What is market research?

Market research is the process of truly understanding your target market. Their needs, wants, preferences, beliefs, hopes, ways of thinking, pain points, problems and more. Anything that gives you a better insight to your target audience and why they would want to buy from you.

Why is market research good?

Quite simply you’ll sell more. If you are off target with your market research then your copywriting and marketing messages will not have the desired effect, they will be less impactful. If you get it right however, if you can understand exactly who you are selling to and preciously why they buy a product or service like yours then your conversions are sure to increase. No matter what tactic you use, sales letters, emails, adverts, webinars, videos, blog posts, or any other form of marketing, understanding your market underpins it all and your marketing will be so much more powerful and resonate so much more with your audience that response will certainly increase.

What’s bad about market research?

Market research done correctly has no draw backs, what could be bad about understanding your market better?

The only thing that’s bad is when you don’t do it, when you guess at what your market wants, needs, thinks, cares about, that’s the mistake, not doing it or giving it any considerations altogether or guessing, assuming you know what your market thinks and feels when you really don’t.

Who is market research for?

Everyone, all businesses should be engaged in conducting market research from time to time.

How to do market research?

Market research is all about talking to your target market and hearing what they have to say. So simply ask them. Ask your customers, they will usually be forthcoming with helping you out as you have a trust and relationship built with them but make sure they are not sugar coating things because they like you, ask for pure, honest feedback even if it is harsh or uncomfortable. By finding out where you can improve, you can eliminate problems you did not realize you had.

You can also ask for information from people who are not customers so long as they are part of your target market.

A great way to get information from your customers and the people in your market is to ask if you can interview them or ask them to fill out a poll. Ask the right questions, collect the results and identify the common, reoccurring themes. These are the big factors, these are the thoughts, feelings and opinions that your market as a whole share and will respond to.

That’s it for market research, this is the boring part no one wants to do but it’s so important, I can even begin to state how important. Your marketing is built on your market research.

Mike Faith is the founder of Headsets.com, a $30 million per year company built upon the principles of fun and outstanding customer service. In this interview Mike shares how he grew his company using some wacky Marketing & PR stunts, one of them to tune of $6 million. Mike is also a huge advocate of customer service and he tells us why good customer service is an asset, not a cost.

In the last episode, episode 143 I talked about copywriting and so I thought in this episode it would be fitting to point you in the direction an incredible free copywriting resource, it’s one of my own blog posts and perhaps one of my successful and controversial blog posts, it’s called the 182 greatest copywriters and copywriting resources of the internet age.

You can find it over at josephbushnell.com/greatest-copywriters-copywriting-resources

This was a list I complied of the world’s top copywriters and copywriting resources of the modern era. It’s a big list because there are a lot of very talented copywriters and places to learn copywriting. I believe in this list I have managed to pretty much include most of the super talented people who can help you to improve your copywriting. If you go check the list out, I not only just include peoples names but specifically I list all the blogs, newsletters, books, products where you can go get their copywriting information.

If you are serious about learning to write amazing copy that makes money, this list will show you who the best of the best is and the links to where you can learn from them.

Go to josephbushnell.com/greatest-copywriters-copywriting-resources

What is Copywriting?

Copywriting is the process of writing advertising promotional materials. Copywriting is the text you see on websites, in emails, banner ads, social media statuses, the scripts used for a webinar or video sales letter, if a business is saying it with some kind of intention to influence or persuade then it’s copy. It’s also everywhere in the offline world, in fact that’s where it all began, it’s the text on brochures, billboards, advertisements, catalogs, the direct mail sent through your door, it’s all over the place. This text is known as “copy.”

Unlike other forms of writing however, copy is all about getting the reader to take action. That action might be to buy, opt-in, to register for a webinar, to comment, or engage with a product, service, or company, there’s many possible outcomes that your copy could be trying to achieve but it’s your copy that will motivate the reader to do so.

That’s why copywriting is often referred to as “salesmanship in print.” It’s sole aim is to get someone to do something and often that something is to buy something.

Why is Copywriting good?

Copywriting can be the big difference as to whether you are listened to or ignored. It’s the big reason someone is interested or uninterested. It’s whether some wants or desires what you have to offer or whether it just doesn’t appeal to them. It’s whether they do as you ask or not. It’s whether they buy from you or not. It really is a huge part of online marketing. If you get it right, the potential benefits are enormous. Copywriting can be the difference between a struggling, failing business and a successful one, it’s that important.

What’s bad about Copywriting?

Well I can’t think of anything bad about copywriting, except for bad copy. Good copy has no drawbacks at all and copywriting by its very nature should be good, that’s it’s whole aim, whole reason for existing.

