Podcasting Secrets

This is Entrepreneurs of Faith, a Sunday episode of Monetization Nation. I’m Nathan Gwilliam, your host. In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss the inspiring story of Moses and how he used delegation to become a successful leader.

The Story of Moses

Moses was a prophet called of God to do His work. God spoke to Moses in a burning bush and called upon him to save the children of Israel from the bondage of Egypt. The Israelites had been slaves of Egypt for 430 years, and after much pain and sorrow, Pharaoh, the ruler of Egypt, told Moses he could take his people and go. 

Exodus chapter 14 is one of the most known in the Bible. While Moses led the Israelites to freedom, Pharaoh took 600 chariots and pursued them, trapping them against the shores of the Red Sea. 

As Pharaoh’s chariots and horses marched towards the Israelites, they became afraid and cried out unto the Lord. In verses 13 and 14 Moses said, “Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will shew to you today . . . The Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace.”

The Lord commanded Moses to lift up his rod and stretch his hand over the sea to part the waters. As Moses followed the command, the Red Sea divided and the children of Israel walked upon dry ground to safety. 

When we are told this story, it often comes to an end in Exodus chapter 14. Moses saved the Israelites from slavery and led them to God’s promised land. The end. But it doesn’t end there. 

Moses just saved a lot of people. Exodus 12:37 says, “Now the sons of Israel journeyed from Rameses to Succoth, about six hundred thousand men on foot, aside from children.” If the 600,000 number is only the men, then including women and children, we can assume there were millions of Israelites with Moses. 

Exodus 14:31, says the people “believed the Lord, and his servant Moses.” The millions of Israelites were all looking to Moses for guidance. 

Leading the Israelites

With the guidance and direction of the Lord, Moses became the leader of all the Israelites. Exodus chapter 18, explains that Moses went to judge the people and listen to them from the morning until evening. 

When Jethro, Moses’ father in law, saw all that Moses was doing for the people, he said, “The thing that thou doest is not good. Thou wilt surely wear away, both thou, and this people that is with thee: for this thing is too heavy for thee; thou art not able to perform it thyself alone.” (KJV Exodus 18:17-18) In other words, Moses was sitting in judgment alone and trying to do everything himself. He had not learned how to delegate.

Jethro counseled Moses to teach the ordinances and laws of God and to show them the way, but to also provide able men to be rulers over them and help judge. He said, “But every small matter they shall judge: so shall it be easier for thyself, and they shall bear the burden with thee.” (KJV Exodus 18:22)

Moses was an incredible leader, but in this situation, he was doing too much. He was taking on all of the burdens and doing everything alone. Not only is this exhausting, but also less effective and efficient. He listened to Jethro’s advice and appointed other judges to help him. With that help, Moses could help many more Israelites.

We can learn from Moses’ leadership and example. Being a leader doesn’t mean taking on every task ourselves. It also means delegating tasks to others. I like to tell my managers that their job is to get the job done, not to do the job themselves.

The Art of Delegation 

Entrepreneurs are leaders. Building a startup business often requires entrepreneurs to be involved with many different aspects of the business at the beginning: sales, finances, marketing, content creation, customer service, staffing and management, strategy, and more. Like Moses, we may take on too much, but we need to remember that we don’t have to do it alone. In fact, we shouldn’t. Learning and applying the art of delegation will make our work go along much more effectively and efficiently. Delegation is essential to success. 

Andrew Carnegie, an industrialist and philanthropist who led the expansion of the American steel industry and became one of the richest Americans in history said, “No person will make a great business who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit.”

In order to grow our businesses, we need to hire team members to do certain tasks and take responsibility for us. By getting help with the day-to-day responsibilities, we will have more time to focus on our higher priorities. When Moses was judging the people by himself, he spent morning until the evening working. However, when he appointed other judges, he had a lot more time to work on more important things. Freeing up time will also reduce stress and exhaustion, thereby improving our workflow. 

With more team members, we will also have more talent, creativity, hours, and ideas to work with. 

