IMScalable Five Minute Marketing Podcast

   Today I want to explain the importance of using pre-sell pages with your native advertising. If you're new to the concept of Native Advertising, I've got a bunch of other videos and posts about it. I suggest you start by reading Definition an...

   What if you could increase the stickiness of your page or sales letter by using one simple, low-budget trick? I think you'd jump right on that! In this blog post, I'm going to show you a very low-budget way to increase the conversions on your sales page, homepage, your opt-in page, whatever it is that you use. Basically, if the page has a headline, this trick can help you increase conversions and stickiness on that page. I'm talking about animated headlines. What is an Animated Headline? The name kind of speaks for itself. An animated headline is a headline that has some eye-catching movement to it. It's a quick and easy split test to run on your pages that has the potential to give you a significant boost in results. Some people are calling the concept 'dynamic headlines.' I think 'animated' fits it better. So what does one of these 'animated headlines' look like? Well, when a visitor gets to the site, it may look like somebody's actually typing the headline out on the page. Or maybe when the page loads, the visitor sees a headline—but then slowly more words start to be added to the headline that catch the viewer's attention and give more meaning to the headline itself. (People have been getting really creative with this. If you Google animated headlines there's some options out there that you can check out.) Animating Your Headline There are 2 ways of 'animating' your headline, both are simple and easy to implement. You can use a script called typer.js or you can create a GIF image. You can create your GIF image in Photoshop. Simply create a GIF image and that will show a change the text. You can Google 'creating a GIF in photoshop' for some tutorials. However, keep in mind that a GIF is an image and won't look like webpage text. The other option is to do with a script called typer.js which will actually look like the text on the page is being manipulated and in many cases, can be more eye-catching than the GIF. You can easily get the typer.js script here, or by running a Google search and clicking on the first result. If you want some creative examples, I suggest you search YouTube for typer.js headlines. You'll probably need to hire a freelancer or a Fiverr guy to install it for you, if you really want to do it right. But it shouldn't be expensive at all. I suggest you get a freelance, because it is a little bit techy. But basically, you put a little bit of code on your page and now it will type your headline on to the page without needing to use an image. So try that as a split test on some of your pages and I bet you'll get a little bit of a boost on your conversions. Questions? Comments? Let's discuss in the comments section below... Related Articles 5 Things Every Sales Page Must Have Swipe and Deploy These Multi-Million Dollar Earning Headlines How to Write Winning Headlines, Blog Titles and Subject Lines The 20% of SEO that Creates 80% of the Results

   Today I'm going to show you a new visual design technique that'll help keep your viewers' eyes glued to the screen when they watch your VSL. Lately, it seems like every VSL looks almost the same. So keeping your audience engaged and listening to your sales message is going to take a switch-up—something they're not used to seeing all the time. Today, I'm going to show you how to take your existing sales letter and make it much more visually stimulating. It can drive your conversion rate up to levels you've never seen before. Or, if your sales letter used to work really well, but the conversions are starting to fall off—it could very well be because it's visually outdated. This new design technique will solve that problem for you. THE PROBLEM WITH TODAY'S VIDEO SALES LETTERS For a long time now, video sales letters, for the most part, have just been a white background with black text displaying the words that are being spoken. It's almost like somebody's reading to the viewer. Here's the thing, though. When I'm doing my Facebook ads, one of the most common complaints I get on the ads is “Why are you reading to me? Just show me the sales letter. I don’t need you to read to me,” or “Why does it go so slow?” So I think people are getting a little annoyed because that style has become so popular that seeing it so many times makes people feel like they're being sold something and it rubs them the wrong way (of course, it depends on your market, if your market doesn't see a lot of them this may not pertain to you). If your market sees a lot of video sales letters then this could help you drive your conversions even higher on your existing sales letter. After the white background with the black text, people started using the doodle board technique--it looks like a little pencil-drawing that illustrates whatever is being read to the viewer. But even that’s become rampant. So we always need to freshen things up. And the way that you can freshen it up is something that’s been working lately—it's a new visual design technique called kinetic typography. WHAT IS KINETIC TYPOGRAPHY? Remember the old powerpoint effects from back in the day? When words would come down on the screen and roll away off to the side. Sentences would come swirling onto the screen and then dissolve away. Or sometimes the text would slowly appear on the screen and then quickly whiz off to the side like a speeding bullet. Well that's actually cool again these days. Except that it's much more intense than powerpoint ever was. While you probably could use powerpoint for this, you really want to hire a professional. Here's an example that was done by a visual design student. This video does kinetic typography to the famous song “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen. You've probably heard this song lots and lots of times before. But click play and watch how your eyes stay glued to the screen as the words on the screen almost play out what is being sung in the song. Black and white is the strategy of yesteryear. It's very static, very slow and nothing's really moving. Now the words are moving and they're jumping over each other and the 'kinetic typography' (the moving words) is playing out exactly what's being said. It's visually stimulating and you can even imply certain ideas just by the movement of the words. If you want more examples and inspiration for your own sales letter, just search for 'kinetic typography' on Google or—even better—on YouTube and you'll see lots of different examples. And if you want the hook up on a really good source to get your video re-made using kinetic typography, send me an email and I'll share a great recommendation for who you can hire. I'm not just going to give that info to everybody. So hit me up at info@imscalable.com for my awesome typography connect.  Questions? Comments? Need more advice? Let's discuss it in the comments section. I always reply...