The only other thing perhaps is that it doesn’t always come easily or naturally so if copywriting is something you may try your hand at, be prepared to really have to work at it and be prepared for the occasional fail. Even the a-list copywriters sometimes bomb.

Who is Copywriting for?

Copywriting is for every single business on this planet, I don’t care who you are and what you sell. You need good copy.

How to do Copywriting?

There’s a lot to copywriting, it’s one of the toughest skills to acquire. It certainly comes more naturally to some than others.

If you have the resources, hire a professional copywriter.

If you do not have the resources then use the classic copywriting formula, the AIDA for formula.

AIDA stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, Action.

First you need to grab attention, this is the headline of your sales letter, or subject line of your email, or first line of your social media update or first thing you say on your video sales letter. Whatever it is, you have to cut through the noise and give people a good reason to stop and read or stop and watch or stop and listen to you. Anything less than that will be ignored.

Then once you have their attention, you need to elaborate further on what you have just said, give them even more reason to give you their attention, get them interested.

Then when you have their full attention, their interest, you tell them how you can help them and what’s in it for them if they do the next step which is Action. You give them a call to action but they are only going to take this call to action if you grabbed their attention, got their interest and then made them desire so that they could follow your call to action to opt-in, to buy, to register, etc

Of course to do all of this you need understand who you are writing or talking to. If you want someone’s attention you need to know what holds their attention, if you want someone to desire what you have to offer you need to understand exactly what motivates them to want that.

That’s where market research comes in and we’ll be covering that in the next part of this series.

Gideon Shalwick is an expert in online video marketing and founder of splasheo. In this interview he shares how we can dominate our niche by using online video marketing.

In the previous episodes we discussed the top 9 ways to drive targeted traffic which were SEO, Search advertising, Display advertising, content marketing, organic social media traffic, social advertising, email advertising, affiliate traffic and retargeting.

In this episode we are moving on from traffic onto increasing our conversion rates.

As I’ve already explained this piece is absolutely critical because everything else depends on it. If your offers don’t convert then all your traffic driving efforts will be wasted. This is the point where you either get an ROI on your traffic or you don’t.

It’s at this point that the money is made. It’s where people say yes to you. It’s where they give you money. If you get this part wrong then nothing else matters.

The lifetime value of your customers also depends on your conversion rates. If you want to sell to your customers frequently then you require lot’s of yes’s. If you want to upsell your customers to higher price points, to get even bigger yes’s then you need to be able to convert them to that level.

All 3 of the ways to grow your online business through better marketing, driving traffic, increasing conversions and maximizing lifetime customer value are vitally important but if you put a gun to my head and forced me to pick the most important of the 3 then I’d say increasing conversion rates is the most important factor in the equation.

You could grow a business with low traffic volume so long as your conversion rates where good. I don’t recommend that but you could do it.

You could have a profitable business that drove traffic and converted well but neglected the lifetime value of a customer, again, I totally recommend against that but a business could still succeed with that element, they just wouldn’t reach their full potential.

But a business where your offers don’t convert. Where no one see the value of what you offer. Where prospects do not become paying customers. Well now you do have a really big problem. There are very few online business models where conversion rates are not a big factor.

It’s also perhaps the hardest of the 3 to get good at, to get skilled at. Anyone with money can drive traffic, maybe not in an optimal way but they could drive traffic. It’s also easier to sell to people once they are already a customer so raising lifetime customer value is not too difficult. They’ve said yes before it’s now easier for them to say yes again.

But getting someone to say yes when they have not said yes before, to take someone from prospect to customer, that’s the tough part and if you don’t know what you are doing you will struggle.

So that’s why it’s so important. I don’t know you or your business, but if you are struggling, then my best guess is that this is the first place you should look. If people are not saying yes or handing you there money very often then this is the first thing you need to fix.

The best way to do this? The most time efficient way to do this? Is to hire a copywriter or a CRO specialist (conversion rate optimization) to fix this issue for you. Assuming you have a good product, you can hire a good copywriter to come and write compelling marketing messages for you. A CRO company can make your website into a conversion machine.

But neither of these services come cheap, at least not for high quality copywriting or CRO services, you need to be prepared to invest. If you do have money to invest, I highly recommend taking this route.

If you do not have money to invest right now then you need to learn this yourself. Or someone on your team does. Either way it can’t be ignored or your low sales problems will just simply continue.

Even if you do hire a copywriter or CRO company you should know this stuff anyway or you won’t know how to judge whether the work they have done for you is likely to work, whether it’s been worth your money.

At least a basic understanding of marketing, sales and copywriting is essential for every business owner in my opinion.

So with that said here 13 ways to increase your conversion rates, to help more people to say yes to you.