Richard Branson, an author, investor, and business magnate said, “I learnt from an early age the need to delegate responsibility out to other team members as there is just too much for one person to do themselves. What is the point of hiring talented team members if you don’t give them the freedom to make the most of the chance you have given them?”

We may have a lot of great ideas. We may have many talents. But, we will never have as many ideas or as many talents as a group of 20 people, or even three. 

In a study of 143 CEOs, it was found that those with a higher talent in the delegation had an average three-year growth rate of 112 percentage points higher than those with low delegator talent. Those with a high delegator talent also generated 33% greater revenue than those with a lower delegator talent (Source: Gallup). 

When we delegate effectively, we actually increase our chances of success and monetization. 

Delegation doesn’t just mean handing off tasks to those around us while we watch them do it. We need to be a good delegator, something that requires us to help them be successful. This includes providing training and resources, authority, offering feedback, trusting, setting clear expectations, and ultimately, taking responsibility for the final results. 

“If you want to do a few small things right, do them yourself. If you want to do great things and make a big impact, learn to delegate.” - John C. Maxwell, New York Times Best Selling Author 

Moses and Delegation 

Moses learned early on that he didn’t have to do everything on his own. He was eventually able to use delegation to be a successful leader. 

In Exodus 35 to 39, Moses used delegation to speed up God’s work. God commanded Moses and his people to create a tabernacle, or place of worship, where the Israelites could make offerings unto the Lord. He also provided very specific instructions about how to do it. Moses gave these instructions to the people, and most people helped. Moses didn’t try to do everything himself. 

In chapter 35, all of the Israelites provided offerings of materials to help build the tabernacle. “And they came, everyone whose heart stirred him up, and every one whom his spirit made willing, and they brought the Lord’s offering to the work of the tabernacle of the congregation, and for all his service, and for the holy garments.” (KJV Exodus 35:21)

The women spun fine linen, rulers brought onyx stones and spice, and others brought jewelry, gold, brass, and more. 

Then God appointed through Moses, Bezaleel and Anoliab, and every wise-hearted man, to be put to work to help build the tabernacle and altar. “Thus was all the work of the tabernacle of the tent of the congregation finished: and the children of Israel did according to all that the Lord commanded Moses, so did they.” (KJV Exodus 39:32)

If Moses had tried to build the tabernacle himself, he could never have done it himself, even with a lifetime of work. However, because he effectively delegated the work to others, they were able to build the tabernacle in a much shorter period of time. 

Just as Moses used delegation to speed up God’s work, we can use delegation to help grow our businesses and become successful leaders. 

Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

1. Moses was able to effectively and efficiently accomplish God’s work when he delegated tasks out to others.
2. Like Moses, we don’t have to do everything by ourselves. A successful leader and entrepreneur need to be an effective delegator. 
3. If we delegate day-to-day tasks, we will have more time to focus on higher priorities. 
4. If we delegate tasks, we will have more talent and ideas to work with. 
5. Delegating tasks helps our businesses grow faster and increases our chances for success and monetization.
6. To be an effective delegator we need to be involved. We should be clear about our expectations, provide training and the resources our team members need and take responsibility for the final outcomes. 

Join Entrepreneurs of Faith

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Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/94-how-moses-used-delegation-to-become-a-more-successful-leader/ 

Welcome back to another episode of Monetization Nation with Daniel Burstein. In our previous episode, we talked about customer-first marketing and how putting our customers first is vital to our business sustainability. We also shared how to help our customers perceive the value of our products and services. 

In this episode, we continue our conversation with Daniel where he tells us some of his secrets of successful content marketing and how to leverage digital products. 

The Biggest Tectonic Shift Affecting Business Owners Today

Daniel believes today’s biggest tectonic shift is the shift to the empowered consumer. When he started in the advertising industry more than 20 years ago, advertisements were more like one-way conversations from companies to potential customers. The advertisers and the brands had most of the power and control. This was essential because they could get their messages out and broadcast them.

In the past, customers had only limited opportunities to share word-of-mouth referrals. If they were unhappy, they would tell one, three, or maybe 10 people. Now, customers are empowered and use digital tools to share their opinions. This is why we have to understand how important a customer-first marketing strategy is. Our goal isn't just to sell a product, this would be short-sighted. Our real goal is to have a successful customer. When we have a successful customer, and they refer us to their friends,  we're going to have a much greater chance of sustainable business success. 

