A Little Math Can Make You More Money

I have a love affair Sharon is VERY jealous of… with math.

And I’m not talking about the kind of “slap-your-own-forehead-it-makes-my-brain-hurt” stuff you were thrilled to be done with after high school or college…

I’m talking about simple formulas which reveal valuable patterns most people just don’t know about.

Let’s start in the real world before we talk marketing.

The intensity of magnetic fields fall off in inverse proportion to the square of the distance between you and the source.    So, for example, a computer you keep two feet away from you exposes you to 1/4th the magnetic field of a computer one foot away.  A similar rule applies to any leakage from your microwave oven, by the way,  so you might want to take one painless step back next time. (The field is nine times less intense at 3 feet than it is at 1 foot, if you follow the math)

Knowing a little math can give you a BIG impact for a LITTLE effort.

Now,  here are some ways to make math pay off for you as an entrepreneur:

1) Every sales process in search marketing has a natural period of statistical stability.

This is usually the time  it takes to get 40 to 50 orders, but almost never less than one Calendar Week (even if you get hundreds of orders per hour).

In most markets, it’s meaningless to say “I get X orders per day”, because it depends upon the day of the week, the month of the year, etc.  And if you’re in a slow traffic market, it may take months before your sales stability period is obvious.

How is this useful?

Most marketers I know check their orders every day.  They’ve got email notices coming to them from several places (their shopping cart + authorize.net, for example), and they log into their accounts daily to tally their sales.

Some panic when sales are down for a day (or a week, or some other less-than-statistically-stable period) and rush to change things.  Others are overly excited when sales are up for the same period, and go out and make unwarranted financial commitments.  It’s not only a distraction, it’s a formula for manic-depression!

You can route your notices through your customer service team, and unless you’re actively testing the system, check your sales at regular intervals approximating your statistically stable period (or at least, no less than half way through).

You’ll be amazed not only at the time, but the mind-space this frees up so you can MAKE SOMETHING HAPPEN INSTEAD OF WAITING FOR SOMETHING TO HAPPEN. (It’s only human to wait for the orders to magically show up in our shopping carts… part of the entrepreneurial fantasy online, but definitely an obstacle to overcome)

2) The ultimate measure of a PPC ad’s success is NOT click through rate or conversion, but “profit per impression”.

Ever done a split test where the winner had a better click through but a lower conversion?  In fact, the very nature of increasing click through rate carries with it the risk of decreasing conversion because you’re getting people who were ambivalent about clicking before to click!

So how do you choose the REAL winner when CTR and CONVERSION go in OPPOSITE directions?  Figure out which ad makes more money every time it’s shown!  Common sense, right?

Profit Per Impression =  (Gross Revenue – Advertising Spend) / Number of Impressions

It can be a little tricky to pull this data out of Adwords, so I built a free utility and an explanatory video/spreadsheet to help you: please watch this Super Split Testing Video if you haven’t seen it before.

3) A search stream’s propensity to fill out a survey form is directly proportional to their likely willingness to opt in to a mailing list which promises similar benefits, and inversely proportional to their ability to meet their needs elsewhere in the market.

In other words, if you can get people to take a survey off of your PPC ads, there’s a damn good chance this same traffic stream is going to be interested in opting in to your list, and you may have found a “market gap” your competition has overlooked.  (Because if they could get their needs met elsewhere for free, or for a fair price, why would they bother with your stinkin’ survey?)

Surveys can work magic in marketing, not only from the content of response, but from their statistical behavior too.  (I’ve consistently found in my own experiments that a survey of less than 3 questions will have approximately the same take rate as the opt in form I install later on.  Since there’s a direct relationship between number of sales and number of opt ins, I often find surveys, when done on a keyword group by group basis, to provide a kind of “realistic heat map” of what my likely cost per sale is going to be, though this is admittedly less predictable than the opt in percentage).   You can learn all my advanced survey methods in the Hyper-Responsive-Club of course.

4)  The total value of inventory in a given search market can be roughly estimated by it’s total search volume x average bid price.  When you take the square root of this result, you correct for extreme examples and create a roughly accurate metric to compare market to market.

