Category: Marketing

Categories
Design Entrepreneurship Marketing Uncategorized

Customer Onboarding: The Basics

Customer Onboarding: it’s a concept every entrepreneur needs to wrap their head around, but that too few understand. It represents a crucial element in the long-term success of your business, doing what neither marketing—nor even the strength of your product—can do. It’s how you keep the customers you earn. It’s how you guarantee that those customers get what they paid for. It’s how you keep them coming back for more.

Put simply, onboarding is how you create the experience your customer has immediately following their purchase. Whether it’s an online or offline business, a soft or hard product, a membership service or priced per item, it’s a must. What happens after your customer pays can’t just happen. It’s something you should plan conscientiously. It’s your chance to make your customers, customers for life.

Why Onboarding Matters

Onboarding is where your customers form their first impression as customers. As first impressions go, this one’s really important. It’s as important as—if not more than—the first impressions your marketing made on them as potential customers. This is the stage at which they can feel one of two ways: like you’ve gotten their money and moved on, or like you’re every bit the reliable, genuine problem-solver they’re paying you to be.

For the customer, it solidifies their relationship to your business and product. For you, the benefits of good onboarding are myriad. A quality onboarding system can:

  • Reduce the need for refunds. Surprisingly, many refunds aren’t the result of the product being defective or the customer being misled. Often, customers are dissatisfied simply because they don’t know how to use the product. They haven’t been guided in its best use, or how to get the most out of it.Even the most seemingly self-explanatory product should come with some basic guidance. Harrys.com sells razors, which at first seem like the kind of tools that don’t need instructions. However, Harry’s makes sure that each customer gets the guidance they need in order for the system to work for them.Other refunds happen because the customer never used the product at all! Sometimes, without the right encouragement, customers put the product aside for later…and later never comes. Unopened (literally or figuratively) merchandise loses the appeal it had on the day of purchase. Next thing you know, they’re un-buying it.
  • Reduce churn. For membership services, slowing the churn is always a top priority. How can you keep your members coming back month after month or year after year? Onboarding goes a long way towards this. By getting your new members started right away, you can create the habits that build the momentum of their dependence on your product.
  • Create more effective word of mouth. If your customers use your product right away, and they get what we call a “win” (a substantive result that addresses the need they’ve come to you for), they will be excited. They will share that excitement. That excitement will spread, and that excitement will bring you new customers to onboard.On the other hand, customers who don’t get a reasonably quick, concrete benefit from your product won’t be likely to sing its praises.
  • Reduce misconceptions about your product. Of course, bad word of mouth happens too—and it’s not always deserved. Customers who haven’t been guided to the best possible experience may have a bad one. They can get frustrated, and they can share that frustration. That’s not good.
  • Help with branding. A great onboarding experience makes customers feel connected and cared for. That in turn makes them see your business as something personal, relatable and un-corporate. These days it seems like every business—especially the massive über-corporate ones—are trying to appeal to people’s desire for the genuine and organic. If your actions show your business approach to be genuinely accessible and caring, you achieve better branding than McDonald’s could ever buy with all their ads for “artisanal” chicken nuggets.
  • Add perceived value. People seek out guidance on how to best use the products they already own. People even pay for it. By giving your customers more than just the product, you tilt the exchange further in their favor. When the business—not just the product—is there for the customer, it seems like money better spent.
  • Reduce the need for support services. Again, too many customers get frustrated with products they don’t know how to use properly. By engaging with customers right away through tutorials and walking them through their first use or two, you make them less likely to need help later. That makes them happier, and lowers your costs.

The 2 Kinds of Onboarding

There are countless examples of onboarding systems out there, some better than others. Almost every business follows an online order with an immediate follow-up email that includes a thank you, a receipt, and some kind of access password if applicable. Unfortunately, that’s where many businesses stop.

To fully engage customers in the onboarding process, you’ll want to go further. There are two main kinds of onboarding, and while one is more directly powerful than the other, it’s a good idea to use both.

In-product onboarding is exactly what it sounds like. The onboarding system comes with the product, so the customer is using it from the second they “open the box,” so to speak. On a physical product, it’s generally written instructions inside the literal box or on the product somewhere. For software and online products, it can be even more direct: popup windows that prompt customers through each step of the user process or a guided “tour” of the program.

For example, our software company WebinarNinja features an onboarding system that helps the customer create their first webinar. We recognize that if we don’t get the customer to complete their first webinar as soon as possible, we might lose them. We can’t let them get away without feeling what it’s like to accomplish this. Our goal is for them to come out with that first win.

External onboarding is everything outside the product. This includes the first follow-up emails, separate tutorial pages, support agents, forums and even how-to blogs. The difference is that the customer has to elect to seek these out; theoretically they could use the product without them—not that you’d want them to.

