ROI: The Cinderella of Stats?

I'm a firm believer of ROI (return on investment) as the best measure of effectiveness, but ROI doesn't just measure your copy's effectiveness. It includes your market, your offer, and your copy.

Those who talk about conversion rates alone are missing the boat. However, there's a caveat to that: if you are using conversion rates as a comparison figure, it tends to be more relevant.

For example, to say that my copy converts at 15% means nothing by itself (but it is still good for marketing purposes for some markets--and I use it myself--for those that are convinced of an "industry standard" of 1-2%). For all you know, my copy is giving away John Reese's "Traffic Secrets" package for $10. Then 15% sounds pretty low, doesn't it? (unless you factor in the credibility of such an offer, which is a very real issue to address).

But conversion makes sense when the market and offer haven't changed. Only the copy has. An example here is Mike Morgan's improvement over Sterling Valentine's conversion rate on a particular product. It was a staggering 655% improvement on conversion over the control. If you're on David Garfinkel's mailing list, you probably saw his email on that. And David is a very credible guy when it comes to this stuff. Kudos to Mike!! The market and offer didn't change. Only the copy. So attributing that magnificent increase in conversion can be directly traced to the copy that Mike did.

But I still stand by ROI when it comes to measuring an ad's effectiveness. If I have an ad that pulls in $4 for every $1 I spend (that's a 4:1 return) and I bump that up to a 10:1 return, then the difference in conversion rate is a useful metric. But the conversion rate by itself means little without knowing the other dynamics in play.

Another figure tossed about is traffic. "I get 100,000 hits a month." My answer: "That's great, but what is your ROI? Are you losing money or making money?" You certainly can't tell from the number of hits.

If I pay six figures to get traffic, I'm going to get traffic. But does it pay for itself? Does it sell? Is my ROI worth it? That's the key question.

I believe that the percentage of people who buy after seeing your message (i.e. your conversion or response rate) is useful only as a relative comparison, but even then there are some caveats.

For example, if I get 5% to buy as my control, and then I beat that control by getting 9% to buy, that's a useful comparison stat. But the 9% by itself is useless unless compared against 5%. I could get 9% to buy and still lose money. Then it's a losing ad, whether it's the market, offer, the copy, or any combination that's the culprit.

But if you say I have a ROI of 725% from a market/offer/ad, then you know I am making money with it from that stat alone. There's no need to compare it with another piece's results.

I'll take it a step further.

What if split test "A" gives a 5% response, that is 5% buy. And split test "B" gives a 9% response. Comparing the two would indicate that split test "B" wins, right?

But if you measure your lifetime customer value, you may find that split test "A" yields a better ROI in the long run than split test "B", when you factor in back-end offers and such. All things being equal, that's unlikely to happen unless the offer differs between the two split tests. But it's just a point to illustrate the kind of thinking that needs to go into testing.

Too many people just split test the front-end offer. If I'm split testing price (which usually goes to the offer, not the copy...unless you change the copy to support the price change, then it's the offer and copy that changes, but I digress), I may find out that I sell less with a higher price point on the front-end, but my back-end sales increase as a result, ultimately giving me a higher lifetime ROI. In fact, some sellers purposely set the initial price higher to weed out the tire-kickers. They've got their sights on the back-end sales.

Others purposely set their front-end price lower, because they want to build their list more. It all depends on your marketing plan, and your long-term, or lifetime ROI plays a huge factor in determining whether it's successful or not.

It really doesn't need to be that complex. ROI is a good measurement for any business plan or marketing plan.

And that's what I almost always go by.

Teleseminar Overload?

Is it just me, or is everyone getting a flood of "free teleseminar" offers in their inbox nowadays?

Now, don't misunderstand me. I think teleseminars are a powerful and lucrative way to tap a new profit center for just about any business. And even though it seems I get a half dozen of these teleseminar invites a week (and steadily increasing), they all have a few things in common:

• Most have to do with making money. That's not surprising, because I subscribe to a lot of marketing lists.
  
  
• Some pitch their products and services, and some claim to be "pitch-free." Hint: Pitch-free are the best for content, but don't expect to not be solicited. Even if they don't hawk their pitch on the call, you may get a follow-up email with one or more pitches). I don't claim this to be a bad thing. It does tends to add to the inbox clutter, but it may be just the thing you're looking for!
  
  
• They all follow similar business practices. They require you to opt-in, then you'll get the dial-in info. So it's not exactly "free." But a lot of times trading your email address for great content is a no-brainer. Besides, you can always opt-out afterwards.
  
  
• There are always a limited number of lines, and you have to "act now" before they fill up. Well, this is takeaway selling, of course. And it's very effective.
  

Now I'm certainly not knocking these practices. I've used them myself very successfully.

But it occurred to me the other day that lots of folks are leaving money on the table. Let me explain.

