People – Web Design Specialist Australia

Read This – Tactical Triangle: The Ultimate in Marketing Simplicity

(This is not from me but from Perry Marshall – it’s well worth a read.)—
When Jack Born called me on the phone one day after his morning run and sketched out the triangle you’re about to see, I instantly fell in love with it.

This is the e=mc2 of marketing.

(This is not from me but from Perry Marshall – it’s well worth a read.)

When Jack Born called me on the phone one day after his morning run and sketched out the triangle you’re about to see, I instantly fell in love with it.

This is the e=mc² of marketing.

The Tactical Triangle always takes you where you need to go, and the 80/20 in the center always focuses you on the points of highest effectiveness.

I’m going to show it to you.

Before I do, I need to warn you that most people, even the very sharpest students, will not instantly “get it.” It may not be at all apparent how many things you can do with this tool. But as you begin to use it, you’ll find it’s one of the most powerful tools anyone’s ever given you:

The one thing you need before anyone will buy from you

A few weeks ago I was offered two very similar products. One was free the other cost $100. I bought the $100 one. And there is one reason why I did that – something that applies to any product or service for sale on the internet. I’ll tell you what it is.

A few weeks ago I joined a mailing list for a very successful marketing duo
Or at least according to their own claims there are successful – and I have no reason to disbelieve them. I think they make a lot of money. So in that respect they are what they say they are.

Anyway they were offering a very good and inexpensive deal on an Autoresponder course on DVD.

Actually it was free and all I needed to do was pay the shipping.
I even clicked through to the order form a few times …

BUT NEVER ORDERED.

Over the time this promotional offer was running I got quite a few emails from them and each one made me less inclined to buy. You’ll see why later.

The promotion is now over and I didn’t buy. Even though I have a need that matches what they offer exactly
(I needed some help and direction with setting up my own autoresponder course)

Then a week or so back I got an email with a link to a post by Perry Marshall.

He too had an autoresponder course.

Only this wasn’t free – it was just under US$100 and really seemed to be not much more than a simple PDF doc with some extras thrown in.

Guess what – I bought it.
And it’s very very good. It was exactly what I needed without the fluff.

This made me ask myself though

Why did I buy the more expensive one over the the “free” offering?

What stops people from buying

So why did I buy the more expensive one over the free one?
The free one promised more than the one I bought – apparently
I was in the frame of mind to buy as well.
So I was a “hot prospect”

There’s a great book – now out of print unfortunately – by Les Dane. It’s called Big League Sales. In it Les describes how sales resistance is the armour – the brick overcoat – a prospect wears.
They want to buy and the job of the salesperson is to discover how to get through the armour first and then to spur them into action.

It’s worth getting off Amazon or Ebay if you see it.

Les knows why I didn’t buy….

Because I didn’t trust them enough.

Why I didnt buy the free offer.

It added to my sales resistance rather than removed it.

1. Firstly there was presentation of the first (free) offer. It was one of those long, sales letter sites. Complete with the video, testimonials, bullet points and all the other bits the formula for a sales letter says you must have.

You can see hundreds of them on the web today. Not a good start. Already I am subconsiously associating them with every over-hyped product I have ever seen. Regardless of how good their product is

2. And to add to this it was written with the obligatory very over-the-top hype sales pitch. Yes got me the first time I read it. I almost bought on impulse.

Almost

Left me cold the second time through though

3. Then the follow up emails encouraging me to take up the offer were more of the same. Hype about how this is the answer to very single problem in my business right now and I should be sitting on a beach sipping champagne .. yada yada yada

I unsubscribed and never bought a thing from them. Probably never will.

Maybe they are the real deal and I am sure they will make thousand of dollars.

And maybe I am being cynical but I have found those who employ that type of hype and sales letter and who promise the world NEVER DELIVER.
I’ve tried enough to be fairly sure of this.

You could be excused in thinking it was their “same here” sales copy that killed it for me.

Yes… but no.

There’s more to it than that

Why I did buy

Now Perry’s offer however was different.

He had a sales letter too. But it was part of his blog. Written in a very informative style. Appealing to a different buyer – not after an impulse buy as much as an informed decision.

Just reading the sales letter by itself and doing nothing gave me valuable data I could use.

And I didnt but straight away on impulse. I left it for 24 hours came back and re-read the sales page

And bought

Why?

Well sales technique aside there is one thing Perry has that the others didnt. And they failed to establish …

TRUST

People buy from the people they trust

Whilst I don’t always agree with what Perry says I do trust him. Enough to invest a hundred dollars anyway.
And that trust was enough to overcome my sales resistance and pay for a course even when I was offered (and declined) a similar one for free.

Trust is the commodity that allows one to transform an interest into to an action (sale)

Do your visitor’s trust you

I asked myself the very same question when I realised this. Do my visitors trust me?

