"The Lightning Speed Internet Sales Success Course" LESSON #1 © 1997 B.S.A. / F.M. http://web.idirect.com/~bsa/index.htm _______________________________ THE TOPIC: How to test and verify all your marketing cheaply on the Internet before you roll out with the expensive stuff (space ads and direct mail.) THE ANSWER: Virtually all aspects of direct mail have corresponding aspects in Internet marketing. Therefore, due to the fast and inexpensive nature of Internet marketing, testing on the Internet can make your direct mail profits come in bigger and faster. Split-Testing on the Internet: an example of split-testing in direct mail would be to mail 5000 of one salesletter and 5000 of another, and compare the results to find out which has the best bottom-line result. You can do the same thing with a web site by having variations of your home page and/or updating it from time to time and observing the effect it has on your lead-generation and selling efforts. Testing headlines on the Internet: Headlines on the Internet have 2 meanings: the Headline of a salesletter in an email or a web page, and the subject line of a newsgroup, listserv or e-mail message. In e-mails and newsgroup messages, the headline is just about all you've got to go on. The Subject line will make or break you. "Get Rich Quick" or "Hot New Product - Make $90,000 In One Week" are, obviously, stupid headlines (subject lines). Some of my favorites are "A personal message from Jonathan Mizel", "7 Free Secrets Of Internet Profits", and "Gary Halbert made $1,000,000+ from this idea". Nice, eh? I can't delve into bulk e-mail here; it's a deep topic, fraught with controversy and people threatening other people with bodily harm. So go to www.cyberwave.com and my good friend Jonathan Mizel will give you the low-down and the what's-what - after all he makes $10,000+ per month on a regular basis using bulk e-mail. As a pre-test for direct mail, remember that newsgroup postings, advertising on Compuserve and AOL, and bulk email, will ALWAYS produce a smaller percentage response rate than direct mail. If you can get a .01 to .1 % response rate from bulk email, you'll probably get a 1% or higher response rate by direct mail, assuming you are following the rules: using quality printing, first class stamps and a good mailing list. The thing to do is find a tactic that gets SOME response on the Internet before spending your money on direct mail or ads. If you don't have a Newsgroup program yet, you need to get one NOW at www.shareware.com or www.jumbo.com. Choose your operating system and use the key phrase "newsreader" or "news reader" as your search phrase. You'll quickly find a free program you can use to read and post newsgroup messages. The experiments you do with your web sites will bear fruit for your direct mail and space ads too. You should have your web site set up so that you know where people are "clicking to" and what freebies they are asking for - and how changing an online salesletter affects results. Simply observing the behavior of your web site visitors should help you out. Let's say you're collecting the name and address of 5 people who visit your web site daily. Don't you think it would make sense to offer 20 free reports (use a "checkbox" method) - and let them choose 5 only? That would tell you exactly what your market most wants, wouldn't it? The creation of this 20-step course is a good example of using free Internet research. All I had to do is ask a handful of people, by e-mail, which topics they would like to see discussed in this course. There was overwhelming agreement about which topics people were hungriest for, which makes it very easy for me to do my job, which is giving people what they want! But the really good part is this - when I advertise this course OFF-LINE, I am sure to garner some attention because a) the 20 lessons are also good headlines to test and b) all that has to be done for a salesletter is to write a brief synopsis of the topics covered and tell people how much it costs and give them a reason to order it TODAY, by email, disk or on paper. After all, it is PROVEN to contain the info that people really want. ------------------------------------- Going a little off topic, here's ... PROFITABLE WEB SITE DESIGN Part 1 As harsh as this may sound, it has to be said - if you can't sell off the 'Net, you won't be able to sell on the 'Net. Telling you otherwise would only mislead you and give me bad karma. Real bad. Putting it another way, if you didn't know how to market in 1992, and you aren't a student of marketing, then you are probably not making money with email, the web, news-groups and online multimedia TODAY. Do you know how to sit down and write a salesletter that sells what you are selling? Just words, no pictures. You really do have to know how to do so. Perhaps you should start with "Scientific Advertising"/"My Life In Advertising" by Claude Hopkins. Find it or order it at a bookstore or visit http://web.idirect.com/~bsa/amazonbk.htm NOW! When you understand marketing, you are ready to create your profitable web site. NO SHORTCUTS! (The following is excerpted from Internet Consulting Disk #2, "World Wide Web Magic" ...) The Scott Covert Web Site Design Philosophy ------------------------------------------- 1) Speed Web sites should download as quickly as possible. - use small graphics - use .gif's with the lowest "# of colors" setting or just use .jpg's, which tend to compress very well - start your web pages off with some text at or near the very top so visitors have something to read right away while graphics are loading - use fewer graphics - economize only to the extent that your web site still looks great 2) Warmth Your web site should feel warm and homey. This can be accomplished with whites and yellows, and the proper use of "white space" to avoid crowding on your page. Some sites use solid black backgrounds, which to me seem rather harsh and uninviting. Use friendly language. Speak as you would to a friend. 3) Economy Less is truly more on a web site. Use the graphics, tables, forms etc. you NEED, but don't go hog wild or your visitors will feel that your site is too much to handle - a big corporate mess. 4) Mailing Address collection Use as many techniques as possible to collect mailing addresses from your visitors (potential customers). Direct mail is still a much more powerful way to make money than trying to collect it over the Internet. Offer freebies to people who will give you their mailing address. Also collect email addresses. Compile a directory and mail to it often. After all it costs you nothing. But that zero cost is a glaring invitation to screw up. How? By blasting out commercial message after commercial message until everybody has either asked to be unsubscribed from your distribution list, or simply ignores your messages. Don't make this mistake. Give people something useful! Your salesletters come after you have proven your value. 5) Interactivity Have some thing(s) that change every once in a while (a quote, or letter, or article), and encourage visitors to give their comments by sending you email or filling out a form. Interactivity is also possible by using the new "multimedia plug-ins" like Shockwave and Neuron. Try to use only those plug-ins that 1,000,000 or more people are able to see, and make sure that all relevant information is on your page in plain text format in the event that your visitor has no plugins and is using a 1993 version of Mosaic to surf the net. 6) Constant And Never-Ending Improvement Defend the up-to-date-ness and quality of your web site as you would defend your life. A web site is never completed. 7) The All-Important "Hot List" and Repeat Visits a) URLMinder. This is a service which allows visitors to your site to register with a company that will let them know when your site has changed. Amazingly, this is FREE. b) The Hot List. This may also be called the bookmarks list or "favorites" depending on which browser a person is using. TELL people to add your site to their hot list. 8) Give Them What They Want Your visitors want their life to improve in some way as a result of visiting your site. Figure out what your market wants, and deliver it. Give them free stuff and profound information related to what you are selling. Have a customer service page where people can fill out a form offering their complains, compliments, requests and testimonials. The World Wide Web is interactive; don't design advertising as if it were going onto print.