In theory, internet marketing is easy: attract traffic, make sales.
In practice, making sense of it and finding out what works and what doesn’t is nowhere as easy.
There are so many conflicting reports and things change over time – sometimes gradually, often crazily fast.
So how can you make sense of it all?
Email marketing to your list is essential but it’s a bit like walking a tightrope with no safety net.
When you get it right, it seems like all your wishes have been met,
When you get it wrong, that’s a different story.
Whilst you can’t please everyone, there are some things you can do to tip the odds in your favour.
Reviews can make the difference to a product’s sales.
A bad review in a newspaper can close a play.
A lot of cinema goers will check a site like Rotten Tomatoes to find out what the critics and the public think of a film before deciding which movie to watch.
Car dealers offer test drives – a short term review copy – to help individuals decide whether to buy a car.
Reviews work. Especially honest ones. And they can be a relatively easy way to make affiliate sales.
We can’t multi-task.
Try to pat your head with one hand and rub your stomach with the other and you’ll quickly find that out.
We might pretend we can multi-task but that’s about it. Various studies have shown that people who concentrate on one thing at a time get much further ahead than those who try to run in every direction at once.
Concentrating on one thing at a time gets much better results.
Deep down, you know that.
But – if you’re like most people I know – you struggle to put the theory into practice.
So how can you concentrate better? Whether that’s with your internet marketing or anything else you want to accomplish more?
We’re all creatures of habit.
You’ve got internet marketing habits – things you do regularly in your business – but are they helping or hindering you?
There’s no quick answer as we’re all different but the first step is to work out what your internet marketing habits are.
OK, I admit it, the premise of this post is weird.
After all, why would you want to unlearn the internet marketing skills you’ve built up over the years?
You’ve spent time and money learning all those different parts of the internet marketing jigsaw – creating content, making videos, contributing to forums, maybe guest posting, finding photos and videos that could go viral.
All sorts of stuff.
And some of it is still useful.
Scarcity sells.
We’re hard wired to want scarce stuff, it’s part of our survival instinct.
The trouble is, most things aren’t really scarce.
Especially not downloadable products where, unless the internet stops working totally, they can be available at the click of a mouse.
So how can you ethically use scarcity to increase your sales, whether those sales are for your own product or one that you’re selling as an affiliate?
If you believe some sales letters, you can set your internet marketing on something close to perpetual marketing.
But does that kind of promise really work in practice?
The short answer is “no”.
The longer answer is “sometimes, kind of, but for nothing even close to perpetual really”.
There are lots of reasons for this and I’m going to delve into a few of them here,
Web pages and advertising on the web only work one way: you have to know what you want before you see web pages and adverts for it.
This problem is maybe the biggest elephant in the room with regard to the web.
If you don’t know something exists, you won’t search for it and you won’t see adverts or web pages for it.
It could be the biggest thing since sliced bread but you’re blissfully unaware of it.
There’s no easy answer that I’m aware of but let’s at least examine the problem:
Refunds are a fact of life. They happen in almost every business to a greater or lesser extent, even when no refund option is given.
How you deal with them affects your customer relationship and therefore affects your business.
The first thing to remember is that it’s almost certainly nothing personal.
You can’t please all of the people all of the time.
For instance, my products vary in style but are usually “how to” products or “watch while I do this” products.