What Everybody Should Know… About How To Increase Sales By Using This Four Letter Word
Last week we talked about “The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions” and the marketing principle of “Relativity.” This week we are going to discuss a “Power Word” that has made businesses a fortune. But, what is so remarkable about this power word is that once again we will see how people don’t behave in a rational way when it comes to their buying decisions, but rather in a predictable irrational manner.
There are a number of power words and phrases that you should incorporate into your sales copy because of the effect they have on your prospect. Here are just some of the most powerful selling words and phrases that you should use:
- Free
- Transforming
- New
- Secret
- How to
- Big Mistake
- Three easy steps
- Guaranteed
- Risk Free
- 7 Tips
- Limited Time or Limited Number
- Sale
In this article, we are going to examine the power word “Sale”, because it’s a word that causes people to act irrationally and take action.
Let me share with you a true story of a friend of mine and how this four-letter word helped get him promoted into a senior management position for a large regional retailer. When he started with this retailer, he was in the grocery department of one of the stores in the chain. It all started when there was a contest on who could sell the most candy bars of this one major brand. That particular candy bar sold for 15 cents at the time.
He wasn’t doing so well when he read an article about marking a item on sale, but don’t reduce the price. Instead, raise the price. So, he took the 15-cent candy bars that weren’t selling very well and created a display and put up a big sign that said “Sale – 5 for $1.” What happened surprised even him. He started selling boxes of the stuff even though you could purchase the same item for 15-cents or 5-bars for 75-cents.
That shows just how irrational people are when they see the word “Sale”. But, the story doesn’t stop there. On day, he decided to improve his sign and he drew a squiggly red cloud around the word “Sale”. You would not imagine what happened next. He sold five times the number of boxes than he did with just the word “Sale”. Nothing changed other than drawing a squiggly red line around the word “Sale.”
In the end, he won the national contest, which eventually led to a promotion in his company. Who would have guessed!
Is it rational that someone would buy five candy bars for more money than they would pay at the regular price just because of the word “Sale.” Not at all, but that illustrates the power of the word “Sale” on the human psyche.
So how do you apply this tactic to your Internet marketing business?
People want a bargain and they are motivated to act when they see the word “Sale.” The word “Sale” leaves them with the impression that a product is only available at this price for a limited time and if they don’t act now, they are likely to miss the opportunity.
In your marketing strategy, you should use the word “Sale” or “Discounted Offer To The First 50 People.” It invokes a sense of scarcity, which causes people to act. The word sale has a well-defined meaning in your prospects mind: it means a bargain for a limited time. Act now!
Here is how we have applied this strategy with our Document Imaging software.
Our document imaging software has a base price of 5-concurrent licenses for $26,000. This price is cost prohibitive for many small businesses. Generally, once a year, we send a special onetime offer to our prospects that haven’t purchased a system from us. In virtually every case, they haven’t purchased any document imaging system because of price.
We run a 30-day sale where they can purchase 2-concurrent licenses for $1,200. You would be amazed at how many businesses decide to purchase a system at the sales price. We have them calling on the last day of the sale telling us they are sending a check next day FedEx.
You can see a number of strategies used on our document imaging website at http://www.disusa.com/.
Authors Bio
For the past 11 years, Randy’s principle business enterprise has been in the top 5 listings on Google for his industry. His list of clients includes the Department of Defense, Department of State, Municipalities, Fortune 500 Companies, College and Universities, and several hundred small businesses.
Today, Randy is using his acquired knowledge to help businesses learn how to grow through the savvy use of internet marketing techniques. His central focus is to take complex online marketing strategies and tactics and break them down into easy to follow step-by-step processes.
Randy has written and published articles on internet marketing strategies to show businesses how to make money online. You can access these resources and learn how you can make more money online at www.InternetMonetizationUniversity.com .
Astounding New Book Reveals How To Increase Your Sales and Make Greater Profits By Knowing the Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions
Today’s article is about “The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions”. The information I am about to share with you was collected from the New York Times Bestseller, “Predictably Irrational” by Dan Ariely. In his book, Ariely proves scientifically that people don’t behave in a rational way when it comes to their buying decisions, but rather in a highly predictable, irrational manner. Moreover, if you know what influences a prospects buying decision, it can have a significant impact on your internet marketing business.
Key Point: All of your customers base their buying decisions on a scientific principle called “Relativity.” As Ariely points out in his book; “We don’t have an internal value meter that tells us how much things are worth. Rather, we focus on the relative advantage of one thing over another, and estimate the value accordingly.”
