Win a Free 1 Hour Marketing Make-Over with Myself and Howie Jacobson

by admin on 4:45 pm

I’ll make this brief…

Howie Jacobson wrote a new book.

It’s fricking awesome, but it’s not about marketing… at least not directly.

It’s about our f’d up food industry and the political forces which distort the truth in the scientific community.

So here’s the deal (and please note I don’t make a dime from this)…

Because I FIRMLY BELIEVE IN THIS CAUSE…

Because Howie needs to get a g’zillion genuine reviews as quickly as possible (and I DO mean genuine, please don’t hold anything back whether positive or negative), he and I are holding a little contest for my audience.  On June 19th, we’re going to pick the MOST GENUINELY INSIGHTFUL review in our sole judgment, and organize a GoToWebinar hour with the author.  We’ll give you the best of our marketing brains for that hour, and try as hard as we can to genuinely transform your business.

Simple, right?

The truth is, the value we’ll give you will be eclipsed by the value of reading the book itself in your life (as hard as that might be to believe)…

Here’s the link to the book on Amazon

And below is an AMAZING SHORT INTERVIEW with Howie about the book I can’t recommend more highly.

Enjoy :-)

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Nuances of Emotional Market Research Part Three

by admin on 10:07 pm

Ever wonder what the right MINDSET is to do emotional market research the right way?

Want to know how to “put your empathy meter on high?”

Curious about when getting sensitive to “drama queen language” might make you more profit than spending hours pouring over your AdWords account?

Then you’ll definitely want to listen to Michael McCarrell, the man who’s done more Livingston-Certified Hyper-Responsive Emotions Research than anyone else in the world!

I learned a few things from this interview and I know you will too :-)

(Please listen through the whole thing even if the information in the beginning seems familiar… we really needed to set up the foundation for what Michael had to offer)

Oh, one more thing…

If you want someone to do this research FOR you, Michael’s definitely your guy.  Have a look at www.BullsEyeMaster.com now!


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Real Business vs Bull Crap IM Business

by admin on 1:56 pm

There are a just a few insights into the nature of REAL businesses vs. BULL CRAP internet business ideas I’d like to share with you today…

1. REAL BUSINESSES SELL LOTS OF PRODUCTS (AND SERVICES) AND RUN VOLUME ON UNDER-OPTIMIZED FRONT ENDS. (While bullshit internet businesses spend all their resources waiting to perfectly optimize their front end, thinking it, and perhaps one back end, will eventually make the whole business work)

This one’s a little tough to grasp, because intuitively we all know in our hearts that optimization is a good thing.  I mean, I’ve spent the last several years studying and teaching RESEARCH AND CONVERSION, all in the name of optimization, and I’ve been trying to hammer home the notion that there’s no such thing as a traffic problem, only a conversion problem…

It’s all true.

But what’s equally true is that it takes a lot of time, money, and labor to optimize your front end…

And once you’ve got a customer who trusts you, that customer is likely to be interested in buying A LOT of products and services from you.  A LOT!   (One of the most common complaints I get, for example, is “I wish you had more for me to buy Glenn”). But only IF they know where to find them and why they should buy them.

Once a REAL business has a semi-manageable front end, they focus their resources fast and hard on creating a multitude of back end products.  A WHOLE CATALOG of things to sell.  They say “good enough is good enough” (to quote someone we all know and love) and just run with the damn front end conversions…

SHOULD they keep optimizing the front end?  Sure….

But it’s often easier and faster and more economical to add visitor value by pumping out back end products and services…

And the overall profits in the business get maximized not so much by the efficiency of front end acquisition, but by the VOLUME of customers acquired who then go on to buy lots of back ends.

Short story?  Once you’ve got the ability to build a list of buyers, build baby, build!  (And add LOTS of products and services). You can fix the front end ROI later.

