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.

Treating Your Customers Like Humans

This is going to sound silly when you say it out loud, but the biggest flaw with 99% of the marketing advice out there is that people can easily forget that you have to treat your customers like humans.

Have you ever wondered why there is a massive difference between “warm traffic” (clicks you send) compared to “cold traffic” (clicks that any external source sends) in terms of conversions and earnings per click?

People buy from people they trust, be a stellar resource and the customers will flock to you in the masses. [Tweet This Quote]

It’s almost sad how shocked and amazed most people are when you put just a little more effort into customer retention and being accessible to their needs. Luckily this gives you a drastic advantage that will create lifelong customers who will go bonkers for what you do and even be willing to pay more money for the same product if you’re the one selling it.

How To Earn Customer Love

Be super accessible to your potential and existing customers and be available for contact across every major communication channel.

Your potential customers want to know they are going to get the support they need before they buy, and people who have bought need to be blown away with how hard you are willing to work to keep their business through stellar support on all channels.

I know it sounds like a lot of work, but you need to ask yourself something.

“If I worked THIS hard to get a sale in the first place, how hard should I be willing to work to keep it?”

The answer to that should be that you are willing to work AT LEAST as hard to keep someone as you are willing to acquire them in the first place.

Think about how much energy went into getting that customer between capital expenses, media budgets and leaning on the credibility of your affiliates. It’s a massive effort to get someone to trust you enough to open their wallet the first time, so it’s your obligation to make them feel great about their experience even if they end up wanting a refund.

The Secret Sauce for 381% Improvement

Wondering what I did differently that completely blew my (already good) conversion numbers out of the water?

I installed a live sales and support chat service on my sales and documentation pages.

Now, when I have my regular messenger up and running anyone on the site can instant message with me to ask my questions from pre-sale to support.

The results (sales increases aside) have been stunning. Not only will you sell way more product and shrink your refund to near-zero ranges, you are going to learn SO much about your customer base.

People will tell me the exact use cases they are thinking about using my stuff for, or at the very least gives them an authentically awesome first line of response for any issues they might be having.

Everyone works their tail off to make sure that there is as little friction as possible to get a customers money, but what about a no-friction communication strategy?

How To Do It

There are several to kill it with live chat, but two services in particular stick out as the market leaders. These are the same people who are being used for major brands like Salesforce.com, Hipmunk, 99designs and many more.

One thing both of these services have in common is that they tightly integrate with support ticket and CRM systems for a complete customer cycle solution.

1. Olark

This is the exact service that I use on Contest Domination for the huge gains mentioned above. It’s a breeze to install and even easier to use, when someone shows up to your site you can set an in browser chat window to pop-up with a custom message that gets the conversation started.

If your chat is set to away or you aren’t logged in, customers can still drop you a note and Olark will send you an email with the message so you can follow up right away.

I love how the messenger name is filled with all kinds of customer information like location, browser, page they are currently viewing and how they go there (Facebook, Google search etc)

To get started with the Olark, my favorite live chat service click here.

2. Snap Engage

Snap Engage is impressive in it’s own right and has an a-list roster of current customers.

The functionality and feature set is pretty similar to Olark, it basically comes down to personal preference and what feature set you need.

Differences here are primarily that Olark starts at a lower price point, however with Snap Engage you can get an SSL certificate on a much less expensive plan.

Trial Snap Engage by clicking here.

How do you plan to wow your customers with amazing availability and prove that you aren’t just another vendor that is easily replaced?

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.

To setup a giveaway like this you have to essentially sell the partner on the giveaway. There is nothing fancy or challenging about setting up this promo it just requires manning up and pitching publishers.

If the product you are giving away is solid then this makes the entire process much easier. Please don’t try and give-away a crappy product. This makes you look like a cheapskate!

Another hot example is to run a contest with WordPress using Contest Domination. Buy the plugin, install it, and pick an epic prize. Then partner up with a publisher who has some serious reach. You and the partner promote the contest through your channels and BOOM you get a ton of emails via the Contest Domination promo. Your sales/marketing hustle helps you build your email list!

Now can you see why I say online marketing is really about business development and sales? Giveaways and contests are really mini bizdev deals. You are partnering with the publisher.

Yes this is marketing but to set it up requires sales hustle. Another great example of a bizdev marketing partnership is utilizing someone else’s email list.

Promoting your product to 100,000 people via email is a guaranteed way to generate some serious sales. Too bad you have 39 people on your email list.