   Facebook's new Website Custom Audiences is brand spankin' new and I want to show you 3 really smart ways you can use the tool to make more sales. And if you're reading this and it's 2015, you're probably thinking “This isn't new!” But as I ...

   There's a new frontier in the Internet marketing and advertising world, and I believe it is going to be the future of online sales. I believe that this new technique is so powerful that it can kill webinars and Video Sales Letters (VSLs). ...

   Today I want to talk to you about a trick to increase your EPC - that’s your Earnings Per Click. This is the metric that makes you money. Forget about conversion rates, forget about all that soft stuff, I'm talking about things that put dollars in wallets: EPC. But before I show you how to easily increase your EPC—effectively increasing your sales and profits—I want to take a minute to explain EPC to you. EARNINGS PER CLICK (EPC): THE MOST IMPORTANT METRIC Let me explain EPC in the simplest of terms. When you calculate your EPC, you're figuring out exactly how much money you made (or lost) on each click in an online marketing campaign. Basically, you would divide how much money you made off the campaign by the TOTAL amount of clicks that you got. If you're not familiar with your EPC, I suggest you get started immediately. If you're not sure where to begin, I highly recommend you to start out by reading a previous post called Why Your Conversion Rate is a Liar & a Thief. It breaks down why your conversion rate is deceiving you and causing you to LOSE money while you actually think you're making it—and more importantly, that post introduces you to EPC and why it's the most important metric in online advertising. YOUR EPC WANTS SOME TLC What I'm about to tell you is extremely simple, yet not as obvious as one may think. The simple trick to increase your EPC is by increasing how much money someone is spending when they actually make an online purchase from you. Simple, I know. But few people pay as much attention as they should to their EPC. Unfortunately, that means that if you have just one product in your sales funnel, then you're going to be limited to just that finite amount of money that you can earn from each sale and this trick isn't possible for you. So to employ this super easy trick, you have to have some kind of upsell, multiple upsells or downsells. In other words, you have to have more than just one thing that you sell. If you've ever wondered why so many companies and 'gurus' and all those millionaires have upsells and downsells, now you know. It's because it increases their EPC. And when you increase the EPC—how much you're earning per click—that means you can spend more per click, which means you can bid out all the competitors. That’s how you win at this game. Increase the EPC, lower the CPC. THE EASIEST WAY TO INSTA-INCREASE YOUR EPC The trick to easily increase your EPC is to use an offer wall. An offer wall is simply a page that is designed to look like a 'Wall of Offers'. Marketers often employ the offer wall technique at the end of their sales funnel. That means that after a customer has made a purchase, the customer will then presented with several different offers at a discounted price. This lets the buyer see everything they could possible purchase right there, laid out neatly and organized into boxes for them. Then, the buyer is free to simply click on anything and everything that they would like to add to their original purchase. Naturally, this increases the average amount of each sale and therefor increases how much money you make on each click. WORKS FOR ANY PRODUCT IN ANY NICHE The offer wall is a strategy that I see top marketers using in almost any niche and for pretty much any product. I've seen affiliate marketers do. What they do is they drive traffic to a squeeze page and then as soon as the user goes through that squeeze page, there is an offer wall with multiple affiliate products that the user can buy. I've seen media buyers use this technique. Instead of acting as an affiliate and driving traffic to a page that has an offer for just one product, media buyers will straight up drive the traffic to an offer wall that has several affiliate offers right there together. That way, instead of basically having a 50-50 shot of making a sale or not on the single offer page,