Another way to look at this is, what if you had to make a business work with crappy front end conversions?  It’s a good exercise to model out in a spreadsheet for yourself because a LOT of 8 figure businesses I’ve run into are built on really crappy front end conversion numbers! (Seriously… even some really famous ones you’d recognize in a heartbeat if confidentiality didn’t prevent me from revealing… doing millions of dollars on 0.5% conversion or worse)

2. REAL BUSINESSES HAVE LONGER TIME HORIZONS.  (Bullshit internet marketing businesses start out with the question “how can I make money quickly without a lot of work”)

It’s become in vogue to make fun of the “Wall Street” business model.  You know the one I mean… let’s go raise $50,000,000 and burn through it at a million a month while we talk about lots of ideas and make lots of spreadsheets.  We’ll get profitable in 3 to 5 years…

So in many ways it’s only natural for the pendulum to have swung the other way…

We internet marketers HAD to say “this is silly, you should hold yourself to profitable results MUCH sooner, perhaps even right away”…

But you know what?  Thinking you’ve got to be profitable immediately is probably the best way to fail…

  • It prevents you from doing the 20 or 30 market tests you’ll probably need before you achieve escape velocity, because you’ll deem the business a failure way before then…
  • It prevents you from seeking funding when necessary, so you  really CAN have time to study the market, craft the best offer, and see it to fruition and profitability…
  • It prevents you from recognizing your true successes, which prevents you from building upon and strengthening them..
  • It creates an overall sense of panic and “unworthiness” in your organizational culture (which, if it’s just you, means throughout your own brain all day long!)…

So REAL businesses make a realistic plan for achieving profitability in a year or more…

And they figure out how to FUND this time horizon so that the members of the business are financially calm and focused.

Food for thought, right?

3. REAL BUSINESS PEOPLE WORK LIKE FUCKING MANIACS (AND THEY LOVE IT!).  Bullshit internet marketing people work as little as they can get away with, and only do so in order to be able to not work later on.

My apologies… it’s pretty rare for me to curse, but I wanted to underscore the point!

If you’re in the right business, you’ll know it because you won’t really want to stop working…

Instead of looking at your workload and saying “I have to do this work today”, you look at it with a kind of perverse excitement and say “Oh good, I get to work on this today”…

Not every moment of every day…

But there’s a general feeling of passion, interest, and excitement for the business…

The essence of your being gets poured into it.  You burn the ships at the shore and fully commit to conquering the territory…

You feel in your heart it’s not a matter of IF the business succeeds but WHEN it will…

And because of this you’d rather be working on the business than almost anything else…

In your “free” time your head is constantly running with thoughts, images, and feelings about the business…

You feel thrilled with the littlest successes, and heartbroken with the smallest defeats…

Much the way a mother might about their child. (The best description of having a child I’ve ever heard was  ”It’s like having your heart outside of you and watching as it runs around taking risks in the world”)

What does this all mean for you?

1. Do the math.  Set up a spreadsheet with at least a half dozen products and services in the mix, and see if you can make it work with a low front end conversion.

2. Once you’ve achieved escape velocity and you have a catalog of products, you should probably buy as many customers as you can as fast as you can (provided your business systems can withstand the load).

3.  Keep developing your conversion and optimization skills, but recognize these are NOT the only skills required to build a real business, and that because they represent a resource intensive activity, you’ve really got to constantly be thinking about whether optimizing a particular front end (especially) is the “highest and best use” of that resource.

4. If you can’t see your way to becoming passionate about your business so you’ll actually WANT to work like a “fucking maniac” (there’s that word again), think about how the business would have to be transformed to make this possible, or how to safely transition to something where that motivation would exist for you.  Because SOMEONE’s going to have to provide that driving force or else, in my experience, escape velocity eludes you.

Onwards!

Dr. G :-)

PS – In a mood today I guess!

PPS – If you haven’t been through the hyper-responsive club yet, you really don’t know what you’re missing.  It’s different.  It’s powerful.  And if you think you might be a maniac like me, it’s something you really have to try.

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Marketing with Body Language

by admin on 6:41 pm

What does body language have to do with marketing?

Well, pretty much everything…

And you’d think I would have realized this sooner, seeing that I sold more than $100,000 worth of body language downloads ($14.95 at a time) during my “market to a million niches” days!

But like everyone else, I find there’s always an immense lag between my knowledge of best practices and my ability, willingness, and interest in allocating the resources to execute on them all.  (My friend Bill Harrison calls this your “Marketing Wall of Shame”… which is a long list of things you know would definitely make you more money if only you could get them done!)

