Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction............... 6 Chapter 2: What Is SEO?.............12 Chapter 3: Keyword Research...18 Chapter 4: On-Page SEO.............25 #1 Content........ 26 #2 Title Tag....... 27 #3 URL.............. 28 #4 Meta Description.............. 29 #5 Headlines.....30 #6 User Experience................30 Chapter 5: Link Building............33 Good Links vs Bad Links........34 Search Engines and Links...... 37 Chapter 6: How to Execute a Content Marketing Strategy. 40 When SEO Meets Content Marketing.......... 41 The Execution Process...........42 Chapter 7: 10 SEO Best Practices....................48 #1 Keyword Placement......... 49 #2 Search Intent.....................49 #3 Page Speed.. 50 #4 Use HTTPS....51 #5 Avoid Duplicate Content...51 #6 Optimize Your Images...... 52 #7 Insert Relevant Hyperlinks.................... 52 #8 Use Your Keyword Research..................53 #9 The Google Search Console.................... 55 #10 Long-Form Content........ 56 Chapter 8: Advanced Tactics.....58 #1 Build Topic Clusters......... 58 #2 Do an SEO Audit................ 59 #3 Look for Journalist Keywords................ 61 #4 Work on Internal Linking. 61 #5 Use Dynamic Parameters.62 Chapter 9: How to Measure and Track SEO Results............64 #1 Organic Traffic.................. 65 #2 Quality of SEO Traffic....... 65 #3 Keyword Ranking............. 66 #4 Identify Slow-Loading Pages..................67 #5 Engagement Metrics......... 67 Chapter 10: Conclusion..............70 Sample Content Preview A lot of these are commercial operations and searches are a big part of how users find brands and their services. When you do a good job with search engine optimization, your website gets better rankings for keywords/keyphrases from the search engines and that improves your brand’s visibility. This gives you a very real shot at converting a regular visitor to the website into a paying customer. This is no longer the open secret that it used to be a few years back. This means businesses have gotten good at tricking search engines to rank their webpages higher to get visibility. So, search engines are constantly tightening the screws by changing the parameters through which they rank websites to make the search results more useful to the user instead of benefiting businesses with subpar content. This is why you need to be on your toes and in the loop on new practices. Search engines are also trying to retain traffic on their search results pages instead of redirecting users to other webpages because advertising is how they make their money. This is why you see certain features on the homepage. Think about this. The search engine results page or SERP has both ads and organic results. One such feature is the featured snippet, also referred to as the answer box. There are also image carousels that do the same thing except they are for pictures. This feature gives the user a direct answer to a specific question instead of redirecting them to a different webpage. So, if the user types “London weather” or “convert cm to inches” or “Sydney time now”, they won’t just be given a list of websites or be taken to a website that answers the question. They see a box that answers the question or in the case of a conversion, allows them to enter the numbers and get the results right away. You will also notice similar boxes for queries that can be answered by sites like IMDb and WebMD. Search engines are able to make money more efficiently when they cater to the users’ needs by keeping them on the SERP pages for a short period of time (it might be confusing, but this means that the user found what he was looking for in short time). But lucky for businesses, some of this can be beaten fair and square with good search engine optimization techniques. This can be done for paid and organic content. That’s how when a user types a direct question into the search panel, they get a brief summary of text from the highest-ranking page which possibly answers the question right away. This could be an organic result based on good SEO. Circumventing strategies that keep the user on the SERP page and getting them to your page requires a little more strategizing. That is what makes search engine optimization a big part of many marketing strategies drawn out by companies both big and small. At the heart of it, SEO is basically just understanding the words your potential customer is typing into a search engine when looking for your website and how you can use that knowledge to draw them towards your website instead of your competition. So, it is fundamentally about understanding your customers. And the good news is that the tips and tricks you learn from search engine optimization don’t have to be limited to your website because it essentially teaches you how to use language more effectively which can be applied to social media and get your website more traction from social media platforms which are a big magnet for online traffic. The other side of this practice is understanding what the crawlers employed by search engines are looking for so that you can get visibility. A search engine looks at documents, pictures, videos and any other type of content you have on your webpage. All of this is cataloged and that process is known as crawling and indexing, which are two different things. When a user types a query, this cataloged information is used to decide how relevant the content on your website is to their query. That is how your page gets ranked. Now, the first thing to know when I talk about ranking is the accuracy of keywords. That’s the next topic to dive into. Chapter 3: Keyword Research When I say keyword research, I’m talking about words and phrases that the content on your website should have. This makes it easy for users searching for such content to find your website easily when they type in specific words into the search bar. The idea is to synchronize your understanding of the user’s preferences with the search engine’s data so that it can show your website up top when users look for those keywords. This is one of the most important elements of search engine optimization. And when you take care of keyword SEO, you have a better shot at beating the competition on the search engine results page. This is also very useful when you are running a marketing campaign. Typically, the process starts with creating a list of keywords that are relevant to the content you are trying to optimize. It takes time and effort but the results are phenomenal and makes it totally worth investing your resources. Now, there is no one right way to do this. This means you will be engaging in some trial and error methods before you get a hang of it. But it is not entirely arbitrary. For instance, here’s a couple of things you should not do. A lot of individuals, including some professionals, look for SEO keywords only once and don’t update them from time to time. Another mistake is to add only the most popular keywords which means you will be one of the many websites that have added the same set of keywords.

