Internet Marketing Magazine September 2012

1internet marketing magazineseptember 2012

>> THE ORIGINAL AND BEST INTERNET MARKETING MAGAZINE DESIGNED SPECIFICALLY FOR THE IPAD, IPHONE, ANDROID AND THE WEB

september 2012

SOFTWARE BUSINESS MASTERY

JOIN US ON FACEBOOK

LEON JAY

> THE NEWCOMMANDMENTS

OF SEOPAGE 16

> 9 GOLDENRULES FORSEXY COPY

PAGE 18

> HOW TO GROWYOUR EMAIL LIST

PAGE 22

> THE END OF“GURU-DOM”

PAGE 25

> SHOPPING CART ABANDONMENTISSUESPAGE 27

> TURN BORING FACTS INTOEXCITINGBENEFITSPAGE 30

> AMAZON VSTHE WORLDPAGE 32

2 internet marketing magazineseptember 2012

THE STATE OF THE INTERNET> INTERNET UPDATE

Cloud Accelerated Browsing – Amazon Silk

Amazon, when it released it’s Kindle Fire tablet re-cently introduced a new “split browser” Browser Ar-chitecture that it is calling Amazon Silk. It is a radical new paradigm that accelerates the power of the mo-bile device hardware by using the computing speed and power of the Amazon Web Services (EC2) Cloud. The result is a faster web browsing experience.

Modern Web sites are getting more and more com-plex. Rendering a single Web page for many sites re-quires hitting tens of domains and upwards of 100 files. That can be sluggish even on modern desktops, and they have a lot more horsepower than the Kindle Fire’s 7-inch package can hold.

To solve this problem Amazon Silk will start learning what sites and pages you like and will begin caching them for you on it Amazon Web Services Platform. Then when you make a web browser request it will be able to serve up your content much quicker than a normal web request.

Amazon can also use its massive cloud storage in-frastructure to cache enormous amounts of content that is commonly loaded by users, ensuring that it

is instantly available to transmit. Amazon intends to put its machine learning expertise to use determin-ing which pages users are likely to load so that the relevant content can be aggressively pre-cached and ready when needed.

Amazon can take advantage of its high-bandwidth connection to the Internet backbone to retrieve in-dividual page elements faster than the user would be able to natively on the device.

This is great from a browsing speed point of view, but what about privacy?

The reality is much like Google and Facebook, Ama-zon is watching you and learning about your prefer-ences, as each Kindle is tied to an Amazon ID, which gives Amazon a great deal of information about you already.

Amazon is going to be in a position to know a great deal about your Web browsing habits along with your buying habits and media habits. Now Amazon is in a position to know what books you buy, what shows you watch, the Web sites you visit and much more.

Amazon advises that the collected usage data is anonymous and stored in aggregate, thus protecting user privacy. It’s also possible to completely turn off the split browsing mode and use Silk like a conven-tional Web browser.

So will Silk stay just for the Tablet Market?

We don’t expect the Silk browser to stay confined to the Kindle Fire for long. We suspect that Amazon is going to be releasing a Silk desktop browser in the near future.

In this section of Internet Marketing Magazine we cover the low down on what are the big plays that have happened online recently and how they affect you.

Amazon Silk—Amazon’s Revolutionary Cloud-Accelerated Web Browser

http://internetmarketingmag.net/2012/cloud-accelerated-browsing-amazon-silk/


Amazon’s New Secret Weapon: Delivery Lockers

The Web giant has quietly installed large metal cabinets called Amazon Locker in grocery, conve-nience and drugstore outlets that function like vir-tual doormen, accepting packages for customers for a later pickup.

Amazon began putting lockers in Seattle, New York state and near Washington, D.C. and are growing into more areas.

The online retailer has opened at least 50 self-ser-vice pickup stations in a few U.S. cities. It’s more for Apartment dwellers than traditional residential houses. By adding the lockers, Amazon is address-ing the concerns of some urban apartment dwellers who fear they’ll miss a delivery or have their items stolen from their doorstep.

How it works is that Amazon ship the item to the locker, then you receive an email to go pick it up. It’s convenient for Amazon, but is it really conve-nient for you as the online shopper? The jury is still out on that one, as on one hand the security is better, but on the other – you don’t really feel like having to go out to the shop to pickup something that you bought online as it feels like it defeats the purpose and convenience of buying it online in the first place.

Facebook to allow Gambling in the UK

Facebook Inc will allow users in Britain to wager real money on its service, opening its doors to gam-

bling for the first time as revenue growth slows at the world’s No. 1 social network.

Gamesys, an independent gaming company, launched a version of online Bingo for Facebook us-ers in Britain who are at least 18, and which the company said will pay winners real money. Game-sys also announced plans to offer virtual slots gam-bling on Facebook.

“Real money gaming is a popular and well-regulat-ed activity in the UK and we are allowing a partner to offer their games to adult users on the Facebook platform in a safe and controlled manner,” Face-book said in a statement.

Facebook spokeswoman Linda Griffin said there are no current plans to offer gambling in any other countries or with any other partners besides Game-sys.

Apple-Samsung Patent Lawsuit: Samsung Ordered To Pay Apple $1.05 Billion

After a year of litigation, a jury decided in August that Samsung ripped off the innovative technology used by Apple to create its revolutionary iPhone and iPad.

The jury ordered Samsung to pay Apple $1.05 bil-lion in the latest skirmish of a global legal battle between the two tech giants. An appeal is expect-ed.

The jury found that several Samsung products il-legally used such Apple creations as the “bounce-back” feature when a user scrolls to an end image, and the ability to zoom text with a tap of a finger.

Apple lawyers plan to formally demand Samsung pull its most popular cell phones and computer tab-lets from the U.S. market. The result of this is still to be seen unfold in the next month or two.

“Today’s verdict should not be viewed as a win for Apple, but as a loss for the American consumer. It will lead to fewer choices, less innovation, and potentially higher prices” Samsung are quoted as saying.

An Amazon Locker in a New York City grocery store


Most Popular Smartphones in the US

Comscore released its recent fig-ures about Smartphone penetra-tion in the US.

The study surveyed more than 30,000 U.S. mobile subscribers and found Samsung to be the top handset manufacturer overall with 25.6 percent market share.

Samsung was closely followed by LG with 18.8 percent share. Ap-ple continued to gain share in the OEM market, ranking third with

15.4 percent of US mobile sub-scribers.

For the Best Selling Book on Am-azon – Kindle outselling Physical

The Scholastic blockbuster ‘Hun-ger Games’ has just surpassed the ‘Harry Potter’ series as the best-selling book of all time (print and e-book combined) on the leading U.S. bookseller, Amazon.

Amazon announced that the Kin-dle versions of Hunger Games books outsold print versions by a ratio of nearly four to one (3.7 to one to be exact). So, for every print copy of the Hunger Games sold on Amazon, nearly four e-book copies were sold.This illustrates a massive shift in the way that the general public now want to consume books, with the move from physical to eBooks via sophisticated readers such as

the Kindle to be very prominent.

Mobile Commerce Continues to Rise

26% of America’s top 500 e-re-tailers now have a mobile site or app, and the country’s total m-commerce sales are expected to reach $17.5 billion this year, up 64% from $10.7 billion a year ago.

