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source http://anthonyaires.com/4875/zero-to-3000-fans-in-3-weeks-on-a-new-fan-page-without-having-to-buy-ads/

Webinars Your Big Profits Guide

Introduction

Webinars are an excellent way to increase sales and conversions, especially on big-ticket items. Because webinars are interactive, they are more engaging and thus have higher conversions than other types of marketing.

A few benefits of webinars over other sales presentations include:

• The limited time nature increases participation. People can’t procrastinate if a webinar is only available at a specific time.
• Active participation in the form of chat, question-and-answer sessions, etc. makes for a richer, more engaging experience that makes people pay attention and take action.
• Social proof from other participants can increase conversions.

In this report, you’re going to learn how to set up and run successful webinars, with a focus on selling high value items that pay a higher commission than average products. You’ll learn how and why you should run automated webinars, and how to increase webinar conversions.

So let’s get started.

Selling High Ticket Items via Webinar

Webinars can certainly increase sales to smaller ticket items, however generally speaking they are much more cost-effective for selling high-ticket items.

The main reason why these big-ticket items make more sense is because of the limited nature of webinars. Most webinar programs only have a limited number of seats available, generally due to the limitations of the software itself, which might not be able to handle large numbers of users at once.

Because there are so few people who will be able to attend each webinar session, it only makes sense to promote higher ticket items. If you are only paid $10 commission on a small ticket item, and you only have 50 attendees, you’d need a 20% conversion rate to make 10 sales, which would only earn you $100 in commission.

That’s not exactly a princely sum for the trouble of planning, organizing and carrying out a webinar. And remember, a 20% conversion rate is very difficult to achieve even with a webinar.

However, if you were paid $100 commission on a large-ticket item, with the same 50 attendees, you’d only need a 10% conversion to get 5 sales, which would earn you $500 in commission.

As you can see, you’d need half the conversions to earn five times as much income. So large-ticket items really make sense when you have a limited number of people to market to, such as you do with a webinar.

Not only must you worry about the physical limitations of your webinar software and server, but the schedules of potential attendees as well. You may see fewer attendees than you expect because people are busy at the time you schedule your webinar.

It’s possible to record your webinar and distribute it to people who cannot attend, however conversions on recorded webinars aren’t likely to be nearly as high as during the live broadcast, because you can’t have viewers of the recorded webinar interact with you as they could during the initial live broadcast.

Doing the Math

Before you plan your webinar, it’s important to do a little math to be sure your webinar has the best chance to be profitable. (In other words, worth your time.)

First, figure out which product you’d like to promote. Ideally, this should be a product that you’ll make at least $100 in commission from, though higher amounts would be even better, obviously.

However, don’t choose a product solely based on its commission. It’s better to choose a product that makes a bit less commission and converts much better than to choose a product that has a very high commission and won’t convert at all.

Let’s say your product will make you $100 in commission. If you want to make at least $500 from the webinar, you know you need to get a total of five sales.

You may not know the exact conversion rate of your product, but you can estimate it. A 5% conversion rate is a good starting point as an estimate. It helps greatly if you’ve tested the product already, or if the product owner has released public information about its overall conversion rates, but 5% is generally a safe estimate for most products.

In order to get five sales at a 5% conversion rate, you need a total of 100 people in attendance. You could make more, or you could make less. But getting a minimum of 100 people to attend would be your goal.

If you have a high-converting product that gives you $500 commission, you would only need one sale to earn what you desire. This means a higher-priced product would require much fewer attendees.

Automated Webinars

Automated webinars make it easy to set up webinars at times when you cannot theoretically be in attendance. This is great for providing access to people on varying schedules and all around the world without having to be there constantly.

You may wonder why it makes sense to do an automated webinar when you could simply do a single webinar, record it, and offer access to a video

There are many reasons to use an automated webinar system instead of simply offering a video recording:

1. People are much more likely to attend when they feel they are on a time constraint because they don’t want to miss the event. If they are given a link to download a video, they are likely to put off watching the video until “later”, but “later” is likely to never come. People tend to procrastinate unless they have a set timeframe for something.

1. People tend to perceive the value of a live webinar as much higher than the value of a single video, even though the information is technically precisely the same.

1. A video recording does not allow audience participation of any kind. Some automated webinar scripts allow audience members to chat with one another and also chat with you if you are available at the moment.

1. A recorded video cannot be set to play at a specific time so that late attendees believe they are attending a live webinar. However, with some automated webinar software, the video will begin at a specified time, and if people are late or leave and come back, the video will not resume from the same place they left off, giving the impression of a live broadcast.

There are many different automated webinar systems available. Here are a few of the most popular.

>> http://www.EvergreenBusinessSystem.com – The Evergreen Business System is one of the most popular automated webinar systems. At $497. This system delivers a tremendous number of features, most of which cannot be found elsewhere. For an additional $97 monthly fee, you can also run an unlimited number of live webinars using their servers.

>> http://www.StealthSeminar.com – The Stealth Seminar system charges as $97 registration fee (after coupon), and then an additional $69.95 per month. While this is cheaper upfront than the Evergreen Business System, you will find that it lacks some of the features people want in a webinar host. However, it does integrate with almost all major autoresponder systems.

>> http://www.EasyWebinar.com – Easy Webinar is only $297 for a 10-domain license. It is less costly than other systems, but again it doesn’t have quiet as many features as the two listed above.

Planning a Webinar (Structure, Pitching an offer)

Planning the full webinar before it begins is absolutely essential. Without proper planning, you’re likely to end up with long periods of dead air or being unable to answer questions posed by attendees, which can throw off your webinar and cost you conversions/sales.

Webinar Formats

There are several different formats you can choose from for a webinar. Different formats have different benefits, so you may want to use different formats at different times based on your needs.

Let’s take a look at some of the various formats and their benefits and weaknesses:

Single Speaker

In the single speaker format, one person does the complete presentation and may ask the attendees questions or answer theirs.

One major benefit of this particular webinar type is that you won’t have to train multiple people how to use the webinar software. Additionally, you don’t have to worry about timing and coordinating multiple speakers, or having presenters talking over each other answering questions.

The biggest potential drawback of the single speaker format is that sometimes people are reluctant to interact with a single speaker, because they feel it can be a bit intimidating, because the single speaker becomes somewhat of an authority figure. However, this is also potentially beneficial, because if you are seen as an authority figure, people will be more likely to take actions you recommend or request, such as buying a product.

Interview Style

The interview style webinar involves two or more people working together. One person is usually the interviewer, and that person interviews one or more other people.

Some people find that hearing several people at once helps make a webinar more interesting. Also, since the interviewer is asking the other person questions, many times this encourages attendees to ask questions, increasing interactivity.

This means you’ll have to ensure everyone is able to use the webinar software, including the interviewer and all interviewees. You may also run into scheduling conflicts, because you will have to coordinate multiple people to run the webinar.

Moderated Panel

A moderated panel has several people online at the same time with one moderator who ensures only one person can speak at a time. This is done either through the software itself, allowing the moderator to mute everyone who isn’t currently speaking, or in the same way a moderator facilitates a live discussion, by giving individuals permission to speak.

Like the interview style, this type of webinar allows users to hear different perspectives and different voices, which makes the webinar more interesting than a single speaker style.

However, as with an interview style, you’ll have to ensure all parties know how to use the webinar software and be careful of any scheduling conflicts. But perhaps the biggest challenge with this format is keeping the conversation flowing well without people talking over each other. The moderator must take great care to keep things organized.

Interactive

The interactive format requires a single individual to lead the attendees in various activities such as question-and-answer sessions, lessons or other interactive content.

Because this format is extremely interactive, people generally get more out of the webinar. Attendees can ask questions, and even answer questions for other attendees. This can be very helpful if someone asks a question that you don’t know the answer to.

The main problem with this format is that it can really only reasonably accommodate a small number of individuals, because large groups can cause a lot of confusion if everyone is trying to speak at once. You need to be reasonably skilled at running this type of webinar for it to work effectively.

Planning the Presentation

You will need to plan your presentation carefully from start to finish, and you won’t want to deviate from that format too much during your webinar. The reason for this is that once a webinar has been derailed, it can take a long time for it to recover and get back on track, thus making your webinar run over time.

Since people have to plan to be present at a particular time for a webinar event, they generally don’t allot time over that. They may make plans after your webinar, and if it runs over, they may have to leave. Or they may just get bored if the webinar runs too long.

Here are some things you might want to include in your presentation:

1. A slide that introduces your webinar, including its purpose, what time it begins, how to use the various webinar functions, and how long the webinar is estimated to last.

1. A slide that gives information about the webinar host/presenter and any other presenters, interviewers or interviewees. Include their name, their professional credentials, and a picture if you have one.

1. A short presentation of the webinar’s agenda, including the topics to be covered and any other material to be presented.

1. Screenshots or videos that demonstrate primary elements of your presentation. You may be able to keep these on your computer and present them as needed, as some webinar software allows you to share your desktop so everyone can see what you’re doing live as you do it. This will let you show videos, slides, screenshots or whatever else you need to display.

Plan Attendees

Keep in mind that a lot of webinar software has hard limits on the number of attendees. This is due to a number of different factors, such as bandwidth, software limitations, etc.

