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The IMC Insider
Helping Real People
create wealth and freedom with Internet businesses since
1998 |
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Editorial: Introducing The IMC Insider!
By Derek Gehl
 Welcome to the first edition of my brand-new newsletter, "The IMC Insider"!
If you've been subscribed to IMC's Marketing Tips newsletter
for the last nine years, you may be wondering how I can
call this a "first" edition.
Well, it's pretty darned simple... As you'll see, I've changed the entire look and layout of the newsletter.
I've shortened the article length -- but increased the number of articles... I've invited my team of experts to start contributing articles on their particular areas of expertise... and I've made it easier for you to tell me EXACTLY what you think about each article, so I can make sure we always give you the kind of valuable, ACTIONABLE information you're looking for.
I've even changed the newsletter's name!
And all of these changes (except the new name) came directly from the suggestions YOU gave me in last week's newsletter survey. As of today, 3,362 of you have completed the survey, telling me exactly what you want from this newsletter... and now I'm going to do my best to give it to you.
From this day forward, in every single edition I promise to give you...
- Short, to-the-point articles that offer you immediate value! No fluff... just hard-hitting advice you can put to work for your business right away.
- The latest proven strategies from my team of experts -- based on the real-world testing they're doing on the frontline of Internet marketing.
- Strategies for both advanced Internet business owners and beginners alike! Whether you're still a little wet behind the ears or have been working in the Internet marketing trenches since the beginning of 'Internet time'... there'll be massive value for everyone.
I am going to be blunt... I am absolutely, totally and completely
dedicated to making sure that you're on the edge of
your seat waiting for this newsletter every
week.
In fact, you should stop what you are doing right now
and add my email address (derekgehl@marketingtips.com)
to your address book so you…
Never miss all of the
FREE VALUABLE INFORMATION
I'm going to give you!
Speaking of free information, when I asked you to take part in my survey last week, I made you a promise. I said I'd share the survey results with you so you could apply the information to YOUR online business as well.
I'll be revealing the results of that survey in just a moment... But first, I wanted to let you know what ELSE you'll be finding in this issue:
Mitch Tarr, IMC's Vice President of Marketing, is going to tell you the top 5 things you need to know about testing and tracking in order to make sure your online business is functioning at peak performance levels.
Then we'll show you how online musician Aaron Bradley did some testing and tweaking of his own -- and ended up growing his revenues by 300%!
So enjoy the first edition of our newsletter! Remember, this newsletter is a community resource -- it's YOUR newsletter just as much as it's mine.
If there's something you want to see in this newsletter...
something you particularly like or DON'T like about
this brand-new format... or some particular topic or
strategy you want to learn more about, then go to my
blog and tell me about it!
After all, if I'm not giving you EXACTLY what you're hoping to find in this newsletter, then I'm not doing my job.
Have a great week!
Derek Gehl
P.S. How do you like the new name? Which do you like better,
"The IMC Insider" or our old name, "Marketing
Tips"? If you have a preference, please tell me
about it on my
blog. I'm dying to know what you think!
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Survey results: Discover the issues that matter most to YOU!
By Derek Gehl
My team and I were absolutely blown away by the response we got to last week's newsletter survey.
Usually when we run a survey, we offer a free gift such as an eBook to encourage people to take part in it. This time -- because we'd just given away a free eBook the week before -- we decided not to offer a free prize. As a result, we figured we'd be lucky if we got 1,000 responses.
Well, as I said, 3,362 of you weighed in with your thoughts -- and the information you gave us was invaluable.
Thanks to you, we now have a much better idea of exactly who you are and where you are in your business-growing efforts -- and we also know exactly what kind of advice and information you want from us.
(Like I've always said, "If you want to know what your customers and subscribers want from you, just ASK!")
And we thought it would be valuable for YOU to have this information, too -- so you can put it to work for your business.
