Thu, 28 January 2016
Picture this: you wake up one morning with an amazing idea. You do a little research on it and, by the end of the day, feel a growing sense that this idea of yours has real selling potential. Maybe you even ask your audience directly if they'd be interested in this idea, and they give it a resounding "Yes, please!" And then, after all this, you put your great idea into action...and it doesn't sell. Nothing comes of it. When you spend time, effort, and money putting together something for your audience, only to hear crickets when you put it out into the world, it can really crush your confidence, not to mention put a dent in your bottom line. But what if you could take your idea through a proven process that makes sure it's a good fit for you, your business, and for your audience? Now that's a pretty good idea, right? My good friend Pat Flynn has tested many, many great ideas over the course of his online career. And believe it or not, even Pat has had a few ideas that he thought were great end up dead in the water. That's what led to his new book Will It Fly?, which shows entrepreneurs how to test their great ideas for real value. On today's podcast episode, Pat and I are going to walk you through some ideas, insights, and tips to help you learn how to test whether your idea will work for you and your audience. It's a great episode and you're going to want to hear the whole thing--trust me! Pat is one of the hardest working guys out there. But even more impressive than his work ethic is his transparency. If you've visited his site, you've seen that he publishes his monthly revenue reports so that viewers can see real-life proof of how well his ideas work. Success Isn't OvernightAs entrepreneurs, we're always talking about launching. Launching is a big part of what we do, but how often do we talk about what happens after you launch? Is your idea actually going to take off? Is it going to fly? Is it going to keep going or is it going to crash? Whether you need permission to really get moving on your latest idea, or if you require some "tough love" in order to let this one go and keep searching for inspiration, Pat's book is going to give you some fundamental tools for entrepreneurial success. The Three Validation TestsOne of the best things Pat's book offers is the three validation tests that show how an idea fits into your life, your strengths, and the overall goal of your business. The Airport Test Imagine that it's five years from now. You're at the airpot and you run into someone you haven't seen in the past five years. They ask you "How's life?" Now imagine you answer "Life is great. It couldn't be better!" What would be happening, five years from now, to make you say that? Now ask yourself: is the idea you're working on right now contributing to that five-years-from-now goal? The History Test This test makes you analyze three or four of the different jobs you've had in the past. You call to mind the position, the environment, the people you worked with, specific memories that are either pleasant or painful. When you do a review like this, it helps you see what those jobs might have had in common...and why that pattern might be attracting you over and over. Does it point out a skill or a preference that you have? Whether they were good jobs or bad jobs, they have something valuable to tell you about who you are...and that will give you a better understanding of how your idea fits into your skill set. The Shark Bait Test Imagine you are a contestant on the show Shark Tank, standing in front of the celebrity investors and pitching your idea. Doing this honestly, from your gut, takes away the salesmanship from the exercise, and makes you really speak to why you and your idea are special and why people would be crazy not to get on board with it. If you know Pat and his content at all, you know that his superpower is taking complex ideas and making them simple and easy to digest. And he brings that gift in full force to today's episode. His tips on how to tackle market research are worth their weight in gold! Want to check out Pat's book, where he dives deep into the content he shared with us? Click here to find out more about his new book, Will It Fly.
Direct download: Online_Marketing_Made_Easy_Podcast_Episode_95.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:00am PDT |
Thu, 21 January 2016
By now you've probably heard about Periscope, the live streaming social media platform that lets you talk to your fans in real time. It's the fastest growing social media platform of all time! Since Periscope launched in March 2015, it already has 15 million users. And get this: those users upload three years' worth of video content every day. I dabbled with Periscope for a while in 2015, and to be honest, I couldn't figure out if I loved it or hated it. Mostly, I just didn't really understand how to use it to its fullest potential. That's why I was so glad to talk with today's podcast guest. Zack Spuckler is a genuine Periscope ninja, and he has used the platform to do amazing things with his email list. Whether you're an early adopter who is already using Periscope on a daily basis, or a skeptic who wonders if this medium is really going to last long enough to be worth the time it takes to learn it, this episode is one you just can't miss. I'll be the first to admit that my biggest obstacle in using Periscope is the whole "live stream" nature of it. Frankly, it makes me nervous--I like to have a plan, a script, and a lot of chances to correct my mistakes. At the same time, I recognize the real power of livestreaming to break the barriers between you and your audience. They get to come inside your world, and you get to be more personal and engaging with them. It lets your audience see a side of you that really no other social media platform offers. Having said that, there are some do's and don'ts that go a long way toward making Periscope truly effective as a marketing tool. That's where Zach's expertise comes in! In addition to offering tons of pro tips and insider tricks on how to use Periscope to best advantage (and a good estimate on how long it takes to really hit your stride) Zach has created a freebie just for you. It's a worksheet with five simple steps to guide you through your first Periscope broadcast. Click here to get it now! The NumbersIn Zach's first 30 days on Periscope, he did $10k in sales. (Listen to the podcast if you want to hear my reaction to this unbelievable number.) It's even more amazing when you find out that previous to this, Zach's all-time revenue high had been $1700 in a month. So he started plugging all his channels into Periscope, to see what kind of results he got.