Anyway, here’s what you need to remember most…

Body Language = Empathy, Empathy = Trust, and Trust = Necessary But Not Sufficient Condition to Make the Sale!

Do me a favor and read this headline (for my new coach training program) all by itself:

“In Just Twelve Weeks You Can Become a Certified Professional Coach, Confident and Secure in Your Ability to Grow a Thriving Practice from Anywhere…Guaranteed!”

Not bad, right?  Especially if you’re an insecure coach-to-be who hasn’t yet done a single session and has no idea where to get their first client!

But now click here and tell me what the difference is…

MUCH more of an emotional impact, right?…

  • Because you know WHO is behind the promise…
  • Because my smile and gentle gaze tells you I’m confident I can provide this…
  • And because my forward leaning body and posture indicates I’m sincerely  interested in doing so…

So many of my students complain of how difficult it is to amass PROOF of their claims…

Yet they forget that the central reason proof is so important is to create TRUST…

And body language is another way we can do this. (Note in the example picture linked here again for convenience that you know NOTHING about my background, credentials, or anything else which would constitute proof in the more traditional sense… yet isn’t it just SOOOOO much more trustworthy?)

Food for thought, no?

Yes!

All my best,

Dr. G :-)

PS – I’m going to have to cease operating my live “Make Them Buy” conversion webinars club as of May 3rd (the last event) due to time constraints.  However–and I can’t endorse this highly enough–Terry Dean’s conversion club is less expensive, and in many ways BETTER than what I was providing.  While I bring research and psychology into the mix for an unusual perspective, Terry’s just been straight out studying and coaching copywriting and internet marketing for 17 years now… he is MY go-to-guy when I’m stuck to make something convert, and I’ve been paying him $600/mo for personal service for 6+ years now.  GlennSaysMentor.com is my affiliate link… grab your spot THIS WEEK please because Terry’s leaving some special issues in the downloads section as a bonus as a favor to my people!

PPS – Make Them Buy members will not be charged again.  Contact support if you have any questions.


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Business Lessons from Stupid Spammers

by admin on 8:32 pm

Can you make money studying stupid people?  Emphatically yes!

OK, so  for anyone who ever thought spammers were clever,  I defy you to read this message I just received and maintain your opinion.

Is it really possible that anyone who hasn’t recently ingested a fistful of Quaaludes would think this was NOT phishing and mistake it for a real email? (Or has such a large percentage of the population actually begun doing regular Quaaludes that it’s actually profitable for the spammer to take this approach?)

Wouldn’t you think the spammer, who was willing to go to all this effort to risk breaking the law, would just get an editor who spoke English to edit it first?

Well, there are a few business lessons here…

  • First, it MAY BE profitable for the spammer to send out such a message because a large proportion of time-starved people  don’t read the email at all.  They just glance at the brand name/logo, click the link, and there you go. (I didn’t click to the site of course to see what idiocracy happens there because I was frightened of viruses, etc).    Lesson for ETHICAL marketers?  You’ve got to attend to BOTH scanners AND readers in your emails and beyond.  Does your message pass the blink test? (Look at it for 2 seconds then look away… what do you come away with?)
  • Further, the economics of spam only require a very, very small percentage to respond.  This is the antithesis of the targeted marketing we’re all accustomed to thinking about.  Lesson for ETHICAL marketers?  It’s worth considering whether there’s a broad, relatively untargeted traffic strategy which might work in your market.  For example, suppose you pay $2/click bidding on targeted keywords and sell 1% for a CPA of $200.   Is it possible you could find a traffic source (think banners, email, CPV, etc) where clicks are voluminous at 20 cents, but you can only convert 0.1% (same CPA… but  greater volume)…
  • Last, the majority of criminals are lazy.  In fact, I think the reason they’re criminals in the first place is because the rigors of regular societal work are too much for them… they’re looking for the short cut, or the “lazy man’s way to riches.”  Which is why I don’t worry too much when I find someone has copied my copyrighted marketing and is trying to sell with it… oh, I prosecute them, but I don’t worry too much because I know they’re looking to copy FORM, and they can’t copy SUBSTANCE.  (Lesson for the ETHICAL marketer?  Be a person of substance… make your marketing not so much about the techniques you can implement but about the person you become by doing it and–all else being equal–you should wind up on solid ground)

Anyway, them’s my thoughts for the day.

