Today Jay Abraham and I are in NYC at StartUp 2012… I’m running a contest today on my facebook fan page – all you need to do is guess why we are here… whoever is closest gets free 1/2 hour call with me to focus on their business.
During a recent trip to participate in a high- level “mastermind” meeting hosted by Dan Kennedy…
Dan and I sat down and did a short, casual video interview together…
…where we talked about how I got started in business…
My life as an Internet marketer…
And how I positioned myself as a “Category of One“… by doing the OPPOSITE of what everyone else was doing online.
Here’s the raw, unedited interview right now. You’ll find it very interesting:
Over the last few posts, we’ve been talking about why so many Internet marketers have problems creating free content that makes sales.
If you already watched part 1 and 2 of this series, then you already know the wrong way to create free content.
Now it’s time to take a look at the right way…
In my last post, I gave you some background on why marketers have such a problem creating free content that makes the sales.
I also told you a story of one of my clients who I helped dramatically increase his sales with just a few suggestions on how to change his free content.
If you didn’t watch this first video, I recommend you go back and watch it now.
Today, we’re going to pick up where we left off in this free content series. In the video below, you’ll hear the biggest mistakes that Internet marketers make with free content.
Over the next few posts, I want to talk about an area of marketing that so crucial to succeeding online, yet so many people get it wrong – free content. Specifically, free content that actually makes the sale.
To start off this series, today’s video will introduce you to why so many Internet marketers have problems creating free content that turns prospects into clients.
We spent the last few posts talking about a very important concept to your business – getting clarity. I mention that because it provides a nice segue into what I want to talk about for the next couple of posts.
It’s an area you definitely need clarity on in your business. One where you need to be as clear as you possibly can about what your objective is; what you’re trying to do; what success will look like, etc.
The area I’m talking about is getting clear about your communication with your prospects and your customers or clients.
And when I say communication, it could be anything. It could be emails. It could be a report. It could be videos. It could be blog posts. I mean, you name it. It doesn’t matter. I’m talking about communication in any format.
So first let’s ask, why do you communicate with your prospective market? Well there’s the obvious answer – to make more sales. You want them to buy your stuff.
But that’s not really clarity. There needs to be a deeper reason. And you need clarity on that.
I don’t know how many of you will remember, but in the past I’ve talked about my retail clothing store. And how our goal when a customer came in was not to just sell them clothes, but to sell them on the store as well.
Doing that gave us the opportunity to sell them again and again and again. Had we just focused on selling them the thing they came in for, we would have probably sold it to them anyway, but we wouldn’t have created a new, frequent customer. We would have only created a sale.
So if your answer to why you communicate with your prospects, clients and customers is to make sales, then what you’re doing is narrowing down the potential of what you can get. You’re losing all ability to leverage each and every sale.
What are some of those other clarity goals you might have as you communicate with your prospects, your marketplace, your clients and your customers?
So I’m going to tie up my discussion of clarity today. We’ve spent the last couple issues on it and hopefully it has made some impact on your life and your business.
If you’re a Founders Club or BGS member reading this, you already know that. I’ve stressed the need repeatedly in a number or Founders Club reports I’ve written for you.
We touched on it in the Blueprint Report which helps you get clear about who your prospects are, what they want, who you are, what you want and then helps you build a business to bridge the two.
The Core Concept Report is all about getting clarity on that one message that helps you get what you want and helps get your prospects to become clients, to get what they want. The one message, the one sentence, that boils it all down.
The Core Myth is about getting clarity on the best way to transmit that core concept.
All these things fit together and it’s all about developing clarity so you can be more effective.
So clarity is one of the most important aspects or insights any person can have. And it doesn’t have to be about your business. Whether you’re a business owner, or you work 9 to 5… Whether you’re a student or a professional in the workforce… Whether you’re an artist, a bus driver, a plumber, a college professor…
The most important clarity you can get is about you.
So what about you?
What about clarity of who you are?… What you’re all about?… What it is you want?… And how you’re going to get it?
How much clarity do you have?
If we were to boil it down into more psychological types of phrases or definitions, we’d talk about how clear are you about your purpose, your mission in life, your spiritual beliefs, etc.
How clear are you about your identity, who you are and what you’re all about. How clear are you about your beliefs and your values, which values are most important to you, which beliefs you hold most sacred.
How clear are you about the skills that you bring to the table in your business and what the benefits are of those skills for others? How clear are you right now about the behaviors that are both helping you and hurting you.
You see, the great clarity you have about these elements, the easier it is for you to be authentic.
Because, when you think about it, how can you be authentic if you’re not clear on who you are?
