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Saturday, December 8, 2012

Landing Page Videos: What Do You Say?

Videos on landing pages and "video sales letters" have become super popular in the past year or so. When technology shifted and making videos became a LOT easier, videos became a new tool anyone can use to build a greater connection to an audience.

Having a video on your landing page or your homepage can cultivate a more personal, engaging experience for your website visitor. Not only can they read the text, but with a video, they can hear and see visuals to compliment it. If you're talking into the camera, they can also get to meet you. Because so much is taken in from first impressions, this gives you an opportunity to make a more lasting impression than text alone can.

Videos are also entertaining. Whether simple and goofy or professional and flashy, videos entertain as much as they can inform.

With that in mind, here's a few tips to guide you in making a compelling video for your landing page or homepage.

9 Elements of a Successful Landing Page Video

1. Grab the Viewer's Attention On the First Slide - Traditional squeeze pages have headlines that function as attention magnets for their visitors. In video, you may or may not have a text headline on the page. But you can add text to a slide and use that as your thumbnail on your video.

This acts as a headline because it's the most prominent visual that people will see once they enter your video squeeze page.

2. Establish the problem - Next, to really connect quickly to your audience, the key is to talk about THEM, not you. You want to acknowledge where they're at: what their problem is, how they got there, why they are stuck.

As humans, we have 2 motivating forces in our lives: to increase pleasure and to decrease pain. Some of us react more to one or the other--but we all respond to both. By identifying the problem that your viewer is facing as well as what they want to happen if the problem was fixed, you demonstrate to the viewer that you "get" them. This builds rapport. If you do it authentically, this can really catch attention right from the beginning.

Problems can be anything from weight loss difficulties, struggles in search engine optimization or even the inability to land a date. The problem you describe needs to be relevant to the statement you showed in the beginning of the video.

3. Put the problem into context -This might be what you call "twisting the knife"... it's emphasizing the pain the viewer is in because of their problem, then describing the result that will happen if they don't fix the problem. This is painting the picture of the nightmare future they DON'T want, to increase the importance of finding a solution to the problem.

4. Introduce the solution - After introducing the problem and giving your viewers a more aggravated perspective of it, it's time for your video squeeze page to introduce the solution.

This is when you present your free content that will help them with their problem. This free content is something you've created to help your prospects with this problem you've identified. It can be a free report, free video training, an app, a checklist, an ebook, whatever. As long as it's something that's of value to your market and you're giving it away free of charge, it's a compelling element that will drive the viewer to give you their email for it.

You want to be clear on what they're getting and why it's valuable to fixing their problem. It should be able to give your viewers a sense of hope and leave them with a yearning to find out more about you, your product or services.

5. State the features, advantages, and benefits - This is the part where you get into more detail about your free content. Features are the definite attributes what it is they're getting, like the number of pages, its total length if it's a video, its size if it's a physical product, and so on. Advantages, on the other hand, are qualities that make your content superior to others. Meanwhile, benefits are the end positive results of the features and advantages when they go to work for your prospects.

6. Issue a strong call to action - If your viewers are still watching your video after you've stated the features, advantages, and benefits of your free content, there's a good chance that you've already made a good case and you can now ask them to opt in. Tell them how to do just that by issuing a strong, clear and easy-to-understand call to action.

In a video squeeze page, this is very important. People will sometimes be clueless as to how they can get whatever it is you're offering them, so they need to be given instructions. Calls to action are usually as brief as "enter your email address in the field below and click the 'Get Instant Access' button to receive your free whitepaper." The call to action in the video should then be supplemented with a brief phrase on the call to action button for good measure.

7. Establish authority - Sometimes, your content alone won't be enough. You need to establish authority with the viewer as to why YOU are qualified to be the source for their problem's solution. Why do you understand them? What experience do you have? How qualified are you to be creating the content that will help them?

