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Where do your ideal customers congregate online?

 

where is my target market

We know you must work through WHO your dream clients are and then find out WHERE they are. Driving traffic is all about finding the people you are trying to serve and convincing them (through an AD) to leave what they are doing and to come to your website.

Let me ask you a question….When you hear the word ‘congregation’ what is the first thought that comes to mind? For most people religion comes to mind. Religions really are nothing more than a group of people who gather together based on similar beliefs and values. So, if I were selling a perfect product to Mormons, where would I go and sell it?? The best place to start is where Mormons congregate which would be the Mormon Church. They would all be right there together and all you would have to do is put your message in front of them…..not suggesting you do this btw!

APPLYING THIS TO YOUR ONLINE BUSINESS

One of the coolest aspects of the Internet is that people can gather together engaging with each other about pretty much every topic under the sun. This has allowed people like you and I to get into business quickly without all the barriers and expensive hurdles of traditional media and overhead.

Think about how quickly you can connect with and join like minded people that are interested in the same topic or hobby as you no matter where one another lives.

We all have hobbies or interests. When we want to engage with people with similar interests, we have forums and groups and meetups that we can go to or we can find where people come together to talk, offer support and share ideas on anything related to that hobby/interest.

Humans congregate in these little pockets all across the Internet. All we have to do is find them and put our message (bait) in front of them. Simple Right?

Not sure where your congregations are? Go to Google or Facebook for starters and type in your keyword + forum/blog/meetups.

This exerices should help you begin to answer the questions….

Who is my Target market?

Where are they congregating? 

You might find a Facebook group or many where people are coming together, a popular blog/website or even a newsletter that many of your target market seems to subscribe too. Once you find out where your people are…..create your AD . Your ‘bait’ offer will attract them to your website.

As an entrepreneur or small business owner it is your job to find out where your people congregate so that you can then answer the next question.

How can you get the person to leave their congregation and check out your page?

We’ll be sharing that on the next update. Subscribe over on the right and follow along!

P.S. Get your FREE BOOK DotCom Secrets by clicking below if you want to learn how to attract your ideal customers to your business.

The ONE THING missing in your Business

The secret formula that I’ve been sharing up to this point helps you figure out:

  • Who you want to serve
  • How to find them
  • What kind of bait you should use to attract them
  • Where you want to take them

The value ladder was created to help you figure out what products and services you need to add to your business so that your dream clients move from your bait to your front end offer and then to your high end services generating more value for your clients and more money for you!

Now it’s time to bridge the gap between a Value Ladder and a Sales Funnel.

Ideally, you and I would be able to day in and day out talk our ideal customers into purchasing our best, most expensive offering.

In my last article we spoke about the reality of this being very rare to almost impossible because we have not provided any value to them yet. Another thought to consider is maybe your most expensive offering (or only offering) isn’t the right solution for everyone that interacts with your business, especially for the first time.

We build a funnel that will help us to do two things:

  1. Provide value to each customer at the unique level of service that he or she can afford.
  2. Make money and be profitable while identifying our dream clients who can afford our highest offer.

 

traffic funnel

 

In the illustration above, the cloud represents all your potential customers. Located at the top of the funnel is your bait offer to attract your ideal clients.

For example, I might start placing Ads for my bait offer where I believe my ideal customers are hanging out. This could be a publication they all read, a newsletter from a popular website or they may be in groups on Facebook. As you go, some of those ideal customers will begin to see your bait and a percentage of those people will purchase your front end offer.

A funnel moves people through your sales process in an automated way. They enter as prospective customers they took the bait (traffic) and our job is to convert as much traffic to repeat customers by selling them the front, middle and back end product or services.

Looking at the diagram you can see at the top of my funnel is the ‘bait’ that will attract my ideal customers to my offer. As I begin to publish Ads featuring my bait, potential customers will start clicking the Ad, a certain percentage will then also purchase my front end offer that I will present to them right after they opted in.

You continue to take them through your value ladder offering even more value while also costing more money. Think of this as an ‘upsell’- Would you like to supersize that?

Let’s be clear that not everyone will ascend up your value ladder and therefore through your sales funnel as you’d like but a certain percentage of clients who took the initial bait will.

sales funnel for lead generation

What you are left with at the top of your value ladder is a percentage of customers who originally ‘took your bait’ offer and still remain. This is your ideal customer who will want your highest value offer- your dream client.

More and more businesses spanning all verticals are moving their businesses online. This is overall IMO a very good thing but it does mean that competition starts to grow which results in higher Ad costs and couple that with buyers resistance going up and it ends up becoming much harder to sell compared to only a few years ago.

As a result, the importance of building a deeper funnel with more offerings becomes critical to the success of your business.

The deeper your funnel is, the more you can offer you customer, the more each customer is worth to you.

The more customers  are worth to you, the more you can spend to acquire them.

Russell points out to remember this truth:

“Ultimatley the business that can spend the most to acquire a customer wins.’-Dan Kennedy

Do you have a value ladder for your business?

If you read Law of attraction for lead generation and put some thought into the four questions below….now it’s time to begin to create what we are going to call a value ladder for your business.

