Product Launch and Business Growth Blog » lead generation

More Traffic or Increased Conversions?

Rick Braddy — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 22:54:53 +0000

The one thing all e-commerce providers have in common is, we all want to increase our sales results, lead flow and financial performance.

But what’s the best way to go? More Traffic? Increased conversions on existing traffic?

I read a blog post by a highly-successful online entrepreneur recently. His name is Dr. Neil Shearing – a trusted source of quality information and “scam-free” products (he’s sort of famous for going against the grain of traditional Internet marketing, downplaying the usual hyperbole, outrageous claims and B.S. that’s so typical from those of that ilk).

Anyway, Neil correctly points out in his post:

“…it’s a lot easier to improve your conversion rate by a percentage point or two than it is to double or treble your traffic. Let me illustrate with an example. If you get 1,000 visits per month at a 1% conversion rate, you make 10 sales. If you improve the conversion rate to 2%, you’ll double your sales to 20 per month. If you went in search of more traffic INSTEAD of improving your conversion rate, you’d have to double that… which means getting 2,000 visits per month instead of 1,000. Ouch!”

That’s a very astute observation, Dr. Shearing!

And in my experience, it’s certainly possible to boost one’s conversion by at least several percent, by a) applying best practices that are proven to boost conversions, and b) to fully understand causing people to buy (and not to buy) first, then apply that knowledge to amplify conversion results.

It’s common to simply run out of available “inventory” of qualified traffic, which causes one’s business growth to plateau and stagnate. Increasing conversions clearly provides better ROI than experimenting with new and unproven sources of traffic, as well.

I highly recommend this independent review article written by Dr. Shearing.

Incidentally, I invited Dr. Shearing to review Sales CSI months ago and he just now (finally) got around to actually doing it. This is a completely unbiased review by an expert in the conversion optimization area (Dr. Shearing used to sell a great conversion tool, before Google began offering Website Optimizer for free). And you will find his blog is full of other astute observations, strategies and tips of interest to online business owners and marketers.

Your most important needs for 2011 – addressed

Rick Braddy — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 16:55:45 +0000

Late last year, we surveyed our audience and list to uncover the most pressing and highest priority areas that needed attention in 2011. The Survey Results are shown in the following chart:

The most important areas that you were dissatisfied most with your ability to address properly were identified as:

Launching products
List building and list nurturing
Online sales conversions
Landing page conversions

Today, the solution to items #2 through #4 is now available. It’s called Sales C.S.I. (we already provide solutions for launching products).

We created a focused, video-based program that shows you what you need to do on your websites to build your lists bigger and faster, increase sales and improve landing page conversions. And we decided to make it affordable, so that anyone with a small business or website could afford it (it’s just $77 during this limited introductory period).

It’s called Sales C.S.I. because the focus is on showing you how to apply “Internet Marketing Forensics” to your business. Forensics enable you to go deeper and truly see what’s happening on your website – what buyers are doing that you can amplify and optimize – and what non-buyers are doing (so you can find ways to fix your site and processes to turn more non-buyers into buyers).

In most cases, the information you need to solve your “conversion mysteries” are available to you right on your website – once you put the proper instrumentation in place and learn how to interpret the reports properly.

Then we go a step further. We teach you how to do A/B split-testing and multivariate testing properly, so you can then tune and optimize your lead-generation, list-building and sales conversion processes.

The reality is, if watch the brief videos and follow the simple, step-by-step instructions provided, you will get results. If you do not use the proper instrumentation and tune your site, nothing will change (your conversions will stay the same or continue to drop over time with increased competition). Those are the realities of owning and operating an online business of any kind.

So, for the first time, I have shared all the best practices and most of what I know about tuning and optimizing sales and lead-generation processes (including landing pages and sales pages).

Be sure to check Sales C.S.I. out and let me know what you think.

Some list building and sales conversion help for you

Rick Braddy — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 20:18:39 +0000

Yesterday, I posted a link to a video about an important announcement that you should find interesting if you are responsible for online sales, lead-generation or list building.

