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Get Leads to Opt-in with These Alternative Methods

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No doubt about it … landing pages will undoubtedly give you the best results when encouraging prospective customers to opt-in your lead magnet, but there are a couple of other methods that should not be overlooked.

1. Sidebar Opt-in

  • Great options inside of a blog-based website
  • Form or Graphic
  • Key is to make them stand out
  • fiverr.com or canva.com

2. In Content Opt-in

  • Many options for placement – top of content, in content, bottom of content
  • Form in page
  • Graphics that link out to landing page or popup
  • Great success with these because when they’re done right – you’re making an offer that makes sense. It’s like saying … Hey I hope you enjoyed this article about X, would you like to learn even more – check this out.
  • Great marketing is the right offer to the right people at the right time…this definitely takes advantage of the right time

3. Popup Windows

I know a lot of you aren’t fans of the popup window, but I would ask you to keep an open mind here because it’s not really about what you like…it’s about the customer and people still use these because they work.

The cool thing is, popups have been around forever but they’ve gotten more sophisticated over time. Now we can only show them once every 10 times you visit the site, or after 30 seconds on the same page, or only when you’re leaving the site.

I use what are called “exit intent” popups. My popup window only shows up under certain circumstances and only when you’re leaving the page. So when somebody moves their cursor up to the top of their browser like they’re going to either close the browser window or go to type in a new web address, then the popup shows up and is like … Hey!!! Before you go, don’t forget your free gift!

Again, I am very non-aggressive with these and I’ve seen conversion rates from 7.5% all the way up to 13%. That’s 13% of the people that are leaving my site stop and give me their email address.

Here are some links to some Opt-in Software Programs:

There you go. Now you know some alternative opt-in methods that I recommend you play with – test them out and see which ones work for you.

If you’re generating the right type of traffic you don’t want to let these people slip through your fingers so easily. You’ve already done the hard part of getting them on your website…now you just have to offer them your free cool stuff. Who doesn’t like that?

Now It’s Your Turn

Use the comments section below and tell me what opt-in methods have you tried?

Fill Your Cup with Value Using These 6 Marketing Campaign Types

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Question: What is a campaign?
Answer: A series of communications and actions with a specific purpose and a desired outcome.

The reason it’s important to think in terms of campaigns is because the relationship you have with your prospects is a delicate one. Especially early on in the relationship.

If we just start sending random messages to our newly added prospects, they are either going to unsubscribe or just stop responding to our emails.

Getting a prospect on our list is important, but keeping them on the list and engaged is a whole different ballgame.

I think about it like this …

My relationship with my customers and prospects is like a glass of water.

It starts out empty and then every time I add some value to the relationship, it fills up a little. I can fill it up with a ton of different actions including; a great service provided, a compelling blog post, a thank you card, a free downloadable thing, a coupon, etc. These are all relationship building activities that fill up our cup.

Anytime I ask something of the relationship – download this, signup for this, buy this – I’m in essence emptying that cup and our relationship goes back to even. Now, before I can ask anything else from my prospects or clients, I need to get busy filling that cup back up.

This is why it’s important to think of campaigns. We don’t want to have our backs against the wall and just start shooting emails at random because we need to fill up some time-slots. This is what we call “SPRAY AND PREY” marketing and it does not work.

Instead of this reactionary marketing, we want to be thoughtful and purposeful in our communications. This is where campaigns come in. By thinking about the communication and where we are at in the relationship building process, we can actually plan out our marketing in advance and the results will be better.

There are 6 different types of marketing campaigns.

Campaign #1: Introduction

This is one of the first things a user will see when they opt-in for one of our lead magnets. The purpose of this campaign is to set the tone of the relationship with the prospect.

Campaign #2: Engagement

You’ve heard everybody talking about engagement but how do you get it? This campaign’s goal is to get your new prospect engaged with your business and to take the relationship deeper.

Campaign #3: Ascension

This campaign is used to sell prospects or customers large ticket items with your company. For example: if you just groomed a new prospects dog, you may have an ascension campaign that tries to sell the person on a large ticket grooming package.