There are two concrete benefits to this formula.

First, you don’t want to go fishing in a pond without any fish in it right?  It only makes sense to compare market inventory values before you stake your ground.

Second, a variation on the formula is (Inventory x Average Bid x 35%) — without the square root.  Assuming 65% of searchers never click a PPC ad, this gives you a very approximate value of the PURCHASED search inventory.   COMPARE THIS AGAINST YOUR PPC AD SPEND to see what your “ppc market share” might be, and keep pushing for a higher percentage (while running your business at a profit of course!)

Moving on…

5) 50% of Profits in Most Internet Businesses is Driven by Only 1 in 2,000 Visitors!

Most marketers ignore hyper-responsive buyers.

That means you can make a LOT more money with less effort if you know how to sell to them, even in brutally competitive markets.  This is the math behind Hyper-Responsive customer focus (from my salesletter):

• THE 80/20 RULE: 80% of profits come from 20% of customers
  
• THE 80/20 RULE SQUARED: you can apply the 80/20 rule to the TOP 20% of customers too.  Without getting too caught up in the math (e.g. 80% x 80% = 64% and 20% x 20% = 4%, etc)… about 5% of buyers drive HALF the profits 
  
• THE 80/20 RULE SQUARED ON THE INTERNET: 5% of BUYERS may drive HALF your profits, but only 1% OF VISITORS BECOME BUYERS on most sites.  1% x 5% = 0.01 x 0.05 = 0.0005 … or ONE OUT OF TWO THOUSAND VISITORS

You really don’t have to understand (or agree with) my math in order to make more money with the information right here in this letter because:

• Whether your a solo entrepreneur on a teeny tiny budget, or a Fortune 100 company with a Billion dollars to spend on advertising…
• Whether or not you’ve made your first dollar online…
• And even if you (heaven forbid) decide NOT to become my customer…

If you’ll just entertain the idea that a small percent of special visitors drive a large percent of profits then these 5 Tested and Proven Hyper Responsive Principles… (click here to read the letter)

Now, get out your calculators and make some money!

Dr. G

PS – Extra credit for anyone who understands this math joke or can share a better one “Q: Why was 6 afraid of 4?”  ”A: Because 7 8 9″

Glenn Club |   Coaching |  A to Z Product for Newbies |   Advanced Adwords Seminar

Glenn’s Sordid Past as a Jazz Piano Composer

OK, well, while we’re on the topic of creative expression, I dug up this recording I composed more than 20 years ago, right after I got out of graduate school (I was 25 years old).

Nothing to do with marketing really, so I won’t send out an email on this one, just thought I’d share for the exercise in guts.

But man, there are entirely too many notes, and listening to it reminds me of what it was like in my head back then! (I’ve got a few more I’ll post later this year)

G

Obliterating Writer’s Block (for Marketers)

For marketers, writing is everything.

Salesletters, autoresponders, blogs, broadcasts, tweets… as technology grows, so do our opportunities for contact with our market.

And when you communicate valuable things… MORE FREQUENCY = MORE MONEY.

(Seriously… once you’ve got a list that likes you, you’re MUCH MUCH MUCH better off with 50 A- or B+ points of contact than 5 A+ points of contact)

But what if you’ve got nothing to say?  How in the world are you going to communicate, with value, on such a regular basis?  How will you ever maintain that level of “marketing intimacy” in your relationship with your list?

In other words, it’s not just copywriters and authors who suffer from “writer’s block”, we marketers pay the price in spades.

Thankfully, there are some simple principles which overcome writer’s block, virtually every time:

1. WRITE FOR YOUR CHILDREN, NOT YOUR PARENTS OR YOUR TEACHERS:

Most of the time when we feel blocked, we’re experiencing an inner critic which prejudges every word before it even has time to form in our brain.   It’s as if we think our parents or schoolteachers are looking over our shoulders, critiquing everything we do.  Who wouldn’t clam up in such a situation?

