Driving Traffic Offline Traffic to Your Online Website the Dirt Cheap Method

On the last blog post, we started down the road of how to generate traffic from offline sources.  I’m going to try to research and place as many ideas as possible and write about them.  Some of these ideas are from personal experience as well as research. 

You can read the last post I did on that subject here: Offline Traffic Generating Strategies

Tell Everyone You Know – How many people do you know?  Chances are, you know a load of people that you aren't even thinking about.  Sit down for a moment, get out a pencil and a pad of paper, your address book and any other log you use to keep names and addresses on and write down every person you can think of.  Not just friends and relatives, but anyone you do business with. 

You can then write them a brief snail-mail letter telling them about your website as well as the irresistible freebie that you have on your site if they get on your email list. 

Hey, double winner, chicken dinner!  Not only will they go to your site, but if the offer is great, chances are they’ll sign up for your shameless newsletter, email series, blog post alerts, etc.

Advertise Your Online Business on Your Vehicle – Have you ever been out driving and see a bumper sticker that had a web address on it?  Of course you have.  Sometimes I think the weirder the web address is the more it makes you remember it and want to go home and plug into the net.  Which brings up the major question of this post: Will people actually look up your business if they see your web address on your vehicle? 

Well, considering how many people are carrying cell phones and tablets around with them they probably will look you up. 

So here’s an idea, the more unique you can make your advertisement on your vehicle look unique or interesting, the more you’ll get the attention.  Use words or phrases that will generate curiosity.   Ask a question they ca answer on your site, or tell them that you have a free product to give them if they visit your site and register with you.

Once again, you’re trying to build that all-important list that you can use to market to the people that follow you and your products and services online. 

Put Your Web Address URL on Your Answering Service – Marketing Master, Dan Kennedy, had a great story about how he called a guy that was supposed to spray his home for bugs.  When he called the home office of the exterminator a lady with a cheerful voice greeted him and after a few seconds asked if he wouldn't mind waiting for a few minutes on hold while she transferred his call.

He was then treated to an awesome advertisement about the services and upgrades he could purchase with the standard service package.  That and all the perks, insurances and everything else you can imagine that you can think of.  Of course he was given the web address where they could get discounts and other freebies. 

Then Mr. Kennedy was treated to another commercial with all sorts of information and ideas on how to clean and take care of pools.  Yep, the web address of the pool maintenance company was on that commercial too and that business was owned by the brother of the bug spray guy.

Put Your Web Address on Al Correspondence- Yep, I know that this is a no brainer, but it bears reminding you to put your web address on all correspondence pieces like letterhead, envelopes, return addresses, etc. 

TIP! You could buy sticky labels and make them for your envelopes with a good call to action on it.  Put pictures on it or anything else that’ll catch the eye of your reader.  Just think of all the hands your letter passes through on its way to the recipient. That way your envelope will have a double purpose to it, carrying the letter and advertising!

 Mark “Elmo” Ellis

"When it Comes to High-Response Copy - I've Got Your Back!"

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

(859) 797-9560

elmo033057@gmail.com

Dirt Cheap Offline Methods of Generating Traffic to Your Website

Most of the Marketing Methods I've talked written about has been methods of send traffic to your site online.  Now, we’re going to get into other methods of driving traffic.  Primarily, how to send traffic to your site from the offline world. 

In some ways, marketing offline can actually be more fun to do and you can get very creative with how you do this.

Join Local Groups in Your Community – I live in Lexington, Kentucky and I can tell you that this is not a big city.  Actually, where I live I can have access to 3 cities that are rather small.  However, there are business groups that have regular meetings to discuss their businesses and network together.

These are usually businesses that perform services or products in the bricks and mortar world.  

So their topics whenever they speak of them are usually about what they’re selling or doing.  In my case, since I talk about dirt-cheap marketing methods and also write advertising copy, I have a pretty wide appeal with my group.  If I were a dentist, well, I don’t think I’d have the same appeal, even though dentists perform a super-important service. 

Finding these groups is pretty easy.  Just Google “Business Networking Groups” and the name of your city or town. Once again, don’t try to be a “Johnny Jump-Up” and try to connect with your group too fast.  Just like online social groups, you’ll want to get to know your group before you approach them with anything.

Once they get to know you. They’ll be much more responsive to what you have to say and your marketing message.  At some point you’ll want to give them a business card or offer to speak at one of the meetings. 

I can’t overstate that you’ll want to ease into these relationships before talking to them about what you do too much.  Just be cordial and attend regularly.

