My son is a reader.
I don’t mean an occasional reader. I mean a reader.
Here he is reading at the table during lunch:
He reads in the car… he also carries his books with him everywhere just in case he has an extra 5 minutes!
I absolutely love that he is a reader but….
…have you ever tried to keep up with purchasing books for a kid that can read a whole novel in less than 3 days. Yeah. I need a second job just to pay for his Kindle purchases! 🙂
Every now and then I look on my shelf for books I think he might be interested in and a few days ago I came across a book my mom gave me when I was about his age.
Maybe you have heard of it. It is called “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie. 🙂
When I presented the book to my son I told him a story.
I told him how when my mom gave me the book when I was about 11 or 12 that the title put me off. I thought my mom was trying to tell me that I was a “loser” because only a “loser” would need to read a book about how to make friends! 🙂 I told him that it took me 2 years to read the book and when I finally did I was ready to kick myself.
I realized that the author was an amazing storyteller and had great advice for anyone in any walk of life. I told him that as soon as I read it I realized I had made a mistake and wished I had read it earlier.
(He is currently reading the book and is already on chapter three and has told me he really likes it!)
So what has this got to do with anything? Well over the last few weeks I have been taking a class by Amy Porterfield called “Facebook Marketing Profits” and all I can say is, “wow”.
When Amy and I met briefly at Infusioncon last year I was a little too proud. I thought … “well I already know all that stuff about Lead Magnets and Marketing Funnels. What is she going to teach me?” I figured I was only going to learn about 20% of new information from the course so I did not want to “waste” my time or money.
(After-all, as an Infusionsoft Certified Partner I help clients set-up Marketing Funnels all day long!)
I made the same mistake most business owners make. I got so focused on working IN my business… I forgot how important it is to always be learning and working ON my business!
I also forgot the golden rule of growth! It is not about how much a course “costs”, but how much you can leverage the information in the course to grow your business.
Lesson learned. 🙂
Although I can’t share with you all of the insider tips I am learning as a VIP member with Amy, I do want to share with you three things that I have learned from Amy Porterfields’s class Facebook Marketing Profits.
First, don’t do FB Ads for Likes.
There are two types of Facebook accounts. A personal profile and a fan page for businesses.
The personal profile is primarily used by individuals to connect with families and friends. Most of the time what you post on your personal profile is shown to only people you have accepted as friends.
The Fan page is meant for businesses. Fan pages are different in that anyone can “like” the fan page to stay up to date with the posts on that page. In the past, having a lot of people “like” your fan page meant that you could reach more people with your news and promotions. For example, a page that had 1,000 likes might reach 400-500 of their fans with each of their posts. Recently Facebook changed the algorithm they use to display updates to fans. Now if you have 1,000 fans, your post might only reach 50-80 people if that.
In other words, it used to be a benefit to have a lot of fans because it was like free advertising. The fan page was free, likes were free, and posting updates that got delivered to your fans was free. This is no longer the case.
There are still benefits to having your clients and prospects like your page… but the benefit is not so huge as to be worthy of a great advertising investment.
So what do we do? Instead of running Facebook ads for Likes… run the ads to OFFERS where you can capture the name and email address of your prospects so you can continue to market to them through email marketing!
What kinds of offers? There are many! When you offer something for free in exchange for the person’s contact information, this offer is called a “Lead Magnet”. You are “drawing” the lead to you! The offer is your magnet that draws leads to you!
- Ebooks
- Whitepapers
- Teleseminar
- Webinar
- Free Demo
- Free Trial
- Coupon for a percentage off
- Coupon for free shipping
- Free T-Shirt
- Free Book (They pay shipping)
- Free Kindle Book
- Free Consulting
- Free Quote
- Site Analysis
- Custom Report
- Many, many more!
Once you have decided on your Lead Magnet, the next step is to create a Landing Page to send people to. A landing page is different than a regular page on your site in that it usually only has ONE option. Well two. The visitor can submit their name and email or leave!
The landing page usually has a webform where you can capture their name and email. This webform connects to your email autoresponder so that you can now send out follow-up emails to pre-sell them on your products or services!
