Author: Pam Ivey

The 12 Best Places to Add a Sign Up Form

We’ve all seen the typical email sign up form on the side bar of a website. It’s pretty much commonplace.

But did you know there are other places that can work just as effectively?

Make time to review these to make sure you’re not missing out on revenue opportunities.

Now, let’s have a look!

1) Your Home Page

Some business owners use a landing page as their home page so they can collect email addresses right away before sending the visitor on to read the content. If you make this as unobtrusive as possible and make it easy for your audience member to click through to the content you’ll increase subscription rate exponentially.

2) The Feature Box

Many themes today have a feature box for “featured content”. Why not put a sign up box there instead? You can also just use the spot that is “above the fold” and the first thing people see when they sign onto your website. Tell them why people sign up and give plenty of information in the feature box.

3) The Side Bar

Yes, you can still use the side bar up at the top right for a sign up box for your email list! Even though many will ignore it, those who like signing up for free things will look for it here since it’s the most common and popular spot for an email sign up form.

4) A Pop-Up Form

You might not like this idea, but if you have doubts you should let them go. Popups of all kinds work. The trick is to make them unobtrusive and easy to bypass. Create copy that grabs a visitor’s attention and makes them want to sign up. You can have popups, pop-unders, pop ups that come up when people are leaving the page, sliders that slide up from the bottom and more. The concept is the same. Make it interesting, and make it easy to get out of.

5) Social Media

There is a way to put an email list sign up on every single social network that you may use. You can usually put it in the profile area someplace or you can put it more aggressively as the landing page depending on which social media service it is. It’s wise to have this on all your social media networks.

6) Site Registration

There is something called the “hello bar” which is above the menu on the very top of the page. You can actually ask for people to register for your site to get free access to all of your content while giving them access to some of the content without registering. Offer them something special to register outside of content too and you’ll get more signups.

7) The Footer

You might think this area is just a waste of space, but the truth is, some people do look at the footer. They go there to read your disclaimers or they end up there due to reading through your content. You may as well put a sign up form there too in order to get those audience members who prefer to read every word first.

8) On Blog Posts

Before and after your blog posts you can put unobtrusive sign up forms that will get results. It can be as simple as, “Do you like this content? If so sign up for more.” Include a space for their email address so they can learn more or get notified of more content like what they just read.

9) Your About Page

The about page is probably one of the most misused spaces on a business website. People get confused because it says “about us” so they write it “about us” but it should really be written with your audience in mind about be about them. Tell them about themselves and how your website benefits them and then give them an opportunity to sign up and learn more.

10) Resource Page

Most business websites have a resource page today that lists tools and other information for the reader all in one organized area. This is a great place to include a newsletter sign up. Because after all, if people want more great resources, they should sign up, right?

11) Menu Bar

Include a spot for newsletter sign up on your menu bar. When someone clicks “sign up” or “newsletter” they can then get either a quick pop up that lets them sign up now or a squeeze page that gives them more information about the email list and what they’re signing up for.

12) Exclusive Content Access

There aren’t any hard and fast rules that say you have to give the public free access to all your content. You should. in fact. put most of your content in your email marketing messages.

Your audience is always a very important consideration.
How to Better Understand How Your Customers Think

Understanding how your customers think can help you immeasurably.

Imagine being able to talk to them in a manner that they not only understand but relate to.

Marketing isn’t about appealing to the masses and communicating with a group. It’s about making every single person you’re marketing to feel as if you’re talking directly to them.

Your prospect wants to know that you not only understand their plight, you feel their pain. You know exactly what they’re dealing with and you know how to help them.

To be able to communicate that effectively with your customers and prospects means understanding them at their core level. You need to know how they think.

But that’s not always so easy. After all, empathy only goes so far.

You can imagine what their life is like and how they feel but it’s difficult to know and understand. The good news is that there are ways for you to get a better understanding. In fact, many organizations create customer profiles for their various types of customers.