In other words, we base our decisions to purchase by comparing the product to our other choices. He illustrates this point by showing how a restaurant can increase their sales of sizzler steak. He points out that given three choices, most people will choose the middle choice. So let’s say that you want to sell an 8oz sizzler over 8oz of ground sirloin, you wouldn’t give a customer just two choices: an 8oz ground sirloin for $5.99 and 8oz sizzler for $9.99. Given just two choices, a lot of people would select the 8oz ground sirloin because it appears to be a better value relative to the two choices.
He points out that you should put in a “decoy”, a third choice that will make the 8oz sizzler more attractive. Knowledgeable restaurant owners do this all the time. They add a 6oz filet mignon to the menu for $22 as the “decoy”. They know two things:
1. They are’t going to sell much filet mignon but they will sell more 8oz sizzlers because now the sizzler looks more attractive relative to the other steaks on the menu. After all, you are getting a deal, an 8oz steak for $9.99 compared to a 6oz steak for $22.
2. They also know that given three choices, most people will select the middle choice.
Ariely points out: “we not only tend to compare things with one another, but also tend to focus on comparing things that are easily comparable – and avoid comparing things that cannot be compared easily.”
How do you apply this principle to your internet marketing efforts?
First, you should never offer just one choice. You should always offer three choices when you design your offer. For example, you might offer a downloadable ebook for $27, an ebook plus audio for $97, and finally an ebook plus audio and video for $197.
Second, you should always show the value of your free bonuses as part of your offer. In other words, show that your bonuses alone are worth over $3,000 but that you get them included for free as part of your $197 offer.
Let’s illustrate this point by the offer we put together for Raw Food Chef Beth Wilke. Beth makes incredible raw food recipes that are not the usual free recipes that you can find throughout the Internet. She takes painstaking hours to blend just the right ingredients to bring out the subtle flavors of her raw dishes. She was marketing an incredible recipe book and a recipe club membership that just wasn’t selling the way she wanted. She is using three wonderful recipes as her name capture system.
We restructured her offer and once a raw foodist signed up for the three free recipes, they are presented with the following options on the “free recipe download page”.
If you were interested in raw diet recipes, which offer would you choose?
Note: There are times where the offer you want someone to choose shouldn’t be the middle choice. In this case, it was better to show it as the last choice.
If you are interested in getting three delicious raw food recipes, you can do so by going to www.sensationalrawrecipes.com . You can learn more about the raw food diet and sensational raw food chef, Beth Wilke at www.sensationalrawfooddiet.com .
Authors Bio
For the past 11 years, Randy’s principle business enterprise has been in the top 5 listings on Google for his industry. His list of clients includes the Department of Defense, Department of State, Municipalities, Fortune 500 Companies, College and Universities, and several hundred small businesses.
Today, Randy is using his acquired knowledge to help businesses learn how to grow through the savvy use of internet marketing techniques. His central focus is to take complex online marketing strategies and tactics and break them down into easy to follow step-by-step processes.
Randy has written and published articles on internet marketing strategies to show businesses how to make money online. You can access these resources and learn how you can make more money online at www.InternetMonetizationUniversity.com .
How to Build a List of Potential Buyers… BEFORE You Even Have a Product!
Google Adwords
By applying this strategy, you can start building your list of potential people to sell your product too immediately. You don’t have to wait months while you’re building your product before you find a group of eager buyers in your market. You simply need to find someone else’s product for your niche (preferably one that will complement your product) that you can sell while you build your own product.
This strategy also lets you get your business up and running quickly, in a matter of days instead of months. And, while you are building your list of potential buyers, you will be making sales that can help cover any of your costs.
Finally, it’s a fantastic way to confirm that you have a product that will sell once it is released to the general population. You can easily get feedback from your initial list on their interest for the product that you plan to bring to market.
Here’s how you can implement this strategy…
- Find an affiliate program for a product that you can sell to your niche market.
- You’ve done your keyword research and you know what people are searching for in your niche market.
- Now it’s time to put those keywords to the test!
- How do you do this? You find a product for your niche, which solves one of their three largest problems.
- For example, let’s say one of your top keyword phrases is, “how to sell a horse on the internet.”
- Based on this and other similar keyword phrases, you’re thinking about creating an eBook that shows people how to sell their horse on the internet. In your research of affiliate products, you find someone who is selling a program on horse training.
- You then sign up as an affiliate and create a squeeze page to capture their name and email address.
- You tell them you have found a great solution to training horses.
- Here’s the really great thing about this strategy…
- You will also be building a list of potential buyers who have already proven they’re active in your niche market.
- Use Google AdWords to drive potential buyers to your squeeze page.
- Once you’ve created your squeeze page, you’ll want to start sending traffic to it right away.
