It seems like my inbox is flooded with promises of “ninja ways to increase conversions” from some guru who got a special insight from a drunk guy in a Russian bar that generated an extra $100k in profit. B.S. radar going crazy yet?
Besides the obvious problems with this kind of nonsense, is that even if these tricks DO work – it never lasts. The name of the game should be sustainability of income.
Worst yet, the refund rates from people who feel duped by whatever method you used to get them to buy feel taken advantage of and even betrayed.
And in case you haven’t noticed, a customer who feels betrayed is not only a high PR risk but they are next to impossible to keep around with their wallet open.
People hate to feel tricked. (DUH!)
So while there are thousands of things you can do to make a sales page better such as better copywriting, split testing images, better explaining your value proposition etc there is one thing that blew ALL of those out of the water for me.
I found that changing one little thing in the way I approached sales pages created a massive 381% increase in sales conversions and historically low refund rates for my product.
It completely blew the doors off of my business and I’ll never be turning back.
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I love working with people I meet through The College Startup, but I’ve always felt like something was missing.
People either love or hate forums, but I always thought it would make a welcome addition to the community here. And while I had played around with countless solutions they all seemed to more or less suck.. a lot.
Finally, I found bbPress (after it had gone through many updates that seemed pretty cool). However, it had some glaring issues running on Thesis that were complete show stoppers until a wise blogger created a fix (thread linked here).
After having a fix for the last thing standing in my way I’m pleased to bring you the Internet marketing forum section of TheCollegeStartup!
If you want to check it out, keep in mind it’s brand new but you can go here. To get started you are going to need to register with this site first so you have an account, which can be done by registering here.
Looking forward to see what you guys do with it and how you can help each other. I’ll personally be there in there too answering questions when I can.
This is a guest post by Matt Smith. Matt (@MattASmitty) is an online sales and marketing dude. Currently Matt runs BusinessPirate.com, which teaches you how to build your own video course business.
So you want to be an online marketer? The dreams of controlling a million person email list and having thousands of consumers visiting your site daily. Ahh how sweet it sounds 
Before you get too excited let me tell you one certainty I have uncovered regarding online marketing: online marketing is all about partnerships and business development.
The online marketing world really revolves around partnerships, business development deals, and relationships. (we are NOT talking about advertising here)
How do you get your site featured on TechCrunch or Mashable?
I bet having a personal relationship with the editor would help. I am not saying that all high profile tech news sites only cover people they know. What I am saying is the better your relationship with the publisher the higher the probability that they will cover you.
How do you get a publisher to cover and link to you? A give-away is a fantastic tactic. Reach out to the site owner and offer to give free product to his readers. Ideally you team up on a simply Twitter and comment contest.
Readers tweet a predetermined message and comment on the giveaway post to be entered in the contest. Both you and the partner benefit from this exposure.
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Ever wondered why your competitor is having runaway success and you aren’t?
Chances are that it has less to do with slick sales copy and more to do with trust equity.
Sometimes you don’t have trust because you’ve been in constant pitch mode, or maybe you are just new to the scene. Don’t worry though, there are several sure fire way to find your voice with visitors and turn them into loyal fans.
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If you are being strategic about your internet marketing, then you are likely engaged or at least aware of all the social networks out there for you to put your brand and attempt to engage with your potential customers. Most of you ask if it’s worth putting in all the effort for so many different profiles and trying to reach your audience all over the place. However, unlike almost all the other networks that Google (or anyone else really) has tried to push out (Google Wave anyone?), Google+ actually makes social networking interesting again. So how did they do this, why does it matter and how to benefit from it?
How They Do It
Google really ramped up their war chest of developers for Google+ and it shows, not only is it an extremely powerful platform but they are constantly pushing new updates to it to make it better all the time. They also took the time to think about how to make the most compelling experience they could by taking what makes Twitter interesting, what makes Facebook dominant and how to make a really unique social experience.
The term “game mechanics” is thrown around far too often in startups, especially if you watch any of the TechCrunch Disrupt conferences “We are going to take game mechanics to badges and FarmVille your friends for profit and lulz”. But Google+ really does take just enough elements of true game mechanics that make the users actually feel good when new people add them to their circles.
Why It Matters
Why does it matter that Google found a way to make game mechanics meaningful in a social network that isn’t a Zynga brainchild? ENGAGEMENT. While Google+ is still invite only (don’t have one? let me know in the comments what your gmail is and I’ll invite you) so it has small, but rabid user base. TechCrunch has Google+ showing up in their top 10 referring sites regardless of the fact that their Google+ presence is 1/10th the size of their Twitter and Facebook connections.
The Benefit (and how to get Google+ users right now)
Besides the obvious perk of more traffic, it’s important to grow your audience in Google+ because people will engage with your content. This extension of your conversation is great for you because when people comment and “+1″ your posts it will resurface the content in your audiences feed so the conversation doesn’t die as easily as it does on Facebook and Twitter.
The important thing to note here however is that you don’t want to put all your eggs in the Google+ basket because you don’t own it like you do your Aweber list, and while Google+ is awesome today – social networks can come and go, but you need to own the rights to your hard work and be able to help them engage across any contemporary platform in the future.
(Pro Tip: Add a P.S. with a link to your Google+ profile in your next email blast and watch your follower count go up)
If you are already on Google+, what are your thoughts? If you aren’t and need an invite just let me know in the comments.