Here are the four questions for review:

  • Who is your ideal customer?
  • What bait can you use to attract them?
  • Where do they hang out and what do they read?
  • Where do you want to take them (your highest value offer)? What results do you want to provide for them?

What is a value ladder?

A value ladder is extremely important for you to think through and set up before you start creating any type of sales funnel or communication to your ideal customer or current customers.

The value ladder shows where you want to take your client to serve them at the highest level.

Value Ladder and what it for your business

It will be difficult for you to position your highest value offer to strangers who have not interacted with you or your brand yet because you simply haven’t provided any value to them yet! Warm them up first, with a simple non threatening offer.

The idea here is to offer something of lower value to them, that is non threatening from an investment or time commitment standpoint so that they can get a feel for you and your brand and what you have to offer for them.

Giving your ideal customer multiple value points at different price points gives you an opportunity to give them exactly what they want and multiple ways to make money!

For example, in Russell Brunsons’ business Clickfunnels– which is a software subscription to help business’ create sales funnels- does not start the relationship off by positioning his software-which is higher up on the value ladder.

In this example he might have a couple of ‘bait’ offers like a free book or a free research report something that would be of value to his ideal customer yet not a huge time or money commitment.

A Holistic medical practitioner would not lead with a comprehensive wellness program to strangers who are just getting to know his/her practice or even a new method of healing they provide like Reiki or Meditation.

They may want to offer a free guide to holistic healing an FAQ or a free consultation to get them warmed up to the value you can deliver for them while they receive value in your bait offer.

Once your ideal customer receives a little bit of value from you, they will naturally want to acsend up your value ladder to see what other ways you can deliver for them.

A key component to your value ladder and thus your business is the concept of a continuity program. If done correctly this will turn out to be the lifeblood of your business. A continuity program will continuously bring in cash flow for you at an ongoing basis,  essentially residual income.

From our two examples above, at Clickfunnels this comes in the form of subscription income for the use of their software.

For our Holistic medicine practitioner, this could come in the form of ongoing coaching or monthly membership access to ancillary services.

A great example Russell shares in the book is one we all have been through at the Dentist. The Dentist may bait you into an offer for a free cleaning. Once you arrive to their office for the cleaning the Dentist begins to examine the overall health of your teeth and mouth. He may suggest other services for you like teeth whitening, or retainers etc.

You received value with the teeth cleaning and now you naturally ascend up the Dentists value ladder with other ways he/she can provide value to you and make money for their practice at the same time.

What can you provide? Can you be more hands on?

These back end offers and continuity programs will be all for nothing if you have a non effective, no value front end bait offer that does not provide value to your ideal customer with an opportunity for them to warm up to you and your business.

Law of Attraction for Lead Generation

 

law of attraction for lead generation

The first chapter of the DotComSecrets book did not disappoint! It was full of action packed advice without any of the fluff. It lays out the foundation for your success online which is easy to follow yet most of online businesses do not know the answer to all four questions below.

Who is your ideal customer?

Please learn from others’ mistakes and DO NOT lead with a product. That will not end well if you cannot clearly
explain in detail who your ideal customer is. Main point here….when you know who you are serving it makes everything else you do easier because you you’ll be speaking directly to that ideal customer. This is where the “law of attraction” comes into play.

The better you know your ideal customer’s persona the better you will be able to hit their ‘hot spots’ and serve the people who will value what you have to offer the most.

 

Where do they hang out, read and where can you find them?

One benefit of answering the first question  Who is your ideal customer? is that it makes the second question that much easier. If you know your persona/ideal customer like you say you do, then you shouldn’t have any problems finding out where they hang out.

Find what social media platform the prefer, find out what groups and forums they joined. It may be possible that they meet offline as well which gives you another opportunity to join.

What publications do they read?

Go find your ideal customer and hang out with them…

 

What bait can you use to attract them?

Once we know who our dream customers are we have to create the right bait to attract them. Your bait could be a physical product ( see the book that I’m offering?) or an audio recording, video-anything that your ideal customer would pay attention to and want.

For example,  a chiropractor friend, who was looking to grow his business online but wasn’t having much success. He was getting people in the door for ‘adjustments’ but that didn’t prove to be a valuable non threatening way to get people in the door–especially if they aren’t in pain and need an adjustment. This wasn’t exactly something that appeals to a larger audience.

What could he use as bait to get more people in the door that also provided value to that customer? His bait idea was to offer a free massage. This ended up working out so well that he hired and trained massage personnel to not only give the massages but to also feel for any adjustments or work that the Chiropractor could provide for his new clients….offering even more value to his customers.

What results do you want to give them?

Once you’ve hooked your dream customers with the perfect bait, the last question is what RESULT do you want to give them? This was another mind shift for me.

This is not about what product or service you want to sell them. A business is not about products and services. A business is about what results you can get for your clients. Once this is understood, price is no longer a barrier.

Imagine that your clients could pay you anything to get a deired result. What would you do to help guarantee their success?

Where would you lead them?

What does that place look like?

Keep that place in mind because it is the pinnacle of success for your clients and it is exactly where you need to lead them!

law of attraction for lead generation