Over the last year or so, I’ve been finding subscribing to, and refining a list of marketing podcasts that I listen to on a regular basis.  These podcasts make my short drive time both productive and quite enjoyable.  I also listen to podcasts (though not always marketing podcasts) while doing work around the house and taking walks.   Because I listen to music almost all day, having something else to put on in the car or while I’m not engaged in conversations or around other people, is a treat. Plus, it’s a great way to stay informed and add to my personal knowledge base.

Now that the list is fairly mature, I thought I’d start making some recommendations, starting with one of my top favorites.  The “Internet Business Mastery” podcasts is consistently the first show I listen to when there is a new episode available.  Sterling and Jay deliver so much valuable information in their show, it is not only a great source of information, but an excelent model in terms of how to build a great ‘front-end’ for your sales funnel.

About the Show

Learn how to create an internet based business, unleash a flood of traffic and trigger explosive profits in the new social media age. Internet Business Mastery teaches you how to use Web 2.0 strategies combined with classic internet marketing principles to build passive income streams and brand yourself as an expert (or even an online celebrity). Whether you’re starting a new business or looking to augment your current one, you’ll discover techniques that will boost earnings, increase lead generation and extend your personal/business brand. You’ll learn tools and techniques such as search engine optimization, social media marketing, social network marketing, email list building, blogging, podcasting, online viral video and much more. We’re dedicated to teaching you not only the skills but also the mind set necessary to succeed as an internet entrepreneur. We want to help you to use your ideas and expertise to make money and open up to opportunities so that you can have the freedom and income to pursue the lifestyle you want. We’ve been the #1 internet business podcast since 2005. Join our community that contains thousands of listeners dedicated to becoming an internet business master.

I took the above directly from the ‘information’ link in iTunes.  Like I said, you will not only learn a lot from listening to the content of this podcast, but you’ll also learn a lot by modeling the effectiveness and thoroughness of their marketing approach.  A lot of podcasts leave details like this out, and miss promotional opportunities in the process — but not Sterling and Jay.

About the Internet Business Mastery Sales Funnel

I always look at products from three angles: 1) will it benefit me, 2) will it benefit my subscribers and 3) what can I learn from the sales process. In this case, I hit a power trifecta — this podcast has something to offer for all three angles.

Sterling and Jay have developed a powerful sales funnel by focusing first on their podcast first, then a free offer for their free recording called “3 Pillars of Designing Your Ultimate Internet Lifestyle“  They have two very solid lead generation offers (LGO’s) that are compelling to their target market and deliver tons of valuable content.

Subscribe to their podcast, and you’ll see how they effectively balance delivering great content and promoting both their free offers and their ongoing membership site.

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The most spectacular successes are based not on perfect execution, but on consistent course correction.  No one gets from point A to point B in a straight line — zigs and zags are the norm, not the exception.

Several years ago I was discussing the various zigs and zags of my business model with a good friend and former client — a gentleman I came to think of as “The Shaman Entrepreneur” because he is quite good at building businesses and he is also, literally, a shaman.  Dave has provided some real gems and observations for me over the years, but one that really stuck in my mind was his response to me when I was lamenting a particular zag (or was it a zig?) that ended up costing me a good year and a half of time and resources to get back on track.

He said, “Doug, that’s normal.  There are no straight lines in nature, nor do they exist in business.  Of course, you need to have a vision for where your ship is headed, but on your way to your goals you can count on being off course most of the time.  The trick is to know when you are off course, and make constant (hopefully small) course corrections. If you want to avoid big detours in the future, you just need to make sure you know when you are off course earlier.”

“My “ship?,” I asked?

Dave laughed, “I’ve used that analogy a lot and it has helped me keep a good perspective on progress toward my goals. When I say “ship” I’m not talking about an ocean liner, I’m talking about a rocket!”

Dave went on to explain how the first manned Apollo mission to the moon (Apollo 8) was almost scrapped because the engineers could not solve the problem of keeping the rocket on course. In fact, they could do no better than keeping it on course 20% of the time. The best scientific minds in the world worked on the problem and could not develop a way to maintain an accurate trajectory.

When you are trying to land a man on the moon for the first time in history, being off course 80% of the time is not a comfortable idea. The breakthrough came when the NASA engineers changed the way they looked at the problem. Instead of trying to stay on course all the time, they focused on developing superior measurement technology that allowed them to make constant small course corrections.  End result, Apollo 8 was indeed off course 80% of the time, but they hit their target within 12 feet on their first attempt to put a man on the moon.

