Launch Read online

  So the first thing you need to do is get clear on who your prospect is—we use the term “avatar.” Think of your avatar as your typical prospect, the typical person you’re trying to reach. So if you’re teaching about golf, you generally aren’t trying to reach all golfers; you might be going after school-aged golfers who are trying to get a college scholarship. Or you might be going after 45-to 55-year-old women who are just starting to golf after their kids have gone off to college. Or you could be going after men with handicaps under 10 who want to improve their short game.

  I actually don’t really know the golf market, so I just made all those up. But you get the idea—everything about your marketing will be completely different depending on which of those three different groups you are targeting.

  So this is the deal: Your list building effort is the very sharp end of your marketing efforts. It’s the first place where people have contact with you, so you have to get it right. And the very first step in getting it right is understanding to whom you are selling, who your avatar is. The reason you have to get this right is we’re going to create what is called a “squeeze page.” That squeeze page will have an “opt-in offer”—that’s the offer you will make to get someone to join your email list. One way to think of this offer is as a bribe, but an ethical one. You have something of value that you will give to your web site visitor if they join (or subscribe) to your list. Your squeeze page and your opt-in offer will be the key to your list building efforts.

  IMPORTANT: As I just mentioned, it’s important to get this first piece of your marketing right. In fact, it’s critical. This is your lead element in the battle for your business. HOWEVER, you don’t have to get it perfect right out of the gate. In fact, no one gets it perfect right away. The good news is that it’s really easy to be incremental about this. You get your first squeeze page up, and then you work on improving it.

  One of the coolest things about an online business is how much data you get and how easy it is to test things. In the most basic form (and one of the most useful), you create two versions of your squeeze page. Then you use software to alternate which version is shown to your site visitors (check my Resource Page at http://thelaunchbook.com/resources) and watch to see which version has the best response rate. After you have a winner, then you use the winner but create another test to see if you can improve it even more, and so on.

  This is called “split testing” or “A:B testing” and it’s the key to constantly improving your site’s “conversion”—in this case, your conversion is simply the percentage of visitors you get to join your email list.

  Again, the important thing to remember is this: Don’t worry about perfection when you’re starting out. No one gets it right the first time. The important thing is to get the first version done and then improve from there.

  How to Get People to Join Your List

  So what is a squeeze page? As far as can be determined, this idea was pioneered many years ago by my friend Dean Jackson (ILoveMarketing.com) and has proven to be one of the most significant developments in the Internet marketing world. A squeeze page is a very simple page that gives the visitor a choice of only two options:

  1. The visitor can opt in with their email address to get some type of free something (this is your ethical bribe).

  2. Or they can leave the page.

  By forcing your visitor to choose . . . well, you force them to choose. And you should be clear right from the start that, for most web sites, the majority of your visitors will choose to leave your site.

  The fact that the majority of visitors will quickly leave your site can be very painful for a new web site owner to think about. But the reality is only one thing on your site is 100% guaranteed—that EVERYONE will eventually leave your web site. And you need to understand this—if they leave your site without opting in to your list or buying something from you, then the odds of their coming back are extremely slim. And when I say “extremely slim” what I really mean is “no chance at all.” If you doubt this, just think about your own actions online. How many times do you ever return to a web site that you visited randomly? Even if you bookmark a given site—even if a site is really cool? Probably not very often; instead, it’s a matter of “out of sight, out of mind.” Your visitors will be the same. Once they leave your site, they will never think about it again . . . UNLESS you capture their email address. Everything changes if they join your list, because then you can use your emails to drive them back to your site (or any site you want to send them to).

  When you start to think about your list building that way, all of a sudden it starts to make a lot more sense to put up a squeeze page and force people to make a choice when they come to your site. Make them either opt in or leave.

  If you’re still having a hard time wrapping your head around the idea of a squeeze page, here’s another way to think about it. Consider the value of a subscriber to your email list. When you’re just starting out, this can be a difficult number to calculate, but I will tell you that in my market niche, a general rule of thumb is that a subscriber is worth $1 per month or $12 per year. That’s a really rough guestimate, and I could write for a long time about email list metrics and the characteristics of email lists. But let’s stick with that $12 per year for this example.

  So let’s say that you do NOT have a squeeze page, but you have some type of form people use to subscribe to your site. Maybe there’s an opt-in box in the right-side menu that says “Subscribe to my newsletter.” That’s not a very powerful way to convert your site visitors into email subscribers, so you might get only 3% of your visitors to subscribe to your list. That means that each visitor is worth 36 cents to you in the next year. This is how the math goes: Since each subscriber is worth $12 per year and 3% of your visitors subscribe, it’s a matter of simple multiplication. In this case, .03 x $12 = $0.36.

  Now, let’s say you have a squeeze page. You are forcing your visitors to make a choice—either subscribe to your email list or leave your site. With a squeeze page, you’re very likely to get a higher rate of conversion to your list. In this case, let’s assume you get a 20% opt-in rate. That means each visitor is worth $2.40 in the next year. (Here’s the math: .20 x $12 = $2.40.)