If you didn’t have time to view it yet, you can catch it here.

If you watched the video, at the end it mentioned today’s video would open things up and give you “… a look inside.”

So, if you want to learn about the latest in analysis and “forensics” technique to build your list bigger and faster, and convert more sales with your existing traffic, then check out this video that shows you how.

Rick

How To Increase Sales and Lead-Generation for AdWords and SEO

Rick Braddy — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 15:00:39 +0000

You won’t want to miss this…

Are you responsible for online sales and/or lead generation?

Would you be interested in how you can supercharge your Google AdWords, SEO or affiliate marketing results – from your existing traffic resources?

Then watch this brief video

If you use a website to capture leads or drive sales, I’m sure you won’t want to miss it.

To your success,

Rick

WinningWare.com

P.S. When you click the link above, you will arrive at our new “Customer Portal” – yet another great way to leverage WordPress!

Internet Marketing Forensics: Coming this week

Rick Braddy — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 22:24:19 +0000

UPDATE: Get all the details here

This coming week we’re going to unveil a new product for the first time publicly that’s been under wraps and development since last year. Actually, it’s been under development since 2006, since what I’m about to share has been refined in my own businesses since then.

What I have done is to finally document everything I’ve been doing with the exact techniques in my own online businesses for years to:

Back-track sales transactions to understand exactly where the buyers and leads are originating
Understand buyer behavior, in terms of content usage and consumption patterns on websites
Properly tune and optimize landing pages, sales pages and critical content pathways
Build bigger lists faster and less expensively
Get the most out of lead-generation and sales conversion processes with certain best practices I’ve learned from all over the place since 2004
Reduce wasteful spending on advertising programs, including Google PPC and Display Network
Pinpoint where to concentrate SEO efforts to get the biggest ROI

I decided to package this knowledge up and turn it into a video-based training course that anyone will be able to use to get what I’m calling a “Detective of Sales” badge, by learning and applying “Internet Marketing Forensics™” techniques to their online business.

I designed a cool-looking badge for those who complete the course:

We’re going to be providing training on how to become a “Sales C.S.I.”, a sales detective who gathers the proper evidence and clues on the “conversion scene” (the website), and then (like their crime solving counterparts) solves conversion mysteries, then makes tuning and optimization decisions that:

- Increase online sales conversions

- Increase lead-flow to offline sales teams

- Maximize profitability of PPC and other traffic and advertising

- Guide where to focus for the highest-return on SEO keywords and related SEO investments

- Reduce waste and eliminate unprofitable spending (esp. on Google AdWords and content network traffic that doesn’t convert profitably)

The thing is, we have decided to launch this product a bit differently. We’re going to begin by limiting the initial user base to just one hundred (100) users in what we’ll be calling a “controlled release”.

This controlled release phase is essentially a paid pre-release/beta program, where we’ll be working closely with the early adopter customers to help them apply these Internet Marketing Forensics techniques in their businesses, gather feedback on the pre-release product, testimonials, etc.

Keep an eye out for the announcement, as I’m expecting those initial 100 units could sell out rather quickly, given that we’ll be making the controlled release units available at just 40% of the normal retail price. Once the controlled release units are gone, the product will be taken off the market for a while until we formally launch it (probably in May/June timeframe).

Also, this is the only time we will be working with clients this closely at such a low introductory price point, so while the controlled release may not be for everyone, it’s a great way to get going quickly to improve sales and lead-generation results fast with some hand-holding that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg

Anyway, I’m very excited about this “soft launch”, controlled release of the Sales C.S.I. program, which begins this coming week.

Stay tuned. More details will be announced on Tuesday, March 1st at 11 a.m. Eastern time.

How Successful Email Marketing Is Done

Rick Braddy — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 03:22:42 +0000

Check out this video on how successful permission-based email marketing is broken down into 4 essential steps:

Quality Opt-in Database – build an opt-in database of quality leads, using double opt-in best practices
Timely and Relevant Messages – use good lead nurturing techniques with timely and relevant content and messages, developing a relationship and trust with your prospects
Segment your Database – segment your lists into targeted, topic-focused sub-lists with similar interests
Advanced Email Software – use an advanced email auto-responder system that manages ISP relations for you and run your email marketing campaigns using these integrated systems.