Having Successful Customers is Our Goal

Our goal is not to sell a product; our goal is to help the client be successful. This is more important today because clients have more power than they've ever had. If we have enough successful customers, we will probably have positive customer reviews. This will drive more business and give us more credibility. But if we have too many unhappy clients, we’re not going to survive for long. Thanks to Google reviews, Yelp, Facebook, and other platforms out there, the customer is empowered like never before. If we're not creating true value for our customers, it's going to get out there, and ultimately will ruin our business. 

Leveraging Digital Products in the Business

Daniel believes we’ve become used to digital products and so we take them for granted. However, he thinks it’s against human nature to buy a digital product. When we sell a digital product, it's all about perceived value. Take books as an example. When we go into a bookstore, we can see the book, flip through it, and get a feel for it. With an ebook, all a customer sees is an image on the screen. We must realize that customers don't perceive digital products as we do. 

We need to ask ourselves, “How can we test our products with customers and understand how to communicate that value to them using the four elements we talked about before: appeal, exclusivity, credibility, and clarity?” Daniel believes the biggest mistake entrepreneurs make with digital products is they assume that customers perceive the value just as they do. 

“Treat your content like a product.” - Drew Davis, author of “Brandscaping: Unleashing the Power of Partnerships”.

Secrets of Content Marketing

Over 41% of Americans use an ad blocker (Source: neilpatel.com). Since content is usually not treated as an ad, it has a much better chance to get the message across without being blocked. 

Daniel spent a lot of time in content marketing in his career. I asked him to share with us his best secrets of content marketing. 

1. Content is Not Free

Daniel’s first secret is that content isn't free. Oftentimes companies think that when they do a free webinar, a free email newsletter, or a free blog, customers will be rushing in, which is not the case. When we talk about content, we need to look at our content as an actual product, a digital one. We need to ask what we can do to create a value proposition for this content even if it's only a free webinar or a free email. Customers may not be paying money for this content but they’re still paying with their time and attention. 

1. Give Value Away for Free

The second secret Daniel gives for successful content marketing is to give value away for free. If we’re looking to monetize digital products, we need to know where the cutoff between free and paid is. Daniel gives an example of having a digital course that has 20 sessions. The cutoff here would be to give two sessions for free. Then we can take information from those two sessions and turn them into webinars every month. 

Another way to know if we have good content is when we have really good interaction with our audience. This means asking questions on social media or email. This is also where we need to decide when we can treat those questions as paid services or helpful engagement.  

1. There is an Abundance of Good Content 

Daniel noticed that when companies start with content marketing, their struggle is that they think they don't have any content. What they don't realize is that many companies are content-generating machines. This content can be the questions that they’re already answering for customers, an area where a lot of content is already being created. We need to look at the content we’ve created or we’re creating and develop a content marketing strategy.

The Most Effective Ways to Monetize Content

Daniel believes that when it comes to monetizing content, it’s simply about putting in a lot of hard work. We need to create something that has a unique value in the marketplace. So, the competitive analysis would be the biggest thing we have to do. The first thing we should do when we’re working on a paid content offering is to start with a landing page. We should create a landing page that has the four elements in it: it's appealing, exclusive, credible, and it's clear. 

We also need to look at competitors, because this is what customers are doing. We want to put the page we’re creating for our content against the other offerings of other competitors. And when we have an appealing offer that is exclusive, credible, and clear, that's when we have a chance to succeed with our monetized content offering.

In the end, Daniel believes it’s important to remember that we are more than just our jobs and our roles. In his case, a marketer during the day, a person, a dad, and a husband at night. And so, he encourages people to bring their whole selves to work and realize that they’re people too. A lot of times marketers are failing because they act as marketers only and forget all their other dimensions. They write in ways they would never talk to other people. And this is how they think of their products. Daniel advises us to think of ourselves when we’re selling our products. What would an actual real person think about this? How would they react if I was talking to a real person, instead of talking like a marketer or writing on LinkedIn? How would I talk about this? What would I say if I was in physical proximity to someone if this wasn't digital? 

