I'm going to start this off with the most essential mindset; I believe this to be the number one business-saving, money-generating rule. I call this the SGT method.
SGT Method
Sgt. Common Sense wants YOU ... to Stop your Greedy Tactics! With your own personal gain in mind for business decisions you'll get nowhere but a deceiving sense of success. Here's a small example for you to consider ...
A business owner starts an online website hosting company. He spends $1000 USD/month in advertising to the general public through Google AdWords. His first month he gains 200 paid clients at $24.95 USD/month revenue. With these new clients, he's gaining $4990 a month in revenue, $3990 in pure profit! Amazing!
He continues with his business plan, but decides to upgrade a few of his services. His advisor tells him that he needs to put funding into support services for his clients; this will cost $500 a month and should support 1000 clients. Ignoring his advisor, he throws another $2000 into monthly advertising with Google.
Now here comes the part where you should pay attention ... The business owner is looking at short term when he should be looking long term.
Month Two:
Advertising Costs : $3000 USD
Tech Support Costs : $0 USD (NO SUPPORT)
Clients (end of month) : 750 (200 + 550 for new month)
Business Owner: "We're doing GREAT! LOOK at the GROWTH!"
What's he forgetting? COMMON SENSE! If you don't take care of your current clients, how could you possibly take care of future one's?
Month Three:
Advertising Costs : $6000 USD
Tech Support Costs : $0 USD (NO SUPPORT)
Clients (end of month) : 1000 (750 + 250 for new month)
Incoming clients are now down 300. Why? Because 300 of his current clients left due to lack of support. This does not account for his clients that signed up, couldn't transfer over and demanded refunds. This could also put a freeze on the business owner's merchant account, costing him even more money.
Lesson? Take care of the clients you DO have.
Here's why, and this may come as a shock to you but you may not have to pay another cent in advertising, ever again.
"Josh, what the heck are you talking about?" - Confused Reader
It's simple, word of mouth. Word of mouth is the most powerful, and most cost effective method of advertising that is on the planet Earth. What is a better way to advertise, you tell me:
1) You pay $1000 in Google AdWords and gain 200 clients.
2) You pay $0 and gain 100 clients
Good question, is it not? Hint: I would say 100 clients for $0 would take the cake out of those choices. 100 clients for free?!? Sign me up!
Now here's another question. What sounds better out of these two?
A web surfer looking for a website to visit that will assist him with home gardening goes to Google, and types in "home gardening". He looks at the links and has his attention caught by ... what ends up being hundreds of possible assisting sites. But have no fear! After all, we're sponsoring the keywords with Google AdWords, right?
Guess what ... the buyer most likely won't buy from a website that he/she has never heard of before. So he/she calls his friends asking if they have heard of your website with a do-it-yourself guide. He call's his friend John, who replies with,
"No, I haven't heard of that one ... but I know of a good guide that we used for our garden, it worked wonders. Jill said she would have bought two times over, and subscribed to their mailing list for future ideas and tips. Now they send us a new tip every week, it's great! The website address is www dot ... "
What just happened here happens daily to EDUCATED shoppers. These shoppers are the kinds of people you want to purchase from you / sign up for your information. They realize that if they get one good nugget of information from you or a great product, they can get more. This goes back to the term in the introduction, they become a repeat customer.
Here's the best part:
You don't pay more to get them back. Your advertising money went even FURTHER than one sale with this one!
Your .20 per click just generated $50, $100, $150 or even THOUSANDS in sales! This also doesn't count everyone that this one person talks to about your products.
Of course, there are a few drawbacks. You won't become an overnight millionaire with this method. It takes time for word of mouth to properly work. But when it does, boy is it a beauty!
Bottom line to create a FREE advertising empire ...
Treat your clients the best that you can. It's a NECESSITY!
Personally, I believe that two years worth of work that will create thousands a month in revenue is worth the time. Of course, if you're impatient, thousands in advertising costs work too...
The bottom line of the SGT method is that if you treat your clients well, it's the best advertising method you can get!
SGT Recap
When Used Properly, you have an advertising team that ...
+ Is Extremely Effective
+ Pays YOU to advertise YOUR products!
+ Will WANT to advertise YOUR products!
+ Spreads with VIRAL EFFECT when done right.
+ Does the work for you ... and you get paid for it.
Does that sound like something you want? A free advertising empire that wants to advertise for you, and pays you to do so. It certainly sounds like something I want for my products.
Now let's go over the methods to turn visitors into repeat clients. The first one I'm going to present to you is the ...
The Triple R Method
Ah, the Triple R Method. These can be the most effective method when utilized correctly. This helps turn your website from a information site into a money-generating machine.
