Your 10 Step Formula to Maximum Exposure!
You are about to discover our proprietary 10 Step Formula to take a moderately successful promotion and turn it into a blockbuster by rolling it out to the largest possible audience quickly, with little or no risk.
What's a Roll Out?
A roll out is the process of scientifically and progressively increasing your sales by exposing your offer to the greatest number of prospects in the shortest possible amount of time.
It's often performed with a lead product, which is an easy-to-sell, low priced introduction to your company with massive perceived value. The goal of a roll out is to create a relationship with an enormous group of prospects.
These prospects can then be solicited and monetized, generating monthly cash flow and building the overall value of your business.
Before we reveal the roll out formula, please note:
Two warnings
- All promotions have a maximum saturation point, and the size of a roll out is determined by the overall size of an audience. As you move through each step, you target less qualified prospects at an increased cost. Since only you know the lifetime value of your customers, gauge the revenue each one generates as they flow through your sales process. Be prepared to instantly stop an unprofitable campaign to focus your attention (and resources) on steps that consistently pay off.
- Measure your site's metrics. Knowing the value of the people who visit, opt in, and purchase is the most important part of the roll out process. Get comfortable with a calculator, and learn if you can afford to proceed to the next step. Determine the likely outcome before you move forward.
Here are the four metrics, or calculations, that matter most:
- Sell through (conversion rate): The average percentage of people who buy from your Web page. Example: If three out of one hundred people go to your site and purchase your product, your sell through is 3%.
- Visitor value: The amount of money an average visitor is worth. Example: If three out of one hundred people purchase your product, and your product sells for $100, each visitor is worth $3 because 100 visitors equals $300 in sales. (This is a critical number when you are buying traffic by the click.)
- Revenue per opt-in name per campaign: The total revenue you receive sending promotions to your opt-in list, divided by the number of names you have. It represents the amount of money an average opt-in name generates per campaign. Example: If we send 100 prospects an offer that generates $50 per sale and 3% buy (3 sales total), we earn $150, or $1.50 per name every time we mail them a similar offer.
- Revenue per customer name per campaign: The total revenue you receive sending promotions to your customer list, divided by the number of names you have. It represents the amount of money an average customer generates per campaign. Example: If we send 5,000 customers an offer that generates $100 per sale and 5% buy (250 sales total), we earn $25,000, or $5 per name every time we mail them a similar offer.
Why are these metrics so important?
Because every promotion is unique, and every mailing list or Web site performs differently at different times. These figures are more than numbers; they are benchmarks you need to reach before you can grow your business.
They allow you to compare costs and results by campaign as opposed to every month or fiscal quarter.
If you see a problem with a step of the roll out process, you can track it and react immediately. And you'll know whether it's something creative (like the ad copy), or a technical issue (like a broken order form).
Two assumptions
There are two assumptions we are going to make about your business before we reveal the formula:
- You must have a killer sales letter. The sales letter is the cornerstone of a successful promotion, and is the primary reason complete strangers decide to give you their money. If writing ads isn't your strong suit, hire a professional to write proven copy and use it as your control piece. Then, spend a majority of your time re-writing and testing different variations. Nearly any disadvantage can be overcome with great ad copy.
- You must have a quality product or service. If you have a poor product or service, rolling it out will simply generate problems, refunds, complaints, and a poor reputation. Do your quality control before you create new sales.
As you test the validity of a new product or unproven offer, it's important to spend sufficient time on the first few steps. Don't blow your whole budget on one expensive promotion without evidence you'll get an adequate response.
The following 10 roll out steps are presented in terms of least risk, least cost, and most response first. It's where we begin each promotion.
1. Pay-per-click search engines
The initial step in the roll out process is pay per click search engines because they are fast, cheap, and allow you to establish your metrics in about a week.
This step involves research, so you'll also learn some interesting things about your business and Web site that will help you in future steps. Strategies like: how to determine keywords, how much average click through prices cost, how to uncover available ad inventory, and how to find secondary target markets.
Here is what we recommend:
- Create a list of 10 to 20 primary keywords. These words clearly describe your site.
- Create a list of 50 - 100 secondary keywords. These words describe the nature of your business, but may not be directly related or appear on your site.
Set up accounts with the largest pay-per-click search engines. Start with GoTo.com, FindWhat.com, and RocketLinks.com. Bid on your primary and secondary keywords, and start buying traffic. Don't worry about initial click through pricing, just get a position high enough to start attracting over 100 visitors a day (to determine your sales figures).