If you know you have a limited number of spots available, be sure to let potential attendees know this in advance. This will help increase the number of people who sign up for your webinar, because it will lend an element of scarcity.

Record the Presentation

It’s a very good idea to record the webinar to allow those who could not be in attendance to view it at a later date. This will increase your conversions, because you will be able to reach more people than could be present due to their own scheduling conflicts or due to the space limitations for the live presentation.

If you’re going to record the webinar, you’ll want to plan this in advance so you can be certain your webinar software allows recording, and to learn how to use the function properly.

Create the Agenda

It is very important to create an agenda with approximate times so that the webinar flows smoothly and doesn’t go too much over time. Remember, if you run over time, you won’t make it to your final sales pitch with some participants, which will severely cut down on conversions.

Your agenda should contain a list of topics that you plan to discuss during the webinar so that you don’t forget any important points.

The agenda should also contain a rough guide for each segment of the presentation, including the order in which speakers will make their presentations, a list of interview questions, etc.

Here’s a sample agenda for a webinar beginning at 6:00 PM:

6:00 – Introduction to the webinar and its presenters.

6:05 – First topic of discussion.

6:15 – Second topic of discussion.

6:25 – Third topic of discussion.

6:35 – Questions from the audience.

6:50 – Product is introduced, letting people know their unanswered questions can be answered by it. This is the sales pitch.

7:00 – Webinar is concluded, attendees are thanked for their presence, and the final sales pitch is made.

Schedule Presenters

If you intend on having any special guests, additional presenters, experts, or interviewees, you need to schedule them well in advance so they are certain they can be present and on time for the webinar.

Don’t forget to schedule all presenters for a trial run, too. This should be done at least once before the day of the webinar in order to ensure everyone knows how to use the software properly and that everyone knows their role and can stick within the time constraints.

Plan a Dry Run

A trial run is absolutely vital for ensuring your webinar goes smoothly. There isn’t much that will kill a webinar’s effectiveness faster than a bunch of people saying “um” and “uh” every couple of minutes because they don’t know what they’re doing or what should happen next.

It’s a good idea to do two or three dry runs, but you must do at least one. The dry run will help ensure everyone knows how to use the webinar software correctly, the order of events, what they plan to say, and how to stay within time constraints.

You won’t be able to plan for things such as user questions as well, but you can anticipate some of the things attendees might ask and be prepared to answer those questions.

The dry run should include, at minimum:

1. Practice the webinar introduction, including introducing individual presenters.
2. Making sure presenters know how to use the webinar software.
3. Check all software and equipment. Make sure the web server is running optimally. Be sure everyone has working headsets and knows how to use them and mute them when necessary.
4. Go over the complete agenda with all participants. Do a run-through of all presenters’ presentations, including visuals such as screenshots and videos.

Fine-Tuning Your Pitch

The most important part of your webinar is obviously your pitch. This pitch must be as finely tuned as possible before the webinar begins, and it must contain the perfect blend of selling versus informing.

If the product is yours, you can be a little more aggressive with your sales pitch. People will expect this if you’re selling your own product, so they won’t really be upset.

However, if you’re selling an affiliate product, people are likely to be rather skeptical about the product if you’re selling too hard. Instead, try to focus on talking about why you personally like the product rather than just saying, “Buy! Buy! Buy!”

Here are some things you might want to include in your sales pitch:

• A few of the most important features of the product
• The best benefits of the product (Remember, benefits are different from features. Features would be things like a server’s bandwidth or hard drive size. Benefits would be no loss of sales due to bandwidth limitations or never running out of server space for critical backups.)
• What the product has done for you personally
• Why you believe everyone would want the product

Be careful not to oversell the product or people will smell the sales pitch a mile away and won’t feel it is genuine. The more personal it seems, and the more you relate to them what it has done for you, the more people will want to buy it.

Pre-Qualifying Participants

Something you may want to do if your webinar is very limited is to pre-screen potential attendees to be sure they understand the product you are presenting, its basic features and its price. You don’t want valuable webinar spots being taken by people who would have absolutely no interest in the product you’re selling or wouldn’t be able to afford it even if they were.

Thus, before your signup form, you might want to include a short survey asking people questions that pre-qualify them for your webinar.

Some example questions for a weigh loss webinar might include:

• Are you interested in losing 50, 75, even 100 pounds or more in the next six months?
• Have you tried other weight loss products and failed?
• Are you sick of weight loss systems that try to charge you a monthly fee on and on, yet they never work?
• If you could pay a one-time fee of just $497 to lose all the weight you want, and be guaranteed success, would you be interested?

This will ensure participants are both interested and willing to pay the cost of the product.

Conclusion

Webinars can be extremely profitable if care is taken with the setup, presentation, and pitch. Remember that they are best used for pitching high-value products that pay a larger commission in order to take advantage of the limited nature of most webinar software.

Remember, you can continue making money long after your webinar has ended by allowing others to view the recording of it. But don’t forget that your webinar’s effectiveness will diminish significantly if you only offer a standard video stream or download of your broadcast.

Instead, consider using one of the automated webinar systems that make your broadcast seem like a live event. This will increase urgency and ensure that more people will view your recorded webinar and take action, too.

I wish you the best of luck with your webinars, and I hope you find wild success with all your future webinars!

Good luck!

source http://anthonyaires.com/4804/webinars-your-big-profits-guide/

Web Design Mistakes

Introduction

Web design is complex enough as it is. You have to worry about mobile accessibility, design aesthetics, user friendliness, SEO, and so much more. But when you consider just how many mistakes one could make and how dearly those mistakes could cost the owner of the website… well, it’s frankly just mind blowing!

The fact is, if you focus too much on any one element of web design, the other elements are going to suffer. You can’t allow that to happen. It’s important to be sure you’re covering all the bases if you want to have a website that is effective at getting traffic and getting conversions.

In this guide, you’re going to learn about some of the most common mistakes web designers make, and how you can avoid making them on your own websites.

Remember, it’s not all about SEO, or it’s not all about looking pretty… there are many factors that work together in unison to make the perfect website. And if you neglect one aspect, your site isn’t going to get the results you’re hoping for.

So let’s begin.

Mistake #1

Overuse Of Animations and Flash

Back in the 1990s and even the early 2000s, the use of animation and flash on websites was common. It was a way to jazz up websites and draw attention.

Unfortunately, these tactics got overused and eventually became completely passé. Now, their use is a glaring signal that the person who made the website had absolutely no idea what they were doing.

Flash and animated images have their place. For example, those websites that post funny images might use animated GIFs to get a laugh where a static image just might not work. Or Flash might be used on a free web-based gaming website.

But if you’re using a ton of Flash banners or menus, or if you’re using animation in your logo or to draw attention to certain areas of your website, you’re being lazy AND annoying your visitors. Stop it!

Use such tactics very judiciously, and only when necessary. Otherwise, you’re just making your site run more slowly and getting on your visitors’ nerves.

Mistake #2

Poorly Chosen Colors

Another huge mistake people make when designing for the web is choosing colors that don’t work together or that severely clash and look terrible together. This could end up frustrating visitors to the point that they leave your site. At the very least, this could hurt conversions.

Not only should you choose colors that are aesthetically pleasing, but you should be careful to use colors that work psychologically with your website’s theme. Believe it or not, colors can actually have specific effects on the human brain.

For example, McDonald’s has always used the color red in their restaurants because the color can make people feel hungrier. This causes them to order more food than they really ought to, because they think they are hungrier than they actually are.

If you want to learn more about how colors work psychologically, you can check out this article:

>> http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/233843

Mistake #3

Improper Font Use Fonts

They can make or break a design, and unfortunately most people just go overboard with fonts, or they use the wrong ones.

Some designers actually become semi-obsessed with fonts. They may have thousands of fonts on their system (which is a bad idea in itself, because the more fonts you have, the slower your system runs) and they may want to use as many of those fonts as they can in every design they create.

Every font you use should have a specific purpose. Don’t use something like a cursive font or (heaven forbid) Comic Sans for the body text on your site. Not only is this not a good look aesthetically, but it also makes it harder to read the text. Use easy-to-read fonts like Helvetica, Arial, or Verdana.

You can get a little more creative when it comes to your logo and headlines, but you should still make sure that:

1. The fonts are easy to read, AND…
2. The fonts work for your niche. (For example, don’t use fancy script fonts on a masculine website, or huge, garish fonts on a feminine one.)

Mistake #4

Failure to Implement SEO

Every single website on the planet (except maybe those that are set up specifically to be private, which can be blocked with a password or robots.txt) needs search engine traffic. Otherwise, why even be online in the first place?

But unfortunately, a lot of web designers focus too much on the way a site looks and they forget to make sure the site is capable of getting traffic! (The prettiest website in the world isn’t going to do you a bit of good if no one ever sees it!)

Yes, your site should be attractive. And yes, your site should be user friendly. But you can’t forget to ensure that search engines can properly find and index your content. This requires using proper silo structure and making sure your navigation links are easy for search engines to find.