Well get creative and try to leverage somebody else’s list. Reach out the partner and tell them you’d like to offer his list some amazing free goodies.

Give-away free stuff to this email list in order to a) convert them to your email list b) get them familiar with your product c) try to upsell them more stuff.

Leveraging a 3rd party email list is a much bigger bizdev marketing deal but it is super powerful. A traditional giveaway could lead to a few hundred hits but leveraging the right email list could lead to a few hundred sales!

The final example of a bizdev marketing deal is guest posting. You are essentially pitching someone to post your content on their blog. This still requires the online marketer to man up and make it rain.

In summary, online marketing requires sales hustle and relationship building. To be a top notch online marketer in 2012 you need to be a badass salesman.

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.

Understanding Trust

At the end of the day, people are going to trust who they feel like they know, over who might actually be the best solution.

If you can find a way to connect with your readers in a relatable way, you are going to be leaps and bounds ahead of most. Yes, this means coming out of your shell a little bit and letting people get to know you.

Are you a little weird? It’s cool, it will be more fun doing what you do when you can be yourself. Your real audience will respect you for that.

1. Doing Webinars

This is far and away the most effective thing you can do to earn your readers trust.

You’ve probably been seen or heard about webinars that big names have been doing lately.

Why? Because they freaking work.

Beyond just being a sales tool, webinars are an amazing way to get in front of your audience in a way that feels personal and your audience is going to eat it up.

Think about a LIVE webinar experience, it gets your voice and tone in front of everyone. It’s almost as good as having you in the room with them or doing a personal skype call.

The mistakes you make during webinars too make you more approachable, they make you feel more like a human.

Better yet? You can even make a big impact by using some free tools.

Sure, GoToWebinar is the gold standard but that’s pretty expensive for a lot of people.

Don’t be afraid to use Ustream or another free alternative. Using a cheaper alternative is much better than using nothing at all.

Fun Side Effect of Webinars

Besides the benefits listed above, there are some awesome side benefits that can come from webinars.

When you consistently deliver content driven (read: no pitch) webinars, the word gets out. As word gets out, your new loyal fans start telling their friends and suddenly you start building momentum.

That means fresh faces, and a bigger audience.

Then, once you’ve built a loyal following you’ve also trained them to clamor to get on your webinars. Never discount how habitual humans are.

Know what that kind of behavior means when it’s time to finally give a soft pitch? People are going to act in DROVES and you are going to crush it.

2. A Creative Bio

This is a great opportunity to give yourself a pat on the back without sounding full of yourself.

A good mix of accomplishments with your unique brand of humor is typically good. People want to know two simply things when reading a bio.

1. Why should they be listening to you

You need to boast a little here, it’s even encouraged by your readers to do so. They want to know exactly why they should be listening to you instead of someone else.

I read an interesting quote somewhere that said something to the effect of “If you read two books in your industry every single day, after one year you’d be 10 years behind the curve”, or something to that effect.

What that means is that people have to pick the right people to follow. We live in a curation age now, no longer will just creating the content count. You have to bring meaningful information, and quickly, or else you will lose your audience.

2. Are you going to be entertaining to follow

More than being educated, people want to be entertained.

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, so add some personal flare and sarcasm into your bio to show that you aren’t just all business. Most people are going to appreciate this and be more likely to come back a second, third, fourth time etc.

3. Writing Persona

Everyone has a particular way of writing and articulating information. This is the biggest reason it’s a bad idea outsource your social media accounts if you care about how your audience sees you.

Same goes for blogging and every other piece of content you produce. If your name goes on it, then it should be genuinely written by you.

This is something a few of my clients have disagreed with me on and their stats reflect the amount of effort they’ve put into their *personal* brands.

Does this mean you have to create everything that touches your social streams, webinars or blog posts?

Absolutely not, it’s something that is next to impossible to scale. However, it does mean that when you get contributors that you let them bring their name and style to the mix as an integral part of your brand experience.

If you attempt to hire ghostwriters etc and your audience finds out, then they are going to feel betrayed. And that’s just about a worst case scenario.

NOTE: Using ghostwriters to build the framework for your copy is just fine. So long as you do what’s called “overwriting” and mold it to your own voice before stamping it with your name and brand.

Action List

Now that you have some ideas on how to build trust with your audience, how are you going to act on it?

My personal suggestion is go and try running a webinar since you can do it for free and it has the biggest impact.

You don’t need a massive audience to present to, but you do need to pick something relevant to your niche.