- Calculate your metrics: Establish both your sell through and your visitor value. This will tell you how many visitors you need, and how much you can afford to pay for them, to stay within your budget and reach your goals.
| Note: GoTo.com is currently obsessed with keyword relevancy, rejecting as many as 95% of all words submitted. Now, a keyword or phrase must exactly match the page you are driving traffic to, and the phrase must appear within the visible copy.
Normally we suggest writing an article or report, which references the keyword, and acts as the target URL. However, if you have hundreds of keywords, this is time consuming, and as we recently discovered, not really necessary.
If the connection between the keyword and the target page is clear, even if the exact keyword doesn't appear on the page, here's a little trick.
Do not use the GoTo.com Power Change Spreadsheet! Instead, submit your first 10 - 20 words manually, then add 5 words or phrases (maximum) manually every few days using the Direct Traffic Center feature for advertisers. It works!
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2. Free Search Engines
Manipulating search engines like Excite and Alta Vista is more black magic than science. And getting a top position in a directory like Yahoo is nearly impossible, unless you create a site solely to impress their reviewers (which isn't such a bad idea). There are entire manuals written on how to get good placement.
We aren't going to tell you how to use search engines in this article. This method of marketing is great, but it's not reliable enough to be considered anything more than a cursory step in your roll out, simply because it's free.
As you grow your business, and your budget increases, we suggest hiring a professional search engine firm. Just make sure to regularly calculate your per click cost so you know what you are paying on a performance basis.
3. Banner driven click through services
There are many sources for banner driven clicks, including ad networks like DoubleClick.com and companies like CyberGold/MyPoints. However, these firms are expensive, with minimums of $10,000 to $20,000.
If you want to keep your testing cost for this step low (under $1,000), take a look at the following:
These services deliver targeted click throughs, however, not all are appropriate for every market. It's critical to research each company, as well as compare your visitor values on a service by service basis.
4. Small-run banner campaigns on targeted sites
By choosing small to medium sized sites within your niche and negotiating hard on rates, you can often squeeze out a modest profit using banner ads.
But the real goal isn't to make a profit, it's to create a sales process that makes a profit!
By creating a sales process that works, you ensure your ability to attract quality affiliates and resellers in the future. These partners run your banners on their sites, and monetize their traffic with your proven offer.
Here are a few secrets to profitable small-run banner campaigns:
- Look for sites that are an exact match to your product and approach them directly. You don't need practice buying advertising, you need metrics you can show affiliates and joint venture partners with similar sites to demonstrate how much money they'll make working with you.
- We set the cap on what we'll pay at $20 per thousand impressions (CPM). Establish your own cap in the $20 - $30 CPM range. You'll have a good idea what your click through rate and visitor values are, so don't be afraid to walk away from deals that seem too expensive.
- Over time, you'll start to discover how much an opt-in name is worth. If you can generate over $0.50 per name per month, consider driving your banner traffic into an opt-in page to collect e-mail leads, instead of sending traffic to a sales letter or home page. That way, you can see how many "real" prospects there are by asking them to raise their hands first.
5. Opt-in e-mail
Using opt-in e-mail is the most effective way to promote an online business. As a site owner, you have two primary goals:
- Develop your own opt-in list. Collect names, set up a sequential sales process, and mail new offers regularly.
- Find outside lists to mail your offer to. Generate traffic, sales, and opt-ins that become your own prospects and customers.
Over time, your opt-in list will become the most important asset your business owns because it will allow you to generate traffic and cash on demand.
If you have an in house list, by all means test it first since it will be the most responsive. But if you are just beginning, or you are selling to a new target market, you probably have few if any names to mail to, so you'll need to test outside lists.
Check out the following companies:
6. Joint Ventures
This is where you test the final phase of your sales process before step 7 (the biggie). Joint ventures (JVs) allow you work with similar businesses, Web site owners, even your competitors to find the most profitable promotion formulas.
If you want to attract quality JV partners, here are five big secrets:
- Give the product to the JV partner for free before you ask them to promote it: This is simple, but rarely done. If you want to approach someone about promoting your business, give them your product or service for free first. If they like it, they'll promote it with passion.
- Share your metrics: When you approach a potential partner, you are basically asking them to give you free advertising. If you have the results of prior campaigns, share them so they know how much they can expect to make when they add a banner to their site or perform a mailing on your behalf.