Sample Content Preview It doesn't really matter how big your marketing budget is. Chances are there will always be a person in the executive team who expects your online marketing efforts to go large or go home. The idea is that you need to get out of the gate and take no prisoners. While there is a lot to commend this strategy, it's too easy to overdo things. It's too easy to just blow through a tremendous amount of money and effort and have very little to show for it. Social media marketing is essentially a long term engagement. It doesn't really fit well with a one shot big shot approach because you don't know all the variables coming in. Strategic information regarding consumer intelligence, audience insights and audience profiling are things that you discover along the way. You can do some advance research but at best, they are shots in the dark. You will only truly know in a real world campaign scenario once you have already jumped in with both feet and done the marketing. It reveals itself as you try out your approach. Given this reality, if you adopt a one shot big shot approach, you end up blowing your money only to end up with seriously flawed or partial at best hindsight. Do yourself a big favor and avoid this mindset. Instead, commit to a slow start. In the beginning, you're just feeling things out and eventually, you will get enough of a clue to take it to the next stage. Once you achieve your initial set of victories, you can then start connecting the dots putting together a more workable strategy and then you can start scaling things up. A lot of online marketers simply copy and past what their competitors are doing. This extends all the way from the content that they produce to their social media graphical elements all the way to the meaningless campaigns they run. Now this may seem like it makes a lot of sense, but you have to understand that you can't blindly copy because when you just copy and paste whatever somebody else is doing, there's a good chance you'll be copying their failure. If you don't know what to look for, if you don't know how to cross reference, slice and dice and otherwise numerically analyze what you've copied and pasted, you are wasting your time. If your competitors are struggling, you're going to struggle even worse because you don't have their built in audience. You have not proven yourself or created solid value. Instead of operating from a strategic advantage, you have actually dug your own grave. It's no surprise that blindly copying what your competitors are doing can often lead to fatal results. You blow through a lot of cash only to have very little to show for it. One of the biggest mistakes people make is to go with their gut feelings as far as marketing strategies are concerned. They think that they're on to something that is so hot that they only need to spend money on it and it will pretty much take care of itself. Maybe they've discovered that people like a particular type of content so they jump in with both feet and invest a tremendous amount of money on a specific type of content and try to promote it all over the place. It turns out that the person behind the idea is very distinct from members of his target audience. It turns out that this person has different values and has a different mindset compared to the typical member of his target audience. Not surprisingly, content that he finds compelling is a complete waste of time to his intended audience. What do you think happens in that situation? That's right. The company blows a tremendous amount of money and nobody shows up for the content. Talk about a wasted opportunity. Thankfully, there's an easy solution to this. In fact, it's so easy and obvious that it pretty much jumps out at you. I'll discuss the solution near the end of this book.

