Affiliate Marketing Business Blog

It will substantially help your business to survey your customers. But if you’ve never done it before, it can be a little difficult to know how to start. Here’s a quick tip on how to do it. (more…)

Well the Winter Olympic Games are over and the question many people are asking is, who won? Those from the United States probably feel vindicated in claiming victory because their athletes won more overall medals (37) in the winter games. Germany (30) and Canada (26) come in second and third for overall medals.

However, if you’d ask any self respecting Canadian, Canada obviously won by bringing home more Gold medals (14) than any other country. Germany again second with Ten gold medals, while the US and Norway tied for 3rd with Nine gold medals. But no matter how many more gold medals Canada won, most Canadians claim victory because they beat the US in the Only Game that really matters, Hockey.

In the end, who won or lost mostly depends on the perception of the person being asked. Everyone wants to claim themselves as the victor.

How does this help you as a business owner? Because it’s essential as a business owner to understand who the winner is. It’s not the athletes or the countries or you or your business. Most people couldn’t care less about the athletes or you. They’re only relevant to people when they see them as an extension of themselves. So, the winner always is and needs to be the person you’re talking to. For your business, that’s your prospects and customers.

No matter what activity you’re working on, this is a critical point to remember. If you’re writing sales copy, making a video, teaching people how to do something, or selling a physical product, it all comes down to the same principle. Everyone wants to be a winner and a hero and it’s up to you to help them feel like one.

You will sell more and gain more loyal customers if you help them see how your products will help them become that hero. If you want them to turn to your for solutions, they need to know that you understand the struggles of their battle and how your products are the precise tools they need to win.

If you interact with your customers and prospects with this in mind, I have no doubt that your business will grow immeasurably and your customers will become lifelong buyers.

So who wins? You and your business, when you help your customers and prospects become heroes.

To Your Success,

Matthew Glanfield

A funny thing happened the other day. Two business associates of mine met for the first time. The funny part was that one of them was convinced they’d already met in person. We assured him that they had not but you could tell that he wasn’t totally convinced. Finally we concluded that because he had seen him in some Youtube videos that he simply felt that they had already met. And he’d only seen just a few videos.

So how would it change your business if your clients actually feel like they’ve met you’ve both met face to face? Do you think they’d buy more from you? In the small niche we’ve been working in, I’ve certainly seen huge results from doing our own video campaigns. People really do feel like they know you. The same way many feel like their favorite TV personality is part of the family, you become part of their family. So buying from you is a much more personal transaction.

Plus, making videos can be so easy. For me, it’s often not as painstaking or laborious as writing an email. Just turn on your camera and start talking about the topic of choice. Videos are super powerful and I’ve seen major results from using them. I’d highly recommend you start making them as often as possible. Your first ones won’t be very good so get those out of the way as soon as possible. Don’t worry about making too many mistakes. That just makes you more personable.

To Your Success,

Matthew Glanfield

Ok…maybe hate is a little harsh. But you’d have to admit that many internet marketers don’t really want to have anything to do with you. They don’t want to hear what you have to say, they don’t want your questions, and they certainly don’t want you to be able to contact them. They want you to buy their product and just leave them alone.

Now I’ve always tried to provide as much support as possible for all of my products. But as I’ve been building my business outside of Internet Marketing, the importance of interacting with your customers has become even clearer. People want to interact with the people they buy from. And lots of people are willing to pay more to do it.

In my current little niche, I charge more than many of my competitors for the exact same items. But my business has dominated that niche because we are continually interacting with our customers. We happily answer their questions, make a ton of videos, and encourage them to interact with us at every turn. What has that done for us? Well in 2009, we saw an explosion in growth while many other businesses were hurting.

So if you’re looking for a tool to explode your business in 2010, my advice is, don’t hate your customer. Interact with them every chance you get.

If you have success stories with how interacting with your customers has helped grow your business, feel free to leave them in the comments below.

To Your Success,

Matthew Glanfield

Yesterday I posed the question, “What Is A Real Business?” A real business is made up of two basic elements and these two elements should be the main focus of every business owner. If you find yourself working on other things, you need to shift your focus.