If you market and sell online, here are facts you should con-sider: Consumers worldwide have purchased 67 million Apple iPads since the product was introduced two years ago. There are now 218 million iPhones in use. And last year alone all manufacturers shipped 492 million smartphones.

If your online stores aren’t opti-mized for these mobile devices, your business is certain to lose sales as a result.

GregCassarGreg CassarInternet Marketing Strategist& Editor – Internet Marketing Magazine

From the Desk of the Editor

Last month was a great month for Internet Market-ing Magazine with the ‘Supply Chain & eCommerce Masterclass’ with Ruslan Kogan generating some real interest from those in online retail.

This month’s expert audio interview with Leon Jay will be available in the members area in the next few days. We’ll send an email out to the member’s once it’s live there. If you are not a member yet please feel free to register for it today at http://internetmarketingmag.net/become-member/

Important: We’re working on building the number of reviews we have on the Apple platforms so as to keep dominant rankings in the search. If you are

getting good value from Internet Marketing Maga-zine I’d really appreciate it if you could spare 1 minute of your time and click this link to give us a quick honest review (click ‘view in iTunes’ then scroll down and click ‘write a review’, thanks :).

Until next time… Wishing you the best of success online

http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2012/8/comScore_Reports_June_2012_U.S._Mobile_Subscriber_Market_Share

http://internetmarketingmag.net/become-member/


http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/internet-marketing-mag/id474766871?mt=8

http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/internet-marketing-mag/id474766871?mt=8


Make Your Website Easy to Read& Effective on all Mobile Phones

http://mywebsitemobile.com/freedev/




> EXPERT INTERVIEW

An Interview by Internet Marketing Strategist Greg Cassar

Leon Jay is a serial entrepreneur and Internet Marketing Marketer. Originally with an Electrical Engineering and Natural Therapist background, Leon ended up as an Internet Marketing Mar-keter, and later became very successful in the development and software business. Leon has gone on to build two very successful seven-figure businesses.

Greg: Leon, you’ve got quite a varied and di-verse background prior to the Internet Market-ing. Can you tell us a little bit about that, and then how you first came across Internet Market-ing?

Leon: Like most people in the business I wasn’t born with an ‘Internet Marketing Degree’, and in fact I don’t know anybody who is in the business that has really studied formal marketing. My back-ground started when originally I studied electrical engineering. But most of my actual work experi-ence was much more diverse than that - I served for a time as a grave digger; I worked for a while as a Special Needs assistant; I worked for British Telecom as a support person on the phones for a while, because I actually failed as one of the sales team. I trained in British Telecom as sales personnel, but it never really felt good to me sell-ing products to old ladies that they couldn’t really afford them, so unfortunately my sales volume wasn’t very high.

Eventually I found my calling as a natural thera-pist. I trained in a variety of different techniques, which kind of ironically again later on became the foundation for my Internet Marketing, because as I studied a lot about how the mind works and the way that the emotions work. I found that helped me understand the psychology of the customer and the psychology required in a sales letter when I became a marketer. But it was actually while I was trying to market one of my early businesses as a physical therapist that I really started learning more formal business and marketing.

My first online income was an accident really. I built a website based around a natural therapy’s technique which was relatively new at the time, and there was a lot of people searching for infor-mation, but there wasn’t a lot of content on the internet about it. I basically did everything right completely accidentally without even knowing it at the time. I built a very content rich website in a low competitive market with a lot of interest and put up a couple of affiliate links to some DVDs and made a sale.

I didn’t really think it was going to work, and I didn’t really think much about it, but that was what triggered things. What inspired me was when I woke up one morning and found I’d made more in an affiliate commission than I had done from see-ing clients and working really hard to make that same amount of money. Greg: So you got the bug at that stage?

Leon: Yes absolutely. It opened my eyes to what was possible - and being a bit of a global traveller, I move around a lot, which made building a thera-pies business quite challenging. Also this ability to make money from wherever I was, work on it whenever I wanted to - the green lights went off and I was awakened to a new industry.

Greg: A few years back you worked with Greg Jacobs on a very successful project at the time called, WP Mage. What is WP Mage, for those who haven’t come across it, and what is a bit of the story of that launch?

SOFTWARE BUSINESSMASTERY


Leon: Greg Jacobs came to me with this idea for a product that he wanted to launch as a Click-Bank product. I took a look at it and I saw that there was a lot of overlap with an idea that I’d had personally.

The basic premise was that a lot of people used WordPress as a platform to create SEO based websites for long tail keywords at that time. There was a lot of installation of particular plug-ins and of certain types of theme, SEO settings, etc. What I realised was that while the method that he was using was extremely ef-fective, it was also quite time consuming. So, we re-designed an interface for installing WordPress in a specifically configured way to make it optimised for long tail keyword SEO sites. And that’s es-sentially what WP Mage was. So essentially it enabled people to install websites that could have 1,000, 2,000, 5,000 & upwards pages of content without really putting any effort in. You could build these sites within just one or two minutes, and without any form of technical experience, just by inserting a key word list.

Greg: Where was it grabbing the content from?

Leon: It used a variety of differ-ent sources; YouTube, article sites and Yahoo Answers. It was a vari-ety of different material.

Greg: So it was like an aggrega-tor; it aggregated content on your site?

Leon: Yes exactly. It just com-piled a variety of different sources based around specific keywords. It

is not my personal style of mar-keting. I personally prefer more high-end websites, but I could see that it was working for Greg and so I helped him on that launch, helped develop a marketing plan to not only release the software, but also build a brand for himself, which obviously he’s gone on to utilise very effectively.

Greg: Did you go through a for-mal launch process with that product?

Leon: Yes absolutely. I was a fifty percent partner on that project, just behind the scenes. Basically we formulated everything, even down to the actual design of the interface.

What I did with WP Mage was to think about the marketing before we even built the product. So, we looked at how to simplify the in-terface right down. How we could systematise it to a point that when the marketing came it could be demonstrated in a very easy and effective way that people could understand.

Greg: And is the product still out and about, WP Mage?

Leon: I left that project some time ago. The latest version of the product is now called Monster Mage.

Greg: One thing that I was think-ing about it was whether or not Google would like that sort of site anymore, with all their recent up-dates in 2012. So that individual one may be more relevant in 2009 than it is in 2012.

Leon: I totally agree with you.

Greg: It is an interesting launch project that you went through and it was 100 percent relevant at the time. Yes, full credit to you for pulling off a massive launch there.

You’re obviously now very estab-lished and you have a good track record in the software business, in particular automating busi-ness processes and marketing process etc. What is it that you like about the software business as a business model compared to other business models online?

Leon: It’s not just software per-say. Obviously WP Mage was soft-ware based and we did very well with it however, WP Mage wasn’t my ideal software model and the reason I say that is simply because it was a one-off licence fee for the actual software. That works well, and is a preferred model compared to say an information product - the problem with infor-mation products is that there are so many of them out there, there is so much competition with them and there is so much good, free information out there these days. So software gives a lot higher val-ue.


Also I think people can really ap-preciate the value that it can bring for their business. With WP Mage it saved people a huge amount of time. It saved people a lot of out-source fees, in terms of what they were spending and getting WordPress installed and configured for them. And so it was a valuable product to them.