You can’t be authentic unless you’re clear about who you are. And that’s important. Because if you’re going to do video marketing or you’re going to do report writing or any of the type of cerebral type of marketing that ultimately requires you to get your prospects to make some kind of shift, authenticity in yourself helps make that a lot easier.
That’s an area where clarity greatly increases your ability.
And then of course we’ve talked numerous times about clarity about your market; about who your prospects really are and when you’re creating a video or message, any kind of marketing message whatsoever, the clarity about what it is you want them to think, what it is you want them to feel, what is it that you want them ultimately to do.
The metaphor that, from my perspective, sums up whether or not you are operating from a position of clarity is – right now, do you feel more like a lion ready to pounce, just waiting cues you know you need to move forward… OR….are you more like a deer caught in the headlights uncertain, unfocused, confused, worried, afraid of what’s going to happen. Struggling without the clarity of exactly what you need and the exact steps that you need to take.
There are so many quotes about how you’re more powerful than you realize. You’re more powerful than you know. And that’s true when you’re operating with a sense of clarity.
So I wanted to share that clarity with you. How to get the clarity of what you want, clarity of where you currently stand, clarity on anything that is integral to your life. Clarity is a performance enhancer.
It is an igniter of more progress. It’s an accelerator of progress. Because ultimately you’ll know what you need and where you need to go next.
Today we’re going to talk about getting clarity in your projects.
And really, it doesn’t even have to be a major project. I can be a minor project – anything you’re doing that requires several you should be looking to get clarity on.
I believe there are two questions for getting clarity on a project that we can ask.
In other words, when it’s complete, what will it look like? And, what are all the steps involved in getting it done?
Let’s look at these questions separately.
Q: So how do you determine what “done” looks like?
A: The way you surface the answers to that is by asking a series of questions like, “if this project was incredibly successful, how would it turn out?” “If it was everything I wanted it to be, how would I know?” “If this was a smashing success, how would it end up?”
So those are the types of questions that you ask to get extensive clarity about what does done look like. Obviously if it’s anything that is more than just a few steps, it requires that you actually spend a few minutes at the very least writing out your answer to that question so that you can have greater clarity.
Now once you understand that, the next step is to figure out what “doing” looks like. To do this you need to really start listing all the steps that will get you to “done.”
I think I’ve probably shared this before, but what I like to do to determine what “doing” looks like is to brainstorm all the steps.
I don’t try and make it linear – first step, second step, etc. – because if I do that, I box myself in too quickly. So what I try to do is just brainstorm all the steps first.
Then as I’ve kind of exhausted all the steps, then I put them in order. As I put them in order, I realize I might have forgotten certain things.
Once I get all that down, I’m able to put it into a step-by-step plan that will lead me to this outcome that I’ve already defined by determining what would this look like if it was an amazing success.
A Harder Question:
How do you know the questions to ask?
That brings up a more difficult question of how do you know what you need to know, to get clarity on anything?
To answer that, I’m going to go a little bit more global here for a second; a little bit more meta-level.
The answer is really pretty simple, but it’s not that easy to do. I’m talking about the ability for you, as an entrepreneur, to trust your instincts.
Well you see, you’ve been trained ever since you were a child not to trust your instincts; that somehow your instincts were bad or wrong.
When you were a baby you wanted all your toys and your parents made you share them. When you went to school, you might have wanted to stand up and walk around; but you were forced to sit in class and pay attention. If you decided that something was interesting to you if it wasn’t necessarily interesting to your parents or your teachers you might not have been able to study it or get access to it.
You’ve been taught over time to trust outside experts to give you certain answers that ultimately you should be developing yourself.
The bottom line is, and this is just my perspective, because people don’t trust their instincts, they don’t know what it is they want or need.
They end up looking for answers without knowing what it is they need to know.
The problem with getting answers to questions you don’t know.
So they end up joining a program, they buy some books, they listen to an audio but they’re not really clear what it is they’re hoping to get out of it. So they go to wherever it is they’re going; the program, the audio, the course, the book, etc. hoping to find out what’s there and what potentially they need as opposed to walking in knowing exactly what they need and what they’re there for.
When you don’t trust your instincts you end up deferring to others to tell you more and more of what you need for the clarity. Ultimately you’re not getting your own clarity. You’re getting other people’s clarity.
Most of things that you want right now, whether you really want them or not, have been ingrained in you. Someone else has told you that you need to have it. It’s obvious what those things are. You want more money. You want a good relationship with someone who loves you. You want a good business that makes you feel like you’re making a contribution and getting the security and freedom that you desire.
So here’s another big question. Do you think you need something that you currently don’t have in order to get something you want? Do you think you need something that you don’t have right now in order to get more money; in order to have a good relationship with someone who loves you; in order to have a good business where you feel like you’re making a contribution?
