I’d Swipe This Email Right Away…
Watch this little video for a total breakdown of an email you should swipe and use right away in your business.
Check it out.
The Kung Fu Panda Internet Marketing Revelation
Last week, right after Christmas, I finally got the chance to watch Kung Fu Panda with my kids. If you haven't seen it, and you have little kids, it's well worth the hour and a half. Funny thing is, it was not only a cute flick, but there's a killer internet marketing lesson shared toward the end.
Let me explain...
When I first started online in 2003 I was amazed by some of the incomes I heard gurus earning. I had no idea at that time how the heck someone could be earning 4, 5 and even 6 figures regularly in a single day. It baffled me. And, as I started to dig into the IM world, it actually started to frustrate me a little when I couldn't figure out the "formula".
I started buying courses and studying marketing like a madman. Today, actually, I'm embarassed to admit that I spent thousands on ebay buying up second-hand courses. I guess I owe some "gurus" some purchases. 
Anyway, while studying I became overwhelmed with everything there was to know. I started to think that most of the "gurus" must either be SUPER-savvy marketers or just incredibly schooled in marketing, advertising and business. Regardless, I knew I wasn't any of that and at one point began to doubt my likelihood of success online.
Thank goodness I didn't choose to throw in the towel due to a lack of smarts, super-savvyness, or sheer intellect. Boy would my life be different today!
Some time later, as I got experience online under my belt and learned more about direct marketing, I realized there were principles that could be followed over and over to produce success, and the huge "guru" incomes WERE NOT a product of any super-intelligence, innate skillset or the highly sought-after"secret ingredient".
And, that's what Kung Fu Panda reminded me of. Actually, his dad reminded me...
[SPOILER ALERT]
You see, all throughout the movie, Kung Fu Panda's father... a noodle maker... kept telling his son that what made his noodles so good was this special secret ingredient he used.
And, when Kung Fu Panda, was training... trying to become a Kung Fu Master, he continued to "get knocked down", thinking he didn't have the special, innate ingredient to be a Master. In fact, he almost gave up his dream altogether. Thank goodness he didn't either.
Later on, his dad confessed... with a few giggles... there was no secret ingredient that made his noodles so good.
And, it was after his pop's confession that Kung Fu Panda realized... he wasn't lacking anything. Well, anything other than belief in himself. And, once he realized there was no special, secret ingredient, and he believed he could become a Master, he went on to save his village by defeating the evil Kung Fu lord.
And, the same is true with the other successful marketers you see online. There is NO special intellect or innate skillset we possess. We're just like you. In some cases, less intelligent. As my old boss used to say, gurus put their pants on one leg at a time, just like you.
Fact is, not being super-smart, super-savvy, or loaded with natural technical ability is NO EXCUSE for not going after your dream, and succeeding, as an online entrepreneur.
You only need the desire, and the willingness to put in the time and effort, to get it done.
Period!
There is NO "secret ingredient".
Believe in yourself, believe in your dream, put the time and effort in to learn the business, and more importantly... stay focused on your mission, goals, strategy and tactics.
Stop wondering off and looking for the next latest and greatest technique, trick, or tactic. And, instead, stay focused on the core principles (after you've learned them, if you haven't already) and just push, push, push!
If a panda can become a Kung Fu Master... you can become a successful internet marketer. Actually, a better way to say it... is... if Jack Black can become a successful movie star, you can become a successful internet marketer.
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Added after: I once heard Dan Kennedy say something really profound about gurus, if you will. He said, "...in order to achieve wealth you must BECOME the wizard and BEWARE of the wizard." Think about it.
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This is KILLER!! (For advanced marketers ONLY)
Hey guys... I'm so not about being hypey, but I have to tell you... this WILL add some serious dollars to your bottomline.
It's the strategy of using one-click upsells/downsells following the initial sale of your product.
The old way most internet marketers would try to do an upsell was with an "intermediary upsell" page. This was a wepage that offered an upsell BEFORE the customer actually even completed the initial transaction or went to the order form. It would appear right after a customer clicked on the "order now" button.