Speak at local business meetings.  

Almost every city or large town has a Toast Masters Club.  These clubs are there to give members the opportunity to speak or help you learn to speak.  However, just like any other social network, you will have an opportunity to network and talk to others that are in business.

And guess what?  You’ll be able to give a speech about your business there and hand out business cards and make connections you can send to your website!

The next move you’ll want to make once you get used to talking to crowds is to research different business groups in your area and contact them.  Usually there are business chapters or clubs that meet regularly and many times they are looking for speakers.  Depending on your niche market, you can speak at some of these events.  All you have to do is send a brief letter to the chair person leading the group offering your services to speak. 

The only words of caution I would have is make sure your niche or subject is relevant and applicable to your audience.  A good way to make sure that you’re speaking on target would be to ASK the person in charge what subject (related to your field) that they think would be good for you to speak about.

This method is very effective, especially if you’re addressing people that are interested in your business.  Usually, people will come up to you and ask you for more information. 

However, I have a better plan for you…

Hot Tip!  Instead of just giving out your marketing materials when someone asks for it why don’t you “bump it up a notch”? 

At the end of your presentation, you could say something like this:

“Thank you so much for allowing me to speak at your event.  To show you my extreme appreciation, I’ve got some free parting gifts I’d like to give you at the door before you leave."

You could give them a free report, complimentary items like pens or key- chains that have your web address and other contact information on it.  This way, you can make sure that just about everyone in the room will have your marketing materials as they leave, rather than just one or two people that just talking to one or two contacts that happen to approach you. 

How Are Internet Marketing Strategies Like Fad Diets?

I’m starting to look at marketing plans like diet plans.  Before you tell me that I’m mad, hear me out.  Within the last two days, I have heard another two revolutionary methods of marketing your businesses online that supposedly was a new way to do it.  While I must admit, there are different styles of marketing your business, there pretty much isn't anything new under the sun.

Consider diet plans for a second.  If you watch any daytime TV at all, one of the popular Doctor talk shows that permeate the airwaves have a different diet plan almost on a continual basis.  Of course, this is marketing in itself, because women, which are the target market, are always looking for ways to look younger and thinner.

So, the shows are geared for this.  The products and plans they have on those programs talk about books and equipment dedicated to this industry.  Not only that, these shows are interrupted by obligatory commercials that have all of the low- calorie foods and plans dedicated to this market as well.

And the diet plans are endless:

The Mediterranean Diet
Low Carb Diet
South Beach Diet
Chocolate Diet
The Spartan Diet
The Paleo Diet
The Diet Diet
The funniest one I heard was the Peter Pan Diet.  (I wonder if it involves peanut butter.)


I once had a book given to me that was produced by Men’sHealth magazine.  It was a real interesting book because it had huge, luscious, full-color pictures of food in it that YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO EAT.  I took one look at that book and shouted, “Finally a book that tells me what I want to hear, eat all of this incredible food!” 

The part of the book that stood out the most, was a section at the beginning of the book.  It went through all of the most popular diets, and described what you were supposed to eat or not eat on them and the editors and nutrition experts at Men’s Health dispensed their 2 cents worth on what they thought of each of these diets.  At the end of the day, they said that all of them were not realistic ways to lose weight and that each one of these strategies of losing weight was not sustainable over the long term. 

However, the real kicker came at the end of that particular chapter.  Men’s Health decided to tell you the one and only method of losing weight that would actually work over time. Yup, according to them, there was one diet that worked, and it was so complex and hard to do you just wouldn’t believe it. 

However, because I have worked out an exclusive deal with this top of the line magazine, they have signed a massive 500 page release allowing me (and me alone) to unveil this ultra-secret diet plan.  And now for the first time anywhere, I am going to unleash its awesome power to you so you can use it.

Here, now, for the first time, is the Ultimate Diet Program by Men’s Health Magazine, exactly as appeared in their book:

(Uh-hem…Sorry, I get nervous revealing such incredible information.)

Burn more calories than you take in.

Yep, there’s no arguing the logic or the science behind that plan. 

Marketing Strategies are like Fad Diets

As I mentioned above, I recently heard two new marketing …I guess you’d call them philosophies that I had not really heard before.  However, when I got past the fancy titles, (I think one of them was “Ninja Marketing Tricks for Businesses on Steroids” or something like that.) and the double speak, it was the same marketing ideas I’ve heard a million times before.