Watch the video for more details:

It’s really not too surprising that the average ROI on email marketing investments is about 57 to 1; i.e., $57 returned for every $1.00 invested into email marketing.

Finally, for a better idea of what kind of ROI you can expect from your next email campaign, try this free email campaign ROI calculator.

B2B Lead Generation

Rick Braddy — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 23:25:37 +0000

Here’s a few excerpts from an excellent post by Brian Carroll, CEO at InTouch and author of Lead Generation for the Complex Sale and the Start with a Lead blog. For more information on the source article, check out the Lead Generation Checklist blog post.

In this particular post, Brian summarizes the 6th in an an 8-part series called the “Lead Generation Checklist”, a comprehensive approach for helping organizations optimize their lead generation processes. Brian outlines a complete system for companies to use in generating leads, as discussed below:

To be successful at generating leads for a complex sale, marketers can’t rely on one specific tactic but rather they need to leverage a portfolio of channels. To illustrate, I created a mind map of what multi-modal lead generation looks like (click image to enlarge).

It begins with a mindset that sees lead generation as an ongoing conversation – with human beings – that’s both multi-modal and iterative. This isn’t about doing random acts of marketing hoping something sticks.

Here are a few tips for creating a mult i-modal lead generation approach that will positively affect your bottom line:

View your Lead Generation Program as you would your financial portfolio. If you can’t measure channels or programs in terms of return on investment to the organization (leads generated, business closed, opportunities in the funnel) then the company should not be expected to invest in them. Maintain an assortment of researched and/or proven best-fit channels that can be drawn upon whenever needed.

Assess the number and mix of channels required. The model above shows a vast number of ways to generate leads for the complex sale. As you look over it, ask yourself a few questions: Which of these channels are we using? Which are our competitors using? Now think of what you know about your prospect’s buying process. Identify the gaps.

Adopt a flexible and iterative approach. Your program should allow marketing and sales to retrofit messages whenever a prospect’s position in the buying process changes. What worked yesterday may not work today. Complacency is not part of the marketing game. Well-performing or under-performing tactics should be quickly identified and dealt with accordingly. If a tactic fails to deliver, be ready to modify it or replace it.

Understand the synergies of various tactics for best ROI. Do you know how your tactics are performing? Are they working together in a complementary way to connect each step in the customer’s buying process? Try to detail a lead generation calendar for the year that maps out anticipated programs and tactics by month and quarter. Employ an effective closed-looped feedback system to structure information from the sales force than can be converted to actionable tactics. Collect sales feedback regularly and as rapidly as possible.

Not only do the disciplined integration and maintenance of a history of touches in the database aid relevancy, they open doors to tactical personalization.

Test and improve every tactic in your portfolio. The best way to maximize your budget resource is get more out of what you’re already doing. I don’t know a CEO or CFO that doesn’t already think this way, so why should marketers be any different? When was the last time you looked at your program and asked, “how can I make this a channel perform better?” Are you testing how you can optimize your lead generation results?

We know that in the complex sale most contacts do not become immediate leads so once dialogue has begun, other tactical modes should be set up to keep the conversation going. Remember, every touch should represent and communicate value. The tactics you choose should ultimately help your future customers (aka leads) form their opinions, directly or indirectly, as they proceed through the buying process.

Powerful Money Magnets

Rick Braddy — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 17:51:47 +0000

Money magnets do exactly what the name suggests – they attract people with money to your business and website. It’s easy to attract “freebie seekers” who will waste your time and never buy anything, but quite a different thing to attract the right kinds of people who will actually buy what you offer.

Everyone is very busy these days, and there are so many free videos, reports and other downloads available, who has the time to try them all? Certainly many of the people making the most money don’t – they’re too busy making more money! Of course, people with a job they need to get done will often spend the time to watch a brief video, read a quality report or go through a free trial.