The problem with this approach is that shopping cart abandonment is HUGE, let alone on an intermediary upsell page. So, marketers would lose a tremendous number of sales by putting this page in before the actually order was completed.
The other way many IMers do an upsell is on the order form with a check box of some sort. Again, the problem with this is that we don't want to add in anything that can cause friction in the sales process. We want to make the customer feel as comfortable as possible.
Instead, what is SUPER-EFFECTIVE is adding your upsell/downsell pages AFTER the transaction has been completed.
In other words, the customer clicks the order button, they go to the order form for the initial product, the fill in their information and submit the order button, THEN you take them through a series of upsells and/or downsells that only require them to push a single button to add the upsell/downsell product to their order.
The key to this whole thing is that accepting the upsell only requires ONE CLICK and not the refilling out of an order form.
I personally use Infusionsoft for my CRM and shopping cart and had one of our programmers on staff program this to work with the Infusionsoft API. I recommend, for whatever CRM/autoresponder service you use you have a programmer design something like this for you.
You will INSTANTLY see your revenue go up. It's really unbelievable how much better this process works than the old way of doing upsells.
4 Steps To Become Your Market’s Thought-Leader
This video shows... what I believe... is a cutting-edge 4-step technique to quickly establish yourself as your marketplace's main go-to person when it comes to valuable information about their niche.
I'm talking about positioning yourself as THE person in your niche who is worthy of being a trusted resource and advisor to the marketplace.
Put this into action now and you will get a HUGE JUMP on your competitors. Seriously. Do it now!
P.S. Don't forget to follow me on Twitter, if you haven't already. It's where I share the juiciest goodies. - Go here
Powerful Conversion Tool… When Used Properly
[This is an excerpt from the 2 1/2 hour Teleseminar Todd conducted a couple of weeks ago titled "Tipping Points Within An Internet Marketing Business]
Most internet marketers know the value of testimonials from satisfied customers. Unfortunately, most marketers don't truly understand how to properly gather quality testimonials and use them strategically in their sales funnel to reap maximum conversions.
The first step in the process of leveraging testimonials in your marketing funnel is to actually have a dedicated funnel for the acquisition of quality testimonials. Quality testimonials. Actually, quality and quantity.
As you increase the quantity of testimonials on your sales page, and you increase the quality, which I’ll explain in a second, your conversions will go up. Period. I’ve personally seen it time and time again. The reason why we’ve been able to go into several niches... niche after niche after niche and conquer it and basically own the category that we’ve created... is because of the huge amount of quality testimonials that we acquire and how we use them.
Frankly, I’m not passive about testimonial acquisition.
In other words, we don't wait for them to come to us. We methodically go about generating specific types of testimonials. And, we have a dedicated marketing campaign just for that purpose. And that campaign is similar in intensity to the types of campaigns we use to generate leads and customers. In other words, we take it seriously as should you.
Point being; you need to be proactive. You need to be aggressive with your testimonial acquisition. I put out a video—I think I called it, “The Magic Funnel" that's on the blog here. Watch it. It explains one of the savviest systems I’ve ever seen used online. It’s a system that I use in our companies to do several things. To make the sale stick. To get somebody beyond the refund period. To exceed their expectations, and to generate a huge amount of testimonials. And that’s the thing...
You want a system that generates quality testimonials for you every single week, that you can then add to your various dimensions or marketing channels... so that you can add more testimonials to your sales letter... add more testimonials to your email follow-up... have more testimonials that you can use during teleseminars and Webinars and even voice broadcasts.
In fact, talking about voice broadcast and the different ways you can use quality testimonials... I actually got a customer to record an audio clip for me, like a two minute audio clip that I then voice broadcasted out. I took a testimonial from a customer and I took that audio and plugged it into a voice broadcast that goes out automatically as part of one of our marketing funnels.
See how again, I’ve got that testimonial. I’ve got that guy’s audio testimonial on the website. I took the audio testimonial and transcribed it, and it’s there in print, in our email follow-up. Took the recording and voice broadcasted, again, repurposing content. This illustrates no only the value of repurposing your content, but also the value of leveraging testimonials out the wazoo.
Next, let's talk about what makes for a good testimonial.