So what are the two elements? They are Traffic and Conversion. Any business activity, whether the business is online or bricks and mortar, can be summed up in these two elements.

Traffic:
This is perhaps the most important element in building your business. Lots of people think that if you have a good product, the customers will come running. But most of the time, that isn’t the case. Here’s an example why. Lets say, there are two men who own hotdog cart businesses and they want to sell hotdogs around the superbowl stadium. The first one has all the best hot dog toppings one could imagine, and he gets a spot a few blocks over from the main entrance to the stadium. The second man just has the basic toppings but he gets a prime spot located right in front of the superbowl stadium. Which one is going to make more money that day? Of course the guy with the basic toppings but a prime location. This is the reason why McDonalds is so successful. McDonalds focuses on prime traffic locations. That should be your focus too. It isn’t uncommon for a savy internet business owner to start building traffic before they finish or even start the website.

Conversion:
The second most important aspect to running a business is conversion. Once you have the traffic, you’ve need to get them to buy. You might be asking, “Don’t you need to worry about your product before thinking about conversion?”

My answer: No. Athough both are elements of conversion, good marketing is more important than a good product. The product is important in the sense that you want happy customers who buy and keep buying from you. But no one will even understand the value of your product without good marketing. It’s up to you to let them know that you’ve got something of great value and why it’s of greater value than the amount of money you’re asking for it.

Now, pretty much any aspect to business will fall under one of these two categories. Your job as a business builder is to find the most effective ways for you to achieve these two things. Sometimes that depends of the market but often when you’re starting out, much of it depends on you.

A Real Business’s success depends on how well you can focus on traffic and conversion.

I could go on, but I’d like to hear from you. What are the most important activities you find that fall under one these two categories?
Or would you like to share what your thoughts about traffic and conversion, feel free to leave your comments below.

Matthew Glanfield

Watch this video to find out how I realized how easy it would be to increase my sales by 20%…

www.Formula5Marketing.com

Over the past couple of months Dave the Live Video Guy and myself have been hosting live video shows every Monday afternoon.

Normally the recordings are only available to members of the 21 Day Formula (which is a free membership), but I have decided to post our second show here, in hopes that you will see the value of this free training and join us in the 21 Day Formula.

Here is the recording:

You can sign up for free here:

www.21DayFormula.com

Enjoy!

Matthew Glanfield

I just completed another website critique for Peter Rosenblum’s site http://www.peteyboysprofitcentral.com.

In this video I cover:

-how to increase opt-in conversion rates on your squeeze page
-how to increase email verification rates (i.e. getting people to actually verify their email addresses after subscribing)
-how to increase blog newsletter opt-in rates
-how to increase info-product sales rates
-how to get more search engine traffic

You can watch it here:

Click here to watch this website analysis…

Matthew Glanfield

Yesterday I completed my first full free website conversion analysis of one of the sites submitted on my previous post where I offered to do a few free website conversion analyses (I looked it up - it’s right!).

This is of Connie’s website www.portraitpeoplepets.com, a site where Connie sells her services as a painter.

You can watch both parts of the extensive 36 minute analysis video here:

Click here to watch Connie’s analysis now…

Matthew Glanfield

I have a problem.

It’s a problem I don’t mind having so much, but it is a problem nonetheless.

You see, when I put up a post about giving away a few free website analysises (analysis’? analysees? nevermind…), I wasn’t quite expecting the response that I got.

Right now there are over 110 replies, most of them people asking for their website to be included. This is, of course, impossible, given the amount of time I want to spend on each analysis.

So I came up with a small solution for now. Although I will still be doing 2 or 3 full website analyseyes, I decided to put together a 20 minute video going over as many of the websites that have been submitted as I could.

I don’t spend much time on each of the websites, but the time I do spend I give my first impressions and immediate things that I would change.

Now, I only got about 10-20 sites done (I didn’t actually count), so I will probably do another one of these videos to cover more, IF you like what you see.

So, once you’ve watched the video, please post a comment here letting me know if it was useful to you or not. I will honestly base my decision on your replies alone (why put in the time if nobody cares, right?).

Click here to watch my video “A Buncha Website Analysiseses”…

Matthew Glanfield