What do you think?

Onwards and Upwards (if perchance occasionally sideways)…

Dr. G :-)

www.HyperResponsiveMarketingSecrets.com

PPS – Nothing within this message should be taken as encouragement to spam.  Intuit is a registered trademark of Intuit, Inc.  If you see a copy of the email above I encourage you to AVOID clicking on it as it is clearly phishing.  Also, you should NEVER pour hot coffee on your bare feet, make threatening comments in an airport, or pee facing the wind.

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Choking the Chicken for Fun and Profit

by admin on 7:13 pm

So, I have a very good, but VERY strange friend these days…

He’s a high-end copywriter who lived with a copy-writing legend we all know and love for a few months.

I find it difficult to have great copywriters for friends…

Because they’re constantly distracting me with their emails, especially their subject lines…

I mean like DISTRACTED with a CAPITAL “D”…

TODAY  I got an email with the subject line “choking your chicken” from him.

I’ve got ask you this…

How the HELL am I supposed to get ANY work done when someone I know and respect sends me an email about “choking your chicken?”

Of course I read the email, which linked to an interesting lesson about “chicken rental” offers.

So I had to ask him “how the heck do you come up with one email after the next that I absolutely, positively, have to STOP EVERYTHING to read?”…

I mean, I KNOW the formula is “Curiosity + Benefit = Eyeballs and Clicks”…

But his EXECUTION OF THE FORMULA is just soooooo damned compelling I felt like there was something I was missing.

Know what he told me?

“It’s because I enjoy it entirely too much”… and he meant it.   Apparently he bought pet chickens a few months back—(which is in and of itself, by the way, and I don’t care what kind of vegan freak you happen to be, just plain WRONG!)—and had been dying to use the line ever since.

It’s like his emails are his one chance to be evil and irreverent in his attention getting maneuvers… and then he just finds a way to link the subject line to a story, and the story to a sale.  (His email links to a compelling story about his pet chickens.)

It all start with irreverent, outright enjoyment of his evil little mind…

“I want to use ‘choke the chicken’ in an email” (heh heh heh – insert slightly maniacal laugh here)…

Then he takes that curiosity and links it to a benefit (in this case fun and profit)…

Conjures up a story to match and there you have it!

It’s sick, it’s twisted, but it works damn well.

BTW, here’s his email, reprinted with permission:

—————-
SUBJECT: chocking your chicken

I had an idea this morning.
An idea that could make you a lot of cash FAST.

Heck, if you only get a mere 20% of the results
I’ve gotten from this, it could TRANSFORM
your business… practically overnight.
My choke your chicken for cash plan is here
(hyperlinked to his pet chicken story)

————-

Anyway, if you want to study his style in more detail, he’s got a GREAT print newsletter I suggest you sign up for via my shameless affiliate link.

In the meantime, maybe we should all be asking ourselves what evil little daily thoughts WE could be using to grab attention, link to a benefit, and make some cash from our markets?

Until then,

Glenn :-)

PS – Going forward I plan to call this email writing strategy “choking your chicken” and I give you all permission to “choke your chickens” until your heart is content.

PPS – At the end of the year last I exhaustively combed the detailed notes from my live webinars club to find the TEN BEST CONVERSION SECRETS most people were omitting from their websites.  Through Friday this week you can pick this up as aseparate product here.  (As a bonus, I asked Perry Marshall to do an hour long interview with me about the 3 most important things he’s learned in his entire marketing career… I was shocked at how much I personally learned from this!  Exclusively available in this product… coming down on Friday night)

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Choosing Profitable LOCAL Markets

by admin on 6:43 pm

So, I’m pretty well known for the formula for choosing profitable worldwide niche markets…

But what if you want to choose a profitable LOCAL niche?