Here's what you told us about yourselves:
- 21.9% of you are subscribed to 10+ newsletters
- 52.1% of you are subscribed to 5 or fewer newsletters
- 69.2% find three or fewer newsletters to be actually helpful
- The five newsletter features you're most interested
in are:
- Advanced "how-to" articles (76.6%)
- Basic "how-to" articles (75.3%)
- "Ask the Expert" columns (50.4%)
- Case studies (47%)
- Industry Update news (43.8%)
- In terms of how you want your newsletters formatted:
- 51.1% of you prefer to receive your newsletters
in simple HTML
- 19.8% prefer plain text
- 14.7% want HTML with all the "bells and
whistles"
If you have your own newsletter -- and have been delivering it in plain text up until now -- you might want to start experimenting with HTML. You should also pay attention to the kind of articles you're sending your list, to make sure you're giving them the kind of information they're looking for.
(And if you aren't sure what they're looking for, I suggest you send them a survey and ASK them -- after all, it worked for
me! :)
As for where you are in your business-building efforts,
here's what you had to say:
- 31.2% have your own website (but it's not making any money)
- 17.7% have websites that are making money
- 5.4% are actually earning a full-time income with a site
- 21.1% are in the process of building a website
- 18.4% are planning to build one soon
We were really surprised to see how many of you actually had your own websites or were in the process of building one. That's awesome! Lots of you have already taken action and have experienced some level of success, which shows you really ARE motivated to take it to the next level.
You also named a lot of different newsletters you enjoy
reading (in addition to ours -- thanks for all your positive
comments!). The ones that kept on cropping up most often
in the results were:
- Dan Kennedy's newsletter
- Joe Vitale's "New You Can Use"
- Brian Tracy's newsletter
- Early To Rise
- Jay Abraham's newsletter
- Dr. Mercola's newsletter
If you're not subscribed to any of the above newsletters, you might want to check them out to see why other people find them so valuable.
Finally, in terms of the challenges you're facing with
your business-building efforts RIGHT NOW, the top 10 problems
that kept cropping up were:
- How to get started
- How to find a good niche/product to sell
- How to get more potential buyers to your site
- How to get more opt-ins and subscribers
- How to increase conversion rates (in other words
-- turn visitors into BUYERS)
- How to get a good search engine ranking
- How to write engaging content for your site
- How to determine if an affiliate program is a scam
or not
- How to make sure your emails are actually getting
delivered and opened
- And finally, how to find the TIME to get things
done!
Going forward, you can expect to see more articles from me offering
usable "how-to" advice that will help you deal
with those problems and much more. If there's some other
topic you'd like me to address in this newsletter, please
let me know! Leave your suggestions on my
blog and I'll do my best to address them in upcoming
issues.
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Want to grow? Then you've got to test
By Mitch Tarr
At IMC, our entire philosophy is based on the principle of testing EVERYTHING you do -- and tracking the results.
It's the only way to keep track of what you're doing right with your online business, and what you need to improve.
For example, let's say you
want to make some changes to the layout of your web site. Obviously, you don't want to make changes just for the heck of it. Any changes you make should be for one main purpose: to do a better job of converting visitors into customers.
But if you don't test the new version vs. the old version, how will you know if the changes you make actually DO improve the performance of your website? And if you don't track the results of your testing, how will you be able to know exactly which changes had the greatest effect?
Simply put, if you don't test and track every single change you make to your site... every promotion you run... and every traffic generation strategy you try... you're going to be shooting in the dark every time.
And there's absolutely no way of knowing what you're going to hit.
So here's my list of the top 5 things you absolutely MUST know about testing and tracking in order to keep your business on target.
1. Only test ONE thing at a time
When it
comes to testing, the most important thing to remember is this: KEEP IT
SIMPLE.
Make sure you only test one thing at a time. It's the only way you'll ever know exactly which change is causing which effect.
Say you want to increase the number of opt-ins on your site. There are lots of different things you could test to make this happen.
You could try putting your opt-in form in a different location on your site. You could change the wording of your opt-in offer. You could even change the offer itself! (For example, you could try offering a gift with the subscription instead of just a free newsletter.)
But if you made all these changes at ONCE and your opt-in numbers began to skyrocket, how would you know which change was responsible? Besides, one of these changes could actually be having a negative impact -- and you'd never even realize it!
If you have no way of knowing, then the next time you change your opt-in offer, you're back to square one.
2. The MOST important numbers you need to know
To keep on top of your website performance you need to know TWO main numbers: the number of visitors you get and the number of sales you make in any given period. That way, you can figure out exactly how many visitors you need to attract to your site in order to make a sale.