Here is some information on the silo structure:

>> http://www.bruceclay.com/seo/silo.htm

Mistake #5

Failing to Make the Site Mobile Friendly

Let’s face it. Mobile is the wave of the future. Up to 90% of a given website’s traffic may be mobile these days, and that number is still rising. The personal computer is actually losing ground rapidly.

Most people use computers for things like writing documents and for working, but when it comes to browsing, more and more people are using tablets and smart phones, because they can be used anywhere.

Plus, as of April 2015, mobile friendliness is one of the factors Google uses to determine rankings. If your site is not mobile friendly, your rankings are likely to plummet unless all your other ranking factors are just phenomenal.

If you’re using WordPress, you can make your site mobile friendly by simply choosing a mobile friendly (also known as responsive) theme. If you’re building your own website, you will need to detect user agent in order to find out what system a visitor is using, and then direct those users to a mobile version of your website. This requires making different versions of your site for different platforms.

You can analyze your mobile friendliness here:

>> https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/

Mistake #6

Using Audio or Auto-Play Videos

Nothing is more irritating about the average website than being startled by loud audio that you weren’t expecting. This is especially true if it happens at an inopportune moment, such as when you’re surfing inconspicuously at work and it’s not break time, or if your kid is asleep and it wakes him up, or if you’re browsing somewhere you shouldn’t be (like, say, church or at a funeral – oops.)

Unless you have a very good reason for doing so, never automatically play audio or video on your website. Polls have shown that if a user is hit with audio or video that plays automatically, it drastically increases the chances that they will immediately leave. (This increases what is known as bounce rate, and if your bounce rate is too high, it can adversely effect your search engine rankings.)

The only time you should maybe set something to automatically play is when it is the primary focus of your page. For example, a video sales page or squeeze page might require auto-play.

Otherwise, make it so that users have to manually activate audio or video. Your users will thank you!

Mistake #7

Bad Navigation

Navigation is one of the most critical elements of any web design. If a user cannot find what they are looking for quickly, they are likely to leave just as quickly.

There are several locations for navigation options on any website. Here are a few places you can squeeze in the navigation you need:

• Above the logo – This is a good place to have links to important pages like privacy pages and contact pages.
• Below the logo – This is traditionally where you can find important links to articles and other content.
• Sidebar – Your sidebar is another good place to locate stuff like article categories and pages.
• Footer – More links can be placed in your footer, and this is a good place to include links to pages if you haven’t located those links above the logo.

You also want to be sure your site has search functionality if you have a large amount of content. Otherwise, it becomes nearly impossible for people to find the exact content they are looking for.

Mistake #8

Requiring Software Installations

Years ago, it was common to need to download a piece of software in order to use a particular website. Things like Real Player and various web cam programs required downloads to run, because their functionality wasn’t built in to browsers.

These days, with so many viruses going around that can steal your personal information or destroy your computer, people are wary of installing anything. If you require a download in order to use a function of your site, people are most likely just going to leave.

If you need functionality that you can’t get from standard HTML or CSS, consider using something like HTML5 or other standard formats. If it requires something that most people don’t have, you’re going to lose a whole lot of traffic.

You could also use Java or JavaScript, which most browsers can use natively these days.

You can read more about HTML5 here:

>> http://www.w3schools.com/html/html5_intro.asp

Mistake #9

Improper Optimization

One of the biggest factors in SEO today is the speed at which your site loads. If your site is slow, you’re going to rank lower than a site that is speedier if all other factors are the same, simply because Google and other search engines understand that people are impatient and will quickly get bored and leave if a site takes too long to load.

The most important things to optimize are:

• Images
• Videos

Text itself doesn’t take long to load. It’s the images and videos on a website that can take a very long time to load. If you’re including photos in a blog post, for example, they don’t need to be massive in size unless they enlarge to show important details (like infographics, for example.)

Images should generally be about 400-1000 pixels at most, and no more than about 75k. Videos should be optimized for the smallest size possible without sacrificing quality. HD videos are great, but they take a while to load, and this could hurt your search rankings, especially if your videos are set to load and play automatically. They’ll just slow down the rest of your site.

Mistake #10

No Contact Information

Lack of contact information is a red flag for a lot of people, and it’s a red flag to Google. Sure, legitimate websites may not have contact information, but spammers almost never put contact information on their websites. If you have a contact page, people will trust you more.

Here are some reasons you might want to include contact information on your website:

1. It’s a ranking signal for Google. Google loves to see contact information on your website, because it makes the site look more legitimate. Spammers definitely don’t want to be contacted.
2. Users will trust your site more if they see you’re being open and allowing people to contact you.
3. You could get important messages from potential advertisers who want to give you money to advertise on your site.
4. It could save you from legal issues if someone can contact you to resolve potential issues instead of having to subpoena your information and potentially sue you because they couldn’t contact you to ask you to remove something you inadvertently used on your site, for example.

Conclusion

Web design is already a technical task. You have to learn how to use many different types of software, how to use scripts or program HTML or CSS, how to design graphics… it’s a lot of work and a lot of knowledge required.

But even the most experienced designers often lose sight of the big picture when it comes to building websites. They may focus too much on aesthetics that usability suffers, or vice versa. Or they may focus too much on SEO and not enough on user experience, or the other way around.

It’s important to be sure you’re looking at all potential aspects of design, and not focusing too much time and attention on any one factor. A harmonious design takes all factors into account equally in order to ensure the site is friendly to both users and search engines.

You might want to create a checklist with web design best practices that you should keep in mind every time you build a new site. This way you can be sure you’ve followed every step each time.

Good luck with your website!

source http://anthonyaires.com/4803/web-design-mistakes/

Twitter Advertising Secrets

Introduction

Twitter is a great place to market your business, and you can certain use it for free. Lots of people have made big fortunes using Twitter as one of their primary marketing channels without spending a dime, however the nature of social media requires a lot of time and effort invested to get good results if you don’t want to spend any money. After all, time is money.

But if you don’t want to spend so much time on Twitter, you can spend a little money and skip the huge time investment. Even if you enjoy Twitter, you can reach more people with advertising, expanding your organic reach through selective targeting.

In this guide, you’re going to learn how to create highly effective Twitter ads, and to get the most out of the platform, no matter what you’re advertising.

So let’s begin.

Getting Started

Before we get started, you might want to go ahead and sign up for your Twitter ads account at:

>> https://ads.twitter.com/

This will let you kind of follow along and look at some of the features in your account as we discuss them, which helps you understand how the different features work a little better. You can always do this later if you want, but I recommend doing it now. This will just take a couple of seconds if you already have a Twitter account.

Twitter has been working on new elements for their advertising platform for a while now. By the time you read this, they may have added or removed features.

These are the options that you can choose from as far as the different types of ads you can run. You need to be sure you choose the right type of ad for your business’s purposes, not just the one that’s least expensive or seems to get the most traffic.

Let’s take a look at these different ad types.

Website Visits

This, of course, will get you visits to your website. You can include a “Website Card” which is a preview of your website that shows up directly in your Tweet. You are charged per click for this type of ad.

Followers

This is pretty self-explanatory. You can buy followers. Any impressions or engagements you get as a result of this campaign don’t cost anything. If you just want to increase your follower count, this is an easy way to do so.

Awareness

This campaign is priced based on impressions, not results. For this reason, you should only use this type of campaign on Tweets that have already been proven to work through some other method, because you don’t want to pay for impressions to an ad that may not perform.

Tweet Engagements

With this type of campaign, you promote individual Tweets for the purpose of getting engagement. You don’t have to pay for impressions unless they result in engagement, and you will not have to pay for organic engagements from users who see your Tweet like normal instead of through your promotion.

Remember that even promoted Tweets must still adhere to the same 140-character limit that regular Tweets must follow, so you’ll want to be as succinct as possible.

Video Views

If you want to promote videos, GIFs, vines, etc., you can use this type of ad to do so. You pay for impressions to your video, and the video will auto-play as users scroll in order to get more attention.

Website Conversions

This is similar to the Website Visits ad type, but instead of just paying for clicks, you can track conversions. You can include a Website Card in this type, as well.

App Installs or Re-Engagements

If you have an app, this is the type of ad you’ll want to use. You can use this to get people to install your app for the first time, or to get people who already have your app and haven’t used it in a while to use it again. You can include an App Card in this ad type, which will let you show a preview of your app, plus the app’s ratings in the Tweet. It also gives users the ability to open or install the app with a single click.

Setting Up a Campaign

When you’re ready to set up a campaign, it’s pretty easy. You’ll need to choose the type of ad campaign you’d like to use, name your campaign, and set up tracking and the dates you want to run your ad. Tracking (via DoubleClick) is optional, but recommended.

Next, you need to choose your targeting options. You can target by location, even down to specific postal codes, by gender, language, device, platform, and even their cellular service carrier!

You can also, of course, target by interest, behavior, etc. This lets you choose specific keywords based on what users Tweet about and things they are interested in.

After this, you have to set up your budget. You can choose a daily maximum (which is required), and also a total budget (which is optional).

Then you have a couple of options for setting your pricing. You can either bid automatically, or set your bid price manually by using their recommended bids for each type of campaign. Automatic bidding is the easiest option, but you may notice spikes in pricing that leave you with a nasty surprise later, so you will want to keep an eye on your campaigns if you choose automatic bidding.