However, when it was launched, it was designed to generate a large amount of income in a short period of time, but then close down (launch style).

The way that we’ve gone on to develop other software is much more about a monthly subscrip-tion based service. The reason I love that is that you’re deliver-ing a high value service, a high value product on a monthly basis that obviously if people aren’t finding valuable they will stop their subscription.

With information membership websites, people tend to drop off very quickly. When they get the information they want from it, they don’t keep going back to them on a regular basis. Where as with software, if people get into using your software they’re going to keep using it month in and month out. So their reten-tion rates are far, far higher, and of course the value delivered to your customer is significantly higher.

Greg: The continuity side of the business is definitely better than information products, because especially when someone starts using your service then they’ve got a dependency on it and it is serving them real value, rather

than just providing them infor-mation. So that makes perfect sense.

Have you tested upfront fee with trailing continuity versus, just trailing continuity right from the word go?

Leon: Yes we have. When we first started developing our lat-est project, which is FusionHQ, we did start that as a lifetime access. We had to do that real-ly because in the early days the software was in a very raw, very basic state, and so we recognised that people were unlikely to stick with us long term. At the same time we needed people to invest in it to motivate them to use the system. We tried free to begin with, but people just didn’t ap-preciate what was there. So by getting them to pay for it we found that people started using it and gave us a lot more feed-back that helped us develop the product.

When we came to a critical point where we were able to charge quite a high price point for a life-time access we then moved over to a monthly model which was a scary time for us, because logic dictates that people don’t like monthlies and therefore we ex-pected the conversion would de-crease. Actually, what we found was that wasn’t the case at all. We found we were able to main-tain very comparable conversion rates, but of course the lifetime value of the customer was sig-nificantly higher. So, while there

was a minor drop in conversion rates, it was so insignificant in comparison to the increase in the lifetime value of the customer.

Now, even though we’ve had to do this from a business perspec-tive it actually also enables us to deliver a better service to the customer as well. That’s because there’s a lot of monthly over-heads that go in to providing a quality service, and a lot of on-going development costs.

Just to go back to the ques-tion earlier about why do I like software products, I’m guessing we’re comparing that against maybe more traditional informa-tion products. With an informa-tion product – let’s say you’re making a membership site it is very easy to put a lot of very high value content in there in the early days, but it is hard to keep improving that information, because you use up the best of the information that is available and you really start struggling to find high value content to add to it. Whereas with software it is almost like you can’t stop com-ing up with new ideas to keep improving it. It is far easier, on a long-term basis, to keep improv-ing and finding much better ideas and adding far more interesting features and refining interfaces etc with software than it is with an information product.

So we have a team of program-mers that work around the clock to constantly improve things, and of course they come at a cost. So, basically our customers now help fund the constant develop-ment of the software, but they are getting very from that

http://fusionhq.com/imm


“

“

The reality is we’re not trying to build the largest list - we’re trying to make the most amount of sales.


because they’re getting the constant updates, and they’re getting the constant improvements at a fraction of the cost compared to trying to develop it themselves. Whereas, if you’ve bought a script, or a piece of software for a one-off fee, it usually be-comes outdated very quickly – the software dies be-cause the marketer who sold it to you cannot keep investing into it without a recurring income coming from it. They’re looking at the software as a short term project, making their money and then walking away to move on to the next project.

Greg: You mentioned your flagship product these days, which is FusionHQ. For those who haven’t come across it, what is FusionHQ and how did it come about?

Leon: Fusion HQ is a multi-tool platform for Inter-net Marketers. If you think about the various differ-ent tools that an information marketer or an affili-ate marketer would need you would think of sales funnels, membership websites, auto responders, hosting, CDN networks, affiliate tracking systems. And so essentially, FusionHQ provides all of those combined into one integrated system. The advan-tage for the marketer is that you don’t need to have programmers to install scripts and patch different scripts together. It came about after working on a variety of different projects, such as for example WP Mage. With WP Mage we needed one script that

managed the membership site area, we needed an-other to manage the affiliate tracking, we needed another to integrate with the auto responder ser-vice, and we needed sales processes that were built on static HTML pages connected together with all of the other services integrated. It took several weeks to just set up and configure everything. This was three professionals working on a project and still taking three to four weeks to configure everything, and then another week to iron out the bugs. Now the project was a great success – we had a lot of sales. But of course when you have a lot of sales you have a fair few refunds too. Now each refund took between 8-9 minutes to pro-cess on average, because we would have to refund the payment inside of PayPal, then we would need to go to the membership site management script and reverse the customers access there, then we would need to go to the affiliate tracking script and reverse the commissions there. It was not a very efficient way to run a business. What I realized was that we could do much, much better. So, I began designing what would be the perfect tool for me, as a marketer, to speed up the process of getting projects to launch, give me the flexibility during the launch to improve conversions, to do split test-ing and then post launch, to help better manage the new customers.

FusionHQ.com

http://fusionhq.com

http://fusionhq.com/imm


Greg: Makes good sense, espe-cially for people who don’t nec-essarily have dedicated develop-ers on their team, just to simplify all those different processes - and even cut down the costs of the number of tools that you need to buy is a great win.

With FusionHQ obviously you must get access to some great data of what is working and what is not. So you would see some good trends when it comes to things like sales trends. With up-sells and down-sells, what learnings have you been able to take away in that space, as far as when they work and when not to use them?

Leon: A lot of my understanding on this comes not just from Fusion-HQ, but from a variety of top mar-keters who I am now lucky enough to call my personal friends. We sit down and discuss the data – the real data, not the numbers people put on their sales pages, but the numbers no one else gets to see. So from my perspective, the up-sell, down-sell process is some-thing that I think is heavily over done by many amateur marketers, and is often misused or abused.

What I see actually working is a process that it is designed to add additional value to the customer at each stage in that process. One of the things that I see doesn’t work is, let’s say on your squeeze page you say, “This is the best thing since sliced bread. This will give you absolutely everything you need to know about AdWords”. So, somebody goes in and then on the OTO there is an offer for let’s say 97 dollars, and again the sales copy promises everything you need to know about AdWords that we did not tell you in the opt in

product. Then in the upsell the of-fer is to join my coaching program and I will teach you the ‘real’ se-crets about AdWords. There is an integrity issue there.

It is like - you just told me that ev-erything I needed was in this prod-uct I just bought, so now you’re trying to tell me that the product that I just bought isn’t actually that great, because now I need to buy the product that you’re now trying to sell me. So that’s one mistake that many marketers are making.

The other big mistake is to start offering products that are just completely unconnected or irrele-vant – so for example, if I’m selling a product EFT, which is a natural therapies technique, maybe I sell a course or a training program on EFT, and then I’ll have an up-sell to sell a hypnosis product. Now the process is not irrelevant, it is another natural therapies tech-nique, but it is not connected to EFT directly. So, now I’ve started going off on a different tangent. So, if somebody is interested in EFT I should be selling them infor-mation or services around EFT.

I think the trick to making OTO’s up-sells, down-sells etc work well is trying to find this balance point where we can find products that offer additional value that ex-pands on the original offer. I’m not suggesting don’t offer coach-ing programmes, or don’t offer DVD training, but just make sure that you don’t de-value what you’ve just sold because that re-ally annoys people. Also try not to go and send the customer on a completely different tangent. There’s nothing wrong in taking that list and offering them some-

thing on hypnosis later. But do it in an email follow up, rather than using an OTO process.

