How to Use an Online Event as Marketing Tool
An online event can act as important building block in your marketing system. It can help you to develop a campaign capability, which involves the capacity to send hundreds or thousands of visitors to a single page in a short time span and ask them for a specific action like registering for a mailing list or buying a product. This capability is essential if you want to earn money by participating in product launches as an affiliate, and much more so, if you want to launch your own product.
What Is an Online Event?
Online events take most often the form of teleseminars (conference calls or webcasts in a variety of formats) and webinars. A webinar contains visual and audio elements, while a teleseminar or webcast focuses on audio. A printed document may be added, and especially for the pure audio event it is very important to provide a clear structure to the listener in a printed format. The visual portion of an online event may be a power point presentation, or a transmission of the presenter’s computer screen.
What Is so Special with Online Events?
First of all a written text contains only a fraction of the information which gained by listening to the voice of a person. By Talking and listening it is much easier to create a bond of trust. If you want to learn more about this aspect of an online event, do a web search for “Arthur Joseph”. In this article I want to concentrate on more formal aspects of marketing with an online event.
Natural Reasons to Send Follow Up Messages
You get naturally a number of natural occasions to contact your audience through email, twitter etc: Announce the event, remind them to attend, when the replay is put online, when the replay is going offline. You can add a deadline to register, or to ask questions in advance. You can contact them this way. You can send five, six, seven messages in one campaign without being or sounding spammy.
Urgent Need for Action
You have at least two deadlines inherent in your online event which create automatic urgency: The events date and time, when it’s over, it’s over. And the second deadline is the time when you remove the replay. If you choose, you can add a third deadline by asking to register for the event or request a certain topic to be covered latest at a certain date.
Project Scarcity
Every direct mail copywriter will tell you to create a sense of scarcity. Your online event does that elegantly: You have only 200 phone lines available. Seats are awarded on a first come first serve basis. The more you have been able to become known as an expert in your field, the ability to ask you a question and interact directly and publicly with you will be seen as a scarce and valuable opportunity.
Sense of Belonging
To belong to a select group is a powerful motivator for humans. You can use this fact of course with your online event by making a special offer exclusively to the group attending the event. But you can even go a step further by doing events for your customers only, or for your twitter followers, Facebook friends and mailing list subscribers. If you do this properly, you can strengthen your relationship with your audience with each and every event you do.
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How to Get More Sales
If you want to grow your business, you need to get more sales. By definition, there are only three ways you can get that:
- Get more customers
- Sell more often to each customer
- Sell more in each transaction
Get More Customers
If you do not want your business to die, you need to acquire new customers all the time. In truth, you lose customers all the time. To grow your business and get more sales, you need to find more new customers than you lose current ones.
Finding new customers is expensive and can be difficult. Many businesses do not earn a profit and even make a loss on their first sale to a new customer, the so called front end sale. They need to go a long way to find a prospect, make him aware of the offer, get his interest, nurture his desire and finally induce him to act on the offer. You need lots of effort and high expenses to guide him through his decision making process.
Sell More Often to Each Customer
It is much easier to get more sales from an existing customer, because you have built already a trustful relationship with him. You can get his attention, and it is easier for him to act on his desire, because his risk to be disappointed or look like a fool is now much lower.
How often you can sell to each customer depends on your product or service, and on your effort. The best scenario you could dream up is a product which needs to be replaced or serviced every couple of months, and you can approach your customer at the right time to remind him about the need. One simple example would be your dentist. He will send you a letter to remind you that it is time for a new checkup and ask you to call for an appointment.
The same system lies behind the riches of Gillette, Procter & Gamble and Coca Cola. In these cases, the body reminds you that you need more razor blades, detergents or drinks. To get more sales the providers of these products need just to be present in your mind as well as in the store.
In internet marketing we use social networks and email to be present in the customers mind. It is a bit more difficult to come up with products which need to be replaced on a regular basis, because we sell typically immaterial products consisting of information. But still, information needs to be up to date, which opens the door for membership sites providing a steady stream of news about a certain topic.
