The Buyers’ Mentality

July 16, 2008 | 2 Comments

Today I read a post from a friend, Corinne Edwards that really make you laugh.

She brought up the issue of chain emails that we receive almost everyday. Whenever we received such emails, often people pay attention to it and more often, believe in it as well.

If you read the readers’ comments of that post, you can see that “fear” is the driving force of people believing what may be hoax. Readers will want to be careful or take precaution, just in case. The “fear” is to avoid pain or suffering.

Now you know a bit of the human psychology of avoiding pain or suffering, you can apply this in your internet marketing campaign.

What is a bigger driving force for people to buy? To avoid suffering or to enjoy pleasure. The majority is avoid suffering.

In your internet marketing campaigns, when you point out a problem or problems, link it to the suffering that the person may be facing now. Eg, feeling humiliated because of ugly acne, or feeling lonely because unable to get a date. Humiliation and loneliness are a form of suffering.

In your salescopy or headlines, link your highlighted problem or problems AND associate it with sufferings. Then link your product or service to solving the buyers’ sufferings. This way, your product or service is so much more enticing to your buyers. Remember, people want to avoid sufferings.

Try this and you can see your online sales improving.

The Importance of Landing Pages

July 1, 2008 | Leave a Comment

You have found your product and are ready to start marketing it. You have all the marketing tools ready email, banners and text ads. Now the last question to ask is where are all your potential customers being directed to?

Are your potential customers being directed to your company’s homepage, your blog or your product page?

Where your potential customer is being directed to will determine your conversion.

Photo by cambodia4kidsorg

If you have done your keyword research right, your keywords should be drawing in potential customers who are ready to buy your product. Since their mentality is ready to buy, then their expectation when they click on your link is to get the information or product. Imagine the potential customers expecting some information or solution to their problems but when they visit you, its about your company. The ads and the resulting page does not jive. Or, you advertise for a product to

solve some problem and yet when they are ready to buy, you lead them to your blog. Now why are you making it so difficult for potential customers to buy from you?

Don’t lead your potential customers in a circle when they are ready to buy. They will lose interest fast and just leave your site.

This is where land pages are useful. Landing pages have many uses that help you to convert your potential customers. Here are some benefits:

1. Landing Pages Help You To Presell Your Product

When potential customers click on your link, they are going to buy IF you really deliver your promise. Landing page is a continuation of your ads, email or banners. This is where you continue your marketing from where you left in the email, ads or banner. If people are willing to click on your link, then there is some interest in your product or services.

Use your landing page to focus on the specfics of the customer’s needs and benefits which they will enjoy. Once they are convinced, you can lead them to your payment gateway to process their purchase. From your landing page, don’t lead them to other places and get distracted from buying your product or services.

At your landing page, your potential customer should have only 2 options, click to buy or just click to close. So make sure all the relevant information is provided in your landing page.

2. Landing Pages Help You To Compete With Other Affiliates

Many successful affiliate marketers have their own landing page for each of their product or services. Many good merchants provide you with a general salescopy which all the affiliates can use. How do you compete with much experienced marketers?

Photo by Randy Son Of Robert

You need to build your own compelling landing page. Think about your product, understand the benefits it provides. Analyse which niche can the product be sold. Don’t just sell the product generally. Don’t sell to the market that the merchant advises. Everyone is jumping into that market already. Try to focus on a different niche that the product can sell.

Then you create your own landing page and sell the product to a different niche. You lessen your competitors by focusing on a different niche that other affiliates are not concentrating on.

Now in a different niche, you cannot use the general salecopy that your merchant provides. Use your own landing page and only send them to your merchant’s payment gateway to process your customer’s payment. This way, your potential customers will not be confused with what you promise and what the merchant is offering.

Landing pages are important to your internet marketing. Landing pages are very specific, laser pointed marketing to your potential customers. Do it right and you can see your conversion improve which ultimately lead to improve business.

5 Writing Tips To Be A More Productive Writer

June 27, 2008 | Leave a Comment

The majority of us are not proficient in writing. I remember in my younger days, I hated composition in English as well as in Mandarin. The reason being, I have to write on something that I’m not interested in and have to hit a minimum word count.

In my university days, I hated large reports especially those 3,000 or 5,000 word report that will decide my fate whether I pass or fail certain papers.