And if you do feel you need something, what is it exactly? If you don’t know what it is you need to have in order to get that, how will you ever find it?
Unless you’re hoping that someone else takes responsibility for knowing what it is you need and therefore giving it to you. That is a very dangerous position to put yourself in.
I’ll share a personal story about that in the next post.
I want to share one final marketing tactic with you in this post.
Like I mentioned in your last post, a consulting client of mine – Agora Publishing – is set to break the $600 million mark this year. Much of that success is due to this technique I want to share with you now.
It’s a powerful technique that will let you leverage your current assets to their maximum potential.
In internet marketing, when a promotion’s success started to wane and an entrepreneur felt they needed a new one, they usually created a new product to go with it.
New promotion = New product.
Rather than creating a new product every time they need a new promotion, Agora keeps the same product and just creates a new promotion around it. If they have to, they might create a new premium, some kind of bonus that they’ll attach to some need, desire, or want on the part of their prospect that ties back into their product.
That may sound simplistic, but it’s not. And the key secret to their massive success is how they keep each new promotion fresh and interesting to their list while still promoting the same product over and over.
I’m going to show you how you can do what they do.
We all make this mistake. I’m sure that you could find numerous examples where I’ve made it myself. But nonetheless it is important and something you need to keep in mind when creating a marketing message.
I’m talking about the power of certain words you use.
You see, there are words that increase the chances of a sale and there are words that will work against you in that regard. Let’s start with the biggest offender.
Buy is a word that is simply not ideal. People don’t like to be sold, so telling them to buy is a big turn off for your prospect.
So what can you use instead?
How about “claim?” Think about:
Discover how you can claim your special report
…as opposed to:
Buy your special report here.
Can you see and hear the difference?
You can use the word “invest.“. For example:
Your investment in this special report is backed by our iron-clad guarantee.
Or how about “enroll“…
When you enroll to get the information in this special report…
This isn’t the be-all-end-all list, but you can see how they are an improvement over the word “buy.”
Another word that can always be generally improved upon is “learn.”
People generally don’t like to learn. Learning is work. People much prefer to “discover.” Discovering is exciting. It implies “newness” or something that maybe no one else has seen or heard of before.
Or even better, if you are talking in kind of conversational tone, you could say “find out.” “Here’s how you can find out…”
Both words are less threatening to the prospect.
I sometimes see people use the word “things” in sales letters. As in “The five things you need to become…”
“Things” is a weak word. It’s very important to be specific in your marketing message. “Things” is just too vague. Tips, tricks, techniques, insights, secrets, strategies, insider tactics, etc. are all much better options than using “things.“
This list could go on forever. And I’m not going to spend the entire post trying to create a comprehensive list. Suffice to know and understand that you have to be aware of the words you are using in your marketing.
If your words imply work on the part of your prospect or anything confrontational (like the “buy” example,) you should think twice about using a different word in its place.
Now, I want to share one more important marketing concept with you.
I’ve saved it for last because it can be immensely powerful. It can really be your ticket to multiplying how profitable, how big, how successful your business can be. And also accelerate how fast you get to your goals.
But before I get into it, I want to kind of give you the right context here. There are two important pieces of information that I want to share with you that I think will help you appreciate the value that I’m about to give you.
The first is from Porter Stansberry. Porter runs the largest division of Agora – Stansberry & Associates. His division has grown to nine figures in a very short period of time. That’s over $100 million dollars. Thanks to his division alone, Agora will break $600 million this year.
Porter once told me that people buy for emotional reasons, but those emotional reasons never get full satisfied. That’s important. Once you know what a buyer has bought in the past, you have a pretty good idea of what they will buy in the future.
So for example, I buy a lot of books. There are a lot of good business reasons why I buy them. But there’s also some emotional baggage I carry around.
Let’s say I buy all these books because my mother and father thought I was stupid. That’s not true but let’s just say that it was as an example. If that were the case, then I’m really buying all these books because I’m unconsciously I’m trying to prove that I’m smart.
Well if that’s the case, there is no book that’s ever going to fill that emotional need. There’s never going to be a book that I buy, read, and say, “Ah ha! Now I’m smart! I don’t have to buy any more books ever again.”
It’s that emotional need that never gets satisfied that a marketer can tap into time and time again. That’s important to realize. I think it’s pretty profound actually.
And what’s more, we’re all subject to these emotional needs in some form or another.
I want you to think about that for the next couple days.
What kind of emotional needs might prospects in your market have that you would be able to fill. Make a short list. When I come back in the next post, I’m going to expand on this in much greater detail.
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