Posts Tagged ‘Internet marketing’

Should You Be Using Google AdWords?

Wednesday, October 14th, 2015

adwords logo
For many businesses, Google AdWords can be their most productive source of new leads and customers.

But how do you know in advance if it has a chance of working for you or not?

It can be expensive to hire someone to do it for you and you then you have their management fee along with your actual ad spend you pay Google.

Facebook vs Google

Before getting into the details of how you can tell, I want to make sure you understand the different types of online advertising.

Facebook is the hot thing these days, but you need to understand people do not go onto Facebook or social media to look for stuff to buy from you!

They go on it to avoid work, not do work . . .

It is the equivalent of having a billboard on a busy highway. There may be lots of people going by, but that doesn’t mean they are prospects.

Even if you use all of Facebook’s targeting capabilities, you may be putting your billboard on a road only your target people drive down, but they are still not there looking for you.

So, you have to “interrupt” them from doing what they are doing with some sort of enticing offer.

Google is totally different.

In the Google search network – called Google AdWords, you are bidding on key words and phrases so your ad shows up when someone is actually searching for what you have.

Big difference.

Trying to interrupt someone who is trying to avoid work vs being found when someone is actively searching for what you offer.

How Google Search Works

I think this is very interesting. Here’s what happens 3.5 Billion times per day when people do a search on Google.

Their algorithm decides which web sites should show up based on your location and prior search history.

Then they figure out which ad should be on top, which one # 2 and which # 3 at the top of the page and then which order should the ads be on the side of the page.
2015-10-14_1313

This is essentially an auction held every time someone does a search – 3.5 Billion times per day!

You place your bids on what you re willing to pay for a click and how much you are willing to spend per day and Google combines your bid with your “Quality Score” to determine where your ad shows up – if at all.

Quality score is essentially how likely someone is to click on your ad. If you have a high quality score, you can actually pay less per click than someone else with a low quality score in the same spot.

Google doesn’t explain it this way, but it’s really just a way for Google to maximize their income.

Say you bid $20/click and 10% of the people who see your ad click on it . . .

and you have a competitor whose ad is not as appealing as yours and they are bidding $40/click. Only 1% of the people who see their ad click on it.

Your ad with the $20 bid will be placed above your competitor who bid $40. Here’s why.

For 100 searches, at 10%, that means 10 people click on your ad making Google $200.

Your competitor bidding $40 only gets 1 click (1% of 100) so Google only makes $40.

Now, it becomes pretty obvious why Google puts your ad on top – $200 is more than $40!

Google goes through all these calculations 3.5 Billion times per day – I think that’s absolutely incredible . . .

Will Google AdWords Work For You?

Here’s how you can get a good idea:

1. What is a customer worth to you?

You may sell a variety of products and services, but whether this will work for you is all about the numbers. What will you have to pay for a click? What percent of those people who do click end up buying?

If you are selling a $29 book, and you have no other products and services to sell that customer, there is no chance.

If you had to pay $10/click, and 1/3 people who clicked, bought, you still lose money.

On the other hand, if you do kitchen remodeling with an average ticket of $50,000, you can pay $100/click and do great.

2. Importance of lifetime customer value

Back to the book example. If you had a high end coaching program people pay $10,000/year for, you might be using the book as a loss leader to get prospects.

So, understanding what a customer is really worth is what you need to consider, not just what the initial sale is for.

3. What does Your Competition Do?

If you are in an industry where all your competitors are advertising, that’s a hint that it might work for you too.

But be careful, in the book example, if you didn’t know someone paying for clicks to sell a $29 book, had a “back-end” $10,000 offer, you could end up losing money.

There are online tools that I use for my clients that show me what people are paying for clicks, what keyword phrases they bid on, and how well their ads are working.

You still have to actually try it and do testing to know for sure.

4. Are you a local business?

Google loves local businesses and advertising locally only is much cheaper than advertising nationally.

Google has many targeting options so you can even do things like only advertise to people within 10 miles of your office.

How To Get Help

I do AdWords campaigns for clients and if you are running Google ads now and they are not working well, or if you want to consider doing ads, get in touch.

I will do a free AdWords audit of any existing campaigns or help you set up a totally new campaign.