For an interesting read/listen on the topic check out Wayne Hodgin’s podcast and transcript Off Course – On Target: The Story

Since this conversation with The Shaman Entrepreneur, I’ve adopted this way of thinking and have found more success and less stress in my business life.  Knowing that the key to less painful and costly course corrections is better measurement, I’ve also focused on creating better “instruments” for my ship.

Getting quick and meaningful feedback about how your business is doing is more than important, it is critical to being able to hit your target. In order to know where you need to be, you first need to know where you are.

This is why I have dedicated myself and my business to creating better measurement tools for Infopreneurs.

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I just finished reading  the new Extreme Optimization report from Matt Gallant and it is packed with both excellent testing methodology and case studies.  If you are in doubt about the power of split testing, then this is a report you must read.  If you are a testing geek like me, you’ve probably already left this blog and started reading

In his report, Matt explains how even a newbie can beat the pants off a pro copywriter, just by using testing as a ’secret weapon.’

Here’s a shocking fact that most copywriters never talk about (even most of the “big names”): They are GUESSING 95% of the time. Now, in their defence they are making
educated guesses. They’ve studied other copywriters and they’ve put their chops to the test and created many winners. However, it doesn’t mean that a newbie can’t get into a market and clean their clocks. Especially, if the newbie learns the art and science of Radical Testing Results (Which you’ll be begin to learn starting with this report).

It’s not only copywriters who guess 95% of the time, if you expand the sample to include ‘marketers’ in general, the numbers are more like 99.9%  And here’s good news for you, MOST of those people will continue guessing and you can put yourself way ahead of the pack by implemeting a habit of continually measuring, testing, and improving.

One of the big “take aways” from Matts report for me is a simple formula I can use to rapidly accellerate my tests, even for offers that don’t have a lot of traffic to begin with.  Instead of waiting a long time to get statistically significant numbers, Matt suggests moving fast and looking for breakthrough results.  But, you still don’t want to guess, so it’s important to have some sort of rule of thumb to use when picking a winner in split tests.

Matt’s rule of thumb comes in the form of this formula that he calls his “big breakthrough formula:”

The Winner – Square root of the winner > the losing element

It works like this — In any split test, there will be a winner and a loser.  You know you have a reliable winner when it passes the big breakthrough formula test.

The big breakthrough formula is simple… You substract square root of the winner from the winner and it should be a bigger number the loser.

It sounds more complicated than it is…(most every simple calculator has a square root button)

Let’s say you’re doing an A/B test and element A has 20 sales and B has 12 sales. First, calculate the square root of 20 – which is 4.47.  Now, simply plug-in the rest of the numbers:

20 (winner) – 4.47 (square root of 20) = 15.53

The next question is: Is 15.53 a bigger number than 11 (the losing element)?  I hope you answered yes.

It may seem like a small thing, but I’ve struggled with this very issue many times. When doing a split test, how do you pick a winner?  What Matt’s formula does it it provides a simple way of ‘handicapping’ the winner of a split test to that you know it’s not just a winner, but a real winner — a breakthrough winner.

If you don’t get a winner that passes the test, then you have two choices 1) extend the test to see if the gap between the winner and loser expands or 2) pick a new test.  For me, if the test was close, I’d let it run for a while longer. If the difference is only slight, I’d create a new test — aiming for a quick breakthrough result.

Extreme Optimization Graph

Matt shows several informative graphs in his report and I just want to point out one thing, the vertical axis on all graphs is Visitor Value — one of the most important metrics you can measure in your sales systems. If you are a VisiOlo user, you already know that this metric is extremely valuable because you can see it, at-a-glance, right in your dashboard

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Squeeze Page vs Sales Letter – My Personal Stats Revealed

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Hey Warriors,

Got some test results that may interest some of you.

We all know (or assume) that running our traffic to a squeeze page works better than running the traffic directly to your sales letter.

Well it’s been a long time since I tested this so I thought I would run a small test. Below are the results:

Total Hits sent by PPC: 3726

I used a split script to evenly send the traffic to 2 different pages.

==============
PAGE 1:

Traffic Directly to Sales Letter:

Hits: 1863

Sales: 13

Sales Conversion Rate: 0.7 %

Page 1 Revenue: $611 (13 x $47 product)

==============
PAGE 2:

Traffic Directly to Optin Squeeze Page:

(users are sent to same sales letter after opting in)

Hits: 1863

Optins: 483

Sales: 12

Sales Conversion Rate: 2.5 %

Revenue: $564 (12 x $47 product)

Sales Generated by AutoResponder Followup Messages (so far after 10 days): 9

AutoResponder Revenue: $423 (9 x $47 product)

Page 2 Overall Total Sales: 21

Page 2 Overall Total Revenue: $987

==============

SUMMARY:

Sending traffic to my squeeze page (instead of directly to sales letter) produced MORE sales, generated MORE revenue, increased my conversion rate (I guess by qualify the traffic by going thru optin first) and also allowed me to build a list of 483 subscribers.