Sample Content Preview Compile multiple pieces of PLR content to create something entirely new. For example, you might take excerpts out of three or four PLR articles to create an entirely new article. And speaking of excerpts… 2. Take Excerpts From Your Products Obviously, this is a super-quick way to create an article. But the other bonus of this particular strategy is that you can quickly insert a pitch at the end of the article to promote the full product. Now, there are two ways to use these excerpts: One way is to simply pull the excerpt directly out of the product, create an introduction and conclusion, and post it on your blog. For example, let’s suppose you have a report that lists ten strategies for cutting calories. You can excerpt out three to five of these strategies to create your article. Then at the end of the article, you can pitch the paid report as the place to get more of these great strategies. The second way is to cut some of the meat off the excerpt so that people will want to buy the product to get all the details. Let’s take the example of the report with ten strategies again. This time you excerpt out all ten strategies, but you edit out some of the details. So readers will get an article that tells them what to do, but they don’t get the exact instructions of how to do it. They’ll need to purchase the product to get those exact instructions. Next… 3. Make Link Lists A link list can come in a variety of formats, including: A gear list. These are tools you use that you’d recommend to others. It saves beginners a lot of time and money, since they don’t have to do as much research. For example, you might list all the plugins you use on your blog. Or if you’re writing to bodybuilders, you might make a list of all the “must use” supplements. A list of free resources. Here you might link to blog posts, reports, videos and other free sources of content to help your readers achieve some specific goal. A list of paid resources. In this case, you’d write a short review for each resource to let people know who can use it and its benefits. A mix of paid and free resources. For example, “The Top 10 Resources Every Aspiring Copywriter Ought to Read.” Again, the point is to save your reader time by doing some of the legwork and research for them. It’s much easier to get recommendations and content all in one place from a trusted source, rather than having to find products and sources yourself, and then have to separate the wheat from the chaff besides. Next… 4. Recap Your Recent Posts The idea here is to create an “in case you missed it” list of your best posts in the last couple weeks or months. Of course you don’t need to just list blog posts. Instead, you can curate your own content across platforms, including your social media accounts and newsletters. Another way to do it is by curating your best (recent) content around a very specific topic. For example: Five Blog Posts That Will Change the Way You Think About Dieting The Three Posts Every Beginner Marketer Ought to Read The Five Keys to Improving Your Golf Score All you have to do is write an intro to the post, list the resources along with a short explanation of why people should read each resource, and then wrap it up with a quick conclusion.

Table of Contents Increasing Traffic to your website . 3 Web Content ...... 5 Sending Newsletters and Info ...... 8 Become a Community Member .. 10 Use Experts to Write For You ..... 13 Use Tracking Software .. 15 Use of Keyword Tools ... 17 Don't be Afraid to Copy Others ... 19 Focus on the most Popular Parts of Your Site ..... 21 Always Give Free Stuff .. 23 Advertise Advertise Advertise .... 25 Build Your Brand ........... 27 Using The Right Software .......... 29 Using the Right Content 31 Using META Tags ......... 34 Your Blog ......... 37 Hold off on Comments ... 39 Create a Sitemap .......... 41 Big Traffic ......... 43 Become Part of an Online Community .... 45 Be Patient ......... 48 Be Nice to People and Customers .......... 51 Conclusion ....... 53 Sample Content Preview The content that you put up on your website is the most critical thing that you need to think of. In the same way that a store will do well only if they sell things that people need, you will get people visiting your website only if you give something that people are looking for. Of course it also means that you are entering a crowded market because genuinely unique niches are hard to come by. If you do find one, you are on to a good thing, but even if not, as long as you make the content appealing, you are sure to find takers. Do something that others don't do. For example, selling products or services online is catching on really fast, and you will find a number of sites with products that link back to the larger online retailers like Amazon or eBay. If you want to do the same, it is not that difficult, except that there is something that you will have to give that other websites do not offer. For example, if you offer a personal review of the product that you are selling you are sure to develop a certain number of loyal customers and as long as the reviews are informative and helpful you will only get more customers with time. There are other websites that offer the same thing, but most of them will have only a couple of lines that they probably found in other websites and copied. If you give information that is more detailed and specific, things that only a user would know, you are sure to make a hit. Keep people coming back for more! This does take more work and time, but unless you are willing to invest in good content, there is really no point in proceeding further. Make sure that you do your research. Even if you are only selling dog collars, as long as you give the pros and cons of each one honestly people will appreciate it. The goal should be to make the content such that people who even casually visit your site once will bookmark it and keep coming back. Keep it short and simple While writing your content, remember that just because you want to be informative you should not have long winded articles. Statistics show that between 600 and 800 words is the best length for most online articles. If you want to fill space in your site use other interactive content. Not only will this make the whole thing nicer to see and read it will also relieve the monotony of just plain text. Even if you do not have the expertise to create interactive content, just using bullet points and charts in-between text will break it up into smaller more easily read pieces. Stay who you are Lastly, while writing, never lose your human voice. While writing it is easy to lose the personal touch that you give when talking and instead go for a more