Our end goal is to create value for our customers and communicate that value.

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Daniel for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

1. Our goal is not just to sell a product, our goal is to help the client be successful.
2. If we're not creating true value with our products, the word is going to get out there, and ultimately it’ll ruin our business.
3. Content is a very crowded marketplace. We must ask ourselves what our value proposition is and what customers are willing to pay their attention and interest for even if there's no monetary cost.
4. A lot of times our biggest failures come from having that blind spot from working in our office where we're only looking at our digital products and digital offerings and forgetting that there are real people just like us on the other side of what we're doing.

Connect with Daniel Burstein

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Daniel or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/danielburstein  or visit the MECLABS website meclabs.com

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
2. Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
3. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
4. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 
5. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story 

How do you market and monetize your content? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/93-secrets-of-content-marketing/ 

When customers have great experiences, they want to buy more and are more likely to remain loyal. A positive customer experience often results in positive word-of-mouth referrals. 73% of customers say a good buying experience is key in influencing their brand loyalties (Source: PwC). 

Daniel Burstein is the senior director of content and marketing at MECLABS Institute. He oversees all content marketing coming from the MarketingExperiments and MarketingSherpa brands, while helping to shape the marketing directions for MECLABS Institute, digging for actionable discoveries while serving as an advocate for the audience. Before joining MECLABS Institute, Daniel was Vice President of MindPulse Communications—a boutique communications consultancy specializing in IT clients such as IBM, VMware, and BEA Systems. Daniel has 21 years of experience in copywriting, editing, internal communications, sales enablement, and field marketing communications. 

In today’s episode, we’re going to discuss customer-first marketing and how we can help our customers see the value of our products and services

Customer-First Marketing

Daniel is passionate about what he calls “customer-first marketing”. This is an area where MECLABS Institute has done a lot of research. Daniel said there are many different ways to succeed as a marketer. However, from different studies and research, they’ve done, they’ve found one of the most successful things we can do is put the customer first. As marketers, it’s part of the job to ask for a conversion. Daniel believes the best thing we can do is go back to our team and ask, “What can we do to put our customer first?”

MECLABS conducted a research study on 2,400 consumers to determine how they perceive companies. The research found that the customers who could perceive that their needs were being put first were more loyal to the company, more satisfied, and more likely to be repeat customers. 

Daniel said the most important question we need to ask whenever we need to make difficult decisions, is the question of how we can put the customers’ needs first, while also achieving our business goals.

“Building a good customer experience does not happen by accident. It happens by design.” - Clare Muscutt, Founder of CMXperience

Actual Value Vs. Perceived Value

It’s important to understand the difference between the actual value and perceived value. Marketers have to communicate to customers the perceived value of the products a company is creating. This is the reason why we have content marketing and marketing in general. That’s why marketing plays a vital role in value perception. If marketers don’t do a good job and show the customer the value of what they’re offering them, they will likely choose another company. 

Though the difference may seem subtle, it’s really important that our customers can see the value we’re providing. I see this happening all the time when companies provide so much value to the customer but they fail to communicate this value to the customer effectively. As a result, this makes it much harder to make the sale. 

We can't just provide value to our customers. Our customers have to perceive the value we are providing. 

What is Your Sign Out Front?

Just as luxury real-estate companies invest a lot of money in the sign in front of the development, we as entrepreneurs must ask ourselves, “What is our sign out front, and what does it say about our products?” Our “sign” can be our website or a free version of a premium course we’re offering. This sign has to indicate to our customers that what we offer is what they’re looking for. It has to help them perceive the value of our products. 

Trust Through Transparency 

Daniel mentioned the research from Michael Norton, at Harvard Business School, who spoke earlier at their event. In his research, he talked about what he calls “trust through transparency”. Once again, it comes down to value perception. A lot of times people don't understand what went into making the product or service they're buying. This includes the many years of experience we’ve accumulated to be that good at what we do. 

