Work Yourself Up!

Social Bookmarking to Grab Attention Online

Social bookmarking is the electronic version of leaving a breadcrumb trail. After all, you can have a great product, but without enough traffic, it’s just another nice site.  Even if you have a faithful marketing list, you constantly want to reach new online viewers.

The options for connecting with social bookmarkers are exploding.  That’s why you need to surf around and see what’s out there, then set up a series of “regular” social bookmarking accounts to use.

StumbleUpon is one of the leading social bookmarking sites that’s both easy to use and powerful. Once you create an account, you can add the toolbar interface.  Then all you do is click the Thumbs Up icon to recommend a site.  You can do this for your own sites, or ask your friends to submit a Thumbs Up rating for you. Besides the rating, you can add comments about the site.

Can you Digg it? That’s not just a line from a 70s movie - it’s a widely used social bookmarking site. Digg functions much like Stumble Upon with raters given the chance push the ratings of a site to the front page. Making it to the front page of Digg gets your information in front of thousands of viewers and it helps traffic flood in to read your newsworthy submission.

Clipmarks describes itself as “scissors for web pages.” As with other social bookmarking sites, you can submit items that are sent to the web - including to Facebook or to an iPhone. As a one stop service and huge time saver, sign up with OnlyWire.

You begin by installing a plugin for your browers, and then you only need a single click to submit your item to multiple sites. To make this work, you still need to sign up at bookmarking sites that you plan to use. After that, you can use OnlyWire to handle the multiple submissions.

Make sure your site viewers know how to rate your site. You can’t reward or bribe them for bookmarking your site. That’s the social bookmarking version of stuffing the ballot box at voting time.

You can put links to the bookmarking sites on your sites as a gentle reminder. And don’t be shy about submitting your new information to the networks yourself – just make sure you also submit other sites so that you don’t appear spammy. Let people know what you’ve got and where to find your site and they’ll share that information with others.

What’s Your Customer Worth?

Do you know the economic value of each customer who buys from your site? If your answer is, $47 or $95 or the price of your product, then that’s the wrong answer! You just identified the value of the first purchase.

A more important number to know is the “lifetime value” of a customer.  Did you know that you’ll spend five to seven times more money and more effort to gain to a new customer than you would to get another order from a current customer? 

That’s a general rule. For some products, prospects may need even more contact and visits to your site before they click the order button. Nurturing your customers is an important way to increase your overall sales.

You’ve already built rapport with the customer so when you send a new product pitch, the customer wants to know what you have to offer. Finding quality products from trustworthy sellers can be a challenge, so buyers who received a good product in a timely manner backed by a solid guarantee are satisfied and they’re more likely to buy again.

To keep your customers buying, don’t flood them with just any offer. Make sure that you send product offers that match the customer’s prior purchase type and overall price range. Some customers like to download information products while others want to receive CDs or DVDs.

You need to know those preferences so that you offer what a customer is most likely to buy. The worst thing you can do is flood their email inbox with every type of offer. Before long, customers are deleting them without reading your messages.

You want a customer to see your email and say, “I want to see what’s new today!” That’s the kind of response that means a long term buying relationship. What sets you apart from other Internet marketers is in the way that you nurture connections with your customer.

Send out the occasional free item as a “customer appreciation” gift. You’ll really stand out if you send a free gift that’s not part of an order. This is another way to remind a customer to drop back into your site and see what’s new.

Let your customers market for you by offering a discount or bonus item when they recommend a friend who purchases your product. A loyal, repeat customer is gold – treat them as the valuable asset that they are to your online business.

Making the Most from ClickBank

ClickBank is definitely a leading connection between product developers and affiliate marketers. It’s also a place that buyer can go directly to purchase information products. Plus ClickBank has a positive reputation for its ease of use.

With all that going for it, just upload your information products and you’re good to go, right?  Not exactly. You might make a few sales, but if you want to make ClickBank a centerpiece of your marketing, then you have to do more than just upload, post a link and wait.

Set up targeted minisite.  Create catchy sales copy to accompany it. You can also add a video demonstration or an audio that expands on the product.  Offer a “bribe” or freebie when the viewer clicks that Buy Now button.

If you have strong testimonials, add them on the sales page or with video clips that are scattered inside the sales copy.  Post product reviews. Write short reviews or ask a colleague to review your product.

If you’re looking for reviewers, offer the product free to a limited number of potential reviewers. This is a popular technique on marketing forums to get testimonials. You can also get reviews from people who are significant contributors to forums in your niche. Then get those reviews posted on as many sites, forums and discussion boards as possible.

Trade mailing lists. Contact sites with comparable niche interests and tell them about your ClickBank product.  Offer an affiliate sales opportunity. You can also agree to trade mailings - your offer to their lists, and then a few weeks later send their offer to your list.