Finally, you have to choose your creative. You can promote existing Tweets or create an entirely new one for your ad, including adding media.

Then just click “Publish Tweet” to launch the ad, and you’re done!

Creating Effective Ads

As you probably know, it’s not enough just to run an ad. Any type of ad must be optimized well for maximum conversions. Let’s take a look at some ways to get the most out of Twitter ads.

Tweet Length

Remember that a Twitter ad must fit within the 140-character limit (unless you’re using an ad format that doesn’t publish a Tweet, such as Followers). This means you must be concise with your ad. Say what needs to be said, but don’t go overboard.

Studies have shown that the most effective promoted Tweets have between 120 and 139 characters. So try to say what you have to say in a reasonable number of characters, but don’t keep it too short.

Use The Right Words

There are certain words that you can use in Tweets to increase your response. They’re a lot of the same words you may have heard work well in sales. Words include:

• You – You is one of the most popular words in sales, because people want to know how things benefit them. Focus on what you have to offer your potential customers.
• Free – This one is obvious. People love free.
• Now – Now provides a sense of urgency, making people feel they need to respond right away. You can also use hurry, quick, limited, while supplies last, or other similar terms.
• New – Anytime people think they can be one of the first to try something, it makes them happy.

Don’t Include Prices

If you want people to re-tweet your ads, don’t include prices. Ads with prices are 30-35% less likely to be liked and re-tweeted. So unless your prices are so low they are unbelievable, leave them out.

Use a Specific Landing Page

Try to make a landing page that fits specifically with your Twitter ad, because you’ll leave users with a much more favorable impression if the Tweet matches the landing page.

For example, if you have a promo code for Twitter users, create a special landing page that has that promo code on the page so it matches your ad.

Include Images or Cards

Ads without images or cards included get much less attention. Make sure you attach an image to your ad or use a website or app card as appropriate.

Ads with images or cards are several times more likely to be liked and re-tweeted.

Target Like A Boss

Targeting is definitely one of the most important elements of running an ad, but Twitter makes it WAY easier than some places.

For example, running an ad on Facebook can be a nightmare in some subject areas, because there’s literally nothing available to target. The best thing you can do is target something slightly similar. For example, if you want to target a very specific type of novel reader (in a genre that isn’t big enough to have its own “interest” or any authors that are traditionally published and popular enough to be targetable) on Facebook, the best you can do is target people who read a similar genre. Not very effective.

But on Twitter, you can target by #hashtag, by interests, by the TV shows they watch, and (best of all, perhaps) you can even target a specific user’s followers! That means you could, for example, find several people in your genre and target all of their followers! Super effective!

It should be relatively easy to figure out how to target for your particular product since there are so many options for targeting, but you may want to run different ads based on what you target. For example, if you have a retro-style video game you want to promote and you want to target fans of Pac-Man and fans of Donkey Kong, you would want to use two different images and two different forms of ad copy to adjust the ad to what you’ve targeted.

Targeting the fans of your competitors is probably one of the most effective ways to reach the audience you need to reach, so that’s a great place to start. If you don’t have any competition to target, such as when you have a product that is so new or innovative there’s no true competition, you can target complimentary accounts. For example, if you created a unique kitchen tool, you could target accounts like Food Network and Food & Wine Magazine.

Twitter has a great article on targeting best practices here:

>> https://business.twitter.com/en/targeting.html

Conclusion

Twitter ads can be remarkably effective if you are careful with your targeting and your ad creatives. You may want to experiment with different combinations until you find the ad that gets the best result at the lowest cost, but once you do you may find Twitter outperforms other platforms for the price.

Don’t forget to use some of the techniques you’ve learned in this guide for creating more effective ads. Use images, use the right words, don’t include prices. These tips will help you create ads that will get results.

Don’t forget to check out Twitter’s targeting best practices, as well. They have some very good tips for helping you find just the right methods for targeting just the right audiences.

I wish you the best of luck with your Twitter promotions!

source http://anthonyaires.com/4802/twitter-advertising-secrets/

Traffic On A Budget

Introduction

Everyone knows that paid traffic is the easiest, most reliable traffic. Other sources take a lot of time or effort, and many people eventually give up entirely because they don’t see results for weeks or months.

For example, using only free methods, it may take months or even years to build enough authority on a new blog to rank well in Google.

Or it might take weeks or months to build a decent following on Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook without spending money. Plus, it takes a lot of time to do so.

Fortunately, paid traffic doesn’t have to cost a fortune. In this guide, you’re going to learn how to use inexpensive Facebook ads to drive traffic to your offers and build your list with as little as $10 per day spent!

Where else can you begin building a real foundation for a business with only ten bucks a day?

Just ten dollars a day… which many of us spend on coffee and lunch, anyway, can help you build a platform you can use to market products for a very long time!

Let’s begin.

Three Types of Traffic

There are three main types of traffic we’re going to discuss for the purposes of this guide:

1. Strangers
2. Friends
3. Fans

Strangers

Strangers are people you’ve never met, and who have no idea who you are or what you do. These people are not likely to buy anything from you, so marketing paid offers to them is typically a waste of your money.

Friends

Friends are people who you’ve met, and they have gotten to know you a little bit, but they aren’t yet ready to trust you fully. You can market low price offers to them, or get them onto your email list, but it’s still a waste of money to use paid advertising to sell high-dollar products to them.

Fans

Fans are people who know you and your products very well. They like you. They trust you. They’re willing to buy products you promote, even at higher prices. They may even be willing to promote your content for you by sharing it on Facebook and other platforms.

It’s important to know these three traffic types, because the methods you use and the budgets you set will be based on the type of traffic you’re targeting.

Before you get started, you might want to use the Power Editor, which only works in Chrome. (If you don’t have Chrome, download it. It’s available for all major operating systems, and it’s free.)

You can find the Power Editor here:

https://www.facebook.com/ads/manage/powereditor

You certainly don’t have to use Power Editor, but it will allow you to have a lot more words in your Facebook ads than if you use the standard ad creation tool in Facebook.

These two tools are VERY similar in terms of how they’re used, so I’ll be giving instructions for the regular editor. Remember, they’re very similar except for the fact that you can add more text to your ad with the Power Editor.

Advertising to Strangers

Budget: $6 Per Day

Strangers are people who have never heard of you, or might have heard of you but don’t remember you at all. These people aren’t likely to buy anything from you, and might not even be willing to join your email list.

Because strangers aren’t likely to take action, it’s best to provide them with significant value in order to gain some trust. If you give them good content for free, they will start to trust you a bit.

For this reason, you should never use paid traffic to advertise paid products to strangers. They’re not likely to buy anything, and you’ll just end up spending money with little to no return on your investment.

In fact, this is the biggest reason people quickly give up on paid traffic. They target cold leads—people who have never heard of them—and try to sell them products right off the bat.

Paid traffic can certainly work if you use it correctly, which means warming up cold leads in order to turn them into buyers—eventually. Not right away. They’re not likely to buy anything from you for a while, but this is a long-term game, not a get-rich-quick scheme. You want to build a real business, not just make a few bucks, right?

So… if strangers aren’t going to buy anything from you, what are they good for? Well, for the same reason everyone you know now was a stranger at one point. Even your parents were strangers until you grew to know them while you were growing up.

Strangers are just friends you haven’t met, yet. That’s as true in marketing as it is in the rest of life. If you treat a stranger right, that person can turn into a friend. Later, they may even become a very good friend. The same thing is true in marketing. If you treat someone right, and you provide them with enough reasons to trust you, they’ll begin to trust you.

Setting Up a Stranger Ad

The first thing you’ll want to do is log into your Facebook account and visit the ad creation manager. For stranger targeting, you’ll want to select “Send people to your website”.

Next, enter the URL you want to send traffic to. This could be your blog, a squeeze page, etc.

When you’ve entered your URL, it will tell you that you can set up a pixel for tracking. Be sure you do this! This will be absolutely vital when you move onto marketing to friends and fans later! (Just follow the instructions Facebook gives you for setting up your tracking pixel.)

On the next page, you’ll set your budget. When targeting strangers with interests, you’ll set your budget at $6 per day.

Next, you’ll need to enter your targeting information. You won’t be able to set up a custom audience until you have an audience to use, so for now you’ll just be targeting by interest.

When you’re targeting strangers, the only way to do so on Facebook is via interest targeting. You’ll need to target based on specific interests people add to their Facebook profile.

Let’s say you want to build a list of people who want to lose weight. You could target interests such as:

• Weight Watchers
• Atkins Diet
• Overeaters Anonymous

It can be tricky to find the right interests to target, but you’ll want to spend some time on this, because it’s one of the most important elements of this method.

You’ll want to target a fairly specific audience, but not so much so that you don’t get much traffic. Your market should have a potential reach of approximately 500,000 to 1,000,000 people.

The best way to ensure you’re targeting the right interests is to make sure you’re targeting interests that prove people are truly interested in a particular market. For example, a lot of people might put the “cooking” interest on their Facebook page, but not all of those people would have a strong interest in it. Many of those people might just be casual hobbyists.