  That means for every visitor you have, you are losing $2.04 by not having a squeeze page. You are getting only 36 cents instead of $2.40 per visitor. Now, of course, this is hypothetical . . . and there are all kinds of different factors and variables at play here. But the fact is that in many cases, putting a squeeze page on your site is an instant win in terms of web site profitability.

  So one of the most important things that makes a squeeze page work is having a really strong opt-in offer (this is the ethical bribe that I mentioned earlier). Basically, this is the honey that you’re going to offer your visitors on your squeeze page to convince them to opt in.

  So what’s the ethical bribe? It all depends on your avatar . . . what do they really want? What are their greatest fears? Their biggest desires? What keeps them awake at night? Going back to golf, if your avatar is an average male duffer who plays one round of golf a week with his buddies, then maybe he just wants to drive further than his friends . . . especially on the first tee.

  If that’s the case, then a great ethical bribe might be a video tutorial on how to completely crush your drive on the first tee . . . every single time. Or maybe instead of a video, it could be a special report (i.e., a written PDF report).

  Getting your squeeze page right is really about getting the ethical bribe right. And it doesn’t have to be perfect the first time out, since this is another thing you can test very easily. But at the end of the day, the effectiveness of your squeeze page is very much dependent on the quality of your bribe and how closely it aligns with your avatar’s hopes, dreams, nd desires.

  Okay, enough theory . . . let’s take a look at some examples of squeeze pages.

  ProductLaunchFormula.com

  ListGettingBlueprint.com

  VictoriaLaba
lme.com

  InnerCircleSessions.com/training

  So far we’ve covered:

  1. Defining your avatar.

  2. Creating your opt-in ethical bribe.

  3. Creating your squeeze page.

  Now the only thing left to do to get your list rolling is drive some traffic to your squeeze page. Of course, driving traffic is another one of those huge topics that I could write a book or two about. And it’s a topic that is constantly changing, which means if I did write those books, they would probably be out of date by the time you read them. But here’s a big picture overview . . .

  There are a number of ways to drive traffic. The first one that most people think about is from the search engines, such as Google. This is usually called “natural search” traffic—meaning traffic that comes from people finding your site in the search engines. Getting your site to rank in Google (and by “rank” I mean appear near the top of the search listings) is part science and part art, and people devote entire careers to it. One important thing to remember is that it’s VERY hard to get a squeeze page to rank well with Google. Nevertheless, natural search is something that I always build into my business at some level.

  Another way to drive traffic is through “paid search.” Those are the little advertisements you see at the top and on the right side of the Google listings. There are similar ads on Facebook. Those ads are basically sold on an auction basis . . . they’re available to the highest bidder. It’s actually more complicated than that, but that’s a close enough explanation for now. In any case, paid search can be expensive . . . but it’s great for testing squeeze pages because you can literally start driving traffic in minutes.

  Another way to send traffic to your site is through Social Media, such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Again, this is a big topic—far too big to cover in any real depth here, but I would have loved to have something like Facebook available when I started out. You can create a Facebook presence in minutes and start gathering followers there almost immediately. You already know that my preference is always going to lean toward building an email list instead of a social media list, but you can use your social media presence to drive traffic to your squeeze page. In other words, you can use your Social Media following to build your email list.

  There are many other ways to drive traffic to your squeeze page, such as creating great content that attracts word-of-mouth traffic (this has always been one of my personal favorites), other forms of advertising, and online forums.

  And, of course, there’s my all-time favorite source of traffic, which is affiliates and Joint Venture partners. This is when other people with lists send you tons of traffic, and it doesn’t cost you a single penny upfront—you pay them out of the sales that are generated by that traffic. This is the ultimate shortcut to building a big list fast. In fact, I’ve personally added more than 50,000 people to my list in a matter of days using this method. But this is an advanced strategy, and we’re not ready to talk about that one yet—I’ll go into all the gory details a little later.

  The Secret to Having a List Is to Just Get Started

  Okay, by now I hope I’ve got you convinced of the power of lists and the absolute necessity of list building in your business. It drives me nuts that there are still people out there who don’t do this. The bottom line is that this is all about your bottom line. Your lists of prospects and clients are the biggest asset in your business. In fact, I could argue that they’re almost the ONLY true asset for most online businesses.

  Of course, since I’ve started teaching the Product Launch Formula®, the number one question I get is “What if I don’t have a list?” Or sometimes people whine about it: “Jeff, that’s great for you because you have a big list, but I don’t have one.”

  The truth is that’s exactly where I began—with ZERO people on my list. But I went to work building my list. Slowly, methodically, diligently. Some days I would get a single new subscriber, some days I would get none. My efforts gradually started to pick up momentum, and I would get three or four subscribers a day. I kept at it, and soon I was getting 30 subscribers a day . . . and 30 subscribers a day starts to add up. That’s 900 subscribers a month or 10,800 subscribers a year.

