Trends

A lot of people ask us how we manage so many websites and if we sleep at night. We do sleep at night, in fact we even try to sleep 8 hours every night or most of the nights.

Our process works more or less like this: We get a new idea that could work, sleep on that and the next day we do some research on the market possibilities. We then get together and discuss what needs to be done to implement that idea and set deadlines. Now, the project goes to a project management software were it is divided in tasks with deadlines and people involved are notified of their tasks. Usually we set very short deadlines. The project is launched and we start testing. 99% of the time there are glitches to be fixed. We are strong advocates that you don’t have to get it perfect, just have to get it going. The reason behind this is that it is more important to test the project with the market and see what the market wants and that if you try to perfect too much, you never implement anything. Ask Google and Microsoft if they don’t agree with me. If for some reason a project doesn’t do well, we phase it out fast. There is no problem in failing as long as you do it fast and move on. You always learn a lot in the process. The key point here is to implement, never wait. You will always be better than your competition if you are the one testing new ideas and implementing things. Once we prove that idea will convert well, we go deep, invest more time and perfect the project. Next year, try to implement more and worry less. Test everything, track everything, rinse and repeat. The results will blow your mind.

Have you realized that there are only 60 days to the end of the year?
While you might be already thinking what to cook for Thanksgiving or about gifts for Christmas, you also need to think how you are going to use these precious 60 days to generate more revenue in your business.
After all, there is no better Christmas present than a profitable year.

Here are a few things you can do to generate more business in the next 60 days and to ensure you start a new year with a lot of business.

1. Set goals and expectations first. Like any marketing plan you need to see first what you want out of these efforts and how much. This will also help you create a marketing plan for the next 60 days and give you a glimpse of how useful a marketing plan for the whole year could be.
2. Get in touch with your top 20 clients in the next 30 days. Why not use Thanksgiving as the perfect reason to thank them for their business. People get a lot of cards for Christmas, but not on Thanksgiving. You can use this opportunity for a special offer. Be sure to connect with these customers on social networks like Facebook and Linkedin. This is a good time to survey them and see what other services and products they would like to see you offering. Always ask for referrals.
3. Do you like the 12 days of Christmas idea? Why not offer a different promotion for each day?
4. Do an e-mail marketing campaign where you tell them about your most successful product or service and offer them a 3 days special offer for this product. This time of the year people expect reviews and are curious about other people’s stories.
5. Every year do you go out and spend money on Black Friday? Why not be the one offering a Black Friday deal or even better, a Black Monday deal online?
6. Send a press release. Tell a case study from one of your customers and how you helped them become more successful. You can submit the press release online using PRweb or many other similar services.
7. Sell a new year planning teleseminar series where you will educate your audience in what they need to do next. You can record the calls and later have a new product to sell. Teleseminars are also great to bring prospects into your funnel. Use Facebook to promote this event.
8. Use the “End of the Year” or “New Year” offer to promote one of your products or services.
9. If you have an e-book or report, give it at no cost on your website and promote as a Thanksgiving offer.
10. Tell people you are doing an end of the year clean up in your office because you need extra space and sell some items at a discount.

Truffle is one of the world’s most desirable culinary treasures? A pound of white truffles costs as much as $4,000. In order to find a truffle in nature you would have to dig some dirt.

It is like a little diamond that you have to find, dig the dirt to be able to enjoy. Marketing your business is not different. You need to do some digging in order to find precious opportunities. Truffle farmers use Beagles to sniff and find the truffles. Smart people have coaches to spot their diamonds.

We get all worried about having a great design for our website and creating products, but do we ever worry with the sales process?
We must master sales and make sure our site is a selling machine.
There is no point in driving traffic to a website if the site is not ready to convert.

Of course, text is still a big part of any website and we need to pay a lot of attention to the copy. After all, copy sells. Just don’t forget that copy can also be in audio and video format. A mix of text, audio and video makes a site a lot more interesting. Remember that being boring is a big sin in business.

The copy on your site must pin point the pain in your customer’s mind, not only his needs or wants, but the pain that if correctly addressed will make him take action.

Next, tell your customer how you can help solve this pain.
Engage your customer and explain how and why you can help.

Think about the objections that could come up in a conversation and address them.

Then tell your customer how they will benefit from your solution, show how others have benefited from it. Don’t be shy with testimonials. Testimonials can be text, audio and videos. Use testimonials everywhere you can, on the product page, home page.

Tell them what action is expected and how they should take this action.

Give them contact information on every page: e-mail, phone number etc.

Always have a place where they can get ion touch with you. Preferably in every page of the site. Let them communicate with you, ask questions, expose their fears.

And, if they want to buy, let them! Don’t make it difficult for people to buy from you. Name buttons clearly, provide a range of payment options and only ask for information that you really need. People don’t like to give you information, so only ask for what is necessary.