But let’s say you’re targeting chefs. The “cooking” interest is too broad. Instead, you’d want to target things that would mostly (or only) be of interest to chefs. For example, you could target some of the high-end knife brands that appeal to chefs, or you could target some of the most popular culinary schools.

In the bid amount section, you can either allow Facebook to set the price you pay, which could lead to nasty surprises if your ad doesn’t perform well. Instead, you can set the bid amount to “Manual”, and enter the price you’d like to pay. (About 5-6 cents over the suggestion is ideal.)

Note: If you don’t see custom bidding options, there’s a section you can expand at the bottom of the ad creation page that says “Show Advanced Options.” Expand this, and you’ll see the new options.

Finally, you need to go to the next section to create your ad. You’ll need to include an eye-catching image (which must be less than 20% text to meet Facebook’s latest standards) and some text. You won’t be able to include a lot of text unless you user the Power Editor, so it’s suggested you do. The more text you use, the more you can say, and the more attention you can attract.

To review, check out the details for stranger campaigns below.

Stranger Campaign Details:

• Budget: $6 per day
• Facebook Ad Objective: Website Clicks
• Bidding Type: Clicks (bid 6 cents higher than suggested bid)
• Target: Interests (until you have 500k to 1,000,000 audience)

Advertising to Friends

Budget: $3 Per Day

Friends are people who know who you are, and may have joined your email list or liked your page on Facebook, but they don’t yet have enough trust in you to buy something expensive.

The process for setting up an ad for advertising to friends is similar to setting up a campaign to advertise to strangers, but you’ll want to set the budget to $3 per day instead of $6, and you can set your ad objective to either website clicks (as you did for strangers) or website conversion (which is like paying for leads instead of just clicks).

Instead of paying a specific amount for clicks, it’s a good idea to set the price to “best conversions at the best price” to be sure you get the most out of this type of campaign.

You can target interests just like you did for strangers, or you can use a custom audience by targeting the people who have visited your website (which requires you to have set up the tracking pixel as mentioned in the previous section) or a lookalike audience based on your Facebook fan page if you have one.

Otherwise, you’ll set up the ad the same way you did when you targeted strangers. In this case, you’ll probably want to send traffic to a squeeze page, and your ad can reference your lead magnet.

Friend Campaign Details:

• Budget: $3 per day
• Facebook Ad Objective: Website Conversion or Website Clicks
• Bidding Type: Best conversions at the best price
• Target: Interests (until you have 500k to 1,000,000 audience) or Custom Audiences

Advertising to Fans

Budget: $1 Per Day

Fans are people who know who you are and trust you. These people have probably bought something from you already, potentially several times. They may even share your content occasionally.

If you set up the targeting pixel properly, you can easily target those people by using your targeting pixel to create a custom audience.

For targeting fans, you’ll only set a budget of $1 per day. These will be website clicks, and you’ll pay about 6 cents higher than the suggested bid, just like you did for the stranger campaign.

This is your chance to get sales. Whereas you were mostly just introducing yourself and maybe getting newsletter signups with your stranger or friend campaigns, you can target products with a fan campaign. This could be a product of your own, or an affiliate product.

Remember, these people know you and trust you, so it’s time to bring out the big guns and advertise something that has a higher sales price and gets you a better commission!

Fan Campaign Details:

• Budget: $1 per day
• Facebook Ad Objective: Website Clicks
• Bidding Type: Clicks (bid 6 cents higher than suggested bid)
• Target: Custom Audiences

Conclusion

You’ve probably spent a great deal of time thinking you couldn’t afford paid traffic, or that it was too expensive to even try. You may have thought it wouldn’t convert well enough to be worth the investment. (And if you wanted to promote the wrong thing to the wrong audience, you may have been right!)

Fortunately, ten bucks a day can get you plenty of paid traffic you can then use to market multiple products to for a long time in the future. You can use it to build your platform, build your list, and make sales, but you have to keep the three types of traffic in mind.

Remember this:

1. Strangers aren’t likely to buy, so you only want to introduce yourself to them and let them know a little about you.
2. Friends may buy cheaper products, but it’s best to just get them on your list and provide them with value.
3. Fans are those who have seen your value and are much more likely to buy more expensive products and help promote you.

If you keep these three types of traffic in mind and market to each one correctly, you’ll build traffic very affordably!

Good luck!

source http://anthonyaires.com/4801/traffic-on-a-budget/

Top Twitter Marketing Mistakes

Introduction

Twitter is one of the most high traffic websites in the world, and it can be extremely profitable for marketing purposes. It’s also very simple to use. You just sign up, complete your profile, and post messages. It’s basically as simple as sending email, right?

Wrong!

Sure, a five-year-old can learn to use Twitter in a few minutes, but not everyone can learn to use it correctly!

The fact is the vast majority of people are using it all wrong. They’re making these huge mistakes than can turn out to be giant disasters in the long run, and can not only hurt your marketing efforts, they could actually hurt your reputation, too!

In this guide, you’re going to learn about some of the most common mistakes people make on Twitter, and how you can avoid them. In fact, just avoiding these simple things can improve your marketing significantly and rapidly.

So let’s begin.

Disaster #1

Tweeting Nothing But Marketing

Perhaps the single most common mistake people make is Tweeting nothing but marketing messages over and over. After a while, people are probably going to tune you out. Unless your followers are extremely rabid for your products and have specifically signed up to hear about your new releases or special offers, they’re probably going to tire of you quickly if you inundate them with marketing constantly.

Would you like to see your own feed clogged by dozens, perhaps hundreds, of marketing messages by the same person? Would you be ok if you kept missing important messages because someone else kept posting so much marketing that other stuff got lost?

No?

Well, neither would most people!

Instead of posting continual marketing, break up the monotony by posting interesting, entertaining, or helpful posts, especially if they are related to your industry.

But don’t make the mistake of posting totally irrelevant or controversial posts! This will likely only backfire.

Disaster #2

Posting Long Messages

Many people think that because they can post a maximum of 140 characters, that they should get the most out of every post by getting as close to the character limit as possible, but people actually like and respond to shorter posts much better.

Studies have repeatedly shown that posts under 100 characters actually get a much higher rate of engagement than longer posts.

Not only that, but when you keep your posts under 100 characters, it leaves room for your followers to share posts and use the @mention or retweet functions.

Your posts should be short and to the point, with one or two relevant hashtags. Anything more than this and people aren’t as likely to read your tweet or engage with it. And, of course, with any type of social media, engagement is key.

If your followers aren’t retweeting your posts or otherwise engaging, you’ll never get the type of viral reach you’re hoping for.

Disaster #3

Ignoring Mentions

Twitter isn’t just a place to share cute stuff, it’s also an important platform for customer service. Surprisingly, a lot of customers are now using Twitter to contact companies instead of email, because they feel it’s more likely a company will respond to a public request. Additionally, it’s often easier to contact someone on Twitter than it is to pick up the phone or search for an email or contact form.

You should check your account to see who “mentions” you a few times each day to make sure you aren’t missing important messages. It could look very bad on you and your company if you ignore messages.

Additionally, responding directly to customers will help build loyalty. Not only will those customers be more likely to purchase from you in the future, but they will also be more likely to recommend you to others.

I’m sure you’ve heard how important word-of-mouth marketing is. It’s a little principle called “social proof”, and it can be incredibly powerful. People are much more likely to purchase something if they’ve heard about it from a trusted friend or family member, so it’s extremely beneficial to be sure all of your customers are as loyal as possible.

Make sure you check out who mentions you on Twitter, and then make sure that respond, respond, and respond!

Disaster #4

Being Redundant

Have you ever seen someone you have followed on Twitter tweeting and re-tweeting the same message over and over, all day long? It can get pretty annoying, especially if you end up missing important messages because of it.

This is a very common mistake that is typically made by people who are relatively new to Twitter and don’t really understand the platform yet. It’s not the worst thing you can do, but people will definitely start to tune you out after a while.

Most people who do this, think it will help them get seen, because their post will be more likely to end up near the top of someone’s feed, but that’s really not true. All it will end up doing is upsetting your followers and making you look bad.

If you really must keep tweeting about the same thing, at least vary your messages. Change the wording, or perhaps add something new. This will help the redundant seem a bit less so.

For example, you could change up tweets like this:

• Love the new Sparkle Shine Dress? Post a pic of you in it and get entered to win a $50 gift certificate? bit.ly
• Let’s see a picture of you in the new Sparkle Shine Dress! You could win $50! Bit.ly
• We’re giving away a $50 gift certificate and it only takes a pic to enter! Bit.ly
• How’d you like $50 to spend on new shoes? Send us a pic at bit.ly

These variations help distinguish your tweets from each other, and will help you gain more engagement because someone who doesn’t respond to one particular wording might respond to another.

Get creative, try new things, and you may discover that not only are people paying more attention, but they’re also taking more action!

Disaster #5

Automation

There is a growing movement for auto-tweeting, but this can end up with disastrous results. One company found this out first hand when they had a larger number of auto-tweets scheduled about an upcoming concert and the roof of the stage collapsed, causing fatalities. The company was still tweeting about buying tickets for the concert, which was already cancelled. They looked tasteless and borderline criminal. It was a disaster!

