starfire

When CRO Goes Wrong – Ben Hunt & Shane Melaugh

April 9, 2015 By starfire

I was delighted to be asked to present a session for the first “CRO Day” worldwide event, and invited my buddy Shane Melaugh from Thrive Themes to join me.

We decided to take quite a heretical approach, and tell people when and why you shouldn’t use Conversion Rate Optimization, which was a lot of fun.

Unfortunately, Shane was locked out of the live webinar, so we re-recorded it with both of us. The new video is 66 minutes long. Hope you enjoy watching it as much as we enjoyed putting it together.

Thoughts On Sharing Why You Do What You Do

April 7, 2015 By starfire

In this short eight-minute chat from an unusually sunny veg garden, I try to explain why it’s so important to know why you do what you do, and to communicate it to your market.

Using The ‘Wrong’ Ad Rotation Settings?

April 2, 2015 By starfire

Do you ever get involved in ‘teaching’ things?

I sometimes do. Archery. Running. AdWords.

I dislike the word ‘teaching’. Partly because it reminds me of school, but also because it implies that I am going to tell you what to do.

Telling people what to do works okay with archery, where there are a defined list of things never to do. Like for example when an over-eager beginner will draw the bow string back to their ear, with no arrow attached. Gives me heart palpitations just thinking about it.

AdWords however is less clear cut. The problem with ‘teaching’ AdWords is that I am expected to stand on a podium at the front and decree “use this setting!” “But never use this one!”

Everybody wants to know which AdWords settings you should use. Whether you should target mobile devices. What bid modifiers to set. What ad rotation settings to use. Whether you should target the search partner network.

It’s like there is supposed to be some sort of magical optimal AdWords configuration that when set leads to guaranteed AdWords profitability.

Yeah right.

What I can teach is how to approach your decision making in the right way. How to go about selecting the right campaign settings for the right circumstances. Unfortunately that requires thinking on your part, which for most people is less appealing than a defined list of do’s and dont’s.

One of the campaign settings I’ve been playing around with for a while has been the ad rotation settings. When you set up a new campaign, the default setting is ‘optimize for clicks’.

‘Optimizing for clicks’ is the default setting. AdWords is a clicks generation machine, and more clicks means more click revenue for Google.

There are however circumstances where you do want to optimise for clicks. In the early stages of an account for example, you won’t have enough data yet to optimise for conversions. So optimising for clicks is an obvious interim measure.

We’ve run campaigns recently where we have created as many as 40 ads in a single ad group. We’ve then set the ad rotation settings to ‘optimize for clicks’, and left Google to figure out which ads get the highest click through rates. If you look through our AdWords Survival Guide documentation that is what the process currently tells you to do.

In principle I am saying to Google “here are 40 ads I think might work. You go and figure out which ones are best”.

Do you want to know what happens when you do this?

What happens is that most of the 40 ads get very few impressions and under a handful of clicks. One or two ads get the majority of clicks.

The problem with this is that Google seem to have jumped the gun. They seem to optimise for clicks before they really know which ads are really performing best.

If ad A has had 2 clicks and a 2% click through rate, and ad B has 4 clicks and a 3.5% click through rate, you have no idea yet whether ad B will have a higher clickthrough rate in the long run. Really you need over 100 clicks on an ad before you can be sure of its long term performance.

Google however don’t seem to be concerned about that. (They just want their click revenue, dammit!)

So, I no longer suggest using ‘optimize for clicks’ or ‘optimize for conversions’. At least not in the beginning. Instead, I suggest you use ‘rotate for 90 days then optimize’ or ‘optimize indefinitely’, and follow our ad testing process every 90 days to evaluate your results.

Are there any other AdWords settings you find confusing? Let me know here, and perhaps we’ll cover them in future issues of there is sufficient demand.

My Top 7 Recommended Marketing Books

April 1, 2015 By starfire

One of my students asked me today if I could put together a list of the various marketing books that I recommend in our calls.

There are a LOT of marketing books out there to buy. Many of them offer you one particular tactic, often presented as a very good thing, but my experience is that what’s right for one business could be catastrophic for another. So I don’t want to recommend any particular tactic.

This short list of 7 titles contains the books that I really think every single marketer should have on their shelf, and should read many times.

