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A Marketing Shortcut for Content Creators Who Are No Good With Ads

In the online business world there’s a skill spectrum that looks like this…

Content <- – – – – – – – – -> Marketing

The majority of people either lean to the left and are good at content or lean to the right and are good at marketing.

You don’t have too many people who are equally great at both.

One of the best ways for someone who is great with content to grow their online business is to simply partner with someone who is great at marketing. That way they can handle the marketing and you can focus on what you are good at.

However, in the meantime, if you are doing your own marketing…

…either to learn about it because you want to be able to identify good marketing when you see it so that you can identify a good marketing partner OR if you just want to do it all yourself…

It’s important to learn a few marketing shortcuts to increase your chances of success.

In the case of profiting from the money you invest in your ads, one of those shortcuts is learning how to optimize your Average Order Value (AOV).

What is Average Order Value (AOV)?

As the name suggests, it’s the average value (amount) someone spends with you on their first order.

To calculate this number you divide your total revenue by your total orders.

So if you made $1,000 revenue today and you had 10 orders today, your AOV would be $100 (1,000 revenue ÷ 10 orders).

If you made $500 revenue and you had 20 orders, then your AOV would be $25 (500 revenue ÷ 20 orders).

Why is Average Order Value Important?

The higher your Average Order Value, the more you’ll be able to spend to acquire each customer.

The first step with any offer is to see if it has a pulse. “Will people buy it?”

The next question is… “How much do I have to pay to get one buyer on average?” (this is your Cost Per Order metric)

To find that number you take your total advertising investment and divide it by your total orders. So if you spent $570 to get 10 orders then your Cost Per Order is $57 (570 spend ÷ 10 orders).

Now you know that your Average Order Value needs to be at least $57+ in order for you to breakeven.

And if you have a high enough AOV, say $100, $150, or even $200+ on the front end you can definitely afford to buy a lot more traffic and scale up your volume of orders.

Here Are 3 Ways To Increase Your Average Order Value

1 – Pre-Purchase Upgrade

Whatever product you are selling now, there is always a way to make it more “premium”.

Whether it’s offering additional content, white-glove service, or even allowing people to “become a member” of an exclusive club or group, you can create a premium version of what you’re currently offering.

In any market there are going to be people who always want the “best option”, even if that means paying more money for it. And if you don’t have a “best option” for them to purchase then they will just purchase what you have available.

When people click Add To Cart on your sales page, instead of sending them directly to the checkout page, you can send them to a “Choose Your Preferred Option” or “Choose Your Preferred Package” page that gives them the option to choose between buying the basic option or a premium option.

A certain percentage of your customers will go for the premium option and that will help increase your AOV tremendously.

Here’s the math without a premium version…

10 ebook orders at $27 each without premium option = $270 total revenue ÷ 10 orders = $27 AOV

Now if you created a $199 “premium” version of the Ebook, perhaps now it also comes with a video version, audio version, and they get access to a live group Q&A call you will do for all premium members, etc.

Here’s the math with a premium version…

Assuming you get the same number of orders but this time 30% of your customers buy the premium version.

7 ebook orders at $27 each + 3 premium buyers at $199 each = $786 total revenue ÷ 10 total orders = $78.60 AOV

That’s almost TRIPLE your previous average order value.

Side Note: A few years ago I used to sell recipe books. I offered customers a Bronze, Gold, or Diamond package. 60% took the Bronze package at $19.95 and 40% would buy the Diamond package at $99.

Each market will be different and you’ll want to test different price points, but if you don’t have a premium option already, create one!

2 – OrderBump

Now, once your customers are at your checkout page (where they’ll enter their payment info) you can offer them something additional at a special price.

Think of it like the impulse buys at the checkout aisle at the grocery store. They have all sorts of candy bars, magazines, or other things you can add to your cart right before you checkout.

In this case, think of something complementary you could offer your customers.

What else will they need to solve their problem that your product doesn’t solve?
Does your product create a future problem?
Do your customers want access to you?

Here you can offer one thing or a bundle of things at a reduced price. All they have to do to add it to their order is to check the box that says “Yes, add this to my order.”

You’ll get another percentage of buyers to add that as well.

Here’s how an order bump could help increase your AOV…

Let’s take the previous example of your $27 ebook and your $199 premium option and this time let’s add a $60 orderbump.

Here’s the math…

7 ebook orders at $27 each + 3 premium buyers at $199 each + 2 of those same customers added the orderbump at $60 each = $906 total revenue ÷ 10 total orders = $90.60 AOV.

That’a big jump from where you started at an AOV of just $27.

3 – Post Purchase Upsell

Now, the next place to help increase your AOV is the page people land on right after someone clicks the “Place Order” button.

They have just made the purchase and you can now offer them something else.

What you offer your customers here will depend on your specific business model, strategy, and market, but here are a few different things you could offer.

An “Advanced” version of your Ebook that goes deeper into the topic.
A software or some way to automate what you are showing them in your Ebook.
A done-with-you service to speed up their results.
A done-for-you service to speed up their results and reduce their required energy output.
An option to “become a member” of an exclusive club or membership that gets awesome perks.

Now for this example, let’s say you offered a monthly membership that gave people access to join a monthly group call with you for $99/mo. Let’s say you now gave people the option to get 12 months of access for the price of 10 months ($990 instead of the normal $1,188).

Assuming that 1 person out of your 10 orders purchases, here is the new math…

7 ebook orders at $27 each + 3 premium buyers at $199 each + 2 of those same customers added the orderbump at $60 each + 1 of those same buyer became a member at $990 = $1,896 total revenue ÷ 10 orders = $189.60 AOV.

That is SEVEN times your original AOV of just 27 dollars.

With an AOV that high you don’t have to be great at ads to make them work for you because you can now spend up to $189.60 to acquire just one customer and still breakeven on the front-end.

And that’s just with the three strategies above.

