5: MARKET IT

Marketing your message

How to build a following of over 35000

Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

In 2008 AuthorHouse, a US self-publishing company, signed up more than 40 000 authors, distributed over 60 000 books and sold 2.5 million copies. This sounds like a lot, but it represents an average of only around 42 sales per title.

Today there is a common misconception that a message will market itself if it's captivating enough. That's uncertain at best. An insider contact revealed to me that Rhonda Byrne, the author of the famous bestseller (and movie) The Secret, refused to do interviews for media outlets with an audience below one million. She has sold a staggering 19 million copies worldwide, which clearly demonstrates that it's not how much marketing you do that creates success: the key factor is where you focus your efforts. Even His Holiness the Dalai Lama has a publicist to help spread the word about his upcoming book releases and tours.

The public perception is that these successful individuals took their products to market and instantly became best-selling authors without a marketing or PR strategy behind them. But all marketing is not created equal. It's time for us to pull back the curtain to see what it really takes to be successful.

The goal of marketing is not just to focus on the 20 per cent of activities that produce 80 per cent of the results. It's to focus on the 1 to 2 per cent of activities that generate the 98 to 99 per cent of income.

You've got life-changing ideas in your grasp, and now that you're clear on what your message is, and you've discovered how to package it, it's time to monetise it by marketing it like a pro. Think of it as a boulder sitting atop a hill — we need to give it a push to create momentum to get it rolling. I'm going to give you a running start now by providing you with strategies to help you build an online following of 35 000 plus.

To achieve this you need to follow a process in which you first test the viability of your product. Based on the results, you then launch it into a wider market. Finally you put it on autopilot so you can make money while you sleep. Let's begin with …

Phase 1: Test your product — the 7-Day Quick Fire Test

The 7-Day Quick Fire Test allows you to launch a new product on a shoestring budget and assess its potential for generating profits before it is released to a wider market. Testing digital products is quick and painless. There's none of the hassle of testing physical products and delivering them to a shopfront or pop-up store. This initial phase is the most critical as it establishes the foundation for generating six-to seven-figure revenues.

We'll begin by testing your product idea using Facebook, a social media platform that is comprehensively embedded in our society. As an initial text case you can set a budget as low as $25 per day for seven days ($175 total spend). It would be unwise to share with you Facebook's marketing particulars in these pages, given the speed at which its practices change. To learn more about Facebook advertising, and for up-to-the-minute recommended training programs and resources that make it easy even for the novice, visit www.benangel.com.au/flee9-5.

The 7-Day Quick Fire Test campaign aims to ascertain:

• the product's viability and profitability
• the conversion rate
• the success of targeted demographic
• changes to be made to the sales page
• which ads are clicked on most and which copy appeals to the consumer (so that it can be rolled out on a larger scale).

The test is designed to reduce time wastage and speed up the process of taking a product to market (before doing a major launch), which could yield you $20 000 or more within a month. Let's go through it step by step:

1. Pick a platform to market through and a product to promote

Visit www.facebook.com/advertising and create an account for your initial test campaign. (If you are convinced that your target market isn't on Facebook, set up a Google AdWords account by visiting www.google.com/adwords. It takes only a few minutes.) Select a product under the $100 price point. It is critical to choose a product that has a low barrier to entry. Once a customer purchases one of your introductory offers, and rapport and trust have been established, you can then introduce them to your other, more expensive products.

2. Create your ads

Create 10 ad variations to promote your product, and direct the traffic straight to your online sales page. For details on how to set up an online sales page and shopping cart, and to view live examples, visit www.benangel.com.au/flee9-5.

3. Set your budget

Set a budget for how much you would like to spend each day and how much you are willing to pay per click to your web page. Target your ‘ideal' customer based on the 3X Customer Formula (see p. 50). If using Google AdWords, visit www.googlekeywordtool.com to find out more about Google's handy tool for finding keywords and phrases that your customers are typing in when searching (such as how to get new clients, how to find a relationship or what to say on a first date). The more specific you are, the higher your conversion rates will be.

Ensure your keywords and phrases reflect the copy on your sales landing page — an insider tip Google advertising pros rarely share. For Facebook, select your age group and the ‘interests' your customers are attracted to (such as weight loss,personal development or small business). Be specific. If this is all new to you, visit www.benangel.com.au/flee9-5 for more information on the ins and outs of getting your campaign set up.

