John Reese’s 3 Solutions to Common Internet Marketing Mistakes

Do some brainstorming and keyword research to find the most targeted keyword phrase you possibly can that relates to what it is that you are trying to sell.

In other words, someone that is actively looking to buy what you sell.

For example, if you’re selling do-it-yourself plans for building a bird feeder the keyword phrases bird watching or even bird feeder are not the most highly targeted keyword.  Bird feeder might be, but build your own bird feeder would be even better.

So you need to do some serious keyword research to narrow it down to the most targeted possible keyword phrase you can find.

Once you find this keyword phrase the next thing to do is to start driving traffic to your landing page.  Unless the top spot for that keyword phrase is going for $5 per click, you should pay whatever you have to so your ad will show up in the top spot — which will, hopefully, get you the maximum traffic.

The purpose of this test is NOT to turn a profit.  This is why you want to pay whatever you have to so you can get the #1 position for maximum traffic.  This goes along with my methodoloy of Sacrificing Early Profits which I will expand upon in a future blog post.

Hopefully, your most targeted keyword phrase at least gets enough traffic for you to generate about 300-400 visitors in one week or less.  Because we want to get our test data as quickly as possible.

If you’ve driven 300-400 visitors from your most targeted keyword phrase and you haven’t made any sales, you’ve got big problems.

You are most likely faced with one of THREE things:

1.  Your price is too high.

2.  The marketing copy or sales information is too weak.

3.  No one wants your product.

There are some other small factors that could affect this scenario, but those are the major ones.

Issue #1 (high price) can be solved easily.  Just lower your price as far as possible — even if it’s $4.95.  Then drive another 300 visitors or so.  If you still don’t make any sales at that price then you’re in trouble.  Price is the factor that can affect conversion rates more than anything.  If you test a super low price and still get no takers the odds are good that you’re not going to have much success selling that product.

Issue #2 is a bit harder to solve.  The price of the product might not actually be the issue if prospects are leaving your site without even seeing your price — so testing a really low price might have misleading results in this case.  But if you’ve done your homework and researched your competition in that market, and you have a good understanding of how they communicate with the market, you should be able to come up with something that will at least make some sales.  If you do some tweaking and still don’t make any sales, you’ve most likely got big problems.

Issue #3 is one that cannot be solved.  It’s nearly impossible to pursuade someone to buy something they have absolutely no interest in.  Millions of product ideas are thought up and created each year.  And many of these products go unsold.  The fact of the matter is not all products will sell.  Many of them won’t.  If you should run into this experience don’t get freaked out.  Just move on to the next project.

The biggest mistake one can make as an entrepreneur is falling in love with a product idea they have come up with.  If it doesn’t sell, it doesn’t sell.  Don’t take it personally.  The faster you can move on to test something else, the faster you will start making more money.  Period.

Another method to test in the early stages of running The Exact Targeting Test is to use my Give-It-Away Method.

Here’s How The Give-It-Away Method Works:

If someone is leaving your site hit them with a pop-up window that says you will GIVE THEM your product for free if they give you their honest feedback as to why they left without ordering.  Many browsers block these kind of pop-ups today but there are still quite a few that don’t.

Obviously, there’s very little cost in giving away your product if it happens to be digital — like an ebook, video, audio, or software program.  If you’re trying to sell a physical product then you will have some cost involved.  But it will most likely be well worth it.

The ‘answers’ that you can get from offering to trade someone your product for their feedback can be priceless.  They may tell you that your web site was too confusing and they couldn’t find out how to order.  Or that they wanted to order via money order and you didn’t offer it.  Or they wanted to order by phone but you didn’t list a phone number.  Or they wanted the product in a large size but you only had medium.  Or maybe they thought your product was only for men.  Or for spanish speaking people.  Or for people under 35.

You just never know what you will discover until you ask.

Running a Give-it-away process can sometimes save a product — because it can reveal some things you need to change in the marketing copy itself in order to successfully sell it to others.

The bottom line is this…

If you drive traffic to your site from the most targeted keyword you can possibly find for what it is you are trying to sell and you don’t have any luck, the odds are very high that you aren’t going to make any sales from any other keyword for that market either.

Unless, of course, you’ve targeted the wrong keywords.

I am constantly amazed by how many people go crazy and drive traffic from all over the place, spend a small fortune, and are shocked that their product doesn’t sell.  It’s very easy to find out without spending too much money.  Start with the most targeted keyword phrase.  If it doesn’t convert, it’s most likely that any other traffic won’t convert either.

Think about it…  if someone is actively searching for something that’s as close to what you are selling as possible, and they won’t buy, how in the world will other not-as-targeted prospects buy?

You always have to keep in mind that you need to adopt the Sacrificing Early Profits mindset in order to build your machine.  Your marketing machine.  The machine that will eventually run by itself and automatically produce profit after profit for you.

So in the early stages don’t be afraid to overpay for keyword traffic.  You want the volume of traffic to validate your testing in the beginning.  Once you fine-tune and tweak your process then and only then do you want to back off and lower your costs to the point where it becomes profitable.

In many cases, bidding 30 cents per click instead of 60 cents per click will take twice as long, or more, to generate the same volume of traffic.  And your time is worth more than that.

Don’t wait one month to get 300-400 targeted visitors when you can get them in a few days and know what your next step will be.

And, of course, don’t worry about giving away some of your product for free if it will help you fine-tune your marketing machine that will eventually sell your products for the maximum return.

But start with the most targeted keyword for your product.  If you can’t make it work then the odds are good that you need to abandon that idea and move to the next.  This isn’t always the case, but most of the time it is.  It’s a very strong indicator.