Charlie Cook's MArketing for Success Insider's Club

Archive for July, 2008

On The Internet Marketing Index

By Charlie Cook   |   July 31, 2008

MarketingforSuccess is on the internet marketing winners list this week moving up the internet marketing index

– Charlie
Small Business Marketing That Works

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Are The Best Ads Politically Incorrect?

By Charlie Cook   |   July 31, 2008

Recently I was reviewing ads to see if I could find more great ones to ad to video ads. As I perused them I kept finding ones that made me laugh but “objectified women” were racist or in some way offended someone. Of course that’s why they were funny and got hundreds of thousands of views.

Am I right?

Are the funniest and most watched ads politically incorrect?

What do you think?

– Charlie
Marketing Ideas That Get Attention

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You Should Know…

By Charlie Cook   |   July 30, 2008

I know it’s Wednesday and I usually don’t post today but there is one important thing I wanted you to know about.

I had to close my marketing mentoring program early this year because I was completely booked but that has changed for the moment. As of today I’m accepting applications for two openings.

That’s right, I’ve only got two openings for my one-on-one, hold your hand and show you how to get it right marketing mentoring program. And these two spots may be gone in the next couple of days if you wait. If you’re interested please fill in the form here >>

But before you apply realize you may not qualify. I’m only looking for ambitious business owners, people who can show me a track record of success and are doers not talkers. People like Kris >>

I can show you what works and help you double or triple your business but be aware I expect you to take charge and implement the proven ideas I’ll be walking you through. If you do you can easily add $10,000 to $100,000 a month to your income, depending on your business.

Interested? Use the form at the bottom of the page to apply >>
Gotta go,

It’s a beautiful summer day here on the coast of Connecticut and I’m heading out for a lunch time paddle in my kayak.

Charlie
MarketingForSuccess

P.S. If you’re hot to get going with your marketing, get more leads, more interest, get people calling or increase sales with your web site, I’ve got just 2 openings in my mentoring program.

Interested? Apply here >>

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What Web Marketing Strategy Are You Testing Right Now?

By Charlie Cook   |   July 22, 2008

….
It’s awfully quiet.
….
Nothing? Really?

Making money with your website by leaving your profits to chance is like buying a lottery ticket. You might win — anything is possible — but the odds are against you.

If you’re serious about making money online, make testing part of your web marketing strategy. Let’s look at why testing matters and what to test and when.

Why Testing Matters
A couple of weeks ago I headed out after work for a quick 20 mile bike ride. Nice evening, not too much traffic – everything was going great until my rear tire went flat.

I thought, no problem, I’ve got spare tubes and a sleek, lightweight carbon fiber pump I paid a premium for. Within seconds I had the new tube in the tire. But when I went to inflate it, I discovered, much to my chagrin, that my pump didn’t fit the tire valve.

I’d never tested my pump. I didn’t know that I’d chosen a great looking and expensive pump that only worked on one type of tire valve. More importantly, it didn’t work on the valves I had with me. There I was by the side of the road with all the tools to fix a flat, but they didn’t work together to get me rolling again.

Is your web site broken down leaving you stuck?
Find out how to fix it >>

You have a home page, a couple of additional supporting pages, an email address for people to contact you. Your site looks great, but is it working to generate leads, sales and profits?

What’s the solution?

Testing!

You want to optimize your site’s performance so it brings in a steady stream of profits. Without testing, you won’t know what’s working and what’s not. Each element of your web site needs to be tested to see if it is actually doing the job you expect it to do.

Here are the top 3 things to test.

1. Your Marketing Message
Test the headline you put at the top of the page that tells people why they should stay on your site. You can use Google Ads to run split tests to two different pages and see which headline keeps people on the page the longest or which prompts the most number of people to contact you.

2. Your Free Offer
One of the fastest ways to generate leads with your site is to offer something for free, but just adding a free offer subscribe form on your page won’t get you the most leads. The key is to provide your site visitors with a compelling reason to give you their contact information.

Test the offers you provide, even if it’s just for something you are giving away, to see which offers generate the most leads and sales. The wrong offer won’t generate leads. Find the right one, and you can easily prompt dozens of people to contact you each day and double or triple your profits.