Call me at 720-890-8760 or email joemcvoy@gmail.com

Kudos To The Lizard . . .

Tuesday, September 15th, 2015

geico lizard
I normally would NEVER write a testimonial to any business on my blog . . .

And, it’s beyond comprehension that it would be to praise an INSURANCE company????

Here’s why . . .

There’s a lesson here from a big-ass company that all us little businesses can actually learn from.

The company is Geico – hence the headline about the lizard . . .

Here’s what happened . . .

After a totally frustrating day, being totally stymied with technological glitches and further confirmation of my lack of technological skills . . .

It was 9 PM and I decided to try to get the “renter’s” insurance I’m supposed to have after hearing my ex, Jeanette, tell me about how her daughter’s dog sitter stole all her valuables and jewelry . . .

Since I have my car insurance with Geico, I figured I’d start with them . . .

As expected, the web site led me into the dark morass of insurance . . .

Since the site didn’t answer my questions – how could it? – I clicked on “contact us”!

Of course, my computer, a Mac, tried to open up Microsoft Outlook to let me send them an email.

Of course, that didn’t work, so I went through the usual 5 steps to stop Microsoft from taking over my computer . . .

The questionnaire wanted to know what my building was made of – no idea – what kind of heat I had – again, no idea.   I was totally prepared for another typical insurance./banking experience . . .

But then, the system gave me a phone number – answered from 7 AM – 1 AM????  18 hours/day?

I couldn’t believe it, so, even though it was 9 PM at night, I called the number on the East Coast . . .

A nice guy actually answered the phone after I went through a totally reasonable automated menu asking me what type of insurance I wanted or whether I was filing a claim . . .

After getting my name, he already knew my address and the fact that I had an auto policy with them . . .

We talked – he actually asked me what I wanted???? – and I told him my story and he listened????

What’s happening here – a big company listening to me  . . .

It can’t be . . .

I told him I had no idea what my building was made of – brick, block, alien materials, or what.  He said – no problem – he looked it up in his database – powered by Google I’m sure – and he told me more about my building than I knew . . . He saw that I was in a 4 story building on a golf course . . .

I made the mistake – I thought – of telling him I had a business in my home – online, of course.

That created another batch of questions and I also told him I was certifiably old and asked for any AARP discounts, he laughed and said he’d check.

He also had questions about how much I made and I pitched him on joining my business – which he said I could send him info on separately . . .  No idea if he’s really interested, but it doesn’t really matter – he listened to me and responded accordingly!!!

Then, he asked me to hold and then he checked a bunch of affiliated insurance companies and came back with a price . . .

30% lower than any I’d been quoted before – $40K of renter’s insurance for $10/month . . .

Absolutely amazing!

Who can say they’ve had an enjoyable conversation with an insurance agent selling them insurance.  In my entire life, I’ve never had that happen – and, as I said, I’m old!

Warren Buffet owns Geico – the dude knows what he’s doing – and it passes all the way down to the customer – kudos to Geico and kudos to Warren Buffet.

So, long story, not so short, there’s a lesson here for all of us.

Customer service is king.

Do a good job of that and after someone gives you money, they will tell their friends about it!  Just like I’m doing here.  What’s it worth to you for a customer to spend an hour or more posting unsolicited positive info about your company online?

Do you want people doing that about your business?

Well, be good at what you do and make sure you stay good at what you do, and it will happen . . .

I have systems for local business to do just that without a billion dollar budget.  Contact me and I’ll help you to do it.

To Your Success,

Joe
720-890-8760

Profitable Marketing Systems, LLC
690 S Alton Way # 4C
Denver, CO 80247
joemcvoy@gmail.com

 

How To Evaluate An Online Business Opportunity

Thursday, January 22nd, 2015

how to evaluate an online business opportunity
It can be overwhelming trying to evaluate every online business opportunity that comes your way.

It seems there’s another one each day and of course, they all claim to be the latest and greatest opportunity the world has ever seen.

I have been starting and building businesses online and off for over 30 years now and have made 7 figures in both online and offline businesses.

Here’s my quick guideline that will allow you to evaluate any online business in just a few minutes.

