The Basics of Making Bucks
The video is from a local Internet marketing group here in the Tampa Bay area that just happened. The event was held at The Bunker in downtown Ybor city where the group has grown by leaps & bounds.
More and more people are looking for ways to make money on the internet however what I find interesting is that they still find their way to off line events to cultivate relationships and gather more intimate knowledge.
There are a few lessons that can be brought forth from this short video that I’m going to give you insight on when heading into making some cash online or off.
- Know your target audience and their needs
- Crafting your offer to them
- A 3 step no fail process of engaging your audience & asking for money
- Understanding influence & persuasion and it’s importance in the process
- Always tweeking your offer to get better results
Know Your Specific Audience
As Barry Nicholson from Dynamic Duo Copywriting pointed out in the very beginning of the video, you must have a specific and definite target and a means of which to hit that target.
You must know exactly who you’re talking to and specifically target them through your online efforts. Throwing everything out onto the web in a shotgun fashion is a slow expensive means of learning. Many people that have this philosophy quit way before they figure this out.
This is not what you want to do.
The same thing applies in your off line efforts of marketing, networking & sales. He or she who see’s the target most clearly will get it quicker.
You want your results faster?
See your objective clearly and define a means of which to reach it. Then plan do & review constantly in order to stay on track.
Barry is a master of this because he specializes in direct response marketing. He knows exactly how to elicit a direct response from his target audience because he’s tuned into their needs.
More on that topic in a minute.
Crafting Your Offer
Kyle Graham was 2nd and delivers a very clear message about not getting caught up in the weeds. It’s about crafting your offer, taking action and doing one simple thing along the way.
Asking for the order.
Crafting your offer is the one single biggest thing you can do for the longevity of your business.
Make your offer irresistible so that your target market wants it!
I remember writing about the Ready Fire Aim principle where you do gather as much intel as quickly as possible in the beginning however you take immediate action right after that and then adjust your actions (marketing efforts) along the way.
It’s simple but you can easily get constipated by knowledge and never take any action at all. I have to have it perfect syndrome, I call it.
I see this every day in my off line business and have been a victim of it many times in my own ventures in the beginning.
No Fail 3 Step Plan to Engage
Whether it’s off line or on line the 3 keys to getting financial results when presenting to your target audience are:
- Here’s what I have
- Here’s what it will do for you
- Here’s what I need you to do next
I’ve personally done this one on one and even in front of up to 100 people in a room and it gets results!
A confused mind does nothing so keep it simple and don’t hide the fact that you want people to take action on your offer.
Once you’ve gathered the information about your target audience, put together your offer and then start taking action with those 3 steps.
Will you need to aim over and over and over?
Absolutely.
Human Dynamics & Needs
Finally Chris Blackerby covers the importance of direct response marketing and how it’s been part of the fundamentals of sales for decades. Direct response is all about understanding your prospects needs & problems.
Yes it’s much more than that but I’m giving you the dumbed down version.
This is where you can get it all wrong if you’re not careful and only focus on your problem, lack of money.
Too many people fall into the “I’m desperate just to make a buck” trap online and off line.
Direct response marketing has been around for a long time and it comes down to understanding emotional triggers, influence and human dynamics.
Robert Cialdini’s Influence is a must read as well as his most recent book Yes, 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive.
I would obviously tackle these books immediately if you haven’t yet so that you begin to get an understanding of what makes people take action & buy.
Tweeking Your Offer
One thing Chris really hammered on was something you heard called split testing. This is basically a constant review of what works and what doesn’t work in your marketing efforts.
An example would be having two seemingly identical on line sales letters & having traffic coming to them but with small tweeks between the two to see which one out performs the other.
(Example is the Headline of the sales letter is different)
The one that out performs the other is your control meaning the main one that you focus on, and you continue to test it against another seemingly similar sales letter to see if it out performs your control.
You’re always making your sales letter better so that it converts at higher and higher percentage there for making you of course more money.
Off line this is completely able to be done as well and has been for years.
An example would be if you were doing cold calls on companies using a specific script. If you’re making 100 calls a day do 50 calls with your control script and another 50 with your test script that is slightly different.
Which script got you more appointments that day or that week? That is your control script and you then make a small change and test that script against your control.
It saves you time and creates better results.
Why This Post Is Important
I decided to put this up because on average since November of ’08 there have been 683,000 lay offs per month and I even asked in an earlier post if the worst is yet to come?
There are more people looking for off line home businesses as well as online home businesses than ever before. I’ve noticed almost all of them have no idea where to start either.
So in this post I covered a few key ingredients you want to be aware of in making the bucks on line or off.
You have to be careful because there are a lot of junk online products that promise to do almost everything for you, believe me if it was that easy we’d all be push button millionaires.
It all still comes down to loving what you do, work & creating relationships with people.
I tend to float with subjects here at tonyteegarden.com however they all come back down people & developing relationships.
Many of you have emailed me with questions about making money on line & off so if this post was helpful to you let me know!