professional voice. The only thing that this will serve to do is to make visitors feel unwanted. This becomes more of a problem as you grow, because as you see more money come in you will start to streamline the content. You need to walk a tight rope here because it is very easy to lose what brought people to your site in the first place while doing this. The risk of changing anything is that just as there is potential for success, there is an equally good chance for failure too. One more thing that you should keep in mind when developing web content is that the more graphics you have, the more time it takes to load the page. While this may not be a problem with many people because they have a broadband connection, a number of people access the net through their phones and tablets, and heavy websites really slow down these machines when not on a wifi connection. Find that balance. Sending Newsletters and Info Newsletters and subscribers are a big thing in many websites nowadays. Websites ask people to subscribe to their free newsletters and keep sending out information every week or sometimes more frequently depending on the strategy that they follow. A few years ago, there may have been an issue with spam filters and emails being placed in junk folders. Today, this is still true but ISP are realizing the fact that news letters are here to stay, so place news letters and email info high on your list of to do's when feeding your subscribers. When you do send out your email's and newsletters it is a good idea to get creative with content and the title of your email. Interesting titles create open rates, and open rates create revenue. Try to offer interesting titles which offer value. Depending on your business you should be able to work out what your subscribers want to read and what sells after some time of research. Give them the option A better idea is to give the option to people to subscribe to an RSS feed. This gives them the option to either choose to subscribe or not which means that only genuinely interested people will. It will also give you a much more accurate idea of how popular your site is because most of those who subscribe will actually read what you have to say. You now have three good option for people to read your content.

Sample Content Preview Promote affiliate products – Share informative reviews of products that you are an affiliate for. Be sure to offer a special bonus or discount code (if available) that is exclusively for your viewers. Offer a TikTok discount – Promote a paid product or service that you offer but provide TikTok viewers with an exclusive discount code. Partner with influencers – Find influencers in your niche or that appeal to your same audience and partner with them to promote your product or service. Give them an affiliate commission for each sale and a discount code they can share with their followers. BONUS TIPS: Profit from TikTok Without Showing Your Face or Voice • Use user-generated content such as reviews from customers, product use videos, etc. • Create videos that showcase product functionality, features, and benefits. • Create animated videos that show an engaging quiz or helpful tutorial with a link to more information. • Create a screen recording video to show how to do something that would be helpful for your audience. • Upload your video and add text. Click on the text and click “Text-to-speech” for a Siri-esque voiceover that reads your captions out loud. • Upload a video with you talking and use the automatic add captions feature, then remove the original audio and include music instead. • Hire someone on Fiverr to read the scripts for your videos. Tips For Making Viral Organic TikTok Posts • Stay on top of trends. Regularly scroll through the For You Page (FYP) and see what trends are emerging. Don’t wait to create the content, trends come and go quickly! • Don’t wait on a trend or challenge, start your own! Make it easy and fun and it could go viral. • Always use hashtags, for every video. It’s how users find new content to watch. You can find relevant and trending hashtags on the Discovery page (search page). • Engage with other TikTokers, especially those in your industry and target audience. Leave relevant and helpful comments on their videos. • Use creative effects to make your videos more fun and engaging. TikTok has multiple options available, or you can edit in another program and upload to TikTok. • Add attention-grabbing captions and thumbnails. You only get a few seconds to get the attention of viewers so make sure your content stops them in their tracks! Best Practices for TikTok Advertising • Always add music or other audio to your videos. • Use high-resolution videos and images. You want to avoid blurry or stretched media because it makes people skip your content. • Use the mobile templates available on TikTok to create and immersive video experience. There are many options available. • Open your video with something that sparks interest right away and get to the point quickly. • Promote one product but show multiple features and benefits. • Tell your brand story with video clips and images that will resonate with your target audience. • Show your product being used, instead of just talking about it. • Use images and videos that have worked well in previous campaigns on other platforms. • Create and test multiple different versions of each ad. • Create and test multiple different ad groups (placements, audiences, locations, etc.) • Use contrasting colors in your videos to liven things up. • Keep your important video content and images inside the green “safe zone” (see below). Keep in mind that adding more text decreases the green zone. Image 1 (left): One line of description text. Image 2 (middle): Two lines of description text. Image 3 (right): Three lines of description text. Example TikTok Ads Caption: Bunch O Balloons, the fastest filling water balloons around! Video by Kennedynz This 15 second ad was made from a video that was created by a customer of Bunch O Balloons. There’s no hard selling or text, simply a video showing how the product works with the logo overlaid at the beginning and end. There’s not even any talking! It just has music playing along with the video. It received over 350k likes and 1000+ shares. Caption: Create and share awesome videos! This 15 second ad showcases the functionality and features of a free app for adding backgrounds, stickers, and overlays to videos. It quickly shows how to search their library and add backgrounds to a video. There’s a voiceover element telling viewers about the product and how to use it and text overlay that talks about the volume of content available in the app. It received over 4600 likes.