Sure, this level of nightmare isn’t likely to happen to you, but you never know. What if you scheduled tweets about “a tsunami of deals” and a disastrous tidal wave hit a town and killed thousands right before your tweet went out? It would look like a callus joke in horribly bad taste and make your company look terrible.

If you’re going to auto-tweet, be sure you keep abreast of current events and make sure no tactless tweets accidentally go out at the wrong time.

Also, you might not want to tweet about individual products on an automated basis. Imagine tweeting about a product that had been sold out for weeks with the text “Now In Stock!”

You’d have a lot of upset customers on your hands!

Disaster #6

Mistaken Identity

If you manage multiple Twitter accounts, you may occasionally forget which account you’re logged into. This can have disastrous consequences if you’re somehow hiding your identity.

If you want to see just how disastrous this kind of thing can be, you only need to look to a huge mistake made by one of the social media managers for the American Red Cross, who thought she was logged into her personal Twitter account, but to her horror discovered she was still logged into the official American Red Cross page.

Fortunately, the Red Cross handled the situation like a boss. They quickly deleted the post and used a bit of levity to avoid any real damage to their organization.

They tweeted:

“We’ve deleted the rogue tweet but rest assured the Red Cross is sober and we’ve confiscated the keys.”

As a happy consequence, donations ended up temporarily spiking, but you can see that this could have been an embarrassing situation for all involved. This kind of thing could get people fired or cost a company major business!

If you’re going to manage two or more accounts, get into the habit of checking the name on your account every single time you post so you can be certain you aren’t accidentally using the wrong account.

Disaster #7

Tweeting Too Much

Tweeting too often is the kiss of death for any Twitter account, unless you have an extremely rabid following that hangs on your every word. Over-tweeting is one of the quickest ways to get people to un-follow you.

This is true whether you’re tweeting about what you had for lunch, the latest breaking news, or even posts about contests and giveaways. People just don’t want to see sooooooo much content from one single person or company.

Try to limit your tweets to a maximum of 8-10 per day, and do that only rarely. Four per day is plenty most of the time. This will help you reach people in different time zones around the world without being annoying.

If you’d like to know when the most effective times are to tweet, keep an eye on your metrics as far as engagements such a retweets and when people mention you. Tweet at the times you regularly get the most engagements, to reach the bulk of your audience.

Also, if you notice your account losing followers, you might be tweeting too much! Slow down and see if your rate of loss drops.

Disaster #8

Hashtag Insanity

Have you ever seen a tweet where over half the message was nothing but one hashtag after the other?

These tweets look something like this:

Ready for #summer? Get a hot #swimsuit, #tankini, #bikini, #sarong or a great pair of #sandals or #sunglasses! Bit.ly

This is annoying, looks terrible, and isn’t likely to accomplish much. You’re much better off separating this into focused posts by concentrating on each item in a separate post. You can spread this out over a day or two to keep from inundating your followers.

Examples:

Ready for #thebeach? Get your next super sexy #bikini at our huge Summer Sale Event! Bit.ly

We’re having a huge Summer Sale Event on swimsuits! Get your next #tankini at up to 60% off! Bit.ly

Need new #sandals for #summer? Check out our Summer Sale event! Bit.ly

Disaster #9

Follower Begging

The last thing anyone wants to see is a total stranger begging to be followed. Begging is not only rude, it’s downright distasteful. It makes you look desperate, and definitely doesn’t inspire confidence in your product or service.

Think about it. If you’re so desperate that you’re begging strangers to follow you, what does that say about you or your company? Does that sound like you’re a confident business owner who has a stellar reputation and a first-class product?

To the average person, begging smacks of desperation. And people are usually desperate because they aren’t making any sales. And what is the biggest reason people don’t make sales? Because their product stinks!

I’m not saying your product stinks, but that is what people are likely to think if you beg for followers.

Instead of begging, you can send a polite message requesting a person follow you and give them a reason to do so. This might be exclusive promotions, giveaways, contests, coupons, etc. Or you could mention that you’d happily retweet their messages when they follow you.

Disaster #10

Too Much Retweeting

Retweeting is a great tool, because you can use it to show off praise from customers or to call out a company or individual you’re happy with. But overused it can be a recipe for disaster.

Not only could it harm your reputation if your randomly retweet the wrong person who later ends up to have a bad reputation or scams people, but if it is overdone your followers will start to tune you out as they would if you overused any type of posting method.

Ideally, you want to ensure that each retweet reflects well upon you and your brand. Check the background of each person you intend to retweet, and use them sparingly. Save them for occasions when a tweet really stands out as worthy of a retweet.

Disaster #11

Controversy

Unless you’re a brand that thrives on controversy, it’s never a good idea to post anything that might be controversial unless you’re really willing to lose a large chunk of your user base if they respond negatively to whatever you post.

Sure, some brands can get away with being controversial. For example, many Chick-fil-A and Hobby Lobby customers have praised these two companies for standing up for their shared religious beliefs. It was a huge risk, but now many of their customer base, have become more loyal because of the decisions these companies have made. However, these companies have also discovered that a very large chunk of their future and potential market has decided to boycott them, and that their stance on certain issues will make it difficult for them to ever broaden their market reach.

In PR, some people have said that no attention is bad attention, but in many cases this simply isn’t true. Controversy can be the kiss of death for a business, and it can be a PR nightmare.

Be very careful about what you post. Think before you post and be sure you aren’t stirring up even the slightest hint of controversy. You definitely don’t want to offend your core customer base, and it’s easier than you think, to do so.

Be careful!

Conclusion

Twitter is a remarkable platform for marketing when it is used correctly, but most people tend to make at least a few of these common mistakes. This can lead to the platform being less effective than it could be, or even potentially causing more harm than good.

In order to make the most of Twitter, it’s important to observe these warnings and avoid these potential mistakes, at all costs.

To recap, the biggest mistakes are:

Disaster #1 – Tweeting Nothing But Marketing

Disaster #2 – Posting Long Messages

Disaster #3 – Ignoring Mentions

Disaster #4 – Being Redundant

Disaster #5 – Automation

Disaster #6 – Mistaken Identity

Disaster #7 – Tweeting Too Much

Disaster #8 – Hashtag Insanity

Disaster #9 – Follower Begging

Disaster #10 – Useless Tweeting

Disaster #11 – Controversy

If you can avoid these common mistakes and use Twitter the way it was intended, you’ll soon discover that it’s an effective marketing platform that is actually as effective as it is easy to use.

Good luck with your Twitter campaigns!

source http://anthonyaires.com/4800/top-twitter-marketing-mistakes/

Top 10 List Building Mistakes

Introduction

You’ve probably heard the saying, “The money is in the list.”

This is one of the most popular saying in the world of business, and it’s absolutely true. Content may be king, but the list is the Supreme Chancellor.

The fact is, having a list is far more important than having a large fan base on Facebook, a lot of traffic on your blog, or a lot of followers on Twitter. List subscribers are people you can reach at any time. You don’t have to get them to be on Facebook, Twitter or your blog. You only have to get them to open their email, which is something most people do at least once per day.

On average, each email subscriber you get can make you approximately $1 per month. That means if you have 100 subscribers, you could make $100 per month. 1,000 subscribers could make you $1,000 per month. This isn’t a hard and fast rule, but it’s a good general guideline. It could be less, but it could be much more depending on your niche, your offers, and how you treat your list.

In this guide, you’re going to learn about some of the biggest mistakes people make when building a list and marketing to that list, and how you can avoid making these killer mistakes in your own campaigns.

Let’s begin.

Mistake #1

Waiting to Build a List

You may think that because your website or blog is only getting a handful of visitors that you shouldn’t bother trying to build your list yet.

Wrong!

No matter how much traffic you have, even if it’s one visitor, it’s never too early to start trying to build your list. You never know when that one person who would buy absolutely everything you promote might come along, so it’s a good idea to get up a squeeze page and a lead magnet and start trying to gather subscribers immediately.

Let’s say you decide to wait until you are getting 1,000 unique visitors per day to start building your list. And let’s say it takes you a full year, 365 days, to reach that point. And let’s say you got an average of 100 visitors each day before that point. And let’s say that your squeeze page would have converted 10% of those people to subscribers.

10% of 100 visitors per day (10) x 365 days = 3,650 subscribers

Remember how I mentioned that the average subscriber is worth $1 per month? That’s $3,650 per month worth of income you could be missing out on! This is just a simple example, but you can see my point, right?

Mistake #2

Bad Lead Magnets

A lead magnet, in case you’re not aware, is whatever you’re giving away as an incentive to get people to join your list. This might be a free video, a report, an eBook, a multi-day email course, or perhaps just a free coupon or discount offer.

A lot of people make the mistake of thinking they can throw together a 5-page report that offers very little real value. While it may work to get people to join your list, it isn’t going to benefit you much for the long term.

Why?

Because your lead magnet isn’t only to get people to join your list. It’s also a preview of what you know. It’s a preview of what kind of valuable things you might offer in the future. It lets people know you’re an expert in your field.

Your lead magnet should actually be of such high quality that people would be willing to pay for it. The higher the quality, the more people will want to buy whatever you offer for sale later, because they will automatically think, “If the freebie is this great, the paid stuff must be freaking incredible!”