Obviously these tests may be different in different markets. But for me sending to a Squeeze Page instead of directly to my Sales letter is a no-brainer.

Anyway I thought some might find these stats interesting

Cindy

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Last week, I launched my first beta test for a VisiOlo offer.

Do you beta test your offers before launch?  At this point, I won’t launch anything without testing first. I elaborated on the need for beta testing of offers on this guest blog post on testing offers in the Internet Marketing Niche at The How To Project.

Here’s an excerpt of that post:

Before you launch a product, it’s extremely important to launch with the confidence that comes from testing your sales process before you do a launch.

JV partners and affiliates are much more responsive to an invitation to join a launch if they can see evidence that you’ve at least worked out the kinks in your sales process and at best optimized your sales process for maximum conversion.

I would say that no one likes to be a guinea pig, but that’s not true. If you ask close partners and friends to help you test, they will. But they like to know that it’s a test.

If your promotional partners feel that you are attempting to launch a ‘green’ untested system, they will shy away from your launch or they won’t get behind it with the gusto that you would like.

There are ways to test in *any* niche, but since I do my testing in the IM niche, let me share with you some ideas that will help you do effective beta testing.

My initial test gave me some great insights into my offer. The test included mailing to a specific group of my past customers, a WSO (Warrior Special Offer) in the Warrior Forum, and a single mailing from a JV partner.

Here are the results:

My List

• Impressions: 516
• Clicks: 30
• Click Conversion: 5.8%
• Sales: 2
• Sales Conversion: 6.6%
• Revenue: $154
• Revenue Per Click: $5.13

WSO

• Impressions: 239
• Clicks: 33
• Click conversion: 13.8%
• Sales: 0
• Sales Conversion: 0%

Partner Promo

• Impressions: 7100
• Clicks: 255
• Click Conversion: 3.5%
• Sales: 2
• Sales Conversion: .8%
• Affiliate revenue: $77
• Revenue per click: $.30

Keeping mind that there are multiple moving parts here, I think it’s safe to say that the offer is converting at a dismal rate.  Out of a total of 320 visitors to the sales page (some visitors came from different sources) only 4 sales were made. That’s a sales conversion rate of 1.3% – not stellar to say the least.

These were, for the most part, the most qualified prospects I would expect to have. The conversion rate *should* be much higher — like 10X higher.

I think, with tweaks to the sale page, I could easily double the conversion rate, but with results this far “off” I really think that the offer itself needs to be revised.

My guess is that VisiOlo is something that one has to *experience* in order to really understand it.  I can do more on the sales letter to explain how VisiOlo works and how it can transform one’s business, but it’s far better to let prospects experience it for themselves.

It’s a guess, but probably a pretty accurate one.

Next Actions

Armed with the information that I collected in my test, I feel that adding a ‘trial period’ to the offer will greatly improve results. I’ve already asked members of my advisory team about introducing a trial period and they concur. I’ll ask the rest of the team just for a reality check, but more than likely, the next test will include a 14-day $1 trial period with automatic billing of the remainder of the offer on day 15. This will give users a chance to log in to their accounts, set up a system or two and collect some data.

I couldn’t come close to that kind of engagement in a sales letter, so it makes sense to me.  Spending $1 for a 14-day trial is an easy decision for the target audience to make.  The next test will probably occur after the new year, but as soon as I have more data, I’ll report back.

Note: I know you would like to see the offer, but since this was a closed offer, I’ve chosen not to post links.

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I’d like to share with you are two very simple tests that I ran, and the results, including the “mindset” lessons learned.

It’s a small case study which I hope will be of some use to you.

Case Study

File under: Sales System Management

Project Stage: Prototype

Objectives

1) Maximize Opt-in Conversion

I have to say “maximize conversion” rather than something more specific because this was my first round of testing.  I am just now establishing a baseline conversion rate so I will soon be able to be much more specific such as “Increase Current 26% Opt-in Conversion Rate to 30%”.

With every new system, I start at the front of the funnel with my optimization efforts.  I want to make sure I’m getting as high of an opt-in conversion rate as I can before I start working on maximizing profit. It may not be the *best* approach, but it seems to be the one I always take.  Lots of people would suggest focusing first on increasing profit per visitor, but opt-in rate and profit per visitor are tied hand in hand, so I start with the simpler one first. I can always monetize a list, but I can’t re-gain lost visitors who should have been prospects.