So a good money magnet both attracts the right kinds of prospective buyers and qualifies them – at the same time. Let’s examine this further by way of a true story.

Several years ago, I was approached by a customer in one of my online businesses that had nothing to do with online marketing. He said he needed help with his business and saw what I was doing with my online business and thought I could probably help him out. At the time, I wasn’t providing any kind of online marketing or related consulting whatsoever (I was too busy with my day job and my own small business during off hours).

His name is Kevin, and on the Internet he’s known now as “Tiki Kev”. We finally spoke on the phone and Kevin told me about his plight and that he was virtually broke, was having to shut his shop down and sell all of his best tools, and didn’t know what to do… I could tell he was rather desperate and that if I didn’t reach out and help him, things were going to go from bad to really bad.

Kevin is a master builder, and had decided he wanted to specialize in Tiki Bars and Tiki Huts, something he’s very passionate about. Kevin builds the highest-quality Tiki bar and hut products. Click the link and have a look for yourself, if you’re curious.

Anyway, he told me these custom-built products sell from around $5,000 and up and that he wanted to sell them via his website. He showed me his website, which looked really nice (his wife is an excellent graphic artist). Right away, I realized there were several big show-stoppers standing between Kevin and success.

I told him, “Kevin, I hate to say this, but people just aren’t going to come visit your website and buy a $5,000 anything from you – no matter how good they look…” The old saying “Houston, we have a problem” came to mind. I told him I’d think about it and get back with him.

A few days later I called him back and told him I had an idea. I told him we needed to start smaller and build our way up to selling them the custom Tiki bars and Tiki huts. I told him we needed to write an e-book on how to build a Tiki bar. After I explained everything that would be involved, he agreed. I then offered to help him with some important website changes that would be required to make all this work.

Kevin’s a very hard worker and he knew exactly what to do. He went to his shop and started building one of his signature custom Tiki bars, and they took pictures of the entire process – start to finish. Kevin then wrote the first edition of “How To Build Your Own Tiki Bar”. I went to work on writing a sales page for the product.

A few weeks later, the whole project came together. We had the sales page in place, and posted his e-book for sale on ClickBank. It took several more weeks of driving Google AdWords pay-per-click traffic to the site and split-testing price points to find the magic price: $19.95.

Kevin was not happy at all about the final price. We both wanted the e-book to sell originally for $49.95, but it just didn’t sell at that price. At $19.95, it began selling great and we saw the volume rise to over a hundred e-books per month right away.

Meanwhile, I told Kevin that while his website looked good, it was too graphics-heavy and needed a lot more text, because the search engines only cared about text. A few more weeks of SEO work and we were good to go.

A few more weeks passed (it’s now been several months) and I noticed I wasn’t getting any emails from Kevin, so I decided to call him. I finally reached him over a weekend, and he sounded really tired. He said, “man, I’m working like 18 hours a day building bars for people, it looks like I’m going to have to hire some help – I can’t keep up with all the business that’s coming in”.

A few months later, I get a call from Kevin. He’s really excited and tells me “I’m gonna be on TV!. Extreme Home Makeover is having me and my crew on their show! Can you believe it?” Well, needless to say, I was very proud of what we had accomplished. They found Kevin’s site due to the SEO optimizations. In fact, go search on Google for keywords “tiki hut” or “tiki bar” – he’s still on page one today.

If you visit his site today, you can see for yourself what’s happened since then. More TV appearances and more e-books and sustained success for Kevin’s business.

In Kevin’s case, the $20 e-books turned into “money magnets” for his $5,000 custom-built bars and huts. Let’s examine this case study a little closer, because something very important happened here.

People who wanted a Tiki bar and wondered what it would take to build one themselves bought his $20 e-book and found out just how involved it actually is to do this and do it right. Some of these e-book customers went on to build their own very nice Tiki bars, using Kevin’s master plans.

