How Giving Away Something of Value Can Help You Monetize Your Back End

Everybody loves a freebie! What do you currently sell, that is of value, that you could offer for free? And how can you monetize the back end of that? This works especially well if you can offer something that other businesses would normally charge for.

For example, if you have a corporate cleaning business, you could offer your first clean free, and follow up with your customer to see if they were happy with your service and would like you to continue. This is a great way to get new clients to try your service, as you’re taking all the risk out of it for them and, if you do a great job, chances are they’ll want to keep you on. The principle of reciprocity comes into play here too - you’ve given something of value to them and chances are they’ll feel the urge to do the same back.

A twist on this model is our “free plus shipping & handling” funnels, where we offer something for free on the front-end as long as the customer covers a small s&h fee (usually under $5). As long as they think the value is $20+, they’ll consider this a steal and be inclined to jump on it, even if they normally wouldn’t buy it right then and there. However, a necessity with this model is to make sure that you have a great set of upsells and a good backend to really monetize it. We typically have a continuity offer (like a membership or something along those lines), a low to medium priced offer, and ideally a high-end offer in the upsell path. The real money is made in the upsell path, as it’s hard to make a lot off a free plus s&h offer. As an added bonus with this model, you also get a lot of quality buyer leads (worth far more than non-buyer leads), without often having to pay a lot in advertising costs to acquire them. This allows you to market more offers to them in the future and make even more money off these buyer leads.

Think about something you can give away, that has value, and then look at how you can monetize the back end. Whether it is a sample of your service or a physical product, this works especially well if it something that other people usually charge for.

For more insights on how to create a sales funnel that maximizes your profit potential, check out this tool here: BizFire's Free Funnel Maker & Analyzer

How To Position Your Offer To Increase Sales

In many cases it can be a wise idea to offer multiple similar packages when selling something. However, instead of offering drastically different offerings, which might make your prospects hesitate more due to not being sure which option to get, you can offer similar options where the “value buy” seems like an amazing deal.

For example, let’s say that you’re selling an SEO service to help websites rank better. If your main offer is a done for you package for $997 where you fix up their site and offer some basic consultations for them too, that can normally seem like a lot of money to some people and can make them hesitate more on if they should buy or not. However, you could offer three options where the “basic” package is for $897 and only includes a report where you identify the issues but don’t fix it for them, the “most popular” package is for $997 and includes identifying and fixing all the issues on top of three free consultation calls, and the “elite” package is for $1,997 and includes everything in the most popular package but also includes unlimited consultation calls for a month.

What this does is that almost everyone thinks that the middle, “most popular” package is the best deal. It’s only a little more than the basic package, but it includes a TON of extra value. Whereas the “elite” package is twice the price but only has some extra consultation calls that most people think they’ll never use. All of a sudden people perceive the $997 option as being cheap and a great deal! The other options aren’t meant to necessarily get sales. They’re simply meant to help make your main offer stand out more.

And by literally writing something like Basic Package, Most Popular, and Elite Package next to the options, you can help them differentiate between them even more and gravitate towards the Most Popular one.

You just have to be crystal clear with them (in bold colors and / or graphics) what the best or most popular options are, and really make it seem like it’d be dumb not to go with the offer you want them to take.

This also has the added benefit of making your “most popular” or “best” option seem cheap when it’s only a bit more than your basic package. If you didn’t have your basic package, they might think that your offer is expensive, but when they see it as being only a tinge more than the basic, their mindset changes from “that’s too expensive!” to “that’s only a bit more than this basic offering here … what a deal!”

So consider offering multiple packages like a Basic, Most Popular, and Elite Package where the value of the Most Popular one seems huge in order to make more people gravitate towards it and see it as a crazy good deal.

For more great marketing and positioning tips to increase your sales, check out this book: 50 Marketing Tips & Tricks Learned After $100 Million in Sales Over 20 Years!.