- Pay commissions immediately: JV partners hate it when they promote a product or service, generate thousands of dollars in commissions quickly, then wait 30 - 60 days for their money. Pay your best resellers quickly and they'll promote you more often.
- Do all the up-front work: Don't tell the JV partner to sign up for your affiliate program and hope they do it. If you really want to work with them, sign them up yourself. Send them the target URL to promote along with a pre-written teaser ad they can send to their list, a high click through banner they can stick on their site, and a nice thank you note.
- Pay at least half to the partner: No quibbling here, since your customer acquisition cost is fixed, pay your partners well. If your markup is small, offer half of your margin. Not only will you be developing new business for free, you'll also be testing your sales process for when you launch your own affiliate program.
7. Set up an affiliate program
This is the holy grail of online promotion because it's 100% performance based. You only pay for actual sales, not impressions or clicks.
Because your affiliate advertising is essentially free, if you carefully analyze the competitive intelligence you gathered in earlier steps, and put the best performing elements into your affiliate program, you will be successful.
Your goal is to create an easy-to-sign-up for program with the best sales process, copy, teaser ads, banners, and offers, and open it up to the world!
Many of your top affiliates may even compete with you in other areas, but they are often willing to promote your business because they need to monetize their user base and generate cash flow.
8. Search Engine Based Click Through Services
Here's a fascinating fact about search engine consulting services. Over the past year, nearly every company we work with stopped selling placement, and started selling traffic on a per-click basis.
This is due to two trends:
a) More companies are moving toward performance-based marketing.
b) The need for search engine consultants to generate regular cash flow.
Consultants and search engine experts who have genuinely cracked the code want (and deserve) more than a placement fee of $500 - $1000 a month. They want a piece of the action and guarantee results on a click through basis to get it.
What they do is create keyword-optimized pages for each client and direct the visitors through their own servers (a redirect page). This way, they can track the clicks, and if the client ever wants to cancel, the click through service still owns the traffic (which they can then sell to someone else).
The newest model is for click through services to get as many top keyword positions as possible, then sell the clicks to the highest bidder. This is quite popular since it's totally performance based. (In fact, one of our clients just sold his search engine click through firm for almost $100 million.)
Click through services are popping up every week, so spend some time searching for your keywords on the major search engines and see if they are being re-directed through a third party. Then, look up the domain name ownership to see who you need to talk to at the service.
The biggest players are the companies who control the most competitive keywords at any given moment.
Before you pull out your checkbook, understand most services are expensive, charging between $5,000 to $10,000 a month with a six month minimum. But if you do your homework first, you'll know exactly how much you can pay for traffic, and how much revenue the traffic will generate.
9. Network advertising campaigns
By the time you reach step 9, finding targeted media opportunities will be difficult. If your metrics are in place, you can begin running campaigns to entire ad networks and general interest e-mail lists, and gauging the ROI.
Companies like DoubleClick.com, Yahoo.com, and SmartClicks.com have plenty of expensive, untargeted, overpriced media to sell you. We hate to sound cynical, but buying ads for a targeted product on a network basis means you have money to waste. Only the most carefully crafted campaigns with massive generalized appeal can make money on an untargeted basis. (Which is why this is step 9 and not step 1.)
Major online advertising networks
Smaller online ad networks and discount banner networks
10. Offline branding campaigns
We have a saying, "Branding is for companies who don't know how to make sales."
But seriously, if you are successful at exploiting every possible direct-marketing medium, you'll want to work on branding, customer mindshare, and creating a positive image.
Here are the primary branding vehicles for offline advertisers. These things are incredibly expensive, and rarely produce a positive return on investment, but once the smaller promotional opportunities are exhausted, they are the only thing left:
- Radio
- TV
- Outdoor Billboards
- Bus and taxi billboards
- Print
- Direct mail
Conclusion
The hardest part of the 10 steps isn't the process, it's the initial work you must do to uncover a product or service worth rolling out to a broader audience.
It's said only one out of ten direct marketing projects breaks even on the first shot. This means you could spend a lifetime (and substantial chunk of change) just identifying the right target market.
But as you have learned, now there are quick and easy ways to discover how to calculate your metrics, there are media companies who allow you to purchase targeted click throughs without spending a fortune, and are there are step by step instructions on how to do it yourself.
Respectfully Submitted,
Jonathan Mizel