Sample Content Preview No matter what your goal is, you need to promote an in-demand offer. Throwing a flash sale for one of your most popular products serves this purpose. However, you can also run a flash sale on a new offer—just make sure it’s something your market really wants. In other words, do your market research first! Specifically: See what the hot sellers in your niche are in marketplaces like ClickBank.com, JVZoo.com, and even Amazon.com. Survey your market to see what they want. Take note of what the top marketers in your niche are selling on their websites, through their newsletters, and to their social media followers. Check out what type of products people are paying money to advertise on Google, on top sites in your niche, and even on Facebook. Use a keyword tool like WordTracker.com or MarketSamurai.com to uncover what your niche is looking for. Once you have a popular product in hand, then move on… 3. Choose a Date Now choose a date for your flash sale. Keep these points in mind: Choose a date that is at least two to three weeks away. This gives you and your affiliates time to prepare. Research the date to find out if there is anything major going on at the same time. For example, if a really popular marketer in your niche is launching a huge product on the same date, you’ll have a harder time getting affiliates onboard and getting customers to take notice. Next… 4. Decide on Your Sale Offer Here’s where you decide on the following points: What all will you include in the offer? For example, are you going to toss in an extra bonus or two to make the offer even more attractive? What percentage-off or discount are you offering? Hint: A flash sale should be a really attractive offer, such as 40% off or more the regular price. What percentage will you give to affiliates? This is partly going to depend on your goals. If you’re looking at building a list, getting affiliates really involved and generating backend profits, then you may consider giving all or most of the frontend commissions to affiliates. If you’re looking at generating a lot of frontend profits, then you can offer a more standard 50% commission rate for affiliates. (This is assuming you are selling digital products—commissions of course are smaller if you’re selling physical products.) Next… 5. Determine How Long It Will Run As the name implies, a flash sale happens fast – it’s usually over in a matter of hours. Generally, this may be anywhere from four hours twenty-four hours. Determine the start and end times. Figure on running it for at least 8-12 hours for maximum exposure. Take your prospects’ time zones and activities (such as work) into consideration when deciding the start and end times. In other words, you don’t want the entire sale to fall within the work day, otherwise you’ll have a lot of people missing out.

