Month: June 2006

Product Marketing and Analysis Resources

I recently wrote about a podcast I had heard that discussed a method for developing and selling e-books. This was not the ‘download my e-book, rebrand it, and sell it’ get rich quick approach. They focussed on identifying potential products, evaluating the potential market, market testing, and then producing and selling. It is a very systematic process.

Product evaluation and market testing has been high on my mind since I heard that podcast, so I started doing some research on the subject. I found a few very interesting resources. Links to them are at the end of this article.

I came across one great website called www.PragmaticMarketing.com. There were two really interesting articles there: ‘Due Diligence For New Product Ideas, and ‘Seven Things You Can Do To Improve Your Credibility On The Web‘. Very solid information with little hype.

They also have a free newsletter and magazine. I signed up for both on the basis of these two articles – they were both features in an earlier edition of the magazine.

The other resources I found were mostly from college course materials posted online. Some deal with traditional physical product design and some with the conceptual framework for doing analysis. They all looked interesting to me and I plan to go back and spend more time studying them. They are:

If you know of other resources for devising a method of evaluating the profitability of a potential new product, let me know. I will be testing a few ideas for online information products soon and will be writing about the different methods I used.

Andrew Seltz
The Go-To Guy

Increase Your Website Traffic By Joining The Conversation

When was the last time you had to join a new group? Maybe you started a new job or school. Maybe you joined a club or church. If you are anything like me, the process of getting to know people probably went something like this:

You showed up and talked with a small number of people at first – the boss, a greeter, the person sitting next to you. You talked about common interests and started the process of getting to know more about each other. At the same time, you started to listen to what the people around you were talking about. You gravitated toward the people you found interesting and eventually found an opportunity to contribute to the group conversations.

As people got to know more about you, they began to see the unique insights, experiences, and skills you had to offer and started to come to you with questions. Eventually, people started to refer others to you because they thought you could help them.

Over time you became an established part of the group with a history of involvement and a level of respect earned by the quality of that involvement.

This is a very common path to establishing yourself in a community. It is also an excellent process to model for generating website traffic on the Internet. The Internet is really just a great big community and you have to establish yourself there just like anywhere else.

So, How Do You Establish Yourself On The Internet?

The short answer – Join the Conversation! Seek out the places and people who are talking about things that interest you. Over time you will learn who the trusted voices are and discover where they hang out. When you feel like you have something to say that will add to the discussion, make comments. Blogs, user forums, and newsgroups are designed to encourage this. When you add value to the conversation, people will want to know more about you and what else you have to say.

Make sure people can find you. Whenever allowed, include a link back to your website or blog so that people can find you. Then, make sure you have good stuff waiting for them when they do.

Impress people with the quality of your comments and they will come find you. Impress them with what they find and they will bookmark your site or feed. Eventually, they will start recommending you to others.

Before you know it, a community will develop around your conversations.

How Powerful Is This Approach?

I will give you one quick example to show you the power of joining the conversation. On June 20, 2006 (3 days ago as I’m writing this) I left a short comment on an interesting article at Brad Isaac’s website. The article is called Work for Yourself First. I felt that my experiences with the subject were relevant and that others might find them interesting. Read the article and see what I had to say in response (it’s also a great article – so read it for that reason too!)

I was a little surprised today when I checked my site’s traffic stats and discovered that 21 people had already visited by following the link to homepage that is included in the comment. They came from all around the world. That is more traffic referrals than from any other single source over the same 3 days. And, these visitors also spent more time exploring my site and reading my articles than most others.

The same thing happens when you include trackback links to relevant articles in your own blog posts. An exerpt from your article will show up as a comment attached to the article you are referencing. This comment will link back to your blog entry. As you add to the conversation the community grows around it. It is powerful stuff.

Don’t Pee in the Pool

Before you run out and start flooding the Internet with comments, remember that your reputation is at stake.

Do not post scores of ‘me too’ comments, or worse, irrelevant comments intended only to get a link back to your site (this heinous practice is called comment spamming. Many website resources have been created whose sole task is weeding this junk out and throwing it away.) You will not get traffic to your site if you are known as a ‘comment spammer.’ What you are likely to get are piles of angry comments on your own site from people who are upset about what you are doing.

Another downside to comment spam is that it fills the Internet with so much garbage that nobody wants to wade through it to find the good stuff. The people who create good content must spend their time taking out the trash and are not generating new content.

Once somebody pees in the pool, nobody wants to go swimming and somebody has to clean it up!

Go Out and Join the Conversation

Go, be sociable. Talk to others and add your insights to the conversation. Build your reputation on the Internet and before long, people will come looking for you. The traffic you get will not be subject to the whims of any search engine’s latest algorithms, and the visitors you get will be more likely to become regulars.

Andrew Seltz
The Go-To Guy

Email Autoresponders and Sequential Email

Email autoreponder software is a powerful lever to move your online business ahead.

Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.
-Archimedes

Leverage. Using a tool to magnify a small effort into a large result. The Internet is a powerful leveraging tool. One person can spend a few hours creating a webpage and find hundreds or thousands of people around the world to read it and be influenced by it. And, as long as the page is online, it can continue to be discovered and read by new audiences – month after month, year after year.

Another powerful tool of the Internet age is the email auto-responder (also known as a sequential emailer.) With one, you can leverage the direct communication power of email with the set-it-and-forget-it cababilities of a webpage. You can use auto-responders to deliver a carefully constructed sequence of emails at precisely controlled intervals, with no human intervention.

Why Would You Want to Send Automated Sequential Emails?

There are a number of reasons to send out emails in this fashion.