Campaign #4: Re-Engagement

As much as I’d like to think I’m perfect at nurturing my prospects and customers – I’m not. So over a period of time a certain portion of my list became disengaged. They haven’t unsubscribed, but they just aren’t clicking like they used to. A re-engagement campaign is used to get them interested in our stuff again.

Campaign #5: Segmentation Campaign

We know that good marketing is all about putting the right message in front of the right customer at the right time. So, the more we know about our list, the better we can serve them. Segmentation campaigns are used to get information from our list so that we can break it down further into more specific segments. Some great examples of this type of campaign are surveys or segment specific content.

Campaign #6: Nurture

When we run specific types of campaigns, they run for a relatively short period of time and then we fall back into more passive mode of staying in front of our audience. This method of staying in front of our peeps is called nurturing and we do this with a nurture campaign. During a nurture campaign you are basically just staying in front of your audience providing value while waiting for your next active campaign to start.

Use these campaigns to add value to your relationship with your potential customers. Keep filling that cup with water!

Now It’s Your Turn

Use the comments section below and tell me what type of campaign have you been using in your business?

Increase Your Traffic by 700%+ with this One Simple Strategy

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If you’ve followed me for any amount of time you’ve likely heard me say that I’m not a fan of blogging for many small businesses.

There’s quite a few reasons for that but the largest is the amount of time and energy it takes to start to see consistent results.

In my experience from the past 18+ years of working with small business owners, blogging is something you may hear about at an event or some guru somewhere talks about how awesome it is to get all this free traffic and BOOM – your engaged.

What they don’t tell you is how hard it is.

It’s not just about throwing your opinions out into the webosphere and then you are suddenly deluged with copious amounts of free traffic.

You have to craft great content, you have to do it consistently and you have to get as much traffic on those posts as possible.

I actually stopped blogging for a few years and let the person go that was doing it for me because we weren’t seeing any results from it.

We’d craft this blog, put it on our Facebook page and there would be a slight bump in traffic and then within 48 hours our site traffic was flatlining again.

After 6 months of this I gave up. I shifted the revenue from that marketing assistance into paid advertising and overnight we were creating leads – I didn’t look back until about a year ago.

One of my goals for 2016 is to get on more stages and do more speaking engagements. This type of exposure and credibility goes a long way when you have training programs like I do, so I hired a coach that had a lot of experience with speaking and the first thing she said – you have to write. Blog posts, articles, books, etc. Those are all credibility builders. So initially, I was like… ughh, what a waste of time and then in my typical fashion, I nerd out on it a bit and see how can I make the best of this situation. That’s when I came up with VERSION 1 of my content distribution strategy.

So here’s the problem – most people that create content will write a post on their blog, maybe share it on twitter or Facebook and that’s it. At the end of the day, the post gets very little exposure, no comments or engagement and the site traffic doesn’t really do much. A little blip – but noting impressive.

I’m paying my coach a LOT of money so I’m definitely going to take her advice because she’s already been where I want to be. BUT, because I’m me, I’m going to try and hack it to see how I can get maximum exposure for my efforts so here’s what I did.

I know from experience that people aren’t going to come by my site looking for my latest and greatest blog post no matter how awesome it is, so I have to get proactive in pushing it out into the web. I have to put the content where the customers are.

I also know that if I get too aggressive it could have negative repercussions so the goal is to physically push out this content as much as I can, and still be “cool” with everybody.

Step 1: Make a list of all the different platforms that I want to show up on.

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Linked In
  • Pinterest
  • Google +

Step 2: For each platform identify where my perfect customers were hanging out.

  • Facebook pages
  • LinkedIn Groups
  • Twitter feeds
  • Pinterest boards

Step 3: Create the distribution calendar based on a few different “rules”.