3. Your Page Design
The size, color and placement of different elements on the page determine how well your visitors understand what you want them to do. Changing the size and color of your headline and subhead, for example, can make all the difference in whether or not visitors take the action you want them to take.

For example, I recently did a test with the sign up form on my home page. Instead of asking people to sign up for my free report in two places at the top of the page, I designed a larger sign-up form and asked them once. The larger, single sign up form converted twice as well.

You could spend the next 10 years figuring out what works to sell online — or you could use proven web marketing strategies and techniques to get results right away.

Here’s the shortcut to online success >>

How Much Can Testing Improve Your Sales?
I had one client who was a big believer in testing. Every time I suggested a change to their site, they’d test it to see if they wanted to make it a permanent one.

Within the first three months that I worked with them, they tripled their lead acquisition and sales. Over the next three years we continued to test the elements of their site and ultimately increased their conversion rates by a factor of 17.

Want to increase your online sales by a factor of 17?
Here’s how >>

Testing is the key. To make it simple for you, I’ve spent the last 10 years testing what works to get more people to come to your site, to contact you and to buy from you.

Many web site owners leave their online profits to chance. I know you’re smarter than that and would rather put proven techniques and strategies to use to jump-start your sales.

Don’t get stranded beside the road, as I did when I forgot to test my bike pump. Discover what works to make your web site a success.

To your success,

Charlie

P.S. Try this one test to evaluate whether you’re web site is working. Is it making a profit of $10,000 or more each month?

Smart people like you know when to stop doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. If your web site isn’t making as much money as you want it to make, you know it’s time to take action and get back on the road to success.

Here’s how >>

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Use This Marketing Strategy to Increase Web Sales by 300% This Month

By Charlie Cook   |   July 15, 2008

“My web site stinks! I’ve been spending thousands of dollars a week on pay-per-click ads but they’re not paying for themselves. I’m only getting a few leads and sales from my site. What am doing wrong? How do I get my web site to sell?”
Martha C., NY

What’s Missing From Your Web Site?
Are you wondering why all the people who come to your web site don’t contact you or buy from you? You know you’ve got top quality products and services, but few visitors to your site are staying long enough to read the details, much less contact you or buy from you.

Want to know the secret marketing strategy to making your web site highly profitable? Use this link>>

Shift Your Focus Away From Traffic
Most web site owners do what Martha did. They put up a web site and then they focus on getting all the traffic they can to their site. Typically the fastest way to do this is to spend money on pay-per-click advertising. That’s the first and biggest mistake!

I regularly talk to web site owners who’ve spent thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars a month on pay-per-click advertising and search engine optimization. They’re spending money hand over fist on driving traffic to their sites and still not breaking even.

Imagine you have a relatively new car. It still has that distinctive new car smell, but it has a major defect. Every time you turn the engine on, all you can do is rev the engine. You can’t get the car in gear. Obviously your shiny new car isn’t taking you anywhere.

What would you do? You’d get your engine repaired immediately.

Find out the fastest way to fix your site >>

Like your car, if your web site isn’t doing it’s most basic job, you won’t move forward. No matter how much money you spend to bring traffic to your site, if you aren’t converting traffic to leads and sales, your site won’t be profitable. There are thousands of web sites selling products and services that customers want. Very few of them successfully convert traffic to profits.

Why Most People Focus On Traffic and Why You Shouldn’t
Most web site owners focus their spending on getting more traffic to their sites for a simple reason; it’s easy. Just cut the check for your SEO expert, or send the payments to Google or one of the other pay-per-click advertising services, and the problem is taken care of, right? Wrong.

Traffic Comes After Conversion
Do the math. If your web site isn’t converting visitors to sales now, how is sending more traffic to your site going to help?

On the other hand, by making a few simple changes to your marketing strategy and web site, you can easily increase your site conversion rates by 300%. Make a few more design and copy changes, and you could do what one of my clients did; increase your conversion rates by 1,700%.

Want to know how you can increase sales by 300%? Get the answer here >>

How to Convert Visitors To Buyers
You want the people who come to your web site to stay, read your pages and to either contact you by email or phone and to buy from you. What’s the fastest and most cost efficient way to make this happen?