8. Set the deadline - Unless people have a reason to act fast, they often won't. If you can use scarcity, you can compel them to take action NOW instead of waiting and never doing so. Say that you're limiting to only a certain number of downloads, or only offering for a week, or offering a bonus to the first 100 sign ups. This creates more excitement so they don't miss on the opportunity you are giving them.

9. Issue a final call to action - After making it known that your free content offer won't be there forever, it's time to give your prospects another call to action. Tell them again to enter their best email address in the field below your video and to hit the action button.

The difference is, you'll be sprinkling in a little bit of fear and guilt this time.

Tell your prospects that, unless they act now and take you up on your freebie, nothing will change in their current predicaments and their problems can only get worse. It sounds a little dramatic, but it enforces the situation they are in, and why doing something as simple as entering an email can alleviate the pain.

There you have it! There's 9 keys to a successful video message that can lead your viewer to take action.

Consider videos you may have seen, pitching an offer or describing a service. Do you remember any in particular? What stood out for you?

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How To Make Money With eBay By Starting A Web-Based Business

The process of learning how to make money with eBay can be an ongoing one. The more time that you invest into developing your sales and marketing skills, the more profitable your efforts will ultimately become. Getting started can be relatively easy, however, it is always best to take it slow.

eBay is one site that allows consumers to post a lot of feedback on sellers. This process of rating merchants is very beneficial to buyers as it helps them to determine the best places to shop for the goods they want. For those who wish to sell on this site, however, it places a constant pressure for people to always do their best.

Due to this fact, one of the best ways to get your company going is by first taking on the role of buyer. This will help you to develop a consumer perspective of this process and the platform that makes it possible. There are essentially two ways in which goods can be offered or purchased. You can buy an item immediately by paying an upfront or flat rate price, or you can buy it at auction and vie with other interested parties in an effort to place the highest bid.

As a buyer, you will have an opportunity to gauge the different areas that sellers can be rated in. You can tell others how fast and efficient your seller was in sending off the goods and whether or not these things matched the listed condition. Some sellers go above and beyond by taking the time to communicate with buyers about the status of their shipments and to thank them for their business.

Once you have completed a purchase or two, you will have a fairly clear understanding of what the characteristics of a good online merchant are. The next step is to determine what you will sell and how you will build your stock. You can use wholesale and dropshipping companies for this end of your business. Both are affordable options and both will provide you with access to a broad selection of goods that people really want.

Another very vital aspect of learning how to make money with eBay is finding out how you will market to consumers. You can use the sales platform itself to attract attention by using keyword-rich listings and in-depth product descriptions. You can also use social networking sites and blogs to get the job done. By making an effort to invest a considerable amount of time into building your business and your understanding of how this site can be optimally used to generate revenue, you will be able to start gaining phenomenal returns from your efforts.

What Keyword Numbers Can I Rank Well For?

Keywords are probably the most vital ingredient to getting good traffic flow but as importantly targeted traffic because bottom line that's what you want & need.

Many people including us have quite a bit of difficulty in trying get their websites to rank well in the major search engines. It is definitely not something you can just do with your eyes closed, but as with many things having a foundation and starting your journey to the top of the rankings in the right way is very important.

Research is the absolute key

Many people want to rank for specific keywords, but have no idea what they are up against. It might be with some luck that they were able to find a keyword and rank easily for it, but in most instances that would not be the case. It is therefore crucial that you do some proper research at the start to identify the keywords you will be able to rank for.

Attaining top rankings for very competitive keywords are not impossible. It should just be looked at as a long-term goal. There are however often hundreds of related keywords you would be able to target and then in turn get to those top rankings with far less resistance.

Work out a Plan First

The first thing you should do is think about what your end goal is and think about: "What are keyword numbers that I can rank well for?" Explaining this with an example is the easiest way so here goes:

Here's An Example

Say you have a news website. It would be wonderful if you could start ranking for a term like "online news" or just "news". The problem is that you would then need to work past all of the major newspapers as well as sites like cnn.com and bbc.co.uk. So it is better to take a step back and rethink your approach.

