This was a "crash course" (pun intended) training trip for the Baja 1000, the longest and most dangerous off-road race in the world. Highlights…

Other than some awesome driving footage, you'll see my co-driver, Craig Allen with a cactus impaled in his arm. Shortly thereafter, I got him on camera vomiting Goji berries. (funny, but you might not want to watch this part if you have a sensitive stomach)

A big "thank you" to my good friend Jay Kubassek for putting this video together.

I can't wait until we race for real next month in the Baja 1000 baby!

Yesterday someone actually filled out my contact form asking if I was dead. (No Frank, I'm not dead. I'm alive and well… but thanks for your concern man.)

In August of last year, I left the "guru business" for good.

Yes, that's right… I quit.

I won't get into the "whys" right now, but I will say it was the best damned business decision I've ever made.

Since then, I've partnered with a former mentoring student to launch a very successful Web 2.0. social networking website for network marketers and other home based business entrepreneurs.

It's been a rewarding experience for all involved. In addition to launching the community, we've managed to more than triple our sales revenue by improving conversions and enhancing our sales funnel.

Although I'm no longer "officially" teaching marketing, I will be updating this blog occasionally as time permits to keep you up to speed on some of the more interesting marketing experiments we have been and will be conducting in the future.

For my long time subscribers who have invested in some of the courses I've put out over the years, you will find much of the same quality of real "in the trenches" marketing information right here.

And the best part is, I've decided to give it away for free. No catch and no cost. In fact, I have nothing to sell right now. That may or may not change in the future, but currently I have no plans to sell any of my own products or offer any marketing services.

I won't commit to posting daily updates or anything like that (and why should I when I'm not charging) but I will continue to share some of my best tips, tricks and test results as long as people are interested in learning.

Now for your first tip…

It's the first in a series of videos called Building On A Budget put out by my partner Mike Dillard.

In this video, you'll see some of the things we've been testing behind the scenes to improve our sales conversions and increase the number of leads and sales we've been getting.

This will be of interest to any marketing student even though the video is addressing the network marketing industry.

You can watch the video here.

Enjoy.

It's time to open the traffic floodgates, so you drop some money on targeted ads and the visitors start trickling in.

A few days and 312 clicks later, you still don't have a single sale. You think to yourself, "Something must be broken" – so you run through your entire sales process and place a test order on your cart.

Hmmm… everything seems to be working.

You ask a few friends to review your sales copy, but they all tell you "it looks fine."

You wonder if maybe it's the ad you're running or the keywords you've selected, so you test your ads, test different traffic sources, test headlines, test prices…

5 days and $300.00 later, you've got 1223 clicks and only 1 sale. What the heck gives?!!

Your website is sucking wind, and you don't know why.

This is usually about the time I get a phone call or email. After reviewing hundreds of sales letters, I can say with confidence it's most likely because your offer is missing one or more of the following ingredients:

1. Credibility and trust: Your offer must be credible and believable. There are many methods for introducing credibility in your sales process such as testimonials, proof, case studies, multi-media presentations, product demonstrations, and many more we covered in depth in our Copywriting Course.
2. Desire: A big part of this is understanding exactly what your potential customers want and what’s causing them grief, pain or feelings of lack. With this knowledge you can craft your sales copy to invoke an emotional response. I highly suggest reading Jesse’s free report Journey Into The Mind Of The Buyer to learn more about how to create desire in the minds of your prospects.
3. Urgency: Human beings are procrastinators by their very nature, and your website visitors need to know why they should make the decision to buy a priority. You may only have one chance to get the sale, and your job as a marketer is to motivate them to take action NOW.

If your campaigns aren’t converting and you aren’t getting the kind of sales you’d like, it’s time to take an honest and objective look at your sales copy and ask yourself some important questions such as…

• What can I do to make my offer more believable?
• What kind of proof can I provide?
• How and where can I use testimonials to demonstrate the results of others?
• Does my sales copy invoke an emotional response?
• How can I create a sense of urgency to get more people to take action?

You’ll find many of these questions answered in our copywriting course, along with very specific step-by-step instructions on how to craft an offer that includes all 3 of these factors.