If we’re trying to monetize our content, we need to show all the work that went into creating the content in order to help customers and potential customers perceive the value of what we’re offering.

The Conversion Sequence Heuristic 

MECLABS Institute has patented methodologies based on research done to understand the factors that go into customer decisions. The MECLABS Conversion Sequence Heuristic is a framework of five factors on which marketers need to focus their optimization energy. 

Daniel focuses on the “D factor” which represents the force of the value proposition. There are four elements that affect the force of the value proposition. Daniel believes these elements are critical when we consider monetization. Because then we have to build a value proposition for our product. It's even more difficult when it's a digital product when customers can't just walk into a store, pick up a book, flip it around, and perceive its value. That’s why, with digital products, we need to make sure we're communicating the value proposition right. 

The four factors that form the force of the value proposition are appeal, credibility, exclusivity, and clarity. When we’re trying to create the value proposition for a product, we have to ask ourselves how we rank on these four different factors to a customer.

1. Appeal 

First, we need to ask if our product has appeal. After we’ve created something that has appeal in the marketplace, our customers will want to know why and how our claims will work. 

2. Credibility

We need to look for ways to add credibility to our product. This can be achieved through some third-party certifications, customer reviews, or testimonials. This is also where content marketing can come in.   

3. Exclusivity 

After we’ve created an appealing product that people believe in, we need to think about exclusivity. If everyone else is selling our product, it'll be a commodity that we won’t be able to sell at a higher margin. This takes us back to building the value proposition for our product. We must ask, “What is the exclusivity that we bring to this niche that no one else does?” It’s about finding out what differentiates our product. 

4. Clarity 

The fourth element is clarity. We can have the most appealing, credible, and exclusive product but without clearly communicating these values, the customer won’t care. We won’t be able to get their attention and convert it into interest. Daniel’s advice is to look for the exclusive value we offer in the marketplace and make it the headline.  

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Daniel for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

1. If we don’t put customers first, they won’t put us first.
2. If there’s one question we have to ask, it is, “How can we put the customers’ needs first, while also achieving our business goals?”
3. It’s important to show our customers all the work and experience that went into creating our content so they can perceive the value we’re offering.
4. To make sure our products have exclusivity we need to ask, “What is the exclusivity that we bring to this niche that no one else does?”
5. What is exclusive and appealing to one customer is not going to be to another customer. That’s why it’s important to identify and target our ideal customer.

Connect with Daniel Burstein

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Daniel or connect with him, you can find him on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielburstein/ or visit MECLABS website, meclabs.com

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
2. Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
3. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
4. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 
5. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

Share Your Story 

How do you help your customers perceive the value of your products and services? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/92-customer-first-marketing-and-how-to-help-customers-perceive-the-value-of-our-products-and-services/ 

Welcome back to another episode of Monetization Nation with Tim Ash. In the last episode, we discussed how to create a successful landing page. In today’s episode, Tim explains his entrepreneurial journey and the lessons he learned along the way. 

Tim’s Entrepreneurial Journey 

Tim was born in the former Soviet Union and moved to the United States when he was about 8 years old. His family ended up in California, and he eventually attended school at the University of California San Diego. He double-majored in cognitive science and computer engineering in graduate school. For seven years he worked towards a Ph.D., but eventually realized it wasn’t something he wanted to pursue. After he dropped out from completing his Ph.D., he started up his own business, helping people launch new startups, serving on their boards of directors, and raising their first rounds of venture capital.

He thought he could be more successful doing his own thing so he bought a desk and office space and took a leap. He was so excited. He said, “I remember . . . I called up my girlfriend and said, ‘Hey, I’m running around the office naked. You know why? Because I can; It's my frickin office.’”

For the last 25 years, Tim has built his own business from scratch—a journey he has referred to as a rollercoaster. Along the way, he started an international conference series, became a published author, and started keynote speaking. “It's been a lot of what you'd call pivots or just adjustments—wrenching adjustments. The survival enzyme has been running professional services firms for a long, long time,” he said. 

In his journey, he has learned three key principles every startup entrepreneur should know and apply. 