  1. I know I can post to twitter multiple times per week and be OK.
  2. I know in LinkedIn groups that are similar, many of my people may belong to the same group so to not look spammy, I post to similar groups on opposite ends of the week.
  3. I have multiple Facebook pages for different businesses so I post the content on different pages in different weeks.
  4. At the end of the week, once I’m done pushing it out, I know the content has a very short shelf life so I added it to a scheduling software so that my old blog posts and content will be recycled.

Step 4: Do it yourself.

You have to do it yourself because you may get some pushback. Some LinkedIn group owners may post your stuff as promotional so make sure you reach out to the group admins if that happens.

Step 5: Hire a Virtual Assistant to do it for you

  • 1.5 hours per week

Step #6: Integrate paid ads to drive traffic to content to expand reach and remain relevant.

This is my content distribution schedule:

Monday

  • Publish post on blog
  • Linked in niche 1
  • Linked in local 1

Tuesday

  • Pinterest
  • Twitter
  • Facebook – Page 1

Wednesday

  • LinkedIn – publish on LinkedIn
  • LinkedIn Niche 2
  • LinkedIn local 2
  • Facebook – Page 2

Thursday

  • Email to list
  • Twitter
  • PAID TRAFFIC

Friday

  • LinkedIn local #3
  • Linked in Niche 3
  • Google +
  • Schedule in Edgar – extend liveliness

Creating great content and having a distribution strategy that puts it in front of your customers where they are hanging out, can increase your traffic by 700%+. Try it!

Now It’s Your Turn

Use the comments section below and tell me how have you been distributing your content successfully?

Free vs. Paid Traffic – Which will Work for Your Business?

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Traffic is ANY and ALL sources, both online and offline, that can be used to get your message in front of your perfect client.

Some examples of Online sources:

  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Email marketing
  • Snapchat
  • Craigslist

Some examples of Offline sources:

  • Networking events
  • Door hangers
  • Flyers
  • Business cards
  • Ads in the local paper

 
Personally, I use both, BUT focus more online because for me, my business model is based on larger numbers. I’m not a local business, I serve people all over the world.

The two criteria that make a great traffic source:

  • Appropriate
  • Reproducible

OK, so that’s online vs. offline – now let’s talk a little bit about paid vs. free traffic.

I feel like the difference between the two is pretty self-explanatory but there is a time and place for each.

Most folks are drawn to free traffic (also known as organic) because the idea of getting something for free is appealing. My momma didn’t raise any dummies – if it’s free I’ll take two.

And when a lot of people start professionally marketing their businesses like we’re doing – their budgets are small or even non-existent, so that fits the bill.

Here’s the problem … it’s hard to get free traffic in any reasonable amount.

  • It takes lot of time to create the content.
  • It takes a lot of skill to properly SEO the content to make sure it gets seen and to monitor it when search engines make updates to their algorithms.
  • For most local businesses – it can take months to even start to see the results of your daily or weekly blogging.

The businesses that do really well with SEO are usually mid-sized businesses that can afford to have content creators on staff that aren’t worried about generating immediate revenue.

This is why I typically veer more towards paid traffic. With paid traffic I have:

  • Better control over who I target – keywords, interests, likes.
  • It’s faster – I can get results in 24 hours.
  • I can adjust my campaigns and budgets on the fly.
  • Can get started for as little as $5/day.

I totally understand the draw of the free traffic, but it fails both of our tests for great traffic sources.

So here’s the way most folks scale up their traffic:

  1. Organic traffic sources while you’re testing out your funnel.
  2. When you are happy – bump up the organic reach with the content distribution model -The additional investment here is time.
  3. When you’re happy with that – start to mix in some paid ads.

Now It’s Your Turn

Use the comments section below and tell me which traffic sources have been the biggest success for your business?

The Simple Steps to Indentifying Your Perfect Lead Magnet

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There is ONE BIG THING that you must always make clear when identifying your perfect lead magnet…it is your PROMISE!

What’s the One Big Thing that your lead magnet is going to do, teach or solve for your end user?

There are quite a few areas where you can draw on experience for this.