Greg: That makes good sense. I do a lot of conversion optimization on big eCommerce stores these days and one of the trends that I’ve noticed is that there in now less and less up-selling going on in the cart. For nearly all of the big eCommerce stores when there are products in the cart they are more focussed on getting the checkout to go through than adding indi-vidual additional steps that can potentially lose the sale.

The exception to the rule is when you can do the up-sells etc after checkout, if it has already remem-bered the cart details. That sort of model I believe is brilliant.

I know with myself when I’m de-signing checkout processes I’m trying to cut it down to as few steps as possible really to maxi-mise the percentage of people that are checking out. Because you see some people’s checkout processes and they are losing at least 50 percent or more of their sales just in the checkout process. So, it really is a key area, and a very easy area to double a busi-ness.

Leon: The important thing here to remember is to test everything. One of the most important


functions inside FusionHQ is the way we designed the up-sell, down-sell, sales process to be displayed as a flow chart. You don’t just see the actual pro-cess, you also see the statistics. When you do an A/B split test, you can see exactly how many people see each of the pages, where they go, and you can see this in real time. So you can actually watch what is happening inside your sales funnel. You can see very quickly if people are buying, dropping out, giving up, and generally see what’s working and what’s not.

Some niches are more tolerant than to these pro-cesses than others. Even as an experienced marketer we can often guess what we think will happen, but the reality is that I’ve found I don’t know anybody who can guess correctly a hundred percent of the time. We are very shocked sometimes at the results in terms of what is working, and what isn’t working. But to get the best conversions, and to get the best customer value, I can’t recommend this kind of vi-sual split testing enough where you can really track the actual flow, or the process that people are going through, at a quick glance.

Greg: Agreed, that is very powerful.

Following on from the checkout is the follow up, or sales funnel design - you’ve obviously done a lot in that space yourselves. What are your thoughts on best practice in terms of email marketing for the type and timings of follow up?

Leon: There is a couple of things that I’d suggest around email marketing. The first is I see a horrible trend of people capturing email only, and not cap-turing the first name. I know the logic behind this is to increase the number of opt-ins, which it does do, but what I tend to see happening is that it is also decreasing the quality of the actual list.

More importantly, if we look at other statistical stud-ies, or tests that have been done, we find that the reason to capture the first name is to increase the conversions and to increase the open rates on the email. If you use the first name of somebody in the subject line of the email, it can actually increase the number of email opens. If you use the first name in the email, it is likely to increase the click-through rates. If you pass the first name over to display in the sales letter it can increase sales conversions. And of course if somebody is not willing to enter the first name in the first place the chances are they won’t be willing to enter their credit card details later anyway. So, the first thing I’d say about email marketing is, for me it is still about capturing both the first name and the email address – not just trying to grab the largest list possible.

The reality is we’re not trying to build the largest list - we’re trying to make the most amount of sales. So, we really want to be thinking long term - how does that list convert, how can we increase open rates and increase the click-through rates. We can’t do that if all we have is their first email address.

I’m also a big fan of simplicity. I love text only emails, simply because they have a higher deliver-ability and read rate. The challenge is that more and more people are reading their emails on their phones, so keeping emails to a minimum, or should I say a maximum character width of around about 50 characters per line and keeping them text based only will increase the number of people who actually read them.

Now, I know myself, if I get an email that comes in on my phone and it is HTML formatted and it doesn’t really show on the phone properly, I can’t read it easily, I am just going to delete it. If it is text only and I can read it, then I can decide if it is of value. If so then I’ll go back to my computer later and ac-tually process that email properly. So, simplicity in emails I would suggest is critical.

Greg: What about frequency? Is there a good rule of thumb you like to work with yourself, with your own business marketing?

Leon: What I have found very effective is when you create a new list is to begin by building a relation-ship with your subscribers and get them wanting to

FusionHQ Process Flow


open your emails. One of the most effective ways to do this is to cre-ate the first, for example, seven emails as an email course. By do-ing this you increase the value of the emails that you are sending, and you also create the expecta-tion in the subscriber to look for your emails. They actively want to find your emails and open them. And I think this makes a big dif-ference.

For example, if you just give away a PDF when somebody opts in – they opt in, they get their PDF and they’re all happy. Suddenly you start sending them a bunch of oth-er emails. They’re not expecting them, and they’re certainly not actively looking for them. So if we can train people to actually look for our emails, to open our emails and to associate them with high value content then the long term relationship is established and the long term conversion rates will in-crease. So that is one of the first things I would suggest to people. Create at least a five part, if not seven part auto responder course that is high value.

After that there are two schools of thinking. The first is to send as many offers to your list as possi-ble. Basically swamp them so they either just put you into their spam folder or unsubscribe. There are quite a lot of top name market-ers that subscribe to this approach where essentially they’re in the email harvesting business and they just harvest as many emails so they can just butcher them to death.

The second approach is much more along the lines of top mar-keters, such as, for example, Mark Ling. This approach continues to

deliver high value content and not make every email an offer. The frequency is kept reasonably regular, but not overkill. So we’re looking at perhaps one email a week – maybe two emails a week, depending on the niche. So what we’re not flooding the inbox every single day, but we are keeping in regular contact with that person so they don’t forget who we are. The first method may get results, but personally I am a big fan of the second.

Greg: If we move on to member-ship sites, which is something that we spoke about before with the business model. There are multi-ple different ways of going about it. Have you found that the micro continuity model, meaning that you sell it and it lasts for a cer-tain period of time, whether it is three months, six months or that sort of thing, converts better than open-ended subscriptions, where it is like X dollars per month open ended? What are your thoughts on winning membership site design/model?

Leon: I love micro continuity for several reasons. To answer that di-rect question, do I see it increas-ing conversions – the answer is, not really. I don’t see it increasing conversions. But what I do see is it increasing lifetime value.

I do believe there is more money to be made from micro continuity

and of course there is a lot less work involved. The generally ac-cepted average customer reten-tion rate is about three to four months on a normal membership website. People simply get bored of them. There is no end to it, so they cancel.

Now, with micro continuity after 3-4 modules you know that the course will be completed in the next one or two months, or the next one to two weeks. You can now get the sense of completion, you also don’t have to worry about having to cancel that subscrip-tion – you know it is going to can-cel automatically. And people are generally lazy. Even if they’re not active in the course, because they know there is an end to the sub-scription they are more inclined just to let it end on its own rather than take the effort to go in and manually cancel the subscription, or contact customer support.

So what we are actually doing is increasing the average custom-er lifetime from three to four months, up to more like four to five months. This makes it a great way to increase our average retention rate. Also what we do not have to do is constantly come up with new content every single month. This reduces our operational costs on that particular project – and we can ensure the content is concen-trated value. If we have to come up with new content each month it often becomes diluted. With micro continuity we make more money, reduce effort and deliver a better product.

Greg: You obviously split test with your software a lot of dif-ferent landing page designs. What design considerations do


you find that you have at top of mind when you’re designing win-ning landing pages for conversion?