There are dozens of onboarding features to choose from when designing your own system. Before you decide what your customer’s experience should look like, ask yourself these three questions:

  • What should the customer accomplish? Between the moment they pay and the moment the onboarding is complete, what should your customer be working toward? For Webinar Ninja, we want the onboarding result to be a completed webinar. For a book, it may be getting the first chapter read. For a course, it may be completing the introductory lesson. Whatever it is, define that concrete goal and tailor your onboarding to its completion.
  • What “onboarding” strategies are you currently using? Even those who’ve never heard the term are doing something to follow up on a purchase. It may be inadequate, but we’ve all gotta start somewhere! What do your customers get after they pay? An email? A receipt? A handshake? Establish what you have, and build on that.
  • What’s your refund rate? What percentage of your customers are satisfied? How many are choosing to give your product back? See if you can find out why. You may be surprised to learn that it’s not a problem with your product, or with them. It may just be that there’s too wide of a gap between the purchase and the result they’re looking for.

Simple Onboarding

How much effort and money you can devote to onboarding will depend on the particulars of your own business. Fortunately there are many low-cost, relatively easy onboarding features that anyone can employ. Beyond that, there are some more pricey services designed to truly perfect your onboarding. If it’s possible, they’re worth considering too.

The first easy, simple onboarding strategy is to make sure you’ve got a functional onboarding page. Your customers should be directed there the second the sale is closed. For example, on the $100 MBA, the first customer payment automatically brings up a gif of myself and my partner Nicole. Underneath is a “Get Started” button. That button takes the customer to a short video of the two of us welcoming the customer, thanking them for their business, and offering some words of inspiration.

From the video, we encourage the customer to click the “orientation” button directly underneath (literally pointing at it from within the embedded screen). We do everything we can from the second payment is accepted to get them to click that button. That’s because that button starts the first lesson. Finishing that lesson is an accomplishment. Once it’s done, the customer is truly ours. If they don’t want to continue with our service after that, it’s not for lack of information.

The key is to create a controlled environment. Simply accepting payment and leaving the actual use up to the customer just leaves too many openings. The less guidance they have, the more chances they’ll have to get lost. Onboarding is like a cattle chute, except instead of leading steer to slaughter, you’re leading customers to a full commitment. Don’t leave it up to them to find what they need. Show them. Make it easy for them now, and they’ll be around later.

Yes, your customers are probably capable of figuring your product out, but if you relieve them of that chore, you can get the momentum going immediately.

Even for a physical product, try to excite the customer about its potential use. Even something as simple and self-explanatory as a t-shirt should come with guidance—what to wear it with, care instructions, whatever. As long as you start moving them towards the goal the product represents (even if it’s just having something to wear with jeans), you’re onboarding.

On the external side, set up automatic emails and schedule them for delivery upon purchase. While in-product onboarding is crucial, every bit helps. Go beyond a simple thank you and receipt. Offer tutorials and complementary products. Use the emails to forge a deeper bond, and the customer will be more enthusiastic about their purchase.

Advanced Onboarding

If you’ve got the capital, it’s possible to go beyond DIY onboarding. There are several services out there who specialize in the post-sale customer experience. They can help you analyze and perfect your onboarding and ensure maximum customer retention. Note: none of the following services are sponsors of the $100 MBA.

Appcues.com is an onboarding service that we use for Webinar Ninja. It allows us to create the pop-up tools and tips that make the initial user experience so much more seamless and enjoyable than it would otherwise be. For complex, multi-faceted software products with multiple features, it’s an excellent tool. Best of all, it doesn’t require the business to write a single line of code. Of course, it comes at a cost: $99 per month for a thousand unique visitors. It’s not cheap, but we’ve found it to be worth the cost.

Usertesting.com provides an advanced study of the customer experience, right up to and including video of their reactions to your product, for $49/month. Hotjar is an analytics service that offers detailed breakdowns of customer activity on your sites, with options ranging from free basic service to an $89 “business” level. Both of these services exist to paint a picture of your onboarding experience so that you can determine how best to improve it.

Take the time to get your onboarding right. Before you launch (or relaunch) your next product, dedicate a full day or two exclusively to your onboarding sequence. Ask yourself the questions posted in this article, and answer them honestly. Give your customer onboarding the care it deserves. Study the results, and adjust as needed.

It’s a long-term principle, so it may take time to see the broad results. Once you do, you’ll be glad you gave it the same effort you give to your product, your marketing, and the rest of your customer service.

Categories
Business School Entrepreneurship Marketing

Writing Can Be Easy: 4 Hacks

How can we make writing easier? For content marketers, writing is a must-have skill, without which we really can’t connect with our audiences. We need to blog. We need to write website copy. We need to compose effective emails and product descriptions. Even when it’s writing down what we’re going to say aloud during webinars or videos, we’re writing. Almost by definition, every entrepreneur has to be—or hire—a writer.