These profiles are in depth and describe a day in the life of each different type of customer. For example, a soccer mom’s life and challenges may be quite different from a single working professional but they both may have the need for fast and healthy meals.

Let’s take a look at some of the tools and resources at your disposal to learn more about your customer’s mindset.

1. Analytics – Use your analytics for more than identifying next month’s blog post topics.

How are people interacting on your website? What is their path? What topics do they respond to and when do they take the next step to become part of your community? For example, when do they sign up for your email list or post a comment on your blog?

2. Read What They Write – Social media is vastly underused. Most business owners focus on spreading their message.

However, it’s a gold mine for learning more about your customers and prospects. What do they talk about? What language do they use? (You can mimic this language in your content.)

What pages do they like and what comments or posts do they share? What gets them fired up? Use social media, including your own blog comments, to learn more about how your customer thinks.

3. Sales Reports – How does your customer buy? When do they buy? How long does it take them to trust you and what seals the deal and finally earns that trust and that first purchase? Learn to identify trends in your sales and you’ll learn more about your customers.

There are services that you can hire to learn more about your customers. They can create detailed customer profiles. If you have room in your budget, this can be a useful investment. However, you also have the ability to reach out to your customers personally and spend time getting to know them. Get involved with your prospects and customers and learn how to connect.
Back End Sales Techniques

Selling to your existing customers is one of the most valuable skills you could develop as a marketer.

Because your customers already have trust built up with you and you can market to them over a longer period of time, back-end sales techniques are a little different than front-end techniques.

Most Importantly: Have a Good First Product

More important than any other technique is to have a stellar first product.

If someone buys a $20 product from you and the quality is shoddy, chances are they’re not going to buy a $200 product from you.

On the other hand, if they spend $20 with you and the quality is off the charts, they’re going to be much more willing to spend $200 with you next time.

Thank You Page Upsells

Selling someone a second product when they’ve already purchased is one of the most effective techniques around.

This was one of the most successful techniques for McDonald’s. You’ve heard the line: “Would you like fries with that?”

Likewise, if you were selling bed sheets, you might ask after a customer placed their order if they’d also like pillow covers.

When someone decides to buy something, they’ve switched into “buying mode.” They’re much more likely to buy something else at that moment than any other.

Take advantage of that with the Thank You Page technique.

Cross Selling During Checkout

Another common technique is to sell other related products during the checkout process.

This is slightly riskier than selling on the Thank You page, as you risk alienating some buyers by trying to sell them more products before they can purchase what they wanted to purchase.

That said, the gains from using this technique often offset the risk. You have to test it to see what the real-world results are, of course.

One good example of this is GoDaddy. Before you checkout, they’ll try to sell you all kinds of products, but it’s still fairly easy to checkout and buy a domain with them.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is the ultimate back-end selling technique. If you can’t make the sale today, you can make it tomorrow – Or next week, next month or even next year.

If you have your customer’s email, aim to build a relationship with them by sending them useful emails that they’ll actually want to read.

Over time, they’ll come to trust you. Once you have their trust, all you need is great copywriting that gets them excited about a product to make a sale.

These back-end sales techniques are used by both giant companies like Amazon.com to small mom and pop online shops to great success. Apply them to your own business and you may be shocked at just how effective they truly are.
Website Traffic – Where Are You Sending Them?
Alright so you have them hooked … they are on your social media sites and your blog, they are watching videos and listening to your videos and webinars.

Great! Now what? They want more so you direct them to your website.

But where on your website is the question?

Should you send them to:
• A general home page?
• Your blog?
• About You page?

The Answer:
Send them to pages where you know you get the highest amount of conversions. The tried, tested and true pages of your website. Let’s have a look….

Create Special Landing Pages

Get ‘em while they’re hot! They have already clicked through so you know you have their interest. Don’t lose them by sending them to a home page. Make a landing page for the audience that gives them a “special offer” including a way to sign up for your email list. Imagine how happy someone who clicks through will feel when they see a special welcome message and a special offer just for them.