  1. Client Interviews – One of the things you should always be asking is what’s the #1 problem that you have with abc? What do you hate about xyz?
  2. Surveys – Same thing here – the data isn’t quite as reliable, but it’s still a really good source of finding peoples frustrations.
  3. Competitors – Do you have competitors that are killing it at some aspect of their business? Are there challenges with it?
  4. Prospect Phone Call – You talk to prospective clients everyday – What sort of questions do they ask? What objections do they put up when you ask them tschedule?
  5. Your FAQ – This could be an FAQ page on your website or just your own internal understanding of the client’s needs (this must be based on actual data.)

Whenever I put a lead magnet out into the webosphere, I always take users to a second page where I get a little more information. The one question I always ask is – What’s your #1, single biggest marketing challenge right now?

After asking this over 1,000 times, I’ve realized that in my niche there are really three main challenges. I developed a lead magnet for each of these challenges to help my prospective client overcome them.

  1. People Don’t Know Where to Start. There’s so much information out there and everybody says you have to do this if you want to be successful. They end of just picking something at random and then wonder why their stuff doesn’t work. Lead Magnet: 2015 Marketing Guide – What’s Working Now.
  2. People Have a Hard Time Finding Good Team Members. It’s hard to market a business if you don’t have anybody to trust that will do the work. Lead Magnet: Expert Interview Series on Hiring.
  3. No Time. People are trying to do it all in their business and have no extra time or money, so they need to do everything on the cheap. Lead Magnet: Productivity Lead Magnet in the Works.

Here are 6 steps to help you identify your perfect lead magnet;

STEP 1. Identify Problems You Can Solve

Grab a pen and paper and start jotting down the problems that people are having that you can help with. These are the ONE BIG THING PROMISES that you can solve for your clients.

STEP 2. Categorize Your Ideas

Determine what category the lead magnets might fall into.

  • Is it a How-To guide?
  • Is it a Cheat-sheet or Checklist?
  • Is it a Training Video?

STEP 3. Test it against the 5 Keys to a Great Lead Magnet

After you select the category of the lead magnet – the third thing you want to do is run it through our 5 Keys to a great lead magnet.

Think about your idea and ask the 5 key questions:

  • Is it specific enough?
  • Is it easy for the prospect to consume?
  • Does it address a KNOWN desire?
  • Does it deliver value?
  • Is it aligned with one of your products/services?

If you said YES to all 5 – you’re on the way to having an awesome lead magnet. If you don’t have all 5 go back to the previous questions and see if you can tweak it to make it satisfy all the criteria.

If your Lead magnet isn’t specific enough, you can take your topic and break it down even further.

Maybe it’s not about how to grow an awesome garden but how to grow awesome tulips. Its more specific.
Maybe it’s not how to be a better marketer, but how to attract new clients.
Maybe it’s not how to stop dog bites, but rather how to keep your toddler safe in a dog-friendly home.

STEP 4. Thinning the Herd

From all of the lead magnet ideas that you have, take all the ones that have all 5 keys checked and put them in one pile. Take the rest, and put them in a folder for later use. Sometimes there could be some great nuggets in there – you just need to work on the idea a little more.

STEP 5. Pick Your Winner

Of all the Lead magnet ideas that you have left – the ones with all 5 Keys checked…go ahead and lay them out and choose which one you feel you can deliver the best on.

THAT’S YOUR WINNER!

STEP 6. Come Up with a Compelling Title

There’s a reason why we saved the title until the very end. The title of your lead magnet is very important. If the title doesn’t grab the user’s attention – it doesn’t matter how great the content is, they’ll never see it. 8/10 readers will read the title, only 2/10 read the body copy. So if we can’t grab their attention, they’re not going to consume the content (and remember…that is one of our 5 Keys to a great lead magnet.) We need the users to consume the content so they can reap the benefits of our knowledge.

Now that you have identified what your perfect lead magnet is going to be…all you have to do is CREATE IT!

Now It’s Your Turn

Use the comments section below and tell me what is your best idea for a lead magnet for your business?