And it’s not enough just to be able to write correctly and with clarity (though that’s a definite must). We have to be able to write a lot. To market effectively, we have to be professional, productive writers. We have to be efficient writers who can produce the amount of content required to maintain our relationships with customers. We have to produce quality and quantity.

Fortunately, you don’t have to be born with some literary bug to be an effective writer. You just have to get in the habit of articulating your views on paper (or on your laptop screen). There are ways to do this. I’ve used them myself. In fact, these 4 little tricks are so effective that you probably won’t have to use them for long!

Consider them your writer’s training wheels. They’ll help you develop the mindset and habits that make writing a snap, banishing all sense of “writer’s block.” Once these strategies get the ball rolling, you’ll know intuitively how to create the momentum you need to fill pages.

  1. Start at the peak.

This technique comes from Chase Reeves of fizzle.co. First, you identify the main idea or overall point of whatever it is you’re writing. What is it you want the reader to get out of this? What’s the grand takeaway? If a blog or other piece of writing is a mountain to climb, this is the “peak.” Once you know what that is, you simply write that part first.

Yes, you’ll still need to write the introductory and contextualizing stuff. You’ll still need to write a conclusion. You’ll still need to produce the rest of the mountain. But the peak is really the easiest part. It’s the meat of your story, the thing you’re really trying to say. If you don’t worry about finishing the writing or meeting a word quota or anything else and just let it flow, it will. And once you’re done, you’ll probably have half the desired length completed.

From there, it’s easier to build an introduction that works the reader up to the peak, and to summarize and contextualize it all into a strong conclusion. Doing so with the “peak” already in place is a breeze.

  1. Say what you want to say-literally.

For most people, talking is simply easier and much more natural than writing. Maybe it’s because we get more practice communicating that way. Maybe it’s because there’s no “middleman” in the form of a keyboard between our thoughts and our words. Whatever the case, saying it doesn’t seem like as much work as writing it.

Thing is, there’s no difference! The words are the words. Yes, we don’t pay as much attention to grammatical rules and structure when we talk, but that’s window dressing that anyone with an 8th grade education can apply. If we could simply find a way to put our spoken words onto our computer screen, nothing but a little editing would stand between us and completion.

Fortunately, we can. Transcription is easy, whether you do it yourself or hire out for it. iOS has a great dictation app available to anyone with an iPhone. Digital recorders (both of the hard and software varieties) are ubiquitous. You can even have the actual transcribing of an audio file done for pocket change on fiverr.

Once you’ve recorded and transcribed your talk, the hard part’s over. Editing what’s already on paper is much easier than filling a blank page. One of the great secrets of the writing world is that so many authors do this, like our one-time guest teacher Tucker Max. Entire bestselling books are “written” this way.

  1. What, Why, How, Your Thoughts

Before you begin the actual writing process, it can be very helpful to establish these four basic parameters. This will help you boil all your thoughts down to what matters, eliminating much of the rambling roads that take time to write (and ultimately end up edited out anyway). Literally write down these four categories as a precursor to the rest.

First, what are you writing about? Define and describe the subject of your writing. Whether it’s customer onboarding or content marketing, construct a concise definition of it for the reader. Second, why share it? Why is it important to the reader? What problem are you solving for the reader? What’s the writing’s ultimate value? Tailor everything else to this objective. Next, how does the reader apply this? This is the “peak” we mentioned before, the part the reader really came for.

Finally, what are your thoughts on the topic? Add your personal take to whatever it is you’re addressing. Share the opinions that make it truly your perspective. Without this unique, humanizing aspect, your writing will lack the personal aspect that forges a bond between you and the reader.

  1. AIDA

Neville Madhuri writes about AIDA in his book This Book Will Teach You How To Write Better. It stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action. It’s a recipe for almost any kind of writing. First, you write something that will grab the reader’s attention—a hook, something personal or bold that makes the reader want to know more. Then, you develop their initial interest with facts, stories, and supporting details.

From here, you move towards the “peak.” You encourage the reader’s desire by presenting a solution to their problem—the “Why” of the What, Why, How, Your Thoughts technique. You send a message of hope that speaks right to the desire that brought the reader to your work in the first place. Finally, you move to action, or the “how” part. You give your reader something concrete to do, some actionable steps towards their own goals.  

That’s only a brief summation of the AIDA method. For more detail, I highly recommend picking up the book.

In my view, the ultimate “hack” to anything is best articulated by the good folks at Nike: Just Do It. Maybe “It” won’t be exactly what you were hoping for in your imagination, but simply getting started will take you down the path to realizing your goals. So many of us get trapped in the planning phase, frozen by the need to have everything perfectly arranged before we can move forward. This is a mistake, and the reason so many things remain undone—especially writing.