There are many more ways to increase AOV but I’ll save those for another time.

For now, calculate your existing AOV and add even just one of these strategies to your current setup and see what it does for you.

And if you don’t yet have anything for sale but are working on your first product, map out what your pre-purchase upgrade, orderbump, and post-purchase upsell could be.

You don’t have to be great at marketing or copywriting, just think of and test different combinations of content, service, membership, or access that would be most helpful to your market and come up with different ways for your customers to purchase those from you.

See you next time…

-Eddys Velasquez
DigitalMarketingRx

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Does Your Online Business Drain You?

As your online business grows, things don’t get easier.

They get harder and more complex.

There are more moving parts, data to track, software to set up, people to manage, copy to write, etc.

And if you’re not careful, it’s easy to let overwhelm take over and have that keep you from making progress for months at a time (or even years).

One of the things you can do to simplify things is to create a system for every activity in your business.

A system is just a set of consistent procedures on how something gets done, whether it’s you, someone else, or a machine that does it.

For example, when I first got started with driving traffic via Facebook one of the most frustrating and overwhelming things for me was something as simple as “naming” the campaigns, ad sets, and ads.

On the surface, it appears to be a quick and simple process. Just pick a name and get on with it, right?

Still, always having to come up with and decide on a new name that wasn’t the same as several of the other campaigns I had already set up was draining to me.

So that was one of the first things I “systematized”.

I came up with a system for naming my campaigns where I no longer have to decide what the name is. The system does that for me.

Now, that is one less thing I have to spend energy on.

In the same way there are likely some activities in your business that drain you too.

Think of one of those activities and ask yourself…

1 – Why is this activity significant or important to the business? Does it have to exist or can it be eliminated?

If the activity can be eliminated then don’t spend your energy on it for now…

If it cannot be eliminated…

2 – Do I have to do it? Can someone else do it? Or can a machine do it?

If you don’t have to do it yourself, have someone else or a software do the task.

Although, sometimes it’s useful to do something yourself and find ways to make it more efficient before you have someone else do it (especially if this person is just following your instructions).

Another shortcut is to just hire an expert who already has a system for it and you can skip the “creating instructions” part, etc.

If you have to do it yourself…

3 – Break down that activity into multiple components. So for example, if it’s writing an email newsletter for the week, your components might be…

Pick topic for email
Write subject line
Write intro
Write body
Write conclusion
Write P.S. or promo section

Or it might be…

Pick topic for email
Write subject line
Write story
Write insight/lesson
Write P.S. or promo section

4 – Analyze the first component and look for what can be done the “same” every time. What is the most significant or important part about this component? Is there a part of this component I can eliminate? Is there a way to streamline this so I can do it in half the time? How can I eliminate the decision fatigue from this component?

One of the ways to eliminate decision fatigue and to make the creation or implementation of each component more efficient is to find where you can make things the same every time.

Consistency will do wonders for your overwhelm and in many cases can keep you from burning out.

Say you struggle to pick a topic for each week’s newsletter.

Do some work ahead of time, create a topic bank, organize it by category. Category 1, Category 2, Category 3, Category 4, etc.

Take some time to fill up each category with ideas.

Then assign category 1 to week 1 of 4 in the month, category 2 to week 2, category 3 to week 3, etc.

Now, instead of spending 30-60 minutes coming up with and deciding on a topic you can spend 30 seconds pulling up your Topic Bank spreadsheet and seeing what the next topic in the list is. Boom, 1 hour saved right there!

5 – Repeat this analysis for each component of the activity that drains you. How can you cut the TIME it takes you to do it? Is there a way to reduce the amount of ENERGY you spend on it? What about that component can be the SAME each time?

For example, for writing subject lines…

My process is to write the body of the email first and then I’ll choose something from the body of the email to be the subject line. I may adjust it a bit once I’ve got the idea for the subject line, but instead of laboring over that decision for 20 minutes, that’s now a 1-2 minute process.

Find the activity that drains you the most and create a consistent system for it. The more systems you have the less total “energy” you’ll need to spend on it which means you can now spend that energy elsewhere!

See you next time…

-Eddys Velasquez
DigitalMarketingRx

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Your Conversion Rate (Good or Bad?)

A few years ago I was a coach for Ryan Levesque’s coaching program.

My role was to answer questions in the Facebook Group, answer email questions, get on zoom calls, and show up to Live Events.

This exposed me to very possibly over 1,000+ questions over the years I worked there. All variants of similar themes.

One of the most common themes was…

“My product isn’t selling. What should I do to make it sell?”

If they were working on running Facebook Ads, they would ask… how do I word my ads to get more clicks? Or how do I target buyers?

If they were working on their quiz funnel, they would ask… how do I word my quiz landing page, questions, and opt-in page to get the most leads?

Some of them would tell me their lack of sales was a result of not enough visitors. So the questions would revolve around how to get more visitors.

And if they were working on their sales page, they wanted to know the highest converting headline or what were the best “persuasive words” to use to increase their conversion rate & turn more visitors into sales.


=== What is “Conversion Rate”? ===

Your conversion rate is the rate at which whatever method you are using to sell (your sales mechanism) turns visitors into customers.

So let’s say your sales mechanism is a text-based sales page.

If you had someone running your marketing you might hear them say your conversion rate is 1%. How do they arrive at that number? And is it good or is it bad?

Let’s say you received 100 visitors to that sales page.

That means 100 people clicked on your ad and landed on your sales page.

Of those 100 people who landed on your sales page, you got one sale. That means that 1 person out of 100 visitors purchased, giving you a conversion rate of 1%.

(1 sale ÷ 100 visitors) x 100 = 1%

If you received 500 visitors and made 10 sales, your conversion rate would be 2%.