You can of course use Facebook ads to send people directly to your sales page with an offer to purchase as well! This works depending on the price point and how well your audience is already connected to you.
For example, in Facebook Ads, you can also create Custom Audiences that target only people that you import from an excel file. So for example, if you have a list of customers, you can upload that list to Facebook, create a custom audience, and send only those specific people directly to your sales page!
One final note here. After someone opts in by putting their name and email into your webform on your landing page, the page that they are re-directed to is called the “Thank-You” page. This is the page where you not only have an opportunity to say “thank-you” for opting in to my list or thank-you for requesting this pdf or for registering for this webinar… but a place where you can show them what to expect next.
Here are some things you can put on your thank-you page!
- Video of you introducing yourself and thanking them
- Screenshots of email that they are about to receive
- Ask them to like your Page on Facebook or Share a Tweet on Twitter to get a bonus product.
Second, don’t Boost posts.
I have fallen into this trap so many times. When I post an important message on my page that I want to get more eyes on, the easiest thing to do is to hit “boost this post”. It is easy to justify as it is only $5-7 to get thousands of eyes on an offer! The problem with this is that the people you are advertising to is NOT targeted. You are letting Facebook decide who to show the ad to. It is always a much better strategy to setup a targeted Facebook marketing campaign so you can send out ads to exactly who you want to target!
Instead of boosting posts that target random people that Facebook chooses, you can create ads to promote your posts to specific audiences. But again, this goes back to the first point! Unless the post is to an offer or you have another strategic reason, it might be better to refrain!
Third, I need to rewrite my new subscriber email sequences… yesterday!
It was on one of the webinars in the course that Amy just casually mentioned that she probably rewrites and tweaks her email sequences about 20 times a year.
When I heard that I paused the video, took a deep breath and listened to that again. 20 times. Twenty. Not ten or fifteen. Twenty. Success is not by accident. It is by hard-work, determination, and testing and tweaking to try to get things right.
Writing email sequences has always been one of my least favorite jobs as a marketer! More than once I have paid out good money to have a copywriter write my emails for me. One time I paid $700 for a series of 7 emails to a copywriter that came very highly recommended. It resulted in 0 sales. ZERO! There are just some things that you cannot outsource easily. Maybe if I had invested in a copywriter at the rate of $3,000 or so I would have gotten better results but I don’t think so.
What your audience wants is YOU. They want to hear YOUR stories. YOUR voice. They signed on to your list because they felt a connection to you. You just can’t give them that close relationship when you outsource your copywriting!
Copywriting does not come easy but it is a skill you can learn!
If you are struggling with copywriting here are some suggestions:
- Create a separate gmail account and optin to many offers of your favorite marketers
- Study their optin sequences, nurture sequences, and sales sequences
- Pinpoint what resonates with you. Find out which marketers you connect with most in regards to writing style and then identify what it is that you like about it!
- Tell stories. The best salespeople always tell stories. If you have stories in your writing it is also more difficult for others to copy you!
- Study your target market with intention. Intentionally try to find out what keeps them up at night. What are their fears or motivations? The more specifically you can address the needs of your target market, the more successful you will be!
Finally, here is a bonus tip for you!
Tip: Don’t ever stop learning!
I should have taken the class a long time ago.
Just like how I put off reading the book, How to Win Friends and Influence People for two years… I should have taken Amy’s class 2 years ago. A lot of what I have learned about lead magnets, marketing funnels, and setting up email sales sequences I have pieced together myself over the last few years. I could have learned it all in less than 6 weeks if I had just taken this course 2 years ago. (Facepalm) 🙂
So that is my story. What is yours? What have you been putting off?
- Just send us a quick email to [email protected] and put “My Story for Nicole” in the subject line! Tell me what you are working on and what your biggest roadblock is right now to truly being successful!
- Next, jump on over to Facebook, connect with me, and share this with your friends! If this has been helpful to you, help me help others!
- And finally let me know you read this by leaving a comment!
Let’s make 2014 a super successful year!