Leon: Simplicity, simplicity, sim-plicity. That’s definitely what we’ve found best. Now, we’ve spent a lot of time branding certain projects and getting them looking really sexy, re-ally nice looking Internet Marketing sales funnels where we have a nice big banner and cool backgrounds and tested them against simple white pages. And to be honest white pages or plain white content page on a light background converts far better for us – in just about every single case. In some case as much as four to nine percent increase in conversion rates.

So not only do you reduce the amount of money spent on getting a project launched, and the amount of time taken in set up, but you also increase the amount of money you make by increasing your conver-sions.

We do put a lot of effort in having a really good product image. If you are doing an eBook, for example, make sure you have a sexy looing eBook cover, because that will in-crease your conversions.

In terms of general page design I’m a big fan of Arial font around size 17, black on white background. This gives maximum readability. It used to be more like size 14 or 15 pixel font, but people’s resolution on their screens are getting much smaller, so people struggle more to read it. Size 17 is much more legible for more people.

Keep the pages fairly narrow, cer-tainly no more than about 770 pixels wide for text, and break the page

up with images, bullet points, sub headlines, testimonials etc. Also use quite a lot of white space, to make sure that different design elements are separate from each other.

If you’ve got an opt-in box mak-ing sure that the text is not pushed right up close. If you’ve got a head-line, make sure you separate the headline. If you’ve got images, make sure you’ve got space around the images and they are not pushed up against the text.

Make it very, very easy on the eye, basically just keep your options clearly visible, so the consumer is focussed on one objective, whether that is opting in, or buying.

Greg: Yes, that is a very impor-tant point - Don’t combine a whole bunch of different priorities. Have one clearly defined primary course of action for the landing page is a very key point. Another thing is re-ally don’t assume anything, split test everything, and keep moving forward bumping those conversion rates higher and higher. How can our readers and listeners find out more about yourself, or the FusionHQ products week?

Leon: We’ve got a special page for your readers, where they get a special offer from our normal sales page. All they need to do to is go to http://www.fusionhq.com/imm.

Greg: Thank you very much Leon for sharing these valuable insights. You’ve obviously got a lot of experi-ence in the Internet Marketing and development business space and I think people will be able to take a lot of good takeaways away from that.

http://internetmarketingmag.net/contact-us2/



http://www.fusionhq.com/imm


> ADVERTISEMENT

http://kiva.org/invitedby/gregandjulie2039




THE NEW COMMANDMENTSOF SEO AFTER GOOGLE PENGUIN

> SEO

Google Penguin, like Panda before it, has made something of a splash in the world of SEO (there’s a pun there somewhere…) and has left a lot of web-masters and bloggers wondering what the best way to bring attention to their sites is now that Google have seemingly changed all the rules again – if in-deed there still is one.

There are indeed still some hard and fast rules to SEO, we just need to adjust them a little in light of these recent developments. With that in mind, here are the new ‘commandments’ of SEO. Follow these and you shouldn’t go far wrong.

Build Quality Links Over High Quantities of LinksHaving a hundred thousand links isn’t going to cut it and if these are from the wrong sources then it will in fact just get your site penalized by Google. What’s much better is that you have a smaller num-ber of inbound links from far more relevant and high authority sources. This looks more natural and less like spamming and it ensures that your site looks like a high quality one. Now would be a good time to try and delete any links coming in from low quality or spammy sites.

Guest Posts Are the New Link ExchangesWith this being the case getting hundreds of links by emailing random websites and asking to swap is no longer very effective and the same can also be said for article submissions to a degree. As such swapping guest posts is now a more valuable strat-egy than ever and one you should certainly look into if you haven’t already.

Write High Quality Content ConsistentlyThis quantity over quality rule should also apply equally to your content and one of the things that Cutts specifically said that Penguin would aim to cut down on was bad quality and spun content that doesn’t make any sense. Make sure that you don’t have any of that on your site and that yours is all

original and the kind of thing that people would want to read.

Avoid Making EnemiesWith bad links now being such a serious crime, it’s easier than ever for a competitor to attack your website by getting someone to get hundreds of bad quality links pointing to your site. That’s called ‘negative SEO’ and it’s a bigger problem now than ever before. For this reason you should avoid mak-ing enemies and try to network with competitors rather than just knocking them off the top spot like some sort of bounty hunter.

Use Rich SnippetsIt seems that when Google closes a window they open a door, and have in this instance provided webmasters and bloggers who have been paying attention with a new and highly effective way to increase their visibility on the SERPS – by using au-thorship schemas in order to link your Google Plus page to your articles and have your profile picture come up next to your links. Google rich snippets can also be useful in other ways too – for instance by getting reviews/prices etc. to show with your listing rather than just a random snippet of text.

By Robin Gupta


Avoid Over Optimization in GeneralSpammy link building and spun content have taken the biggest hit when it comes to recent updates, but this is not the only form of ‘over optimization’ out there. Other culprits include keyword stuffing, and that means in file names too. Basically prac-tice SEO in moderation but focus on putting the reader and the content first.

Build a BrandHaving a brand that you can build into something recognizable over time is a very good strategy and one that Google has been recommending them-selves. Most recently this has applied to exact name domains which are losing power compared to URLs that use real brands (and recognizable ones in particular).

Use Social NetworkingMark Zuckerberg was right – the internet is becom-ing more social and Google clearly knows this. So-cial cues are great indicators of authority and this is something that will be factoring more and more into Google’s algorithms. That and it’s also just a good way to get yourself out there, market and network.

Make Link BaitLink bait means that you make content that is so good that people want to share it thus doing your promotion and your link building for you. This was one of the top tips that Cutts himself shared say-ing simply ‘make it cool’.

Don’t Rely Solely on SEOAt the same time these last two points help you to become slightly less dependent on SEO – use it yes, but don’t have it as your sole way of driving traffic to your pages. If Google Penguin has shown us one thing it’s that we can’t rely on the ‘rules’ of SEO to remain constant and we can see our rankings drop quickly with little warning. In other words then you need a backup contingency plan, and you need other ways to bring in the traffic should your rankings dip unexpectedly.

Robin Guptais an SEO expert authority who also has strong knowledge of online business. He writes experts blogs on online business and SEO. Robin runs an SEO Agency at www.robingupta.co

http://www.robingupta.co/

http://www.bretthomson.com/project-success/?ap_id=greg


THE 9 GOLDEN RULES FOR PRODUCING“SEXY” COPY EVERY TIME

> COPYWRITING

Let’s talk about sex… or more specifically about how to be sexy… hmmm treading on thin ice here… sexy in a marketing sense!!!

My trusty Oxford Dictionary defines “sexy” as: “at-tractive or stimulating, exciting, appealing”. Pretty much sums up, don’t you reckon how we want our copy to look?

You see I’ve been getting a number of questions of late about how to be more sexy… or how to be at-tractive, stimulating, exciting and appealing (keep it clean here, we’re talking about marketing!).

There is a saying, “Good copy is like pornography, hard to define but you know it when you see it”. It’s the same with the look and feel for ads, sales let-ters and web pages… you just know when something looks right and appeals, don’t you? With all marketing, it is test and measure and what works well for one market, may not hold true for another. That being said there are certain principles which hold true and if you stick to, chances are your copy will fall into the sexy rather than ugly and un-appealing category.