Influence

“Influence” is a one-of-a-kind book, a landmark in the study of how we buy, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Psychologist Robert Cialdini set out to figure out why he ended up paying for stuff he didn’t want, which started him on a long journey into the underworld of sales tactics. He even went undercover to learn techniques from sales organizations!

“Influence” brilliantly sets out a few common tricks that marketers use to make us say yes to stuff, and walks you through how and why they work.

Of course, like anything, you can use this knowledge in many ways: ethically or less ethically. That is up to you.

Start With Why

“Start With Why” is one of the books that I can confidently say changed my life.

Somehow, one day Simon Sinek had one of those realizations that geniuses get. He saw that “people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.”

This book is more than a masterclass in marketing or branding. It can help you find, or refine, your own direction in life. And it’s packed with wonderful examples. You absolutely MUST read this book!

80/20 Sales and Marketing.

Perry Marshall’s “80/20 Sales and Marketing” is, for me, another landmark book in both marketing and business.

Perry got snared by the 80/20 (“Pareto”) principle, and it took him down a rabbit hole that caused him to challenge a lot of his assumptions and habits.

He takes you on the whole journey in this books, which I can confidently say is a work of pure genius.

Quite simply, friends, if you’re in business, in any shape or form, read it.

Zag (Marty Neumeier)

You must read either “ZAG” or “Purple Cow” because these will show you the primary importance of being unique.

Hey, we’re all unique anyway, aren’t we? But one of the biggest problems in marketing is, failing to BE who you really ARE, and trying to look, sound, or behave like your competitors. That is a huge mistake.

I particularly love “ZAG” because it’s concise and intelligent, and it doesn’t just stress why you should zag against the market, but has a step-by-step process for figuring out your ZAG.

Purple Cow

Seth Godin is one of my favourite marketing writers. “Purple Cow” is kind of similar to “ZAG” but I couldn’t leave it out of my list.

You know what, get both, they’re both short and entertaining, because you NEED to get uniqueness into your bloodstream.

It isn’t a marketing trick, it isn’t something you can add on, it’s becoming more and more essential to survival in the marketplace. It is that important, folks.

Tribes

I had to include this one by Seth Godin as well. (I might also recommend “All Marketers Are Liars“). “Tribes” shows you the vital, natural tendency that we all share as humans to want to belong.

We’ve lost the close-knit family communities that we evolved with, but we’re still tribal, so now those original community groups are replaced with a new form of tribe: communities of interest. And they need leaders. “Tribes” shows us just what kind of leaders we need to be, at whatever level, to be successful in the market today.

The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding

I also considered adding Al Ries and Jack Trout’s “Positioning“, which is a masterpiece (and highly recommended if you’re into brand development), but this one simply had to make the list.

Father and daughter team Al and Laura Ries’s “The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding” tells you pretty much everything you need to know about branding, and nothing you don’t. It’s another quick read (I just inhale books like this) and backed up with wonderful case studies from the trenches.

Reasons Why You Must Segment Your Audience

March 16, 2015 By starfire

I recently wrote a post on Open-Source Marketing that argued we should target prospects more carefully — aim for the bullseye, not the whole target.

In this post, I’d like to get more quantitative, and show you exactly why accurate targeting, which may include paying more for clicks, and deliberately reaching fewer people, is sensible marketing.

We’ll look at the impact of broad versus narrow targeting on three areas: SEO, PPC, and conversion optimization.

Let’s take two hypothetical marketers working in a random sector.

Colin and Barbara are both florists who specialize in wedding flowers. As small businesses, they can each handle about eight customers per month.

They take different strategic approaches to their marketing. Colin wants to reach the biggest possible market, whereas Barbara has decided to focus on specific niches.

We’ll follow Colin and Barbara as they drive PPC and SEO traffic to their sites, and try to optimize those sites for conversions.

1. AdWords

Colin doesn’t have time to waste on research, so he invests in the popular overall term “wedding flowers”, targeting the 18,100 monthly searches in his UK market. He can expect to pay 48 pence per click.

Barbara takes a different approach, preferring to target multiple specific terms, and point each one to its own landing page. This method means she spent several more hours doing her research in AdWords, and a couple more hours each month creating new landing pages.