Add Links at End of Blog Posts

Once you identify highly converting pages that you already have, why not link to them under new blog posts? If people are reading through your blog posts they will likely want to click through and read more. If what they click through to is a highly converting sales page, opt-in page, or landing page all the better.

Create a Menu Link

Any high converting page deserves its very own menu link on your website or blog. That way if people come to your website in a way that you can’t control, then they will see your menu choices and click through to one of your highest converting pages on their own. This is a great way to increase email list sign ups. The menu item might say “Get My Book Free”.

Make a Sidebar Graphic with Link

Take any high converting pages of your own and make a graphic that links to that high converting page. Why should all your side bar information send people away from your website to affiliate programs? It shouldn’t. You can sell to the list members after they join, using the side bar space to entice people to sign up for your list is a better option.

Use Text Links

On your resources page, or in your side bar, or within the context of your content you can link to any high converting pages using text links. Try not to do that more than twice within any page of content, but you’ll find that leading your audience to these high converting pages will increase email sign ups.

Use the Famous Words: Learn More

People want to know more, learn more and get more. Use the words that get results and you’ll get more people to sign up. When you know that you have certain high converting pages, don’t hide them, lead everyone to them.

Understand that your job, if you want to call it that, is to provide exceptional information for your audience so that they want to get more and learn more and know more.

I want to hear from you!
- What social media site do you get the most conversions from?
- What pages do you direct your readers to?
7 Reasons Why You May Be Disorganized

Disorganization can literally cost you your business, and even in some cases, your entire family.

The stress that disorganization can cause a person is enormous. Things are often not done on time, everyone is always late everywhere, and you probably never know where to start and aren’t even ready to start when it’s time to start.

All of this stress caused by disorganization can also affect your health. Its just not good on any front to live in chronic disorganization. If you consider yourself disorganized, here are seven reasons why.

1) You Don’t Have a System

If you’ve ever had a job that already had organization and systems in place, it is likely you managed to maintain that organization at least for that job. Everything had a place, and everything had a reason, and there was a set system to do what needed to be done. That’s what you have to set up for your business and your life if you want to be successful long term without stress.

2) You Don’t Have the Right Space

Trying to run a business without the space you need can be near impossible. It doesn’t mean you have to have an entire office. But at the very least you need a space where you can set up your computer in a comfortable manner and have a roll-away file cabinet to use for keeping all your work and important documents together. The right space can also include the space on your computer since many offices run paperless now.

3) You Lack Focus

If you don’t have something specific to focus on, you might find yourself doing a little of this, and a little of that, and never getting anything done. If you’re literally running in circles instead of focusing on each task at hand, you will end up feeling worn out but having nothing finished. Find a way to place your focus on each task until you have an end result. After all, thats the part that matters most.

4) You Have Too Much on Your Plate

Many people get disorganized due to the simple fact that they have too much to do. There are only so many hours in the day. If you find that you’re in this predicament then you need to get help. Find tasks you dislike doing and outsource them to people who like doing them, can likely do them better, and for less than what it costs you to do them yourself. Remember that your time has a value. If you can spend time on tasks that make more money and that you like, you should.

5) You Tend to Procrastinate

Many people claim that they work best under deadline at the last minute. You’ll hear all types of people saying that. But, it’s simply not true. They’ll never really know how well they could have done something had they given themselves time to do it right, so it’s really hard to say. If you tend to procrastinate you need to get to the bottom of why you’re putting things off to the last minute. Sometimes procrastination is a symptom of a whole other problem.

6) You Think Multitasking Is Good

One of the biggest misnomers of the last decade is the idea that multitasking is good or even something people can do well. The truth is, studies have proved many times over that multitasking doesn’t work. It pays off more to concentrate on one project or one task at a time (without concurrently checking email and allowing other interruptions!). Try it out and see how better you perform.