While it's true that a lot of online marketers use teleseminars effectively, many offline folks do not, and many businesses with a target market other than marketing don't use them effectively (again, savvy marketers are the exception).

For those of you who don't know what a teleseminar is, it's really just a "value-added" conference call. Except teleseminars can be done as a lecture, where only the hosts talk, and everyone else listens. It can be in a question and answer format. It can be a combination of the two. And then there are moderated sessions, interactive via email or website, where the questions are answered by the hosts. You can do marketing hotseats, joint ventures, whatever you want. It literally can be a virtual seminar, if you want.

In fact, there's so many ways to use teleseminars, I'm not going to cover them all in this post. I'll talk about some other strategies in the future, but for today, I want to talk about two great ways you can use teleseminars to boost your business.

I've been doing them for a good 20 or more years, going back to the days when only large corporations could afford them. Nowadays it's very cheap to do one. In fact, there are several providers that offer these services for free. Just Google "teleseminar" and you'll see what I mean.

Ok, the first thing I'm going to talk about is using a teleseminar to test a market. Let's say you have an idea for an info-product. Or a physical product. Or a service. Whatever it is, you want to see if there's a viable market for your widget.

So what do you do?

You create a squeeze page, also known as an opt-in page to collect email addresses. At this point you want to see if there's a market for what you're selling. So your opt-in page promotes an upcoming free "mini-course" via a phone call (for non-marketing niches, it's usually better to phrase it differently than a teleseminar, which might confuse folks).

And when you get them to opt-in, you ask a few questions. A short survey, if you will. At this point, you are gathering information. You want them to ask you their most pressing questions. Or tell you what it is they want most.

On the call, you deliver pure content. By the way, always record it. You never know when it may make a good info-product on its own.

Now you've built up a modest list. Rinse, and repeat.

After several times of doing this free teleseminar, you should have 2 things:

1) You have a list of hot prospects.

2) You have info directly from your list on what they want.

Now you can decide whether to enter this market and create an info-product for this list.

You see, it's almost always more time-efficient to get the market first, then create the product. Don't waste time spending a year creating and polishing your product, only to find that your market is weak. A little late now, right? Don't fall into that trap.

Ok, the second way to make money (and this is a beauty) is to sell a full-blown course via teleseminar. Have one freebie up front, then charge for a six-week course, all conducted via teleseminar. That way you get the money up front, before you even create the product. You can get experts in your niche to participate and pay them a percentage.

So you'll make money up front, then do the "course."

But it gets even better...

Now you record each teleseminar with people who have paid to attend. Now you can package it together and sell the course as a collection of CDs, include it as a package, you get the idea.

So you were paid upfront to do the course to begin with, then you make even more by selling the recordings (hint: you can charge much more offline for the physical product, like John Reese, Michel Fortin, David Garfinkel, Jeff Walker, and countless others have done).

A few resources, and then I'll close:

KDPress is a printing company that will create short-run books, manuals, etc. Lulu is another, and they do CDs and DVDs also.

DigitalCDR.com also replicates CDs and DVDs.

Disk.com is a fulfillment company that will handle all of your shipping, refunds, etc. John Reese told me about that one, which he uses now that iFulfill went out of business.

You can literally set this up as an automatic "earn money while you sleep" enterprise, much like you can with strictly online fulfillment. The difference is in perceived value: you can usually charge much more for physical products than downloads.

I'll have much more to discuss on the subject of teleseminars coming up. I'm in the middle of working out some of my own joint ventures using teleseminars at the moment. If you have a story to share or want to give your own feedback or success story, I welcome it! Please feel free to add your own comments.

It's the Market, Silly!

Not too long ago an associate of mine asked me to look at his website's sales copy. He had been struggling with tweaking and testing, and his latest salesletter to beat his previous control only ended up bringing in an additional 0.02% response. With all the marketing he was doing, his site was barely profitable. He even hired a decent copywriter to craft his latest salesletter, the new control.

Well, I took a look at his site, and I gotta say the salesletter didn't look bad at all to me. Great headline, great lead, decent offer with plenty of quality bonuses. Pushed the right hot buttons, used takeaway selling, good call to action. Overall a very good sales letter (to me, at least). So why was it doing so poorly?

I asked him about his target market, and how he was getting them to his site. Uh oh. It turned out he really wasn't going after the right market.

Listen, you can have legendary copywriter Gary Bencivenga write your copy for 5 figures, plus a chunk of royalty payments, but if your target audience is chiropractors and you mail your letter to lawyers, it's going to perform poorly, no matter how brilliant the copy.

So let's examine the three things, in order of importance, that contribute toward response rate:

1) Your market
2) Your offer
3) Your copy

So if you mail your letter to the wrong list, it doesn't matter how great your offer or your copy.

If you mail your letter to the right list, but the offer is weak, your copy is only going to go so far.

