May 08, 2002

Table of Contents

Welcome

Quote of the Week

Administrative Stuff

Staff Article - LEARNING FROM THE SUCCESS OF OTHERS
Marketing Tip of the Week

Guest Article -  APPLYING PSYCHOLOGY TO INTERNET MARKETING
Parting Comments

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Quote of the Week

The person who goes farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The sure-thing boat never gets far from shore.

- Dale Carnegie

Administrative Stuff

FREE EXPOSURE FOR YOUR BUSINESS!

Just send your email to mailto:mybiz@peakconsultinginc.com with "Info on my business" in the subject line. Give us a brief description of your business and your URL and we'll publish it.  (If your business is promoting affiliate programs, you may submit your affiliate programs in lieu of your website).

Staff Article

LEARNING FROM THE SUCCESS OF OTHERS

by: Cary Christian

Every week I have the opportunity to speak with someone who wants to expand their business activities online. There is almost always a common thread among these people: confusion about how to market their business to make it grow.

All of the marketing "gurus" will tell you that you need to read constantly. Some will go so far as to say you need to read everything you can get your hands on! I don't think I would go that far because there are "nuggets" out there that aren't gold, if you get my drift.

But you do need to read, and most of you do. That is where the confusion starts creeping in for some people. There are so many different ways to market online and there are proponents lined up solidly behind each one of them telling you that's the way to go.

I was thinking earlier about Gary Shawkey's and Brian Garvin's new book (our featured resource this week. See above). It explains in detail how Brian became the marketing dynamo he is and how you can use his experience to find your own road to success. I'm not going to give away any of the contents of the book here, but I do have some observations I've developed watching Brian's rise to fame that I'd like to share with you.

Before I start, however, let me say that this article is not aimed only at people who promote affiliate programs. Yes, Brian is known for his success at promoting affiliate programs, but he makes twice as much per year promoting his own more traditional businesses. So the marketing concepts in play here are equally applicable to those of you who run more traditional businesses.

OBSERVATION 1 - DON'T MAKE UNFAIR COMPARISONS

My first observation is that you can't succeed if you're going to compare yourself to Brian, or any other successful marketer, and tell yourself you could never be like them. They all started from nothing and built their businesses one piece at a time, and you can, too.

At the same time, don't tell yourself you can accomplish the same thing in an unreasonably short period of time. You're being unfair to yourself either way.

People are generally an impatient lot. Many of those I have talked to have read about someone achieving great things and they tend to believe they should be able to do the same thing relatively quickly. As a result, they try to do too many things at once. They lose organization and focus and never seem to complete anything they start in a reasonable time period, or they simply give up too soon. This type of activity fosters confusion more than anything else.

Study the marketing techniques used by successful marketers and test them thoroughly with your own products, services or programs. Once you begin finding marketing sources that will work for you, begin implementing them one at a time. Focus on each one and give it the full benefit of your creativity and effort before moving on to another. Accept the fact that it will take time and do your best to curb your impatience.

OBSERVATION 2 - UNDERSTAND THAT IT'S MORE THAN JUST MARKETING

No matter how good the marketing source is, you will not achieve the results you are seeking if your product is not valuable and worthwhile to your target market. It is your job to build this value first. Then marketing can be used to create demand based on the value you've built into the product.

Be brutally honest with yourself when it comes to evaluating your own products. This can be very difficult. Ask for the opinions of others and steel yourself against feelings of resentment if their opinions aren't what you want them to be. Take their criticisms and use them to make your products the best on the market.

If you're selling other people's products, make sure you do your research and be absolutely sure they're worthy of your time and energy. One thing you will find common to the "gurus" you read about is that they rarely back a poor product. On the rare occasion they have, they have lost money, too!

You also need to understand that these "gurus" have built a following. When they introduce a product or start promoting a new program, lots of people jump on the bandwagon with them simply because of who they are. You can build this kind of following, too, but it will take time.

OBSERVATION 3 - LOOK FOR PARALLELS

Once a marketing "guru" tells all, remember that he has "told all" to many thousands of other people like you. There will be tons of clones out there doing exactly as the "guru" advised. They will find it doesn't work so well simply because of the sheer numbers of people all using the same techniques, and many of them for the same products.