Here's how you do it:
Let's say you got 300 visitors to your site in one day and you made 12 sales. Simply divide the number of visitors by the number of sales like this: 300/12 = 25.
For every 25 visitors you got that day, you made 1 sale. (Expressed as a percentage, this means your conversion rate was 4%, as 1/25 = 0.04)
If that conversion rate remains steady, then you can expect to make one sale for every 25 visitors. If you get 100 visitors, you'll make 4 sales. If you get 1000 visitors, you should make 40 sales.
It's
a simple conversion -- but it's something everyone should
know. It tells you EXACTLY how well your website is doing its job.
If that conversion rate drops for some reason, it could mean there's a problem with your website -- and you should do a thorough examination of it right away.
On the other hand, if it spikes, then you should try to figure out why more visitors are suddenly buying your products -- so you can repeat this success!
3. Test the most important things FIRST
If your site sells more than one product, then you should be tracking the conversion rate for each product separately. Maybe your site is doing a great job at selling one product, but a lousy job at selling another. This is something you need to know, so you can figure out what's going right in the first case and what's going wrong in the second.
BUT: Don't start off trying to track 30 things at once! Focus on your lead money makers first, as they'll have the greatest impact on your business.
4. Think in terms of RATIOS as opposed to ABSOLUTES
By that I simply mean, think in terms of percentages, not whole numbers.
Instead of thinking, "Hey, I made 25 sales last week!" -- think, "Hey,
I made 25 sales per 1000 visitors last week!"
Knowing you made 25 sales is nice -- but it doesn't tell you anything
by itself.
If you know you made 25 sales per 1000 visitors, however, you know your
conversion rate is 2.5%. (In other words, 2.5% of all your visitors last week bought something from you.) If it was a normal week, then going
forward you can expect that 2.5% of all your customers will probably
buy something.
This kind of knowledge is ESSENTIAL if you want to forecast how much
revenue you're going to make in any given time period. It also gives
you a baseline number that you can refer back to when testing different
elements of your web site in order to grow your income bigger.
For example: imagine if you changed the headline of your sales page
this morning -- and you ended up making 25 sales, just like you did
yesterday. Does that mean that the change to your headline had no
effect on your sales numbers?
Not necessarily.
Maybe you only got 100 visitors to your site today, instead of 1000.
That means your conversion rate today is actually 25% -- which is HUGE!
That means 1 in every 4 people is taking action on your site. Wow. That
must have been some headline you wrote.
(However, you really should find out why you only got 100 visitors to
your site today. Once you bring that number back up to 1000, then if
your conversion rate stays the same, you'll be making 250 sales a day!)
5. Track your conversions by SOURCE
It's not just enough to know what your conversion rate is. You've got to know where your best-converting visitors are coming from.
For example, are your most qualified visitors coming from pay-per-click ads you're running through Yahoo Search Marketing? Or are they coming from your organic listing on Google -- or maybe your affiliate network?
This is something you need to know! It'll help you understand where
your most lucrative stream of traffic is coming from -- so you can
focus your efforts there and work on growing those high-converting
traffic numbers even bigger.
So in a nutshell, those are the top 5 things you need to know about testing and tracking in order to make sure you're getting the best results from your web site.
Finally, I just wanted to point out that you shouldn't worry about what the precise definition of a "unique visitor" actually is. (Different software tracking packages actually track unique visitors a bit differently) Whether your software tracks the same way as someone else's doesn't really matter. But what DOES matter is whether or not you count the same numbers in the same way every day.
As long as YOUR definition of a "unique visitor" remains consistent from one day to the next, then your numbers will always give you meaningful results.
[Ed. note: Mitch Tarr is IMC's Vice President of Marketing.
He's going to be Derek's featured guest during the next
Internet
Entrepreneur Club tele-seminar on April 11th, and
will be talking about the latest proven email marketing
strategies during that call.]
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Discover how Aaron Bradley of AaronBeats.com boosted his revenues by 300% -- in just one month!
By Jennifer Boulet
Anyone who thinks that artistic creativity and solid business sense can't go hand in hand should meet Aaron Bradley of AaronBeats.com.