Another percentage of them realized just how much work and effort goes into building a Tiki bar right, and suddenly had a great appreciation of the VALUE of having it done for them. And who do you suppose they wanted to build their Tiki bar? The guy in those pictures who showed them exactly how it’s done.

This is how you develop a money-magnet to sell something worth thousands of dollars over the Internet. You find something of interest to the prospects, you qualify them with a small purchase (of $7 to $19.95 – no higher), and then you give them all the information you can for how to do it themselves. Once they recognize the time, energy and effort involved, there’s a much greater appreciation for just buying the finished product.

Some percentage of the prospects will have the money to just buy the product instead of spending the time and effort to do it themselves.

Another quick example of a money magnet comes from one of my online businesses, which is in the Texas Hold’em poker training market, where we provide a monthly membership to poker players to watch training videos and learn to play winning poker.

In this case, I created an “upstream” site known as PokerTester.com. This site provides a free poker skills test, consisting of 25 questions in 8 different skills categories. To take the free skills test, users must register and join our mailing list.

After taking the test, the site provides the user with a “report card” on their skills, along with specific tips for improving their game. This process provides players with real, tangible value and an objective view of where they are falling short, along with instructions for what they need to do about it.

Then, we send a series of skills improvement tips via the email autoresponder, including some sample videos from our membership site. This site provides a steady stream of fresh leads that feeds the membership site, along with selling a number of other 3rd party affiliate products.

These are just two examples of money magnets that work like a charm. There are many other types of money magnets, including free trials, free software tools, results calculators, free reports and e-books, free videos, webinars, teleconferences and more.

The key is to figure out what you can use as “bait” to attract the kind of prospects who will turn into buyers, when the time is right, you’ve earned their trust and they’r ready to buy. It all starts with the right money magnets and getting the prospects on your list, so you have the opportunity to build a relationship with them, earn their trust and show them how you can help them get what they want.

Email Lists – The key to sustainable online profitability

Rick Braddy — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 21:15:40 +0000

In the traditional sales world, sales people used to use a Rolodex (remember those?), business cards and a call log – and of course, their telephone. Many still do today. Of course, modern CRM systems have automated this process nicely. The Rolodex was the “list” back then… today, CRM software has largely displaced the Rolodex.

In my last several blog posts, I stressed the importance of building a relationship with your list of subscribers. Don’t have a list of subscribers?

Oops! You probably aren’t turning a profit online if you aren’t building and nurturing your list – are you?

Today I had a nice discussion with a work at home mom about her attempts to make money online. She had invested around $5,000 in affiliate marketing and advertising based on some “make money” course she saw on TV… well, I’m always saddened to hear these kinds of stories, when good people are taken advantage of by scams or incomplete sales processes…

I explained to her that the only way to turn a consistent profit in an online business is with a list of customers, subscribers and prospects. The reasons for this is actually quite simple. It’s simple economics.

It costs too much to advertise and bring a visitor to your website. On the first visit to a website, 99% are probably not yet ready to buy whatever you’re selling. Well, it’s impossible to turn a profit when only 1% or fewer people buy from you, given the cost of bringing visitors to your site.

Instead, it’s a proven fact that in order to run an advertising-driven, profitable online business, you must build a list of subscribers – who you then can develop a relationship with over time and market to them on an ongoing basis.

It seems simple enough, yet I’m still amazed at how many small business owners and entrepreneurs don’t do this properly. There’s tons of great information freely available on how to develop landing pages that get visitors to register and there’s certainly no shortage of email auto-responders to choose from (arguably there’s too many of them to choose from today).

So what’s the issue? Why are so many companies and people starting out still missing this critical piece of the online profit puzzle?

Perhaps it’s because they lack the content – the so-called “money magnet” needed to attract the right kinds of people to register and subscribe in the first place. Money magnet is a term that’s been used in a variety of ways, but I first heard the term applied to online marketing by Frank Kern, a very experienced and successful Internet marketer.