But here’s the truth.  The people you want to reach in your market are  EATING your words, NOT CRITIQUING THEM.  (Yes, of course there are always a few bitter, mean people who enjoy pointing out every last mistake, but they’re their own worst punishment)

The people you want to reach want to be FED.  They’re not looking for a demonstration of brilliance which would get past a dissertation committee.

Sometimes at seminars when the topic of writer’s block comes up and marketers tell me they just don’t have anything to say to their market with frequency, I immediately ask how many of them have small children.   Amongst the sea of hands which go up I then ask “How many of you had something to say to them yesterday?”   Everyone nods.

When we think of feeding rather than impressing our markets the issue of judgment mostly melts away.

I used to work with young children as a psychotherapist.   I’ll always remember one particular session with a treasured mentor where I was stressing out about whether I was doing enough to help this particular boy who’s father had deserted him.

My mentor said “Glenn, this boy is soaking up every thing you say, do, and smell like.  Stop worrying, and just go back and be present with him”  (Still gives me chills)

2. LEARN HOW TO VOMIT

No, I’m not suggesting you become bulimic, but rather I’m borrowing a colorful metaphor from the world of improvisation.  When actors accept the role of live improvisation, they don’t have the luxury of “actors block”… there’s an audience, it’s live, and something had better come out of their mouths.

Initially when I tried this I found it very nerve-wracking. But my professor for that course told me “Glenn, just vomit.  We’ll make it pretty once it’s out there”.

With regards to writing this couldn’t be more true.  Vomit your words onto the screen and you’ll have plenty of time to make it pretty before you publish it (don’t you just love MS-WORD?).  But if you insist on ONLY putting pretty things on the screen, you’ll have precious little to polish.

Vomit, then make it pretty.  Words to live by

3. WRITE THE UGLIEST TRUTH FIRST

Here’s something most people don’t WANT to know…

When you feel like you’ve got “nothing to say”, it’s really because there’s something you don’t want to say.

When I was studying to be a psychotherapist we learned something very interesting… the mind is never blank.  Never.

How do we know?

There are dozens of scientific studies on sleep and dreaming which involved waking people up in the deepest stages of sleep.  I’m not talking about REM (where dreaming occurs), but the parts we never remember, where we’re most soundly asleep and our body is involved in restoring itself. It’s this part of the human experience we most associate with “nothingness” or a blank mind.

Yet when we wake people at these times and ask them what they were thinking or “dreaming” (not technically a dream because it’s not during REM) in a sleep lab, they’ve ALWAYS got something to say.  Always.

In psychotherapy sessions, you gradually come to observe that people are never really thinking about “nothing” (George Castanza aside).    Instead, when you observe a few hundred sessions you understand that people stop talking when their associations lead them to something they don’t WANT to say.

Writers block is NOT an empty mind.  Writers block is the painful and fatiguing experience of preventing yourself from saying what you don’t want to say!

How can you use this to be in more frequent contact with your market, with regular, valuable communication, and make more money?

Simple.

Sit down and ask yourself what the ugliest truth on your mind is today, then vomit it out on the screen (remember you can edit it later).

Like this:

“No matter how much I accomplish as a marketer, how much money I make, how many people have made millions from my work, etc…  I always feel like a ‘fallen priest’ who should still be using his skills and training to help suicidal people instead of building businesses and making money.”

I could turn this into a useful post by citing 3 examples of how marketers’ guilt about making money actually CAUSES more suffering in their prospects.  For example, if I let this feeling get the better of me I wouldn’t keep sharing what I’ve learned, and a strong argument could be made that the people on my list would make less (with all the suffering that would entail)

Also, and this is key… it doesn’t matter what market you’re in, you can always find a way to use the ugly truth to break your writer’s block .

For example, let’s say I was writing to a body language list instead of you all.  I could still use the ugly truth above.  I’d talk about how, to truly exude confidence with body language, you need to examine and dispute your own guilt, or else you’ll only mimic the posture of confidence, portraying an empty shadow of the stature you’re trying to project.

Or if I were writing to my guinea pig list, I’d say “Listen, your piggy doesn’t want you to feel guilty. Guinea Pigs only live 8 years or so if you take care of them.  That’s 1/10th of a human life span, so every minute you separate yourself from joy with your pet feels like TEN minutes to him”

You get the point.