  And guess what? In many markets you can make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year with a list of 10,000 subscribers.

  The bottom line is that if you want to build a viable business online, you NEED to focus on list building. That’s why I put this chapter so early in the book—it’s a core principle. And it’s part of the Product Launch Formula story, because there is no better way to maximize the results you get from your list than with a product launch.

  And here’s an advanced secret: There is no better way to build a list quickly than with a product launch. Remember John Gallagher and the launch of his board game? Well, he had a very small list that he used in that launch. And you’ll remember his first launch (before he got PLF) had 12 sales. Then after he applied PLF, he had 670 sales. The one thing I didn’t tell you is that in addition to all those sales he made, he also added more than 1,000 new subscribers during that launch.

  That’s what usually happens in a properly structured PLF-style launch. It’s one of the best ways to build your list. But I’m starting to get ahead of myself . . .

  The Sideways Sales Letter: How to Sell Your Stuff Like Crazy without Being “Salesy”

  Chapter 4

  Way back in 1996, when I started my first online business and I didn’t have a clue about sales or marketing, I stumbled my way through all kinds of things. And I made one “mistake” that has made all the difference. In fact, that mistake became the core strategy that’s made me millions of dollars, made my clients hundreds of millions of dollars, and changed the way stuff is sold online. That strategy is the Sideways Sales Letter™.

  Back when I started, I not only didn’t have a clue about how to sell stuff, but I didn’t even know there were entire schools of thought about selling. I didn’t know there were all kinds of sales theory and sales training. I just had no idea.

  So I did the only thing that seemed natural: I made up my own way of selling. And it turns out that what I created was perfectly tuned to the new way that business was quickly evolving to. It was perfectly suited to the Internet and our newly connected lives. As people have become exponentially more connected due to the Internet, the entire game of selling stuff has changed.

  Think about it. When you buy almost any type of hard goods, you can instantly pull up real user reviews on Amazon.com. You’re about to go on vacation, you can quickly look at reviews on TripAdvisor.com. You’re looking for an entertaining movie to go to, you can check out the ratings . . . well, pretty much everywhere.

  And with greater connectivity, people have become more highly tuned to authenticity. They’re more skeptical. It’s like everyone is walking around with a giant super-sensitive “BS Detector” that’s always on full alert.

  People have learned to see a pitch coming a thousand miles away, and they’ve learned to distrust it. It’s just a side effect of our uber-connected world. And that’s why, in most cases, the traditional old way of selling doesn’t work so well anymore. Or at least not nearly as well as the Sideways Sales Letter does.

  Before I can explain the Sideways Sales Letter, I need to give you some context. There’s a traditional tool in direct marketing going back many decades simply called the “sales letter” (also known as the “long form sales letter”). Basically, this is a lengthy printed advertisement written in the form of a letter. These sales letters can be eight pages, 12 pages, 24 pages, or even longer. When most people first encounter a long form sales letter, they have one of two reactions. If it’s a topic they are interested in and it’s a good letter that’s been written by a pro copywriter, they’ll start reading it and soon get sucked right into the narrative of the letter. On the other hand, if it’s a topic they don’t care about or the letter is poorly written, they’ll wonder why ANYONE would ever read such a long and
boring advertisement.

  But the important thing for you to remember is that these form sales letters have been used for decades, and they have generated billions of dollars in sales for all kinds of different products. The development of long form copy and the sales letter was one of the most significant advances ever in sales and marketing. It was, to borrow an old phrase from advertising legend Albert Lasker, “salesmanship multiplied.” You could effectively make a complicated sale without being face-to-face with your prospect.

  An Old Tool for New Profits

  So what happened to the sales letter when the Internet came along? Well, it made the jump to the online world pretty easily. In fact, within a few years sales letters became really popular online. In fact, they got even longer on the Internet, because you didn’t need to pay for printing. It didn’t cost any more to use a 40-page sales letter than a 12-page letter, so the length of many of the letters got longer.

  And in the last few years, another change has been the use of video. The long sales letter has morphed into a long sales video. Think of it as a 20- or 30-minute commercial.

  You’ve probably been to a web site with a long form sales letter or sales video. These sites are very simple—there’s generally only a single page on the site. That page is a very long page of sales copy for a single product. There are no other links on the site other than a “Buy It Now” or “Add to Cart” button. You either buy the product or you leave.

  Alternatively, the page might have a sales video instead. In that case, the page will be very simple, with a sales video that might last anywhere from 15 minutes up to an hour or more. Again, the only link on the page is the “Add to Cart” button.

  As ecommerce and online sales first started to get rolling around 1998 and 1999, the use of the long form sales letter really started to proliferate, especially among small, bootstrapping entrepreneurs. And definitely in the “information marketing” world.