The answer is – sometimes.

They trust me to the degree that I am real to them

See they can’t see or touch a product on the internet.
And I offer a service – web design – so that even more esoteric.

So really, why should they trust me?

Currently I demonstrate trust as a web designer by showing people what I have done for others – my portfolio.

Not enough.

I will re-enforce this by adding in testimonials

But really what makes one real and trustworthy is communication. And valuable communication – not a bunch of hyped-up sales letters.

So my plan is my new autoreponder course (thanks to Perry’s guidance) which will build that communication, make me real to people and whan their interest matches what I offer I will have established enough trust for them to want to do business with me.

Would you trust yourself?

So have a look at you own website.

Pretend you’re someone else

Would you trust it enough to do what it says ie to buy or inquire or whatever the call to action is? (you do have a call to action, right?)

If the answer is (like me) “sometimes” then you’re looking at a surefire way to improve your site right there. Get started!

Here’s some ideas off the top of my head.

Start a blog and offer help without a catch or buyline
Start an autoresponder course offering useful data
Show people how you have helped others through case studies or testimonials
Allow reviews of your products
Have as many pictures as required. User guides and more.

If you need some help contact me- I might just have an email course that will help you.

Ronald Sayegh
Business Web Design
For website design you can afford.

Correct use of Autoresponders in email marketing

I used email marketing years ago. Built up a list of a few thouand people and managed to get myself banned from a well known autoresponder service for spamming! I was of course doing it wrong.

What is an autoresponder

An autoresponder is an automatic email sending program. It can be as simple as an instant response to an email (usually saying thanks for the email) to scheduling a complex series of emails spanning a year or longer

The value of an autoresponder is it allows you to speak with someone more than once.

Once is all you will probably all you will get from a visit to your webpage. But if someone’s gives you permission to email them then you can talk to them for months or years – at little cost – and maybe one day win their business. Something a single visit to a website cannot do.

Austoresponders and email marketing

I have used email / autoresponder marketing in the past. With mixed results.

I even bought a series of 52 email lessons that I loaded up into an well known hosted/ online autoresponder service I had set up.

Then through various marketing methods built a list of a few thousand people.

The autoreponder was loaded up with the email lessons and it happily went about sending the subscribers a message every week. All I had to do was throw in a few affiliate links and an odd product push and I was all set.

Sounds great.

It wasn’t.

The problem was I wasn’t communicating.

Just because it’s all automatic doesn’t mean it has to be robotic. Or rote. And the messages I was sending were not from me. Not really.

Communication comes from a person and is directed to another person. I missed that boat altogether!

Really I was wasting my time and the time of the people who received my emails

( Then I made the mistake of buying some double opt-in leads and got kicked off of the autoreponder service for spamming!! And I guess I was as the emails were not personal contacts. Don’t make this mistake!
But that’s another story.. )

Email Marketing and blogging

That was 2 – 3 years ago. I hadn’t bothered much with email marketing except to my own customers since then.

But of late marketing expert Perry Marshall has been banging on about the value of auto responder email marketing at some length. And it got me to take a fresh look.

I notice many of the emails I get from him contain just a short excerpt and direct me to his blog to read the rest. Then I realised many of the marketing guys I get emails from do the same thing.

What a great idea

You see a blog post can be much longer and better structured than an email. People can comment on a blog post. And google can list a blog post and even rank it well

And for some reason I find it easier to post a blog than write an soulless marketing email.

So I am now setting up a new improved email strategy.

The first thing I had to look at was HOW to set it up.

Autoresponder Software v/s Hosted Solution

Do a search an google and the autoresponder service of choice is Aweber. It get great reviews all over the place.

That might be because they are the best.

It might be because they have a good affiliate program (excuse my cynicism).

My problem is I already have a mailing list of clients I email on an ( irregular ) basis and to use this list in Aweber would require each one of them getting a subscribe confirmation email. So they can opt in to the list.

Not really appropriate and not very professional since I have been working with some of them for 4 years or more.

I have opted instead for a server based software. I guess is the web designer/ developer in me. I’d much rather have it on my server under my control.

The program I have chosen allows me to throttle my my email volume to 200 an hour so as not to overload an mailservers, and I don’t see this as being a problem for quite some time. 200 an hour = 4800 a day = 33600 a week. And no monthly fees

I may need to revise this choice later but it’s working fine for now whilst my list is small.

What to say

Well that’s the fun part. I have written a short mini course to encourage people to give me their email addresses in the fisrt place. Then It will be emails that refer to these blog posts

How well will this work? … I’ll keep you posted.

I don’t know yet

Helpful comments are welcome.

Regards

Ronald Sayegh
http://www.webdesignspecialist.com.au