4. Revise and relaunch

Track your ads over a seven-day period and systematically create new ones and shut down ones that aren't being clicked on and aren't yielding sales. Re-create the ads that are working and relaunch them by changing one element at a time — that is, first the imagery, then the copy and then the demographic they are marketed to. Finally, and most importantly, use the information from your test to tweak your online sales page. If it completely missed the mark, duplicate this page and create versions a, b, c and d — as many as necessary. As with your ads, change only one thing at a time — for example, the main headline on your sales page; in the next version you could change the sales video script. This isolates and allows you to identify elements that aren't working. Conduct the Quick Fire Test and assess your results a second, third, fourth and fifth time.

Remember, the fastest way to profits is to fail fast, fail early and fail often. Test and measure as you move through this process and continue to tweak, revise and relaunch until you've nailed the winning formula for your specific offering in your specific industry.

To help make things even easier, table 5.1 (overleaf) illustrates a seven-day schedule for your first Quick Fire Test campaign. As you'll soon see, it takes just an hour or less a day over a seven-day period to trial your first product.

Table 5.1: the 7-Day Quick Fire Test schedule

Creating ads that convert

You may or may not choose to test your product's viability via Facebook or Google AdWords. Either way, you have a finite amount of space in which you can run copy that converts. Simplifying your marketing message is at the heart of its success. This is where your outcome-focused marketing efforts come full circle. Condense your copy down to its essence as we did earlier (for example, ‘how to lose 7 kg in 7 days').

As an illustration, table 5.2 offers an example for each of the four key profit categories discussed earlier — business, career, love and life. Drill down to your subcategories to define them further, and ensure you focus on your customers' outcomes first and foremost.

Table 5.2: examples of ad campaigns that convert

Tracking conversions

Now your ad is set up, it's time to put it to the test. But before you do, it's essential that you leverage the tools that Facebook and Google provide you, including conversion tracking. Google and Facebook offer you unique codes that can be embedded on the ‘confirmation' page that delivers your product to the customer. This code can then track back to the precise ad that the customer acted on, giving you the power to shut down ads that are getting clicks but no conversions, thereby quickly lowering your costs and increasing your profit margins. A quick online search will provide you or your developer with instructions on how to embed this code on your site from the relevant advertising platforms. In most cases it's as simple as copying and pasting a line of code.

For a list of insider tips, tools and resources to make the most out of your 7-Day Quick Fire Test campaign, visit www.benangel.com.au/flee9-5.

Critical mass marketing: the tsunami effect

When an idea reaches critical mass there is no stopping the shift its presence will induce.

— Marianne Williamson

Most entrepreneurs proactively seek the elusive tipping point at which a new idea or product finds its own momentum and hits critical mass. Now you understand the simple process of developing an idea, packaging it and then testing it in the marketplace, it's time to uncover strategies that create a tsunami-like effect when launching it.

After all, it has the potential to provide you with your annual salary within a space of a few short weeks or months.

Where many go wrong is in launching their product gradually, so they make ripples in the marketplace that last only momentarily, as if they were skimming stones across a lake's surface. Launching a product for the first time not only establishes you in the market, it potentially creates a tipping point at which other opportunities are born. It provides established agents of influence with the opportunity to reinvent a potentially dying brand. Take Miley Cyrus, for example.

Building the buzz: what we can learn from Miley Cyrus's VMA publicity stunt

Miley Cyrus gave a controversial, sexually provocative performance at the 2013 Video Music Awards in which she violated a large foam finger (and my eyes) live on stage. Was this a young lady heading down the same path of self-destruction Britney Spears took when she shaved off her hair? Hardly. This strategic move made an artist who had almost completely fallen into obscurity the talk of the world.

Miley's second single, ‘Wrecking Ball', from her new album, Bangerz, was strategically released the very next day and subsequently downloaded more than 90 000 times, breaking records by garnering 19.3 million video views in its first day online. Three weeks and 175 million views later, Miley had successfully re-established herself as an artist to be reckoned with by stealing the limelight from Lady Gaga's new release, Applause, and Katy Perry's Roar.

Even though her stunt attracted worldwide criticism, Cyrus achieved her objective: her sales went through the roof in spite of serious competition. Personal responses aside, it's impossible to argue that Miley didn't pull off a supremely successful marketing campaign, the likes of which we haven't seen in years. When launching a new product, we can surely learn from it. Above all, Miley's timing was impeccable. Most entrepreneurs fail to recognise that timing can make or break a launch, and good timing can increase a fan base by thousands. You'll learn more about this in phase 2 (overleaf).

As a dear friend, professional speaker Joanna Martin, puts it, when it comes to launching an event, ‘There's not one way to put fifty people in a room. There's fifty ways to put one person in a room'. Whatever the format — whether an event, book, online course or digital download — the same principles apply when launching a new product or service. Two types of marketing campaigns that can help are the enlightened launch and the evergreen campaign.