- That’s where Google AdWords comes in… PPC ads are simply the best way to send instant traffic to a website.
- We suggest that you sign up with Google AdWords and create a minimum of 5 ad groups representing your top keywords. This will give you a great opportunity to test the effectiveness of your keywords and your squeeze page.
- Set a minimum budget. The more traffic you send to your site, the bigger your list will be when it comes time to launch your product.
… And that means more potential customers for you!
Not only will this strategy help you build a list, it will also give you critical information to help to build your website. You will have discovered the keywords that send the greatest number of converting visitors. Plus, you can test different versions of your squeeze page to determine which benefits are most appealing to your target audience.
The bottom line is this: you don’t need to wait until you have your own product to start building your list. You can find an affiliate program, build your squeeze page, create your Adwords Campaign, and start making money within 48 hours
How you implement this strategy
- We suggest you go to Clickbank.com to find affiliate products for your niche market. We recommend that you look for products that pay at least $30 in affiliate commissions.
- You should click on the link and visit the sales page for each product. You want to find a product with a sales page that will convert visitors to sales. The best way to judge that is to see how you feel when you are on the sales page. Are you compelled to buy their product if you had the problem that they say they can solve? If you are, that’s a good indication that it’s an affiliate program that will work.
- Does it look believable?
- Does it look trusting?
- Are there any testimonials?
- Does it clearly state what the customer will receive?
- Are there any “extras” like videos, actors that walk onto the screen and talk directly to the visitor, or a “timer”?
- Narrow your list to three products and then select the one that you feel is the best one to promote. Keep the other two in the back of your mind, in case your first product doesn’t sell. The benefit of selling someone else’s product to build your list, is that if it doesn’t convert you can replace it with a different product.
Here are 5 questions you should ask yourself about the landing page’s quality.
One final note: don’t try to find the “hot new product” to sell. Your primary goal is to build your list, so you want a product that applies to your niche market. It doesn’t do you much good if you are trying to break into the “horse” market, and you build a list from the “weight loss” market. You want to stay within your niche market.
Finally Revealed! Instant Strategy Anyone Can Use To Increase Sales From 1/2% to 12%… Add Video To Your Sales Process Using This Proven Tactic!
There are many reasons why you want to use video in your internet marketing business, but one statistic stands out from all the rest.
- Typically, only ½% to 2% of visitors to your website will purchase your product if your website is text only. If you ad sales-orientated videos to your site, of the people viewing them over half will take some sort of action, and 12% will actually purchase the product offered.
Simply put, if you’re not using video in your online marketing efforts, you’re leaving money on the table.
When you use video, you need to determine how you are going to use the video you produce….
- Will the video be used to pre-sell your product
- Will it be used to actually sell your product
- Will your video be used to demonstrate a feature of your product
- Will it be the information product itself
Once you define how you want to use the video, the next step is to crystallize the message that you want to convey to your audience. We like to teach “The Seven Slide Solution” by Paul Kelly. A study from Princeton University on cognitive science reported that the average person can hold and process only seven pieces of information in short memory at one time
Paul Kelly writes that: “people think in ideas, not in facts and that the structure by which people communicate ideas with one another is with stories.” When you build your video around a story, your audience will understand your ideas and can be persuaded to consider changing their status quo.
Stories are the most powerful communication device anyone can use to sell a product or idea.
To tell a great story, you need to storyboard the sequence of how you want to lay out your video. A storyboard conveys a visual line of reasoning and shows how each idea relates to the other ideas. It allows you to determine what should be included or excluded from the presentation
What makes this process easy is that every good story has the same structure. As long as you follow that structure, you are guaranteed to make a great video.
How To Write Great HEADLINES That Pre-Sell Your Prospects!
Do you want to know the top secret to effectively selling things online?
It’s uncovering the RIGHT WORDS for the job.
Think about this: Most visitors take 8 seconds or less to decide whether to stick around or move on to the next site. You have just 8 seconds to convince them that your site is where they will get what they are looking for.
It doesn’t matter how incredible your product is or how amazing your website is… if your words don’t grab your visitors attention, they’re going to leave.
Make note of this point: of all the words on your site, the most important are the ones in your HEADLINE.
Your headline is the first thing anyone sees on your website. You want your headline to jump off the page, capture their attention – ignite their curiosity – and pull them deeper into your site. And it has to do it in under 8 seconds!
Make YOUR headlines work for you by using the following formula:
MAKE YOUR HEADLINE RELATE TO THE PROBLEM THAT BROUGHT THEM TO YOUR WEBSITE IN THE FIRST PLACE…
When visitors come to your site, are looking for information to solve a problem.
Etc..