   What happens when people watch your VSL longer? They buy more stuff. That's because they consume more of your sales message and they have more ammo to rationalize to themselves why they should purchase your product. If we know that to be true, then we understand that our goal is to get prospects to consume as much of our sales message as possible. That means if you have a booklet/brochure, you want the prospect to read as much as possible—preferably the whole thing. And if you have a Video Sales Letter (VSL), or online infomercial, selling your product—well, you want your prospects to watch for as long as possible. ONE SMALL TRICK TO KEEP YOUR PROSPECTS' EYES GLUED TO THE SCREEN What I'm talking about is a little snippet—a little image, really—that you can put underneath your VSL that will encourage people to watch your VSL longer. What you wanto to do, is put a graphic of little box underneath your VSL and then you're gonna cut it into 4 quarters. Then, you'll number each box from 1 to 4 and insert a short summary of what's in each quarter of your video. You want to make this summary interesting, juicy and attention-grabbing. So, basically, each one of those four boxes are a teaser that gives them a little bit of an idea of what's gonna be in your VSL at the different stages so they know to stay tuned for the good stuff. That way, some of the same people that would have simply exited your VSL only 30-seconds in, will stay to watch because they already know they want to get to part 3 or part 4. So it encourages them to wanna watch your video all the way through the end. Use this tactic. I've seen lots of people do it. I can't name names, but some of the top media buyers in the world are using this on their VSL pages. It's tested and proven, so you can't go wrong. Questions? Comments? Let's discuss in the comments section...   Related Articles 3 Ways to Optimize Your Video Sales Letter for More EPC How to Write the Perfect Sales Letter Every Time 5 Things Every Sales Page Must Have  

   In this post, we'll look into lead magnets. But first... WHAT IS A LEAD MAGNET? A lead magnet is basically something that you're using as an ethical bribe on your lead generation page to incentivize potential buyers to want to give you their name, email, phone number, address or whatever info it is that you're asking for. It's called a lead magnet because it's supposed to magnetize the leads to you and it just sounds freakin' cool. THE MOST COMMON TYPE OF LEAD MAGNET I've used a lot of different types of lead magnets. And the most common is the FREE report or FREE video - and they do work. I'm not saying they don’t work. Obviously they work, if they're being used all over the place. And if you're not incentivizing your prospects AT ALL, a free report or video is certainly better than having nothing at all. But that's not why I'm writing this post today. THE BEST TYPE OF LEAD MAGNET What I'm saying is there's something that works a little bit better. Instead of giving your prospect free information, i.e. free video or report, you can give your prospects a tool. Often times, when someone hears me say “tool” they instantly assume that I'm telling them to create a software. But NO! There are much simpler, less time-consuming tools you can create that your prospects will drool over. So when I say that you need to create a tool as your lead magnet, I don’t want you to automatically think of software. There are lots of different tools out there. What I mean by tool is, something that's useful. So in my business, I give away a spreadsheet. It's a spreadsheet of traffic resources I personally use and it's a great tool for my prospects. I'm not giving them information that they need to consume and retain and then put to use. I've already done the work for them and now I'm giving them a tool to save them time. Some other cool, yet simple tools that I've seen other marketers giving away: A list of Wordpress plugins. A calculator. A toolbar. A screensaver. And yes, if you want to go as far as creating a free software to magnetize leads to you, that would work great. It's all a matter of how much your leads are worth and how much you can afford to spend on magnetizing them to you. DON'T STRIVE FOR AVERAGE WHEN YOU CAN EASILY GO BEYOND So at the end of the day, what I'm trying to tell you is one of the best lead magnets I've ever used to get the highest opt-in rates has always been some sort of tool. The FREE reports, FREE videos—they work—but they get average conversion rates. When I use some sort of tool as the lead magnet, my conversions go up much higher. How do you magnetize leads? Tell me in the comments section below... Related Articles 2 Sneaky Ways to Turn Your Facebook Fans Into Leads 3 Ways to Monetize Leads That Don't Buy 7 Marketing Books I'd Run Through Fire to Save 60,000 Leads Per Month Like a Boss