(10 sales ÷ 500 visitors) x 100 = 2%

If you received 1,000 visitors to your sales page and you made 5 sales, your conversion rate would be 0.5%

(5 sales ÷ 1,000 visitors) x 100 = 0.5%

=== What conversion rate is considered good? ==

The standard conversion rate people shoot for is 1% or greater.

So for every 100 visitors to your sales page you want to make at least 1 sale.

Can you make a sales funnel work with a conversion rate that is less than 1%?

A conversion rate of less than 1% doesn’t mean you can’t make your funnel work, it just means you may have to spend more money on the front end to acquire customers.

One way to offset this additional advertising investment is to offer a higher priced back-end program to help cover the additional advertising costs required to get more visitors to your website. We can talk more about that in a future blog post.

=== Why is Conversion Rate important? ===

People are eager to learn how to increase their conversion rate because a higher conversion rate makes it easier to spend money on advertising without going into a big loss on the front-end.

Also, your conversion rate gives you a general idea of how much you’ll be able to spend on advertising to breakeven.

For example if your product price is $99 and your conversion rate on your sales page is 1%.

That means if you are running ads and paying for clicks you can do some quick math to determine up to how much you can spend PER click to breakeven.

In this case, at a $99 price point and 1% conversion rate you’d be able to spend up to .99 cents per click to breakeven. (99 x .01)

At the same price point, if you have a 5% conversion rate you’d be able to spend up to $4.95 per click and still breakeven.

===

While the questions the coaching members were asking me were all great questions.

What many of them missed and only a few of them ever asked me was…

“Am I selling the right product?”

You see, most wanted to find out all the best techniques & strategies to sell a product they wanted to sell and not necessarily what their market wanted to buy.

This could be for a variety of reasons.

Perhaps they already spent a lot of time, money, and effort creating a product on a topic they were passionate about. And so… “Why jump ship to something else when I’ve already invested so much into this product?”

Or some would say… “But they need this stuff, they should want it.”

So when it came time to test their funnels on cold traffic, some of them would get little to no sales at all. And then they would spend their time working on an endless number of small adjustments to the existing funnel.

Completely neglecting or overlooking…

One of the most effective strategies for increasing their conversion rate.

And that strategy is NOT to test different Facebook Ad wording, making 100’s of adjustments to your funnel (especially without testing any of those adjustments with live traffic), or even getting the perfect headline.

It’s to find the best Product-To-Market Match.

Basically… “How well does your product match what your market wants to buy?”

If you are working on getting your online business off the ground, one of the best things to do is to test selling multiple different products on the front-end until you find one that is a perfect match for what your market is buying right now. Timing is another crucial factor but I will cover that at a later point.

For now, know that the tighter your product-to-market match is, the higher your conversion rate will be. So if you’ve been fiddling with an existing sales funnel for a while and still aren’t getting the results you want, it may be time to ask yourself the tough question…

“Have I been trying to sell what I want to sell instead of offering what my market wants and is already buying?”

See you next time…

-Eddys Velasquez
DigitalMarketingRx

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Who is the enemy?

Have you heard the saying… “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” ?

It’s true.

And if you apply that concept to your online business, specifically in your messaging, your stories, your sales pages, your ads and social media posts, I guarantee you’ll make more sales (assuming your product does what you say it will do).

It’s worked for me, and I’ll tell you about that in just a minute, but first, here’s where I learned it.

I was sitting at the front of a marketing seminar put on by Ryan Deiss & Perry Belcher in Austin, Tx – it was their second ever Traffic & Conversion Summit.

I was right at the front eager to soak in all the new marketing tips and tricks of that time.

One of the guest speakers got up on stage and told a story I’ll never forget.

His name was Fred Catona.

He was the marketing guy behind the meteoric rise of PriceLine.

And he told the story of how in their first 14 days of running commercials, 2.2 million requested airline tickets. According to Fred, they sold $15 million in airline tickets the first week and then went public within 18 months at a valuation of 10 billion.

What made it work?

Fred said it was because they had an enemy.

Sky high prices for airline tickets.

People want to fly, they want the best price they can find and therefore the commercial’s main line was… “Name your own price for an airline ticket.”

Of course it helped that they also had William Shatner on board! But that’s another story for another time.

Later on Fred said he did something similar with the company FreeCreditReport

He thought what an easy service to market, I’ll just offer people the credit report for free, but he soon found that wouldn’t work.

With some research and a comment from someone that worked for him, he discovered that people were afraid that someone at the company would run the report and see their private financial information.

Fred then tweaked the ad from saying “Get a free credit report” to “Run a free credit report on yourself”. That’s when their ads started working.

What I found fascinating is that in both instances Fred wrote a line that empowered the ad listener (radio commercials) to defeat their enemy.

I applied this to a sports fitness company that I was doing marketing for. It was a product to help athletes (specifically young high school & college-aged basketball players) jump a few inches higher.

Before I wrote the script for the video sales page I called up a few of the past buyers to find out more about them. Of the 6 or 7 that I called almost all of them had some version of a “seeking revenge” story.

Who was their enemy?

A bully on the court.

Someone who had previously humiliated them in front of friends by “breaking their ankles” (a phrase referring to someone running past them with the ball in such a way that forced them, the defender, to fall over) or some other similar scenario that caused onlookers to point & laugh.

The end result being they felt angry, disrespected, and embarrassed and more than anything they wanted to “get back at the bully” by “dunking on them”.

And that’s when I found it!

The subtext for the video sales page would empower previously humiliated basketball players to “dunk on them”. And so I got to work on the sales page and asked the product creator some questions to uncover one of his own “bully stories” from college and used that as the lead.

The result?

That video sales page did $25k in its first two weeks from the initial email launch and then went on to generate over 20,000+ customers and $1M in revenue over the next five years.

Now think about your product or offer…

Who or what do your customers see as the “enemy”?

Stand against their enemy in your marketing, your stories, your ads, and empower your customers to defeat their enemy and you will see your sales increase.