Secondly, take a closer look at your bio and start thinking about how you are going to scale your content without compromising on your writing persona.

If you enjoyed this article I invite you to share this article with a friend using the buttons below. I really appreciate seeing the impact my content has on people.

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.

Who inspires you in business? It’s likely someone who is a known entity in their field and thinks differently enough to stand out. For me, it’s people like Seth Godin and Gary Vaynerchuk because they have built up influence and an audience within a very difficult vertical.

But like any good entrepreneur you are probably asking “HOW did they get such a strong and passionate following?”

The answer is actually more straight forward than it seems, you see most people believe the influence comes through the ability to persuade people into thinking or doing what you want – or worse yet into just telling them what they want to hear so they do an action that parallels with your goals. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

In fact, these personality types are influential because they have provided an enormous value to their prospective audience that resonated well, was shared with their friends and then capitalized in a way that was sticky (read: built their list).

Create killer content

Writing what you want to hear likely won’t get you the results you are looking for, what you want to write is something that resonates with your target audience. For instance, do you think President Obama really had a deep seated passion about every subject he campaigned about leading up to his election? Of course not, it’s just not human to be that personally invested in ALL the issues, but he definitely had an audience, the American public, who across all the segments was deeply invested in every issue.

Love him or hate him, it’s easy to agree upon the fact that his campaign was smooth because it was able to seemingly appeal to so many different audiences that felt like it was personalized, and when he hit that nerve people shared his message – and they shared it quickly.

You see in order to create killer content you must not try and please someone just like you, you need to please someone who wants to be just like you. Think about that for a moment and realize how non-ego centric that statement really is.

Make it sticky

Once you have grouped together your initial base audience and have found a way to inspire them to share your message, your content, your ideas – your brand; you need to find a way to create a sticky community for the new people who come across your content and message in order to inspire and influence them to an even greater community.

Making the experience sticky doesn’t even have to an email list (although in most written work it’s the most effective). For rich media and niche content streams such as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook it’s all about bridging the connection to communicate at a later date. That comes by getting users to subscribe to your channel, follow or “like” you – respective of the network you are creating your content on. The most influential people are bringing their audience into the conversation and engagement across every medium possible to help them “spread the gospel” that is your content.

If you are able to find what motivates people, give them a compelling reason to share and then give them a strong call-to-action that connects them with your brand, content and message repeatedly in the future you will be able to create a snowball of influence. Those mechanics are what make the world leaders so effective getting where they want to go, it doesn’t have anything to do with being smarter or even having the best content. They simply know how to constantly leverage their resources to reach an ever expanding audience and strengthen the influence they have with their existing constituents.

This past weekend was the SeattleTweetup at HasOffers, a local favorite of the Seattle Tech scene that is doing some really interesting things in the performance marketing space. This event that I did with John Chow was a huge success as we had tons of people filtering in and out over the 5 hours that it went on, which isn’t hard to imagine when you see that people like Rand of SEOmoz and others were in attendance plus the free food and drinks! For those who weren’t able to make it, check out the video below and make sure you come on out next time we throw together a meetup because it’s the place to be for this market.

Being appreciative of what we have is often humbling, especially when you compare what even the “have not’s” of America really do have compared to most of the world. I wanted to take a second and list off the 10 things I’m most grateful for in my life as it stands today:

1. Family

My family runs the entire spectrum, from slightly socially functional geniuses to drug addicts – we have it all. However the extremely wide net has taught me that even a fragmented family blend can be there for you and support each other in ways you never thought possible. It also can give you amazing context on a number of situations, since likely someone in my family has gone through the same or similar situation.

2. Friends

There are no two ways about it, I have some of the highest caliber friends in the world. I’m not necessarily talking power, money or influence – just some of the smartest and most genuine people on the face of the planet who also happen to know how to party. There have been times that I have wanted to give up on the things that matter most to me, and this group has always helped push me through those humps to see the next wave of greatness.

3. Health

While I am certainly not in shape, I don’t have any major illnesses or diseases that I know of. No cancers (yet), failing organs or otherwise. I have 10 fingers, 10 toes, 2 eyes, 2 ears etc – and for that I’m extremely grateful. There are so many people out in the world suffering from issues at birth, from war or sickness. My hear goes out to these people and I wish them the best of luck in living their lives to the fullest.