With these techniques, you can get over that initial hump. You can build the momentum that will carry your writing to its completion. You can develop the approach to writing that makes it easy, natural and conversational.

Categories
Business School Entrepreneurship Leadership Marketing Sales Uncategorized

4 Essential Teaching Principles For Business People

Teaching is the new marketing. Traditional marketing and advertising is useful, but they aren’t enough to stand out in a crowded marketplace. Today’s consumers don’t just want to know about the product. They want to know about where it came from. They want to know who it came from. And they insist on having their trust earned by more than just a pop-up ad.

That’s where teaching comes in. Making yourself into an effective educator is the most important part of being an effective salesperson. Offering valuable insights, information, and experience earns the trust that leads to sales. Proving your own value as an expert builds the credibility that inspires genuine brand loyalty. A great salesman can move product. A great teacher can earn “true fans.”

Of course you don’t need a classroom or a chalkboard to be a teacher. The entrepreneur teaches through blogs, podcasts, interviews, public speaking, tutorials, and all the other modes of content marketing. Whichever methods you use, there are few principles that will ensure your lessons hit home—and drive sales.

The 4 Essentials

I’ve been a teacher for most of my working life. Before I struck out on my own as an entrepreneur, I taught at the high school and university levels. I was also responsible for observing teachers to evaluate their effectiveness. Now that I’m in business, it’s no coincidence that my products are educational. In all that time, four things have struck me as being common threads in great teaching:

  1. Starting with a clear outcome in mind. Some in education call it “backwards design.” Essentially, the first thing you do in designing your “lesson”—your blog, your webinar, your podcast—is identify the desired result. What do you want your audience to know or be able to do when it’s all over? Once you know what that is, you design everything towards that end.

Remember, this isn’t about the desired outcome for you. The outcome for you will always be the same: earning trust, credibility, and eventually sales. As a teacher, you need to prioritize the outcome for your “students.” What will the audience walk away with? How will their outlook be changed? What skill will they possess? What value will they come away with? What will they want to thank you for?

Identify this. Write it down. Keep it as a mantra as you design and execute your content. Anything that doesn’t serve that end, get rid of. Strip your “lesson” down to only those things that lead to the outcome. That’s the difference between a simple sales pitch and a learning experience.

  1. Making it interactive. As much as possible, that is. A blog isn’t immediately interactive, but that doesn’t mean I’m writing this in a vacuum. This is coming from years of not only speaking to audiences, but listening to them. This is the answer to a question I perceive my readers to be asking, from countless exchanges with them.

The same holds true for any content. Videos, books, live events; all can be interactive if you make the effort. Everything you do should be one side of a conversation with your audience. Encourage feedback. Encourage questions. One of the worst mistakes a teacher can make is to be a simple lecturer.

Side note: This principle is why I believe so firmly in the power of webinars, and why we created our own webinar platform, Webinar Ninja. Webinars allow you to interact with a wide-ranging audience in real time through chat and Q&A features. I think this is the future of the “teaching” model of salesmanship.

  1. Having fun. Seriously. That’s not some vague New Age quasi-spiritual advice. If you’re not having fun with it, it’s not genuine. If it’s not genuine, it’s not honest. If it’s not honest, your audience has no reason to trust you. While I’ve said before that “passion” in business is overrated, you have to enjoy your work on some level. Why would anyone follow the advice of someone who isn’t making themselves happy?

Enjoyment is contagious. Enjoyment takes the “lesson” out of the lesson and turns it into something more meaningful on a human level. If you’re stiff or unhappy or unenthusiastic in your delivery, it builds walls. It creates a barrier between you and your audience that makes it impossible for them to see the “person” in the sales person. It’s simple, but it’s true. The fun comes through no matter the medium—be it a live webinar or a simple blog. Have. Fun.

  1. Following through. The last thing that has to happen is ensurance. You’ve got to make sure that the audience has actually learned—that the desired outcome from Tip 1 has been achieved. You’ll have to recap, to constantly put information in context. It may seem to you like it’s repetitive, but to audience members, it’s crucial.

Different people learn in different ways and at different speeds. In order to reach everyone, it’s important to break the information down into bite-sized, digestible sections. This not only makes it easier to process, but makes the content more dynamic. After each section, contextualize what you covered, always bringing it back to the desired outcome. Show a bit, show how it fits into the bigger picture. Repeat. At the end, sum it all up. Even blogs are broken into headings and subheadings for this very reason.

I understand that many people go into business not expecting to have to “teach.” You may have a great product, great marketing ideas, and even business experience. But as an entrepreneur trying to earn a following, there’s no way around it. You’ve got to be a good teacher.