Aaron is a multi-instrument playing musician and producer who sells Hip Hop and R&B beats to musicians who want to make their songs sound more professional. He's been running his site for two years now, and is already doing very well for himself -- earning a five-figure income some months.
And get this: Aaron is only 21 years old!
Aaron offers two different categories of beats through his site: "exclusive" beats he records for the sole use of an individual artist, and "non-exclusive" beats any artist can download automatically from his site for a fee.
Aaron was clearly doing a lot of things right with
his site... but he knew there was still lots of room
for improvement. That's why he joined IMC's Internet
Entrepreneur Club at the beginning of February this
year.
His main goal was to increase the amount of revenues his "non-exclusive" beats were pulling in. (A good idea -- he'd fully automated the sale process for the non-exclusive beats, so selling MORE of them wouldn't take up any more of his time at all!)
Aaron came to the Internet Entrepreneur Club forum burning with questions on how he could improve his site's performance. Our team of experts, together with some of our more advanced Club members, gave him suggestions on how to improve his headline, salescopy, and overall site design.
Aaron immediately got to work and completely revamped his site, based on the input he was getting from our experts. And by February 28th, he'd already increased revenues coming from the sale of his "non-exclusive" beats by 300%!
Here are some of the suggestions he acted on:
- His original site had distracting animation and
loud music that started playing as soon as visitors
arrived on his site. We suggested he remove these
elements so his visitors could focus on his offer,
instead.
- His original copy was written in a light font against
a dark background, making it difficult to read. We
told him to use black text against a white background
instead. (It might seem boring from a design perspective,
but in our experience, black text on a white background
ALWAYS performs best!)
- His headline emphasized features more than benefits.
- His salescopy was too focused on Aaron and the services
he offered. There wasn't enough emphasis on his visitors
and how they could benefit from buying his
products. (Remember: the #1 question on your potential
buyers' minds is, "What's in it for ME?")
- His copy was written in long paragraphs, which had
a negative impact on its readability.
- His site had LOTS of objects and images which were
extremely large, which meant his site took at least
5 seconds to load (in Internet time, that's almost
an eternity). We told him to decrease the number of
graphics and objects and to optimize the ones that
remained, so his site would load faster.
And the result of all the changes he made? Here's what Aaron
had to say on February 28th: "Instead of people
buying just one beat for $29.25, I had people spend
as much as $300 in a single order... I did more than
300% more revenue than last month!"
Here are a couple of links to earlier versions of Aaron's
website, so you can see the kind of changes he was experimenting
with:
http://AaronBeats.com/cool.htm
AaronBeats.com/indexbluegrey.html
And here's the link to his most recent -- and best-performing
site so far:
AaronBeats.com
You can read the whole forum thread yourself -- and
check out the exact advice Aaron was visiting, by clicking
here.
(One thing: the comments in this discussion thread are
arranged with the newest appearing first. Make sure
you're starting at the very beginning of the thread
by scrolling down to the bottom of page 3 and going
up from there.)
As you read through the suggestions on the thread, ask
yourself if you're making any of the same mistakes that
Aaron was making with his.
And if you don't have your own web site yet, or are
in the process of building one, keep our experts' advice
in mind -- that way, you can avoid the pitfalls and
set your site up right the first time!
[Ed. note: Jennifer Boulet is a professional copywriter
and IMC expert moderator in the Internet
Entrepreneur Club forums.]
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Meet the IMC
team of experts
Meet the IMC team of experts – join us
for an exclusive two-day "Wealth-Building Bootcamp,"
coming soon to a city near you!
For two full days in each of the cities listed below,
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... Using the most current, most advanced Internet marketing
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to generate over $60,000,000 in online sales.
Upcoming Bootcamps:
New
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To claim your tickets, click on the links above -- or call my team, who will be happy to answer any of your questions about these exclusive events -- at 1-800-595-9855.
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Reprint
IMC's up-to-the-minute marketing advice on YOUR website
or blog -- free!
Click
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Do you have a
question for Derek Gehl?
Drop him a line at questionsforderek@marketingtips.com -- and you might see your question answered in an upcoming issue of The IMC Insider!
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Do
you have an idea or comment you'd like to share with
the IMC community?
Leave a comment on Derek's blog: http://blog.marketingtips.com/derek/
And let's get the conversation started! |
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