Once all these golden nuggets are made public they lose some of their effectiveness. But only if taken too literally! Use your creativity and draw parallels instead. Understand why the "guru's" techniques work and develop your own variations that are finely tuned to your product.

Understand also that you can learn from the success of others even if they are selling vastly different products. Maybe you'll even learn more since the product differences will force you to look for parallels.

OBSERVATION 4 - FIND A WAY TO DO THINGS DIFFERENTLY

We learned a lot by watching Brian with his marketing of the "Secrets of the Big Dogs" program. For those of you who are not familiar with the program, let me digress a moment.

The Big Dogs program centers around an ebook that provides marketing training primarily on hosted FFA pages for marketing purposes. As part of the program, you join 13 different income-producing programs that are promoted under the Big Dog umbrella. About nine of those are FFA systems. As people join Big Dogs under you they also join the 13 programs and you earn money each month from each program. The FFA pages provide you with about 600,000 leads per month to use for marketing.

So several thousand people promoted Big Dogs using these FFA leads with predictable results. Too many people using the same lead sources yields very poor sales. But Brian made a killing! How? Simple. He didn't use the FFA leads to promote the program! Instead he created a separate web site to promote the program and used hundreds of other marketing sources which he eventually placed on a website made available to his signups, and later to anyone else in the program.

You might want to take a look at this site since it really does contain a lot of good resources. Look at the following page as an example: http://www.bigdogpit.com/adv-solos.html  . You can navigate the rest of the site from there.

This is the essence of finding a way to do things differently. Essentially, Brian added value to the program by providing his recruits with the tools they needed to succeed. Their success translated into money in his pockets.

SUMMARY

Take the time to learn from those who are successful at Internet marketing, but place your own stamp of originality on your efforts. Take your time, focus completely on the tasks at hand, and build your business patiently, one step at a time.


Copyright (c) 2002

Marketing Tip of the Week

In keeping with our theme of business marketing strategies . . . for a limited time you can get a month's free access to Cory Rudl's "Secrets to their Success" website. It's a good way to see real life examples of tested, proven strategies that real businesses have already shown to be enormously successful. You've got nothing to lose and you might learn something important! Sign up free here:

http://dynamic.secretstotheirsuccess.com/t.cgi/649034/free
 

Guest Article

APPLYING PSYCHOLOGY TO INTERNET MARKETING

By Terry Dean
 

The best advertising writers are those who have some knowledge of psychology. We are not dealing with "new" people online. We are dealing with the same people who have the same desires they have always had.

The style changes a little online, but the same approaches that worked one hundred years ago will also work today. Don't forget that.

Advertising mediums change. Effective advertising does not, because effective advertising is based on a knowledge of human nature.

Remember the first principle of advertising. Your prospects are inherently selfish. They will ask one question of everything your web site does, "What's In it for Me?"

That is the first question you have to answer with your web site. It has to tell and show your visitors what's in it for them. What would they get out of ordering from your site that isn't available anywhere else?

Below are four aspects to the human make-up which you can and should use throughout your Internet advertising.

1. Curiosity is a powerful motivation.

Just about every information product you see advertised has the word "Secrets" in the ad somewhere. People are afraid to miss out on something. They are curious to find out just what those secrets may be.

Use this to your advantage. With information products, I love to write the sales letters so that they hit on the curiosity hot button. You can take advantage of this factor of human nature by providing some of the results which were achieved through your information system, but not actually revealing what the system specifically is.

You will notice that I do this a lot in the bullets that I create to go in the sales letter. They will tell you that there are 3 insider secrets to ______, but they won't tell you what the 3 secrets are.

The purpose of this is the pull on the curiosity of the reader...and cause them to order.

2. Extravagance at a bargain price.

People want to keep up with the Jones'. They want the absolute best, but they want to feel like they got it at a bargain price. No one wants to feel that they paid too much for anything. So, you need to give them an impressive value at a bargain price.

In many products and cases, this simply boils down to explaining the exact process it took to create the product. For example, with an information product, it may have taken you 5 years of research and $20,000 in testing to come up with the information in this product. If so, tell them about it.

When your company builds a widget, it might search the country for the best wood available. Half of the wood in the factory is rejected. You have over 60 people who actually work on the wood to create the product you sell (in the ad itself you would tell people what many of them do), and you may have 5 people who put it through a strict 13 step test to assure it's quality.