Feeling blocked?

Write for your children, learn how to vomit, and tell the ugly truth.

Now go write something!

Glenn

Glenn Club |   Coaching |  A to Z Product for Newbies |   Advanced Adwords Seminar

Free Content Network Telseminar

* FREE CONTENT NETWORK TELESEMINAR: Perry Marshall
http://www.PayPerClickSearchMarketing.com/ContentNetworkCall.php

Hey… I just wanted to give you the heads up that Perry’s doing another free content network teleseminar with Shelley Ellis tomorrow.

I’ve known Perry a LONG time, and there’s one very important thing I’ve learned about him… he rarely promotes ANY other marketer CONSISTENTLY (besides me that is).    So when he started repeatedly driving people to Shelley’s work last year, I stood up and took notice.

I’d strongly recommend you listen to the free teleseminar, even if you’re not at all interested in the intermediate content network bootcamp she’ll be offering at the end. (Which, by the way, there are only 29 seats left for so if you ARE interested in one of them, pay close attention to the post opt in page and grab your spot)

Anyway… the call is FREE, and if you know Perry, you know he ALWAYS provides genuinely valuable and immediately usable information on these calls. So why not?

Of course, yes, I’ll make a commission if you buy anything after clicking this link. So you have to ask yourself, does Glenn really mean what he’s saying? I guess, short of giving you my Mom’s telephone number as a character reference, you’ll just have to make up your own mind. Seriously though, it’s kind of a no brainer:

* FREE CONTENT NETWORK TELESEMINAR: Perry Marshall

http://www.PayPerClickSearchMarketing.com/ContentNetworkCall.php

Free Content Network Book and MP3 Interview

David Szetela, CEO of ClixMarketing.com is the author of Wiley’s upcoming “PPC in One Hour a Day”, as well as  ”Customers Now – Profiting from the New Frontier of Content Based Internet Advertising”.

He’s also the host of “PPC Rockstars”, a weekly pay per click podcast with some truly valuable guests and marketing gems.

David not only agreed to an exciting interview for my listeners (36 minute free MP3 below), but also graciously donated his content advertising book (and this is a REAL, meaty book with detailed examples) for you all to freely download.

Enjoy!

Dr G

Glenn Club |   Coaching |  A to Z Product for Newbies |   Advanced Adwords Seminar

Tabasco Sauce in the Bathroom and Effective Outsourcing

Guess what’s on my bathroom sink, neatly lined up with all my shampoos, soaps, electric beard trimmer, and dental floss:

A nice bottle of Tabasco Sauce.

It’s true.  My housekeeper puts it there for me every week and ensures it’s fresh.

What the hell do I need Tabasco sauce in the bathroom for?   Beats me.

But it seems Helena thinks I must indeed need it, because it’s there every week.  And the thing is, she’s a VERY bright, alert, hard working, sweet woman.

Turns out a few months ago I was rushing around and suddenly realized I was late for an appointment while I was eating my lunch (Amy’s organic black bean soup).    Apparently I didn’t want to stop eating it (it’s REALLY good) so I dragged it upstairs with me to the bathroom before I took a shower.  Not the most grown up thing I ever did, but que sera’ sera’.

Anyway, since I work at home, my housekeeper tries to bother me as little as possible.  She just tries to anticipate what I need and please me.  And apparently she thought that henceforth I’d be using tabasco sauce in my bathroom routines.

And me, mister brilliant, educated doctor that I am, fell right into the routine thinking it was so neatly lined up, it looked like it really belonged there… maybe I AM supposed to do something with it.   Of course, I kept meaning to say something, but I was just too busy.

So for months  there’s been a bottle of tabasco sauce, needlessly sitting on my bathroom counter, for no reason at all, and my housekeeper’s been wasting time and effort thinking this is an important way to please me.

Which got me to thinking…

In total, there are over 30 people who work for me, some directly, some indirectly via various levels of management, etc… many of whom have probably developed ridiculous and superstitious routines in their efforts to please me.

