Archive | May, 2025

We talk about targeting the right people for your product, but just how valuable is it to know your audience?

Here’s a quick case study of a deodorant that became a top seller through nothing more than pinpoint targeting of its customers:

In Brandwashed: Tricks Companies use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy, we learn how Axe Deodorant took over their market through targeting.

Unilever executive David Cousino tells us that Unilever first analyzed the potential male deodorant user by breaking men down into six profiles:

• The Predator — He takes advantage of drunk girls, and lies about his job and where he lives
• Natural Talent — Athletic, smart, and confident. He doesn’t need to lie to score
• Marriage Material — Humble and respectful, he’s the sort of guy you want to bring home to Mom and Dad
• Always the Friend — He always hits that glass ceiling
• The Insecure Novice — He has absolutely no clue what he’s doing, and things get awkward fast — the geeks and nerds
• The Enthusiastic Novice — He has absolutely no clue what he’s doing, but he’s outgoing and tries valiantly anyway

Based on these six profiles, they chose to target the ‘Insecure Novice,’ since these are the guys who need the most help in getting women.

And frankly, this is the target market that could most easily be persuaded into buying a product – ANY product – that could potentially help them get over their nerdiness and get the woman. Or women. Lots of women.

The next step was to create the ads. Research showed that the ultimate male fantasy isn’t to have just one woman at a time – it’s to be irresistible to several sexy women at once. (Seriously, did they really need research to determine this?)

That’s why the TV ads proclaim that if you use Axe Deodorant, you will get the chicks. ALL the chicks.

The result?

Axe came out of nowhere to be the #1 male antiperspirant / deodorant brand.

Notice they weren’t targeting EVERY man. They didn’t target married men, old men, men who could already get women on their own and so forth. They targeted ONE demographic – men in their 20’s and 30’s who were nerdy and had trouble getting women.

But in the process, they had a great deal of crossover into the other groups as well.

This is an added benefit of targeting that most marketers don’t realize. They think in order to get the biggest share of the market, they must target everyone.

But when you target everyone, you tend to get almost no one. Paradoxically, when you target one specific group, you tend to get customers from all the other groups as well.

One side note: In this case, Axe’s marketing worked almost TOO well. High school kids were completely dousing themselves in Axe, thinking they would get every girl in class to fall all over them.

Instead, school districts complained of kids reeking of the cologne-like smell.

How could Axe have fixed this? Perhaps by cautioning its users that because of the power of Axe, a normal amount was actually more effective than going full coverage.

Instead, Axe backpedaled a bit from their original campaign, and sales declined.

Which is another lesson – when you find a target market that works for your product – or better still, you target your product to the right market – don’t change what’s working.

Here’s what you can do:

• Make a list of potential target markets for your next product.
• From that list, choose the market – or demographic – you want to target.
• Create a profile of ONE person in that market – this is your ideal customer.
• Tailor your product and your message to that one person.
• Dance around your office as you see the sales come flooding into your in box.

Stop targeting everyone and start targeting your ideal customer. Once you do, it will become clear how you should market, where you’ll find your customers, and how to get them on board. And yes, your sales will almost certainly increase.

Your customers are bombarded daily by the same types of offers – so how can you stand apart from the crowd?

Let’s take the online marketing niche as an example: Everyone is proclaiming to have THE product that will enable ANYONE to make a million dollars this year, or more.

Prospects are confused because there are simply too many choices. What they need is some relief from the continuous barrage of similar looking offers.

Here you come, offering not to sell them the latest greatest program, but instead help them to solve the problem they have right now.

What is their immediate problem? It’s not making a million dollars this year. But it is learning how to make enough money to quit the job they hate.

You offer a Facebook group that is aimed at replacing their salaries and allowing them to quit their job.

Finally, they found someone who is meeting them where they are, instead of trying to call them to the top of Mt. Everest. Because let’s face it, when you’re not making a dime online, making a million bucks seem about as likely as scaling Everest with no prior training.

