John Carlton’s Plodding Dinosaur Test

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"Testing" is a dirty word to some people. And it shouldn’t be. It’s not hard to do, when you know the game.

     And what you learn - once you get the knack of passing all data through your Inner Salesman -- will be like adding jet fuel to your business.

     Remember: "It’s a mess to guess." Most business owners (and nearly all ad agencies) hate to bother with testing. They want to sit around and think really hard... come up with a brilliant solution or marketing scheme (preferably one that is "out of the box")... and then run with it.

     Dumb, dumb, dumb.

     For most people... including most business owners... their Inner Salesman is fast asleep. And flabby. Consider him a muscle that needs a good workout to get strong. And to get really strong, he needs special exercises and extra nutrition.

     Most of the questions (and ALL of the panicked emergencies) I get about marketing on the Web are a direct result of not having a salesman’s savvy. The poor guy’s snoring.

     Here’s a sample of recent emails: "How do I know what to charge for my product online? Should I price it at $49? Or $39?" "I’m not sure which pitch will work to my list. Should I be really aggressive, or should I act like a super-enlightened dude who doesn’t have to try very hard?"

     And my favorite...

"How Will I Know If What I’m Doing Is Working?"

     Big sigh from my end.

     Look, guys, it’s really very simple. Working the Web isn’t all that much different from working direct mail lists. You DON’T "know" how to price your product - you find out. You don’t "know" which kind of pitch will work - you find out.

     And you don’t "know" when you stuff is working (or not). You find out.

     So how do you land on a price? Well, if you have competition, see what they charge, and what they deliver for that price. Then, position yourself either higher, or lower, or exactly the same. And explain why you’re priced that way.

     Here’s what I have discovered about pricing. First, there is no difference at all between, say $49 and $39. There are "price cut-off points" in most people’s minds. In most cases, people won’t distinguish between $49 and $39 or $41, or $35, or $43 or anything else below $49.

     No. There seems to be a range there - anything above $20 and below $50 (if you adequately sell it) should be at least tested at $49. In the customer’s mind, it’s a hazy price range. If they will spend $39 for it, they will often just as quickly spend $49 for it. But they absolutely will not buy at a flat $50. For most people, $50 bucks can be "too much"... while $49 is just fine. (This works all the way down the line. Don’t price yourself at even numbers. Go down, even a penny, and take advantage of the unconscious discount. Thus it’s never $20, but $19.95. It’s $99, not $100. And it’s $1,499, not $1,500.)

     So don’t cheat yourself by coming up with dumb price points.

     This ain’t an exact science. That’s why we test. I’ve had clients who sold stuff at $35 a pop... who could not tell me why they had settled on that price. It just "seemed" like a good number at the time.

     So I told them to test a much higher price... and they were astonished to learn that a good percentage of their customer base would happily shell out $99 and more for the same stuff.

     And with the right kind of pitch, and by adding more value in the form of free reports or tapes or whatever... they could create a package around their $35 stuff... and charge up to $399 for it.

     But they never would have discovered this interesting tidbit... without testing. The lack of resistance to higher prices (when you’ve got something of honest value) is one of the biggest secrets to multiplying your wealth, and hardly anyone figures it out.

     Because they’re too lazy to test.

     But it’s really easy to test on the Web. Here are two different ways to monitor results:

     Web Test #1: If you’re getting a high volume of traffic to your site, you can actually test in "real time". Have your geek standing by (or learn how to use FrontPage software and do it yourself) and change the sales copy on your site while you’re monitoring results.

     This is an amazing opportunity for marketers. In direct mail, you have to wait until the mail arrives and the orders come in. That can take several days or weeks, even with first-class mail.

     With magazine ads you gotta wait months for total results... and there’s a multi-month lag between placing the ad and having it run.

     But online, testing results are nearly instantaneous. For impatient folks like me, that’s a huge bonus. No sitting around twiddling your thumbs. You can launch, test and refine a new campaign every 60 minutes, if you like.

     Amazing.

     Web Test #2: This one is much more primitive... and I believe I officially invented it.

     In fact, I am officially taking credit for it, as of today. Let’s call it "John Carlton’s Plodding Dinosaur Test". Cuz that’s what I am. I love to solve problems with basic, easy caveman tactics.

     It’s very simple. When you want to test your pitch, or anything in it... just get another URL.

     There are no rules against "knocking yourself off", you know. If, for example, you are currently hosting the site teachyourcattomambo.com, and your want to test price, or the "voice" in your copy, or the look of your site, or anything else... go to www.register.com or www.godaddy.com (or any of the other joints that register site names)... and get the alternative URL teachyourcattotango.com. Then open another account with whatever search engine you’re buying terms from, and go after the same market segment.

     And test away to your heart’s content. Not very elegant, but it works.

     But we’re not done yet. Now I want to reveal the big damn secret of quadrupling your profits from any online venture... that is STILL ignored by 99% of all Internet businesses. So listen up.

     The simplest way to add zeroes to your bottom line profits online... is to start using direct mail.

     Wow. I can hear tech-heads exploding all over the world.

     But it’s true. ALL of the savvy marketers I know who are Web-based... have also started incorporating the ancient art of sending real, live letters to their lists.

     They do this because it works like crazy.

     Other marketers I’ve talked to dispute the idea that direct mail could ever work for "their" lists. In each case I’ve seen, they sent out lousy direct mail letters, got lousy results, and considered the issue dead.