If it doesn’t come naturally to you, work on it. Teaching is hard for most people; that’s why most people aren’t teachers. But it is a skill you can develop. It’s ok to be self-conscious at first. It’s ok to be nervous. When I was a new teacher, I could barely contain the fear and apprehension at first. Who was I to tell anyone else what to do? We all feel some version of “imposter syndrome” at the beginning. It’s normal. It’s natural. And it’s no reason to give up. Trust in your own expertise, and your own genuine intentions.

Donald Kelly, founder of the Sales Evangelist, has a philosophy: if you have the skills, experience or knowledge to help somebody, you should share it. If you have the genuine ability to improve people’s lives, it’s your obligation to tell people about it. Let that be the antidote to any apprehension you might have about teaching. You’re offering something valuable to your audience. With that mindset, you can’t go wrong.

Categories
Entrepreneurship Leadership Marketing Uncategorized

5 Actions to Take While Business is Slow

Every business has its busy times, and its slow times. Holidays, seasonal downturns, the occasional zombie apocalypse; all of these can lead to a natural decline in sales. This is not the end of the world (except for the zombie thing). In fact, it’s an opportunity. Time you don’t spend keeping up with high sales volume is time you can devote to that which otherwise wouldn’t get much.

When sales are naturally slow (due to predictable market forces rather than a slump), you can make improvements to your business that will make the high times even more profitable. Rather than trying to boost sales through the slow season by doing promotions or events that few will attend, use the time to make your business even stronger. It means taking a more complex approach to scheduling, but if you can maximize the value of your down-time, you’ll be that much more successful.

Here are five of the most effective ways to make the most of a slow day, week, or month:

1. Take a break

Seriously. Time off is important, not just to your personal well-being, but to the health and growth of your business. If you can schedule it during a typically slow period, all the better. Entrepreneurship is a full-time job, but even the independent business person needs to let off the gas and allow themselves to forget about work from time to time. When you come back, refreshed and invigorated, you may even outperform your pre-vacation self.

2. Train

Yourself, your employees, or both. Professional development is key to the long-term success of any business, so any opportunity to focus on improving everyone’s skill set is a bonus. Identify the weakest aspect of your own business game and focus on that. Maybe you could use a crash-course in web design. Maybe you could take a public speaking course. Maybe you could bone up on your tech. Whatever it is, take the time you have and do it. For your staff, you can do team-building exercises or experimental projects. The options are myriad.

3. Fill Your Content Bank

If you read this blog regularly, you know that content marketing is my favorite kind of marketing. Content production, however, takes time. Lots of it. So when you have some to spare, it’s always a good idea to get ahead of the workload. Write as many blogs as you can and store them up for later release. Film instructional videos. Create infographics. Record podcasts, like the $100 MBA Show, which I like to pre-record and batch as far in advance as possible. Write emails for your marketing campaign. Get all your content locked and loaded for when business is back on the upswing.

4. Product Development

While you’re waiting for your current product to sell, make a new one. Write an e-book, design some software, create a new tutorial course, or simply consider what else a customer who buys your product might want. Or simply modify an existing product, add upgrades or new features, or create a supplemental companion product. Use the extra time to really explore the furthest reaches of your imagination.

Brainstorm (alone or with your team) without the pressure of having to create a product. Consider even the weirdest ideas that occur—one of them might turn out to be a great outside-the-box innovation. Time spent at the drawing board is never wasted.

5. Improve Your Website

One thing any business website needs is constant refreshment and renewal, perhaps better described as “new reasons for people to visit.” When business is naturally slow, consider a redesign. Study your analytics to see what aspects of your site are under-performing, and revamp around the goal of improving the numbers.

Alter the design, the flow of your pages, or go all-in with whole new site built from the ground up—it’s a perfect excuse to have a grand launch event to kick off the next busy cycle.

Identifying “Slow” Periods

Planning the productive use of slow periods is a game-changer, one that can give your business an extra edge. However, you’ll need to be able to anticipate those periods accurately. You’ll have to study the patterns of your industry, and your business in particular, to identify where on the calendar you can take the action of your choosing.

For example, most of the West experiences a slowdown in non-retail business around the end of the year, what with the big holidays. However, New Year’s in China is a good month or so after the ball drops in Times Square. Most people don’t alter their purchasing habits between semesters at Universities—but college students do. Every market, especially the more niche markets favored by entrepreneurs, has its own unique cycles.

Scheduling around predictable slow periods means taking a more nuanced, complex approach to your calendar. That might seem difficult at first, but the reality is that not every day, week, or month should look the same—not if you’re syncing your actions with the flow of business. Refer to your analytics and identify the slowest sales week for your business. Highlight that week for the upcoming year, and devote it to one or two of the suggestions listed above. When the week is over, you’ll be glad you did.