We all want sexy, right? So I thought I’d run through 9 golden rules for get-ting that “sexy” look in your ads or web pages and give you some tips to make your copy as sexy, eye catching and attractive as possible.

Here we go… Making Your Copy Sexy Golden Rule #1: Know Your Media… offline has different rules to online. For in-stance in terms of typeface to use, serif typefaces like Times New Roman is safe for offline (because it looks like newsprint which we are conditioned to reading) and sans serif ones like Arial for online. “Serif” merely means the little “feet” on the ends of each character.

Making Your Copy Sexy Golden Rule #2: Know Your Colours… Subtle but oh so important is the colour(s) you choose for your banner, website or ad and the overall look and feel the colours convey. The colours must be congruent with your market, your product and the message you want to portray. Again, you get this wrong and prospects turn the page or click off in a hurry. Very unsexy.

If you asked them why chances are they can’t ex-plain it… “I just didn’t like it” is probably all they will say. Colour will have a lot to do with it.

As a general rule I avoid black (except with body copy) because it’s a negative colour. Here’s a quick rundown of the other main colours and what mes-sages they convey:

Red – grabs attention and signifies action and move-ment (why it’s used a lot on call to action buttons)Green – calming colour of growth, nature and har-monyYellow – optimism, happiness and stabilityPurple – prosperity and prestige

By Steve Plummer


Blue – trust, wisdom and loyaltyGrey – solid, serious, practicalWhite – purity, cleanliness and strength

Note: a few years ago, for headlines, red was all the rage. Now, with the web maturing as a market-place trusting blue is being used more and more.

Making Your Copy Sexy Golden Rule #3: Make it Easy to Read… it might be creative but choosing different fonts can make it VERY difficult to read and even confuse prospects, so stick to the tried and true. See, it just becomes annoying if there are too many fonts your market isn’t used to. It’s about conveying a sales message not about being creative per se, so stick to what works.

Making Your Copy Sexy Golden Rule #4: Words sell, logos don’t… so NEVER put your logo big and bold at the top. If you have to include it, make it small and at the bottom of the letter or ad.

Making Your Copy Sexy Golden Rule #5: AVOID US-ING BLOCK CAPITALS IN ENTIRE SENTENCES… Again, we’re conditioned to reading with capitals at the start of sentences and for proper nouns. When we read our eyes recognise letter shape from the up-per half of each letter.

USING ALL CAPITALS GETS AWAY FROM THE NATURAL EASE OF READING, SO WHY DO SOMETHING LIKELY TO DECREASE RESPONSE? See, it gets pretty darned annoying! A word or phrase here or there can work well, but avoid all capitals but DO capitalise each major word of your headline.

Making Your Copy Sexy Golden Rule #6: The Rule of One… each marketing piece should have only one purpose. So each web page should do one thing: either get them to opt-in OR buy. An ad is either lead generation OR selling. Remember the age old mantra, a confused buyer simply won’t buy.

So don’t confuse them with multiple things they could do make it easy. (Ok, this isn’t simply a set-ting out thing, but having more than one purpose can make your ad/website too “busy” or confusing and therefore hard to read so it needs to be men-tioned here).

Making Your Copy Sexy Golden Rule #7: Short is Sexy… size does matter. Short sentences, short paragraphs make it easy to read.

Also varying the length of sentences keeps it inter-esting.

A short one.

Follow it up with a longer one because it gives a certain rhythm to your copy.

See?

Making Your Copy Sexy Golden Rule #8: Visuals are Sexy… if you are going to include photos, fol-low these two guidelines:

1. Always have a caption… we are visual crea-tures and people’s eyes are automatically drawn to photos so never miss the opportunity to “sell” with a powerful caption2. Offline – pictures should be no more than ¼ of your ad space

Making Your Copy Sexy Golden Rule #9: Get At-tention… make your headlines big and bold enough for the casual glancer (which is how we all read!) to notice your message. It’s always a balancing act… too big and it looks silly… too small and they won’t see it. Make the headline large enough to give force to your message.

Ok, there you go 9 Golden Rules for Making Your Copy Sexy!

Are you feeling sexier… in a marketing sense? Ok, it might NOT be time for a cold shower but apply these rules to your next promotion and watch your results fly.

Sexy Steve Plummeris the personal copywriter for Australia’s “Millionaire Maker” Mal Emery. Steve’s marketing and writing savvy have resulted in hundreds of thousands of dollars in extra sales for many happy clients. Follow Steve’s blog at steveplummeronline.com

http://steveplummeronline.com/



http://internetmarketingdoneforyou.com


> E-MAIL MARKETING

HOW TO GROW YOUREMAIL LIST WITHOUT

SPENDING A CENT

If you’ve got an email list (even a small one) here’s a simple strat-egy you can use to boost your numbers fast, by using referrals. All you need to do is create a lit-tle bonus you can give away, and then send an email out that reads something like this...

SUBJECT: A Free Gift if You’ll Help Me Out

Hi NAME,

I want to send you a free gift that’ll help you create “Awesome Ads” and get more customers.

You can get it by clicking here

Here’s what David Ogilvy, the fa-ther of Modernadvertising, has to say about it:

“Nobody should be allowed to have anything to do with Advertising until he has read this book (Scientific Advertising)seven times. It’s changed the course of my life”

When you read it, you’ll discover: • How advertising laws are established • The single most impor-tant thing you need to know about how you should treat your advertising if you want it to be profitable • What sort of ads you should look at to work out what really works • Should you use pictures in your advertising? Do colour pictures pay better than black and white? Discover the truth ad reps won’t tell you• How to lessen the cost per customer • How to answer any ques-tion about advertising your product or service cheaply, quickly and finally. • And much, much, much more

There’s just one catch.

But it won’t cost you a cent, I promise.

To find out all about it...

click here

Your friend,

Scott Bywater

This email would then direct readers to a page like this:

http://www.copywritingthat-sells.com.au/new/referral.php

Let’s just take a moment to dis-sect this page and what makes it work...

1. Free Gift that’s valuable to the target market: you are offering something, so you need to give something away that’s valuable in exchange. This book is incredible and you’ll notice I also go on to sell the book with proof elements (David Ogilvy said everyone should read it seven times) and teaser bullets.

Contrary to popular belief, you actually need to sell “free” almost as hard as you need to sell paid. We are so bombarded with information these days,

By Scott Bywater

http://www.copywritingthatsells.com.au/new/referral.php

http://www.copywritingthatsells.com.au/new/referral.php


that you need to sell why your reader should give time to what you’re offering.

2. Asks for a minimal com-mitment: all I am asking for here is two names, in exchange for some life-changing infor-mation that almost everyone in business would receive ex-cellent value for.

Here’s the email that automati-cally gets sent to those who get referred:

Hi John,

Simon Peters recently came across my website: http://www.copywritingthatsells.com.authat helps people put thousands of dollars into their bank account through powerful marketingand advertising strategies.

Simon Peters referred you and thought you might like to know how to make more money through maximising the impact of your advertising too.

If you go to http://www.copy-writingthatsells.com.au you’ll get instant access to my special report “7 ways to increase your turnover, and make your businessprofits skyrocket - no matter what the state of the economy” (valued at $39.95 - Yours FREE!)