But if your market and offer are both right, only then should you look to your copy to boost response.

What do you think? Got a story or comment to share?

Dripping Faucets Eventually Fill Oceans

Have you ever found yourself so busy with the operations of your business that you didn't have time to work on your marketing? Or perhaps you conducted some successful marketing campaigns that brought in so much business, you had to turn people away. No need to market again for a while, right?

But businesses who fall into that line of thinking usually end up with dried up leads and customers after a while. Even that "rush" of business following a profitable marketing campaign will eventually subside. Then you need to market all over again, and it can frequently take time to build up the momentum again.

But if you spend a little time planning and executing your marketing strategies each day, you're far more likely to have a constant and steady influx of business. After all, if you get too busy, you can always hire additional staff, or at worst, turn some of them away (but never turn away your "A" list customers, those who spend the most money with you).

On the other hand, when you find yourself with idle time because of lack of customers, well, that's a problem.

If you are the chief moneymaker in your business, then it makes sense to focus the majority of your time whenever possible to making money, doesn't it? You want to delegate everything else that doesn't have to do with making money.

The legendary marketer and copywriter Gary Halbert calls this "Operation Money Suck," and here's an example of how he carries out this important concept:

Gary Halbert and master copywriter John Carlton were meeting in Gary's office regularly where they would discuss clients and the ways they would write for them and bring money into their firm. In fact, at the time, John made a percentage of Gary's profits, so the more Gary made, the more John made.

Well, John went there one day, and before they could sit down and close the door to his office, the secretaries came running in and cried "disaster!" The computer was down, the phones had been cut off, the landlord was banging on the door for some reason.

As John put it in a recent teleseminar with Michel Fortin:

"I closed up my briefcase, and I thought well, we’re not going to get anything done today. And Halbert, you know, bless his soul, stood up, pushed the secretaries gently out and closed the door, and sat back down and said let’s get to it. And I realized, that’s "Operation Money Suck." If you are the guy who brings in the money into your business, then that’s your most important job. That’s your second most important job, your third most important job and on down the line. If you’re the guy who brings in the dough, that’s what you’ve got to be doing. Every hour you spend fixing the copier or being on the phone talking to the post office about some postage problem, that’s an hour that robs you twice. That hour is gone and you haven’t spent an hour of bringing in money."

By the way, you can listen to the recording of this call and read the transcripts at Michel's site: http://www.boostmyresponse.com

Well, Gary (and John's) point is clear enough. You need to spend your time where your time is spent best. Can you imagine a world-renowned surgeon spending time answering the phones because of hospital policy instead of in the operating room and with patients? Doesn't that just sound ludicrous? So why should it be any different for you?

So no matter your situation, be sure to spend some time each day on your marketing efforts.

And I mention marketing, because that is often the most important aspect of your business (it goes without saying that fulfillment and customer satisfaction are important too, if you want to stay in business).

But these "drips from your faucet" don't just apply to marketing. Any of your goals should be tackled a piece at a time. Each day I review my goals (whatever they are at any given moment) and do at least one or two or more things to help advance me toward those goals. It's so much easier than waiting until the last minute, where you have this huge "monster" to tackle. Isn't it easier when it resolves itself over time with a minimal of effort each day?

In fact, I used to be a big procrastinator. Last week, while on the Tactic7 call, Perry Marshall mentioned something that reminded me of how I overcame most of that procrastination. Perry mentioned that he does things every day that pushes him out of his "comfort zone." And I sort of heard bells going off in my head after he said that, because that's exactly how it was for me.

Whenever I didn't feel like doing something I know I should be doing, I realized that in order to move ahead and reach my goals, I would frequently have to temporarily get out of my own comfort zone. As Nike says, "Just do it!" (I'll bet that's one slogan you do remember!)

Excellent advice, Perry!

So dripping faucets really do fill oceans, given enough time.

You just have to take small actions that keep the drip going.

Blurred Marketing

There's this notion that some people have about marketing. Specifically, online marketing. Many online marketers are looking for the next killer online marketing strategy, only they seem to forget that most of their target market lives in the offline world. In other words, they completely ignore offline marketing or do it very sparingly.

Of course, the same can be said for some brick and mortar businesses in the offline world, especially more established and conservative smaller businesses. Either they don't have the budget, they reason, to market online. Or they don't have the technical skills, they figure. Or they are downright Luddite in nature about changes in technology.

These folks seem to forget that it shouldn't be about them or their marketing preferences. They need to go where their market's at, and if they can't get there on their own, well, then that's when they need to bring in help. After all, the Internet, rich in content as it is, is still just another type of marketing media.

My friend Yanik Silver is a perfect example of doing what it takes to get online and start selling. Although Yanik sells online to a variety of niche markets, he still doesn't know how to create his own web page. But Yanik also doesn't restrict himself to online marketing only.