Categories
Entrepreneurship Leadership Marketing Uncategorized

The Face of Your Business: Do You Have to be Well-Known?

Does the success of your business depend on how well-known you are? Does your profile really make the difference between black and red? Is the modern model of entrepreneurial independence more about the person than the product? Can you run your business from behind the scenes, if that’s where you’re most comfortable? Is a whole paragraph devoted to reiterating a single question really the best way to start a blog post?

I have an answer for most of those.

Many a great business runs largely on the strength of its “face,” a charismatic founder whose personal charms and apparent sincerity woo customers straight to the checkout page. Tim Ferriss, Jason Zook, and Michael Port are great examples. Their businesses are inseparable from the force of their own personalities and unique outlooks, to the point where their customers’ trust in their product is a reflection of their customers’ trust in them. But is a strong personality a necessary ingredient?

The Need For A Face

While the strength and value of your product is the bedrock of your biz, marketing is something you have to always be doing. Marketing, in a nutshell, is the act of connecting with your customers—and connecting with your customers is best accomplished by introducing yourself along with your product.

Some people are reluctant to take this approach. Some shy away from the limelight, and want their product to be the star of the show. Unfortunately, no matter how great your product is, expecting your audience to Pay No Attention To That Man Behind The Curtain makes it harder to sell. This is because today’s consumers (especially the younger ones) are used to knowing the story behind the product. This generation likes to know how the sausage is made, right down to the fitness regimen and personal hobbies of the pigs. An unwillingness to interact with the audience can even be misinterpreted as an attempt to hide something.

Consumers don’t just want to shop; they want to connect. From Rockefeller to Steve Jobs to Mark Zuckerberg, the personality (or the perception of it) defines the business. We’re social animals—try as we might, we see everything in terms of interpersonal relations. From sports to politics to marketing, it’s simply impossible for the public to divorce their feelings about…well, anything from their perception of the people behind it.

Building Your Reputation

The biggest misconception about being the face of your business is that you have to somehow “craft” an identity with which customers can relate. Some entrepreneurs even fear that who they are isn’t “good enough” to make a favorable impression on an audience. This is a complete misunderstanding of how good, honest marketing works. It’s not about being something you’re not. It’s about doing something your audience appreciates. If you consistently provide something valuable to your audience, the only thing you have to “be” is yourself.

If you’re known as a giver, as a font of something useful to people, you’ll build the kind of personal capital that can be converted to sales. This is the essence of content marketing. Master self-marketer Seth Godin once said that the fastest way to grow a business is to become famous. You don’t have to walk the red carpet, but earning the gratitude of a wide audience and popularizing your authentic self can do more for your business than any number of pop-up ads. Eventually, people will find out about your business by researching you: not the other way around.

The key is positive familiarity. Noah Kagan sells software, but when people think of AppSumo, they think of him just as much as they think of the product. Kagan makes a purposeful effort to stay in front of his audience, speaking, presenting, touring, and dealing personally with customers. This isn’t because he couldn’t have someone else do this. It’s because he knows that familiarity with him as a person underpins the strength of his brand.

Doing the Work

While not everyone is comfortable being in the public eye, I have to strongly recommend coming out from behind the scenes. Be well known, in a positive way. Be known for your honesty, for your expertise, and for your refusal to put on a facade. Be known for being yourself, and be trusted for what you deliver. I know from experience the difference this approach makes; a substantial portion of our customers agreed to try our products because they felt like they “knew” Nicole and I well enough to put some faith in us.

Of course, it takes a long time to build that kind of reputation. With rare exceptions, it takes months and years of networking, public speaking, writing, and generally producing content. That investment of time and effort is part of the cost of doing business. Carving your public image through consistent work takes time, but it pays off. Blogging, producing videos, offering instruction—these are the bricks with which you build the audience’s image of you.

We live the Internet age. The distance between producers and consumers has narrowed drastically. If you’re not putting yourself out there, you’re not giving the audience what they need to trust you. Sharing the story behind your business, your motivations and your perspective is a huge part of what helps people decide to choose your business. Modern consumers don’t just think about the product; they think critically about its origins and the merits of the company’s overall mission. You are a part of—a massive part of—what you’re selling.

Categories
Entrepreneurship Marketing Sales Uncategorized

Making Money By Selling Ads

Is selling ad space on your website a viable business? The question comes up a lot when I’m talking to would-be entrepreneurs. After all, it’s the most basic and well-known way to make money from a website. I’ve heard countless tales (some of them true) of average people making thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars by building a great site that doesn’t sell a thing, except for a few strategically-placed inches for advertisers to occupy.

The reality is a little complicated. It all depends on the kind of website you’re running, the goals you have, and the time you have to reach them. Many people overestimate the earning potential of online ad space, and to them I advise caution. That said, it’s not impossible to build a significant revenue stream this way, provided you approach it realistically.