Go to: http://www.copywrit-ingthatsells.com.au for all the details.

Warmly,

Scott BywaterCopywriting That Sells

Suite 21, Seabridge House377 Kent StreetSydney NSW 2000Australia

P.S. John, while you’re there... you’ll be able to join my “Copy-writing Selling Secrets” Newslet-ter for Free like Simon did!Just visit: http://www.copywrit-ingthatsells.com.au

Here’s the email that gets sent to the referrer:

Hey Simon,

Here’s the special link to the fa-mous ‘Scientific Advertising’ Book you asked for!

You can view the report by going clicking here:

INSERT LINK

I hope you get as much as I did out of reading this book, Simon.

Warmly,

Scott Bywaterwww.copywritingthatsells.com.au

Let’s look at the power of this system.

New leads can be expensive.

I pay about $15 to get someone on my email list.

So even if you had just 500 peo-ple on your list...

And could get 3% (15 people) to refer 2 of their friends.

That’s 30 new people who are hearing about you.

If half of those sign up, that’s 15 new subscribers.

I don’t know about you, but I’d be willing to pay double fora referred lead than I would for a cold lead...

So that’d make those 15 new sub-scribers worth $30 a pop.

Or $450.

That’s 90c for everyone on your email list.

Not bad for sending an email.

Particularly since you’ve now got this system for life.

Build that list up to 5,000 and that $450 worth of leads Becomes $4,500.00 worth of leads.

For free... just by leveraging on your existing assets.

Scott BywaterDo you want to learn the easiest way to get more customers fast? Leading advertising copywriter, Scott Bywater, has just completed a set of marketing and advertising “cheat-sheets” to make your online marketing work more effectively. Download it for free by visiting www.adcheatsheets.com/imag

http://www.copywritingthatsells.com.au








www.copywritingthatsells.com.au

www.copywritingthatsells.com.au

http://www.adcheatsheets.com/imag

http://www.adcheatsheets.com/imag


Marketing is the Most Important Skill Online to Master in 2012…

50% of people login to Facebook Every Day There are over 900 million people now on Facebook

Expertly Master this Massive Highly Targeted Cost Effective Traffic Source

There is a Gold Rush currently happening on Facebook. Jump on ahead of the Curve

Because that’s where the people are!

CHECK OUT‘The Essential Business Owners Guide to

Facebook Marketing’ Today!

Get Over 60% offNow Just $67 for Members

Visit InternetMarketingMag.netto Become a Member Now

& Receive Your Discount!

http://www.internetmarketingmag.net/fb/





THE END OF “GURU-DOM”

> EXPERT OPINION

By Spike Humer

I’m not a “guru”—never hoped to be, never wanted to be—never will be.

In its “formal” sense, the term “guru” has been defined as:

• a preceptor giving personal religious in-struction• anintellectualorspiritualguideorleader• apersonwhocounselsoradvises;amentor• aleaderinaparticularfield

The “formal” or historical sense of a “guru” as a preceptor, guide, advisor, mentor, or leader I can live with; it’s the current implications and use and overuse of the term I choose to live without.

In the now “common” or prevailing sense of the word, “guru” has been used by clever marketers, slick salespeople, prodigious product-sellers, and sometimes hucksters or charlatans as a way to say “I know way more than you so you should listen to me, obey me, follow me, or want to be like me” without hesitation or reservation. It’s the old “you too can be just like me if only you do what I have done (and I’ll sell you the product, formula, or se-cret to show you how—buy now).”

Bullshit! (please forgive my bluntness)

People speak of “gurus” in business, relationships, life, and in spirituality as if they alone are “the lone keeper of the secrets” and are the unques-tionable authorities on how to live, love, be, and do in every area of life, love, bliss, or business. To me, a guru is a teacher and a conveyor and pur-veyor of knowledge, a true guru understands the gift is in the message and not the messenger.

I’ve been a “student” as far back as I can remem-ber; I’ve been in business for a long time (30 years plus), and been alive a lot longer (well, not that much longer). While I’ve had a significant number

of mentors, a wide-array of personal and profes-sional advisors, and learned from and have been associated with tons of people I respect, love, and admire, I’ve yet to find the one person who knows it all, has-it-all, and “is-it-all”—no matter the field of expertise or experience.

Yep, I’ve met plenty of experts, dozens and dozens of people with more knowledge, experience, and expertise than me. I have a high regard for many, if not most of them. I appreciate their informa-tion, I respect their accomplishments, and love to learn from their experience and expertise but at the end-of-the-day, it comes down to this: knowl-edge is valuable, but wisdom is priceless.

Knowledge and information may come from “with-out”; wisdom comes from “within”.

My aim here isn’t to attack any “sage on the stage” or any “prophet in a package”. My message is in-tended for you to realize, remember, and reclaim your personal power and your ability to recognize your own unique gifts, treasures, and talents to do, be, and have what it is you want through your own


innate greatness and unique abilities. Any message is meaningless unless you and you alone do what needs to be done, the best way you know or learn how to do regardless of the messenger. To expect, demand of or blindly defer to a “guru” is a surren-der of your own power and the abandonment of the potential alchemy of your unique skill and spirit.

Truth be told, I make my living as a ‘teacher”, advi-sor, speaker, and consultant; but as anyone knows who has been to one of my programs I make a criti-cal distinction—it’s never about how great I am (or not) as a presenter or mentor, it’s about how great they (the participants) can be and will be in-part because of what I share but most importantly what they can and will do as a result of their experience in our collaborative relationship and our time in-vested together.

I’ve been blessed by my opportunities to have worked with and learned from some of the greatest minds and experts on the planet—for that, I’m for-ever grateful. But my success (or limitations there-of) is not a reflection of the “gurus” or guides or as

a sole result of what they shared—it comes down to what I do, did, or didn’t with that experience and the wisdom I’ve gained from what I apply.

Your success is a direct result of not just what you learn, and certainly not about who you learn it from; it’s about what you do. But before you can truly learn you must question—is what I say, or whatever any-one else professes, confesses, or conveys “true for you”—that is the beginning of wisdom in my humble opinion as a “non-guru”. Take what is useful, apply it the best way you see fit, and leave the rest.

Spike HumerFor 25 years, Spike Humer has been at the forefront of formulating innovative business growth and explosive marketing strategies for entrepreneurs, small businesses, and multi-million dollar organizations.

As an entrepreneurial advisor, small-business consultant, and turnaround expert Spike ranks among the world’s greatest thought-leaders and result producing advisors.

http://www.spikehumer.com/

http://internetmarketingmag.net/vsl/

http://internetmarketingmag.net/vsl/


> SHOPPING CART

DO YOUR USERS HAVE SHOPPING CART ABANDONMENT ISSUES?Everyone loves a good deal, and shopping comparison and coupon sites have made it easier than ever. If you’re like most people, the minute you see a better deal on the item you wanted to buy, you ef-fectively leave your shopping cart abandoned in the middle of the digital aisle. The infographic below explains more in detail which particular abandonment issues are causing your users to leave your site – and how much it could be costing you.

By Sherice Jacob

View an enlarged version of Infographic

http://blog.kissmetrics.com/shopping-cart-abandonment/?wide=1


Sheriec Jacobcreates beautiful, high-converting landing pages, in addition to designing blogs and writing compelling content. Learn more at iElectrify or @sherice on Twitter.This article is originally published on KISSmetrics.