For an online business to make any money, you need three things:

1. product(s) to sell

2. traffic to your offer funnel/landing page

3. a conversion process that converts visitors into customers

Let’e address each one separately.

PRODUCT

You really need to have a product line or group of products to sell, not just one product. Ideally, you have a low end, easy entry product under $10 and then other products of higher costs.

The reason why is you need multiple products in order to have a high enough customer value to justify the marketing expense to get traffic.

This is why selling the typical low priced affiliate offers from clickbank, commission junction, etc will not work for you unless you already have a large list you can promote your offers to for free.

The best combination is a business that has low priced products, medium priced products ($100 – $500) and also high ticket products ($1,000 and up).

Even better is if some of the products are monthly subscriptions so you have ongoing cash flow.

Who do you think will be better able to afford the marketing costs to get visitors to see your offers – someone with a one time sale product for $27 or someone with a product line ranging from $10 to $3,000?

One program I’m in has just this – with monthly subscription products at $25, $47 and $100 and 4 more one time purchase products ranging from $500 to $3,500. I’ve seen customer values as high as $800 in this program. See it here.

Who’s going to win in buying traffic – the person who can’t pay more than $15 to get a customer or someone who can spend $500 to get a customer and still make a $300 profit!

So the bottom line in the product section is to calculate what your customer value is and how much you will be able to spend to get a customer.

If the number is too low, you will not be able to buy traffic and therefore have a hard time expanding your business past your current sphere of influence.

TRAFFIC

You are going to need traffic to your offer to make any money.

If you have a large list now and a lot of followers on social media, you will be able to make some money selling anything, but I’m assuming you don’t.

Buying traffic by the click will typically cost 70 cents to one dollar per click/visitor.

The offers you might see to bring your site one million visitors for $100 are worthless – those programs don’t work and you will lose your $100!

Explaining all the different methods people use to claim to bring you cheap traffic is beyond the scope of this post – all you really need to know is that they don’t work!

So, what about free or “organic” traffic?

That’s the best traffic you can get but it takes time and expertise to get it. Learning SEO, social media marketing and other free methods is definitely a good idea but is not going to get you any immediate sales.

All in all, building your own list of people who know, like and trust you is the absolute best long term plan and you should start doing it, just don’t count on it for short term revenue.

But, that said, having the products and the traffic will do you no good at all without . . .

A CONVERSION FUNNEL THAT WORKS

If you bring people – free or paid – to a landing page that doesn’t get opt ins or to a funnel that gets opt ins but no sales, you’re dead in the water.

So, unless you are an expert in building these funnels, look for a program that has a funnel in place with proven conversion numbers.

When you buy cold traffic (from people who don’t know you) you may get 30% opt in at a landing page but only end up with 1% or less in terms of customers.

That tells you right away – if your visitors cost $1.00 each, 30% opt in and 1% of those buy, your cost per opt in is $3.00 and your cost per sale is $300.

So we’re back to what is a sale worth to you – if it’s $500 or more in this example, you’re good. If it’s $15, you’re toast . . .

Naturally, it’s important to measure the conversions at each step of a process and work to improve them over time. The analytics are critical. There are plenty of programs to set up split testing to find out what works best, but you can get a general idea just from the description here.

I’ve had landing pages getting a 3% opt in that with testing and tracking have gotten all the way up to 40%. That makes the difference between making money and losing money.

click here to see the program I’m currently promoting.

We offer a $7 trial of the system we sell so you can see how it all works and decide if it’s something you might like to do.

If you do decide to get involved, I’m here to help you with it each step of the way. You can reach me by phone at 720-890-8760 or by email at joemcvoy@gmail.com

How To Make Money On Facebook

Friday, June 21st, 2013

You can learn how to make money on Facebook in only 14 minutes!  Not only is it free to learn, it’s free to do. Not a bad combination and easy to learn as well.

Mike Hobbs, a Facebook expert, let’s you look over shoulder as he does exactly what he’s teaching you so you see exactly how to do it.

Why learn how to make money on Facebook?

Two reasons. One – leads you get from social media convert much better to customers than leads from cold marketing like advertising. The reason why is that people connecting with you on social media know, like and trust you, while cold market advertising produces leads who don’t know you at all.