1. Know When to Accept Criticism

Over the past years, Tim has learned how to balance criticism and suggestions from his peers. It is a tension he has had to navigate many times. 

There are always critics. People can think of a million reasons why our idea isn't going to work, and sometimes, we just have to push through it. 

“I guess the one thing that stands out for what to do, all of that from an entrepreneurial standpoint, is this balance between saying, ‘Screw you, I'm going to do it anyway,’ which every entrepreneur needs, and throwing good money after bad saying, ‘You know, maybe it's time to go do something else.’ That's always the tension . . . People call with a thousand reasons why your ideas are not gonna work. And at some level, you have to plow on in spite,” he explained. 

So where's that fine line? How do we know when to listen to people when they say our ideas are dumb, and how do we know when to ignore them and just keep moving forward?

A meme that has stood out to Tim is, “Never take criticism from someone you wouldn’t go to for advice.” - Unknown 

He listens to the mentors and colleagues he respects, then tries to ignore the comments of everyone else.

When I started my first business, adoption.com, people told me my market was too small and my niche was too specific. They said I needed to pick a bigger market. I ignored them and went with my instincts, and we ended up being number one in our niche and category. There will always be naysayers. Part of being an entrepreneur means ignoring the doubts and trusting our gut. There's a lot of wisdom to sometimes ignoring the people that don't quite understand why we're doing what we're doing.

However, there is also wisdom in accepting criticism and making changes. In fact, we should advocate for testing different ideas. Just because something isn’t in our brand guidelines doesn’t mean we can’t test it out. The style guide or brand guide CAN be changed, and if multiple people are making the same suggestion, we shouldn’t let pride get in the way of trying something new. 

Part of being an entrepreneur also requires us to be very clear about who we serve and what value we can offer to them. Having that laser focus allows us to cut through the clutter. If we truly understand our niche and our audience, it will be easier to ignore the doubts of the people around us. 

On our journey, there will be times when we want to give up. It is natural, especially when it feels like we don’t have support from the people around us. Tim has had experiences just like this. “There were definitely several times when it gets harder to be an entrepreneur,” Tim said. “[But it comes with] belief in yourself that you get after being an entrepreneur for a long time.” Eventually, entrepreneurs learn to really trust themselves and their ideas. 

2. Understand your “Superpower”

Learning to trust ourselves and understanding our strengths is just as important as understanding who we serve. 

No superhero has every superpower. This same principle applies in business. Everyone has their own strengths. It is about finding our superpower and focusing on that. Nobody can be an expert in everything. As we move along on our journey, we will recognize what we are good at and eventually learn how to rely on ourselves. 

“You can't be an expert at everything,” Tim said. “What I'm talking about is your ability to cut through the clutter and for people to remember what you stand for.”

3. Determine and Follow Marketing Ethics Before Money is Involved

Once we learn how to navigate through the critics and find our purpose, value, and strengths, we can determine what we stand for. As an entrepreneur, it is important to determine our marketing ethics right off the bat, especially before the money is involved. 

“I think that we really need to step back and think about ethics,” Tim said. “One of the reasons that I wrote Unleash Your Primal Brain was kind of to level the playing field for consumers and individuals. We're being manipulated by large companies, by media enterprises, and they're all trying to strip mine us for value and profit.” 

For example, I see a lot of people put a timer on an offer to create scarcity. They claim it is only available for a limited amount of time, but then the next day, that same offer comes up, creating artificial scarcity to manipulate people into buying. We need to question this stuff before we do it and ask ourselves if we will be okay with the results before the money even becomes a factor.

Tim saw an example of this manipulation when a business hid a disclaimer about their service or product. A business he worked for put the disclaimer in the heading of the page so people wouldn’t see it. The guidelines required to put the disclaimer above the CTA button, so they weren’t technically breaking guidelines, but they were trying to be dishonest by hiding the truth.  

As we determine our values, we also need to look at our ethics. Marketing ethics ties into credibility. If credibility is the most important marketing principle happening today, is it ethical to say or do something that, when our customers discover the reality, will cause us to lose credibility? Is it ethical to give them a fake deadline? If our customers notice this, we immediately lose trust and credibility, ultimately leading to a loss in monetization as well. 