Instead of being one of many gurus, you position yourself as the guy next door who works on cars and does gardening, and also happens to have a thriving internet business. Sure, you’ll teach them what you know over a few cups of coffee and some good conversation.

Now who wouldn’t jump at that?

There’s two elements at play here:

First, you’re breaking down that sky-high goal into something people truly believe they can achieve.

Become an Olympian athlete? Not likely. Lose 20 pounds and feel and look better? Yes!

Date the hottest models on the planet? No honest man is going to believe that. But be able to get dates with the nice women they meet through their work or hobbies? Now that they believe.

Second is your own positioning. Instead of being THE Diet Expert or THE Dating God or THE Internet Marketing Guru, you are a normal, everyday person.

Think about who you are – stay at home mom? Nutritionist? Astronomer? Astrologist? Doctor? Airplane mechanic? Crafter? Gardener? Cat lover? Write down the things you like the most about yourself.

Now how can you incorporate that into your chosen niche? You might be the cat lady who teaches diet and nutrition, or the shade tree mechanic who also teaches bodybuilding. Or maybe the prolific gardener who also teaches online marketing.

Whatever the case, use your own life to differentiate yourself from the crowd.

By doing these two things – starting with goals your audience believes they can achieve and being a person they can relate to – you’ll stand apart from any competition.

Your message will become crystal clear and people who need your message will flock to you. You’ll also be much more memorable as the ‘sky writing physical trainer’ than any of the other thousands of people teaching physical training online.

And there’s another benefit as well.

People will believe you because you come across as human. You show your mistakes, and you talk a little bit about yourself.

What you don’t show is ridiculous claims, Lamborghinis, mansions and yachts parked on tropical beaches.

Bloggers, email marketers, copywriters and writers of all genres, how do you keep your readers coming back for more? By utilizing that literary gem, the cliffhanger. I’ll show you how to use cliffhangers and teasers to increase your sales, but first a little background…

We’ve all been caught up in a story only to realize it was continued in the next chapter, installment, episode or issue. And wouldn’t you know it, they ended the present installment right when something HUGE was about to happen! Coincidence? Not at all.

When Dallas ended their season with “Who shot JR?” it was all people talked about for the entire summer. Heck, that was over 3 decades ago, and people still refer to it today. But what if they had shown you who shot JR before they ended the season? It’s likely no one would even remember that JR got shot at all.

Just this morning I was reading a work of fiction in which one of the main characters realized he was about to be ambushed when POOF! It was the end of the chapter. And wouldn’t you know it – the next chapter addressed an entirely different plot line of the story, thus leaving me in suspense until I can return to my reading.

It is the suspense that keeps us watching the movie or tuning in each week to the television show or watching the News at 11 because of that teaser they threw at us earlier in the evening that said, “Is your holiday turkey safe to eat? Find out at 6:00,” or “Is the water you’re drinking causing you cancer? Find out tonight at 11:00.”

You can use this technique in your own marketing, as well. For example, when writing a series of emails, end each one with a major benefit of what they’ll discover in the next email. When writing a sales letter, promise to teach them something they really want to know, but first delve more deeply into why they need your product. And when writing blog posts, either throw out a teaser at the end that sends them to another blog post or sales letter, or use the JR method and leave them hanging until your next post.

Cliffhangers and teasers can be your best friend when it comes to getting your emails opened, your sales letter read and people hanging on your every word. And if you look closely, you’ll notice I even deployed this technique in the first paragraph of this article. It got you to keep reading, now didn’t it? 😉

There’s more to making money from your list than simply getting people ON your list. In fact, it’s once they’re on your list that the real work begins because you not only don’t want them to unsubscribe – you want them to actively look forward to hearing from you, to open and read your emails, and to act on your suggestions.

Your subscribers will stay on your list if you are giving them value in the ways that they need. Tricky, huh? Because how do you know what it is that they need?