See you next time…

-Eddys Velasquez
DigitalMarketingRx

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⛳ A Simple Way To Test An Online Business Idea

Yesterday was the final day of the Masters Golf Tournament.

If you don’t watch golf it would be golf’s equivalent of the “Super Bowl”.

Anyway, it’s a big week for golfers and the final round was amazing.

On the final hole for one of the golfers, Rory, hit the ball into the first bunker (sand trap).

Then he hit the ball out of the first bunker into the second bunker.

Finally he hit the ball out of the bunker and straight into the hole.

Rory & the crowd erupted with emotion!

It was quite a moment.

You can watch a video replay of that moment here ( https://youtu.be/VijqkhvAwgg ). Start the video at about minute 8 and see how the crowd reacts.

Then to put the cherry on top, the other golfer he was playing with (Morikawa) proceeded to do the exact same thing – hit the ball from the sand trap straight into the hole!

Anyway, even if you don’t play golf, you can use the “crowd’s reaction” to test your online business idea.

A Simple Way To Test Your Online Business Idea Using Consistent “Crowd Reaction” Experiments…

One of my preferred ways to test a new business idea in a new niche is to sell something first.

I identify a problem the niche has…

I then find a better, different, or contrarian solution…

Create the product (or get it created)…

Craft an offer around that product…

And then finally write a sales page to sell that product.

The challenge is that there are a lot of things that could go wrong there – especially if you’ve never done it before!

You could choose the wrong niche, the wrong solution, the wrong product, the wrong offer, the wrong messaging…

Very rarely does anyone select the right combination of all of those and hit a homerun on their first try…or should I say hole-in-one 😉

A simple way to test a new business idea is to…

1 – Start creating & distributing weekly content around the topic that is relevant to your new business idea.

You can create a Facebook page, a Youtube Channel, a blog, or just start up an email newsletter.

Identify the questions your market would have around the new idea you are considering launching and start creating weekly content that answers those questions from different angles & perspectives.

2 – Gauge the crowd’s reaction.

Each week’s content is a new experiment.

You are trying a new angle, a new perspective, a new topic, a new way of messaging things.

You can then gauge the crowd’s reaction to each piece of content.

Did they open your email or watch your video?

Did they find it interesting, intriguing, or compelling enough to reply to the email or leave a comment on your content?

Was the crowd’s reaction just “meh” or… “holy moly that was AMAZING!”

After a few weeks if you can’t even get a peep squeak out of the market, either you are dropping the ball on the messaging or perhaps your new idea might not have legs with that particular niche.

3 – Use your best content pieces to string together a high converting sales page.

After a few weeks and several months of doing this you are going to have a good understanding of exactly WHAT your crowd “reacts” to and to what degree.

You can then take the content that gets the best reactions and string them together into an “Insight Sales Page” that you can then use to promote your product to cold traffic.

You won’t have to guess what headline to use, what story to tell, or what insights to deliver… you’ll already know that from your weekly content experiments.

See you next time…

-Eddys Velasquez
DigitalMarketingRx

P.S. An important nuance to understand…

While the weekly content experiments are a great way to find topics and messaging that your crowd will react to, it isn’t always the best way to see if they will buy or not.

You still want to get an offer live and selling to test if all of that “reaction” will actually turn into sales or not.

Think of it as a two pronged approach…

Prong #1 – Weekly content experiments to see what topics & messaging resonate with your market.

Prong #2 – Use the messaging & content that gets the highest level of reactions to sell an offer. Even if it’s just a simple offer like a consultation, an eBook, or a simple subscription service where people pay you monthly to get access to you.

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The Tomato Slice Test (🩸 The Time I Bled During A Sales Presentation)

The summer after my senior year of high school, I found my way into a sales job with Vector Marketing (Cutco Knives).

It was a 100% commission job so if I didn’t produce I didn’t make any money.

Fortunately, the knives were actually very good and the company offered a lifetime guarantee so they weren’t that hard to sell.

The hard part (for me anyway) was getting the appointments from people to hear me give the presentation.

The company provided a “binder” that they wanted us to go through page by page. They stressed that it was supremely important that I go through every… single… page.

Information about the company, when it was founded, etc, etc.

I quickly found out that people’s eyes would glaze over when I went through those pages.

In fact, I had repeated the sales script so often that even I would glaze over lol

During one particular appointment that I’ll never forget, I was going on autopilot and forgot I had the “Trimmer” in my hand (it’s Cutco’s version of a utility knife – it’s sharp!).

Apparently, I had cut myself and not even noticed it.

The lady’s eyes got big and she just said…

“Hey, you’re bleeding…”

I looked up at her but still glazed over I said… “mmhmm” and kept on going with the script…

“No, look, you’re bleeding! Are you ok?”

Sure enough, I had cut myself and was bleeding on the presentation and her kitchen table!

It hurt but I just gritted my teeth, asked for a paper towel, put a smile on like everything was fine and then rushed through the rest of the presentation.

Unfortunately, she did not end up buying and just looked at me sympathetically as she led me out of her kitchen and out of her house. It was so embarrassing!

After that incident, I adjusted how I gave my presentations.

Instead of focusing on the word-for-word script and flipping through the pages in the binder…

I relaxed, memorized the structure of the script, I still made sure I highlighted the important bits, but the main difference…

I put EXTRA emphasis on demonstrating the knives and proving how good the knives actually are.

The team had provided us with some leather squares to cut during our presentation…

…but I found it was even better if I used tomatoes.

If you’ve ever tried to cut tomatoes with a dull knife, you know how messy it can get.

So I made sure to take a few tomatoes with me to every appointment.

I would then go through some of the important bits of the script, but very quickly would move into my “challenge”.

I would say…

“Hey, I’d like to show you something…can you pull out your favorite/sharpest knife that you use every day?”