A useful tool to use in determining the search volumes for keywords is the Google AdWords Keyword Tool, I've covered this many times before in previous blogposts, it's a great tool, quick, simple and free to use. You can type it in Google and it will be the first result that pops up. When accessing this tool you can then type in the word "online news". You will see that it gets searched around 2,74 million times a month globally. Any keyword that has this many hits are usually very competitive and that means very difficult and time consuming to rank for.

Don't Try to Run Before You Can Walk

When browsing through the list below it, you will however see a number of related terms and they would have varying monthly searches. You can then start grouping these into different levels. For example get all the words that have over a million monthly hits, those between 100,000 and an million, those between 25,000 and 100,000 and then the rest under 25,000.

This is just a guideline and you can adapt it any way you want to. When you start out it would be the best to try and rank for the lowest group. In this group you will find many longer keyword terms, as I covered in my last post. Targeting these terms works better because you will be able to rank well for them a lot easier.

This point Makes Sense Picking the low hanging fruit just makes sense. Wouldn't you rather get 5,000 or 10,000 hits per month each from 5 keyword terms or no hits for a keyword term that gets 250,000 hits per month, but you are stuck on the 10th page? You would have put in the same amount of effort into both, but the path of less resistance will deliver positive results.

As you work on finding the right keywords to rank well for, you will quickly start to understand the value of ranking for the less popular keyword terms first. As you start getting more and more of these rankings, you will also see that you start making progress on the more difficult terms. The sky truly is the limit if you start with the right keyword research.

Make Money From Home Online With These Three Key Concepts

Creating a successful internet marketing business to make money from home online is entirely possible for anyone willing to make a substantial commitment and put in the necessary work. But there are a couple key concepts that you need to understand to be able to have a chance of success. Applying these concepts does not necessarily guarantee success, but a failure to understand them and apply them is almost certain to lead to failure.

Each of these concepts requires a shift from the way most people think. Most people learn as they're growing up from parents, teachers and others that the path to success is to do well in school, get a good education and then get a good job. Work at that job for about 40 years and then retire. But most people start to realize in their 30's or 40's that they're stuck on a treadmill that's not getting them to their goals, and that they're not likely to ever achieve the success they've dreamed of for years.

Fortunately, there's another way. Learn and apply a few key concepts and there's no reason you can't achieve the success you've dreamed of. And it's easier than you think to make money from home online once you understand these ideas.

The first thing to understand is that there's no magic button that will drop success into your lap. The hype that is so much a part of the sales pitch for most internet marketing products and a number of investment schemes is simply a bunch of empty promises. Believe the hype and you'll probably end up losing a lot of time and money while your attempt to build an internet marketing business accomplishes nothing.

So don't fall for the instant, push-button success sales pitches. An honest marketing company with a good network marketing or affiliate marketing program can rest easy knowing it has a solid product that can actually produce real results for those who are willing to work. Such a company will typically have a long track record, solid credentials, and numerous real testimonials. Find one of those and you're on the right path.

Too many people believe in the miracle, the instant success. They bet their dreams of success on a lottery ticket or trip to Las Vegas or Atlantic City or a $497 internet marketing training program. I'm not saying you can't go have fun in a casino - there's no reason not to enjoy yourself. In fact, your life should be all about enjoying yourself. But the lottery or casino is not your ticket to big money and a life of luxury - it's simply a form of entertainment. Poor people bet on that chance and pray for it to come into their lives. Wealthy people enjoy the game without the expectation of making money, and with the simple hope they might get lucky. Put your efforts into achieving wealth in a reasonable manner with work toward an achievable goal, and that leads us to the second concept.

Success can be achieved, and when it arrives it can be vastly greater than you might have expected. It won't show up instantly with a push-button miracle, but if you do the work needed to create success it will show up and you'll be able to make money from home online.