Number one, outcome specific.
You want testimonials that talk about the specific benefits that people have reaped from your product or service and hopefully the benefits that they got or the benefits that your market wants, that you’re promising you can deliver. And again, I explain how to get that type of testimonial in that “Magic Funnel” video on the blog here.
The more information about the person who submitted the testimonial, the better. Don’t just have JD or Joe D.
If you can have the person’s first name, last name, age, and depending on the marketplace you’re in, their profession, their state, their city. The more information the better, because it makes the testimonial more believable and more credible.
You also want diverse demographics.
Again, this depends a little bit on the marketplace that you’re in, but if you’re selling to a diverse demographic of ages and genders, then you want testimonials from men, women, young, old and so on and so forth.
You also want testimonials from credible people, like experts in your particular marketplace. If you need to give them a free copy of the product to get a testimonial from them, do it. Testimonials from credible people will give you, on top of average, every day people and customers will give you tremendous, tremendous credibility.
Also, you want your testimonials to overcome the objections.
This is also really, really savvy, so please pay attention to these next two points of quality testimonials.
You want your testimonials to overcome objections, which means if there are five different objections that the average, prospective customer has when it comes to buying your product or service, you want to generate testimonials that overcome those objections.
For example, if one of the objections that you get all the time is, “It’s too hard,” or “I’m not technical enough,” let’s just say. I don’t know, you’re selling a computer or something. And one of the objections that you get all the time is, “I’m not technically savvy.” Well, you would want testimonials that say, “This is so easy. I’m not even technically savvy and I found it easy,” or “I was scared being somebody that’s not technically savvy, but I found this computer so easy to use.”
See, you want your testimonials to overcome objections.
Again, testimonials are some of the most powerful marketing tools at your disposal when used correctly.
Today, in a lot of different niches, because they’re not used correctly, they’re not quality testimonials. It just becomes noise on the sales page.
This last point is not so much about a quality testimonial, but it’s about how to use these testimonials. And you want to place testimonials strategically within your sales letter.
That means you should methodically place appropriate testimonials at appropriate places in your sales letter. So if in the sales letter, it’s after somebody reads a certain paragraph, you know that they’re thinking, "Oh, it’s too difficult, I can’t do it", you want to have the testimonials right there that overcome that objection. And same for the rest of the sales letter.
Put the testimonials in the appropriate places to overcome the objections that people will have at that particular time in your sales letter. Strategically placed testimonials are key. Quality, quantity, overcoming objections, diverse and strategically placed.
Again, when collected and used correctly, testimonials are one of the most powerful conversion tools you have at your disposal. When collected and used incorrectly, in some cases testimonials can actually detract from your sales message and take away credibility.
So, don't just throw some testimonials up on your sales page or in your email follow-up. Collect them strategically and use them strategically. And be proactive about the whole process.
Todd Brown Teleseminar Replay
After receiving multiple requests for the recording of Thursday night's "marathon" Teleseminar I decided to put it on the blog for you.
If you weren't able to make it live, this is your chance to hear one of the most intense, most passionate presentations on internet marketing you may ever hear.
I highly recommend you get a pad and pen before the start of this audio and get ready to take some serious notes. There's tons of internet marketing and business-development gold-nuggets shared at lightning pace for over 2 hours!
Enjoy.
How To Make BIG Money Online With A Tiny List & No Connections – A RARE Teleseminar
Read this very carefully...
There are certain things I wish someone shared with me when I first got started marketing online.
I believe if I knew the things I know today, when I first got started, I would have made so much more money so much quicker with much less strain and struggle.
Well, this Thursday night, during a VERY RARE 2-hour teleseminar I'm going to share those very things with you.
(Very rare because I almost never do teleseminars for the internet marketing community.)
Here's the thing...
I'm not talking about sharing the typical stuff you hear on most teleseminars... stuff like ordinary traffic generation methods, using a squeeze page, writing good copy, etc.
I'm going to share the REAL DEAL "tipping point" strategies and tactics that have created massive FINANCIAL MOMENTUM for me and made my different niche companies several hundreds of thousands of dollars every year - EACH!