Right now, I’m using two opt-in processes (as explained below) so the complexity of testing both processes is double what it normally is, though managable.

2) Define/Validate System Model

This is a critical objective at this stage of the project.  When I started this test, I was still in the process of deciding between two very different system models.  I won’t go into the various options I was considering because that will take too long and it will cloud the main point.  The main point is this: I needed to decide between two very different approaches for a major project, and I needed *objective* information in order to make an informed decision.

One of the key differences between the two models is the opt-in process.  It isn’t the *only* key difference, but it is probably the most important one.  So, part of the decision of defining the system model will be informed by which opt-in process is better. This makes both of my objectives, nicely complimentary, which always makes testing easier.

System Description

This test was run on a single sales system that includes two opt-in processes. It is a straight-foward opt-in process.

Traffic -> Opt-in Offer -> Thank You Page with Product Offer

After the initial product offer, subsribers continue to get frequent content and offers by email.

Description of Tests

Test 1

Background: One of the first things I started tracking with the private beta version of tracking software I’ve been developing was the number of opt-ins I was getting from one of my blogs.  It took about 3 days for the suckiness of my conversion rates to become crystal clear. So I decided to test another opt-in process, this time adding a lightbox pop-up to the picture. The lightbox contains a headline, sub-head, left column of bullet points and right colum opt-in form and it is shown only once to each visitor.

Page Type: Public WP Blog

Control: Subscribe By Email’ Opt-in Box in Upper Right Sidebar
Test: Current opt-in process with a lightbox pop-up opt-in offer

Test 2

Background: I have a ’sales letter’ type opt-in process that I use for the same list.  Most of the traffic for this page comes from my direct promotions (free eBook links, articles, etc.) and referrals from a handful of JV partners and affiliates who have *integrated* the offer into their thank you pages, autoresponders, etc. Because I believe in split testing these types of pages, I wanted to kick off a split test as soon as I became able to track the results easily with my tracking tool.  I didn’t spend much time on it, I just deleted the header from the test page and started alternating the traffic.

Page Type: Sales Letter

Control: Sales Letter with Graphic Header
Test: Sales Letter without Graphic Header

Results

Test 1

Test one didn’t produce many surprises.  The test beat the control by a significant margin.

Conversion for Control: 1.2%
Conversion for Test: 7.1%

This means the lightbox + blog box (test) beat the blog box by itself (control) by a spread of 5.9%  Clearly the test improved results, so the lightbox will stay. And I won’t be running another test on this system because the whole thing is likely to go away in February in favor of a different model.

The conversion rate on the blog box by itself was 1.2% before the test and .9% after the test, so the converson rate of the blog box itself went down but the combination of blog box plus lightbox pop-up is a huge improvement.

13% of the total optins during the test period came from the blog box. This means that they first said “no” to the lightbox and then saw the content and said “yes” to the blog box optin offer.

I suspect that the .3% decline in blog box opt-ins was due more to poor content than it was to the effect of using the lightbox. We have just improved the content process, so I expect that in a week or so, blog box opt-in rates will be back to normal or may even increase.  I really think the lightbox pop-up delivers incremental subscribers without negatively affecting the blog box conversion rates.  I’ll need more testing to know for sure.

Test 2

Test two surprised me.  I have always heard that graphc headers reduce conversion rates, but I’ve not really tested it on my own sales letters.  In this case, I have to call the test in favor of the the version of the sales letter that included the graphic header (control) because conversion was worse on the one without header (test).

Conversion for Control: 35.5%
Conversion for Test: 26.3%

I think it’s time to pick a new test.  With the kind of traffic that I’m getting to that page, my target would normally be to achieve greater than 60% conversion. That would almost double the number of subscribers I get per month.

But, as I mentioned, I’m also evaluating one model against another. By comparing my conversion rate from Test 1 against Test 2, I can clearly see that the salesletter greatly outperforms the blog.

I knew that would be the case when I set up the blog, but I also expected to get some good search enging juice, links from other blogs, comments, etc.  None of those things are happening right now, and I know why, but the effort to make them happen just isn’t worth it.

I can get higher quality traffic from JV and affiliate referrals with much less effort, and comments aren’t really that important at this point.

What I Learned

* A Lightbox pop-up plus a blog opt-in Box performs better than the blog box by itself.

* My sales letter with graphic header works better than the same letter without graphic header.

* An ‘opt-in first’ model works better than a ‘content first’ model (all things considered).

But there is a more important lesson here for me… having ready access to the conversion data I need has changed ‘optimization’ from a concept to an action for me.  Because I have the right information, I am able to quickly make good decisions about how to improve my results.

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