Sample Content Preview To be highly productive tomorrow, you need to start getting things into place today. This is very important to recognize as your energy levels and focus on any given day are very often the result of cumulative results from the days that preceded it. The first thing you need to do today in order to be more productive tomorrow then, is to leave a bit of work unfinished. This might come as a big surprise and seem counterintuitive; but actually, leaving work incomplete is a great way to encourage yourself to work harder tomorrow. The simple reason for this is that we don’t like leaving things unfinished. You’ll be driven by an unconscious urge to complete the task you half-finished tomorrow and this will help you to dive back into ‘work mode’. And of course the other thing you need to do is to get the best possible night’s sleep. This is going to help you to wake up feeling as good as you possibly can tomorrow and it’s actually far more important than any other aspect of your routine. If you want to perform your best, then getting better sleep is the single best upgrade that you can possibly benefit from. So how are you going to make sure you get the best night’s sleep? First: make sure that you take a good half-an-hour-to-an-hour of downtime before you hit the sack. The big mistake that too many of us make, is to work incredibly hard all day, then to come home and watch loud TV or play computer games while checking our phone. This is devastating for our ability to sleep. All that action on the screen stresses out the brain and makes it more active and alert. Meanwhile, the light is interpreted by our limbic system as being daylight, meaning that we feel more awake and our brain will be flooded with cortisol. But if you take half an hour to unwind and settle down, then the low-light that comes from outside or from a small, orange, desk-lamp, will help your brain to realize it’s bed time. Meanwhile, concentrating on something to read for example, will prevent your mind from wandering and help you to get into an almost meditative, restful state. Reading also has the considerable advantage of making our eyes tired as we strain to read the text. This causes them to feel heavy and eventually it will be hard to keep them open! Doing all this will ensure you get to sleep much faster and when you do sleep, you’ll sleep more deeply. At the very least, try to avoid keeping your phone in the room with you when you sleep. Second: make sure your environment is dark, comfy and quiet. This should go without saying but it’s something that many people don’t take seriously enough. If your room is flooded with light from a nearby streetlamp or if you can hear the neighbors entertaining their guests, then you won’t sleep as well and you’ll feel it tomorrow. At the very least, you should try to cover up bright LEDs (another reason to charge your phone in another room!). Finally: get your temperature right! Your room should be slightly cool when you’re sleeping so you have to stay under the covers for warmth. And while you’re at it, consider taking a nice warm bath before bed. This will relax your muscles and help you to regulate your body temperature throughout the night. Wakey, Wakey… Here’s one more tip for sleeping, this time dealing with the way you wake up: get yourself a ‘daylight lamp’. These are lamps that are designed to create a wavelength that is purposefully similar to that of the sun. Better yet, they will get brighter gradually in the morning before the alarm sounds. What this does is to gently stir you out of deep sleep by making the environment seem to get slowly brighter. This means that when the alarm does sound, you will be in REM sleep rather than SWS (Slow Wave Sleep). That in turn means you’ll feel much less groggy. Better yet, you’ll be waking up into a bright room – which makes a huge psychological difference and makes it much easier to get up and get going!

Table of Contents Introduction. 5 Chapter 1: The Types of Leads and What They Mean.................... 8 The Life Cycle of a Lead........8 Cold Leads........... 9 Warm Leads.....10 Qualified Leads................... 10 Lead Scoring and Categorization......11 Chapter 2: Playing the Long Game – Create Leads, Not Customers....... 13 Branding and Leads............... 17 Chapter 3: How to Create Interest and Sell the Dream................21 The Buyer Persona.................22 The Value Proposition.......... 24 Chapter 4: How to Build Trust and Influence.............. 27 What is Content Marketing?.................. 28 Chapter 5: Building a List Through a Squeeze Page....................31 Design....32 Using Incentives.. 34 An Example of the Copy.....35 Chapter 6: A Guide to Writing Persuasive Copy....... 37 Good Copywriting.....................39 Chapter 7: Creating Leads Face-to-Face and Through Other Means.......41 Chapter 8: How to Convert – Turning a Lead Into a Buyer....... 44 Introducing AIDA.45 Minimizing Risk.... 46 Urgency and Scarcity............47 Sales Funnels........49 Chapter 9: Lead Management Software Explained..51 Choosing an Autoresponder................. 53 MailChimp:........ 53 AWeber:...............53 GetResponse:.54 Chapter 10: The Best Lead Generation Methods...... 54 Finding Cold Leads.................55 Making Warm Leads..............56 Getting Qualified Leads.......56 Converting Leads..................... 57 Conclusion and Summary........... 