And, how to do it with a teeny-tiny list, no JV connections, and limited money to spend.
(I started with an $850 investment and never had to invest another dime of my own money in the company. )
And, because this is such a rare thing for me to do teleseminars for the internet marketing community, it's going to be JAM-PACKED and INTENSE.
In fact, below is just some of the stuff I'm going to share:
* The 4 different marketing campaigns you MUST have in every business... regardless of what you're selling online.
* What activities and tasks you should be spending your time on, and how much on each.
* Why you shouldn't have a marketing budget. It's what holds most online entrepreneurs down. Instead, the "right way" to invest in your marketing.
* The 2 most important metrics you must monitor in your business if you're ever going to make serious money online.
* A guaranteed method to increase sales conversions on almost any sales letter or piece of copy.
* How to stand out in any niche and become the #1 provider of your type of product or service.
* How to methodically increase your opt-in rate to build a bigger and bigger list each month.
* A step-by-step breakdown of what traffic methods are "really" working right now. No more hype!
* Exactly where the REAL MONEY is in an online business and the fastest and easiest way to tap into it in your business.
* Which methods and tactics being talked about online are a total waste... and why they'll cost you your dream of a successful online business. There's a lot!
* The upcoming GAME-CHANGING tactics and strategies that, if you jump on them NOW, will give you a massive competitive advantage online. This is where the real players are going.
*... and whatever else I decide to pack in there this Thursday night.
As always... there's nothing for sale, nothing going to be pitched, and this teleseminar is *NOT* a set up for a product launch or anything like that.
I'm doing this as a FREEBIE (at NO COST) for 2 reasons:
1. Because I love this stuff and it's an insane passion of mine. So, for me it's not work. It's fun!
2. Because in 2009 I will finally start formally helping internet marketers make big money online and I figure this is a great way to show you how much I can help you in the future.
Anyway, if you want to attend, the Teleseminar details are below:
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Date: This Thursday, November 20, 2008
Time: 8:00PM ET
Length: At least 2 hours
To confirm your spot and get the phone number and webcast
details, opt-in below:
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This Teleseminar will be worth more than a majority
of internet marketing courses being sold.
No doubt about it.
Don't miss it.
Sponsor Videos On YouTube
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I really believe it outlines what is going to become very popular in online marketing.
Start using it right now to get the early advantage - and soak up lots of free traffic.
Leverage “Guru Actions” To Make More Money Online
Watch the 8-minute video below to understand how to "steal" your way to online success.
Plus, master the art of "leveraging guru actions" to improve your results and make more money.
The Missing X-Factor In Most Online Businesses
Recently, savvy internet marketer, Stu McLaren, published a nice little post on his blog about the concept of "Creative Imitation". It's well worth you taking the time to read (after you're done here, of course).
The gist of the article is that creative imitation is a great place to start online, but it's not what's going to allow you to lead your marketplace.
In fact, towards the end of Stu's article, he says specifically, "Creatively imitating market leaders is a good thing in the beginning. It helps you grasp an understanding of what is working in that industry and it helps you get going.
However, for long-term success you need to get beyond creative imitation and start exploring your own unique ideas. Otherwise you’ll always be a follower and you’ll never lead your industry."
I think this is well-stated, however I think it also neglects to mention an additional reason why you need to be sensitive to and very cautious with your use of "creative imitation" when building your online business.
Oddly enough, I also feel this very same 'additional reason' is what holds so many internet marketers back from ever developing a successful business online.
Really!
And, I don't know why more online marketing teachers and "gurus" don't talk about it.
Nevertheless, I will in this post.
Let me explain:
Most struggling internet marketers are NOT having a difficult time building their online business because they lack knowledge in tactics.
For example, when it comes to creating and selling an ebook, it's a pretty straight-forward process most understand.
Right? I mean, here it is...
1. Find a hungry niche that has, and spends, money on their niche.
2. Uncover what information they desparately want.
3. Put it in an ebook or some other format.
4. Create a sales letter with a killer offer.
5. Drive traffic to the site using any one of the many effective means for driving traffic to a website.
6. Enjoy the fruits of your labor.
Only... for most that simply follow this model, there is no fruit.