The answer is to create a feedback loop so they can tell what they want to learn and what they want to buy from you. This way you can design your products and services in a way that is exactly what your readers want.

You can get this information by using a survey to ask them for their number 1 questions on the niches or topics your list covers. SurveyMonkey.com can do this for you free.

Or you can write a blog post that asks readers to give you information on what they currently need. Be sure to specifically ask them to comment, and reply back to their comments. Commenting back encourages even more readers to comment, because they realize you are really paying attention to what they say.

A third option is to ask them a question in an email. It might be after your main email message, or the entire email might be you asking them to answer your question. Ask them to “hit reply right now” to send you their answer.

Once you know what their biggest questions are, you can write content or offer products that provide them with exactly what they need.

You want to condition your list to work with you, to give you the information you need so that you can help them. Think of it as a team effort – you’re asking what they need, they’re telling you, you’re creating it, they’re giving you feedback, etc.

It’s not about selling and more selling. It’s about offering your subscribers what they need, whether it’s in the form of free or paid content. And as long as you’re doing that, they will not only remain on your list – they’ll also become fans who enjoy reading your emails and buying your products.

Success is great, but failure is EASIER! Come on… I know you can do it. Here’s how:

1. Be filled with doubt. Cultivate it at every step, looking for reasons why you will fail, why your business plan won’t work, why effort is fruitless and hopeless. People who are successful want that success, they dream about it, breathe it, live it in their minds over and over before it happens in real life. When successful people feel doubt trying to creep in, they stamp it out faster than a cockroach in their kitchen. No wonder why they succeed. If you’re going to fail and fail big, you’ve got to be sure you’re filled with self-doubt from the time you get up until you fall asleep at night.

Whatever you do, do not listen to or read positive messages, do not become enthusiastic, and try your best not to be happy. Just sit in the corner quietly with your milk and a giant box of cookies (or your beer and burritos) and don’t come out of that corner until you’ve convinced yourself that you’re a big fat failure who will never succeed at anything. Remember, negative self-talk is crucial to your failure. If you let positive self-talk creep in, you may accidentally succeed, and then where would you be?

2. Be a vacillating slick willy. Don’t stick to one plan. Do NOT make any decisions. Do not move in one direction – move in all directions at once. Buy every ebook and program out there on how to be successful online, and then don’t even read them. If you do read them, bounce from one to the next without doing anything. Change your mind every week on your course of action. When you’ve mastered this, begin changing your mind every day. Aim to change your mind hourly, because this is the pinnacle of failure.

Here’s the monkey mind chatter to strive for: “Should you do this or do that or do this and that or that other thing or what about this hey I could do the thing over there but whoa, what’s this? Maybe I should do this – what do you think?”

Go ahead and second, third, fourth and fifth guess yourself silly and until your mind is numb and all you can do is veg out in front of the TV. Above all else, do NOT make one plan and stick to it – that’s the kiss of success and you do not want that.

3. Turn your obstacles into failures. Those stupid successful people are always taking their obstacles and turning them into triumphs. When their new website isn’t cutting it, what do they do? Fix it until it’s making sales, or start over and find a way to make it successful. That’s crazy! And it’s also more work, and who needs that? If you should accidentally actually DO something like build a new website, hope that it just sits there and gets moldy. That way you can heave a big sigh and say that “you tried” as you drown your sorrows in hops at the local pub.

Above all else, when you run into an obstacle do NOT take a step back and decide on your best course of action – this often leads to success. Do not decide that if this way didn’t work, there must be a better way. And do not tell yourself that you just found one way that doesn’t work, and you’re that much closer to finding a way that does work. Instead, throw up your hands, say that Internet Marketing doesn’t work because it’s all just a big scam, and give up.