4. Food/Shelter

Read the not in the best shape above? That’s because my fat white ass has plenty of food and a safe place of shelter to hammer out blog posts and business development deals. If I am going hungry it’s because I am a cheap ass or lazy, that’s something that is easy to take for granted; the ability to eat whatever I want, whenever I want within reason.

5. Being American

This country has a whole hot mess of issues, but being American is something unique and I love it. While I fear for future generations whenever I go to an amusement park, we have some bright and talented people living in the United States and that is much more than just an ok crowd to be associated with. There are true innovators, artists and free thinkers. That is the America I champion, and without question I have benefited greatly by being American.

6. Capitalism

I love capitalism in it’s truest sense of the term, the ability for markets to self-correct and continually innovate to provide new and ever increasing value to the marketplace and world. Yes, this isn’t perfect but neither is any other organism and that is exactly how I perceive capitalism; as a living breathing thing that comes and goes in strength but will never die.

7. Entrepreneurship

Having the ability to collect a skill set, generate free willed ideas and create something of value the core of my DNA. Being an entrepreneur I have always sought out ways to create new value, not only for profit but for sport. This is a way of life that some people can’t opt-out of and it drives us to create some of the most innovative and creative things in the world (I’m just not world changing yet).

8. Mentors

If someone looks like Yoda, you should probably listen to what they have to say. Oftentimes, regardless of how smart the younger population THINKS they are, there is just no substitute for experience and true wisdom. Mentors in my life have always encouraged me to find the right answer on my own but gently nudged me in the right directions.

9. Technology

Have you ever met me? My iPhone is on deck at all times – I’m constantly on Twitter, Facebook, Texting etc to the point of a fever pitch. I have known to forget my social etiquette sometimes and need to be slapped around to put away my phone and engage with those right in front me. This blessing and a curse has transformed our way of life and I am in 100%.

10. Google

Seriously? What the hell did we do before Google? Whatever the world looks like without Google I want nothing to do with.

So that wraps up my quick list of 10, what are you grateful for?

In business, as in love, there are simply no prisoners. Many of you who read this blog know that I have a passion project called MyBigGive. Recently we have been lucky enough to take part in a little thing called Startup Madness, which is being hosted by an investment firm called TechStars.

This way this is working is a play on March Madness, but instead of basketball teams competing for the crown it is a bunch of startup companies competing for votes from the audience in order to get precious resources like hosting credits, email and potentially even an investment round from TechStars themselves.

The Interesting Part

Since we have been really lucky to have a passionate audience, we absolutely crushed the first round. Coming in at a humbling 71% vote ratio and beating out an interesting visual product search company called Glancely. When we were moved along into Round 2, the success initially continued with our vote count floating between 63% and 70%.

Tonight however, for the past few hours – our new competitor which is called “homing Cloud”, and aims to be a new type of mortgage broker suddenly – and I mean in a matter of minutes was somehow able to plunge our count down a staggering 16% and steadily stream in votes in a way to feels less than organic.

What to do

Now, perhaps homing Cloud really just has a huge audience that responded to an effective mailing. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt, however what I’d really like to do is bounce back on this with your support to show them how effective a passionate audience can really be. Voting is simple and easy but the positive effect it will give us in accomplishing our goals for some of the worlds best charities. Simply follow the instructions below on how to help:

1. Go to http://thisorthat.com/t/big-give-media-llc-vs-homingcloud

2. Click on “Big Give Media LLC”

3. Register if you don’t already have an “This or That” account

4. Make sure that the box saying “Big Give Media LLC” is checked to insure your vote was counted!

If you have any feedback, I’d love to hear what you think.

Do you approach your venture like a product or a service? Regardless of what it actually is, you will want consider approaching it as a service every time for the best user experience.. and I am going to tell you why.

Product vs. Service

When developing a venture like a product, you often approach it from a feature list perspective which causes bloat and takes away from your core goals of the venture. For instance, if you want people to shop on your website you want to make sure that any feature added to the site is something that helps your visitors shop and share. This is how a service works, where as a product often times is seen as a “this feature would be cool” instead of “how will this feature help us achieve our primary goals?”

Completing a loop

Another problem with products is that they are typically one way transaction. The customer purchases/consumes the product and that is where the story ends without many opportunities for your customers to spread the visibility. With service based philosophy you think more about a rolling relationship between you and the customer that gives your venture an opportunity to continue the story beyond the initial point of contact. With present day social graphs (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Namesake etc) there are so many opportunities for ventures story to wander into new circles of influence.

How is your venture being treated like a service? Where are your pain points?