7) You Are a Poor Decision Maker

Many people who are disorganized are also poor decision makers. They spend far too long making a decision, and often they wait so long that the decision is made for them. So, they make what they think are easy and quick decisions to lay one more pile of paper on the desk because they cannot decide what file it belongs to, and likely don’t even have a file folder for it yet.

You can learn to be organized. If you haven’t tried before, pick one thing at a time to work on each month, make a plan for 30 days to follow, and then add to it the following month.

If you try very hard and still having trouble succeeding, there are coaches and counselors that can help you. Or simply get an accountability buddy and learn how to focus on one thing at a time. Odds are you’ll get much farther than you think.
Confirmation Pages: Your Key to Increasing Conversions

Congratulations! You’ve convinced someone to sign up for your email list. Obviously you are doing something right – right?

But it’s not over yet – that is it’s not over until they’ve opted in.

The law requires a double opt-in for every subscriber so they can be sure they’re the ones who signed up for your email list.

Unfortunately we lose about 25 percent of the people who sign up originally because they don’t finish the opt-in process.

What is the best way to ensure you are doing all you can to gain that second opt-in?

The answer is in your Confirmation Page. Through the years my business has taught me that smartly crafted confirmation pages are one of the best ways to help you get that second opt in.

Here are some ideas to try!

Express Gratitude and say Thanks!
I know this seems like a no-brainer but if you’re not personalizing the opt-in message that your autoresponder service provides, you may not actually be saying thank you in a way that resonates with your audience.

The very first thing they should see after submitting their address to the form is a thank you page, let them know that you appreciate them. Making a customer feel valued is the key to customer service and when a customer experiences great customer service they come back!

Set Expectations
Use that page to set expectations about your email list. Remind them what they signed up to receive, what they’ll get when they complete the process, and how smart they are for doing it. You can even use the page to give them more ideas of what they can get from being part of your email list.

Cross- Confirm
A thank you page is a great place to mention other products or services you are selling. For example:

Thank you for registering for ABC products. We can’t wait to get you started!

Did you know we give free give-aways each week on our Blog? Opt in here for our Blog at www.ABCblog.com.

Give a Coupon
Every shopper loves a deal! To ensure the customer uses the second opt-in, include a coupon to another product. Make sure to mention in your coupon details how valued they are as a customer and that you’re looking forward to their next visit!

Provide Opt-In Instructions
This is very important because not everyone really understands how to sign up for an email list when it has double opt-in. You can show pictorial instructions with a list to tell them what to do and how to do it.

What’s more is by the time they read your confirmation page, they’ll have surely received the opt-in email so you can instruct them to find it and let them know how to properly opt-in.

Be Yourself
You want to try and match your brand’s personality on the confirmation page. Don’t try to change your personality for the confirmation page. That’s the problem with using the built in opt-in instructions, whether text or video, it’s not you and doesn’t feel familiar.

Personalize everything to fit in with your brand! Lately I have been sending out more personal messages to my subscribers and I have to be honest I was overwhelmed at the comments I received back. Sometimes a little honesty and a glimpse into you as a person goes a long way.

Finally, deliver awesomeness in every message that you send your audience. The better the content is that you send your members, the better testimonials you’ll get, the more sales you’ll make and the larger your list will grow with a targeted audience of willing participants.

So here’s your task for this week. Pick one and of the above and implement it and let me know how it worked / didn’t work for you.After all we are all a work in progress – let’s share our successes and challenges and learn from them!
Building a Successful and Long-Lasting Customer Loyalty Strategy
Building a long-lasting profitable business means building customer loyalty that lasts.
- How do you get your customers to come back time and again?
- How do you get them to tell your friends about you?
- How do you build up so much goodwill that customers will overlook your occasional mistakes?
- How do you make your customers love you?
Here’s how.

Be Undyingly Dedicated to Customer Satisfaction

The best and most successful companies in the world are companies that care deeply about the customer experience.