1. Do you know anyone who owns an iPod? They’ve sold lot hotcakes and made Apple an unbelievable amount of money for two reasons: they look cool and they are amazingly easy to use. That’s what your web site should be too, appealing and easy to use.

Use the design of your site to make it clear what you want people to read first, second and third. Lead them to take the actions you want them to take.

2. Focus your marketing copy on your prospects’ problems and goals. Remember; your objective is to help people buy, not to hit them over the head with a sales pitch about your products or services.

3. Focus every page of your site on one or both of the following: generating leads (so you can follow up) and/or helping people get the product or service they want.

4. Remember that your site needs to establish you or your company as the trusted, expert source to go to for your particular product niche. Audio and video testimonials provide the social proof you need and with relevant, meaningful content are essential to establishing this.

I’m always amazed at how many web site owners expect to use their web site to increase sales by hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions. and then spend so little time or effort creating a site that actually sells. And when the site doesn’t perform, they keep throwing money at advertising to bring traffic to a site that doesn’t work.

I know you’re smarter than that, which is why I want you to avoid this mistake. Discover how easy it is to increase sales from your web site. >>

To your success,

Charlie

P.S. Still on the fence about where to spend your online marketing dollars? Consider this. If you spent the same amount of time or money on increasing your conversion rates as you did on increasing traffic, you’d get four to twenty times the return.

Interested in finding out how to increase web sales? >>

P.P.S. Something is wrong with the math! Most web site owners spend more on advertising their site than they do on creating a site that sells. If you want your web site to make you your next hundred thousand or half million, isn’t it worth finding out how to do it?

Find out the secrets to creating a top-selling site >>

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How To Profit From The Recession – Small Business Marketing Tips

By Charlie Cook   |   July 14, 2008

What do most small business owners do when faced with a recession?
What do they do when buyers are fewer and far between?

Earlier this week I blogged about how to grow your business when times are tough and I know that your instincts may be to do the wrong thing.

The natural tendency is to get scared and cut back on your marketing and hope that the downturn is short lived and you have cash to spend when business picks up.

Is this the right strategy? Is running scared the prudent path to higher profits?

For most businesses, running scared during a market downturn will only guarantee that they will come out at the bottom, when and if the market ever picks up. Builders are a great example.

When it was easy to get a mortgage, builders had buyers lined up ten deep at their door. All they needed was a business card and a yellow page listing to get all the clients they could handle. Here in Connecticut, unless you wanted to build a house of over 6,000 square feet you couldn’t even get a builder to return your calls.

After ten or more years of easy money, the lending landscape has changed and any builder who thinks that waiting this out is the right solution will be out of business in a few years. It could easily be another ten years before interest rates peak and come down stimulating the next building boom.

I know you’re smarter than to think you can just wait out this recession. Smart business owners see recessions as the chance get ahead while others are running scared.

How can you prosper in this recession?
Use this proven small business marketing strategy >>

Even in a downturn you can always find more business than you can handle if you know how to market your business. The real estate market is a good example.

One real estate broker called me from Atlanta where prices are down 7% and monthly sales are down by 20%. Instead of crying about spilt milk or running scared he saw this downturn as a great chance to end up making more.

His reasoning was that, while sales were down, 3,564 homes sold in April. With an average commission of $10,000 all he needed to do was instead of just selling one, sell three per month and he’d be making plenty.

Tough times can be great for business because they winnow out the less than savvy marketers and leave the playing field wide-open for smart people like you. Fewer competitors + smarter marketing = more business for you!

If you act scared or market defensively – you’ll see your sales and profits plummet – and they may never recover.

Instead use your marketing to position yourself as the go to expert, continue to build strong relationships with prospects and generate referrals – you’ll prosper even in this recession and when the economy picks up you’ll find yourself ahead of your competitors.

The choice is yours.

Find out the simple marketing solution I used to make the past six months of this recession my best ever >>

To Your Success,

Charlie
Proven Small Business Marketing Ideas

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4 Marketing Ideas to Profit with Email

By Charlie Cook   |   July 9, 2008

“Email marketing doesn’t work!” People who say this have it wrong. They’re confusing the medium with the message.