How Split Testing Can Massively Increase Your Conversions and Sales

Too many business owners and marketers will only create one version of an offer, sales page, opt-in page, ad, etc., and simply hope that it works. If it does, they’re happy. If it doesn’t, they think that the offer simply doesn’t work.

That’s a horrible way to go about it. If your first attempt doesn’t work, you’ll want to create several different versions of all of those to see if maybe it’s something in your sales copy. And even if you get lucky and get a winning offer right off the bat, you’ll want to constantly test new things in the sales copy to see if you can increase clicks to your ads, lead conversions to your opt-in pages, sales to your sales page, and upsells to your upsell pages.

It doesn’t have to be hard. Even just changing around headlines or little things here and there can often have drastic effects. For instance, you might find that changing a headline and shortening down the length of an opt-in page might boost your lead conversions from 20% to 30%.  That alone could increase your sales by 50%! And by tweaking an upsell page just a bit, you might find that you move conversions there from 5% to 8%, which would be a 60% increase on the backend! Little changes can go a long way and can easily turn a loser campaign into a winner.

And the best part about all this is that little increases in conversions here and there can be responsible for massive increases in money made overall. But having said that, you want to be sure to focus your efforts first on the parts that make you the most money. For instance, improving your front-end conversion rates or those on your biggest money making upsell will almost certainly make you a lot more than focusing on your fourth upsell that doesn’t sell much currently (not to say you can’t improve that and make more, though).

One awesome free tool you can use is BizFire’s Funnel Maker, which you can get for free at www.bizfire.com/funnelmaker. This tool not only lets you build out funnels to simulate a real business, but it lets you see what happens when you increase or decrease conversions in various parts. It’s perhaps our favorite tool to play around with and plan out our businesses!

So make sure you are always testing new sales copy and upsells in order to see if you can increase your opt-in rate, sales conversions, or upsell conversions. Little changes can often have drastic effects that can turn a bad campaign into a winner.

And to check out the Funnel Maker software for free to see how even small changes can massively impact your conversions, click here BizFire's Free Funnel Maker & Analyzer.

Make It Easy For Customers To Buy: How Offering Free Trials/Demonstrations Can Boost Your Sales

Sometimes it’s hard to see the benefit of something we haven’t seen in action or tried first. Offering a free trial period, or a demonstration of your product, can be a great way to alleviate a potential customer’s fears and make them confident the product will work for them. Also, once someone has tried something free they often feel obliged to reciprocate by purchasing from you - it’s the principle of reciprocity in action.

For example, if you have a software product, offer a free 30 day trial, so customers can see how it works, use it and see the results they get from it. You’ll get customers who may have sat on the fence or not purchased previously all of a sudden be ready to buy because they can get a chance to experience how great the product can actually be for them.

There’s one tip we’ve learned over the years that can greatly increase your retention rate here (or essentially how many stay on past the trial period), and that’s to offer a free trial, but require them to enter their credit card or payment details. Instead of charging them, which can decrease the conversion rates even more, just authorize their credit cards for $1 or so (this is typically where their card temporarily sees a charge for like $1 that never officially goes through – similar to what many gas stations do when you pay at the pump). If you use Paypal, you don’t even have to worry as much about this and can just do a straight trial for X days that automatically charges once the trial ends (Paypal is typically very good at getting money from customers, whereas for credit cards you often have to authorize them to make sure that they’re legit to start with).

You can also use trials as “special offers” whenever you want to run a sale. For instance, if you regularly sell a software tool for $997 / year, you can have a special offer where you do a free trial for 14 or 30 days. This can get a ton of people who’ve been on the fence to jump on this offer, as they know that the only other way for them to try out the software would be to pay $997 upfront.

So make it easy for customers to see the value in your product and purchase from you by offering a free trial or demonstration of your product. You’ll get a chance to make them feel comfortable with your product and see how great it is for them, before having to lay down their hard-earned cash. This in turn leads to more sales, especially from people who may have been skeptical about your product without the chance to try it first.

For more tips on sales and converting leads, check out this book 50 Marketing Tips & Tricks Learned After $100 Million in Sales Over 20 Years!.

3 Easy Business Tricks To Make More Money

Every business owner has the desire to make as much money as possible, that's kind of the whole point of business. Most of us are continuously searching for new ideas to achieve this goal. Every individual business should evaluate the market trends and customers' requirements before making any specific decision about their business. But there are a few common tricks that can be applied in businesses to make more money.

Here are three easy business tricks that can help you in making more money:

1. Establish A Good Brand

Contrary to popular belief, there is a huge difference between a business and a brand. Brands are the results of a creative and innovative mind. In establishing an attractive brand, it is helpful in thinking of your brand as a person and thinking about what kind of person would you want it to be. Customers like to form associations with companies that are also good brands. You should answer the following questions while branding your business:

• What is the personality type of your brand?
• What are the qualities of your brand?
• Why should the customers choose your brand?
• What is your brand's behavior?
• How much is your brand likable?

A personality with characteristics like being innovative, charismatic, lively, and bold is bound to impress the people. Similarly, you should establish a good reputation, a lively logo, and a captivating tagline for your business to attract more customers and make more money through increased sales.

2. Form A Community

The importance of a strong community in the success of a business cannot be understated. It's communities that play a game-changing role in the success of small-scale businesses, especially because such companies are usually the extension of the owners themselves and so, business to business networking gets easier as you build up your comunity. .

Building a community includes establishing a strong network of effective partnerships that can help you in different business sectors.

Businesses can collaborate with each other in a great number of areas like developing optimized websites, mobile apps, or shared services. Joint promotions are also a great marketing tool.

Moreover, recruiting becomes easy and efficient in a close community. You do not have to spend a significant amount of time and money in the hiring process since you already have a familiar community to choose from, from which you can hire qualified people easily. Moreover, your partners can play a huge role in marketing your business online via different channels like emails, social media, and websites, which optimizes the conversion rates.

The following things should be considered while forming new partnerships:

• Which of the companies I want to partner with can expand my reach to new customers?
• Can I save expenses by sharing resources with another company?
• Will my partner help me out in crafting a marketing campaign to excite both new and existing customers?

3. Rent Out A Part Of Your Business

If you possess a commercial space for running your business, you should consider if you really need all of this space for the proper functioning of your business. If you do not require much space, you should rent out some of your area to another individual or a business to make some good money from the rent. This will form a steady stream of income, which can be used for your professional and personal development.

Many small businesses often depend on the Internet and do not require much physical space. Hence, if you have some unused room, warehouse space, or even an empty garage, you can always find people who are on the lookout of such places to rent. In urban cities, storage spaces charge a lot of money, so you can rent out your own to make a significant amount of money.

Other than land and space there are many ways to accentuate your renting income potential as a business by providing certain perks and resources. For example, providing access to the Internet, printers, or other standard devices present in an office. If you decide to rent a part of your business, you should consider giving it to a business similar to yours. It will give you an opportunity for collaboration and cross-promotion.

If you are looking for more methods and techniques for making more money, you can read 50 Marketing Tips & Tricks Learned After $100 Million in Sales Over 20 Years! for marketing tips.

Five Super Important Things to Rank Your Site

What is a Ranking in SEO?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is meant for the betterment of web pages to help search engines rank them accordingly. In SEO, ranking indicates the position of a website’s page on what's called the search engine results pages (SERPs).
According to Google, the ranking of a website is vital because it helps in showing the relevant search results. It is also essential for the organization of largescale data present on the web and making the information reachable and valuable to people all around the world.

The ranking also makes it easier for Google to catalog the pages based on the optimization and quality of the pages.
The five most important factors in ranking of a website are:

1. Secure Website

The right URL is secure and easily accessible. A secure and accessible URL is probably the most important ranking factor of any website. Google’s bots should be able to access and crawl URLs for the information they need.
In other words, websites that have URLs that Google can visit and review easily, are more likely to rank higher on the SERPs.