The image below shows some of the keywords that Barbara might target. Together, just this selection of target phrases accesses a search market of over 2000 monthly searches. However, notice that most of the competition is Low or Medium, and the suggested bid is around one quarter of what Colin is going to have to budget for.

Let’s say that both Barbara and Colin get 800 clicks per month from AdWords, assuming a 1% conversion rate from click to customer, which would give them the 8 jobs per month they need.

At 48p per click, Colin will probably have paid around £384.
At around 13p per click, Barbara will only have paid around £104 — less than a third of Colin’s spend.

Put another way, Barbara can afford to buy three times as many clicks as Colin, and that also means she can optimize her AdWords ads much faster.

But what if PPC isn’t the only traffic source for our intrepid business owners?

2. SEO

Our two florists are also interested in getting organic search traffic, so they both engage in some SEO activity.

Colin wants to focus on his site’s home page, so he’s lazily targeting the phrase “wedding flowers” again, whereas Barbara is pointing traffic at the spread of focused landing pages that she invested in building.

Moz’s Keyword Difficulty tool is a premium app that helps you quickly see your organic SEO competition. Here’s the top three for “wedding flowers”. (I’m concentrating on top-3 placement, because they typically get two thirds of all the clicks, so there is little point targeting any term with SEO unless you are going to make a serious effort to break into the top three.)

Those are all fairly significant pages, all with links from over a dozen other websites, on well-established domains. Colin is going to have his work cut out trying to break into this kind of company.

Remember that all the links on the second page of search results tend to get only 5% of clicks combined, and a placement outside of the top twenty will only be seen by a tiny percentage of searchers.

Let’s say Colin puts a lot of effort into his SEO, and does quite well. Realistically, he might manage to get his site onto page 2, maybe around #12, on Google UK. At that position, he can expect to receive typically under 1% of the clicks that get clicked. So that might get him another 200 visitors.

Let’s compare Barbara’s approach. She has multiple landing pages, such as her page for “blue wedding flowers”. Here’s the top 10 on Google UK for that term.

This is not a very competitive term. The first six results include the phrase “blue wedding flowers” in their title tags, but 7-10 do not. That means 7-10 are very easy targets, so Barbara should easily be able to get above those.

Also notice that the best-linked of the results in the top ten only has inbound links from four other sites. Out of the top six that we’re targeting, none has links from more than two other sites. From this, I think a top-3 placement may be realistic for Barbara.

Even a #4 spot for a term like this would get Barbara around 7.5% of clicks. The Google AdWords research above told us that about 590 people per month search for the exact phrase “blue wedding flowers” on Google UK, which means Barbara might expect about 44 clicks per month from this term alone.

But here’s where it gets interesting. If Barbara had 20 specialized pages like this, she would be looking at maybe 900 direct clicks from search results, way more than Colin’s estimated 200. In fact, just five such pages would get her more traffic than Colin can expect from ranking on page 2 for his more generic term.

3. CRO

A lot of people will tell you that it’s important to test your websites’ conversions, often using split-testing.

What a lot of people don’t tell you is, if your website is crap, you’re wasting your time split-testing!

In order to get meaningful results, you really need a high degree of probability (97% or more). And to get that means you need quite a few conversions.

But the baseline conversion rate also has a massive impact on the number of visits you’ll need in order to reach “statistical relevance”.

Look at it this way.

Scenario 1: Starting From Low Conversions

Let’s say a landing page gets 1000 visits per month, and 10 conversions. That’s a 1% conversion rate, which is low.

We run a split test against an alternative page, which increases the conversion rate by 25 percentage points: a significant improvement. That effectively means the new page is converting at 1.25%.

How long do you think it would take to achieve a reliable result?

Fortunately, some smart people have done the hard work for us and built CRO calculators like this one.

That tells us that this test, running on the low-converting page, will take 698 days to complete. That’s nearly two years! So it is simply not worth doing.

The CRO calculator shows how long it will take for a test to complete starting with a low-performing control.

Why is this? Simply, the extra 0.25% conversion rate (in real terms) only means 2.5 more actual conversions per month. So it’s going to take a lot of months to establish a meaningful trend.

Scenario 2: Starting From Better Conversions

Compare a page that starts with a more reasonable conversion rate of 5%. Assuming we get the same 25% relative improvement, the test would now take only 133 days to complete.