Even if all of your competitor's go through the exact process you do to create the product, it will still be effective for you to tell the story to your customers. This is called preemptive advertising. The person who first tells the story is the one who garners the trade. Anyone else who seeks to follow them ends up looking only as a copycat, not the originator of the system.

Once the customer understood the value involved in the product, they were glad to be able to purchase it at such a bargain price.

What process does your product go through that will add a value to it in your customer's eyes?

3. Fear of Failure and of Making the Wrong Decision

This is the biggest barrier that we have to overcome throughout the selling process. People are afraid they are going to make a bad decision in buying your product. They are afraid you are going to rip them off and not provide them with the product they are expecting.

Everything that you say as an advertiser is immediately looked at with a grain of salt. People have been lied to before when it comes to advertising, so they look at your ads wondering if you are any different. Unless you find a way to overcome this fear of "being taken" in your prospect's eyes, you are not going to close a majority of sales.

There are basically two aspects to overcoming this resistance. The first way is by presenting and adding credibility to your ads. Credibility is produced through your "proof" and through the testimonials which you provide.

It is often said that salespeople without testimonials have skinny children. It is next to impossible to build the credibility you need in the eyes of your prospects without testimonials.

The second way to overcome this resistance is by giving a risk free guarantee or a better than risk free guarantee. Let your prospects know that they can return then package for any reason.

Plus, give them several bonuses in the package which they can keep even if they return the package for a full refund.

An even better method of overcoming this buyer's resistance is by allowing them to try out the package for free, and having them pay for it at the end of the trial period. Which one you rather buy from? Would you rather buy from the person who gives you the horse to try out for a week and allows you to pay later...or the person who requires up-front payment?

Think about ways where you can overcome the buyer's resistance by offering a more risk free proposition than all of our competitors.

4. Exclusivity

People like to get a "special" deal which is made just for them. They like to be told that they are special. They like to have their names mentioned. They like to have their names engraved on the objects that they purchase.

I have learned how to apply this factor to my own sales. I run a subscriber only special to my 30,000 ezine subscribers now once a month...People love it. They are getting something for a special price or with a special bonus that isn't available to the general public. They are getting it just because they are one of my newsletter subscribers.

All successful Joint Ventures are also based on this element of exclusivity. A special deal was created with the list owners partner ONLY for their customers. No outsider can participate. The list owner cares so much about their list members that they negotiated to get them this special price or special deal. These endorsed types of mailings have been known to produce sales rates as high as 10% - 20%...which is completely unheard of in any other venture.

"FREE" without an understanding of the value is actually dangerous.

Along the same lines, the word "FREE" is actually being overdone online. To some people it appears that everything is free online. Using the word "Free" without explaining the actual value involved does not profit you according to final sales figures.

When you are giving away a freebie from your site, it isn't your goal to just attract visitors I hope. You are not after freebie seekers. Your final goal should be to sell more of your products and services to your visitors. This is not accomplished through just handing out the most freebies.

This is accomplished through explaining the value of your products and services...then offering the freebie. Claude Hopkins recorded that even back in his time you should never offer a sample to anyone unless you have had the chance to tell them your product story.

Unless you have actually had a chance to show them the value of your offering, it could possibly diminish the value of your actual product.

Tell your prospects the actual value of the freebie. Then, tell them "why" you are offering it free. If you just listed the value at $97, but never told them why it was worth $97 or why you are giving it to them free, then your statement is worthless. You must both explain why the free product is worth $97 and why you are giving it to them for free. Tell them that you know letting them use it for free will get them hooked and that they will keep coming back for more. Tell them why it is free...or don't offer it at all.

This is why there is so much confusion online concerning giving freebies away at web sites. Some experts recommend giving away freebies. Some recommend that you don't give anything away. It is all a matter of understanding and showing the "VALUE" that you are giving away for free...and if it brings your visitor back to order from you. The ordering process is what you are after.

Remember the marketing statement, "Tell me why, and then I'll buy."


-----------------

Terry Dean, a 5 year veteran of Internet marketing, will Take You By The Hand and Show You Exact Results of All the Internet Marketing Techniques he tests and Uses Every Single Month" Click here to Find Out More:
http://www.peakconsultinginc.com/nbt.htm

Parting Comments

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