E-Biz Booster Blog

I just have read a not so bad blog post. However, when I checked out the about page I got turned off.

“This is an example of a WordPress page, you could edit this to put information about yourself or your site so readers know where you are coming from. You can create as many pages like this one or sub-pages as you like and manage all of your content inside of WordPress.”

Come on. You can do better than that.
And you should.

Anybody who is getting serious about putting your blog in their RSS reader or subscribe to your e-mail list will want to know more about you.

The about page is a great place to let your readers know who you are, what you can do for them, and why they should listen to you.

But first things first.

Some Ideas For An Entrepreneurial About Page

• You have a name, haven’t you. Use it. Introduce yourself with a short bio. … or introduce each team member who writes in the blog on a regular basis.
  
  
• Of course we want to see your photo(s). A nice photograph makes it more personal. You do not want to miss this step.
  
  
• What problems can you help the readers with?
  
  
• Why are you qualified to help them?
  
  
• Tell them how they can stay in touch with you. An optin form on the about page i snot such a bad idea. However, remember the good rule of thumb: “One page, one action.” Don’t offer too much.
  
  
• By the way: Have you ever thought of putting a personal video message (↑) on your about page? I guess, it’s time to do that.

Now go to work.
You don’t have to get it perfect.
5 % better than your competitors will do.


Yours
John W. Furst

P.S.: I just realize I should update the about page of my own as, well.

P.P.S.: In the context of legal issues with online publishing, you MUST NOT have an anonymous blog anyway. Pen names are fine, but readers, customers, and the government must be able to contact you based on the information on your website without having to go through hoops. (I’m not a lawyer. This is not legal advice!)

P.P.P.S.: Do you have anything to add? Any comments? I am sure you have. Let me know.

Top level copywriters preach for ages how this can be done, but it seems that

(1) Most marketing and advertising professionals are consistently ignoring that knowledge of “How To Make The Sale” and

(2) There's a steadily stream of a new generation of professionals whom this know how should be brought to attention too.

Now Christophe Morin and Patrick Renvoise have not only conserved this wisdom in their latest book Neuromarketing, but also have put it in new light.

Put the book in your amazon cart right now!

While you are waiting for your book to be delivered you can read on and answer yourself the following questions:

• Did you ever wonder why there are certain mega markets like health, fitness, make money, relationship?
  
  
• Did you ever wonder why some products sell like crazy although you say, “I never would buy that sort of …” It's not — actually it's never — about YOU.

Once you watched the video below you might not wonder anymore why certain marketing strategies and tactics that you may observe work. Smart marketers are using that secrets big time. For decades. They are making big money while you say, “I don't like that kind of marketing … ”

Well, one more time: “It's not about YOU. ”

As long as you market to people made of flesh and blood you need to do it that way.

• Technology is changing
• Trends are changing
• Styles are changing
• PEOPLE are not changing! Not in your lifetime.

Now watch this video about the absolute marketing power

→ Continue reading:

When we are talking about email marketing, we need to realize, it's not only about finding a reliable email marketing service provider like Aweber. It's not only about squeeze page or not squeeze page, fancy or not so fancy design of your newsletter, your back-end products and so forth.

“Great, awesome copywriting is the golden key!”

It's the words that sell,… and everything around them. Pictures, the layout, and nowadays multimedia with video and audio increase the effectiveness of your words tremendously. Those elements increase the persuasive power of your words and get the reader, listener, or viewer to take the desired action.

Now after you have learned how important the quality of the copy in your message is, you might ask yourself

• What is good copywriting?
  
  
• How to become better at copywriting?
  
  
• How to find and hire a first class copywriter?

→ Continue reading:

Many Internet marketing and Making Money Online “Wannabes” refrain from creating and selling products of their own, because

• they believe it were too hard to create products
• they do not want to deal with customers.

They rather get into affiliate marketing, drop shipping, selling advertising, …

“Of course it is possible to make money online without a product of your own, but building a real sustainable business is on the other side of the coin.”

Creating your own products has certainly many advantages that outweigh the so called disadvantages.

• You are in total control of every aspect.
  • Product quality
  • The offer
  • Customer relationship
  • Cash flow
  • Your Affiliates
  • etc.
• You set the rules and you own the customers. They are yours.