One was a sure fire method of making millions on the Web, but when I got deep into the eBook, I looked at the blue print which really wasn’t much different than one I had sketched out for myself years ago.  Although, I’ll have to hand it to the guy that wrote it, it was a pretty massive eBook that the blueprint was in, even though it had quite a few advertisements that tried to upsell you to bigger and more expensive ideas.

The other marketing idea was from a lady that was into “Natural Marketing”.  In other words, her approach was predicated on trying to relate to people, get to know them, and then sell them.  The video that played, as well as the copy that went with it on the page, kept telling you that you were struggling in life and that there was a natural way to market via relating to likeminded people.  Right underneath the skillfully made video was a button telling you to “find yourself” by paying around $10.00.

Just Like Losing Weight 50 Years Ago…

If you study the principals that were used 50 or so years ago, you’d notice that the basics of sales and marketing don’t really change, even though the vehicles they’re delivered from do change, like the Internet.  

However, many marketers and businesses are starting to realize that people are getting savvier to their marketing techniques and are beginning to adjust.  Perhaps in the future new marketers will have to actually get to know their clients and prospects instead of going for the quick and easy. 
It may actually be a breath of fresh air.

To Your Success!

Mark “Elmo” Ellis
"When it Comes to High-Response Copy - I've Got Your Back!"
www.MarkEllisCopy.com
(859) 797-9560
elmo033057@gmail.com

Web Savvy List Building Story That's 100% True and SHOCKING!

NOTICE:  I am not, nor will I ever be involved with Network or Multilevel Marketing.  It's just not my thing.  If that's the type of business you're into, then God Bless you and keep on trucking. I'm not going to voice my opinion on it one way or the other.  It's just not for me, and I'm not into it.  I have seen some people make a wad on this type of business and I've seen people lose their shirts on it. In my opinion and experience, you have to be an excellent salesperson with a very thick hide to work it. But that's all I have to say about it.  So, there.

Years ago, I worked for an Internet and information marketer; it was a very interesting experience.  He called me from a number on a bulletin board, where I had placed a flyer advertising my Web Design services.  Turns out he had hundreds of websites and couldn't keep track of them all, so he hired me to help him out.   

To this day, I still scratch my head at how disorganized his operation was, yet he was pulling in well over a million dollars.  One day, I went in to his place of business to work on some things he asked me to take care of while he was out of town. 

As a matter of fact, he was always out of town, because he was constantly doing seminars of one sort or another.  So, I got to this building he had rented, and the thing was left wide open.  I didn’t have a key, I just walked in looked around and nobody was there.  He had left family members in charge while he was gone and apparently they had left it open. 

I called him to let him know that his building was left unsecured all night and that the lights and everything else were running full blast.  Since I had no way of knowing how much equipment he had in there, I didn't know if he had some of his stuff ripped off or not.  He had loads of computers, packing machines, machines for silk screening DVD’s, a lot of high-end video equipment, etc.   

When I got him on the phone, finally, he sheepishly said, “Oh, Dad must have left the building unlocked again.”  Turns out this happened all of the time.  

Since I was left alone in his building, I decided to check out the material he was making money on.  His operation was all handled at his shop, and it looked like he didn’t outsource anything. Every part of his business was right inside the building, and he printed on demand.  In other words he wasn’t publishing his books and pamphlets the traditional way.  He was the publisher.  Whenever an order came in, he’d print it up himself, box it up and send it out.

So, being an information marketer – wannabe, I decided to peruse some of his material to see what an actual full-sledged info-marketer was selling.

I was shocked at what I saw. 

Most of the stuff was... how I can put this delicately….Rubbish!

A lot of what I saw were flimsy pamphlets he had printed by copying stuff he had thrown together from his websites and websites from friends who had given him permission.  He would basically print up the actual webpages, put them into a spiral bound machine and send them out.  And the websites themselves were rubbish.  There really wasn’t any rhyme or reason to the material he was peddling.

But, his phones were ringing off the hook.  People were only too eager to buy what he was selling. (Just imagine if he actually sold a world-class product what kind of business he’d do!)  Turns out that he was an EXCELLENT salesman.  He had gotten into the multilevel marketing business and done very well with it.  Now, he not only was running that operation, but he was selling courses on how to make it big in the world of MLM and networking.

I didn’t stay working for this man very long, even though he and his family were very nice to me.  He was on the road so much, he was never home.  I could never get ahold of him to find out what he wanted me to do with his websites, and he also had other gatekeepers that were running some of those sites, so I just faded out of the picture. 

However, I did get one important lesson from this man.  I asked him what he considered to be the most important aspect of an Internet business or an information marketing business was.