The key is to set a specific goal and set that goal at a level that might seem to be a stretch. For example, set a goal to make your current annual income your monthly income within a year. Is that attainable? Yes! Will it be difficult! You will have to work for it - there's no such thing as a free lunch. Will it be worth it? Only you can answer that question. Take that question seriously and contemplate it - would it be the fulfillment of your dreams to have your current annual income become your monthly income? What would you be willing to do to make it happen? Is it worth is to worth working 15 or 20 hours a week to achieve that?

Here's how I answer it - I will work daily to build my business to achieve the success I am seeking, and I will not let any difficulty or setback deter me. There is a solution to any problem I encounter, and the solution is usually easier than I think it will be. Success is mine, and I'm taking steps daily to achieve it. I will reassess my goals and reset them as needed until I achieve my ultimate goal, and I will not stop until I have reached my goal.

In order to measure your progress toward the success you're seeking, set intermediate goals. For example, if you're just starting out, you need to realize that you have to make your first sale before you'll start making $1000 a week. Yes, it's possible to hit the home run the first time to step up to the plate, but it's not likely. Plan to start small and grow your business, and hope for the home run! The idea that you can spend some money on a program and start making big money quickly is part of the hype mentioned earlier. Most of the people who are actually making money online have started slowly and put in a lot of work before they achieve success. Prevent yourself from getting discouraged by setting intermediate goals and then make a firm commitment to your success and work consistently to reach each goal.

The last concept deals with the value of investing in your business. Many people who attempt to start an online business will approach it timidly and are afraid to invest in their business. Their concern comes from not knowing if the investment will be worthwhile. If your cash flow is tight, spending $20 or $30 or more a month may be difficult on the budget. This is where learning to think like a business owner can make the difference.

Many people who are just starting out in internet marketing will worry about the $20 or $30 each month. An owner will look at the income potential, and realize that the expenditure required is small compared to the income potential. How much would you be willing to spend to assure yourself of an income of $50,000 annually? Would you be willing to spend $500 a year? $1000 a year? Realize that most businesses only see gross profits of about 20 to 25%, which means that if you were to open a coffee shop your expenses to produce $50,000 in annual revenue would typically be in the range of $35,000 to $40,000. Makes that monthly investment of $50 or $100 seem rather insignificant, doesn't it?

You can build a solid, income-producing business without any monetary investment, of course. But doing so means you will have to work for it. If you have the resources to invest in your business then you can achieve the results you're seeking quicker. Having no money to invest in your business is not a problem. It simply means you need to set your expectations accordingly. There are two choices here: either you build your business quickly with some effort and some investment in the business, or you build it more slowly with consistent effort.

Learn these three lessons and apply them. You can use them to create the success you wish to achieve with your online business. To recap:

1. There's no magic, instant push-button path to success. The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.

2. When it comes, success will show up to match the expectations you have set and worked to achieve. Creating an internet marketing business that produces $25,000 annually is not very different from one that produces $250,000 annually. It's simply a difference in scale resulting from the expectations and goals that were set at the beginning and the effort applied to achieve the result.

3. An investment in your business, even a small one, can significantly speed up your results. It still requires work (you can't simply buy success) but the investment can make the work easier and reduce the amount of effort required.

Put these principles to work in your business and you make money from home online and realize your dreams of financial freedom.

How To Learn How To Sell On eBay Without Spending A Cent

Everyone needs a little extra cash from time to time. One of the best ways to pick up extra cash without having to get a part-time job is to use online auctions. eBay is one of the most respected and recognized online auctions and has been responsible for millions in sales. If you would like to learn how to sell on eBay without spending a cent, here are a few tips to get you started.

If you don't have a PayPal account you need to sign up and get your account verified so you can get paid. You can do this by adding your bank account to your PayPal account, or you can apply for the PayPal Extras MasterCard. Verifying member banking information is probably the most used method.