Does this sound interesting, “They are yours!”, or scary to you?

What's the deal about customer service anyway? I don't want to talk about product creation today, but rather about the question, “Are you ready for a relationship with your prospects and customers?rdquo;

A great long-term, profitable customer relationship is based on the following.

• Products, services, and value that keeps up with the expectations created during the sales process. That means: High Quality Products (I say high quality, not necessarily overly expensive.)
• Excellent documentation
• Excellent follow-up and customer support
• Respect (*)
• etc.
  
  
• Overdeliver and you won't have much problems!
  

Of course, there are certain types of folks that will try to pull your leg. But when selling a product of your own, you are in control how to handle this and you will learn ways to minimize those negative side effects. Otherwise you leave it to someone else (like your affiliate partner, Google, … to fix the problem. All you get are refund reports, invalid click reports, smart-pricing, …)

The key to long term success is building a relationship with your prospects and customers. Yes, I include the prospects that might be on your email list already, but did not buy anything so far. The terms of such a relationship varies of course with the ticket price, and if you sell to businesses or consumers.

Back to respect (*)

I have observed it in large corporations, in small businesses (though more in consumer markets than in business-to-business markets) that product managers, CEOs or other relevant employees call their customers names and simply ignore their input and signals.

“Any business person that fails to understand the basic tenets of treating people right is most definitely not a genius. It’s very, very disappointing.”
~Ed Rivis

Many companies operate on the edge of what is fair or even what is legally allowed, and not too few have lost masses of clients, credibility, reputation, and fortunes.

“There is no place to hide in todays Web 2.0 economy, you better show respect and play fair in all what you are doing. Otherwise it will fall back on you sooner than later.”

Think twice about how you can support your prospects and customers. Is your business built on arrogance or support?

Yours
John W. Furst

No matter if you offer a standardized or custom made product, are you sure that your customers knows what they will get? Very often your customers and your business will rely on implied assumptions that can be quite the opposite of what the other party believes.

As a professional business person, you will have to find your way to avoid embarrassing situation and make sure that your customer and you not only speak the same “language“, but also mean the same.

You might have heard about the chain of communication:

mean ≠ say
say ≠ hear
hear ≠ understand
understand ≠ accept
accept ≠ do

There are 5 possibilities that the communication between 2 people produces unexpected, unwanted results. It goes well beyond what has been said. It can start out with a customer, who cannot articulate properly what he means, and end with a company delivering something the customer does not want. Some companies are arrogantly thinking, “We know it better than the customer, anyway. He'll love it.”

Avoid those risks altogether by making sure the expectations on both sides match objectively.

A fictional story

A chain of communication between a small business owner (BO) and a Web design firm (WD) could go like this:

BO thinks he wants a Web site, because he has read about a competitor, who has launched a Web site successfully and his sales sky-rocket. But he is also afraid of spending too much money on the Web design firm. However, he is convinced that once he has his Web site, his sales will go through the roof as well.

BO says: “Well, I want a small Web site to promote my store. Nothing fancy.”

WD hears exactly the same. There is no distortion in audio here.

WD understands: “BO wants a small Web site. He doesn't want to spend a lot of money on it.”

WD accepts: “I don't offer him additional packages. If I tell him, that it costs money or that it takes time till a Web site becomes profitable, he probably doesn't order the design from me. Well, I need his business now.”

WD delivers a small, nice Web site. That's it.

BO did not think about promotion for the Web site. He thought it is sufficient to have a Web site in order to get more sales. WD on the other side was afraid of offering more.

If you think the Web designer was a little bit unfair, I agree. He simply could have asked BO how he is going to promote the site. There would have been room for additional business. BO does not even know the basics of Internet marketing.

In other Blog posts I wrote about the importance of an educational marketing strategy. In this fictional case it could have worked nicely.

The conclusion of this short story is that both parties, customer/prospect and the business representative should ask a lot of questions and give honest answers. In the case of a standard product load (but don't overload) the sales page with detailed information and answer objections a prospect might have. Of course keep it benefit driven as much as possible. Actually I stop here, because this not not a course in copy writing.

Yours
John W. Furst