The next reason is because it’s the simplest online marketing strategy you can do. You may have heard SEO and blogging are free, but that’s not quite true. In order to promote your blog posts so they get seen, you need to use tools to do it. Last I checked, I am paying over $500 per month for those tools.

Not to mention, trying to learn SEO is hard – you are in danger of having your brain explode!

Here’s the link to Mike’s video teaching you how to make money on Facebook:

If you like this training, we have lots more free training for you too. Just get in touch and let me know what you’d like to learn or sign up for our team here.

Simple Craigslist Strategy

Thursday, May 16th, 2013

Would you like a simple craigslist strategy to get you free leads for whatever business you have?

Watch the video linked to below to hear Mike Hobbs explain how to use craigslist properly to avoid being flagged and also how to post in other cities than the one where you live.

simple craigslist strategy

If you have heard about needing verified phone numbers and different IPs being needed to post outside your home city, that is correct.  In the video Mike gives you the inexpensive sources he uses.

Mike gets 50 – 100 leads from each ad he places, so if you need leads, watch this video, follow the craigslist strategy, and you will learn how to get as many leads as you want very inexpensively.

This training is part of our Prosperity Team in Empower.  There is much, much more available, all for free if you have joined Empower Network on our team.  It only costs $25.  Join here.

Would you be interested in strategies to dominate Facebook?  Did you know there is a way to get mass exposure through the creating events feature?  Do you know about the super simple way to use Twitter to build your FB followers?  All this and more is inside our Empower Network Prosperity Team.

If you want to make money online, you NEED this training and you can access it for FREE once you are on our team – even at the $25 level!  Join here.  Do it NOW!

Get Unlimited Free Online Sales Leads

Friday, March 15th, 2013

Instead of buying leads for your business, you can get unlimited free online sales leads by understanding a few basic principles.

online sales leads

Online sales leads – from understanding your market

The first step is to understand who you want to attract as a prospect or customer and then also understand what they are searching for online if they are looking for someone who does what you do.  Did you know there are tools that not only let you know what people are searching for in your niche, but that also tell you how many people are searching and how likely they are to buy?

Not only that, you can also find out which of your competitors are ranked highest on Google for those terms and how hard it will be for you to knock them off their top 10 spot.  The # 1 spot in a Google search gets 34% of all the clicks on the term.  If you’re not on page 1, you’ve wasted your time.

Online sales leads – it’s not only about sales “today”

As an average, something like 90% of all people searching online for someone who does what you do are not ready to buy today.  If you have a page they land on when clicking on your listing that talks to them specifically about they were searching for and offers them some sort of free gift/”buyers guide” that they can download, you can get their email and market to them using an autoresponder so they know, like and trust you and buy from you when they are ready.

Online sales leads – staying in touch until they are ready

If your product is candy bars at the checkout in a grocery store, this obviously doesn’t apply to you, so I am assuming here that you are in a business where people want to check you out a bit before buying – ie a higher priced product or service.

You will want to put helpful content on the Internet that when people find it, helps build a relationship of trust with them.  Offering content to help them to understand how to buy what you sell will differentiate you from your competitors who are only looking for a sale today.  Of course, you offer them that option, but just by the fact you are helping them how to understand how to buy your product, will build trust.

Online sales leads – dominate your market by showing up on top of the search result pages for your keywords

Although this is a long term strategy, if you do it right and get found online when people are searching, that will pay off for years and years.  You can learn how to do this yourself, have someone in your business learn it, or outsource it to someone who knows how to do it (me;).

If you want to learn how, the absolute best training on learning this is at the Empower Network.  That’s where I learned.  Specifically the $15K Formula training.  The training is expensive in that it costs $1,000, but is cheap in that there is 27 hours of video training that can get you a 1,000 time ROI.

I’ve spent over $85,000 on marketing training – online and off – in the last 10 years, and the Empower training is worth more than the other $85K I spent . . .  just saying.

Online sales leads – how they can be better than free!

If you buy the $25/month Empower blog platform, you can publish posts about your business on one of the highest ranked blogs in the entire world.  Why this is good is beyond the scope of this post, but you can call me any time and I’ll explain . . .  720-890-8760