Phase 2: Launching your product to the wider marketplace: the enlightened launch

An enlightened launch is designed to educate your prospects about your area of expertise using the ‘tool' we outlined in earlier steps to help them achieve the desired outcome. It also builds the need for them to learn more, anticipation to purchase when the product becomes available, and the trust and credibility required to gain high conversion rates.

Let's look at an example. Sally is an expert in leadership who helps small business owners effectively manage their teams and drive profits. To launch her principal product, a four-week online leadership course valued at $197, Sally launches a free three-part series on ‘leadership to profits'. She creates this free content by using the Matrix Strategy for Content Creation, as outlined in chapter 4. She decides that she will deliver this series via three short educational videos that are approximately eight to ten minutes long — short enough to keep viewers engaged while not giving away all her best content. To launch her product, Sally follows the enlightened launch framework (see Figure 5.1).

Figure 5.1: the enlightened launch framework

This framework is popular among the world's biggest agents of influence. Marie Forleo, for example, has a Facebook fan base of over 85 000 and a YouTube subscriber base of 60 000 plus. Her quirky nature and business angle of ‘create a business and life you love' have seen her featured alongside Oprah Winfrey on Super Soul Sundays. She made the kind of crossover to television that few achieve, by successfully marketing herself and her products in a way that built mass momentum and traction in the marketplace. Other agents of influence using this framework include Anthony Robbins, Janet Switzer, Brendon Burchard and Armand Morin, along with many major companies that are household names.

The enlightened launch framework generates millions for some of the most successful agents of influence in the business through a strategy that involves seven key ingredients.

1. Drive traffic

The core goal of any successful product launch is to drive qualified traffic to opt in to your complimentary series. A marketing mix will generate the best outcome. In chapter 3 we discussed the 2.3 per cent litmus test (the industry average for online conversions). Work out now how many visitors you need to your sales page to generate a 2.3 per cent conversion.

For example, Sally wants to generate 300 sales. We first look at how many sales per thousand visitors she can make at this rate (approximately 23). We then divide 300 by 23 (13), and multiply 13 by 1000 for a total of 13 000, which is the number of visitors to her sales page required to generate approximately 300 sales and (based on a unit price of $197) $59 100 in revenue.

After your 7-Day Quick Fire Test campaign, you will have an idea of what conversion rate you can expect for your enlightened launch. In my experience, a launch process such as this can yield conversion rates as high as 4.5 to 18 per cent. However, to help minimise our risk we always calculate a worst-case scenario so we know how much we are willing to spend to generate the required traffic to the sales and opt-in pages.

Use the formula set out in table 5.3 to calculate how much traffic you will need to reach your financial objectives.

Table 5.3: traffic calculation formula

Now that it's clear how much traffic is required, it's time to look at cost-effective options for driving it to your enlightened campaign. This is where research kicks in. Research the following marketing opportunities and outline the approximate costs for each in an Excel spreadsheet. You can then work back to identify the most affordable options that will generate the return on investment required. If your budget is minuscule, remember that you can negotiate for longer payment terms with some advertisers (such as industry groups and other businesses that deal directly with your target market), or offer commission payouts to affiliates that promote your product. Here are 17 powerful marketing options to get you started:

• Facebook ads
• Facebook-promoted posts
• Twitter posts
• email campaigns to affiliated databases
• email advertising — purchasing ads in industry newsletters
• Google AdWords
• Google Display Network (banner advertising across Google's platform)
• LinkedIn ads
• YouTube sponsored videos
• referral marketing
• re-marketing (this practice involves embedding code on your website; when a prospect visits your site but doesn't purchase, it will target that user on other channels such as Facebook. Visit www.adroll.com to find out more)
• banner advertising purchased on specific blogs
• media buying (for bulk-buying ads online, the preferred sources in the industry are www.sitescout.com, www.buysellads.com and www.adshuffle.com)
• blogging (post regular updates and how-to articles that build the need for your upcoming release. Share links to these posts via social media)
• guest blogging (approach influential bloggers within your sphere who have access to your target market and offer them articles they might like to post)
• sponsored tweets (yes, did you know that you can get major celebrities such as Kim Kardashian to tweet about your product launch? You can visit www.sponsoredtweets.com for details and pricing)
• Outbrain (Outbrain.com is an article marketing site that can serve up links to your articles on major news channel sites. By choosing carefully, you can target highly qualified leads. Visit www.outbrain.com for details).