Photo by mezone

I have been growing up associating negative stuff such as “difficult”, “boring” and “torturous” to writing. This is made worse by all the past teachers’ and lecturers’ ridicule and negative comments on my writing.

Moving forward, I am now blogging and publishing articles to market my sites. I have reached one full circle of hating writing to having to do it for my work. The law of attraction really works. What you don’t like, you’ll attract it! Anyway, that is a different topic altogether…

Now how do I get over my dislikes and difficulties in writing?

First, you need to get rid of your old thinking. It is not as fearful or difficult as you think. Your mind will try and protest and tell you it is difficult because your mind is comfortable with not writing!

Whenever you think it is difficult, say out loudly or shout “STOP!” and say loudly “I can write!”.

Don’t ever think that you can’t write, remove that thinking from your mind and thoughts.

How about language? Well, the good thing is We Are Not In School anymore. The beauty of internet marketing is nobody cares about your grammar in what you publish. As long as it can be understood by a 12 year old, then you are fine. In fact, your grammar deficiencies, if any, brings life into your work. People will find it more believable that it is written by you.

So be confident because nobody is going to point out your grammar mistakes when you publish your blog or articles. Just make sure simple things such as spelling mistakes are corrected. Spelling mistakes is a sign of sloppiness. Any current wordprocessor have a spell check, so use it before you publish.

Now, what are the 5 writing tips that can make you a more productive writer?

1. Discipline

If you are blogging or doing article marketing, writing is your marketing effort, thus, it is your business. You need to discipline yourself to allocate a fixed time everyday to write something. You may or may not finish your writing in a day, that is ok.

Photo by sa_ku_ra

You need to discipline yourself because your mind will find you all kinds of minute excuses to do something else. You need to discipline your mind. Tell it, you are the boss and you want to write. Find yourself a quiet spot that you won’t be distracted or alternatively switch off everything and try to concentrate on writing about your topic or your niche.

Some professional writers even go to the extend of working in an isolated room with no sound or light from outside.

You need to find a working spot at home that you can be left in private to work. If you have an office, then either use the Do Not Disturb sign or close the door.

Allocate the same time each day for your writing. This is to train your mind set to get into the mood of writing whenever the allocated time draws near.

Unless you are a natural writer, I find discipline very important.

2. Identify Your Productive Time Zone

Remember when you work, there are certain time in the day that you are exceptionally alert and your productivity is high? That is your productivity time zone. I find that I work best after breakfast at home and also from 5pm to dinner time. Early afternoon I have problems in concentrating and do things more slowly.

So what is your productive zone?

I used to try a habit of writing my blog post or articles in the afternoon, but I can’t get things done until 5+ when suddenly I hit a turbo button and I could write fast.

Now I write mostly in the morning after breakfast at home. I realised that in the morning I can concentrated easily and get into the writing mood fast and get the work done at shorter time. So that is my habit nowadays. To produce a blog post or article in the morning after breakfast.

You need to try out yourself when is the time that you can concentrate and get into the writing mood fast. Then allocate that time each day as your writing time. This way, you don’t have to waste time making yourself to get into the writing mood.

3. Allocate Reasonable Amount of Time

In your writing time slot, allocate a reasonable amount of time of 1 to 2 hours. Don’t allocate too little or else you run out of time before you start writing seriously. Writing is like driving a car, when you start with 1st gear, you start from stationary and your speed is slow. As you build momentum, you move up your gears. As you gain more and more momentum and speed, you change gears all the way to 5th gear when you are moving at top speed.

Photo by fdecomite

Likewise, writing you start slow and slowly build up your speed as you write more. So if your time is too short, before you hit 5th gear, you run out of time.

4. Write free flow

As you sit down to start writing, you can start with a simple structure of your post or article. Then you write free flow, ie, just write everything on the topic right off your head. Don’t attempt to disrupt the ideas and points coming out from your mind by proof reading it. Just write everything down, connect your thoughts directly to your pen, pencil or keyboard.

Leave the formatting, paragraphing, commas, fullstop, spelling and grammar for later.

Photo by angela7dreams

After you have exhausted all your ideas and thoughts, and are satisfied that you have finished writing, you do your proof reading. This is when you make sure ideas flow from point to point. You will need to reformat your sentences and paragraphs. Rewrite some sentences to change the structure, commas and fullstop to make it more readable. Checking your spelling mistakes or even some grammar mistakes is also done during proof reading. This is the only time that you make your posts and articles readable and presentable.