Then as they walked over to get the knife I would say…

“I’ve brought some tomatoes with me today and I’d like to try an experiment with you. Is that ok?”

I’d wait for their agreement, and then I’d continue…

“I’d like you to cut through this tomato with your favorite knife as you normally would. Then, I’d like you to use this knife [as I handed over the Trimmer] to slice through this second tomato and notice how it feels. If you don’t see any difference, I’ll get out of your hair but if you feel like it’s the smoothest, neatest, easiest tomato cut you’ve ever made, would you consider buying at least one knife today?”

99% of the time I’d get a “yes” to that question.

And then once they tried the knife for themselves, most people would buy. And a large percentage of them wouldn’t buy just one knife, they’d buy entire kits!

Why?

Because of undeniable, demonstrable proof!

“If that knife was this good, the others must be good too.”

I didn’t have to convince them that the knives were good. They convinced themselves.

Take a look at your business.

What could your version of the tomato slice test be?

Maybe you’re not selling knives, but how could you get your potential customers to experience the tangible benefits of what you have to offer and see for themselves that what you have actually works?

If you sell an information product, a higher end program, or a consulting service…

1 – Identify your best, most effective strategy, tactic, or technique that you know always works.

2 – Give it away for free (or sell it as a low priced front-end offer) to as many people in your target market as possible.

3 – Once they get the results from it, they will more readily want to buy your main product, higher end program, or consulting because… “Wow, this thing is good, their other stuff must be good too.”

Think about it and see what you can come up with!

See you next time…

-Eddys Velasquez
DigitalMarketingRx

P.S. Are you actively trying to get your business off the ground but you’ve hit a wall and feel stuck?

Sign up for my weekly email newsletter below, let me know what you’re up against and I’ll see if I can come up with a solution for you.

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Would YOU Buy Your Own Product?

A few months ago I stumbled on the show Yellowstone.

Without revealing any spoilers, it follows the Dutton family as they work to protect their ranch from people who want to take it away from them.

It’s full of conflict, drama, and lots of twists & turns.

It’s a show written by Taylor Sheridan who has an interesting “zero to hero” story of his own (how he went from struggling actor to signing nine figure deals with ViacomCBS within a fairly short timeline). If that’s of any interest to you, you can read the article here.

Naturally, after watching Yellowstone, I wanted more so I found 1883 which is the ‘prequel’ to Yellowstone. That show follows the Dutton family as they journey west. It’s another Taylor Sheridan series and if you’ve seen Yellowstone and loved it, you’ll probably enjoy 1883 as well.

Anyway, something interesting caught my attention about the show 1883.

The value of things based on location.

I particularly found it interesting what items became more valuable once they were out west.

Of course they had money (bills & coins) at the time but trade was a big part of the economy.

I’ll give you this piece of meat for ammunition.

Or I’ll give you these colorful fabrics for your buffalo hide, etc.

I won’t get into any more detail to give away any spoilers but it got me thinking about how people value things and…

A few reflection questions came to mind.

1 – Willingness to trade – People are not likely to trade with you unless what they are receiving in return is of equal or greater value than what they are giving for it.

Sounds like simple “common sense” stuff.

But are you applying it to your business?

Put yourself in the shoes of your audience. Get into their head and pretend you are them.

Would YOU (being them) be willing to trade your time, money, and effort for what your business is offering?

If that answer is an… “ehhh maybe” … then you’ve got some work to do on modifying your offer until the answer would be a “heck yes!”

2 – Value based on location – On the show, certain things become more valuable as they get farther away from civilization.

Fast forward to today and think about all the different places you can buy a bottle of water.

At the grocery store you can find a whole case of water bottles for about .10 to .13 cents per bottle.

I’ve seen people on the side of the road selling cold water bottles to drivers on a hot day. Sometimes those bottles will get sold at $1+ (about 8-10x more than what you can get it for at the grocery store).

If you’re at the airport or Disney, you may find a bottle of water for $2.50-$5.00.

Now, imagine you are at a stadium watching the Super Bowl. How much does a water bottle cost there? According to the New York Post, it’s about $5 to $6 a bottle.

The same (or almost the same) bottle of water is sold at varying prices based on who is buying, where they are buying it, and who they are buying it from.

Who do you need to be selling your products to in order to charge the price you want?

Where do you need to be selling your products in order to charge the price you want?

And who do you need to become in order to charge the price you want?

All things to ponder about your business, perhaps while watching Yellowstone or 1883 🙂

See you next time…

-Eddys Velasquez
DigitalMarketingRx

P.S. Have a burning question about selling digital products, growing an online business, or anything else?

Subscribe to my weekly email newsletter for free, send me your question and I might write about it in a future email.

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Repetition, Repetition, Repetition

I don’t always try new things right away.

In fact, the perfect example of this is a new snack I’ve started buying called…

Aussie Bites

My Dad loves them and he initially offered them to me and I said “no” because I was full at the time.

A couple of weeks later, he offered them to me and I said “no” because I had other snacks I was eating (hmm I’m noticing a pattern here lol)

Fortunately, my Dad was persistent and on another occasion he offered them to me and then told me why he liked them.

They’re sort of a mix between a muffin, a cookie, and a granola bar all in one small bite. They’re relatively ‘healthier’ than other snacks, no trans fats, loaded with whole grains, and are a good source of Omega-3, fiber, and protein.

“Alright, I’ll try them… why not?”

And they taste great, now that I’ve actually tried them!

I’ve bought them every week or so for the past 3 weeks now.

Your Prospects Are Just Like This

Take 100 potential buyers of your product at any given time and you’ll find that about 1-3 of them are ready to buy right now.

For the rest of them…

It’s likely just not the right time or their problem is not yet big enough for them to want to do something about it right now.

But maybe later? You betcha!

The key is…

Repetition – Repetition – Repetition

Keep making your offer.

Just tweak your message a bit each time.

1 – Talk about different ways your product could be used.