As starting entrepreneurs, it is essential to navigating criticism. If we can’t, our ideas won’t make it very far. We need to find our superpower so we can provide value to our audience. And finally, we need to determine our ethics at the very beginning to make sure we keep our credibility and do what we know is right. 

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Tim for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

1. We need to be able to sort through the good and bad criticism.
2. We should only take criticism from people we would take advice from. 
3. We need to make sure we aren’t so prideful that we ignore good suggestions. 
4. We need to learn how to trust ourselves. 
5. We each have our own unique “superpower”. We need to discover what that is and learn how to use it to benefit our customers. 
6. As an entrepreneur, it is important to determine our marketing ethics right off the bat, especially before the money is involved. 

Connect with Tim

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Tim or connect with him, you can visit timash.com. For more about his latest book, you can go to primalbrain.com. 

Want to be a Better Digital Monetizer?

Did you like today’s episode? Then please follow these channels to receive free digital monetization content

1. Get a free Monetization Assessment of your business
2. Subscribe to the free Monetization eMagazine.
3. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation YouTube channel.
4. Subscribe to the Monetization Nation podcast on Apple Podcast, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. 
5. Follow Monetization Nation on Instagram and Twitter.

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Tim Ash is a keynote speaker and best-selling author who has worked for top companies around the world. His knowledge of persuasion and online marketing has produced more than $1.2 billion of value for his clients. 

He has presented at over 200 events across four continents on stages with more than 12,000 audience members. He was a co-founder and CEO of Site Tuners, a strategic digital optimization agency, and the founding chair of the international Digital Growth Unleashed event. He has helped brands such as Google, Facebook, and Expedia develop successful marketing initiatives and has authored more than 100 published articles. His most recent book, Unleash your Primal Brain, was released last month.

In today’s episode, Tim explains some of his secrets about creating successful landing pages.

The Holy Trinity

In order to create a successful landing page, there are three key questions to ask ourselves. Tim’s “Holy Trinity” of landing page optimization includes the following: 

1. What is the page about? 
2. 1. The first thing we should know is what the page is about. 
   2. This should be the headline. 
   1. We should know what the benefit of the form is.
   2. Often, this is the sub-headline. 
3. What is the form asking me to do? 
   1. The CTA should fulfill the visitor’s needs.
4. What happens when I press the button? 

Answers to each of these questions are essential in building a great landing page. We need to determine a purpose and provide a distinct Call to Action.

Purpose 

A successful landing page needs to have a purpose. 

Tim defines a landing page as “any page that has significant potential to have economic value flow through it” and channels significant traffic. This means a landing page could be a campaign stand-alone page, the homepage of our website, a catalog that’s indexed in shopping search engines, or a product detail page. Whatever the case, each landing page needs to have a specific goal and purpose.

What problem is our landing page going to solve? Or as the number one question in Tim’s Holy Trinity asks, what is the page about? Our landing page needs to focus on one specific goal. This purpose could be to raise awareness about a product or to get our customers to subscribe to our email list. Whatever the case, we have to make our purpose clear to our audience the second they land on our page. 

The biggest mistake Tim sees people make is not addressing the needs of their audience. “The biggest mistake that I see marketers continue to make is that we're talking about stuff that's in our own self-interest as marketers. You know, ‘We're great,’ ‘This is the world's best solution.’” Tim explained. “It's really [about] having that user-centered focus . . . A well-designed landing page is going to address the needs of the person. And only by doing that, can you make more money as a business.”

Whether we want our consumers to watch a video, send an email, download an eBook, or make an appointment, it needs to be persuasive and focus on the visitor.

We need to understand exactly who we are talking to. Who is my tribe? What are their values? The same story can have two very different meanings depending on the person and their cultural background. In order to make sure we are getting our message across, we must understand who our audience is. 

“The question is, does [our landing page] meet the needs of the intended audience, and do a high percentage of visitors act and do the thing that you want them to do?” Tim said. “The point of the landing page is to align with the goals of the visitors and to have them take action.”

