My Oops. I Forgot to Mention the "Sell Anything" Book

I promised those on my email list that I would post briefly about Harry Browne's How to Sell Anything book. Don't miss this....

The late Harry Browne was a leading Libertarian. I don't care what your political views are -- forget his. He had something else to offer so valuable that you're kind of a fool if you don't want to know it. (IMHO.)

He was a consummate salesman, and face to face sales are just a subset of marketing, but a crucial one to at least understand when you write sales copy. Just 'cause you can't see your prospect doesn't mean they aren't a thinking, breathing, feeling person. They are. Any guru will tell you that sales copy needs to be conversational and personable -- that a new friend will believe you easier than a skeptic-stranger.

Browne's book takes that a step further, and it is cheap to buy! This great book (140+ pages) covers a "great truth" in the first six chapters: that there is a single, great, common motivator for every person who parts with their money. Once you understand that (and he is absolutely spot-on in his assessment), the rest of effective selling-marketing suddenly makes total sense, and doesn't seem near so complex any more.

The book costs $9.75 for a download, and is a must-have. There is no affiliate program for this, so here is the direct URL for the book:

http://www.harrybrowne.org

Once on his home page (administered by his widow, apparently), just navigate past all the Libertarian stuff (if you want) and click your way to the book. It's the best $9.75 I've spent in years.

--Arlen

How to Instantly Save 10-50% on Marketing Resources.

Hi, Gentle Reader.

I just want to mention something. The Gurus will hate me for this, but I'm going to do it anyway.

Many sellers of marketing info use a technique called the "downsell." It can be a way for you to save 10-50% on the price of a resource you've chosen to buy. Often a sales page, whether for an originally searched-for product, or on an upsell after you purchase or opt in to a vendor's list, will include some form of exit pop-up to try to catch those who are leaving a page without buying.

This pop-up can be a full page, a mini-page, or it may even look like a live chat window, but they all do the same thing: they re-offer the product to you at a discount, sometimes with a bonus or two removed, sometimes not. The point is, though, the vendor will take less money, if that's what it takes to get any money.

I vote "less"!

Here's what you need to do to access a downsell discount if the vendor offers one. When you're on the sales page, open another tab or window in your browser, then paste the URL from the sales page into the blank one and see if it will open as a duplicate page. (Some vendors use sophisticated scripts that "know" your are not on the sales page for the first time.)

If the new window is a duplicate, then try closing that new window to see if you get an exit pop-up. If so, you can buy at a discount something that you were already going to buy at full price. If not, you have to decide if the product is really something you want. BTW, one software package I tried this on went from $197 to $97, just because I was willing to do the above few steps to check for a "downsell" discount. Saving $100 for 30 seconds of work ain't bad.

I suggest the two-page technique especially because of "one-time offers." These offers are usually already discounted, but if you close the OTO offer page, it really will be gone forever. Testing for a downsell using the duplicate page still leaves you able to order through the original page if the duplicate doesn't have a discount exit pop. Just an FYI.

Enjoy, friends, and go save money.

--Arlen

Driving Web Traffic to Your Site - Best Methods

The biggest challenge in almost everyone's web-based business is driving "targeted" traffic to your site. I've seen a little of what works and gets good results, and what is either useless or low-yield. I'm sure you have, too.

As much respect as I have for the "Gurus", there is one little bit of info they don't have, and it has to do with how successful they already are. Many of them talk about SEO or Google as a pay-per-click marketing venue. "Get to #1 in the organic search," they say, or "With Google's Adwords you can have tons of targeted traffic in an afternoon!"

My experience has been quite different. While I have been blessed to be better off than most, financially, I am certainly not a gajillionaire. The gurus touting both aspects of Google pretty much are gajillionaires already. Here's the point: they neither have to worry about how to pay for PPC campaigns of Adwords, nor do they worry about how to make the bills while they steep themselves in SEO lore.

Most of the rest of us can't afford that much time off to fiddle with SEO or finding just the right keywords, no matter how long their "tail" is. Wanna know where most of my subscribers have come from?

So far, two main places: Ezine ads (solo ads for me) and "safelist" email marketing. While I am blogging and submitting articles to ezines, I have not seen any major traffic come from those activities yet. I have no doubt that I will -- it's just a matter of time. But so far, I've had to buy my opt-in friends attention via safelists and solo ads.