A money-magnet is anything you can give away for free or nearly free that attracts the right kinds of prospective customers to register and become a subscriber. Now I realize this is online marketing 101 stuff, but like I said, there’s so many people who are skipping right past the basics to put a gorgeous looking website up and then wonder why it’s not making money, that apparently it needs to be stressed more.

I outlined the entire process for building a profitable online business in a post earlier this year called “A PROVEN ONLINE SUCCESS FORMULA“, where I go into quite a lot of detail on proper goal setting and putting the necessary online selling machinery in place.

Incidentally, all of this is spelled out in even greater detail in the Online Leadership Guide, which comes with some very cool free tools and a mini-course you should check out (it’s very affordable, at only $19.95). Incidentally, this is a decent example of a money magnet and landing page.

So if you’ve tried Google AdWords or other online advertising and are disappointed with the lack of sales results, if you weren’t using a proper landing page with an enticing money-magnet free offer for your visitors to register and learn more, go back and fix your front-end “lead generation” process and start building your list.

Several earlier posts discuss the importance of developing a relationship with your subscribers, giving them even more value for free, then eventually *some* of them will be ready to buy – and when they are ready, some will buy from you.

Done properly, your subscriber and customer list become your more valuable online business asset – much like that Rolodex was to a salesperson in the offline world. Invest in building your list and the relationship with those on your list, and I promise you’ll be amazed at how much it will help you.

If you’ve been in business for a while as a small business, chances are you already have a “list” of sorts – a mailing list in the making inside your Gmail contact manager, Outlook or other mail client. This is, in effect, your mailing list – all your contacts. If you’re like me, you have hundreds of business cards squirreled away in a desk drawer somewhere.

Getting these entered or scanned into your contact manager will begin to round out your business contacts. Keep in mind that these folks would probably accept a personal email from you, but would consider advertising or other forms of direct promotion as spam, so be careful how you use these resources.

If you are a more established medium to large corporation, then you most likely have a corporate CRM system, which is a primary list source for you. You also probably have lists scattered all over the place and you may need to do some list consolidation, de-duping and cleansing. It’s well worth the effort, as these lists are pure gold when used properly with a focused email marketing strategy.

Finally, keep in mind that one of your best sources for lists is leveraging lists of your partners through cooperative marketing campaigns, whereby your partners promote your offer to their lists, bringing lots of qualified traffic to your landing page and building your targeted list.

Ultimately, you’ll need to break out from your core contacts and build focused lists of prospects in each of your target markets. It does take time, but done properly, it is well worth the effort and investment.

It’s good to be King

Rick Braddy — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 05:43:19 +0000

It’s been said that on the Internet “Content is king.” Well, if content is king, then relationships go cha-ching!

Of course, cha-ching is the sound of the cash register ringing—the sound of making money.

Another popular online marketing adage is “The money is in the list”—meaning if you have a list of prospects and customers, the money is in farming the list.

In reality, the “Money is in the relationships,” including relationships that are embodied within mailing lists.

No relationship = no money.

Great relationships = great money.

These “Circles of Trust”, as illustrated at the top of this post, are where the real money is made. Get inside one of these major circles, and you’re in the money. And the more of these circles you become a part of, the easier it becomes.

Tapping into these circles of trust is probably the biggest untapped potential for social networks to create tangible value for online businesses.

One of the fastest and most reliable ways to make money online is to build relationships and then turn them into money. Sounds simple enough…

RELATIONSHIPS = MONEY

For example, let’s say you have a friend or business associate that has a newsletter and blog in your target market. Let’s assume this person has built a following of 30,000 newsletter subscribers and 20,000 regular blog readers per month.

These aren’t uncommon numbers on the Internet; in fact, these are relatively small compared to many people I know personally.

So, you convince this person that it would be in her subscribers’ best interest to know about your new product. As an added incentive, you agree to pay her a 20% commission on every sale you make from her subscriber base and blog. Never mind exactly how we will track those commissions (it is easy) for now.