58 Sample Content Preview Chapter 2: Playing the Long Game – Create Leads, Not Customers In the introduction, we looked in some detail at the importance of creating leads versus customers and we discussed why leads were on the whole more valuable. A good lead is much more likely to have a higher customer lifetime value versus someone that you persuade to buy out of the blue. Moreover, it is much easier to build a large number of leads than it is to create a large number of customers. But we also mentioned how leads could impact on your business strategy and actually help you to alter your approach to business such that you would have a better brand and be able to offer more value to your visitors and to your customers. Perhaps a good way to look at this would be to illustrate the point using an example. Let’s imagine two websites – one that focusses on sales and one that focusses on leads. The website that focusses on sales would most likely have a ‘Buy Now’ button front and center, right on the home page. The text would be focused on making a sale and it would continuously reiterate how great the product was and why people should make a purchase there and then while ‘stocks last’. The social media channels would likely take a similar tact and would be full of promotional posts, along the lines of: ‘Find out why our tills are second to none!’ ‘Want to serve customers faster and keep your costs down? Our till system is better than all the rest!’ ‘Buy now and save $50! Hurry while the offer lasts!’ All this might work to some extent. If someone is in the market for that specific product – a till in this case – then they might see the offer and buy. The same could be true for a supplement company. Let’s say you’re selling a protein shake and you make your home page a single ‘sales page’ telling people to buy your protein shake, raving about the flavour and listing all the powerful ingredients. Your social media might read: ‘Get buff with Super Shake Plus!’ ‘50% Offer – Get Muscles for Less!’ And once again, this might help you to convert some sales if people come across your site. But ultimately, the vast majority of people are going to see these adverts and they’re going to want to leave. This includes people who run high street stores and people who want to build muscle. Unless they’re in the market for your specific product right at the point that they discover your page, they’ll probably just be annoyed by your flagrant attempts to sell to them, they’ll leave and they won’t come back. You can expect to make a 5% conversion rate at the very best and your customer lifetime value will depend purely on the quality of your product. The problem is that you’re now trying to take your cold leads and turn them into buyers. You’re doing nothing to ‘warm them up’ first and you’ve not demonstrated any value or given them any reason to trust your brand. Essentially, this is the equivalent of cold calling. To put this in dating terms, it’s like seeing someone in a bar that you like the looks, walking over to them and asking if they’ll come back to your place. You might find that this works once in every one thousand attempts but it’s going to tarnish your reputation and it certainly won’t maximize the quality or quantity of positive responses! The Lead-Centric Approach Now let’s take a look at the lead-centric approach. Now your aim is not to try and get someone to buy from you but rather to get them to be interested in your business. You want to take them from a cold lead to a warm lead by getting them to see the value in your business, In dating terms, this means your aim is now to try and get a phone number rather than to take people home with you – which in the long run is more likely to mean people end up going home with you. Moreover, you’re not going to ask for that number right away but instead demonstrate value first by showing how witty and nice you are to spend time with! So when it comes to lead generation, this means that your website might provide lots of information for small businesses or for people trying to get into shape. The website will have a strong brand and will present itself as a ‘movement’ or a lifestyle. People will want to get involved and they’ll see that exciting things are going on here. Your Facebook posts won’t all be about making sales – you’ll share interesting facts, post inspiring pictures and link to articles that people might find interesting. You’re now giving them a reason to check back. This then means that you’ll not only capture the people who are directly looking to buy your product but rather you get the attention of everyone who is interested in your niche/industry. That means any small business owner or any person interested in fitness might follow you on Facebook or subscribe to your mailing list. They are now warm leads. This then means you have the option to repeatedly contact them and to spend a long time gradually trying to turn them into qualified leads. You’ll do this by continually providing great quality content so that they stay subscribed and keep coming back but at the same time, you’ll also let them know that you have these exciting products or you’re working on something new. Now at any point where they need a new till, or a new protein shake, they might think to look into what you’re offering further. They know you’re able to offer good value, they already trust and recognize your brand and the option is constantly being offered to them. You’ve drastically increased that customer lifetime value because at any point, they can make the option to click buy. What’s more, is that their brand loyalty means they’re more likely to be impressed with your product and they’re more likely to order again and again. If you’re currently just tweeting about how good your business is and wondering why no one is following you, it’s because you’re essentially cold calling or spamming. You’re not providing any value and you’re not warming anyone up. Stop thinking short term and start thinking about the long game!