If its a blog post or article post, then you may want to search for photos to attach in your post or article.

If you are going to submit your articles to e-zine and newsletter publishers or article directories you can ignore the photos. I would also suggest that you leave your final piece of work alone and re-read it again the next day. This will help you fine tune your articles and pick out mistakes you left out earlier in your proof reading.

You don’t want to let the world see silly mistakes that you missed out doing proof reading, do you?

5. Reward Yourself

After completing your post or articles, remember to reward yourself. We need to re-train our mind that writing is good. In rewarding yourself, you attach a positive association to writing. This will slowly remove the past negative association we have build around writing.

Treat yourself with ice cream, take a nice stroll and enjoy the scenery, have a good meal, or even just a feel good pat on your back. Vary your reward and love yourself for the work you have done.

Photo by zerojay

How Do You Keep Doing The Same Thing For So Long?

June 26, 2008 | 2 Comments

The truth to it is, no you can’t keep doing what you have been doing for extended periods of time. You may have the passion and desire but once in a while you will face doubt and frustration or burnout.

Photo by D’Arcy Norman

You have been blogging, writing and publishing articles, posting comments day in and day out, emailing and doing your marketing. How long can you last? Granted when you see the results coming in, you’ll feel appreciated and it motivates you to keep going.

In times when you are feeling down, how can you get inspired again? Here are some tips to help you get fresh again for your work. Take a few days off!

Taking time off is a very good way of giving your mind and body a rest. In internet marketing, you use a lot of your mind to think, plan and also write and publish your work as well and monitor your marketing plan and analyse its progress. You can do everything at home. Working from home is comfortable and nice but you’ll get bored and fed up quite fast if you don’t have a change in environment.

Taking time off is good for you to collect new ideas and perspective on how to proceed with your marketing. Perhaps you may even think of a new twist to your marketing or a new niche to start.

Try to do something totally opposite of what you have been doing and try to have fun. This will engage different parts of your brain to simulate it in other creative ways. Remember when you were young and trying to solve a math problem for days? Taking a simple walk to clear your head and you solve the math problem easily. Likewise, you may find more innovative ways of making more money online when you are having fun and not thinking of internet marketing.

Introvert people may prefer to sit and have a good read on an inspirational book. I totally agree and do practise it. But you can try taking your book to the seaside or some where out of your regular lounge chair or reading chair.

I find reading at the seaside very therapeutic and it gives you even more omph for the inspirational part. If you can’t go to the seaside, perhaps a nice sunny spot at the gardens. Somehow being in touch with a big part of nature really helps your mind, regardless if you are playing, reading or just relaxing.

Photo by Randy Son Of Robert

After a few days of doing something totally opposite of what you are doing, especially in a natural environment, you will be rejuvenated and feel much fresher to continue on with your internet marketing effort. Take a break and your mind will be more productive. Yes you may lose a few days work but the amount of energy you gain in those few days will boost your productivity further.

I am a fan of Star Wars and leave you a fun video to take your mind off your work for a while.

 

 Dance Off with the Star Wars Stars: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

How To Make Your Internet Marketing Business Stand Out?

June 16, 2008 | 2 Comments

I had just went shopping for new clothes in MetroJaya with my girlfriend. This was not a planned event as we only saw the big sale while we were walking past the entrance of the store.

Since I was looking for a pair of cotton trousers, we decided to walk in and try our luck.

We browsed and tried several pair of trousers and the shopping experience led from buying pants to shirts.

At the end of the tiring but fruitful day, I only managed to get a couple of shirts which my girlfriend was convinced that its a good buy.

We paid at the cashier and left. On our way out, my girlfriend was telling me that the sales staff we met everywhere and the cashier were very polite and accommodating. She said that all the while, the staff there were rude and unhelpful. She said probably the company had finally gave the staff some customer relation training to improve their service.

This got me thinking, hmm yeah the staff were helpful and were friendly and that actually made my shopping experience a pleasant one. I would have left early if I can’t find any trousers while meeting unhelpful or rude sales people. After all, why stay in a place where you don’t feel welcomed.

In all business whether its small, medium or large, customer interaction is the first and only point of contact which will result in a satisfied or unhappy customer. There is truth in people saying that one unhappy customer is worse than having 10 satisfied customers.

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