2 – Breakdown the various ways your product is different from other products.

3 – Explore and communicate how your product can be helpful for a variety of different very specific situations.

4 – Explain the reasons why you decided to create the product.

5 – Mention the specific reasons others have decided to purchase the product.

6 – Tell stories of people using your product and their experience with it…

7 – Shine a spotlight on common excuses people have for not using the product that actually end up costing them a lot more than if they just bought your product…

8 – Feature surprising, unique, or even occasionally bizarre or out of the ordinary use-cases for your product…

Etc… etc…

Eventually, something will hit home.

The timing will be right.

The message will resonate.

Something you said may be just the right “kick-in-the-pants” that wakes them up from their “in-action” slumber.

Something will eventually hit home for one person and they will go ahead and say…

“You know what, I think I’ll go ahead and finally try that.”

Over time you’ll convert more of those initial 100 potential customers that you wouldn’t have converted without repetition, repetition, repetition.

How Do I Apply This?

1 – Do you have a lead magnet? Make sure you’re following up with those leads with at least a weekly broadcast newsletter. In one market we’ve got an automated daily email followup with over 100+ days of daily emails that goes out on top of regular broadcasts that go out each week. Each of those daily emails makes the same offer in a different way.

Tip: Make sure to track the sales from each email! My favorite tracker is Improvely. You can then see which links in which emails were clicked before the person bought.

After you’ve generated enough volume of leads you’ll start to see patterns like…

For example, you might notice that Email #37 always brings in a surge of sales.

Then from there you dig deeper and find out that of those sales that came from Email #37, those same buyers also clicked on links in Email #4, Email #18, and Email #20.

You can then go back and see exactly what you talked about in those emails and use that string of messaging in a new sales page or series of ads that can perhaps even out-convert your existing sales page!

2 – Do you skip the lead magnet and send traffic directly to your sales page? With most clients who already have a front-end offer that has sold in the past, we tend to start with this strategy of sending traffic directly to a sales page and bypass the lead magnet altogether.

We still have other campaigns running to a lead magnet but we start with a direct-to-sale campaign to test different offers, price points, bonuses, etc.

Anyway, if you are running one of these types of campaigns, you can employ this “repetition, repetition, repetition” tactic by setting up your retargeting campaigns like a daily email autoresponder.

If you don’t know what retargeting is, it simply means you are targeting a previous visitor of your sales page again, with different ads.

You can create audiences of people who have visited your sales page within X number of days.

So for example you can create audiences of people who have visited your sales page in the last 2 days, 7 days, 14 days, 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, etc.

Then set up retargeting ad campaigns that target each of those audiences (excluding the previous audience) and send a new batch of ads to them.

I.e. If you are targeting the 30 day audience you would exclude the 14 day audience or whatever the previous audience is that you created.

If you set these campaigns up correctly, once someone clicks on your ad and visits your sales page for the first time, they will now start to see a series of different ads from you over the next X number of days depending on how long you’ve set your audiences for.

We find that these retargeting campaigns help make our daily sales from ads a lot more stable and act like a daily email follow up sequence for someone that has not yet opted in to our list!

And that doesn’t count the retargeting we deploy on other platforms as well (I’ll talk about that another time).

Anyway, Want To Know A Bizarre Use-Case for Aussie Bites?

Here’s an example of a short humor email I might send to get someone to consider trying Aussie Bites…


Subject Line: Protect Your Home From Intruders With This ONE Snack (Only $8.98)

Did you know that this one snack could be an “effective” alarm system for your home?

It’s true, for just $8.98 you could have 32 of these healthy snacks protecting your home from dangerous intruders. How? …you ask.

It’s simple, these weirdly named Aussie Bites come inside a terribly hard to open plastic package. You’ve probably tried opening a similar plastic package before. The kind that might require an electric saw to open.

Anyway, once you do manage to get them open, the plastic makes such a loud sound that literally everyone in your household will know IMMEDIATELY what you are opening and exactly where you are.

All you have to do to protect your home, your family, and your pets from dangerous intruders is…

…you guessed it….

Leave these Aussie Bites out on the kitchen island.

Literally no intruder who walks through your kitchen will be able to resist.

You and your family will be immediately alerted.

And since the intruder will not be able to resist spending the time to eat ALL 32, you will have sufficient time to take a shower, get dressed and then call the cops (or handle the situation yourself).

Want to put Aussie Bites to the test in YOUR home? 😉

>> Click here to try Aussie Bites for just $8.98 <<


Now, would this email actually work?

I can’t say for sure.

What I do know is that it would at the very least get the attention of someone who hadn’t previously considered Aussie Bites and might make them more open to trying them in the future. Maybe they’ll buy from that email or a future one, but the key is… keep on sending them.

There are many different ways to talk about your product and with some creativity and the repetition, repetition, repetition strategy you can start converting more of the traffic you are already getting into buyers.

Don’t be afraid to have fun with it!

Want To Get Articles Like This In Your Inbox Each Week?

See you next time…

-Eddys Velasquez
DigitalMarketingRx

P.S. To make sure you know exactly which messages are responsible for producing your sales, you’ll want to use Improvely.

It’s a relatively inexpensive tracking tool, easy to use, and gives you invaluable data you can use to uncover exactly which message (and even better which order of messages) gets your visitors to turn into paying customers.

Are You Making This Mistake In Your Online Business?

Once upon a time there was a man.

A sinking man.

A man waist deep in quicksand.

How did he get there? That’s a story for another time.

For now, you (an imaginary you who for the time being doesn’t know what quicksand is) aren’t too far away.

You are walking a few hundred feet away and you hear something.

At first you can’t quite make it out.

You speed up your gait and soon enough you can hear it loud and clear.

“Help! … I need help! Anybody there? Help!”

Now you’re running.

Somebody is in trouble and you might be the only person that can help them.