4. Reinvent the wheel. If there is already a proven method for accomplishing something, ignore that method and go invent a new one. For example, there are all sorts of ways to successfully drive targeted traffic to websites, and these methods are used everyday by millions of online marketers. Do NOT use these methods! Instead, invent an entirely new method. This will take up lots of your time and probably lots of your money, too.

Plus the odds of it working are miniscule to none, so you’re almost guaranteed to fail. See how easy it is to avoid success? Simply thumb your nose at anything that’s proven to work and strike out to find an entirely new method to fail. (I have this traffic idea, by the way, which involves 3 dairy cows, a radial antennae and a photo of a Topeka Taco Stand – I’ll let you know how it works out.)

5. Indulge in plenty of delusions of grandeur. Your product is going to be the biggest thing since the iPod only it’s going to be BIGGER because even the tribesmen of the rainforest will be buying this up faster than blow darts and you’re going to get so much free publicity that Oprah is going to do a 1 hour prime time special just on you and your product and cripes, even your own MOTHER will love it, and she hates everything!

Whew. In your quest for Internet marketing failure, feeding these festering frenzied fantastic feats of glory will take up a major share of your time. After all, if you’re daydreaming you’re not working. You’re also not looking at the real world issues of whether or not there is actually a demand for your new discount concrete billy bob beer and crumpet party statues. One of the fastest ways to fail is to devise a product no one but you desires – and then spend your time daydreaming about the fortune you’re about to make.

Besides, this is all about failure. What are you dreaming about making fortunes anyway?

6. Be careless. Sure your ghostwriter just submitted the new product to you – just go ahead and launch it without reading it, right? Of course! How else are you going to miss the glaring error on page 42, or the fact that she omitted the entire key section people are dying to read?

Look, if you attend to details and make sure everything is in order prior to launch, you might actually be successful. So when your programmer sends you that new software, don’t check it, don’t click any links and do not test it. Just assume it’s good enough and start selling – you may do enough damage to your reputation to ensure future failure on a permanent basis.

7. Be lazy. Go watch TV, stay in bed, play video games, whatever. Just do NOT go to work on your business because you might actually accomplish something. Pity all those successful people who spend hours upon hours working on their business – no wonder why they are confined to making money, getting accolades and being successful. If they only knew how easy it is to fail they would just stop accomplishing stuff.

8. Be sick. That’s right – how can you succeed if you’re sick all the time, right? So go ahead and eat that junk food. Stay up all night. Drink until you puke. And above all, do NOT exercise. Exercise is shown to increase your health in a thousand and one different ways, including making you THINK better.

And if you’re thinking better, you’re probably realizing this entire article has been utterly ridiculous – after all, you already know how to fail. Everyone knows that. And while it does take some effort to fail, it’s well worth it. How else can you lay on your deathbed one day, wishing you’d achieved your goals instead of being a doubt-filled, vacillating, failure seeking, wheel reinventing, delusional, careless, lazy, sick, almost-was Internet marketer?

Yes, there is a #9 – and that’s to go do the OPPOSITE of all the opposites I just wrote about. Success isn’t hard – you just need to get busy NOT doing all the things we’ve just covered here.

Over and over we hear how to succeed, how to achieve our goals and dreams, and so forth. And yet, somehow most people are falling far short of those goals and dreams…

Now why is that? Perhaps it’s time to do the opposite. In a famous episode of Seinfeld, George Costanza was a perennial loser who one day decided to do the opposite of what he would normally do in every facet of his life. Result? Success!

Another example is contrarian investing – that is, going against conventional wisdom to buy when others are selling and selling when everyone else is buying – has been known to build fortunes. And this holds true for not only investments, but also in real estate.

Another example of the opposite working: Over and over we’ve been told to do affirmations to improve our outlook and our outcome. Result? If we do them a million, billion, gazillion times, they absolutely do work. But who wants to repeat the same phrases over and over 50 times a day? Not me.

Now I hear that if we simply rephrase our affirmation as a question, we only need to say it a few times here and there for it to work. So instead of saying, “I’m a success. I’m a success. I’m a SUCCESS!” we now ask ourselves, “Why am I so successful?”