It may also be a good idea to drop feed your information product to your customer. This approach may increase usability in a big way. And every time you deliver the next installment of the product, you have the chance to get more sales by offering him a related product or service. If you deliver too much information at once, the consumer may feel overwhelmed, and your product may end up collecting dust on your customer`s hard disk.
Sell More in Each Transaction
If you have made a sale you have got already your customers attention and interest. He is in the mood to act. The simplest way to get more sales from your existing customers is to offer them another related product, which may increase the usability of the product they just bought. One example would be the sales man for shoes, who will inevitably offer you a shoe polish as soon as you have bought your new boots. This is absolutely legitimate, and your customer has every right to be angry with you, if you do not offer this shoe polish, travel insurance, video tutorial etc. He wants the full value of the product you just sold him, and it is up to you to offer him complementary products and services.
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How to Craft a Perfect Tell a Friend Message
Tell a Friend Scripts are internet tools to ferment word of mouth marketing. They can be very powerful, if you use them correctly. But if you do not know how to use them, they can be just without any impact, or even create big problems for a business.
Basic Functions
We use our “Tell a Friend” script for motivating people to inform their friends about an offer. The script makes it easy for our customers to spread the word. They need to fill only their own name and email plus the names and email addresses of their friends into a form, then press a button and, wow, the news goes out to 3, 4, 5 friends. Our script allows us you to offer an incentive if somebody sends the message out. We can also configure a campaign to reward senders if their friends take action after receiving the email, and we have control over the message which is passed along.
Why it Works
The basic power behind our tell a friend script comes from the fact that people love to share new and useful stuff with others. If the information they share is indeed new, surprising and helpful, it is like sharing a secret. And you all know that a secret must be shared with the “best friend”. If we add a carefully crafted reward into the picture, the system becomes even more powerful.
The Motivation
People share useful information and secrets (not readily available information) with several goals in mind. They may hope to …
- provide value to a friend
- strengthen a relationship
- shine as an experts, who knows more than others about a certain field
- earn an additional incentive
- but, if not done correctly, a reward can devalue the information and act as an disincentive
The Message
Our tell a friend script allows us to control the message which is sent out. We limit the script always to send a message written by us, because otherwise people could use it as a platform for sending spam. This could spoil our name create trouble with our internet service provider and even with governments around the world. The message need also to conform to the FTC’s disclosure requirements related to product endorsements.
Message Attributes
How does a perfect message for word of mouth marketing look? Here are a few points:
- It must be short and easy to understand
- It must be interesting, even surprising
- It must provide value to the recipient, even if he does not follow up with an action
- It must induce a follow-up action
- It must not feel and taste like spam, and neither be a hidden product endorsement or sales pitch
Composing a message for tell a friend scripts is copywriting. Every internet marketer needs to hone his copywriting skills continously in a cycle of testing and improving.
Message Examples
The program comes with a readymade message. Take that message as a placeholder. It may sound like
Hi [friends name]
I just found an incredible website offering the cheapest air tickets you can find anywhere, online or offline.
Check it out, click now on this link:
[Website URL].
You will not regret it.I wish you all the best
[Sender's name]
The Test
Would you like to send this message to your trusted friends? Could you hope to gain their respect as an expert, and to strengthen your friendship? And if you received such a message, would you act on it? As far as I am concerned: no and no. If you plan to use a tell a friend script with such a placeholder message, better save the purchase price and use the money to dine with your wife.
Another Example
Dear [friends name],
did you know that there are a few airlines out that allow you to reserve your seat for your family visit next Christmas already in January and then to wait with the ticket purchase until September.I got this information from Johannes Stockburger.
You find the details at[website URL]
I hope this information will allow you to reduce the fare of your next holiday flight.
All the best
[sender's name]
The Same Test
Would you feel good to pass this message to a friend who travels frequently to see his family during the holiday season?
And would you mind to receive such a message from a friend who knows about your recent holiday travel adventures?