You’re curious as to what could be happening and soon enough, you find out.

It’s a man.

A man sinking in quicksand.

He finds your eyes and you find his.

He immediately yells out…

“Hey, can you pull me out of here? Please!”

You take a quick second to think and take an inventory of what you’ve got on hand.

Hat…

Sun screen…

Sun glasses…

It’s a hot day after all!

An umbrella…

A towel…

A rope… (you’re not quite sure why you have a rope for this walk but stick with me here for a minute)

You’ve got a few books…

And a water bottle about half full.

You stick your hand into your backpack and grab one of the items…

“Perfect!” You think to yourself. “This is just what he needs.

So you throw the man your hat…

“Hey, you’re going to need this…” you say. “It’s hot out here!”

The man dodges the hat…

“No! He says… just throw me your rope, please!”

You stick your hand back in your backpack and find a book titled, How To Find Inner Peace During Troubled Times.

Excited that you found this man’s solution, you throw him the book.

The man now has a very confused expression on his face.

“What are you doing? !” he yells out.

“Just throw me the rope!”

Finally, in a last attempt you look through your backpack and think… “you know what, this man must be thirsty… water… that’s exactly what he needs”

So you grab your last bottle that’s half-full – the only water you have left for your trip – and in a selfless act, you throw it to the man.

Once again, the man says…

“No no no… the rope… I WANT the rope!”

A-ha!

“Why didn’t you say that earlier? ;-)”

You throw the end of your rope out to him and after some effort you manage to pull him out.

He thanks you profusely.

Tells you to follow him to his car.

He finds his wallet and pulls out a large wad of cash.

“Here” he says.

“I want to buy ALL that stuff you threw at me earlier and NOW I also want to buy everything else you’ve got… the sunscreen, the towel… the umbrella… the backpack…. Gimme all of it – you saved my life!”

***The End***

What does any of this have to do with your online business?

I tell this tongue-in-cheek story to illustrate a point.

Many business owners are selling what they themselves want to create, NOT what their market actually wants to buy.

Then they’re shocked when no one buys what they’ve spent hours, weeks, or even months of effort on.

“I’ve put soooo much value into this program to serve my audience, they really need this stuff. Why is no one buying?”

Usually, it’s because the business owner has spent all their time putting together a package with a hat, a book, and a water bottle… but no rope… the thing your audience really wants to buy right now.

If you want your front-end offer to convert visitors into buyers.

Offer them what they want, first.

Then, once you’ve pulled them out of the quicksand with the rope, they’ll be more open to investing in your other products (things they need but don’t necessarily want right now).

Some practical steps for discovering what your audience wants to buy right now…

1 – Take a look at what products your market is already buying right now.

A great place to do this is on Amazon.

– What products are the most popular in your market?
– Look for the products with the most positive reviews.
– What are those products?
– Do you notice a trend?
– Why do you think that might be?
– Is it something you could incorporate into your front-end offer?

Outside of Amazon…

– What are the top-selling products?
– Why do you think people are buying those?
– What does that say about what your market really wants right now?

2 – Take what you’ve learned from your research above and incorporate those lessons into your front-end offer.

It could be as simple as adding a free premium or bonus people get when they purchase your main product.

It might mean changing the name of your product to focus on a benefit they want right now rather than what they need.

Or you may find it necessary to create a brand new front-end offer from scratch.

It’s hard work.

It takes time and effort.

And you will likely fail a few times before you get it right.

But once you do get it right, you’ll have cracked the code on getting a steady stream of daily first-time buyers in your market.

Want To Get Articles Like This In Your Inbox Each Week?

See you next time…

-Eddys Velasquez
DigitalMarketingRx

P.S. A question to reflect on…

“What is the quicksand of my market?”

How To Develop A Compelling Offer For Your Online Business

There’s two things people hate

Paying more than they feel they have to (rising taxes, rising gas prices, etc)…

And for some

Getting up off their bed, chair, or couch to move!

Afterall, an “object at rest WILL stay at rest until acted upon by an unbalanced force.”

According to the CDC, fewer than 1 in 4 Americans (22.9%) get enough exercise.

I’ll leave it up to you whether you believe them or not but assuming their data is correct, that means that 77.1% of Americans don’t get enough exercise…

…and I would wager – at least a cup of coffee ☕ 😉 – that a large portion of that group probably doesn’t get any exercise at all.

At times, *I* have been in that group of people getting little to no exercise lol.

Anyways…

One of the ways to develop a compelling offer for your online business is to find out what your market hates. Here’s how…

First, let’s define what an offer is.

An offer in its most basic form is…

“I’ll give you X in exchange for Y”.

I’ll trade you my beef in exchange for your corn, etc.

And in terms of a digital product…

“I’ll give you [what your digital product is] in exchange for [the price].”

Easy enough, right?

The problem is…

If you’re in a competitive market, lots of people are making the exact same offer in the same way!

Take the weight loss market for example…

“I’ll give you this program that will show you how to [lose weight & keep it off while still eating your favorite foods] for just [$xx]”

So if you come in with a similar offer, people don’t have a good reason to say “yes” to yours. And why should they?

After all, there are a lot of programs that are all making that same promise and many of them are willing to sell it at a lower price and then it’s just a race to the bottom.

However…

If you want to develop a compelling offer that can evoke an instant “yes, I want that!” instead of a “let me see if I can find something better…” response, then here’s what you’ll want to do…

Step 1 – Find out WHO is buying your product.

You probably have a general idea of who is buying your product or who might buy your product.

But do you know the specifics?

Do you know if they’re generally men or women?

Do you know their age?

Are they homeowners or renters?

Are they affluent or living paycheck to paycheck?

Are they business executives working in a corporate environment or do they work from home in their pajamas?

Are they married with kids?

Single? Divorced?

Do you know what they believe?

Do you know their values?

Do you know what they have to deal with on a daily basis?