Even though it’s clear that more than 75% of your users are leaving your site to go coupon-hunting or comparison shopping, you can still reel them back in. Here’s how:

• Offer a coupon code directly on your site. Fill it in for customers once they add an item to the cart, saving them from searching for it them-selves. Remind them of how much they’ve saved today versus the regular retail price, once they add the item to their cart.

• Don’t hide your Return/Refund policy. Make it absolutely clear how customers can return an item for a replacement or a refund and let them know approximately how long it will take. Much of the shopper’s decision to return to your site after they’ve purchased is based on after-sales service.

• Show How Many are Left. Being able to include real-time inventory updates can help prevent customers from abandoning their cart – particularly if there’s an in-demand item that’s running out quickly. If you’re almost out, follow

Amazon.com’s lead and let them know that more is on the way. Even better: let them know ap-proximately when you’re due to get more of the product, if at all.

• Use Social Proof and Competitive Shopping – It’s a given that everyone wants a bargain, but it’s even stronger when you can show the social proof behind it. If 59 People would Recommend This to a Friend, there must be something great about it! You can even tie this tactic in with a bit of competitive shopping, by letting your custom-ers know how many other people are shopping online right now too. Nobody wants to let a good deal slip through their fingers, and as a marketer, you can capitalize on this “fear of a missed op-portunity.”

http://www.ielectrify.com/

http://twitter.com/sherice

http://kissmetrics.com


http://www.dolessworkmakemoremoney.com/imm

http://www.dolessworkmakemoremoney.com/imm


> COPYWRITING

HOW TO TURN BORING FACTS INTO EXCITING BENEFITS

I often get asked about the features of the product. Especially features of a technical nature.“Surely you’ve got to mention the features, not just the benefits?” they ask.

And my answer is YES, of course you do.

You need to explain the features of your prod-uct so your customers know what they are actu-ally getting. But you do it in an exciting way. You let them know what these features mean to them (benefits) and what they’ll feel about experienc-ing these benefits.

But the REAL question these people are asking is:“How do I stop getting bogged down in the copy whenIhavetomentionalotoftechnicalstuff?”

That’s the real question they finally get to asking.

That’s what they really want to know.

And it’s a damn good question too. That’s why I spend time on this at my Copywriting Intensives; because it’s an important concept to understand.

But for now, here’s something to keep in mind.When you read the copy out loud, you’ll find there are certain parts of your letter that slow down, that lose the “Greased Slide” effect.

Many times this is where you’ve introduced your technical info, and your fast paced copy comes to a screeching halt.

By Pete Godfrey


So here’s a tip…

Watch out for Technical jargon: Just because it’s technical, doesn’t mean it has to be boring. You have to rewrite in everyday English.

Here’s an example so you get the idea…

FEATURES: Widget is small (5cms by 3cms), Widget is light (20 grams)

COPY:Just 5cms by 3cms, and weighing only 20 grams,thishandylightweightwidgetfitssnuglyinyour

pocket.

ANALYSES:There’s a lot going on in this one sentence.

• I’ve let them know the features: 5cms by 3cms, 20 grams• I’ve used powerful adjectives: Just, Handy, Lightweight• I’ve used powerful Verbs: Fits, Snugly (Yes I know “snugly” is an adverb and I try and stick clear of them. But it fits here.)• I’ve painted a picture in my prospect’s mind: Fits snugly in your pocket. This makes it instantly identifiable… the prospect gets instant clarity. He can see it!• It’s active: I’m not saying: this handy light-weightwidgetwouldfitsnuglyinyourpocket.No, that’s passive writing and doesn’t engage the reader. I say: this handy lightweight widget fits snugly in your pocket. This makes it hap-pening now, in the present, as if the prospect already possesses the Widget. It’s assuming the sale, another BIG subject I cover at my Copy-

writing Intensives. (It’s these small but signifi-cant changes that make the difference between okay copy and the world-class copy that brings in a truckload of money. It’s one of the reasons I get paid the BIG bucks.)

Put it all together and I have turned what could have been a dull moment in the copy, into a ben-efit filled experience.

So what’s the lesson here?

Strive for instant clarity in your copy.

Strive to make clear what the technical stuff means to the prospect.

P.S. One mistake I see all the time in copy is the lack of features. It’s like the copywriter is so fo-cused on benefits, so focused on what the features mean to the prospect, he or she forgets to men-tion the damn features.

BIG mistake.

If it’s a 38-page book you’ve got to tell them. If it’s a downloadable product you’ve got to tell them. If you’re selling a widget then you’ve got to let them know the size of the thing. Sure, you turn features into benefits; that’s copywriting 101. Just don’t forget to mention the features in your excitement to get all the benefits down.

Pete GodfreyWith more than a decade of experience in the marketing arena, Pete Godfrey, AKA “The Wizard of Words”, has developed a keen eye as to what it takes to succeed in business. As one of Australia’s most successful and highest paid copywriters/sale strategists, Pete’s client list contains many of the world’s savviest entrepreneurs including Mal Emery, Greg Milner, Pat Mesiti and many others. To get to know Pete better and see how you can profit from his hard-won copywriting advice go to http://special.petegodfrey.com/blueprint and grab his new FREE report “Business Profits Blueprint: How to Profit in The New Economy”. Valued at a very real $97, it’s yours FREE for a limited time.

http://special.petegodfrey.com/blueprint

http://special.petegodfrey.com/blueprint


> INFOGRAPHICS

By Nii Ahene

AMAZON VS THE WORLDAN INFOGRAPHIC

Amazon has come a long way from *just* being the world’s largest bookseller. This year alone the com-pany has launched three new products or service offerings that challenge the market dominance of an established player.

Check out the infographic (A CPC Strategy First!) below to see where Amazon is challenging rivals for marketshare in the consumer and enterprise spaces.






Nii AheneNii is COO of CPC Strategy, a shopping feed management agency and is responsible for day-to-day business operations and long-term financial, tactical and strategic planning for the company. He has been with CPC Strategy since January of 2007. Prior to working with CPC Strategy, Nii was a product manager at eBay working on algorithmic merchandising and reviews and guides.

http://www.cpcstrategy.com/


Important: Become a member today and you will be notified the instant

new episodes of ‘Internet Marketing Magazine’ become available...

You will also receive access to the Members Area for video training, expert interviews, eBooks, webinars and much more…

If you have enjoyed this edition of ‘Internet Marketing

Magazine’ please head along to http://www.facebook.com/

InternetMarketingMagazine and click ‘Like’ or ‘Share’ to share the message

with fellow switched on marketers, business owners and entrepreneurs

Experience the Benefits of the Internet Marketing Magazine in your life this year

Your Free 24 Month

Subscriptionis Valued at $311.88

& Now Includes Members Area Access

Register your details now at http://InternetMarketingMag.net to get access to

the Members Area, the Webinars, the Expert Interviews & all Back Issues’

> ADVERTISEMENT

http://www.facebook.com/InternetMarketingMagazine

http://www.facebook.com/InternetMarketingMagazine

http://internetmarketingmag.net


Documents

Internet Marketing Magazine September 2012