Follow the Rules
Our tell a friend script adds an opt-out link under this message, and we leave it there. It is just a sign that we and the person sending the message through the script accept the right of everybody else to decide which information they want to receive.
If the letter contains an endorsement, and the script offers at the same time an incentive to send the letter, we must disclose it. But we avoid endorsements and sales pitches in this message.
Conclusion
We try to craft a message providing immediate value to the reader. We avoid open or hidden sales pitches and endorsements in tell a friend messages. Otherwise we would have to include information about any reward offered for sending the email.
We take care that the system cannot be used for spamming, add an opt-out link to the end of the message and we do not allow the sender to change the message. Finally we safeguard the form with a CAPTCHA to prevent abuse and protect our reputation.
The Essence Of Freedom
Is freedom just another word for nothing left to lose? No, this is not the essence of freedom.
I took this line from a song of Janis Joplin, and it was one of my favorites. But later I struggled many years to liberate myself from the thought expressed by this song. Why?
Ability to Say No is Important
This song of Janis reduces the meaning of freedom to one aspect only: The ability to say no. But in truth, freedom is something else: It is the ability to make a choice. This means that you can do something, if you decide so, or you can leave it. Freedom means that you have the ability to determine the course of your live. Freedom is self determination.
If you have nothing, you are not free. If the essence of freedom is the ability to determine the course of your life, then you must have resources to be free. If you have nothing, and somebody offers you food, you must say yes to survive. And, having nothing, you must say no to many opportunities life has to offer because you cannot afford it. If you have nothing, you cannot help others. And if you have nothing, you cannot choose what to learn.
Master Your Things and Social Status
Janis Joplin misses the essence of freedom, when she said “nothing left to lose.” I do not say that anybody should be a slave of things, or of status. It is mostly status, talk of other people about somebody or something, and fear of that, what enslaves us. If we have useless things, we tend to forget them. Useless items will waste our resources, and slow us down, but they will not be able to control our mindset.
Fear Makes Slaves
Fear of gossip surely has the potential to kill off our ambition and make us say yes where we should say no. In postwar Germany, where I grew up, there were plenty of people who should have said no. And there was even more pressure on others, not to speak up and tell the upcoming generation what really happened. So, nothing left to lose said for me merely: “Do not provide others any leverage to force you to do anything.” This has some truth in itself, but it also smells like lost opportunity. It defines the essence of freedom in negative terms.
Positive Approach to Freedom
Let’s try it the positive way. If the essence of freedom means to have choices in life, and to choose what is right for me, how do I get there? This is not a trivial question, but one thing is sure: It involves learning. To identify the right choice, you need to anticipate the possible results. After making a choice, which means in this context setting a goal, you must learn how to reach there. This is done most effectively by looking for people who have done the same thing before. If you study them carefully, you will be able to follow their way.
Internet as a Game Changer
The beauty of the internet is that you can meet there people, who have achieved all kind of things. And many of them are more than willing to share, how they did it. Some provide
Others offer and programs showing you how they reached the degree of freedom they have achieved. They help you to learn their trade and show their tools. Iif you have access to the internet, you can certainly reach such people.
Accept Your Responsibility
But this puts the blame squarely on yourself, if you allow yourself still to pose as a victim. Make the right choice, decide to grow. Determination to grow is the final essence of freedom. This determination will not remove the consequences of past mistakes immediately. But it can improve life faster and more profoundly than you can imagine. Wake up! Every journey starts with a single step.
Upcoming Sale: Proven Affiliate Tools
I just bought resale rights for three flagship products of Mike Filsaime.
Mike is changing his focus away from his current portfolio of proven software applications and infor products to hosted software applications. For this reason he sold resale rights to some of his top products, and I am one of the lucky people who were able to get these rights.
I am happy, but I want you also to be happy. Expect in the coming weeks a super duper introduction offer. But I will be only able to keep this introduction offer up for a few days. After that I will have to charge the regular price for the products.
Subscribe to the feed of this blog, either via RSS or email on the upper right corner of this page to get an alert as soon as the intro offer is out.
If you prefere you can also get an alert on twitter.