Tim Erway

P.S. If you want a quick and easy way to integrate urgency into your sales process, be sure to check out John Reel’s amazing new sales intensification software.

With the launch of John Reel's Sales Bully, we were reminded of the impact a conversion increase can have to your bottom line. What many marketers don't realize is an improvement in your conversions means any additional revenue from your sales is 100% profit.

This is an important point when you consider the common misconception that in order to get more sales, you have to buy more traffic. The fact is, you should always focus on making our website do a better job before spending more on traffic generation.

Well, were going to reveal how you can do just that…

"10 Tips For Improving Your Website Conversions"

Conversion Tip #1: Get Analytics
Before you can improve anything, you must have the ability to track your changes. You can sign up for a free Google Analytics account here.

Conversion Tip #2: Test headlines on your landing/squeeze pages
This is one of the most important factors you can change to see improvements in your landing page conversion ratio. If you want to see better results, learn to write copy or find someone who can. You can use Analytics Website Optimizer when you sign up for a free Analytics account. I can't stress enough the importance of copywriting as it relates to conversions.

Conversion Tip #3: Create keyword/campaign specific landing pages
Break up your related pay per click keywords into smaller groups and create specific landing pages for each group. Remember, conversions will almost always be better if the keyword, context of the ad and landing page are the same. The same holds true for any ads you have. For instance, if you are advertising on an authority website in your industry and someone responds directly from that site (clicks on your ad) it can help to acknowledge the referring site. For instance, “Special offer for Domain.com readers.”

Conversion Tip #4: Add testimonials!
Testimonials are proven to increase conversions. If you can add the element of social proof to your landing pages, sales pages and even order pages, you will almost always see a noticeable difference in your results.

Conversion Tip #5: Identify sales paths and optimize to remove resistance
If you have one product, you may have several "paths" that lead to the sale. For instance, maybe you have a landing page that collects visitor contact information, which then leads to a product sales page, which then leads to a order page, etc. When you look at your analytics data, you will begin to identify where your visitors navigate on your site. In doing this, you can see where your visitors are leaving and either eliminate unnecessary steps, improve copy or call to action, strategically place testimonials, money back guarantees, etc. You should do anything and everything you can to simplify your sales process to make it less confusing and remove resistance. (All of this is covered in our Copywriting Course with David Garfinkel)

Conversion Tip #6: Test your website load time
One variable many people overlook is website load time. This plays an important role in reducing bounce rates on landing pages. You can check your load speed here free: http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/ . There are many things you can do to increase the speed of your site such as compressing images, optimizing CSS and HTML, using code vs. images when possible, etc. This website will give you some tips on how to improve your load speed.

Conversion Tip #7: Test your prices
This is very important and can really make a difference in conversions. Remember, your goal is to maximize your visitor/customer value. The highest converting price may not be the optimal price. For instance, if you were to double your price and only experienced a 10% reduction in conversions… you are more than compensating for your drop in conversions. If on the other hand, you reduce the price by 20% and this in turn triples your conversion ratio, your increase in conversions compensates for your reduced price. Always test your prices!

Conversion Tip #8: Test audio and video
Many people find the addition of media on landing, sales and order pages increases the conversions considerably. You should consider testing these for yourself. Remember to test with automatic play and without it. Remember, credibility is important, and the more ways you can ease buyer resistance, the better. Multimedia is a great way to add life and personality to your sales messages.

Conversion Tip #9: Walk through your own sales process
Place an order on your site and try to step into the mind of your first time visitor. Where are the hang ups, unnecessary steps, or missing elements that might increase your conversions?

Conversion Tip #10: Get into the mind of your market
What questions do people have about your product or service that aren't answered on your site? What are the "hot buttons?"Why do people exit your page without buying? You should consider using surveys for your leads, customers and visitors to identify key points that can help you improve your sales process.

BIG BONUS TIP: Use sales accelerators!
What is a sales accelerator? It's the addition of a offer intensifier, or a method or mechanism used to increase or speed up the process of moving people through your sales funnel. Examples are: One time offers, limited time offers, limited quantity offers, scheduled event offers. We've tested all of these and more, and we've ALWAYS seen a significant increase in sales, sometimes 3-400% increases! Check out SalesBully.com to find out how you can use these special methods to increase your sales.