I'd be interested in knowing what other real-world methods you all have found. If you want to know which safelists and solo ad venues I like, as well as what I paid, go to my affordable marketing training site, and I'll tell all. (It is password protected, but joining is free, and you get very cool info for doing so, so don't be shy.)

Well. Even though I've been marketing for years offline, better and better with each passing year, I am upper-intermediate in knowledge and just lower-intermediate in success scored on the web. One thing is for certain, though: there's no real point in any of you having to go buy three competing version of each marketing widget to find out which works best. Just read my reviews, comparisons, and articles.

As a parting shot, I want to just pass along the two most important things in my marketing world this week.

1 - Overwhelm your prospective client/customer with value, and
2 - Find a way to stand out from the crowd!

Hasta the next time,

Arlen

The "Flurry" Trap - What It Is and How to Avoid It.

Do you ever confuse activity with results? Busy, busy, busy, but at the end of the day, you're no closer to where you want to be? This is the "Flurry" Trap: a flurry of activity, but not in the right direction.

Sometimes you have so much on your plate that you hit the ground running in the morning and never slow down until you fall down, into your bed late at night. At the end of that twelve to eighteen hours of intensity, if there is no concrete progress towards your goals, but you've just a lot of minutia checked off, then you've fallen into the Flurry Trap.

The worst thing about the Flurry Trap is not just the wasted time, where you might have accomplished meaningful things. It's the discouragement of the bad habit. Build up enough disappointment within yourself over missed goals, and you might just give up on the whole thing.

The Magic Key to Beating the Flurry Trap:

There is a very simple, straightforward way to overcome the Flurry Trap, set a good habit, and rekindle your excitement for your goals. It takes a paper, a pen, and about two minutes a day (with an extra ten to fifteen minutes on Sunday).

Each Sunday (or some other day you choose), sit down in a quiet place and make a very simple list. On the upper right side of your page write your most important goal for the week. Halfway down the page (still on the right side), put the next most important goal. At the bottom right, put the third most important goal.

Now, work backwards. What is the last thing that has to happen before the top goal can be reached? Write it to the left of the goal itself. What big key leads to that step? Write that one just to the left again. What leads to that third-to-last step? It goes just to the right again. Finally, after a number of steps, you'll be at the left edge of the page.

Guess what your first task for Monday will be? That's right -- the left-most step toward your main goal. Before you do chores or exercise or shop or go to work, DO THAT STEP. Do it completely, and do not fudge on it. Let everything else go until that sub-goal is checked off. I've heard Brian Tracy call that "eating the frog" (I think he was quoting Zig).

Now, you'll do the same thing for goals two and three, except you'll check those tasks off later in the day. For example, once you've eaten frog number one, then exercise or shop or whatever ... until about ten o'clock. Then you drop everything, and work on task one of goal two UNTIL IT IS 100% DONE. (It must be done by noon.) Then you break briefly for other tasks or recreation.

Rinse and repeat with task one of goal #3, with a deadline of three o'clock.

Do you see the magic here? By the end of Monday, you'll have three major, concrete tasks completed, leading you strongly toward your three top goals. Think that'll be encouraging and energizing? You bet it will!

On Tuesday, you'll nail three more major tasks. Same on Wednesday. And so on....

If three tasks in one day is too much, then get two, or even one, without fail. If you work yourself up into more capacity, then five or six per day may be in reach. Either way, GET STARTED. Today. No excuses. Be relentless until you've formed the habit of meaningful activity.

That's real self-improvement.

That's how you beat the Flurry Trap.

Don't Buy Adwords System Software...

I just reviewed, in a side-by-side comparison, two well-selling Google Adwords Systems, each designed to take the customer step-by-step through the very complex world of pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns. (That was a very large number of hyphens in one sentence.)

I won't bore you with the details in this Blog because you can access it on my site HERE, but it was very interesting to me how the PPC bug bit me again, and how each of these two products appealed to a different part of me. In the end, I bought them both (how else could I review them?), but found I used the simpler, cheaper one much more than the more turnkey one. Huh. Go figure.

As to why the PPC bug hit me: I finally realized that for those of us who don't have marketing staff, doing hardcore search engine optimization (SEO) is frankly beyond me and most like me. The level of SEO in PPC campaigns just seemed a little more manageable.

So, in spite of my earlier debacle in PPC when I tried to figure it out on my own, I decided to give it another shot, but this time, with some instruction.