Go ahead and try it and see if it doesn’t feel different than simply telling yourself you’re a success. Powerful, isn’t it? That’s because by asking the question, you are telling yourself to find all the reasons why you are successful. In other words, rather than just hearing words over and over, you are now actively participating in the process, and putting your subconscious mind to work helping you find the answers. What a difference!

I was going to write an article tomorrow on how to be successful, but I think I’ll scratch that. Instead, I’m going to write about how NOT to be successful, and we’ll see what happens. My tongue is firmly planted in my cheek as I write this, so let’s have some fun!

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s installment where I share with you “9 Ways to Be Certain You’ll Fail in Internet Marketing”… Be sure NOT to come back tomorrow to check it out, ok! 😉

You don’t have your own product yet and you want to make some money promoting affiliate products. But if you promote affiliate products via email, there is a better than even chance that you are making at least one of these mistakes and it’s costing you money. Imagine if every time you promote a product, you make more money with no more effort because you stop making these mistakes – wouldn’t that be worth exploring?

1. Promoting A Product Without Knowing Much About It

Just because other people are promoting a product doesn’t necessarily mean that you should, too. If you don’t know what it is that you’re selling, it makes sense that you’re going to do a lousy job of promoting it. “Hey, buy this product because other people are buying it so it must be good.” What kind of a recommendation is that?

That’s why you want to either get a review copy from the merchant prior to launch, or buy the product yourself. Then spend time actually using the product. Pick out 3 to 5 things you love about it and highlight these in your promotion.

BONUS: 

By reviewing the product prior to promoting it, you’ll discover if it’s something you want to stake your reputation on. After all, if you recommend a shoddy product, your list isn’t going to be happy and your reputation will take a hit. Promote enough shoddy products and you’ll need to change your name and build a new list.

2. Using The Same Promo Copy Everyone Else Is Using

It’s the day of the big launch and you copy and paste the same email a hundred other affiliates are sending to their lists – do you really think your readers aren’t on some of these other lists as well? When they see you’re just a cookie cutter of everyone else, they’re going to recognize your emails as junk and hit the delete button. Even if they are interested in the product, they’re going to find someone else to purchase it from who’s already used the product and can give them the insider’s perspective on what to expect.

When you write your own emails, you stand completely apart from the crowd. While the cookie cutter emails are being ignored, yours are getting read and receiving clicks. Write your own promotional emails with your own unique personality and slant, with sincerity and belief in what you are saying, and you will outperform other affiliates with lists larger than your own.

3. Not Adding Value

Always think of what you can add to the product to produce more value. For example, you can add a product of your own as a bonus, or do a coaching call for everyone who purchases. You might start a mastermind group to help the buyers implement what they learn in the course, or even create a new product to give them as a bonus (which you can then sell to others.)

Always think about how you can add value. Many times it can be as simple as adding a 10 page report or 5 minute video on how to do something step-by-step that is called for in the product.  And be sure the value you add is directly related to the product you are promoting. If the product is how to grow magnificent roses, then a report on the best places to buy rose fertilizer would be perfect, while a video on how to plant asparagus wouldn’t make a lot of sense.

4. Sending Nothing But Affiliate Offers

If you want your emails to get open and read, you’re going to want to mix a good share of content in with your promotional emails. No one likes to be sold to over and over again, yet everyone enjoys getting news, how-to’s and insider advice from a trusted friend. Be the friend, and make sure at least 2/3rds of your emails contain great info. This will build a relationship between you and your readers and also get your promo emails open and read.

5. Hard Selling Instead Of Pre-Selling

As an affiliate, your job isn’t to sell the product – that’s the sales page’s job. Your job is to get your readers warmed up to the idea of what the product can do for them, so that 2 things happen: First, they click the link in your email that leads to the sales page. Remember, you’re selling the click, not the product. And second, when they click that link they are interested, eager and possibly even excited to discover more.