The reason is that, starting with 50 conversions per month instead of 10, the real difference in conversions is far more significant: 12.5 more instead of just 2.5 more. And that’s what slashes the time it would take to get meaningful results.

With a 5% starting conversion rate, testing delivers results far quicker

(With a 50% conversion rate, the test would be complete in only six days, even with only 35 visitors per day on average!)

Let’s apply that to our two florists.

Colin is targeting the general “wedding flowers” market, and he is sending his visitors to a generic “wedding flowers” page. He doesn’t know if they want cheap wedding flowers, artificial wedding flowers, themed, blue, autumn, last-minute, exotic, goth, or any of the other myriad possibilities.

When those people do arrive, they’re looking, as we all are, for signs that they’re in they’re in the right place, that they are likely to get what they find here. If they’re confident, they’ll stay on the page and maybe proceed. If they’re not confident, they will go back to where they came from.

Now, Colin doesn’t know exactly what they’re looking for. So he’s offering a generic service to a fuzzy market. That means he either has to…

Present his full range of services on one page, which runs the risk of overwhelming the visitor with too much information, and making it harder to see the thing they do want.
Or present a fuzzy, generic offering, such as, “Wedding flowers for all occasions,” which is a pretty impotent message, unlikely to persuade a visitor that they’re going to get exactly what they want. (After all, no one’s really looking for “wedding flowers for all occasions” are they?)

Compare Barbara’s site. She’s fishing for a range specific prospects in multiple smaller pools with less competition.

If Barbara targets “blue wedding flowers”, for example, and presents a page with examples of blue-themed bouquets she has created, someone who arrives on that page is instantly going to see exactly what they came to find: blue wedding flowers.

They won’t see all the other options, so the content they really want will jump out clearly. If they had arrived on Colin’s home page, it’s likely they wouldn’t have seen a blue-themed presentation at all.

Which page is likely to convert higher, to generate more enquiries? I would bet on Barbara’s.

The same would apply if she went by genre, theme, price point, location (county, town, or wedding venue), timeframe (e.g. urgent, last-minute, or even for July 2017). In every instance, visitors are going to find their expectations instantly met. They won’t have to scan around, the uncluttered page they find will simply say, “Yes, I offer that. Why don’t we talk about exactly what you want?”

Barbara’s visitors will feel rewarded and understood. They will probably instantly trust Barbara more. And that’s why she’ll get more enquiries and orders.

So, not only will she get more business with less work, but any split-testing that Barbara does across her site will also deliver positive results in less time.

And if these guys are paying for their traffic, conversion rate becomes even more important. In fact, a modest improvement in conversion rate can make the difference between a loss-making campaign and a profit-making one.

If Barbara is paying less than a third for her PPC traffic than Colin pays, and gets 3x higher conversions, that means each of her leads costs only a tenth of what they cost Colin! Plus, she can improve that conversion rate faster over time, further stretching her competitive advantage.

Summary

Simply by segmenting her real target audience, we’ve seen how Barbara can enjoy:

Cheaper, better-targeted PPC traffic.
More SEO traffic.
Higher conversions.
And quicker results from split-testing.

The Next Level: Niche Targeting

Let’s say Barbara is particularly good at “vintage wedding flowers”. A quick search on AdWords reveals a healthy level of searches (720 exact-match per month) and a suggested cost per click (CPC) of 51 pence.

Is it worth Barbara actively targeting this niche, even though the CPC is higher than the ? Absolutely! AdWords competition is low, and the SEO competition is not too competitive either.

Here, the first five results are image results (which she should also target), but there are certainly opportunities in the top ten here. The phrase does not feature prominently in domain names or title tags, and there are several pages with very few links.

Barbara should seriously consider not only having a dedicated landing page for this niche, but maybe even a dedicated domain! She might then use her regular shop domain for local floristry business, and a keyword-rich domain for her specialist vintage designs.

If she has a good portfolio of photos, and a compelling story and proposition, she might even be able to charge higher prices for the specialist service.

Either way, it would more than compensate for the more expensive click cost, because she would also expect a significantly increased conversion rate. The more finely you target your message, the more weight it is likely to have with people looking for exactly that service/product.

In fact, given Colin’s and Barbara’s limit on throughput (8 projects per month), I would definitely recommend them moving into niche markets, even within the wedding flowers sector, which would enable them to raise their prices.