THE LIST.  

That’s what he emphatically told me.  “The list is absolute gold.”

He was an expert at this, because his list was so massive he couldn’t keep track of it all.   However, he had a faster way in than many Internet marketing newbies would have.  Because he had made a major landing in a diet product related MLM business, he would go on the road for this business to their seminars.  He was an excellent salesman, so he’d not only promote his business, but he’d also promote his course. 

So, he was in an enviable position to promote his wares to large, hungry

groups of people that were eager to plunk down their money at the event as well as get on one of his hundreds of sites and order when they got home.  

This concept never left my mind.  When I was still building websites for people, I started noticing that people that were doing lousy in their businesses had no concept of list building or keeping in contact with their past clients.

If you have people that liked your business and liked you, these are the easiest prospects you could ever get?  Why wouldn’t you keep them in your business loop?

So, if you want to build an online business, or an offline bricks and mortar business then keep a good database of your clients and prospects. Always stay in touch with them, and strive to build it, because this is the fuel that’ll drive your business.

To Your Success!

Mark “Elmo” Ellis

"When it Comes to High-Response Copy - I've Got Your Back!"

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

 (859) 797-9560

elmo033057@gmail.com

Web Savvy Methods of Converting Facebook Visitors Into Buyers

In my last post I wrote about how you should know where your Facebook business page fits in your sales funnel.  If you didn’t get a chance to read that post, here’s the link:

Method of FillingYour Sales Funnel 

The Traditional 3-Step Process

In case you don’t know, I don’t claim to be an expert in all areas of Social Media. I do use it on a daily basis, and over time I have seen results from it.  However, to be totally honest with you, I don’t claim to know some Top-Secret Super Guru Method of using social media to generate thousands of dollars daily.  

If you are looking for a good resource like that, you may want to hire this consultant:

So, this is what I've been doing in social media, it is what is called by some marketers as the 3-step process.  Very simply, it looks like this:

Breakdown of the Steps:

Step #1 - Facebook With this step, you are going to update your status in some way.  If you look at the Nature Valley Granola Bar Facebook page, you’ll see that they have all sorts of updates.  They don’t promote their items every day, because when you’re selling all of the time it is “Big-B” BORING! 

Nature Valley shows pictures taken by fans of the great outdoors.  Once my wife and I were hiking around Colorado, and Nature Valley was asking people to post pictures of themselves holding their product in the great outdoors.  My wife was only too thrilled to have her picture posted with a granola bar.  Sheesh!

This is a case of Nature Valley promoting AND getting customers to add to their Facebook Fan page.  So they were getting customer involvement and getting their Facebook page updated at the same time!  Double the Fun! (Wait, that’s a gum product!  My bad!)

Step #2 - Your Blog or Website Once you've engaged your prospects, you can now get them to your website or blog, where they can read information that is of importance to THEM.  (You always want to make sure that you’re not writing things that interest you; it’s your audience that counts!)

You need to have links to your coupons, squeeze page, irresistible offer, or whatever else on the page that they are reading.  Don’t overdo it, but place the links where it can be plainly seen and if possible make them a part of your website’s landscape. 

You can do this several different ways too!  You can have an advertisement close to your valuable content while at the same time, you can also have an RSS feed next to your content and an opt-in box as well.  

What these last two options will do, is allow you to build your marketing list so you can send them a well written offer…eventually.

Step #3 – Conversion…Cha-Ching!  In your final step in the 3-Step Process, you’ll have your sales page work its magic.  In reality, this is the page that’s going to require the most skill to craft, because you’re going to have to use words to sell your service or product.  Not as easy as it looks.  The best way to do this if you have no experience yourself, is to hire someone to craft your compelling copy.

Depending on what you are selling and how much you are charging for your goodies, your message can run from about a page or two, to ten pages!  I just read a sales letter a few days ago, and it was over twenty pages in length!!!

Usually, if you’re selling a high ticket item, you’ll have to use a pretty long sales letter to overcome the load of objections in the mind of a prospect.

  I can tell you that if you hire a good copywriter it will run you big bucks.  In some cases they’ll charge you a minimum of $3000 and half of that is up front, non-negotiable and non-refundable. 

On the other hand, you can hire a cheap copywriter and have low conversions.  It all depends on how much you really want to make.

To Your Success!

Mark “Elmo” Ellis

"When it Comes to High-Response Copy - I've Got Your Back!"

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

(859) 797-9560

elmo033057@gmail.com