Let's get to this Triple R method:
Readability
Reliability
Reusability
Common sense but most businesses do not employ this method to better their futures in the online market. If a business owner keeps these in mind when they create a business and the business's website/content, they will have a 75% better chance they're next business will be as successful or more successful at converting sales and keeping clients.
I'm going to put the Triple R method into plain English and explain each point. Hopefully you'll see the power in making you're contact points with these in mind.
Readability
Your website, cover letter, or point of contact needs to be easy to read. It needs to contain simple English as well as easy to understand sentences. In general, it needs to have a good, basic, understandable format. If a user that knows nothing about your service or product reads your advertisement (or 'pitch') page and has no clue what you're talking about, how will you get the sale?
All of the content that you present to your potential clients or subscribers needs to be put in the simplest English possible. Let me put it this way: have someone that knows NOTHING about the subject check it for readability, understandability and coherence. If someone that has no clue what you're selling can have a general understanding of the product by the time they reach the order page, you have succeeded.
Reliability
Reliability is key. Your information that you sell must be consistent. The methods you give must be logical and easy to follow over and over. If you're a service-based company, the services you offer must be able to compete with the industry standard. For example, I'll use website hosting.
If you're a website host and you offer hosting, one of the main selling points that usually seals the deal is the uptime guarantee. The industry standard is around 99.5% or 99.9% uptime guarantee. If you can offer this, you'll gain a lot more sales from mission-critical clients. Mission-critical means one main thing, more money that consistently flows from the source month after month into your pocket.
If you have the choice between starting with a reseller from your 12 year old neighbor that's in school every day (and handles support himself) and another host that does the job full time, choose the full time. Will it be more expensive? Most likely. Will it handle more of the hassle itself? Yes. Remember, if you put a little more money in return for better quality it will give you less hassle. The company could practically run itself, with the exception of support, of course.
Reliability can either make or break a company. Great reliability will put the word of mouth method into full swing, and will gain you a lot more clients than you're paying in advertising costs. You wouldn't complain about getting clients for free, would you? I didn't think so.
Reusability
Reusability is the number one key to any project that you do. Unless it's a membership site, and possibly even if it is, it needs to be able to be re-used. Think about it in the following example regarding niche markets:
You have identified a niche market you want to start a business in. You launch your eBook site and subscription service around the niche, and impact the market hard. Now it's come to keep adding content and maintain the site. But now you stumble across yet another niche, which looks even more untapped and amazingly profitable. What will you do?
a) Design another website for it, code a site, etc...
b) Jump right in, your first niche site is a template and reusable!
c) Be sorry about not templating, and spend hours doing option A, once again.
Think about it! You spend an extra hour or two on the first site making it reusable and able to be duplicated, in return for hours saved on each and every website you launch after it. Imagine that you launch hundreds or thousands of websites ... that's how many hours unless it's templated? See the point?
Reusability will not only save you time, but if you do it right from the start it will also guarantee your success. If you spend hours looking into Search Engine Optimization and making the site comply with the backbone rules of success, you only have to do it once! There's software out there right now called SEOElite.com that's helped thousands of people achieve success over the titans throughout Google. Here's an example of what SEOElite.com can do.
Think of everyone out there that searches for the term "work from home" in Google. How many sites do you believe there are containing or even focusing in on that term? According to the testimonial from a loyal customer of SEOElite.com there were 468,000,000 at the time of his using the software. He obtained the #1 spot in Google for "work from home". Think of how much Return for his Investment he got from that software. One time payment of $176 USD, to return a flood of FREE DAILY TRAFFIC to his site to earn him more money. Wouldn't you say that's worth the investment?
HVP - High Value Products
Your products MUST have a perceived value. If it doesn't FEEL like it's worth anything, it won't be purchased. Think about it. If you sell a guide to making thousands of dollars for $5, why would people buy it? "It's a quick buck Josh, come on!" NO. If it were a proven method he would want a heck of a lot more than $5 for the guide.
If I gave you the choice right now between a $5 ticket to your local high school football game and a $75 dollar sixth-row ticket to your local NFL team's game, which would you choose? The key behind this is perceived value.
Have you ever heard the classic talk between a husband and wife on TV where the wife buys something and her reasoning is "for $xxx.xx it has to be good!". It's like open source software. Most companies won't use open source software because they think it has a problem. "If they're not charging for it, there has to be a problem with it." See the reasoning behind perceived value?
Ok, here's the kicker. If you're sitting there right now going: "Josh, you gave me this guide for free. What's that say about it?" send me an e-mail and I'll explain why it's free. E-mail me at Josh-_-__at_-_-_HowToMakeMoneyWithA)dot(com and I'll gladly answer you as soon as I receive your e-mail.
Until next time,
Josh Allen
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