Mistake #3

Bad Squeeze Pages

A bad squeeze page is going to kill your list building efforts faster than anything else. If your squeeze page is poorly constructed, you could be losing out on a very large number of subscribers.

Let’s look at the example from the previous section. Those 3,650 subscribers would be half that (only 1825) if your squeeze page converted at 5% instead of 10%. That’s potentially a difference of getting $1,850 on average per month instead of $3,650 per month!

You probably won’t come up with a perfect squeeze page right off the bat. It might take testing several iterations before you come up with the right version. But you can use A/B split testing to determine which version converts best for you. You could even send some paid traffic to your squeeze page iterations to test them before you start using them.

I’m sorry that there’s no one be-all, end-all squeeze page example I can give you that is guaranteed to work in any niche. Different markets will respond better to different tactics. That’s why you should test different styles, different headlines, different images, different colors, even different lead magnets until you get a squeeze page that converts well.

Mistake #4

No Autoresponder Sequence

Okay, so let’s say you have built a list of several hundred (or thousand) people. Now what?

If you’re not using an autoresponder sequence, you’re really missing out on a lot of potential from your list. The reason for this is that you want to keep your list warm until you’re ready to send out your next offer.

What do I mean by warm?

Well, let’s say you join an email list to get a free report. You read the report and like it, but you don’t get any emails from this marketer for several weeks. Then suddenly you get an email selling something.

You may have forgotten who this person is. You may not immediately remember that free report you got, or where it came from. Now suddenly this person seems like a spammer. You hate spam, so you just click the “spam” tag in your email and you don’t get any emails from that person anymore.

Do you want this to happen to you? No? Then keep your list warm by using an autoresponder to send them interesting, valuable emails every few days for a while after they join to keep them warm.

Mistake #5

Using the Wrong Service

Did you know that the autoresponder service you use can make a huge difference to the success of your email marketing?

Some email services have taken measures to ensure their emails are whitelisted by a lot of the major email providers and ISPs. What this means is that your emails are a lot less likely to be marked as spam, which means your emails will be seen and read by more people.

The one thing you should not do is to use one of those scripts that run on your own server. Just don’t do it! You won’t have the automatic whitelist power that a good email service provider has, and you’ll potentially be the target of spam complaints that could get your hosting account shut down or even get your domain name taken away!

If you’re using a good autoresponder service, they would field many of the spam complaints. (And you will get them no matter what you do. People may forget who you are, or they will try to unsubscribe and make a mistake and they’ll think you’re continuing to email them on purpose, or they’re just jerks.) A good autoresponder service would be able to be your advocate, because they have many anti-spam measures in place to protect themselves, and that also protects you.

Mistake #6

Not Tracking Results

This is a mistake even some major marketers make, and it’s a big one. If you aren’t tracking your results, you could be missing out big time.

Most email services provide metrics. These metrics are there for a reason. They give you extremely valuable information that can tell you how well you’re doing with your email promotions.

Some of the information you may get from your email provider includes:

• Received Rate – The total number of subscribers who got your email (or at least the total number of messages sent)
• Opens – The total number of people who opened your email
• Read Percentage – The percentage of people who read your message
• Clickthroughs – The number of people who clicked the link in your email

Metrics such as these will tell you a lot. Your open rate will tell you whether your subject line worked to get people interested. Your clickthroughs will tell you how well you did writing the email copy.

Don’t ignore these metrics, as they can help you improve your results considerably!

Mistake #7

Over-Hyping the Subject Line

The last thing you want to do is over-hype your subject line, because it will only make people automatically think your message is spam. Or even worse, they won’t believe the hype and they’ll think you’re a liar or a scammer.

Take a look at these subjects:

Lose 6 Pounds Overnight? Yes, It’s Possible With NO Dieting!

Brand New Weight Loss Method Shows Promise

The first subject line is probably going to make most people think, “Yeah, right.” There’s no way someone could lose 6 pounds overnight, right? Even if it were possible, the average person would not believe it.

The second subject line is much more believable. It may not be as “exciting”, but it’s much more honest and will probably not upset people the way the first one might.

Mistake #8

Promotion Only Emails

Every single email you send should offer some sort of value to your subscribers. Even promotional mails should be of value in some way.

You may think, “But the product I’m promoting is incredibly valuable!”

That may be true, but if you’re not offering some sort of added value, you may end up upsetting your subscribers. At the very least, you will eventually end up alienating people, because they will stop opening your messages.

Instead, give your subscribers a lot of value. Send them valuable information for free on a regular basis. Interact with them. Don’t use noreply@yourdomain.com as your return email address, because you want to respond when a subscriber emails you! This builds loyalty.

Whenever you send an email, add value. Here are some ideas:

• Offer a discount or rebate of whatever you’re promoting
• Offer a bonus to anyone who buys through your affiliate link
• Offer a how-to-use-it report to anyone who buys
• Make a video review of the product

Whatever you do, don’t just send a promotion!

Mistake #9

Not Using Text

There’s a new trend in email marketing these days to use tons of graphics and completely ignore the text side of things. The trouble is, a lot of people can’t stand graphical emails. Sometimes they won’t pay any attention to them if they are all graphics, or they will get confused and not understand where to click to get more information.

This is why you should always include some plain text for those people. At the very least, be sure you have at least one recognizable text link for people who look for text to click.

Your call to action should always include text. You might think a huge red flashing animated button that says “Click Here!” would be the option that would get the most clicks, and you might be right. But then again, it could be that small, innocuous text link that gets more results.

Just in case, be sure to include the text link alternative. That way, all your bases are covered, and you’ll find that you’ll get a better CTR because you have both options included.

Mistake #10

Mailing Too Often or Too Little

Finding the right frequency to email your list can be tricky, but in general you want to email them anywhere from 2-5 times per week. Anything less than that and you risk them forgetting who you are. Anything more than that and they are likely to unsubscribe because they will think you’re spamming them to death.

* Every time you send out an email, watch your unsubscribe rate.

If you notice a significant increase in unsubscribes after a particular mailing, you might want to decrease the number of times you email your list. (Unless of course there’s another reason you can pinpoint for the unsubscribes, such as emailing about something controversial.)

If you notice that not many people are clicking your links or opening your emails, it might be because they don’t know who you are. In this case, temporarily increase the number of emails you send each week.

This all goes back to metrics. Pay attention to all of your metrics every time you send out a message. These metrics will let you figure out what you might be doing wrong so you can increase the effectiveness of all of your email marketing campaigns.

Conclusion

Remember, it’s never too late (or too early) to start building an email list. The best time to start, if you haven’t already, is now!

• Not tomorrow.
• Not next week.
• Not “someday.”
• Now!

Every day you wait is potentially several subscribers you lose forever. Those people may never cross your path online again. Isn’t it better to get those people on your list while you have the chance?

Be careful with your email marketing efforts, because once you alienate a subscriber, they’re gone for good. They’ll hit that “unsubscribe” link, and you’ll probably never hear from them again.

As long as you avoid the mistakes outlined in this guide, you’ll probably find a lot of success with email marketing. Ultimately, if you treat your list like gold, they’ll bring you lots of gold!

Good luck!

source http://anthonyaires.com/4799/top-10-list-building-mistakes/

The Art Of Selling

Getting To Yes!

The 3 Key Reasons Why People Buy And How To Ensure That They Say YES To Your Products!

The 3 Main Reasons People Buy

Are you selling hundreds, maybe even thousands of products every month (digital or otherwise) or are you still struggling to boost your sales volume so that you’re able to at least break even every month?

If you are finding it difficult (if not impossible) to increase sales despite the fact that you are offering high quality, in-demand products then it’s time to unlock the 3 key reasons why people buy. (And these 3 reasons apply across the board – in any market, industry or niche imaginable!)

The reasons why someone buys from their favorite clothing store are the exact same as the reasons people would buy from you as opposed to your competition (or the other way around).

This holds true regardless of whether you sell website designs, artwork or even mail order.

Once you know and understand exactly what the 3 key reasons are, you can tap into the persuasive power that will instantly skyrocket your sales while putting you in a powerful position of expanding your business and ensuring steady growth over a long-term basis.

If you hadn’t already guessed, this report is all about the power of psychology. But rather than give you a lengthy (and boring) overview of how to use questionable “mind control” tactics to unfairly influence buyers – I’m going to show you how to use legitimate, honest and proven buyer triggers that deliver a powerful message to your buyer base – ensuring that your sales go up and your refund rate goes down.

And we’re not only going to uncover those all important three reasons that people buy, we’re also going to figure out how we can get into the minds of potential buyers, so they come to you instead of your competitors.

Are you ready to turn the tables around and put YOUR brand in front of a hungry audience of buyers?

Let’s begin!

How To Increase Sales With Buyer Triggers

Reason #1: “…to make money”

We all want to make more money, right? And so it should be no surprise that “making money” is one of the main reasons why people buy products. Just take a look around the marketplace today and you’ll see just how many products are designed to help people increase their income – and improve their financial situations.

More money means different things to different people: For some it might mean no more worrying about how to pay the bills. Other people may need to make money to fund projects, get businesses and projects off the ground, while for many others, making more money is simply about security and in their ability to provide a better life for their family and future generations.