You may get dozens if not hundreds of emails each day that are tossed into your bulk mail or spam folder before you even see them. Of those that you do open, sometimes by mistake, most want to sell you stuff that you don’t want or need.

It’s true that a lot of email is pure junk, but before you dismiss email entirely as an effective marketing tool, you should know that for the past year I’ve been using a planned sequence of two emails that result in $15 to 20,000 in sales each time they’re sent out. And you can have the same success.

Here are four ways you can use email to increase your profits by helping more people buy your products and services.

1. Send Email to People That Ask For It

Sending email to people who have never heard of you is almost always a waste of time. They’re not going to open your email, much less read it.

Before people will open and read your emails, you have to prove to them that you can be trusted to provide helpful ideas or information. Then you can politely ask them to give you their contact information and ask their permission to email them. In your first email, double check that they want to hear from you.

The confirmation process described above may seem onerous, but it keeps all of us from being deluged with spam and ensures that the people on your email list want to hear from you and are interested in buying from you.

What’s the fastest way to build your own massive email list? Use this link to get the details about this marketing idea >>

2. Get the Conversation Going
One of the biggest mistakes online marketers make is sending out a barrage of emails that try to sell right away. Send emails like these out and you’ll destroy the trust you’ve been working hard to develop.

Instead, use your marketing emails to demonstrate that you’re the go-to expert in your industry niche. And periodically ask your readers’ relevant questions. Hearing their feedback will let you know what they want and need.

People are much more likely to buy from you when they know you, trust you and feel like they can talk to you.

Ready to find out the secrets to using email to build trust and sales? Start here >>

3. Use Personal Reputation To Increase Sales
Your personal reputation is the sum of every thing your prospect has seen or heard about you and your company. Ideally, your prospects think of you as helpful and interested in them as well as, knowledgeable, up-to-date, trustworthy and reliable.

If your reputation isn’t solid, people will perceive too much risk when you ask them to buy. If you’ve got a strong reputation, your prospects are much more likely to respond when you suggest a product or service and become clients and customers.

How can you use email to build your brand and your profits? Find out here >>

What can you do if you’re just getting started or have been in business for years but aren’t reaching many buyers with your current email list?

Find another company targeting the same market you’re trying to reach. Let them review your products and then make them an offer that can’t be beat to promote your products or services.

When one of the most famous people in your industry niche tells people to buy your product, you’ll generate five times as many sales as you would trying to make the sale yourself.

4. Listen to Your Readers; They’re Your Buyers

Your marketing emails are going to thousands, if not tens of thousands, prospects. You can’t hear what those prospects say when they get your email, but there is an easy way to find out what they are thinking.

Each time you send an email, check your email tracking stats to see:

# The percentage of people that opened your email,

# Of those people that opened your email, how many followed the links provided in the email,

# How many of those that followed the link made a purchase.

Use this information to improve the results of your next email. For example when I log into my email broadcast service I can see how many people opened each of the html emails I send.

When you have this information you can determine which topics and subject lines to focus on and which to dump. Similarly you can use tracking links in your newsletter to see what percentage of people who read your emails went to your product page and how many of those made a purchase.

With a little bit of simple tracking data in hand you can identify whether to fix your subject line, your email content or your sales page, or all three.

Want to know the secrets to using email to grow your business? I’ve been testing and refining my email and web marketing strategies for almost a decade.

Here’s a shortcut to email marketing success >>

Do these 4 ideas sound too simplistic? 90% of my sales are in response to emails that either I send out or my sales partners send out on my behalf. Using the four email strategies above, you could easily boost your sales by more than you ever imagined.

Want to increase your online profits? Put these ideas to work today to see your website profits soar.

To your success,

Charlie

P.S. – Even if you already have a web site that’s making money, I challenge you to double your profits this summer. I know you can if you use these proven email marketing ideas and techn iques >>

P.P.S. – I’m always amazed at how many people keep doing the same thing over and over when it doesn’t work. I know you’re smarter than that and would rather find out how to use these proven email strategies to grow your business too >>

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