After a few weeks of this, people were noticing! They were asking Zach how he got these amazing results...so, naturally, he created a Periscope training course and sold it via Periscope. I'll let Zach tell you what happened: "I sold about $1,200 of the course at a $97 intro price. Then I did it again the next day. We ended up doing about $2,200 in sales with about an hour and a half of Periscopes. We hadn’t sent emails. We didn’t even have a sales page. "Then I launched my Periscope course and really drove people there from Periscope. This will really tell you the power of it: I didn’t have a freebie ready for Periscope. I threw together a lead page that said, “I’m going to make a really cool Periscope freebie. I have no idea what it’s going to be, I just know that you should sign up for it.” We had over 200 people opt in for that and when all was said and done, in the course of the first 30 days and a little beyond that because we had launch, we had sold 60 copies of the course." The Real Power Behind PeriscopeZach has tons of tips and tools that will help you create results like these on Periscope. But the real key to Zach's success isn't just the platform--it's the ability it gave him to really hear what his audience wanted. Prior to using Periscope, Zach was facing that constant frustration of creating products that he thought his audience wanted from him, only to have nobody click the "Buy" button when he finally released it. But by engaging with his audience on live video, he could literally count the number of times people asked about something, and know exactly what it was they wanted. "It’s just crazy, the engagement and conversion that you can get with live video. You don’t have to think anymore, you just have to listen. That's what I like about it." If you're ready to really dive into Periscope and find out how to use it, click here to listen to the podcast now. And make sure to download the worksheet created especially for you by Zach himself.
Direct download: Online_Marketing_Made_Easy_Podcast_Episode_94.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:00am PDT |
Tue, 12 January 2016
You know how important your list is to your business' growth. If you're measuring your list's health in terms of numbers, it can really get you down sometimes. It's easy to feel like the fate of your business is at a standstill until your list numbers in the thousands (or at least the high hundreds). My guest on the podcast today is going to blow that myth out of the water! Rachel Luna is living proof that you don’t need a gigantic list to gain success. What really matters about your list isn’t the number of names and addresses on it, but the quality of those people in terms of their engagement with you. Rachel’s success story is really a one-two punch. Not only does she show the power of what you can do with a highly engaged list, but she’s also a stellar example of how to do affiliate marketing right. If you’ve thought about doing affiliate marketing but haven’t tried it…or if you’ve gone through it before with mediocre results…Rachel’s story is going to truly inspire you. And you’re also going to love the freebie Rachel created for us this week: it’s called the Confident Affiliate Marketing Starter Guide. You can get it by clicking here! Secrets of an Affiliate Marketing SuperstarLast spring, Rachel worked with my business coach Todd Herman and chose to be an affiliate promoter of his 90-Day Year program. As a business/life coach to other entrepreneurs, Rachel is ultra-focused on taking action and setting goals, which made her a perfect fit for this promotion. Her message is all about breaking through negative thoughts and limiting beliefs to achieve the success you want. This promotion really gave her a chance to practice what she preached. Rachel came into Todd's affiliate program with a list just over 5000. That may sound like a lot, but bear in mind she was working among affiliates who had lists upward of 100k! She was a small fish in a very big pond. Actually, I also happened to be working with Todd as an affiliate for this program, as well. And as the promotion got going, I started seeing this name I'd never heard before popping up on the leader board. Her numbers were going up at an astonishing rate. Other affiliates were starting to talk about her. "Who is this Rachel Luna, and what is her secret?" Finally, I decided to get in touch with her to find out just that. And today she is sharing the secrets of her affiliate marketing success with all of us! Click here to start listening now. The Steps to Affiliate Marketing SuccessRachel had done a few affiliate promotions in the past--by the time she got involved with Todd's 90-Day Year program, she had some solid standards for success in place:
Find out more about how Rachel achieved such amazing affiliate success! Click here to listen now. Overcoming Your SetbacksYou can see why Rachel was blowing us all away with her climbing numbers! This made it all the more devastating when, just one week before the official program kickoff, Rachel’s website got hacked. Everything she had planned for her promotion—blogs, sales pages, bonus materials that she’d created for her audience—was gone. Rachel considered not even doing the promotion. She’d spent hours putting all this together, only to have it wiped out overnight. But after talking with Todd, she decided to keep moving forward and see what happened. "I sent off that first email which I had taken the time to write really well. I was very thoughtful about it. I was very intentional because I wanted to make sure it was something that would resonate with my audience." And oh, did it ever resonate. By Day 1 of the promotion, Rachel had made $10k…almost 75% of her revenue goal. By Day 2, she’d surpassed her goal by $2000. By the time the launch ended, Rachel had made a $53,000 profit, almost four times her goal amount. By the way, this little fish, ended up finishing fourth overall out of all the affiliates promoting the program. Amazing! You Don't Need a Big List to Get Big ResultsRachel shares a lot more details of what made her affiliate launch such a staggering success--how much she spent on Facebook ads, how she structured bonuses for her audience, etc.--in the full podcast episode. And of course you'll want to download her amazing freebie, the Confident Affiliate Marketing Starter Guide. But the biggest takeaway, in my view, was that Rachel didn't let the size of her email list stop her. She could have put off Todd's program until next time it came around, telling herself she was going to wait until her list was bigger. But instead, she took action with what she had, focused on maximizing her strengths, and didn't let setbacks slow her down. "Sometimes, in my experience as a life coach, people aren’t so focused on taking action, they are focused on feeling better. They were happy with mediocre results. I want to have the best, most exciting. I want big."