I am going to use this concept of a “Trust-O-Meter” (below) to depict how much trust a prospect has developed in us. The following Trust-O-Meter shows how much our associate’s audience trusts her:

Like a thermometer, the Trust-O-Meter represents the level of trust and relationship strength, in a simplistic way, so we can conceptualize it better. As we see above, our friend’s audience not only trusts her, they like her. We might even consider extending the scale further to the right by adding “Respected” (not shown here).

Why Affiliates and Bloggers Are Trusted

Continuing the affiliate example above, since most of her audience has been with her for some time, they have not only developed a high degree of trust in her, but they also like her. Going beyond trusted to liked is a sure way to make more sales—a lot more sales.

So, we were introduced by our friend and associate to her audience. What is our Trust-O-Meter reading with them at the start?

Because we were introduced by a person the audience (those on the affiliate’s list) both trusts and likes, we get the benefit of the doubt and begin in a semi-trusted state with her audience.

We will have to earn the rest of their trust…

Together, you and your friend come up with a strategy for communicating and involving the subscribers:

An initial email and blog entry that introduces you to her community
A free teleconference where she interviews you about a hot topic of interest
A recording of the free teleconference posted on the blog site and a brief email note sent to the subscriber list
A free giveaway item you provide that is relevant to her audience
A “special offer,” a time-limited discount on buying your product!

Assuming your product can interest the majority of the 50,000 audience your associate has just introduced you, guess what just happened from the above steps?

First, a foundation of trust and respect existed between your associate and her subscribers and readers. Second, she introduced you to them. You are no longer considered a stranger, so you instantly became semi-trusted.

Next, your free teleconference gave those who attended an opportunity to learn firsthand what kind of person you are and to ask you questions and see how you responded. In effect, you became an authority who is operating at nearly the same level as your associate, and perhaps even at a higher level in your particular area of expertise.

Incidentally, everyone who actually registered for and attended that teleconference just became qualified leads for your product, since they invested some time with you.

Next, everyone else who listens to the recorded teleconference audio also trusts you more (assuming you didn’t blow it during the interview by trying to sell something!) Notice how you have moved up in the Trust-O-Meter!

Next, you gave away some of real value to her audience. This shows what a stand-up kind of person you are, someone who cares and is trying to help.

Finally, she pitches the special offer for your product to the subscribers and audience. In this pitch, your friend is effectively endorsing you and your product, which confers an even greater amount of her trust equity onto you.

I call this “transitive trust,” since her audience now implicitly trusts you primarily because you have been endorsed and approved. Why do you think companies pay so much to get celebrities to endorse their products? Because they are both trusted and liked by so many.

Now, let’s run some numbers to put this example of ours into the proper perspective.

Out of 50,000 subscribers, only 50% are even mildly interested in what you have to say or offer them, leaving 25,000 potential prospects.

By the time she makes these 25,000 the offer, around 40% have enough interest and familiarity to open the email and learn more (This is your email “open rate.”) That is 10,000!

Out of those 10,000, about 25% click through to get more details on this special offer— that is 2,500 qualified prospects that now show up at your website (instead of her blog).

Let’s assume your offer is truly special and motivating to the buyers who have an immediate need and budget, and now trust you enough to buy from you. Let’s assume that 20% end up buying your product over the next 30 days as a result of this campaign.

So you make 500 sales! About 1% of her total subscriber base ended up buying your product. Not bad for a brief campaign with this associate of yours. Let’s say your product sells for $100. You just generated $50,000 in sales.

Let’s say your product sells for $995. You just generated $497,500 in sales! Now you are talking!

What just happened here? You went from zero to half a million in sales and 500 new customers in a matter of a few weeks. That is what happened. What other business do you know of where those kinds of results are possible? It happens somewhere on the Web every single day.

The truth is, this happens in online businesses all the time. In fact, I’ve seen product launches orchestrated with multiple partners who have large subscriber bases sell many thousands of units in less than 24 hours—generating millions of dollars in just hours.

All of this is only possible when you have the right relationships in place.

Remember what I said: Relationships go cha-ching! It’s so true.

And, it’s good to be King!

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