Auto-Responders for Sales and Marketing

If you are marketing a product or service, you may already be aware that it can take 6 or 7 contacts with a potential customer before they make a purchase. It’s not easy to get someone to visit your website 6 or 7 times and you never know what pages they’ll choose to look at.

What if you could persuade this same visitor to sign-up for your 5 part email course or a series of special reports? These emails would teach them a little information aimed at answering the need that brought them to your site. But, in this case, you decide what messages they receive, what order they are delivered in, and how much time will pass between each email.

Step-by-step you will be demonstrating your expertise, building a relationship with your visitor, and creating the trust required to convert them from lookers to buyers. It’s like having an automated salesperson greeting everyone who expresses an interest in what you have to offer.

One well written sequence of emails can be leveraged, using an auto-responder, into hundreds or thousands of sales.

Auto-Responders for Content Delivery

Selling is not the only use for an auto-responder. It can also be the delivery mechanism for content you sell or give away. If you offer your visitors a daily inspirational message, or a reminder service, your auto-responder will deliver the goods. It is also an excellent way to deliver an educational course.

Other Uses for Auto-Responders

Another creative use that occurred to me is using your auto-responder to send blog updates when you are on vacation. Instead of posting the usual ‘on vacation’ message, letting the site go idle, or finding a guest blogger to fill in, write a special series of posts and load them into your auto-responder. Set the responder to deliver messages every day and then, when you get ready to leave, add your blog’s email posting address into the subscriber list. (Many blog software packages, like WordPress, allow you to submit posts via email.) Everyday a new entry will be posted to the site and your readers (and the search engines) will keep checking in for the latest updates.

You might also set one up to email your mother every year on her birthday, anniversary, and Mother’s Day! (Or at least email yourself a reminder to buy a card.) The Journal of Medical Internet Research even has the results posted about a study to “assess the feasibility of using sequential email messages to promote physical activity and increase fruit and vegetable intake among employed adults.”

I’m sure there are other creative ways to use an auto-responder. If you’ve got a clever one, leave a comment and share it.

Where Can You Get an Auto-Responder?

There are 3 ways to get an auto-responder. You can pay to use an auto responder service provided by a 3rd party, you can license a commercial software package and load it (or have it loaded) onto your server, or you can scour the open source community looking for free stuff and then tweak and customize it – guess which route I’ve chosen?

There are a number of companies who provide subscription based auto-responder services. They usually have a very rich set of features and are simple to use. GetResponse is one such company. Aweber and Intellicontact are 2 others. These companies often offer extended features like list splitting, campaign tracking, and click-through tracking. If you are looking to do sophisticated online marketing, the extra features and reduced technical maintenance requirements may be worth the monthly fees. GetResponse and Aweber both offer a free 30 day trial to let you test out the service before subscribing.
My Autoresponder Pro, SendStudio, and Follow-Up Mailing List Processor, all offer commercially licensed software that you can load onto your server and run yourself. Most of these packages offer plenty of features and are reasonably priced. If you have trouble with the installation, you can expect some level of technical support. The costs are usually pretty low and, if you know your way around your server, installation isn’t usually very tough.

Being the Go-To Guy, I like to hunt down open source solutions and customize them to my needs and whims (I’m even thinking about making my own software as a PHP/MySQL learning project!)

Open source means no fees, but also no guarantees and no tech support. I’ve found an open source package that I like called Infinite Responder! The interface isn’t beautiful to look at (it was designed by a programmer!!!) but it handles double opt-in sign-ups and unsubscribes, HTML and plain text email options, and multiple lists.

Installation was pretty simple (the developer will install it for you cheap if you need help.) I’m working on customizing the look of the interface to my liking and will post an video installation tutorial soon to guide folks through the installation process.

Want to see how Infinite Responder! works? Sign-up for my Web Business Building series and see it in action!

Andrew Seltz
The Go-To Guy

The 3 F’s of Advertising Copywriting

I’ll bet you understand my frustrations with online advertising. When writing advertising copy for the web you have to address the same concerns that a salesperson deals with face-to-face, but without the direct feedback or ability to adapt your words to new questions or objections. You have to anticipate everything before you start writing your advertising copy.Master copywriter and direct marketing entrepreneur Joseph Sugarman, in his 1999 book Triggers, discussed and illustrated 30 different ways to motivate, influence, and persuade people when writing. It was an inspiring read. But, I had trouble getting all of those great ideas into my copy. Whenever I started getting traffic to a salespage I wrote, my results were zero. I couldn’t translate my knowledge into effect sales copy.

I felt like all of my promotional efforts were wasted because I couldn’t write copy that people responded to. I was stuck. I needed some framework to build on that would get me consistent results. Then, I discovered the 3 F’s of Advertising Copywriting.

Feel, Felt, Found (Discover)

While reading an e-book on email ad campaigns, I discovered the 3 F’s. I had found the structure I needed to build effective sales copy for my web pages. Once I learned to recognize this pattern I began to see it everywhere.

The 3 F’s are feel, felt, and found (or discover.)

You start off by letting your reader know that you understand how they feel – you’ve felt it yourself! Then you let them know that you felt the same way until you found whatever secret, product, or service you are trying to persuade them to accept. What you found changed everything and now you want to share it with the whole world.

You understand how they feel, because you felt the same way until you found the thing that changed everything.

This is a very powerful technique you can use to gain the trust of your audience and lead them to your product or service. Look for it on other websites you visit and work it into your writing.

Andrew Seltz
The Go-To Guy

P.S. I hope it was pretty obvious that I was trying to use the 3 F pattern to structure this article. It was a fun excercise. Let me know how well I did and share your results using the 3 F’s in your copywriting.