It's called your marketing metrics or performance metrics and you have two choices… you can either be a metrics master, or a marketing slave. Yes, understanding your metrics is really "that" important to your online success.

Metrics based marketing is one of the most commonly neglected practices in internet businesses, and it amazes me how many marketers take the "shotgun approach" with their advertising efforts.

Whether you pay for traffic, or you are getting traffic from your search engine optimization efforts, you are investing either money or time, and the ultimate goal should be to get the absolute highest return on your investment possible, and it all comes down to this…

• Knowing your conversions through each step of your sales funnel (click, lead, sale, up-sell, etc.)
• Knowing how much it costs you to get a visitor
• Knowing how much it costs you to acquire a new lead
• Knowing how much it costs you to get a sale
• Knowing how much each customer is worth to you in the first 30, 60 and 90 days (so you don't go broke!)
• Knowing the value of your visitors by traffic source and your highest ROI traffic (so you know where to focus your resources)
• And finally, knowing exactly what to do spend less to acquire clicks, leads and sales & and how to increase the value of your customers so you can out-maneuver your competition

If your head is spinning, I have good news…

First of all, you don't need a mathematics degree to figure this stuff out. There is tracking and analytics software you can use that will do all the complicated stuff for you. All you need to do is set it up once, and your metrics are calculated for you, auto-magically.

One of the tools we use is free, and it's very easy to set up. If you aren't using Google Analytics, take some time right now and watch these Free Google Analytics Tutorials.

Your Metrics Mastery Action Plan

Sign up for a free Google Analytics account

Watch the free Google Analytics training videos (a hat tip to Ian over at ConversationMarketing.com)

Read The Ultimate Sales Funnel Report

Sign up for The Ultimate Sales Funnel Advanced Internet Marketing Course

That's all for today!

• A way to get the best of both worlds, extreme traffic and high conversions.
• Built to "look" and perform like a squeeze page AND rank well in the search engines
• No more Google Slap worries, and better performance with pay per click traffic.

Watch it here

If the video is too small, you can click here for a larger screen shot of the template.

To get the templates and more videos, sign up or register right here

How can I get around the "Google Slap" with my pay per click campaigns?

When, where and how should I use a squeeze page?

Contrary to what you may have heard, the squeeze page method is far from dead, and I encourage you to read on before you take your squeeze pages down simply because you read a report telling you otherwise.

That being said, there are circumstances where a squeeze page should NOT be the first step in the sales process, and there are some products and/or markets where a squeeze pages shouldn't be used at all. Remember, before taking anyone's advice as gospel (including mine), always test for yourself.

Setting The Stage

In 2004, we conducted some fascinating tests on paid search traffic. This was at a time when squeeze pages were all the rage, and marketers were dominating pay per click markets with the "name squeeze" method.

At the time, we were spending thousands of dollars per week Google AdWords and generating a healthy return on our advertising dollars using the squeeze method.

In addition to pay per click advertising, we were involved in search engine optimization (SEO) for some very competitive keywords in our market.

Our basic strategy was as follows:

For PPC Campaigns: Create keyword specific ads and drive traffic to squeeze pages and capture visitor information.

For Natural Search: Create content pages with professionally written articles "pre-selling" our solution, which then led visitors to the opt-in process.

As we started gaining more market share in the pay per click arena, many of our much larger competitors began cloning our pay per click to squeeze page model. This made it more difficult to keep our competitive edge, and consequently bid prices went up and our conversions dropped.

Fortunately, our SEO campaign (with content leading into a capture process) continued to perform extremely well for us, and our conversions as compared to our pay per click traffic, were much higher.

This was an interesting observation that caused us to evaluate our pay per click model, namely the strategy of driving visitors directly from our Google Ads to squeeze pages.

We figured PPC traffic and natural search traffic, in theory, should behave the same way, and therefore our conversions should be the same or similar to what we were getting with organic traffic.

So we tested different methods of lead capture, and what we found was intriguing:

What Method Really Works Best For Pay Per Click Traffic?
(To squeeze or not to squeeze?)