Since any sale makes an affiliate commission for the seller, everyone wins. If you find that your product doesn’t get picked up by affiliates, reduce your cut and increase the profit for affiliate sales. Information marketing is about volume, so remember that 40% of 1,000 sales is worth more than 60% of 100 sales.

Keep it fresh.  Like produce, eBooks have a certain shelf life. Even if the information is still good, add a new twist or update at least twice annually. Unless you’ve written a true classic, then you’ll begin to see a downturn in sales.

That’s the time to tweak it. You can make a slight title change or a major change. Just give the buyer a reason to find this interesting. If you’re doing a tweak, contact your best affiliate sellers to let them know that there’s new information or updates worth sending to the their list again.

A Customer Centered Business

An old adage in sales is that “the customer is always right.”  Over the years as retailer grew large, profit margins faded and experienced salespeople grew scarce, there seemed to be less interest in the customer.

People grudgingly accepted the lack of customer service as the price they paid for cheap products. They complained, but they bought anyway because that’s just the way it was. Online shopping, while distant, is more customer centered than many local retailers.

To develop a rapport with customers in a virtual environment, online marketers had to establish trust and they did it with money back guarantees plus fast delivery. This customer-centered approach not only created trust as planned, but also caused a surprising number of customers to ignore the local stores and shop at major retailers’ online sites.

As a developing Internet marketer, you can learn from this brief history.  You want to position your product as user friendly and open for refund. Granted, this is easier with downloads and information products than with shipped products.

But even shipped products that offer guaranteed, no questions asked refunds actually have fewer refunds because the consumer feels free to try to return it if they’re not satisfied. Before the sale, you want to provide ample information about the product - including several photo views if appropriate. 

Think about the questions a buyer might ask and have the answers ready before the question arrives.  An easy way to provide this information is with an expanded FAQ (frequently asked questions) page. Make sure there’s a link to the FAQ page from each product page.

If your product requires assembly after delivery, post an extra copy of how to assemble it. Even better is to post a video showing and telling how to do the assembly. Another great idea is to post videos showing alternative ways to use the product. This gives buyers options that they might not have considered.

To be consumer-centered means that you can be reached easily. Post your email (or that of your customer service center) and a phone number or SKYPE name. If you are the “Customer service center,” send those emails to a designated email box and answer them promptly.

If you can’t, at least set up an autoresponder saying that you received the customer’s email and are working on the solution. The more ways you can be contacted, the more the customer feels at ease that you aren’t hiding in some unreachable corner of cyberspace.  You can’t shake hands with your online customer, but you can create an ongoing buying relationship by demonstrating that you’re a customer-centered online marketer.

Information Product Dos and Don’ts

Information is a key element for Internet marketing, but never let this your passion for the topic get out of control.  The more you’re emotionally invested in your information product, the easier it is to make this mistake. 

If you create an amazing eBook on a topic that fascinates you, don’t assume it will sell. Unless you identify your market and know how to find that market, you’re wasting your time. Savvy Internet product marketers don’t even start writing an eBook or choosing an affiliate product until they find an interested market.

Have you ever encountered a struggling student trying to sell magazine subscriptions by going door to door? He has something to sell, but you aren’t interested.   So he spends hours searching for one customer at a time and missing the mark more often than making a sale. 

What if he took a different approach and went to doctors’ offices, businesses or auto repair shops to sell magazines to places where customers had to wait and needed entertainment? That’s targeting his market to willing buyers.

In online marketing, you can do this much easier with a few mouse clicks.     Start by listening into the conversation in your niche. The “conversation” is found in discussion forums and Web 2.0 sites that are dedicated to the niche topic.

What questions are they asking? What information is difficult to find? What new twist do you pick up on using a product or concept already on the market?  The answer to any of these questions can be the perfect start for identifying and developing an eBook.

Next, check out ClickBank eBook selections. Look in the section that best relates to your niche. What eBooks are offered that relate to this topic?  Did you find existing eBooks that answer     any of the questions you found from your conversation research?

If there’s an eBook that works, then consider using it as an affiliate product.  You can use this product in your initial campaign, and then develop your own eBook that expands on this information or takes the information in a different direction.

While you’re researching, check Amazon and eBay to see if there are comparable information products. And what does a Google search show? You’re likely to find other marketers who are using similar information products. 

Scan a dozen websites that use these products.  You might find other products on their sites and see how they are presented.  Copy these URLs for future reference to use in marketing your eBook directly to these sites.

If you just want to write about your obscure hobby, do it in a blog and a few people may read it. But if you want to sell information products, locate potential buyers and sample their interests before writing or marketing an eBook. That’s the way smart marketers use the power of the Internet to literally make money while they sleep.