Ryan Levesque to the rescue.  Listen, learn, and enjoy :-)

PS – At the end of the year last I exhaustively combed the detailed notes from my live webinars club to find the TEN BEST CONVERSION SECRETS most people were omitting from their websites.  Through Friday this week you can pick this up as a separate product here.  (As a bonus, I asked Perry Marshall to do an hour long interview with me about the 3 most important things he’s learned in his entire marketing career… I was shocked at how much I personally learned from this!  Exclusively available in this product… coming down on Friday night)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Getting Comfortable with Charging More Money

by admin on 7:45 am

The other day I asked Howie Jacobson–(author of AdWords for Dummies and definitely a guy with something to say!)–if he’d do an interview for my coaches list about money…

You see, one of the strangest things about the people who are most interested in helping people is that they’re also the ones most uncomfortable about charging for it.

The interview came out SO good, and forced BOTH of us to reveal so many interesting nuances of our personal journeys with finances in the service business, I felt it needed sharing for my general entrepreneurial audience too.

If you have even the tiniest discomfort charging what you’re worth, I’d encourage you to listen soon. (This is a relatively short one, but VERY powerful)

All my best,

Dr. G :-)

PS – How many of you know I do the Make Them Buy Live Webinars club mostly for my own benefit? Seriously, there’s not a lot of direct money in there because most internet marketers don’t understand the relationship between traffic and conversion.  They’re unwilling to face the work involved in building a site that converts, so they stupidly chase traffic techniques instead. (Insert frustrated pirate-like sound here). But I’ve discovered pouring over other people’s sites and rank-ordering the winners in a market, then discussing it publicly with a sharp group of marketers is one of the absolute best ways I’ve found to keep growing as a marketer (and to stay on top of current conversion trends online).    Anyway, I did a presentation at the end of last year in the club itself on the TEN BEST insights of the year.  You can get that as a separate package here now.

PPS – Howie Jacobson’s blog is worth reading too.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Getting Out of the Low Margin Pricing Trap

by admin on 9:16 am

A lot of businesses–particularly tradition local businesses selling a “commodity” service like pest control, accounting, psychotherapy, etc–feel their pricing structure is defined by the competitive landscape… thereby boxing them into a fairly narrow margin game.

But there are several not-immediately-obvious ways OUT of this low margin pricing trap…

And I do believe Ryan and I covered almost all of them in this interview.

Enjoy!

Dr. G :-)

Conversion Optimization |  Hyper-Responsive |  Live Webinars Club | Phone Follow Ups on Commission | Research Done For You

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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The Google Reader Alternative

by admin on 12:41 pm

Here’s an important announcement for current and former hyper-responsive club members…

As well as anyone who’s become an avid Google Reader fan…

Here’s the thing…

Stupid Google is retiring Google Reader!

(Which we relied upon heavily in month #2 of the hyper-responsive club to organize internet intelligence on our keyword archery target)

Now, I’m not a religious person, but I like the phrase “When God closes a door he opens a window”…

Meaning that sometimes we become so reliant on our existing solutions we neglect to consider there might be something better right under our nose we’re ignoring…

And also as you might expect, Dr. Glenn’s been scrambling furiously for a few days since the announcement to determine the best alternative!

The solution’s pretty simple…

Feedly.com

It allows you to organize by folder, use tags, save for later (equivalent of “starring” in Reader), etc.

And it’ll automatically import and sync up with your existing Reader data, so you won’t have lost a thing.

What you DO want to do regardless is create an XML backup of your subscriptions in Reader and save it someplace safe just in case Feedly goes bananas and decides to close too…

But it seems there’s little chance of that since they’ve publicly announced their desire to support all the abandoned Google Reader users…

And as soon as you log into Feedly you see a “smooth transition from Google Reader” notice.

Plus they’ve put up a blog post specifically to help us poor orphaned Reader users:

http://blog.feedly.com/2013/03/14/google-reader/

OK, just wanted to keep you in the loop with the new best practices (regardless of whether you’re a current member or not)

All my best,

Dr. G :-)

PPS – If you’re overwhelmed trying to bump your conversion month after month for a site/company that’s spending more than $10,000/mo in AdWords (or other paid traffic), you really should get a consultation with the Conversion Zoom team.

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