So, does the problem lie in the first 5 steps?
Is the issue the tactics being taught?
No.
Not at all.
It's NOT in what's being taught...
...it's in what's NOT BEING TAUGHT where the problem lies.
You see, in creating a successful online business in any niche, besides following the sound tactical steps and process most of us know, there's another crucial strategic element that needs to be addressed.
And, it needs to be addressed right up front.
What is it?
DIFFERENTIATION
In other words, what the heck makes your product different and better than everything else out there being offered to your marketplace??
>> What additional and unique benefits will customers get from you that they won't get anywhere else, with anyone else's product?
>> What's lacking in your competitors products that you've included?
>> What have you done to make sure that comparing your product to your competitors is like comparing apples to oranges?
And, it's that last question that really wreaks havoc with the idea of "creative imitation".
You see, there's nothing wrong with looking OUTSIDE of your niche and marketplace for ideas and innovation.
In fact, that's where true innovations come from - in other niches outside of yours.
However, there is a problem with looking WITHIN your niche and marketplace to "creatively imitate". And, that is... you never differentiate what you offer.
And, without differentiation the end result is that you allow your product (ebook, for example) to become a commodity.
In other words, without differentiation... and without staking your claim on a unique angle for your product, your product gets lost in the sea of sameness.
Without differentiating your product.... even you're POSITIONING of what you're product is... you end up competing in an ocean of competitors (if not now, later on for sure) all claiming and offering consumers the same thing.
Instead, what you want to do is POSITION what your product DOES and IS uniquely in your marketplace.
First, you want to make sure that your product offers unique benefits consumers can't get anywhere else. In the case of an ebook, you'd want the ebook to offer unique information that gives readers unique benefits not offered by competing ebooks. Of course, you want to make sure that those unique benefits are benefits your prospecs want and value.
Second, you want to try to position your product in a unique product category - it's own category. first heard about the concept of creating your own category to own from marketing maven, Even Pagan. With this approach, you're first in your product category and then own the #1 spot. And, as marketing pioneers, Ries and Trout, taugt in their early best-selling book, Positioning, it's better to be first in a product category than it is to be better.
In other words, it's better to create a new category from your information than it is to just be another ebook.
Marketing leader, Rich Schefren, puts it like this, "It's better to be different than it is to be better."
Often this can be done with tweaks in positioning without actually changing the content or the delivery.
For example, by calling your ebook a Digital Manual, you take your product out of the category of ebooks and put it into a new category. Now... even though it's subtle... you're no longer competing with ebooks. Why? Because you're not selling an ebook, you're selling a Digitial Manual.
Or, how about this:
How about you create one or two little videos that go along with your ebook and include links to them within the content of your ebook.
Now, you position your ebook as a Video Manual or Video Book or Video Training, whatever.
The point is... just by changing the positioning of your product to a new category not being claimed by competitors, you're able to create a new category that you now own as the first and #1 provider of.
Add to this your unique content and desirable customer benefits, and you truly have a winning combination.
Again, it's NOT just following the tactics. It's NOT just having good content.
It's having and doing those things AND differentiating what you do so you stand out, have unqiue positioning, own your category, eliminate competitive comparisons, and dominate your niche as the only provider of what you offer!
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Here are some other posts around the Net you may find of value:
“Creative Imitation”–Good or Bad? - There’s quite an interesting discussion going on about “creative imitation”–what it is, and whether it’s good or bad. I just posted a couple of comments on Alex Mandossian’s blog (Jeff Herring’s post), and Stu McLaren’s. ...
“Creative Imitation” Boosts Your Productivity - Here are two interesting examples of creative imitation:. Example 1: In December of 2006 I took Alex’s Teleseminar Secrets Training for the first time. After Module 2 I decided to jump in and held my first teleseminar on Article ...
Business and Marketing Success - Invention Or Imitation? Part 1 ... - Invention or new ideas sound great, but in business and marketing (online or offline) it’s creative imitation that will bring you success. This is what some of the greatest thought leaders, marketers and promoters in history have done. ...
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