Direct download: Online_Marketing_Made_Easy_Podcast_Episode_93.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 4:00pm PDT |
Tue, 5 January 2016
Let's kick off the New Year with an absolute game changer for your business: Facebook ad targeting. Some of you by now have become really good at this. But if you're still struggling to nail your Facebook ad strategy, or if you're just getting started in this world, this episode is most definitely for you. I work with a lot of business students who are just getting started with Facebook ads or have been dabbling in ads for a while without seeing much success. The number one mistake I see them making is targeting the wrong people. This usually happens for two reasons. Some of my students truly don’t understand who their avatar is. Others...the majority, in fact...know who their avatar is, but they just haven’t dug deep enough to understand them in a way that Facebook ad targeting could make a huge difference for them in their business.Specifically, they haven’t done the research or documented their successes and losses, so they aren’t really sure what’s working. Here's what I always remind them: when you get really good at Facebook ad targeting, there is no doubt you are going to see some major shifts in the impact you have with your audience and a major increase in your revenue streams. That's why I've created a roadmap that will let you know exactly where to focus, along with what needs to be on your radar from the get-go. It's really simple--just the way I like it--and it's set up so that you can keep adding to it as you learn exactly who your audience is and how to get in front of them. Basically, it's the key to unlocking the most valuable resource in your business. I've put a lot into this episode for you, so make sure to listen to the whole podcast to get everything you need to start the new year off successfully! I've also created a great freebie to help you with this plan--the Facebook Ad Targeting Starter Guide. It's a list of ten questions that you MUST be able to answer about your audience in order to fully optimize your Facebook ad targeting. Grab the special guide by clicking below! Like I said, you've really got to listen to the whole episode to get all this great information I've put together for you. But to outline it for you, Facebook ad targeting breaks down into four specific opportunities: Targeting Opportunity #1: Target Your Own AudiencesSay you already have an email list of at least 1,000 people. You can upload that email list to Facebook, Facebook will match your email list with their database and voila! You’ve got a targeting opportunity with your best, fastest-converting leads. Targeting Opportunity #2: Targeting Your Own Facebook FansThis list is not as warm as your own email list, but it is still a group of engaged people who are going to pay attention to you. Here’s the huge plus: you will almost always pay less with your Facebook ads when you target your own fan base versus a cold audience. If you ever needed a good reason to focus on building your Facebook fan base, I think this is the #1 best reason to do so. Targeting Opportunity #3: Target Other Facebook PagesThis is where I want you to put the most time and energy when it comes to research and experimentation. Targeting other Facebook pages is the strategy that allows you the most opportunities. I've also got a "super tip" to help you find out which pages you should be targeting. Click here to listen to the podcast now! Targeting Opportunity #4: Creating Lookalike AudiencesA lookalike audience is basically you taking a custom audience that you have and then asking Facebook to find an audience that is really similar to your own audience you have already created If you want to get a little bit more strategic with that (and I know you do!) you can try a technique called layering. I learned this from my friend James Wedmore, and I've been trying it out in my business lately, too. Click here to learn all about how you can do it! Be Patient with YourselfFinally, I have to remind you to be patient with yourself. This isn’t all going to fall into place tomorrow. My goal is to give you a roadmap and a bunch of examples, so you see where you want to go with your Facebook ad targeting and have the skills to get there day by day. In addition to laying out the steps in each targeting opportunity, this podcast episode walks you through using two super-easy research tools that should become second nature to you when you start to dive into Facebook advertising. Click here to listen to the whole thing now. And make sure to download this week's freebie so you can get super-prepared for making the most of your Facebook targeting.
Direct download: Online_Marketing_Made_Easy_Podcast_Episode_92.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:56pm PDT |