A marketing friend recently shared with me that a health-oriented launch he ran, complete with videos, an email series, and lots of excitement…had been a huge disappointment.
Does that mean that launches don’t work?
Does that mean that videos don’t matter?
Does that mean that people think every email they receive is spam?
No, not at all.
But it can point to a very simple problem that many people have with their marketing. Here’s what I wrote in my email reply to him:
Regardless of the kind of product or service you sell online, you’ve got one thing in common with everyone else. And it doesn’t matter if you sell a product or a service, if you’re selling a commodity or a very unique item, or if it’s new or if it’s old.
What is that one thing that is the same for you as for everyone else? The answer is….
About four months ago, a consulting client of mine asked me to sketch out a “Product Launch Blueprint” for his new membership site he was planning.
He knows that I sometimes run product launches, and so he knew I’d be a good person to ask.
So, I wrote him a quick half-page summary of how to do an effective product launch and sent it to him in an email.
He was thankful, and a good student. His goal was 100 new members to his site during his initial site launch, and as I recall he
If you don’t know Jeff Walker, then once you do know him, you’ll either love him or hate him.
Jeff is the “father” of what have come to be known as product launches.
So, if you like that you get lots of free information before a product is launched, you can thank Jeff for that. You can pretty much get an entirely free education in internet marketing just by going through all of the free information that is sent out in these internet marketing product launches.
On the other hand, you might really HATE Jeff because product launches result in your being inundated with emails about the ‘next greatest thing ever’. You also might not like the extra hype and artificial scarcity that usually comes with a big product launch.
I get it. I understand. I feel the same way you do.
That’s why I don’t tell you about most of the product launches that happen — I’m a bit tired of all of this.
However…
Wow, there was a big response to my offer to help you with your web pages. You’ll remember that I gave you a free membership to the Optimizers Club (http://www.OptimizersClub.com) so you could get some new ideas to improve your website.
I was a bit surprised at the response, but probably not in the way you might expect.
Yes, there were a lot of really bad web pages (you’ll see one in a minute, link is below). But there were also a surprisingly high number of already-good ones.
What made them good?
When you get to that level, you might think that the Optimization work is over. But it’s at exactly this point that
If I had told you a year ago that a coupon website would ever be worth more than a billion dollars, you’d have told me “No way!”
But it’s true.
You probably heard that last week that Groupon.com shunned a bid by Google to buy the coupon site for 6 Billion Dollars. That’s right — Groupon turned down Google’s 6 Billion Dollar offer.
Why do I mention this?
Well, stranger things have happened. Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, even Google itself, all rose from the brilliance of someone’s brain to be worth many billions of dollars. They’re all ideas whose concept is so simple and whose purpose is so clear that it fills a void in the online world’s collective mind and habits.
I have a feeling it’s going to happen again.
That’s because
This past Sunday, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was interviewed on 60 minutes. If you didn’t happen to see it, I’ll give you a link in a moment where you can watch it online.
It’s fascinating.
Definitely worth watching, especially if you use Facebook (you do, don’t you?) or saw the move “The Social Network.” (Highly recommended.)
The 60 minutes interview lets you reconcile what you saw in the movie with how Mark is, in real life.
Beyond that, though, two things stood out to me that I think are very much worth talking about, because there are important messages in there for both you and me.
During the interview, Zuckerberg was asked how he would rate himself as a CEO.
But Mark didn’t answer that question, because I think he would have had a conflict over which of several answers to give (and because he probably didn’t want to sound too arrogant on TV).
If he were to be candid about his answer, he’d say that
Whether you’re an affiliate marketer or you sell your own stuff, chances are, your website can make you A LOT more money than it does now.
What kind of difference would a mere doubling of sales do for you? I don’t know your personal situation, but it might mean you’re able to make a MUCH better Christmas for your kids than in years past. Or it might mean being able to expand your business, hire more people, and give yourself a raise.
Or maybe it means you can pay a few bills.
Whatever it means to you, it’s NOT TOO LATE. All you need is a little help.
Here’s what I’m talking about:
The difference between an average or poorly performing sales or squeeze page, and a page that works twice as well might be a VERY SMALL TWEAK. It could a difference of one
If you’ve ever wondered whether your landing page, squeeze page, or entire website was as good as it could be, I’ve got an answer for you.
IT ISN’T.
And there are two reasons why that’s probably the case:
1) “You’re probably not split testing.”
Split testing is the probably the single best way to improve the performance of your website. If you wanted to get more opt-ins, make more sales, and overall just make more money, split testing can get you there more quickly than any other method I know.
If you’re not split testing, start now.
** ON THE OTHER HAND… **
If you’re already split testing, there is one more demon that may be getting in your way. And that brings us to the second reason why your site isn’t as good as it could be. It’s that…
The last week or so we’ve been talking about bad squeeze pages.
There’s CLEARLY no shortage of them online. Once you learn that step one of internet marketing is to build a list, you decide to build your first squeeze page.
I remember my first squeeze page. It was for a mattress website, of all things. I thought I could sell leads to local businesses — a good business, but at the time I had no idea what I was doing.
Having been a programmer in a past life, I thought I’d design the mailing list system myself (bad idea). It’s much better to use standard list-building tools. They’re ultimately cheaper and easier.
And although I had heard that the best way to build a squeeze page was with no menu choices, no links and no distractions on the page, I had plenty of them all.
It wasn’t pretty, and I don’t think I got a single lead.
Well, I’ve come a long way since then, and I’m sure over time I’ll travel even further. But at this point it’s time to give back a bit, and help others in the same situation.
A bit of advice: Don’t expect that just because you WANT someone to opt into your page, that they will. It’s an odd thing, but we tend to think that the things that we love, are in fact also loved by others, and that’s not always the case — in life and in marketing.
In my last post, I showed you the Worst Squeeze Page Runners Up.
Today, you get the winner (or loser, depending on how you look at it.)