6. Not Being Memorable

We touched on this earlier when we spoke of delivering lots of value to your list in the form of content. When you’re known for delivering value, your emails are much more likely to be opened and read. But just having great content isn’t always enough to make you stand apart from the crowd. You also need a hook: Something that makes you memorable to your readers so that each time they see an email from you, they remember exactly who you are and why they should open the email.

If you’re like most marketers, you probably assume you already stand out because you know how different you are from other marketers – but do your readers know this? From the day they join your list, you should in some way differentiate yourself. It could be by using a nickname, such as Mr./Mrs. Overdeliverer. Or it could with your own brand.

If you have another profession, you can use that as your hook. One fellow I know was a school teacher and he still refers to himself that way even though it’s been years since he stepped inside a classroom. Another marketer is known as being unorthodox (to say the least) and yet another is known for his hair and his barefoot running. These are all hooks or associations that make them stand apart in their subscriber’s minds from all the other marketers sending them emails.

Employ some of these hard-fought lessons in your own marketing, and you’ll save yourself years of trial and error, and quickly get on the fast-track to higher profits in your affiliate marketing business.

Every time you turn around, there’s another guru offering a high ticket item that will save the day and put a fortune in your pocket – but will it? The thing about selling information to Internet marketers on how to market is that they are effectively creating their own competition – training others to do what it is that’s making them rich.

Now, if you were going to train YOUR competition to compete against you and try to take away your business – would you tell them everything? No way. For that matter, would you be tempted to tell them things that were – shall we say – not exactly true? Possibly. Here are 4 common myths the “experts” would love for you to keep believing…

1. Long sales copy always out pulls short sales copy. Not true – if you’re selling a low ticket item ($5 to $30) then short copy will often out pull long copy – especially if you state the price UP FRONT rather than trying to hide it at the bottom. If you’re selling more expensive products, then long copy does out pull short copy.

2. Video sells more than written copy. Not true – split testing of squeeze pages shows that the pages without video nearly always out pull the ones with video. Moreover, sales pages with just video and no copy tend to not do as well as sales pages with copy and no video. And a combination of the two really needs to be split-tested, because it could easily go either way. Don’t assume video sells – depending on the product and the video itself, it can hurt as much as you think it might help.

3. You should split test everything. Yes, as we just mentioned split testing is great – but only so long as it doesn’t slow you down. When you’re just getting started, the last thing you need is to delay your actions until you’ve split tested everything down to a science. Better to roll out that sales page today and begin making sales now than to wait until it’s perfect. Do split test, but don’t make it a priority. Taking action, rolling out new products and building your list should be your priorities. Get the money coming in and then focus on improving your systems.

4. Affiliate marketing is the way to go. Think about this – do you want to compete with a hundred or a thousand other affiliates to sell a product – or do you want to sell your own unique product that no one else on the planet can offer? By creating your own products, not only do you eliminate the competition, but you also build a relationship with your customers who come to know you, trust you and love your products. And once this happens, then you can sell them all the affiliate products you like.

Never be afraid to question anything anybody tells you – including me. And always look at the possible motives that might lie behind a word of advice. As my grandfather used to say, “Follow the money!” If someone is teaching you how to compete with them, odds are they’re not only omitting key information – they may also be leading you astray.

Even the smallest changes can sometimes result in the biggest increases to your conversion rate. Take the headline split test, for example. Headlines A, B and C are tested against each other. Headline A converts at 1%, Headline C converts at 2.5%, and Headline B converts at 4.9%. Hmmm, which one should you pick? The choice is obvious, you go with Headline B.

But what if you hadn’t split tested? You would never have known. Just imagine: You write a terrific headline, which happens to be Headline A. It looks like a sure winner, so you don’t bother to test. And sure enough, it converts at a respectable 1%.

