “making it”?

Only a few percent succeed at this internet business thing.  Instead of telling why you’re not getting into that small group, I’ll tell you a few things you need to get there:

Persistence – It’s good to know when to give up or stop wasting time on something, but the moment you give up could be the moment you’re about to break through.  It’s a delicate balance, but you’ll be better served by sticking to a project until you make it work than giving up on it.  This applies to traffic strategies, too.  If you aren’t making it work, figure out how to make it work and then, MAKE IT WORK.

Discipline – This is the one that gets me most often.  You have to force yourself to get things done.  Not just anything, but the right things.  My solution to this problem is to break down a project into the smallest possible pieces.  A sense of accomplishment will usually be enough to drive me to finish things up and instead of focusing on the end result I’m working towards, I do better when focusing on each small piece.

Value – Are you providing measurable value to your customer?  If so, how?  Identify this and it makes it easier to sell your products and services, too.

Differentiate – “Me too” products and services die every day.  Most of them should.  Do something to make yourself different from your competitors.  A crazy guarantee, personalized service, better bonuses…  Do whatever you can to be different in the eyes of your customers because that’s what will get them to come back.

Passion – Do you love what you’re doing?  If not, stop.  Find a way to make money doing what you love and it becomes a pleasure to do the work.  It stops being work…

When you’re ready to test out whatever changes you put into place, we’d be more than happy to help with traffic.  Discover if the traffic you can get from TrafficForMe is the right traffic, click here.
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