Four Presentation Questions to Jump-Start Your Profits
"Let's say you're marketing a site that's bringing in high click-throughs but no profits. What can you do?"
When an affiliate asks me a question like this, I typically break down the problem with a series of diagnostic questions. The first three look at the sources and quality of the traffic that the site is getting. The second four look at the way you present your products when visitors arrive at your site.
1. What are you offering? Is it a service, or physical product, or information product?
When you're selling a physical product, visitors know what they're getting, and they already showed up wanting to buy that product anyway. All you need to do is to push them over the edge with a paragraph or two.
Selling information is quite different. Selling ideas is hard work. An information product really requires a full sales presentation with nothing left out.
2. What do visitors see first when they click on your ad? Are you offering them a wide set of choices or one option?
Generally, choices tend to reduce visitor value. You can't be Amazon, and you should almost take the opposite approach: this site or this keyword is about one thing and one thing only. I think you need to perfect selling one product. Then say, "Okay, I'm going to sell this other one now." Get them in your "maze," then start selling to them, one thing at a time.
3. Can you wrap an idea around the product, sell it as an opt-in, and collect email addresses?
Having a person in your opt-in list gives you the opportunity to sell repeatedly to them. You can give away subscriptions and back issues of your newsletter. Then, whenever you decide you want to sell something in one of those newsletters, go for the jugular. You don't need to give people very many choices at all. Lay their focus on buying that one thing and throw all your ammo at getting it sold.
Get the opt-in. Get the person to express interest and develop some trust with them. Offer them free reports, white papers, software, samples, mini courses, or whatever else you can come up with. Then, you can, in sequence, introduce people to everything you do. They are in what I call "the maze," and you can sell them your lead product, some affiliate product, or some other related deals you've got.
4. If you do offer a set of choices, can you reduce those choices to a very small number of similar options?
One way to present a set of choices is by clustering and bundling products together in similar categories and groups so visitors can buy several things all together. Offer add-ons, like "People who bought this, also bought," with a link to something else. Another strategy is to sell large numbers of $10 or $20 items. Then visitors don't ask whether they need the product or not, but how many they need - they're only $10 anyway. That is a good strategy and that does work. Certainly you could pigeonhole customers pretty accurately based on what they did and didn't buy out of your whole big list.
To Your Success,
Perry Marshall
When an affiliate asks me a question like this, I typically break down the problem with a series of diagnostic questions. The first three look at the sources and quality of the traffic that the site is getting. The second four look at the way you present your products when visitors arrive at your site.
1. What are you offering? Is it a service, or physical product, or information product?
When you're selling a physical product, visitors know what they're getting, and they already showed up wanting to buy that product anyway. All you need to do is to push them over the edge with a paragraph or two.
Selling information is quite different. Selling ideas is hard work. An information product really requires a full sales presentation with nothing left out.
2. What do visitors see first when they click on your ad? Are you offering them a wide set of choices or one option?
Generally, choices tend to reduce visitor value. You can't be Amazon, and you should almost take the opposite approach: this site or this keyword is about one thing and one thing only. I think you need to perfect selling one product. Then say, "Okay, I'm going to sell this other one now." Get them in your "maze," then start selling to them, one thing at a time.
3. Can you wrap an idea around the product, sell it as an opt-in, and collect email addresses?
Having a person in your opt-in list gives you the opportunity to sell repeatedly to them. You can give away subscriptions and back issues of your newsletter. Then, whenever you decide you want to sell something in one of those newsletters, go for the jugular. You don't need to give people very many choices at all. Lay their focus on buying that one thing and throw all your ammo at getting it sold.
Get the opt-in. Get the person to express interest and develop some trust with them. Offer them free reports, white papers, software, samples, mini courses, or whatever else you can come up with. Then, you can, in sequence, introduce people to everything you do. They are in what I call "the maze," and you can sell them your lead product, some affiliate product, or some other related deals you've got.
4. If you do offer a set of choices, can you reduce those choices to a very small number of similar options?
One way to present a set of choices is by clustering and bundling products together in similar categories and groups so visitors can buy several things all together. Offer add-ons, like "People who bought this, also bought," with a link to something else. Another strategy is to sell large numbers of $10 or $20 items. Then visitors don't ask whether they need the product or not, but how many they need - they're only $10 anyway. That is a good strategy and that does work. Certainly you could pigeonhole customers pretty accurately based on what they did and didn't buy out of your whole big list.
To Your Success,
Perry Marshall