Amazon.com was not the first company to sell books online. In fact, they were number four or five to come on the market. The reason Amazon dominated the market was because they had a customer-satisfaction focus. They made sure that everyone who came to Amazon was satisfied. Today, they boost a conversion rate of over 12% as a result of the brand they built up.

The same can be said of PayPal. PayPal was also not the first to launch an online payment system. Many competitors came into the space after PayPal – including eBay, which launched their own competing payment system.

People kept coming back to PayPal time and again because PayPal had an incredible focus on making the customer experience smooth and easy. They kept the amount of steps you needed to take to a bare minimum and adapted to customer demands, while other competitors failed to do so.

Eventually eBay had to shut down their version of the company and acquire PayPal, because it was just so clear that PayPal had so much customer loyalty that they couldn’t compete.

These are just two examples. An unerring focus on customer satisfaction and the customer experience is the number one most important thing for building customer loyalty.

Ask for Feedback in Multiple Media

Asking for feedback is integral to providing a great customer experience. You need to know what your customers like and don’t like about their experience in order to innovate.

Ask for your customer’s feedback in many different media. The most basic method is to ask for feedback via online surveys. But don’t stop there. Ask for their feedback by phone and in person. Watch your customers use your product and see where they get stuck.

Ask for feedback from people who bought, from people who might buy but haven’t and from people who decidedly didn’t buy. Get feedback from everyone.

Only with diligent feedback can you build a really great company.

The bottom line is this: Building a great company means building a brand and a product that customers love. In order to do that, you need to pour all your energy into the customer experience. Everything else, including marketing, comes second to building a brand and product that customers can feel proud to be associated with.
Be Confident of Your Set Priorities

Let’s face it, we could all use a little help achieving our goals and improving our productivity. The key to doing this is to figure out what you want and make a list of your priorities.

The first step in accomplishing your goals is to set them.

A long-term goal is essential, but also include steps you need to achieve that goal. This way, you not only have small goals to help monitor your progress and motivate yourself with your achievements, but you also have a built-in way of knowing that you’ve thought in depth about what you’re doing and are acting wisely. Once you have your steps, turn them into to-do lists. It may help to have daily lists, along with weekly and monthly ones as well.

Once you’ve set your priorities and made your to do lists, you need to stick with it.Sure, if things change, you may need to do some tweaking here and there, but you put a lot of thought into your lists and you need to trust your own judgment. If you keep backtracking and reprioritizing, youre never going to get anything done.

For most of us, it is generally easiest to make a list and then pick and choose which things wed like to do off the list. The problem with this is that something you like doing more may not be as urgent, and the more important items will be put off until the last minute when you absolutely have to get them done.

A better idea is to look at your list and pick the one thing that youre dreading doing. Sure, it might take you a while to get it done, but once you do, you’ll not only be less likely to procrastinate, youll also have a sense of accomplishment and momentum to get through the rest of your work.

A key part of time management is being realistic. Many people think that if they set lofty goals, they’ll get that extra push from the perceived time crunch and actually meet them. The truth is, if you set unrealistic goals, you’re rarely going to meet them. If you continue to not meet your goals, you’re going to become discouraged and actually lower productivity and work quality.

One of the most important steps in time management is taking responsibility for your actions and how you manage what you do during your days. When we fail to meet a deadline, many of us blame it on other things, like a great show that was on TV. This leads us to believe there is nothing we can do about meeting deadlines, which just isn’t true.

You need to own your own time. If you don’t meet a deadline, figure out what you did wrong and what you can do better next time to fix it. With a little effort and a lot of conviction, you can stick with your plans and achieve your goals.
Why You Should Use Popup Forms and Ways to Use Them

Many new online marketers are, quite frankly, afraid of popups. They think they’re intrusive, obnoxious and kind of a PITA.

But as a business owner and online marketing manager, I have to tell you that popups offer enormously good conversion rates.

In fact, in some cases it has been proven that popups work more than 1000% better than other types of opt-in forms. I know …. who would have thought, right?

The truth is you need to know how to use opt-ins effectively in order to get a good return.