Big Money From Ads

Some websites make incredible profits from ads. Unfortunately for the budding entrepreneur, most of those websites are massive, nationally known entities. Yes, TMZ and The Huffington Post make bank on ads, but they traffic in such incredibly high volume that it’s impossible for them not to. HuffPo, for example, gets around 4 million unique visitors daily. No business starts out with that kind of traffic.

Even relatively successful independent businesses don’t get that many eyes on their websites, and therefore can’t count on supporting themselves that way. A business website that sells an actual product can survive on as little as 20,000 visitors a month- because they’re selling an actual product. Making a living on ads alone, however, is a horse of a different color. It can be done, but it’s one of the more difficult approaches to entrepreneurship.

There are some independent pioneers who make their sole living through ads. Joel Brown launched addicted2success in 2011 as a relatively simple collection of motivational blogs, quotes, and advice. He didn’t quit his job to do so, but eventually the strength of his content (and some savvy social media marketing) allowed him to. This didn’t happen overnight, but it happened nonetheless. With a million visitors per month- modest compared to juggernauts like HuffPo- Brown is able to pull six figures on advertising alone. It should be recognized, though, that this is a major feat.

5 Tips for Making Money Through Ad Space

In general, the ad space game is about traffic above all. A long, patient effort is required to build that traffic and make your website a prime target for advertisers, and the statistical odds of doing it are sobering. However, if you can pull it off, the earning potential is staggering. If you’re ready for the challenge, there are a few strategies that will increase your odds of success:

  • Understand that it takes time. You are very, very, very unlikely to make significant profits from ad space within a year. Or two. Or even three. Building that kind of traffic as an independent content producer requires a long, steady effort like the one Joel Brown made while still working his 9 to 5. It requires not just strong content and smart marketing, but sheer patience. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and the Romans weren’t competing with TMZ.
  • Publish constantly. The content must flow like the Nile if you’re to have any chance of success. This doesn’t mean publishing content just for content’s sake; it has to be useful, unique, quality stuff. If you’re selling an actual product, content is a means to an end. To sell ad space, however, content essentially is your product, and you’ll have to devote much more time to it.

This requires creativity, diligence, and above all, time. The biggest content-only sites produce several articles per day, along with video, infographics, and the rest. Advertisers know that their customers need a daily reason to revisit your site, and it’s on you to give them one.

  • Use and (try to) understand Google AdSense. AdSense is a comprehensive way to bring advertisers to your site, but their decision to do so (or not) is based on a complex and fluid formula. Based on your website’s subject, target audience, and the likelihood of your site’s visitors actually clicking an ad, Google determines what your website is worth to advertisers. Unless you work for Google (and I suspect, even if you do) it’s almost impossible to predict what you’re going to make using AdSense.

However, just because it’s unpredictable doesn’t mean it isn’t valuable. AdSense is what helped catapult addicted2success from small independent blog to million-dollar juggernaut. How it works may be indecipherable to most, but that it works is beyond question.

  • Know that it’s better for creative endeavors. If your objective is to market a product, selling ad space is only ever likely to be a minor bonus to your overall revenue stream. Your time should be devoted to developing, producing and marketing that product, with ad space as an afterthought. For creative types, ad space is the best (and really only) way to monetize your work.

If you have a passion for a topic, or want to educate the public, or otherwise want to share a viewpoint, ads are the way to parlay that persuasiveness into a living. That’s why artistic, political, motivational, and educational websites are the best candidates. With ad space revenue being so very unpredictable, it’s the websites on which people spend more time being engaged that bring in the money.

  • You can solicit business on your own. While services like AdSense and AdRoll can be very helpful, there’s always the other option: selling your ad space yourself. Contact businesses whose products are directly relevant to your content, and offer your own custom advertising packages.

Put together easily understandable proposals that explain the terms of the deal, including where exactly on the website the ads are displayed, how they’re displayed (pop-ups, sidebar, etc), and the length of the contract. Matt Giovanisci at Swim University sells his spots directly to pool-care companies, cutting out the middleman. This way, he’s not only in more direct control, he can make more accurate revenue forecasts.

Selling ad space is a tricky, but achievable means of making money. For most, it’s merely supplemental, and not to be counted on when making serious predictions. It can, however, be a boon for those willing to put the time and work into building a high-content, high-traffic website.

It’s an uphill climb, but where would we be without uphill climbers?

Categories
Entrepreneurship Marketing Sales Uncategorized

Spotting Business Scams: 5 Red Flags

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Internet. The ability to share and access information has brought us incredible value, fantastic products, and instant education. It’s also given an incredibly effective platform to a whole new generation of snake-oil salesmen, ready to promise you the world in exchange for your hard-earned cash. Friends, there are vipers in these woods, and those of us trying to go into business for ourselves need to know how to spot them.

