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Strategy vs. Tactics: How to Give Yourself an Instant Pay Raise By Getting to the Root of Your Marketing Problems WITHOUT Resorting to Cheap Gimmicks!

I thought I was so clever. Back when I was a teenager, I had what I thought was a great idea... write an e-book teaching how to program PHP scripts for web pages, load a bunch of tools onto a "three inch CD" for 20 bucks and sell a million copies.

Have you seen those 3-inch CD's? Basically, when you load a CD disc onto the CD tray, there's a smaller "indent" where a smaller sized CD fits. Here's where I thought had hit the jackpot: a three inch CD would fit into a standard sized envelope and would mail with just one stamp.

There's only a few gaping flaws with that line of thinking and that's...

• People weren't going to buy my product "just" because it's on a CD
• That time I "might" have spent burning CD's and mailing them would be better spent: improving the product, the copy, the advertising, even making more products
• Delivering a "real" product, digitally, with an instant download, would take up zero time, with zero cost, and customers would get the product instantly after buying

My mentor at the time (Teresa King) told me to test the product online first. If it sold well and people were actually ASKING for a physical version, and were willing to pay more to justify the cost, then it would be a hit...

What's the moral of the story? Mailing a product on a disc isn't a business model, and it's probably the LAST thing you should think about... only after a product is already selling, and even then, that's one of those little "gimmicks" you add to get a 1% or 2% boost to your profits. It's a TACTIC, not a STRATEGY.

Be very very careful about relying on too many tactics to make money. You'll market yourself into a corner and wonder where it all went wrong, and here's why...

Superstitious Marketing!

Has anyone given you "weird" marketing advice like this?

• Always price your products ending in "7"... like 27, 49, 97!
• Always put the text "Add to Cart" on your order buttons
• Always have an orange order button and nothing else
• Only email your list once per week
• Run a "dime sale"
• Don't ever launch a product unless you have testimonials

Here's what happened: someone had a successful sales letter and a winning product, so they decided to run some split tests... send half their traffic to the $17 price, half to the $19.95 price. Half of their traffic to the blue order button, half to the orange order button.

These gurus have given you a list of "best practices" to put onto your website so that you don't have to start from scratch. Have this white background. Use that red headline. Place your testimonials in little blue boxes.

What's the problem? Poor misguided newbies (and not-so-newbies) see this list of best practices and think... if I make sure my video autoplays on this web page, if I have a 30-day guarantee... then I can put any old piece of crap on the market, and it will sell!

Can I told you what I did years ago to dramatically boost my product sales?

• I limited the number of digital copies of my product I was selling... and it worked ONCE!
• I warned about (and then increased) the price of my product... and it worked ONCE!
• I increased the price with every sale... and it worked ONCE!
• I added a countdown timer... and it worked ONCE!

These tactics boosted sales, but they weren't the ONLY reason I made sales. It enhanced something that was already selling (mostly by making it novel and newsworthy) . If you put out a bad product that doesn't work, or no one wants it, or no one needs it, then these gimmicks won't help you. And even if they do, they only work once or twice before your audience gets used to it and you have to think of a new gimmick.

Could your webinar convert better? Is your sales letter not selling? Here's an idea... learn selling. THE FUNDAMENTALS.

Why Your Sales Letter Isn't Selling

I can look at most sales letters and in seconds, notice at least 10 BASIC things that hurt sales. Fix them and you'll notice an improvement, keep those things in mind for your next launch and it'll pay off again and again...

• Is your headline interesting enough to pull me in and get me to keep reading your web page?
• Do you identify the serious problem that brought me to your web page, align with my values and then transition into the solution, your product?
• Do you CLEARLY introduce your product and only ask for the sale once you've explained what it is? (once you're "earned the right to sell to me")
• Can you find large chunks of text that you need to break up into smaller paragraphs, add bullet points, headlines, and graphics to make it easier to read?
• Is your copy "story heavy" (too much story before introducing the offer) or "offer heavy"? (explaining the offer without building its importance up first)
• Do you have multiple links and buttons on the page that your visitors can click – that drops them down into your order form area?
• Do you have an offer stack where you list all the components of your course in one single place, building up the total value and then revealing the low price?
• Do you clearly explain what price people will pay? (don't make them click through to find out, just freaking tell them)

Do you see what I mean? Very basic things that will help you much more than running an automated webinar, adding a countdown timer, ending your price in $9.99. You'll actually make improvements to your web page that make sense.

If you want to add your picture to that sales letter or not, up to you. If you want to add a logo, I would, and it's increased conversions, but it's up to you. Giant red headline with quotes around it? Be my guest.

An autoplay audio button has always given me a tiny conversion boost. A graphical representation like a 3D cover or 3D box would be awesome... but a polished turd is still a turd!

It's not just sales letters. I once attended a webinar where the presenter was inexperienced, nervous, afraid to sell at the end, messed everything up by offering a Q&A session at the end, and lasting for 3 hours when 1 hour would have done the job.

You could tell by his energy level on the call, and by his email follow-up sequence afterwards, that the webinar didn't sell. Instead of figuring out WHY it didn't sell (strategy), he resorted to the gimmicks (tactics) and spent a week editing the recording to remove all the "umm's", discounted the price, made every mistake and still wondered why it didn't sell.

Real Live Case Studies to Back It Up

I can think back to story after story where... we were selling a 4-module course on WordPress that wasn't selling, I recorded a 12-minute video in the middle of the night showing one single plugin that was part of the course, and woke up to over $16,000 in PayPal the next morning... because I discovered what the marketplace was demanding, and adjusted my marketing so that it made it clear that I was the one to give it to them...

Years ago, Lance and I launched a course on membership sites that we thought wouldn't sell. We were hoping for ten to twenty thousand dollars in sales over a 2 week period. The marketplace wanted a "drip content" plugin at the time, that was our positioning, and BOOM! Over $35,000 in sales in the first 5 hours...

And another time, we launched our outsourcing course explaining how at the time, I'd had over 1.3 million words (something like 150 hours) of audio turned into articles, reports, products, and books. The problem? No one cares about YOUR 1.3 million words, and no one is ASKING to have 1.3 million words transcribed. Instead, we switched it to a short PowerPoint video demonstrating how if anyone had just 3 minutes, they could create an article, chapter, or blog post. Finally, something people needed, wanted, were asking for, willing to pay money for, that was powerful, easy, and fast, that we could provide.

Would we have turned any of those launches around by adding a "FAQ section" or a countdown timer? Without actually fixing the REAL problem? I doubt it.

Just something to think about.