Should You Run Mobile PPC Ads?

March 6, 2015 By starfire

If you’re running Adwords ads on mobile, you could be throwing money away, warns Rob Drummond.

If you have been running pay per click ads you might know what Google and Facebook are extremely keen to convince you of the value of mobile traffic.

The reason for this I suspect is because they have so much mobile traffic to sell.

The primary change when Google introduced “enhanced” AdWords campaigns was that you can no longer turn off mobile traffic. Desktops and tablets are now bunched together, and you have to set a campaign bid modifier of -100% if you want to exclude mobiles.

If that sounds complicated then rest assured there are companies all over the world paying the Google Complexity Tax.

It is also not a coincidence that since this bundling of device targeting the cost per click on a mobile device has risen to something close to the price of a desktop click.

When Mobile PPC Works

I’m not against running ads on mobile, but it only really works in certain situations and for certain types of businesses. If you look through Google’s help documentation for example the examples they give are for a sandwich shop.

For a sandwich shop, mobile traffic will probably work great. People search for ‘sandwich shop London’. They see your ad. They click the ‘call now’ button. They place a lunchtime order. Everybody wins.

What if you sell something more complicated than sandwiches?

I’ll tell you what you don’t want to happen. You don’t want people browsing your non-responsive desktop website on their phone. They’ll soon get bored of zooming and scrolling.

Mobile traffic CAN be profitable, but for most of the clients I work with it isn’t where we start.

Mobile Traffic Isn’t Bullseye Traffic

Mike Rhodes (co-author of Perry Marshall’s latest book) uses the analogy of the archery target.

Desktop traffic for our primary keywords is nearly always inner gold traffic. It is highly targeted, converts well, but you may soon find that you are buying all the clicks available.

So, you move out to the red circle. The red circle could be remarketing traffic, or slightly broader keywords.

For most businesses mobile traffic is probably the blue or black circles. We only move out to the blue or black circles once we have bought all the profitable clicks available on the inner circles.

Display traffic for most businesses is usually the white circle. A HUGE number of clicks are available compared to the inner gold, but getting those clicks to convert can be hard!

This model applies equally well to Facebook, only on Facebook you CAN have mobile-only campaigns. The really cheap clicks on Facebook are all on mobile, because Facebook has a huge amount of mobile ad inventory to sell.

Rob’s Pro Tips for Mobile Ads

If you are going to run ads on mobile you should…

Make sure your site is mobile-friendly. You can discover how mobile-friendly your site is at www.google.co.uk/think/multiscreen/ (look for the tool called ‘Pagespeed Insights’ on the right hand side).
Consider setting up mobile-specific landing pages, possibly using something like Lead Pages, Unbounce or Thrive Content Builder.
Consider running mobile Facebook ads to a landing page hosted on a Facebook tab (Lead Pages will let you do that).
Try to get people off their mobiles as fast as possible. Try to capture their email address, or use click-to-call buttons.
Remove unnecessary distractions for your mobile visitors. For a great example of a mobile-friendly website, go to www.papajohns.co.uk on your phone. Notice how you are presented with a different set of options to the desktop website.

Facebook Ads vs Print Classifieds Head To Head

March 3, 2015 By starfire

Which gives better value for money, Facebook ads or regular local newspaper print ads?

Let’s find out in a head-to-head battle!

The first thing to say is, it isn’t simply down to how many eyeballs you’ll reach for your dollar/pound/euro. We’ll need to consider some other factors as well, but let’s start with the basic numbers.

The traditional metric for print advertising has always been the CPM, or “cost per thousand” (readers).

Of course, not every reader will look at your ad. But some may look at it a few times. So let’s assume that every ad in every paper gets looked at once.

Cost of Print Classified Ads

My local rag is the weekly Derbyshire Times, which has a claimed readership of 108,000 readers per week (source).

A single-column classified advert will cost you £37.10 (plus VAT)

To reach 108,000 readers, that would give us an estimated CPM of £37.10 / 108 = 34 pence per 1000 eyeballs.

Cost of Facebook Ads

Let’s do a direct comparison with the reach of an ad on Facebook. Here are the stats on a recent promotion that we ran recently for a client (click to view full size).

This promotion is reporting a reach of 5224 people for a total spend of £4, giving a headline CPM of 4 / 5.224 = 76 pence per 1000 eyeballs.