And that's what this post is about. On the one hand you have staunch offline marketers, refusing to dip their toes into the online world. And at the other end of the spectrum are the strictly online marketers, who refuse (or don't know any better) to invest any time or capital into any other advertising media than the Internet. After all, "email is free!"

And then you have what I call "blurred marketing," which is really just another term for smart marketing. Here you have those individuals and businesses that understand the benefits of marketing offline and online. To them, there is no "offline marketing" or "online marketing." There is only marketing.

Dan Kennedy talks about the message to market match. Furthermore, he identifies the three components that make up marketing:

1) The message
2) The market
3) The media

So when we talk about offline versus online marketing, we're really just talking about a difference in #3, the media. And the only valid reason for a marketer to favor one media over another can be summed up in one word: results.

Let's say that for every dollar I spend advertising in People magazine for a particular product, I make back $10. And let's also say that for every dollar I spend advertising online, I make back $4.

Where do you think I'm going to want to concentrate on spending my advertising budget?

Of course, that's a rather simplistic example, because there are many places to advertise online as well, so perhaps a fairer comparison would be to compare advertising in the Wall Street Journal online, for example, to People Magazine. Or advertising online compared to offline in general. But I think you get the point I'm trying to make, which is this: you go where you can get your biggest return on investment (ROI).

So we test. And tweak. And test some more. We're always trying to beat our control, the ad that's so far giving us our greatest ROI. And when we finally beat it, our ROI goes up even further. In this way we're slowly approaching the most efficient message to market match as possible. And some times it takes a long time to get there, if ever.

For example, the famous Wall Street Journal ad about two men was their best selling piece for decades. It was only recently that the "two men" control was finally beaten.

And for certain marketing campaigns, the blur is even more evident. For example, Subway Sandwiches recently did a scratch-off contest that revealed a code, and you had to go online and punch in the code to find out if you won. Would you call that offline marketing? Or online marketing?

Or how about this? David Garfinkel and Michel Fortin recently released their Breakthrough Copywriting package. They did online and offline JVs, but were primarily selling online. But then they held these teleseminars where they delivered great content and actual breakthrough copywriting techniques. And then they mentioned their course at the end of the call. In fact, I did one such call with them, and if you want, you can listen to it here. When you add in the teleseminar and other offline activity, they are certainly using blurred marketing.

Now, I know there are some people who market strictly online. Terry Dean and Jonathan Mizel come to mind. But they know if they marketed offline, they would make even more money. They just choose to stay online only because for them it's simpler. It's a lifestyle choice they've chosen to make. They don't want to deal with employees or postage, printing and labor and other offline expenses. So clearly there are always exceptions. But it should be a personal choice, and not one made out of ignorance.

So "blurred marketing," as I call it, is hardly a new concept. It amazes me that some businesses don't even test at all. They either blindly put out their own ads, hoping for a home run, or they put their trust in a big ad agency.

If that sounds like you, isn't it time to start finding out where the real money is?

On Family and Business

I've been meaning to start a blog for some time, and not because everyone else is doing it or that I feel I have to share my life with the world. It's really my desire to start and engage a dialogue about a special topic for me: copywriting and marketing.

Now there are many others out there with some of my experiences, expertise, and goals. But there's nobody else in the world who has all the combined knowledge as me, and has experienced the exact same successes and failures. The same is true of you.

I think the only thing that's been holding me back on doing this blog has been how extraordinarily busy I've been for a while now. Or so I thought.

I recently had some issues come between my family life and my business life. They've caused me to put everything on hold temporarily to focus on my family. I've always believed family comes first, and it's times like these that really make you stop and think just how important my family is to me.

But it also caused me to think about my business a little differently--That there's nothing so important in business that you can't cease all activity under the right circumstances. And this situation would certainly apply.

So while my operations are on hold, I had this nagging feeling that I should start putting down in words some of the experiences I've been going through as of late. And that now would be a good time to finally get that blog up and running.

And so while you'll occasionally hear me rant or talk about whatever's on my mind, this blog in the long run is going to allow me to share with you some of my successes and failures in business as well, and copywriting and marketing in particular.

Who knows? If it helps even one soul out there, it's worth it to me.

And as this thing gets going, I'm hoping other like-minded individuals can share some of their successes and failures with me.

But this won't be some pie-in-the-sky theoretical mumbo-jumbo. It will be about proven marketing techniques and strategies that either I have personally benefited from, or things I have learned from others...others who also have been in the trenches seeing what works and what doesn't.

So no big lesson on anything today with respect to marketing. That will be for another day.

Instead, today is a day I will reflect back on as I go back and reread this post in the future.

And if there's any sort of message from me to you today, it's to embrace your family. Be there for them. Don't let business get in the way. Life really is too short to see it pass you by in a heartbeat.