Sample Content Preview You’re selling an app like meal-planning software. You can offer a blog post with 10 nutrition tips for losing weight. The final tip can be centered on using meal-planning software. You’re selling a social media marketing course. You can post an article about how to get more followers on Facebook, and then point to the course as a way to monetize and leverage this traffic. You’re selling a physical product, such as golf clubs. You can write an article about how to select the right clubs, and include your recommendation within the content. You’re selling a comprehensive course in how to write a sales letter. You can post a “cheat sheet” that tells people what to do for each step, but it doesn’t provide the in-depth instruction they need to write a good letter. See how that works? You can post tips, you can post an overview of a process, or you can even post in-depth instructions for part of a process. But in all cases, they format of the entire article should be a good fit for the product and naturally lead to the offer. Next up… Step 2. Know Your Audience Don’t even think about writing a single word until you know your audience and you know what they want. This allows you to not only pick an offer that you know they’ll want to buy, but it also gives you the ability to “get inside their head.” The more you know and understand your audience, the easier it is for you to create content that connects with them on an emotional level. So how do you get to know your audience? Try out these three tips: Eavesdrop on their conversations. This means visiting niche forums, social media groups and blog discussions. This simple step will give you a great insight into what your audience thinks about certain topics and products in your niche. Interact with them on social media. Here you take it a step further by actually talking to your audience. Ask them questions, find out their pains, figure out what kind of solutions they’re looking for. Hang out with them offline. For example, if you’re selling products to bodybuilders, then go hang out at the nearest bodybuilding gym in your area and spend some time getting to know your target market. Next step… Step 3. Outline and Research At this point you have a pretty good idea of your article topic and format—basically, something that naturally leads to you promoting the paid product. So for this step you need to outline and research. Even if you know the tips or procedures you want to share in your post, it’s still a good idea to do some research. Your research can help with things such as: Finding a good quote or inspirational story to share at the beginning of the article. This is a great way to engage someone emotionally. Statistics and other data to back up your claims in the article. For example, you might share a sobering statistic about how much money an average online marketer makes. And then you can launch into an article about how the reader can avoid becoming another marketer who can barely cover the hosting bills. Ideas about how to structure your content. For example, if you notice that a lot of articles in your niche are big lists, then you might want to create something popular since it’s an in-demand format. Once your research is complete, then outline and organize your topics and subtopics in the way you want them to appear in your article. Then move onto the next step…

Sample Content Preview When somebody is making a video presentation and they call the viewer to action, it’s harder to resist. Assuming that the video has an amazing script and assuming that the video does a decent job laying the foundation for the sale, it’s harder to resist the call to action. Oftentimes, it hits you at the gut level. The video clearly explains what the benefits are. It also walks you through the emotional implications of your obtaining those benefits. It is no surprise that video calls to action are more likely to generate a sense of urgency in the mind of the viewer. They’re more likely to conclude that “they need” the product or service you’re offering. Compare this with a text call to action. Maybe the reader is distracted. Maybe the reader really wants to solve the problem, but somehow, somewhere your text call to action simply didn’t use the right wording. Whatever the case may be, there are just so many things that can pop loose and end up losing the sale. The great thing about video is that you’re able to tell a story at one level and connect with the viewer on an emotional level. In other words, you get to work on your prospect both in terms of rationality, reasonableness, and logic as well as through their emotions. This gives your video story a harder emotional punch than a chart that people can read to go through the benefits that a product brings to the table. A chart is lifeless. It speaks to reason and logic. As powerful as those may be, when you get the same information presented in a story by a flesh and blood human being looked directly at you and speaking to you in emotional tones, you cannot help but open up. You cannot help but pay attention. This is more likely to resonate rather than you reading through stuff. Maybe you have the time, maybe you don’t, maybe things connect in your mind and you’re willing to buy or you just have better things to do. With video, emotions and information appeals are more potent. Let me tell you, I've been doing content marketing for a long time. Getting people to sign on the dotted line or rip out their credit cards through the use of blog posts and content is a marathon. You don't convert them the first time, to try to get them on your mailing list. Once they’re on your mailing list, you then send an update after update directing them to one blog post after another. Ultimately, once they become familiar with your value proposition, maybe they would buy something. While this is a very powerful sales conversion process, video marketing speeds things up. If you’re able to tell a complete personal story through videos, people are more likely to develop the kind of emotional urgency that leads them to either feel like they know your product already or like your product enough after they’ve become familiar with it. Whatever the case may be, you Turbocharge the conversion process because you’re hitting your prospect on so many levels with so many different signals. You’re communicating with your voice, you’re reaching out through emotional and verbal signals in your video, you’re also presenting what would otherwise be dry facts in the most potent form of human to human interaction: The story. Let me tell you people can read a story, but it's doesn’t have strong of a punch when somebody is reading you the story and they’re guiding you emotionally through the twists and turns of the story with their voice. Keep the eight reasons above in mind if you are still on the fence regarding video marketing.