If your product can help someone make more money, thus improving their financial situation, then you’ll be tapping into one of the key reasons why people purchase products.

Reason #2: “…to save money”

Saving money is just as important to buyers as making money is, and if you browse through both digital and physical product marketplaces you’ll find plenty of information on how people can reduce their overall costs and save more money.

From saving money on household bills to saving money at the pump, if your product can help people to save money you’ll be taking advantage of yet another key buying trigger.

Reason #3: “…to alleviate pain and suffering”

This is a very powerful reason for people to buy because this group of buyers are absolutely desperate for a quick and easy solution to their problems and they are willing to pay or do just about anything to find one.

You may have heard the term “desperate buyers”, and there is an entire market dedicated to this avid group of buyers.

If you cater to a market that consists of buyers looking for prompt answers, fast solutions to personal problems, or relief from emotional or physical pain, showing them how your product will directly alleviate their suffering is a very powerful trigger that will result in increased sales.

Understanding What Your Buyers Really Want

You now understand the 3 key reasons why people buy, so your next step is to uncover what people buy, so that you can create a best selling product in your industry or niche market.

To do this, you need to get into the minds of your potential buyers so you can understand what they’re most interested in and willing to pay money for. It’s like trying to find the need of a particular market. It’ll help you create the best product you possibly can while ensuring that your time is spent wisely creating products that have already proven to sell rather than testing out unknown markets.

Your first step is to conduct market research. The more you know about your audience the better your results will be, both in being able to understand your buyers and your ability to reach out to them.

For example, if you were a photographer who was interested in creating an information product focusing on teaching beginner photography-based techniques, you would want to conduct market research to first determine demand, and second to identify a unique angle or focus that you could use to set your product apart in the market.

This research would also give you access to valuable information about your market as a whole including:

Competition

Traffic Sources

Potential partners

Existing products

Leaders (authorities in your market)

Research can make all the difference between spending a lot of time on a product only to get few sales in return, and identifying whether there really is an audience out there for the information you want to publish.

Using Alexa For Market Research
Source: http://www.Alexa.com

You’ve likely heard of Alexa, but have you ever considered it as a tool used to quickly (and thoroughly) analyze your market so you can better understand what people are looking for?
Here’s how to do it:

When you reach the main page of Alexa.com, click on the site info tab.

On this page, you are able to search 5 websites at once in order to compare traffic stats (including volume and history).
For our example, we’ll use the website www.AustralianOpen.com

Alexa gives us a summary of stats for the site and unsurprisingly it reveals the traffic for the site exploded into action at the start of the year, just before the tournament began.

With this information, you can see how trends are an important part of your site research. When you have a potential product in mind for a specific audience, you can explore different sites that already cater to that audience and evaluate overall traffic, interest as well competing websites already in your market.

Over on the right hand side of the page you can see the main high impact search terms that will bring people to the websites you are researching.

You’ll also be able to delve into search analytics including search terms that are rising and falling. This in particular is useful because it pinpoints potential trends. It can tell you what people need.

You can even find out more about the audience that visits this particular site. This is one of the most important features of all, because you can see how each age group compares to the general population.

For example, do more men between the ages of 25-34 visit this site than older men between the ages of 55-64? Do more female visitors go to the site overall than men?

As you can see, there is a wealth of information available on Alexa.com that can help you plan products that people are more likely to say yes to. It’s a great tool to use during the early stages of development because the more you know about your intended target audience, the easier it will be to identify a product they will be in need of.

For example, the audience demographics on this site reveal whether the majority of visitors to the Australian Open site have children or not. Could this be useful in your product creation ideas and marketing strategies?

Quantcast.com

Source: http://www.Quantcast.com

In many ways, Quantcast is even more in depth than Alexa.com. You can plug in the name of a site you want to analyze, and see just how many visits it receives per day, week, or month, depending on your needs.

 

The demographics available on this site tell you a lot about your target audience. Let’s say you want to find out more about the people who use Amazon.com. Scroll down the results page and you’ll find all sorts of valuable demographic information about the audience.

Do more college students use the site than grad school members? How about the earnings of those who visit the site? You’ll get all kinds of answers from Quantcast!

Incidentally it’s worth identifying any peak trends that hit your market at certain times of the year. For example gardening will always be more popular during the main growing seasons. November is when things really take off for anyone selling festive products for the Christmas season. These two are obvious, but you’ll find plenty of other ideas as well. Do any of them apply to your audience?

CrazyEgg – getting more information from YOUR visitors

Source: http://www.CrazyEgg.com

If you have a website and you’re thinking about creating a product

that is specific to your audience, CrazyEgg is a valuable resource both in terms of analyzing a market and in downloading “Heat Maps”, a complete and detailed snapshot of your website, so you can improve your marketing campaigns and make changes that will increase conversions.

A Heat Map provides you with the opportunity to take a look at your website in a whole new way. You’ll see a darkened view of a particular page – and your Heat Map will show you which links are the most popular on that page.

So if someone clicks on a link only occasionally, it would show as a bluish color. However if one link is very popular, producing a high number of click-throughs, it will appear in red. In other words the warmer the color, the hotter that area of your site really is.

This is a paid service but you do get a thirty-day period free to try it out. And the basic service is very affordable so it might be worth a look if you are serious about finding out what your visitors want and need.

Getting Into The Minds Of Your Buyers
If you want to increase your sales, you have to get into the minds of your buyers, and understand how and why they think the way they do. The more information you can gather and analyze – through using sites like Alexa to track the competition and Heat Maps to track the information on your own website – the easier it will be to create products that are guaranteed to sell.

If you’ve been creating products based on what you think your audience wants, you’ve been going about it in the wrong way. It’s all about finding a need your audience already has, and figuring out how to fill that need.

That’s why you should never begin creating products until you know your audience. You can get to know them in various ways – by exploring the market, finding out what they like and dislike about similar products in your market, evaluating the competition, researching demand and finally, discovering a unique angle that you can take, in order to ensure that your products stand-out in the market!

Tracking Results

Of course there comes a time when you have to think about launching a product and seeing where it takes you. For this you’ll need a dedicated website and a sales page that is designed to bring in as many buyers as possible.

This is where a service like CrazyEgg’s heatmap comes in extremely handy. Let’s imagine you write your sales page and put it up there for people to find. Once you start getting traffic to it you can use the likes of Google Analytics to see which phrases are bringing people to the site and how long they are staying there before they leave – or go through to buy your product, as the case may be.

But the Heat Map will show you how your links are performing, what pages are more popular than others as well as what areas of your website could use improvement in order to boost conversion rates.

Heat Maps won’t only show you which links, graphics and pages are receiving more exposure, clicks or visits, but it can also help you determine how colors, headlines, sub headlines and other sales page elements are affecting sales.

For example, let’s say you’ve used two different colors for two different buy now buttons. One color may be outperforming the other one, but unless you know which one is doing this you won’t be able to capitalize on it and change the color of the other buttons as well. A Heat Map will highlight which button is outperforming the other, making it easy for you to change!

You shouldn’t underestimate the power of testing and tracking when it comes to launching any new product. It can be the difference between a successful product and an absolute loss.

A/B Split Testing

It’s worth mentioning the process of A/B testing here. You may also have heard this referred to as split testing. We made a brief mention of this above when we talked about having two different colored buy now buttons.

The idea is you change just one element on two landing pages, whether it is a headline, bullet point, color scheme, layout or perhaps even just button or link placement.

For example you might have a newsletter you want to send out to your 2,000 strong email list. So you send 1,000 people the standard newsletter with one subject line, while the other 1,000 people get exactly the same newsletter with a different subject line.

Apart from the subject lines everything else is exactly the same.

By running an A/B split test campaign you can see which subject line drew the most attention, which one garnered a higher number of open-rates and which one ultimately out-performed the other.

The same test can be conducted to evaluate two different headlines, sub-headlines, greetings and even website designs.

Test your ideas. Test your audience. Find out what makes them tick – and then test whether they react more strongly to one element in your sales funnel than another.

The great thing is, some of this knowledge you’ll learn as you go along can be applied to more than one product launch. As you get to know your target audience, you’ll start to understand them better. You’ll instinctively know whether one product is likely to out-sell another. You’ll have far more hits than misses, and you’ll ultimately, sell more than you ever have before.

Final Words

Nothing is more important than understanding your buyers, what they want most, what they are interested in and what they will buy (and buy again).

When you know your target audience, you know how to create and deliver products that will outsell and outperform the competition. In fact, the more you know your buyer, the greater position you are in to become a leading authority in your niche and someone that people recognize as a primary source of quality products that they can feel comfortable buying.

Knowing your market is also important when building your brand. Nothing will speak to your audience more clearly than when you truly understand what is most important to them. Your products will have a solid angle, a distinct voice, and will stand out in your market, no matter how crowded.

You’ll become a primary player in your industry – a force to be reckoned with, and an authority figure.

Get to your audience and you’ll build a strong, polished brand that will stand the test of time.

It’s a real win-win situation – you get what you’re looking for, the customers get what they’re looking for, and both parties are likely to want to maintain an ongoing business relationship for many years to come.

source http://anthonyaires.com/4798/the-art-of-selling/