1. Good copywriting

2. Better market research

3. Niching

4. Having a marketing funnel

5. A strong USP

6. Conversion rate optimization

7. Video sales letters

8. Webinars

9. Free trials or low cost, low friction offers

10. Proof

11. Urgency

12. Be mobile ready

13. Have a launch

There are plenty more than these 13 factors but for me these are main ones and in the next episodes we will be discussing how these 13 things can help you to get more yes’s, to get more sales.

Rob Brown is one of the world’s leading authorities on personal marketing, networking strategies, executive presence,referrals and reputations. He is the head of the global networking council & the author of the best selling book “How to build your reputation”

In this interview I grill Rob for his very best networking tips. He reveals…

* The networking strategies he used to multiply his income by a factor of 15 in just 13 months!

* The 6 best places to find people to network with

* Where to find your ideal prospect & target exactly who you want to meet

* The secret to never getting nervous & being full of confidence when meeting new people

* How to make a great first impression

* The “Early touch of the ball” method that will get you fired up for a networking event

* The “3 to 1″ technique which will help you quickly identify if the person you are talking to is a potential client

* How to ask better questions & tell intriguing stories to make yourself unforgettable

* 2 questions you can ask to really get people to open up about themselves

* The 4 P’s of opportunity

* How to end the initial conversation so you have a second meeting

* Tips for following up & landing some business

* Why the “Law of recency” means you need to use “keep in touch marketing” or your competitors will get all the business

* 8 common networking blunders

* Why introverts can often be the best networkers

* How online networking has changed traditional face to face networking into a blended networking strategy

Kevin Wilke is the founder of Nitro Marketing, a training company which teaches people how to start their very own extremely profitable local marketing business.

Local marketing is in huge demand right now. Small to medium sized businesses all over the world are desperate for more leads and sales. Many of those local business owners know the huge potential of the internet in bringing them more trade but lack the knowledge and skills to tap into the online goldmine.

That problem for local business owners has presented a massive opportunity to online marketers, who can team up with local businesses to help them dominate the local online presence for their industry. In this interview Kevin reveals…

* Why local marketing is in big demand since the 2008 recession

* How you can charge premium prices of between $1,000 – $5,000 per month for just one local marketing client!

* How to find the right type of client who can realistically pay those kinds of fees

* 6 types of online marketing you can do on your clients behalf so they dominate online local search

* How to pitch your services to these local business owners so it’s a simple, no-brainer proposition for them

* How to give your prospect confidence in your service by showing them results in advance (before they pay you a single penny)

* How to get a clients long term commitment without having to resort to legal contracts

* 5 ways to do warm approaches when prospecting for new customers

* How to use outsourcing to make sure this business doesn’t take up all your time

In this episode I want to point you in the direction of an incredible free resource

It’s Justin Brooke’s 18 Facebook marketing courses and tools reviewed. You can find it at http://imscalable.com/blog/ultimate-facebook-review/

Facebook ads is one the best places on the entire internet to do advertising, so it’s important to get it right. The success of your facebook ads campaigns will come down to what you have learned and can put into practice, so it’s important to learn from the right source.

In this blog post Justin has bought all of the top Facebook ads courses available on the market and very kindly shares with us the courses, people and tools that you should be learning from. So you don’t have to kiss any frogs, Justin has invested in it already and shares it with you so you can just go direct to the best sources.

So if you want to learn how to get cheap facebook clicks, create amazing facebook ads, learn all the techie side of Facebook ads, get a good ROI with facebook ads then go check out this list, check out Justin’s reviews, invest in something to get trained up in FB advertising and make a ton of money from it.

Go to http://imscalable.com/blog/ultimate-facebook-review/

Shawn LeBrun has been doing health and fitness marketing and copywriting for over 11 years. He has helped fellow personal trainers sell over 10.5 million dollars worth of their fitness products and services. He helps personal trainers attract more clients, increase their training profits, and reduce their hours... turning their personal training company into a booming business just simply by improving the copy on their site.

The health and fitness market is an evergreen market in the online space. It will always be so because people who are over weight or need to be more healthy will turn to the internet for solutions and answers. Having said that, with huge demand comes huge competition. To compete in this gladiator like arena, your sales page has to do it's job. In this interview I ask Shawn how to write a sales letter to the health and fitness market that pulls in millions of dollars. Shawn reveals...

* How he sold over $2 million worth of just one of his fitness eBooks!

* What the real pain points & emotional hot buttons of the weight loss/fitness market are

* The most important part of a sales letter in the health niche (up to 90% of the success rests on this)

* The best headline Shawn ever wrote to the health market that tripled his conversion rates

* Why your proof elements in this industry must be visual to be believable

* Layout, design, graphics & color tips to use when marketing to this niche

* How to stay out of trouble and cover yourself legally by using disclaimers

* Why you should be using video in your health and fitness marketing materials