In our first test, we took one of the content pages (traditional website with navigation) that was converting especially well for us with natural search and tested against a squeeze page with no navigation, using the same headline and teaser content from the article page.

Sidenote: our natural search landing pages used a method I call "Hybrid Content/Squeeze Pages." This type of page gives you the best of both worlds (High conversions and high search rankings) by combining content/squeeze methods where appropriate. This method has been successfully used for paid and natural search traffic for over 3 years now with comparably good results across multiple markets.

If you are running Google AdWords campaigns, consider testing the "Hybrid Content/Squeeze Method." This looks almost identical to a traditional website with navigation, articles, etc. The only difference is the article pages (used as keyword landing pages) don't give the "full story." The visitor is required to opt-in in order to get the remaining content and other "goodies" you want to give away to incentivize your visitors to enter their contact information.

These "hybrid" pages are very easy to create. You can use your favorite content management platform, or even a simple blog like Wordpress will work.

What we found was the conversions of our "content style" page was almost double what it was on our squeeze page with the same traffic!

Here's how it broke down:

Squeeze Page: a 24% squeeze page conversion rate, meaning 76% of our traffic "bounced" and left the page.

Hybrid Page: 39% squeeze page conversion, and the average visitor was clicking on 2 or 3 "teaser" articles prior to opting into our system.

Was it a fluke? We weren't sure, so we tested several pages with similar results.

This is important, so pay close attention:

There are two schools of thought in PPC marketing. The first school believes the most effective marketing strategy is to offer content first, claiming "pre-selling" visitors is the best method for generating sales. The second school of though believe in the "squeeze tease", then giving the content after the opt-in.

Which one of these schools is right?

Our testing indicates both are right, depending on the source of the traffic!

Visitor Behavior of Search Traffic vs. Direct Response Traffic

What we found after evaluating the behavior of PPC and SEO generated traffic was these visitors had a completely different mindset than our email marketing traffic.

What do I mean?

Consider this:

When you go to Google and type in a search term for a solution to your problem, you are basically in the "shopping mindset." In other words, you are shopping for the best solution to your problem, and you will likely click on SEVERAL ads before you choose a product or service.

The typical mindset of the search engine generated visitor (paid or natural) is that of "click and see." They will "click" on the ad to "see" what you have to offer. When you are in a "click and see mindset" you are less likely to perform an action without more information up front.

I hope this makes sense, because it's critical you understand your website visitors so you can better market to them. It will also mean the "Google Slap" is not an issue, and the changes they require will only HELP YOU get better results.

HOWEVER, before taking your squeeze pages down, let's evaluate another test we conducted. This time, we used email marketing. The test consisted of 3 separate mailings, each going out to ONE MILLION recipients.

What we found in this test (and a few more that followed) was the forced opt-in squeeze method won hands down. Here's a break down of the numbers:

Hybrid Page: 27% opt-in with a .9% click to sale conversion.

Squeeze Page: 49% opt-in with a 2.1% click to sale conversion.

WOW, big difference right? But why is that?

The mindset of an ad respondent NOT generated by a search engine is much different. They are in a "response mindset." In other words, rather than shopping for a solution, they are responding directly to your advertisement. Therefore, they are much more likely to be "led" into the action of opting in than those in a "shopping" mindset. This holds true for almost all direct response advertisements we and our clients have tested, including email marketing, banners, text ads, etc.

This information is based on actual tests conducted in several markets. There is no "definitive" or final answer to what will work and what won't in your given market, and keep in mind you will want to test different capture methods for different traffic sources.

With all the "Squeeze pages are dead" talk of late, I felt it was important to share our real world test results in non internet marketing related niches. I hope you found it informative

Tim Erway

P.S. Would you like to know more about Hybrid pages? Let us know by visiting our marketing forum, or leave a comment below.

Please tell us which, of these topics, you would be MOST interested in learning about:

1. Search engine optimization (specifically as it relates to blogs)
Guest expert: Denis de Bernardy

2. Advanced list building and monetization
Guest expert: Tellman Knudson

3. Offline and direct mail marketing
Guest expert: John Alanis

Please cast your vote here!

Thanks for your help!

Tim Erway & Jesse Jameson