Read my reviews, but above all, let's compare notes here about PPC campaigns in general, and about products that claim to make the process easier and/or more profitable....

--Arlen

My Three "Forgotten" Marketing Keys - What Are Yours?

I just wrote this mini-article. These tools have worked for me. Please, comment with any other marketing techniques that have been especially effective for you. Thx.

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Marketing: The Three Forgotten Keys
Ignore These and Miss Out On Most of Your Profits

by
Arlen L. Card, Esq.

You hear about "marketing secrets" all the time. The best "secret" I've found for effective marketing isn't a secret at all -- it's just ignored by most.

Wouldn't you like to spend less time marketing and have more time to work on other aspects of your business, or just to play? Everybody would, right? So why is it that so many business owners and managers that I know have forgotten their three main keys to easy marketing?

So let's take these three keys in order. The first marketing key is a no-brainer: deliver a great product or service. This key is so assumed, that sometimes it's easy to forget. You have to be in business to make a profit, it is true. But that is the direct result of one thing only: you provide something that really works for the client/customer, something that, in the end, was more important to them than the money they gave you to get it.

If your client or customer finishes trading their money for what you offer and they feel disappointed, the other two marketing keys are worthless, so be sure you are over-delivering on your promises.

Once you have happy clientele, the next key is for them to ask you to market to them. We call this a mailing list, and can be email, snail-mail or, preferably, both. With physical mail, you don't need customer permission to contact them. You can just mail away. But physical mail-outs add up to real dollars fast.

Email, on the other hand, is essentially free, but it is regulated, and it is unlawful to email a commercial message of any kind to someone who did not expressly invite it.

Enter the "autoresponder." This is a tool that allows automated capture and verification of email addresses, and ensures that the list contains only willing customers. (I give details about autoresponders on my site.)

The main thing is how key number one allows key number two to succeed: a happy client is usually pleased to offer you their email address. A disappointed client never will.

The final key is to use email and snail-mail to stay in contact, appropriately. This is the most cost-effective marketing you can do. A happy customer is much more likely to buy again, but that's only a part of the magic of this third marketing key.

The additional magic, almost universally forgotten, is that a happy client is usually happy to refer other people to you -- but you have to ASK. Only rarely will a customer spontaneously sell for you. But most happy ones will gladly send you referrals if you ask in the right way, at the right time. If you haven't tried this, you absolutely must do so. The results can be astounding.

I have made hundreds of thousands of dollars because I make clients happy, have the right to contact them, and I ask for referrals. So can you!

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So, that my article. It explains some things I've found very effective through 23 years of self-employment (self-unemployment??). How about you all? What mainstays have you used over and over?

Barack Obama, Recession, and Your Finances

As the stock market keeps fibrillating its way through its current heart attack, and Barack Obama as president elect, consumers – you and I – are becoming very skittish about the economy. We tend to hold on to what we’ve got, just in case there might not be more of it tomorrow. That fear and tendency to horde our cash, however, will tend to bring about the very result we dread: deep recession.

But there is a group of select people who can weather this storm almost untouched.

They are the Effective Marketers. Simply put, those who align themselves with the right product or service for the hungriest buyers, and then communicate fully and motivatingly how the widget or waltz that they offer guarantees to stop the buyers’ pain, will win the buyers’ money. Great marketers do fine in any economy, because they are the problem solvers, and emotionally driven money does not care where it goes, as long as the emotional need is satisfied.

The nice thing is, powerful marketing prowess can be learned. It generally requires a large paradigm shift for many mere mortals, but every facet of it can be learned by any person who is willing to study and practice enough.

That means you. You can be a survivor in the hard times to come, as long as you’ve got the marketing knowledge and techniques you need.

So, where do you find such information? One way is to find one or more mentors: knowledgeable people who will teach you the marketing process, step by step. Or, if you don’t know truly successful people who qualify, then you must get your knowledge out of courses, books, videos, and webinars, like I have done. But, how can you know which courses or resources are effective, affordable, and necessary, and which ones are garbage?

I know, because I have bought and perused many of them, and I can tell you which are garbage, and which are gems. But even if you end up wasting a little money and time, you must dig in, today, and learn the best marketing techniques. If you don’t, you’ll miss out on the most comfortable profits during this recession in the economy.

Some fear that Barack Obama’s election will result in further financial ruin, but whether it does or not, there will be a lot less “recession” for those who know how to market effectively!

I invite you to learn it through my site, www.affordablemarketingtraining.com