November 2009
Real World Lessons Learned from an “In the Trenches” Marketing Contrarian…
- Infusionsoft Deliverability Test - Currently, I’m seeing about a 5-15% hit in deliverability using Infusionsoft (http://www.infusionsoft.com) vs AWeber. This is without using a dedicated IP, which is a pretty cheap upgrade at $500 per month. (This is not a scientific test… but it is a test nevertheless. Actually more than one. Enough to give me a rough idea of what I’m up against.) Now 5-15% might seem like a lot, but considering the other profit producing tools that Infusionsoft brings to the table (like actually connecting revenue to leads and customers and many, many ways to deliver individualized marketing based on RESPONSE), that hit should be easy to make up for. Plus, I’m not really as concerned with deliverability long term as I am with sales. If I can double my sales talking to 25% fewer people, so be it. I can find more people. NOTE: Infusion is a powerful system… but it can feel like you’re driving a tank sometimes. Because of that, I call the folks at Infusion a lot. Often because I get different answers if I ask the same question twice. So I’ve learned to double and triple confirm the things that are important. You might want to do the same thing if you’re considering switching.
- Selling online is not rocket science. If it’s not working for you and you have a basic grasp of “how to sell online,” then move on to selling something people actually want. The market is the key. Not the marketing tactics, or the product.
- Less is better. Creating and managing less gets you to results faster. I’d rather implement a smaller plan today than concoct a huge scale plan for world domination that’ll only launch next year. Do you really need social media, PPC, Twitter, SEO, and whatever new marketing technique that’s being featured as the flavor of the week? Who has time to do all that? I haven’t read a study where anyone’s quantified the opportunity cost of going gaga over every new bright and shiny tactic to market stuff online, but I imagine it’s HUGE. Heck, it could be the largest (missing) line item on their P/L. In the end, there are probably only 3 or 4 ways your business will generate 80%-90% of its revenue. Maybe only 1 or 2 ways. The job is to find those things and leverage them to the max.
- Don’t catch a case of what I call: ENTREPRENURIAL START-ITIS. Entrepreneurs seem to be universally good at starting things. Fewer seem to be good a keeping them going… even fewer seem to excel at managing and improving the things they’ve already got going that are working. I have yet to see success as something sexy and glamourous. In my experience, it comes from doing the basics well… and improving them over time.
- Read George Cloutier’s Profits Aren’t Everything, They’re the Only Thing.
- The market online seems to be shifting. If you’re selling to business owners, they seem to be buying as voraciously as ever… if you’re selling to consumers, the same old marketing techniques seem to be losing their effectiveness. Time to get creative and (heaven forbid) try something new.
- The 80/20 rule is probably more like 95/5. I think a lot of business owners are probably familiar with the 80/20 rule. But I haven’t met many that act on that understanding. Aim your resources at fewer things and you’ll move them forward faster.
- You can improve your results fairly quickly by following a very simple recipe. It’s not exciting, not glamorous and it might even be considered real work. It’s called setting up a split test and actually acting on the results. Are you constantly split-testing the major income generators in your business? Do you even know for certain what those are?
You can download a PDF of this below:
E-Book PDF: Download
Related posts: