Preneur Marketing - The Blog of Entrepreneur Pete Williams

Todays post is based on the Robert Cialdini influence principle of ‘Liking’… and the two ways you can look at the factor of ‘liking’ when it comes to marketing and selling.

Firstly, you can say people will buy from people they like. Pretty plain and obvious, it’s just human nature that people are reluctant to throw money at people they don’t like.

There really isn’t anything new here… this principle has been openly discussed for decades. No sane marketer goes around trying to piss their prospects off.. that just ain’t cricket.

Although, what I am NOT saying is “try and get everyone to like you”.. trying to do this is a fast ticket to the insane asylum. Dan Kennedy talks about this principle really well and I will dedicate an entire post to it at some point.. but for now the take away is:

“Try and get your targeted prospects to like you… and just ignore everyone else… even Mother Teresa had her haters”

Secondly, you can look at it from the point of view that if, as a marketer, you can get your prospects to think/believe/feel that they are “just like you” it builds a very strong bond that is such a powerful selling tool.

Over-The Shoulder marketing is not just about letting your prospects look over your shoulder so they develop a liking for you… It’s about creating a subconcious connection in the prospects mind that the are JUST LIKE you..

It’s this take on the ‘liking principle’ that forms the foundation of ‘Over-The-Shoulder’ selling and one reason why Twitter has become such a powerful marketing tool.

Twitter is a great way to really engage your customer in this “Over the Shoulder” way.

Some of the greatest over-the-shoulder marketers around are really embracing Twitter to interact with thier herd (read: prospects) but posting what would otherwise be considered the most random collection of tweets (posts on thier twitter feed)… everything from what they had for breakfast, to what they are doing with their family on the weekend, to what random web-site’s they’re visiting.. plus the odd (strategically placed) sales pitch.

By reading the Twitter feed, you are practically reading over their shoulder and getting a glimpse into the persons life.

So is are these tweets really that random ?

Well, what’s actually happening in these prospects mind whilst reading these random tweets:

“Look at Scott… Look at what Scots’s doing. Aww, Scott’s with his family! I have a family… Oh, Scott had to go to the supermarket just like me. Oh wow, Scott has to do the same mundane taks as me… Cool, Scott likes wearing pink tutoos just like me… Scott really is so similar to me. Amazing, Scott is making like $100,000 a month doing this internet marketing thing… Well if Scott is just like me, there is no reasons I couldn’t do that too… Maybe i will buy his stuff and be even more like Scott….”

It’s not just about having someone look over your shoulder and exposing your life to the world (although thats why the majority of people twitter) - it’s about building a rapport, it about allowing your prospects to get a glimpse into your life and create that “i’m just like you bond”.

As Brent says so elequently…. It’s about making yourself similar to other people in your market - with some of the same struggles, joys and mundane day-to-day life. It’s “mirror marketing” - allowing people to see themselves in you.

It makes anything you do seem achieveable.

If you’re a guru, and you’re like them, your success becomes within their reach. It becomes achieveable.

Pete

P.S. - If you want to find out what Fleur and I are doing this weekend then subscribe to my twitter feed here.

P.P.S. - Make sure you check out Brent Hodgsons blog here - http://www.brenthodgson.com/. He’s just started blogging again after a little break and he really does know what he’s talking about.

Technorati Tags: over the shoulder, over, shoulder, marketing, over the shoulder marketing, over the shoulder selling, brent hodgson, brent, hodgson, pete williams, peter williams, Robert Cialdini, Robert, Cialdini

As Brent mentioned in his post, we caught up for a long over-due dinner earlier in the week and as always got to talking about all things internet marketing…

Anyway, Brent mentioned he was working on an article about Robert Cialdini’s 6 factors of influence and how they can be used when selling online…

For those who have a mmory like me.. for reference the 6 factors are:

• Reciprocation - When people receive a favor, they feel the need to return that favor;
• Commitment and Consistency - When people commit to an ideal or goal in some way, they feel the need to honor that commitment;
• Social Proof - When people see other people doing something, they become more likely to do it themselves;
• Scarcity - Perceived scarcity in supply will create an increased demand;
• Authority - When asked to perform an action by an authority figure, people will usually comply;
• Liking - People are easily persuaded by people who are similar to and/or liked by them;

As Brent mentioned in his blog, the two factors which we spent most of the conversation discussing were “Authority” (how do you establish authority online?), and “Liking” (how do you get someone to connect with your identity through a sales letter?)…

So here is my take on the first of these two factors…

1. Authority

Traditionally, creating authority online has been done by having esteemed “experts” provide testimonials, or endorsement throughout your sales letter and launch process.

Just look at the latest Frank Kern, Mass Control launch, every perceived Internet marketing expert came out and endorsed the product - Ed Dale, Brad Fallon, Andy Jenkins, Mike Filsame, Jeff Walker etc etc etc

By having these experts, who already have authority in the niche of internet marketing, endorsing Frank (or anyone) and saying how great his stuff is, that he is a brilliant copywriter, that the course is amazing and so on.. the authority that expert has gets “magically transposed’ to the person they are endorsing.. in this case Frank Kern (who by the way didn’t really need these experts to get authority, but just roll with me here)

Another way people have traditionally gone about building authority in their sales pitches online (and offline for that matter) is through PROOF. You’ve all seen the proof online… normally in the form of a click bank screenshot showing how they’ve made like $109,543.37 in the past 46 hours etc etc

…. But how can you create authority if you are not an insider into this elite guru group or don’t want to give away your nett worth to all the identity stealers out there?

Ever thought about… PUBLICITY.

Yep I said it, free exposure in the real world media - radio, newspapers, TV - a very over-looked and under-valued internet marketing tool.

The reason publicity works so well as a authority generator for online marketers is that it’s the most amazing third-part endorsement. It’s the (ultimate) testimonial you can’t buy, fake or get off a buddy in an inner-circle.

If you get exposure from a media source that gives your website or product an endorsement via the story, then no amount of paid advertising can bring you the same amount of kudos or credibility.

If the prospect sees an article about you, your website or your product in the media, it’s instant KUDOS - you are the expert!

Also, if you’re selling information on playing the guitar, imagine the credibility and pre-eminence in the market you will gain by being able to refer to print or television media on your website. This will bring you instant expert status and result in harnessing one of the most precious commodities of the internet – trust.

Technorati Tags: selling, marketing, over-the-shoulder, Robert Cialdini, Cialdini, Brent Hodgson, Publicity, Authority, Expert, PR, Press Release, Media Release, Pete Williams, Pete, Williams, Preneur

It wasn’t that long ago that I wrote a post on the power of great copywriting for ebay, well today I have un-deniable PROOF that story-telling works wonders on eBay.

I’ve been using eBay every now and again to offload some of the remaining MCG Carpet with mixed results… until I re-wrote the items description (read: sales letter) which has seen a dramatic increase in bids and sale price.

The orignal item description was pretty standard, you know the type you see on almost every eBay listing - a sales letter that takes the definition of “item description” literally and shows only 1 photo of the item.

Check out an except from original item description:

This letter was pulling OK, I’d make a sale around the $74 dollar range every couple of weeks.. nothing to write home about but still extra $$….

So then I decided to follow my own advice and re-write the sales letter to this:

AND, boy did the bidding start to GO-OFF… Since changing the sales letter I’ve been selling carpet squares on a weekly basis for well over $120… plus I have been making second chance offers to a number of bidder who are accepting and purchasing thier own piece of history at prices still above the original sales price of $74.00

One other thing I added to the listing was a bunch more photos of the carpet - Here is what the actual listng looks like now:

Technorati Tags: eBay, sales, letter, copy writing, copywriting, pete, williams, preneur, marketing, e bay, mcg, mcc, carpet

To first understand how to make the most of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for your business, you need to understand exactly how it is that search engines go about their business.

In the English-speaking world, the major search engines include Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and Ask.com (which includes AskJeeves).

Typically speaking, search engines perform two functions.

• They “crawl” the web and create an index (database) of the billions of documents (web-pages) that are available online - this includes your business’ website.
• They use this index to provide useful answers to questions that users ask of them, most often in the form of a list of relevant web sites after someone searches on a particular phrase or term; such as “plumbers in melbourne”

Let’s look at each of these.

Crawling and Indexing

Search engines don’t just head out across the expanse of the web at random. Instead, they proceed along methodical lines. Most every webpage you’ve ever been to on the internet contains at least one or more hyperlinks to other website pages or files. This sharing of links, in theory, serves as a network connecting all of the pages that exist on the internet. By using these links, the software that search engines use to scour the web (known as “crawlers” or “spiders”) can reach the billions of documents available on the web through any given starting point.

Randfish explains it brilliantly using the analogy of a city bus or subway route. While the main points of interest are the various stops and cities along the route (think of these as the web sites and files), the streets connecting them (the hyperlinks) are critical and of no less importance.

So if you don’t have any hyperlinks (on other webpages) that point to your business’ website then the search engine spiders will never be able to find your website and place its pages in the index. It is this web structure (hence: world wide web) that the search engines crawl through, making these stops, where their next task is to take a look at the code that makes the pages and store the relevant sections of code in their database for retrieval…

Retrieval and Rankings

When most people go to search for something on the internet, say looking for someone to fix the leak in the bathroom… they submit a query at a search engine, by typing in the phrase/term they are looking for (plumber melbourne), and in return they get a list of relevant web pages.

To do this, the search engine looks through its massive collection of documents, and performs a two-step process. First, they return results which are likely to have some relation to what the user was looking for. Secondly, and this is important, they determine the order, or “rank” in which these pages are displayed to the user.

To make this determination, the search engine judges two aspects of your businesses page: relevance and importance.

Relevance is a very complex matter that we’ll be discussing throughout this guide. Suffice to say, relevance is no longer simply a matter of having the right words (plumber & Melbourne) in the text of your webpage. SEO goes far beyond that and incorporates a great number of factors.. but as a starting point; the only way the search engines can determine what your business (website) is about, is by reading the words of test on your sites pages. So if you are a plumber, make sure you incorporate words such as plumbing, plumber, leak, toilet etc etc in your copy.

Importance, from the search engine’s perspective, has to do with how popular your site is… and just like in high school where the most popular people had the most friends… the more links you have pointing to your site, the higher your importance, and the higher your rank in any given search.

If you’ve used a search engine before, you likely know this, but the more relevant and important a page is thought to be, the closer to the top of the search engine results list it can be found. How many times have you even bothered navigating to the second page of a results list to find what you’re looking for? …Exactly….

Of course, these two factors are determined by machines, so there’s a lot of room for error. But rather than see this as a negative thing, we should look at how we can capitalize upon it. In other words, if we figure out just how search engines go about determining how important and relevant your page is, we can make sure that they award us high rankings.

In the next post we will be going further into the actual look and feel of a Search Engines Results Page and how that all works… stay tuned..

Technorati Tags: seo, search engine optimisation, search, engine, optimisation, google, yahoo, msn, sem, serps, pete williams, pete, williams, preneur marketing, preneur, marketing, small business, small, business

Like many small business owners, you may not have even heard of SEO before. And yet, it is one of the most critical things that you need to understand if you want your website to stand out from the crowd and actually generate positive results for your business.

Just What is SEO?

SEO refers to “Search Engine Optimization”. And basically, it involves making very subtle changes to your website so that it becomes more attractive to the programs running the net’s most popular search engines - Google, MCN, Yahoo etc etc.

If you’re not convinced that this should matter to you, take note that the majority of all web traffic is generated by just a few major search engines: Yahoo!, MSN, Google, and AskJeeves.

When was the last time you went to the yellow pages to find a business instead of Google? Exactly.

If these search engines can’t locate your site, then your site cannot be put into their databases. If you aren’t in their databases, you can’t turn up during a search.

In other words, you will never reach those people who are out there, actively looking for your product and services.

This isn’t just a matter of generating random traffic; it’s about ensuring that those people who are in the market to buy your products already will be able to find your site when they come looking for it. If your website is not getting listed on the first page of the Serach Engines Result Pages (SERPs) your business simply doens’t exist online…

So How Exactly Does SEO Work?

Search engines are constantly looking for ways to improve upon their services; they want to go deeper into the web and return better results to their users… That’s their business - to return (display)the most approprite sites on the internet for the ’search term’ entered by the user.

However, it’s ultimately computer software that is conducting these searches, not a human being. As such, they’re prone to error, as I’m sure you all know by now. The good news is that these programs search for sites in a very predictable and methodical fashion. If you know how they conduct their searches, you can make the changes to your site that you need to (often, just a tweaked word here or there!) to take you from the bottom of the search pile to the top!

Why wouldn’t you want to be part of this?

In this blog series, we’re going to cover SEO at a high-level. But before we get into all that, you need to ask yourself if SEO is what you’re looking for… Why did you build your website in the first place? Was it to satisfy your ego and burn money on a slick-looking interactive brochure that nobody is ever going to read? I doubt it, but if so, then you can probably achieve that goal quite nicely without bothering any further with SEO. However, maybe your aim was to generate new leads for your business? If so, then SEO is one of the most effective means to that end in your entire arsenal.

Are we on the same page here? Have I convinced you that you NEED SEO if you want to take your business anywhere in this day and age?

If make sure you check back here in the next couple of days to read the next installment which will cover: How The Search Engines Operate… How the Search Engines Rank Your Site… and much more.

Technorati Tags: seo, search engine optimisation, search, engine, optimisation, google, yahoo, msn, sem, serps, pete williams, pete, williams, preneur marketing, preneur, marketing, small business, small, business