Within the marketing funnel, our landing page is an essential element. The marketing funnel is a business process with steps, often starting with customer awareness and leading to purchase. 

Call to Action

A successful landing page needs to have a Call to Action (CTA).

A CTA is the part of our landing page that tells our audience what we want them to do. This could be a form they need to fill out to “Subscribe Now” or a link that says “Read More” and directs them to our blog posts. 

Here are some examples of a CTA:

• Subscribe here for FREE weekly newsletters
• Read more here
• Sign up now
• Follow our Twitter 
• Watch this video
• Book your appointment today for 15% off
• Contact us today for a FREE consultation

The best CTAs (calls-to-action) often start with an action word, create a sense of urgency, and tell our audience what’s in it for them (Source: SproutSocial).

Questions two and three of Tim’s Holy Trinity are: What is the form asking me to do? What happens when I press the button? We can also ask ourselves, where is the traffic going? Where do we want them to go? The CTA should answer these questions.

Visual Clutter 

A successful landing page needs to avoid visual clutter. 

The second biggest mistake Tim sees on landing pages is visual clutter or “visual boogers” as he calls them. “[Visual clutter] is death by a thousand cuts,” Tim said. “We start decorating [our pages] with drop shadow on the button, or just obnoxious extraneous detail and ‘visual boogers,’ I call them, all over your page and not having a sense of priorities. To me, landing pages should have a zen-like stillness, out of which the Call to Action naturally arises.” 

To get someone on our website, we often need to interrupt them and fight for their attention. But once a visitor is on our website, it needs to be calm. We no longer need to compete for attention on the page. We need to simplify, simplify, simplify. We need to make our core message clear. For everything, ask, “Why is this on the page?” It should all have a purpose that goes back to our central goal. 

“Figure out what's important, make that more visually prominent, and tone everything else down,” Tim said. “I'd say that taking a machete to all of the clutter on your website is step one.” 

One tool we can use is a heat map to help determine what visitors aren’t using, and then go through and remove all the elements people aren’t clicking on. However, even before that, we should have the discipline to strip the access away so everything is visible on just one page (whether that be a laptop screen or phone screen). We shouldn’t have to scroll. If we do, we can cut more stuff. We should only have things on our landing page that answer the three questions in Tim’s Holy Trinity to landing pages. 

“The visual priorities are, what's the page about? That's the headline. What's the form asking me to do? That's the form sub-headline. And what happens when I press the button? And that should be stated in terms of what's useful to the visitor. What do they get? So, if you have those three things as your top three visually prominent things on the page, you win, and anything else just needs to go,” Tim explained. 

Trust

A successful landing page needs to establish trust. 

Trust has to precede the conversation. “Another thing that marketers can take advantage of is badges that indicate various kinds of trust. Whether it's a transactional trust or third party credibility or testimonials, awards, that kind of stuff can be really, really powerful. Instead of you saying you're great, get other people saying you're great,” Tim said. 

One of the most important things is our approach. The biggest mistake we can make is designing our page to focus on our own interests and toot our own horn. We don’t want to make our landing page an ad. We must have an outside-in mentality, meaning we are user-centered. As we do this, we build trust with our visitors and they will be more likely to complete our CTA. 

Key Takeaways

Thank you so much Tim for sharing your stories and knowledge with us today. Here are some of my key takeaways from this episode:

1. Our landing page needs to have a single, central purpose.
2. Our landing page needs to be focused on solving a problem for our audience. 
3. Our landing page needs to have a strong CTA (call to action) with clear benefits for our visitors.
4. Our landing page needs to be simple. We need to cut out the clutter. Everything on our page should align with our central goal. 
5. Our landing page needs to establish trust. 

Connect with Tim

If you enjoyed this interview and want to learn more about Tim or connect with him, you can visit timash.com, and listen to part two of this episode. For more about his latest book, you can go to primalbrain.com. 

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Share Your Story 

What elements do you include on your landing pages? Do you implement the same key elements Tim does? Please join our private Monetization Nation Facebook group and share your insights with other digital monetizers.

Read at: https://monetizationnation.com/blog/90-how-to-create-a-successful-landing-page/