So, on first view, it would seem that the Facebook promotion is about double the price of a print ad. Round one to print?

No — because there are several more factors we need to take into account.

Compare Screen Presence

Not every “eyeball” is the same. Let’s compare the actual Facebook promotion with a typical print classified ad.

Waites FB promotion — Facebook promoted post

Newspaper classified ad — A typical newspaper classified ad (not from the actual publication)

You can immediately see that the Facebook ad is FAR more imposing than the newspaper ad…

You get about five times the space, and the text is far easier to read.
The picture is in colour.
The brand logo is also displayed and in colour.
There’s a date, which lets you know the promotion is current.
And, of course, the opportunity to interact RIGHT NOW with the promo.

Better Feedback

In fact, this £4 promotion got 438 “post engagements”, which means Likes, Comments, or Shares. Because it’s a competition, it got shared an impressive 480 times.

Of course, somebody might show an ad in a paper to someone else, but a good online promotion can be shared and shared and shared. But we don’t actually know how many people (if any) actually look at a newspaper ad (which is why advertisers traditionally would insert coupons in newspapers that you would clip out and either mail in or take in store to claim a promotion).

The net result that it only cost us one penny per actual engagement. At least 480 people read the ad, got it, and liked it enough to take action in some way.

Comparing Eyeballs

Not every “view” is the same.

Check out the photo of the newspaper ads again. There are dozens of ads crammed into a small space, with tiny text. A reader would need to focus carefully on the newspaper in order to take in the ad content.

On Facebook, however, for a hit to count against your “reach” statistic, someone would need to scroll to or past your promotion, which I think means it is much more likely to be seen than the classified ad.

In fact, the two images are roughly the same size, but the newspaper clip contains about 25 different promotions, while the Facebook ad is just one.

Conclusion

Facebook ads will clearly get you significantly more exposure for your money than newspaper classified ads.

However, you must also bear in mind a few other subtle factors.

One is your target audience. It may be that a newspaper’s readership is likely to have a high proportion of the people you want to reach, it may be better value.
Not everyone who reads a newspaper goes on Facebook, and vice versa. If you want to reach as many people as possible, maybe it isn’t an either/or question. Maybe you could consider both?
Facebook will let you advertise using colour photos, and also video. If your promotion would be more engaging in video, that would be a huge benefit of the social platform.

Ryan Deiss Bait & Switch Funnel Tactic Analyzed

February 28, 2015 By starfire

It can be really helpful to unpick Internet Marketers’ sales funnels. You often find a mixture of good practice and gray areas, or occasionally downright deception.

In this video, I walk you through the tactics Ryan Deiss uses to draw in prospects with the promise of a valuable “free” resource, and then interrupting the “giveaway” with a sales message.

I think this comes under the well-known “bait and switch” tactic, which is common in Internet Marketing (because it works), but is not considered best practice, and is not ethical marketing in my view – because it promises one thing and then does not immediately deliver what it promises.

1. Short Walk Through Video

2. Analyzing Ryan’s Sales Video Script

I do also recommend you go through Ryan’s sales video, because it packs in a lot of general best practice, from which you can pretty much build a sales video checklist.