2. Free introductory offer opt-in

Your complimentary opt-in offer is the critical first experience with your brand. Once people opt in by providing an email address via a ‘splash page' (an introductory page on a website that features only one product, service or message) promoting your introductory step, they are automatically entered to receive the scheduled release of free information. I will promote a specific launch date for a series to kick-off and give myself a two- to three-week lead time to attract as many new opt-ins as possible using the strategies outlined in step 1.

3. 3X follow-up

Now you have people subscribing to your free series, it's time to launch it. Release your three-part series over a ten-day period so as not to overwhelm your prospects with too much information, but also not so far apart that the momentum and excitement are lost. Announce in a segue in the second and third parts of your series that you have an upcoming release.

4. Announce upcoming product release

Once your three-part series has run its course, send an email announcing that your product is to be released within 48 hours and that customers will have a limited time to take up your offer, which may include an exclusive launch bonus for the first 300 people who buy. The day before your product release send a second email to your new subscriber list, alerting them that there's only 24 hours to go.

5. Direct promotional offer

It's launch day. Send an email and announce via all social media channels that people can now buy your product. Drive them directly to your sales page. Promote it through as many channels as possible and provide a countdown for how long they have to purchase (for example, ‘the first 300' or ‘before 5 pm on Friday'). I will generally allow a campaign like this three weeks to run its course and provide myself with as much time as possible to secure sales through as many channels as I can within this period.

6. Announce closure of offer

As the closure of your offer draws near let people know (for example, ‘only 37 copies left' or ‘only 24 hours to go'). This is where you will generate a second major wave of sales. Don't give up now — it's when the tsunami effect truly kicks in. Dedicate as much time as possible to ensuring everyone in your target market knows you've just launched a new product. This campaign could potentially generate you five figures in sales within a three-week period. But don't discount the potential revenue from these individuals going on to purchase your other products over the course of a year. This is your six- to seven-figure business right here.

7. Close offer and open up expressions of interest

Now the offer has closed, instead of sending people to your sales page, send them to a page that says, ‘Oops! Too late. Register your expression of interest here to receive details on upcoming releases'. This fills your funnel with prospects for next time.

At this point in the game you may feel slightly overwhelmed. Don't worry.

Allow yourself time to think about what we have covered to date, then strategically map out your next steps as outlined in the following chapters of this book.

Doing an enlightened product launch is not for the faint of heart, and it isn't a short-term strategy. It requires significant attention to detail, energy and focus. Being deliberate and strategic in your approach will ensure your efforts are rewarded.

In phase 1, the 7-Day Quick Fire Test, you trialled your first product before you went to mass market. The enlightened product launch is phase 2 in what is a three-phase process to fleeing 9 to 5 and generating profits on autopilot. Now for the final step.

Phase 3: Put your profits on autopilot: the evergreen anatomy

If launching a product is hard, putting it on autopilot is a walk in the park. Agents of influence depend for their success on creating income while they sleep, which frees up their time to focus on living the life they choose. In phases 1 and 2, you tested your product on a small audience then upscaled to a larger one. Most critically, you now have access to statistics such as conversion rates and which marketing copy and channels have and haven't worked — the holy grail of marketing.

It's now time to extract the ‘best of' from phases 1 and 2 and turn them into an automated marketing campaign that has been well tested before launch. This is called the Evergreen Marketing System. This system automates your entire launch process and takes you out of the many processes. It includes:

• establishing ongoing Google AdWords or Facebook ad campaigns that continually, day in and day out, introduce people to your free series, constantly filling your sales funnel
• triggering the product launch whenever people opt in, without any involvement from you, by automating the emails you created during your initial launch campaign using a series of auto-responders. (Visit www.benangel.com.au/flee9-5 for a list of the top email service providers that support an Evergreen Marketing Campaign.)

This three-step process allows you to follow a methodical path designed to create a quick boost to your cash flow, followed by a consistent income stream. And because of your work with the ascension marketing model, each time a customer purchases a product they are upsold to the next, allowing you to continually improve on your profit margins from the original marketing spend. The Evergreen Marketing System, then, fully automates the entire process — all you need do is ensure that people are opting in to your free educational series on a daily basis.

Later, whenever you introduce new products, repeat this three-step process and once and for all take the guesswork out of monetising your knowledge and expertise.

Tips and resources

To market like a pro, first assess the viability and potential of your product on a shoestring budget using the 7-Day Quick Fire Test.

Next, launch your product to the wider marketplace, using the enlightened launch framework to educate your prospects, build anticipation, and develop trust and credibility.

Finally, put your profits on autopilot, automating most of your business processes using the evergreen marketing system to build a consistent income stream and free up your time to pursue your chosen lifestyle.

Visit www.benangel.com.au for further resources relating to this chapter.

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