Do you know their specific situation?

Do you know the exact obstacles they face and why they face them?

Within your market there are multiple groups of people with common demographic & psychographic traits you can carve out and get to know better. The deeper your understanding of who all is buying (or could buy) your product, the easier it will be to develop an offer that is a “perfect fit” for them and their specific situation.

Step 2 – Find out WHAT problem they’re trying to solve through purchasing your product.

Once you’ve carved out the different segments of potential buyers from your market as a whole, you’ll discover that the problem you think you are solving is actually not the problem THEY are looking to solve.

Each segment will have a slightly or even significantly different reason for buying your product.

If you take the time to look at the specific problems each individual segment is dealing with on a daily basis you may uncover entirely different and in most cases surprising reasons for WHY a particular segment of your market is buying your product.

And then…

Step 3 – Offer them a new or different way (from what they’ve already tried) to solve their specific problem without something that they hate about the things they’ve already tried.

A few years ago, I was selling a digital product with a content partner in the Spanish market. It was a vegetarian recipe book with over 100+ recipes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Initially we thought we were solving the problem of “boredom” for vegetarians. Vegetarians who were bored with eating the same stuff over and over who now wanted to mix things up.

So our message was all about a “variety” of delicious meals.

That got some traction, but nothing special.

Then we did some digging on WHO was buying the book and WHY they were buying…

Our average buyer was a 45+ woman who was NOT a vegetarian, wanted to lose weight naturally by eating healthier (more greens & vegetables), and didn’t want to resort to pills or medical procedures.

Through our conversations with them we also found out that one of the biggest problems they were dealing with was…

Exercise.

They mentioned they didn’t want to go to the gym because of negative past experiences of being judged or feeling embarrassed for not knowing what to do while there…

Or they would say they couldn’t exercise because they had a bad knee or bad back.

Ultimately, what they were looking for was a natural way to lose weight without exercise. Or at least an initial stepping stone of eating healthier to get some progress until they found a way to deal with their exercise problem.

So with that discovery about who was buying and why they were buying, I determined we would need to repackage what we were selling and deliver a different and more specific message than just “here’s a variety of vegetarian recipes”.

Here’s what we did…

Instead of selling a regular “cookbook” for vegetarians we were now going to sell a “plan” for losing weight without exercise.

Our product went from being a collection of “information” to a structured step-by-step plan someone could follow to solve a very specific problem.

Fortunately, my content partner had experience in that area.

So I asked her to create an additional bonus called “Nuevo Guía: El Secreto De Una Cintura Sexi Sin Tener Que Hacer Ejercicio” (translates to: New Guide: The Secret To A Sexy Waist Without Exercise).

And then on top of that we arranged the cookbook (the main product) as a more structured 14-Day Menu with a Shopping List instead of a random collection of recipes.

A “perfect fit” offer for our average buyer profile.

Our Paypal payment notifications started lighting up!

Why? Because we had hit the nail on the head for what that particular audience really wanted…

We had matched our messaging to connect with the thing THEY were struggling with, not what we wanted to sell them initially.

Our offer statement went from…

“We’ll give you 100+ vegetarian recipes for $19.95”

To…

“If you’re a woman over 45+ who hates to exercise or can’t exercise due to a bad knee or other injury, we’ll give you a guide that will help you lose weight naturally without exercise AND you’ll get it free with your purchase of our 14 day vegetarian menu & shopping list”

When they saw we had a specific solution to their exact problem, it was an instant “yes, I want that!”

How Do You Apply This To Your Offer?

1 – Identify who your buyers are (or if you don’t have any yet, who you think they might be). Carve out the different segments and get to know their specific situation and what they have to deal with on a daily basis.

2 – Find out what problem they are trying to solve by purchasing your product (not the problem you are trying to solve). You might be surprised to find out that it’s different from the problem you are focused on!

3 – And then search for the top thing(s) they hate or are frustrated with about the solutions they’ve already tried.

4 – Restructure your solution to offer that [specific group of people] a [specific solution] to their [specific problem] in a new or different way, ideally without the thing(s) they hate about the solutions they’ve already tried and failed at.

Get it right and you’ll have a super compelling offer that will sell amazingly well!

Then if you want to take things to the next level you can create different “perfect fit” offers for your SAME (or slightly adjusted) product for each of the different segments in your market.

For example, in our case, we later discovered that another segment of our market was buying because they were sick & tired of having to cook twice. Once for themselves and another time for their spouse and kids who didn’t like their mother’s more healthy (green) meals.

We then created a different offer for that market segment. A set of vegetarian “meat-like” recipes that their family could enjoy (hot dogs, chorizo, burgers, sloppy joes, etc.) – they actually tasted good! That one did well too, especially when we gave it away for free with the purchase of the 14-day menu with a shopping list.

That’s how you get to 10-50+ buyers per day on the front-end.

It’s not easy, but with persistent effort… it CAN be done.

Want To Get Articles Like This In Your Inbox Each Week?

See you in the next one…

-Eddys Velasquez
DigitalMarketingRx

P.S. Are you feeling overwhelmed?

If there’s 101 things you feel you “should” be doing to grow your online business but you’re not sure what to focus on or where to even start.

I can help you eliminate the “time-wasters” (activities that make you feel like you are making progress but don’t actually move the needle at all)…

And instead, help you focus on the core activities that WILL move the needle for you.

If that sounds like something you need help with (or if you know someone that fits the description), and you’d like to do something about it…

Over the next few weeks I’m going to personally help a few people get clarity on a simplified “path to cash” in their business by eliminating all the unproductive “time-wasters”.

If you want to simplify your daily work routine down to the core cash-generating activities that will grow your business without all the extra fluff, and if you want me to help you do that…

Subscribe to my weekly email newsletter, reply to the first email you receive, and I’ll ask you a few questions to see if I’m a good fit to help your specific situation.