It’s essential you listen to this message: The text above the video says: “IMPORTANT:Watch The Video Below BEFORE You Use The 60 Second Blog Plan (Please allow 10 – 15 Minutes For Delivery)” As though there’s some connection… But the only connection is that the type of person who would say yes to Ryan’s free offer is clearly interested in blogging shortcuts.
Introduce yourself (no one wants to do business with a stranger).
There’s something for nothing here (“I want to give you…”)
Benefits (“Launch your blog AND attract your first 1000 subscribers”)
Specific evidence (“The same plan we used to get over 500,000 unique visitors a month”… But note, he isn’t saying directly that this tactic is responsible for that amazing growth!)
More evidence (“This plan has been tested in the trenches and it does work!”)
[Only at this point does the “Add to Cart” button appear, because they don’t want you to see it’s actually a sales page when you first arrive]
Something you don’t know that could benefit you (“Why 1000 subscribers? Something magical happens…” which is designed to generate self-doubt and curiosity.)
What I’m promising is really important (“1000 subscribers isn’t easy, and it’s your first big hurdle…”)
Inflated half-promise (“That’s why my goal is to take you from zero to 1000 in 14 days or less!!!” Note, this is not a promise, only a “goal” which has no real value.)
Inflate even more (“Once you know how to get 1000, you know how to get 10,000… 100,000… and beyond…” But, remember, Ryan hasn’t told you how to do this.. He’s only promising to give you one tactic that he happened to use on a blog site that got half a million visitors.)
Make it sound easy (“The 21-step process that I’m about to give you works, no matter how big your blog is.”)
You deserve this (“Here’s how we’ll get you the traffic and subscribers that you deserve…” Note the assumptive language in, “we’ll get you…”)
[Now Ryan has baited us, he “switches” and starts talking about something new… A 21-step plan.]
Give an apparently thorough overview of the steps, but without giving the steps away. Keep using, “We’ll…” to make it seem like this is definitely going to happen. Keep saying how effective, easy, and cheap this is.
Don’t miss, “The exact number of opt-in forms you should place on your blog” (which may work in the Internet Marketing sector, but do not believe for one minute that the same will go in your sector).
And… “What to say on your Thank You Page that will turn subscribers into profit IMMEDIATELY” (Really? That will happen? If I put what you tell me on that page it will immediately turn into profit?)
More evidence. “This is the exact process we use every time… and it’s not like we’re a one-hit wonder. I know it works because I’ve tried it a lot of times and it’s worked every time.”
Warning about saying “No” (“And personally, I wouldn’t even attempt to launch a blog without having a proven, step-by-step guide to follow.)
Heavier warning: (“DO NOT Promote a Single Blog Post Until You Read This Guide!!!”)
Put down land mines for your competition. (“It truly is the blind leading the blind”, i.e. Don’t follow those guys, follow me.)
Why you can trust us instead: (“We actually do this stuff!!!”)
We have learned what we’ve learned at great cost: (“Stepped in plenty of you-know-what…”)
Don’t go through the same costly and painful process: (“That’s why we’re so careful to document WHAT WORKS into simple, easy-to-follow Execution Plans.”) Note: “That’s why…” is a magical construct in copywriting… Similar to “Because…” in that it suggests that something obviously makes sense, but without having to explain why.
Exclusivity: (“In the past, these plans were mine alone.”)
Scarcity: (“But now, I’m making a select few available to the public.”) Of course, this is an untruth. He’s going to sell as many as he can! But he wants you to feel special. Fake scarcity is one of the oldest tricks in the book.
Offer hope: (“Now, you don’t have to go it alone.”)
Discount: (“Normally, these Execution Plans sell for $50 – $100 each…”) Yeah? Where and when? And is it THIS plan you’re selling me now, or plans like this one?? And Ryan, didn’t you just say that in the past they were yours alone? Which is it?
Urgency: (“… but for a very limited time I’ll let you have access to this plan for just $7”) Of course, the “very limited time” is unspecified.
Compare to prove value: (“You could have one of those fancy coffees at Starbucks…”)
Visualize yourself as a hero: (“Or you could become a life-saver at your company by being the guy or gal who FINALLY kick-starts the company blog into a profit-pulling machine.”) Note the word “Finally”, which implies there’s an emotive tension or problem that you could solve.
Reiterate the benefits: (“You could save time and money by setting up your blogs the RIGHT WAY first time…”) Suggesting that other ways are wrong, which is another untruth.
It’s so easy: (“You can practically just set it and forget it.”)
I’ll help you avoid hidden dangers: (“Avoid potentially embarrassing rookie mistakes, including two big ones that the fake blogging gurus tout as being a best practice.”)
Reiterate the inflated promise: (“And you create a huge subscriber list and income stream from each and every one of your blogs.”) Which is, of course, a filthy lie.
“The choice is yours”
Tell them exactly what to do next, several times.
Reiterate urgency: (“Do it now, because this FLASH SALE will end… It’s not going to be available for much longer.”) Yeah, right.
Reverse the risk: 60-day no-questions-asked money-back guarantee. Of course it isn’t worth anyone’s time to ask questions for $7… But likewise it isn’t worth anyone’s time to jump through whatever hoops you need to jump through for the sake of $7 either.
More urgency: (“Time is quite literally running out.”)
Repeat the Call to Action again a few more times. (“Go ahead, do it!”)
Assume they’ll do it: (“And I’ll see you on the other side.”) Whatever the fuck that means.