Through the years I’ve learned it’s imperative you understand who your audience is. At the same time, you might be surprised to know there are certain audiences who don’t respond well to popups. The best thing you can do is test the waters.

Here are the most popular ways to use popups:

1. Timed – This type of popup only shows to the audience once they’ve spent a certain amount of time on your website or landing page. You can set it to show after sixty seconds or even two minutes, it’s up to you.

2. Contextual – This type of popup only comes out when your audience is reading certain parts of your website and some will only pop out if the consumer’s mouse touches the right text.

3. Scrolling – This is a great way to give someone more information as they scroll down your website reading your information. This popup only comes out when your reader has consumed a certain amount of information and scrolled to a certain spot on the page.

4. Exit – This type of popup shows only when the technology believes your visitor is about to leave the website. They might click the back button, or the close button, and this is a final effort to get someone to sign up for more or to read more.

5. Slide – This type of popup doesn’t look like it’s popping up at all, instead it kind of slides out of the side bar and stays out of the way of the main content that your visitor is consuming. This can work well for people who hate popups.

There are ways to ensure that a popup works best for you aside from researching your audience to ensure they won’t leave. Hint: Super techy people often dislike popups… go figure.

Your Message is Most Important

When you choose to use a popup, ensure the message you present is the right message to the visitor. The popup should:
• catch the reader’s eye
• have relevant copy and trigger words
• present benefits over features
• have a very strong CTA

Remember: You are only going to get a few seconds to get the reader to look at the popup, use them wisely.

Consider Your Audience

Your audience will determine how effective popups are. For some reason super techy people don’t like popups that much and will often get mad and leave the site when they see one. The only way you can know for sure is to conduct tests and study your audience.

To start, here’s what I want you to do:

Ask yourself:
• Who is my audience?
• Do I have more than one audience?
• What does my audience need?
• What do they want?
• What do they value?
• What is most important to them?
• What are they least likely to care about?

Give it a try!
5 Tips to Make Your Press Release Brilliant

Press Releases can help your business gain publicity through the media. Having media attention gives your business credibility. Here are some tips to boost your press release’s appeal. .

Correct Format: There is a format that press releases need to follow. Make sure your yours is written in the correct format, as you will want it to look as professional as possible. It is also a good idea to double-check the grammar, punctuation and spelling before you send it in for submission.

Keep it Clear and Concise: Your press release should be no longer than two pages. Media outlets receive lots of press releases and don’t have time to read a ten page report. Keeping your writing clear and concise allow you to fit in the important facts without going over the two page limit. As you decide what information to include, answer the following questions: who, what, why, where, when, and how.

What Is The Reader Going To Gain: Give your press releases a call to action. Include something that is going to inspire readers to go to your event, visit your website, attend your grand opening, etc. Writing a blatant ad will be obvious. Incorporate the features and benefits of what you are promoting, and give information on what it will do for your target market. If you are promoting a new food processor, simply stating that it is smaller and takes up less space than previous models isn’t enough. However, writing the information as “the new model is smaller and takes up less space, allowing our customers to have the full chopping power of our larger model, but also save precious counter space” lets the reader know how the new model will help them.

Make It Interesting: If your writing is boring, no one is going to want to read it. Try to find a balance between straight facts and excitement. Using the example of the food processor above, announcing that “our new food processor will be available this spring” isn’t as catchy as “our new space-saving food processor will be available this spring, just in time to help you chop fresh vegetables for your summer salads”.

Remember Your Target Market: As you write and submit your press releases, keep your target market in mind at all times. By keeping your audience in mind, you will be able to focus on what information to include and where to submit your press releases. For instance, if you are promoting an event related to children’s health, submitting a press release to the travel editor of your local paper isn’t going to help you.

The media cannot run a story on every press release they receive, but implementing these tips will help you write press releases that grab, and keep, the media’s attention. The old saying “practice makes perfect” rings true for press releases; the more you write them, the better you will get.