To improve the ranking of your website by making it secure, you need to consider the following:
• A well-developed website through a standard website builder.
• Robots.txt file that is used by Google to determine where it can and cannot view the website information.
• A thorough sitemap which gives the details of all of your pages.

2. Page Speed

Page speed is one of the primary SEO ranking factors for many years. Websites that have rapid-loading webpages give an excellent experience to the users. Faster websites are highly preferred by search engines in any ranking system.
Since 2018, Google has taken into account the page speed on mobile devices as well as PCs. Therefore, website developers should consider smart devices and their loading speeds as well.

3. Mobile Responsiveness

Smartphones and other smart devices have become ubiquitous in the last decade. The majority of users on the web use mobile devices to browse websites. Hence, the mobile-friendliness of a website is a major ranking factor today. It has impacted the SERPs a lot because now, only mobile responsive websites are ranked on the first few pages of Google and other search engines.

Google implements a mobile-first index, which means that the results of the searched keywords are drawn from the mobile-optimized pages. Your website must be mobile responsive if you have a desire to see it ranked high on Google.

Some important factors included in website friendliness are:
• A responsive site that can fit and resize according to the device.
• Fonts are large enough to be readable on small screens.
• Different menus and pages can be accessed and navigated easily.
• Ads are placed appropriately and do not hide the content.

4. Content-Length

Some SEO experts do not consider the content length to be an important factor in the ranking of pages. However, it can be observed from the general ranking on Google that websites that have unique, engaging, relevant, and an appropriate word count are ranked higher than the others.

There is no hard and fast rule on the content length. A long piece of writing is appreciated in SEO ranking because it takes time and energy to create a unique and engaging long content.

However, there must be a balance in length. An excessively long and uninteresting piece of writing content will not attract many people to your website, which will adversely impact rankings.

Recent trends in Google rankings have shown that content length should never be ignored, and long-form content is performing better at the top of the SERPs. As a general rule, 1,000 words or more is optimal for most general content.

5. Domain Age and Authority

Data about the top-ranked websites on Google suggests that the old websites are ranked higher than the new websites. The main reason for this is that the old site is usually optimized over a period of a few years. In some cases, the domain name also accounts for the ranking of a website.

Some researches show that domains that match to each other and that are relevant, useful, and highly-optimized enjoy a significant ranking boost. However, your URL must reflect the nature of your business.

Authority is also another factor in SEO ranking. It consists of SEO signals like inbound links, social media impressions, and page authority. All of this requires a great deal of research, time, and experience, but the process can be made simple by automating it all through advanced programs. Highly ranked websites and SERPs are possible and you no longer have to be a digital marketing expert to make it all work. Web Fire is a great way to make this process fast and simple.

How to Show Value and Position Your Price to Encourage Customers to Buy

One way to show value and highlight the great price you’re offering your customers is to point out when you are giving a discount or savings, as this lets customers know you’re giving them a great deal and lots of value. A discount also has a psychological effect - we feel we are getting a better deal and are more likely to buy. Seeing that an item is discounted not only is an incentive to buy it now, it can also encourage new users to buy that might otherwise have not considered it.

For example, when listing your price, you might write: "$97 --- 50% Off Today!" This makes people feel they are getting a great deal, helps them justify the purchase to themselves and is more likely to push them over the line.

If you have several similar offers that are slightly better or more/less expensive than the other, instead of just listing off the benefits of each one next to their price, you can also not only list off the savings, but say “Good Deal,” “Better Deal,” and “Best Deal” next to each one (or “Most Savings” or something similar). Never assume that people will just do the math in their head and know which one is the best deal.

Think about how you can apply this to your business. Can you put a savings amount next to a price point (eg, “$97 --- 50% Off Today!)? This makes customers feel they are getting a great deal and can encourage customers to buy that may not have bought before.

After more tips to show customers the value of your product? For more marketing tricks and strategies, check out this book here: 50 Marketing Tips & Tricks Learned After $100 Million in Sales Over 20 Years!