BUT, if you had tested, you would have chosen Headline B. And for every 100 people who hit your site, you would have made 3.9 more sales. If your product sells for $47, that’s another $183.30 you would have earned for every 100 visitors. But you didn’t test, and so you didn’t know, and so you lost thousands of dollars. Ouch.

Testing might seem like an irritation, but there are few things that can pay off as handsomely as a simple split-test.

That’s why I’ve made a list of things you might want to test in your next sales letter or even in your next email. I’ve left out the common things like headlines, pre-headlines, sub-headlines and calls to action. You already know about those. But have you thought about testing these?

• Various bonuses tested against each other and against no bonus
• Person next door tone versus formal business tone
• Header versus no header
• Placement and look of testimonials
• Adding more images, arrows, underlining, etc.
• Adding/changing the text underneath the images
• For low priced items – Placing the price at the top (beginning) versus at the bottom (end)
• A soft sell versus a hard sell approach
• Adding more call to actions throughout
• The design of the page itself
• Wording directed to your best customer versus more generic copy
• Changing the color scheme
• Changing the color or text on the order button
• Variations on your product image(s)
• Variations on your product image size
• Variations on your product image location(s)
• Renaming your product
• Focusing on benefits versus focusing on the pain of no solution
• Placing bullets closer to the beginning versus further into the page
• Focusing on one major benefit versus a laundry list of benefits
• Having all copy or video on one page, versus using steps with a progress indicator
• A trial offer versus asking for the entire sale up front
• Sales – a percentage off versus a dollar amount off
• Coupons versus sales
• And perhaps the most interesting of all: Using dark emotions like jealousy or revenge to get the sale [“You know that snobby woman at your child’s school who thinks she’s so terrific? Right now she is praying you NEVER get this program, because if you do you’ll lose that weight and look ten times better than her. Imagine how envious she’ll be then!”] Heh heh.

Mind you, this list is to get you thinking and moving in the right direction. There’s no way you’re going to test all of these things unless you’re a compulsive profit-seeking entrepreneur who can’t rest until you’ve got the most finely tuned sales presentation in the history of the world.

For the rest of us, pick and choose what you test. If you haven’t already, start with the basics like your headlines and calls to action. Then choose something from this list and see if you can’t boost your conversion rate even higher.

To stay motivated, do the math to find out how much more you will earn on every 1,000 visitors for every tenth of a point you increase your conversions. Write this number down and post it where you’ll see it. Then every week, or every day if you’ve got the traffic, test something new. There’s no easier or faster way to give yourself raise after raise than continually split testing.

This idea has been proven to work GREAT for insurance agents, and it can work phenomenally well for other businesses as well. Imagine you walk into Joe’s insurance to sell your marketing services. Joe is sitting at his desk, looking bored and sad. “Joe,” you say, “How’s business?”

“Not great, he answers.”

“Joe, I’ll bet you a steak dinner that I can get your phone ringing off the hook in days.”

Joe takes you up on your bet. You then launch an advertising campaign via social media or traditional media, in which Joe offers a big steak or shrimp dinner if he can’t save a customer money on his or her insurance. Because the offer is so attention getting and so bold, the phone does indeed ring off the hook.

Just make sure before you run a promotion like this that Joe can indeed save most people money.

You can do something similar with other trades, too, such as tax preparers, travel agents and even auto repair shops. That’s right – auto repair. The offer might be – “Bring in your estimate from any other shop. If we can’t do the work for less money, we’ll buy you dinner.”

Can you do something like this with online marketing? Why not?

“Follow my step by step system. Show me you did all the steps, and if you aren’t making “x” amount of money in 6 months, the course is one me.”

Or…

“Follow my recommendations, keep an exercise and eating journal for 6 weeks while following the program, and if you haven’t lost 10 pounds, I’ll send you my competitor’s program for free.”

The possibilities are endless. By making an offer no one else is making, you will stand out from the crowd, get noticed and make sales.