I have personally spent more money than I care to type out loud on products that were at best useless and at worst utter cons. That’s money that could have been invested in my business. I want that experience to have some use for my audience, so this is my guide to avoiding less-than-legitimate products. I have wasted my money so you don’t have to, and if it stops just one of you from being cheated, it will have been worth it.

Pardon the heightened emotion, but this topic hits close to home. At Business Republic, we’ve committed ourselves to the notion that being forthright is the best overall business strategy. We truly believe that honesty is the best policy- not just morally, but as a means of making money. Too many online “businesses” have made this approach difficult by abusing people’s trust. Too many of them have put the bulk of their resources into their marketing, rather than creating a product worth buying. Some of them will be very angry about this post.

Here are the five biggest, reddest flags, the sure signs that a product isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. If you see any of these, run, don’t walk, to another website.

1. They make specific promises about revenue. Here’s the truth: no product or service can guarantee any particular amount of profit for your business. There are too many variables beyond their control for that. They can point to people who attribute some of their success to their product, they can demonstrate a spike in sales that correlates with use of their product, but they can’t (honestly) claim to be able to magically bestow a certain number on your bank account.

This type of scammer usually starts the conversation with a promise of how rich you’ll be after you’ve used their product. “Become a millionaire in one year.” “Earn $5k a week!” They’ll even include a screenshot of a PayPal account with the balance garishly highlighted in yellow. They try to seduce their audience with numbers, because seducing is easier than selling.

2. There’s no risk-reversal. If a given company doesn’t offer a trial period, free content, or a money-back guarantee, that speaks to a lack of confidence in the product. When someone truly believes that their product is worth what they’re asking for it, they don’t just say so. They prove it. At Business Republic, we establish our credibility through content marketing and a free course. Other outfits do limited-time trials or trial versions of software. The idea is to take the risk out of the transaction for the customer, because we don’t want our customers to gamble; we want them to win. Whatever the product, always look for some form risk-reversal. If the company isn’t willing to put its money where its mouth is, why should you?

3. They don’t produce free content. Naturally, I’m partial to content marketing. My business model is built on trust, and trust is earned through the conversation in which I engage the audience through blogs, podcasts, and videos. The scammier sort of businesses don’t bother with this- they simply create and launch products. They create, they launch, they sell, they repeat. All the while they don’t bother to let people know who they are. This is because if you knew who they were, you wouldn’t trust them with your money.

In the end, they don’t really give a hoot what their audience thinks of them, because they don’t plan on having a very long relationship with them. Once the money’s transferred, they’re on to the next victim.

4. They’re impossible to contact. One surefire sign of a legitimate business is that they’re willing to engage with you personally. If there’s no feedback form or question submission process, suspicion is warranted. If your emails get no response, or get only auto-replies, whoever’s behind the curtain doesn’t consider you worth their time. Worse, they see your problems as exactly that- your problems.

Naturally, it becomes harder to personally respond to every customer as a business grows. However, many of us still manage to do so, even the wildly successful ones. Myself and my business partner Nicole, Paul Jarvis of pjrvs.com, Noah Kagan of AppSumo, and many other business founders still personally reply to emails, tweets and Facebook queries. If we can’t, we make damn sure that someone does- someone human who is authorized to address the customer’s needs.

Anything less would constitute hiding from our audience.

5. They’re not vouched for by other credible supporters. You may notice that in both my blog and my podcast, I regularly reference other leaders in the entrepreneur-empowerment industry. I link to their websites, I bring them on the podcast as guests, and I knowingly help to promote their businesses as eagerly as they promote mine. This isn’t because we’ve made some secret back-room agreement to give each shout-outs from time to time. It’s because we share the same approach to credibility-based marketing, and are happy to help establish each other’s trustworthiness to our respective audiences.

Each industry has a community of colleagues and even competitors who vouch for each other- not just for the sake of mutual benefit, but out of mutual respect. Often, we’ve even used each other’s complementary services, like I’ve used Michael Port’s invaluable public-speaking training to help sell my products. If you’re considering a product, and no one you know or respect is willing to put their name behind it, that might be because the product or the company is new and unestablished. It might also be because it’s well-established as garbage. It’s worth taking the time to find out which.

The Internet is a wonderful and a dangerous place for budding entrepreneurs. Bad actors are unfortunately around every cyber-corner. That doesn’t mean we should be paranoid of unwilling to give new products and companies a shot. As long as businesses in question are forthright about who they are and what they do, we should experiment with different products. Some may be exactly what we need, some may be flawed- and that’s ok.

As long as a given company can establish its good intentions, they deserve a shot. If they can’t, or won’t be accessible and up-front, beware. The enticing ad you see may represent something that’s all wrapping and no gift.