Sign up for your eBay account and decide what you will be selling for your first listing. Perform a quick search to see how much is being paid for similar items. You don't want to undercut the going rate for similar merchandise and lose money or overprice your item and not make a sale.

Create your listing with an accurate description. Use the model number if it has one so it will show up if someone uses it as a search term. The more information you use the higher the likelihood you will be matched with a buyer. Buyers will want to see what they are purchasing so you need to take photos of your item to upload. Remember, be very descriptive and truthful.

Photos help sell physical items. Usually if a buyer can see something from more than one angle they are more prone to making a purchase. If at all possible add more than one photo to your listing. If your photos do not come out clear and crisp retake them because bad photos will kill your auction.

If you already know how much you want from your auction you can select a fixed price. By starting the auction at a low price point and accepting bids you may get more for it. For bidding, set your auction at seven days. If you get questions about your auction, answer them as quickly as possible.

Once the items sell, you must ship them promptly to avoid getting bad reviews. That is all there is to it. When you learn how to sell on eBay it allows you to earn money for about ten minutes of easy work and the time it takes to ship the item. All things considered, it's the best way to make quick cash online.

Improve Email Deliverability With Relevancy, Segmentation And Testing

You will hear the word "relevancy" used frequently in the email world as it relates to email deliverability. Relevancy is key to delivering email to the Inbox. But what really is relevancy and how do you achieve this holy grail?

What is Relevancy?

Merriam-Webster defines "relevant" as "having significant and demonstrable bearing on the matter at hand." In short, a relevant email is one that matters to the recipient - it bears to the matters that are important to them.

How Do You Achieve Relevancy?

You can achieve relevancy by sending an email that:

- Is wanted and expected

- Is sent exactly at the right time

- Is sent only as often as it will be opened and read frequently

- Includes a subject and content specific to that recipient

Boiling all that down, let's reduce it to this: Relevancy means "sending the right person the right message at the right time".

Email marketing is effective when customers respond. Customers respond when they receive targeted messages from companies they care about. They like when they're emailed about things they've already shown an interest in.

Achieving Relevancy?

So, what is the key to relevancy in email? The answer is to think like your customer. Find out what they are interested in and why. Then you can use what you know about your subscribers so you can send them exactly what they want, when they want it. A key to increasing relevancy is through segmentation - Marketing Sherpa also found that companies with segmented campaigns produced 50% more opens and 30% more clicks.

Segmentation

Knowing that relevancy and segmentation are so important, how do we segment to increase relevancy and engagement rates? By following the guide outlined below for "Right Person, Right Message, and Right Time".

How to Send the Right Person the Right Message at the Right Time

1. Choosing the Right People

- Start with a great sign-up page to get the clear permission to email new recipients. For example, using a pre-checked checkbox will decrease the relevancy of your email, because many people who don't want your email will end up unknowingly "signing up." You want recipients on your list that have specifically requested your email - and are excited about getting it.

- Remove any subscribers in your lists that have not opened a message from you in over a year. The chance of any one of these subscribers actually buying something from you is about as likely as seeing Elvis walking down the street. It's not going to happen. Get rid of them. If you are paying a CPM rate to your ESP to send your emails, this dead weight is costing you a bundle. Even if you are paying a flat rate, you are losing money as a result of poor inbox delivery due to the negative mailing reputation this causes at the ISPs.

- Next, break down the remaining subscribers into 5 categories:

1. Inactive - No opens or clicks in the last 6 months - 1 year: Use win-back (reactivation) campaigns to wake up lapsed subscribers or direct them to other channels to receive your messages. Remove lapsed addresses that don't respond to win-back campaigns.

2. Fading - No opens or clicks for 3-6 months - You may want to decrease the frequency of emailing these recipients or use a strong special offer.