Announcing “Web Design is Dead” Free Ebook

February 26, 2015 By starfire

I’m delighted to announce the launch of my latest ebook, “Web Design is Dead.”

If you are an amateur or professional web designer or web marketer — or particularly if you would like to be — you need to read this book, now!

The best part is, I’m giving it to you completely free!

When you read “Web Design is Dead” you will…

Know that the web design sector — as we have known it — is shattering
See the factors that are causing the split
Understand your four distinct options for survival (Warning: Sticking at what you’re doing today is not one of them!)
And get clear guidance on which of the options is right for you.

Download NOW

Download your copy FREE today from Ben’s books page.

Right now, the book is completely 100% free, in PDF, Kindle and ePub formats.

Preview: Read the Introduction

The professional web design sector is being torn apart. Where there used to be solid ground, a huge rift is splitting open, so web designers need to move quickly in order to survive.

What’s causing the split is actually our own online publishing technology, which recently evolved to the point that it is making the traditional web designer role redundant.

Since I started designing websites professionally in 1994, “web design” has steadily evolved from a technically challenging, time-consuming, and very costly service into a mature off-the-shelf commodity that anyone can purchase for pennies. The changes have been gradual, but at some point recently they reached a tipping point.

The result is that many familiar methods and roles are going to fall into the abyss. Those of us who have earned a living crafting websites will either evolve fast or we will perish as the market disappears beneath our feet.

The good news is that there will still be plenty of good work for web designers — but it will look quite different to the projects we’re used to. Web designers must dramatically change the way we approach our work.

There’s no doubt that we are going through a period of massive, and accelerating, disruptive technological innovation. As always in times of massive change, there will be winners and there will be losers. The survivors tend to do very well. (In fact, it is said the Great Depression created more millionaires than any other period in US history, source.)

So who survives? It’s very simple. The survivors are always those who…

Notice what’s changing

Accept that it’s changing

And make the necessary changes to adapt to the new conditions.

That’s why I’m writing this book. With “Web Design Is Dead” I’m going to explain why the current seismic shift is happening now, and set out your survival plan.

Today, for the first time in twenty years, we’re seeing very good web designers suddenly finding their web design work no longer pays the bills.

One of my inner circle group runs a web marketing agency in New Jersey. He has a friend who is also a talented web designer, has years of experience, a strong track record, and some great clients. But, in recent years, her business seemed to slow down.

She didn’t think anything of it, until one day disaster struck. Her husband suddenly learned he had lost his job. The real shock came when they realized that the wife’s web design income was not enough even to cover their mortgage. Sadly, this couple lost their home, and the reason they lost it because the market evolved, but the web designer didn’t.

I don’t want anything like that to happen to you. That’s why I’m going to explain what’s really happening in the web design sector, what’s causing it, and — most importantly — exactly what you should do now to ensure you are one of the survivors.

Download the Full Ebook NOW

Download your copy FREE today from Ben’s books page.

Reviews and Comments

The book has only been available for a few hours, and I have already received some early feedback…

(See more comments at Amazon.com)

“Web Design Is Dead was jarring to accept but AWESOME!”

Finished your book and so want to get on board as a Strategy Specialist.

There is such an overwhelming amount of knowledge out there but its so hard to filter out what’s good/bad or applicable.

I totally believe in everything you’re doing and am going to use it as my guide to learn the pieces that I don’t know that I don’t know.

~ Karissa

Just read your new book “Web Design is Dead”

Thank you! You are doing us all a great service — it may not be what we would like to hear, but then the truth often isn’t.

I know now I need to change the way that I present myself, and your book shows us how to do that.

~ Jools

Internet Marketing Sales Email Deconstructed

February 10, 2015 By starfire

I’m getting increasingly fascinated with how the well-known Internet Marketers practise their craft.

In particular, I’m interested in spotting where they are genuinely delivering useful (new) information, and when they’re selling the dream of easy money. Sadly, the more closely I examine their output, the more often I find the latter.

In this short (ten-minute) video, I’m going to deconstruct an email I received recently from Ryan Deiss.

Also note how the email subject line teases at hidden knowledge: “A 15.2% lift (but we were shocked)”

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