     So here’s the caveat: You still have to mail good sales letters.

     Which leads us right into our final tip today. A psychological tactic, stolen from street-wise salesman who can sell ice to Eskimos - you must have on your website, autoresponders (or direct mail letters) to get the huge results you crave.

     Street-savvy hucksters know that no con will work on an honest man. You need greed in the mix. In those 3-card Monte or shell games (which shell is the pea under?), the hustler always allows the mark to win at first. Then the bet doubles. The mark, thinking this is the easiest money he’s ever made, agrees.

     And suddenly that pea does magic acts. By the time the mark realizes he’s being taken, he’s lost a bundle.

     For the rest of us, it’s a reminder of the importance of appealing to the inherent greed in all humans. Many marketers put their customers on a pedestal, and refuse to get into the "gutter" with their competition offering blatant bargains.

     Big mistake. I love to do the "fire sale" ads, where some slight damage or mislabeling or tiny flaw has forced us to offer everything at dirt-cheap bargain prices. There are businesses all over the country who earn so much in their liquidation "going out of business" sales that they not only stay in business... but they routinely try to go back out of business so they can have that liquidation sale again.

     A furniture dealer I know sold so many couches with slight rain damage, that he punched a hole in the warehouse roof to keep the leaks coming.

     People like to get something for nothing, or at least get a better deal than everyone else got. It gives them a story to tell their friends. Makes them feel good about their prowess at finding bargains. And - most importantly - gives them "permission" to spend money on something they might otherwise put off buying (or not buy at all).

     That’s it for today.

[Via - MarketingRebelRant.Com]

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Internet Marketing - 5 Simple Ways to Improve Your Site

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Internet marketing involves more than getting traffic to your site. Sometimes the smallest things can have the biggest impact. The following five actions you can take to improve your Internet marketing and Web site are simple and often over looked when creating or marketing a site.

1) Create a unique 404 error page.

What is a 404 error page? It's the page you see when someone clicks on a broken link or a page that has been renamed. When that happens the site visitor will see a standard page that simply tells you the page is no longer available. It has no thrills, no other links, no branding and above all, very little helpful information.

The page usually starts off with these words:

The page cannot be found.
The page you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.

Your unique 404 error page should look like a regular page of your site. It should include your site's header, footer and navigation bar so that the site visitor can easily click on another area of your site. The content of this unique 404 error page should contain text explaining that the page selected is no longer available along with contact information so the site visitor has the option of emailing or calling your company.

An example of our 404 error page can be found at: http://www.eplusm.com/404.html.

2) We value your privacy.

This simple four word sentence can have a tremendous effect on your email or form conversion ratios. Be sure to have the sentence, or at least the word "privacy" linked to your privacy statement.

Use this sentence next to any email form on your site or on your contact page. Clearly and simply stating your privacy policy assures the site visitor that you will not sell, give or trade their email or personal information to a third party.

While a privacy page is standard practice for most professional site builders, lawyers usually have their hand in writing a company's privacy policy. That results in having the privacy policy looking like a long legal document.

Using the simple sentence with a link to the privacy policy gives the site visitor assurance that you care about their privacy without having a long explanation.

3) We vs You.

Re-read your home page copy and make sure it is customer focused text. Customer focused text is text that focuses on the customer and not YOU. When you re-read your home page content see how often you use the term "we, us, or our" rather than "You". If your text reads something like: "We offer bla, bla, bla," or "Our services includes, bla, bla, bla," then it is focusing on you rather than the customer.

4) Email Signatures.

Create standard email signatures for ALL your employees. Anyone that uses the Internet in your company should have a company standard email signature.

What's an email signature? Did you ever notice that at the end of some emails you will see not only the email creator's name, but their phone number, fax, number, company name, logo, Web site address, etc. It's amazing how easy this is to do and how many companies simply over look it. Or they let everyone do their own thing.

Having the company's contact and Web site information makes it easy for the recipient to contact you or visit your site. Making it standard email signature improves your overall branding strategy.

5) Call to Action.

A call to action is a statement that asks the site visitor to do something. Two of the biggest mistakes made on a Website is not using call to actions or using the wrong call to actions.

You have probably been on sites that do not give you a clue as to what to do next. They have text and links but nothing that tells you to learn more, buy, compare, read, or call now. Look over your site and see what call to actions are on your site. Try to view it as a first time visitor and create a scenario or action you want your site visitor to take.

The most common and most boring call to action is "Click Here". Sometimes it's unavoidable or it's the only phrase that makes sense, but consider using other statements. Instead of "Click here" use words like learn, save, read, compare, etc.

Call to actions are usually linked to another page on your site. This is a great opportunity to use a keyword in a link on your site, which helps with search engine optimization. Use the keyword in the link for your call to action.

These five suggestion are basically simple things to do that can help improve your site overall. They are often over looked but can prove to have a tremendous effect on your site.

For one of our client's Web sites we suggested item number 2, adding "We value your privacy" just above their email form. The sentence was linked to their privacy policy. The link was hardly used, but having that simple statement was all that was needed. The added statement increased their form's conversion ratio by over 250%.

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About the Author: Patricia Hughes is founder of ePlus Marketing and has over 11 years experience in Internet marketing and over 20 years experience in marketing. To receive the ePlus Marketing monthly newsletters and BLOG - both packed with additional Internet marketing tips and suggestions - visit our site as http://www.eplusm.com.

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