3. Active - Have opened or clicked a message in the last 3 months but have not purchased in the last 60 days.

4. VIP - Have purchased in the last 60 days - Treat your very best customers as VIPs with exclusive offers and content.

5. New subscribers - consider an auto-responder sequence to deliver a sequence of your best performing messages to new subscribers before adding them to the Active group. Or you may add these subscribers into your Active or VIP group.

- Track the click and open rates for each of the above categories, and use that data to improve your messages, or potentially determine any categories that are not profitable to email - where your emails are no longer relevant to that category of subscribers.

2. Sending the Right Message

- Put yourself in your customer's shoes and think about what would be important to them.

- Use a preference page to allow your recipients to tell you exactly what categories they are interested in when they sign-up. For example: "Special Offers" and/or "Industry News" and/or "Tips".

- Look at open and click information to see what kinds of email content is generating the best response, and use this to learn how to create more relevant content going forward.

- Your content and design should be short and sweet, and your offer clear and straight-forward. You may have one second of skimming to grab someone's attention before they delete!

- Use personalization and "dynamic-content" based off of tracked data such as first name, location data, past purchases, past email campaigns they have shown interest in, and any other relevant data that can be used to increase relevancy -- but don't overdo it. You want to create trust, not creep them out. Understand your audience.

- Make sure the web landing page is specific to the offer. Don't make the customer search around to find what you offered them.

- State a relevant offer in pre-header text which will still be seen even if images are turned off. Wet the reader's appetite so that they turn on images and read the rest of your email.

- Make sure your emails look right on mobile devices. A 2011 Neilson survey found that 45% of the time spent on a smart phone was used to check emails.

3. Choosing the Right Time to Send the Message

- Day of the week: emails sent Tuesday-Thursday have been shown to receive the highest open and click-through rate, as the mindset towards emails tends to drift Friday through Monday, with emails getting "lost" or ignored.

- Automate your behavioral emails. For example, automatically send a birthday greeting email with a coupon on the subscriber's birthday; send an email a certain period of time after a purchase; or remind a customer when it's time to renew or repurchase.

- Send email that is triggered by real-time events -- such as a welcome email immediately after subscribing, a cart abandonment email, or other relevant messages based on the subscriber's activity on your website.

- Drip Marketing Emails - These are similar to triggered emails in that they are prompted by an event, however these are a predefined series of messages. A series of welcome letters could also be drip marketing emails.

- Frequency: don't numb the reader. Subscribers who have been on your list longer will tend to respond less frequently, especially if they are inundated with too many emails. They may even unsubscribe because it all looks the same. Decrease the frequency to these readers or pause for a while, then offer them an incentive as a loyal customer.

- Set frequency limits - Don't over send. Especially with triggered emails, have rules in place so that you are not sending too many emails in one day or too close together.

4. Finally, test, test, test... then test again!

- A/B testing: Track what worked and what didn't work particular to each segment.

- Test separately for each of the 5 categories of subscribers (see above).

- Test for reaction (open rate, click through, and conversion) as well as Inbox delivery, complaint rates and unsubscribe rates.

- Remember that even minor changes can lead to a significant result.

- Always test during a limited timeframe to reduce the chance that your results will be skewed by time-based factors.

- For best results, only test one variable at a time when A/B testing. (If you want to test more than one variable at a time, use multivariate testing instead which goes beyond the scope of this article.)

- When a new champion is determined, run the same test more than once, perhaps to a bigger group to solidify the findings and to eliminate the "random chance" factor.

- Retest your champions periodically - reactions can change over time.

With attention to relevancy in your messaging and timing, mailing list segmentation and the results of your testing, you will see better delivery of your messages, and greater success with your email campaigns. The above are some of the many helpful tools and tips to consider towards achieving relevancy in email. However, sometimes choosing which steps to take requires an expert guide who is removed enough from your email campaign to see it with different eyes. If you are interested in experienced consulting to help you take your email program to a higher level, make sure you choose a knowledgeable Email Deliverability Consulting company that truly understands your email delivery needs and offers a complete solution to help you achieve the best results possible.