And the truth is, there ARE certain things I’d like to have set up in the bathroom in a very particular way each day for myself, I just never bothered to write out the system and communicate it.

Similarly, how many OTHER things am I dismissing as trivial while people around me scramble to read my mind and make me happy?

If you’re going to outsource effectively as an entrepreneur, it’s something worth thinking about!

Do the people working for you REALLY know what it takes to please you?  (Don’t answer too quickly)

Dr. G

Glenn Club |   Coaching |  A to Z Product for Newbies |   Advanced Adwords Seminar

Overwhelmed?

Are you already feeling overwhelmed by your projects this year?

Feeling overwhelmed is a by-product of lacking CONFIDENCE in your plans.

Why?   Because when you’ve got 100% confidence your plans are the right ones, you also know with certainty which plans are wrong.  And when you know that, you can just say “NO” to distractions, put your head down, and execute the job you’ve laid out for yourself.

On the other hand, if you’re not SURE your plans are correct, you’re always thinking “Is this the right project for me to be working on?  Maybe there’s something better?  Would this other opportunity over here work out better for me?  Did I make a mistake in choosing this first one?”

Then, if you’re an entrepreneur–and this is the downside of having NO boss breathing down your neck to keep you focused, on time, and on point–lacking confidence in your plans you choose whichever opportunity makes you FEEL best at the time.

Take a second and breathe that in again…

Lacking confidence forces you to make important choices with your EMOTIONS.    Consumers make choices with their emotions… but successful Marketers make choices with their HEAD (their intellect).

How do you GET the confidence you need to conquer your projects with focus and determination, and move yourself to the next level in your business?

One word — spreadsheets.

I’m not talking about ultra-precise, rocket science engineered, high octane spreadsheets accurate to 7 digits after the decimal point.

I’m talking about, for your important decisions (like which projects to work on, what your bullseye keyword target is, whether or not to take a job offer, etc), listing out the important criteria, then listing your choices, and coming up with a way to “score” each option.  (EXAMPLE: A few days ago I posted an ultra simple video and spreadsheet for making decisions)

For example, choosing between major projects to execute in a given year may involve considerations of short term profit, long term profit, likely pitfalls, fun and enjoyment, independence and control, fit with other successful projects, joint venture opportunities, etc.

And of course, in the hyper-responsive club we review in detail how to choose your single most important keyword using a spreadsheet which accounts for volume, relevance to your ideal prospect, and bid price.  (If you’re planning an SEO strategy, you also consider competition)

But the point is, breaking up a decision into it’s component parts, thinking through how those parts fit together (should some be weighted more heavily than others in the scoring formula?), and then systematically applying this scoring system to the choices at hand leaves you not only with a much clearer picture of the relative merits of each choice, but also with a system for quickly re-evaluating when things change.  In short, … CONFIDENCE.

Now, I’ve got my special formulas I’ve worked on over the long haul in Glenn Club, and of course I’d like to sell you on using those.   But I’d also like you to know there’s absolutely nothing wrong with you developing your own formulas and spreadsheets.  You don’t have to wait for anyone to grant you a certificate, give you permission, or promise not to call on you in class tomorrow.

Spreadsheets are just kind of a special way of “thinking on paper” in numerical format, and if you’ve ever used a journal (and you understand basic arithmetic), there’s really nothing stopping you from spreadsheeting your own unique problems and situations.

For what it’s worth,

Dr. G

Glenn Club |   Coaching |  A to Z Product for Newbies |   Advanced Adwords Seminar

PS – My private coaching slots are filling very quickly now when I notify the “priority notification list”, and I apologize for being unable to notify the general list on this last round.   Therefore, if you’ve got any interest in a slot the next time an opening is available (I anticipate late February or early March), please opt in to the priority notification list at the bottom of the coaching letter.

How to Commit Social Media Suicide

You might think this post would be all about what not to do while marketing your site in the Web 2.0 nexus we call “social media” … but it’s not.

You see I ran across a very interesting service yesterday called the “Web 2.0 Suicide Machine“. It’s designed to automatically erase your profiles, contacts, and posts on Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, and MySpace, and ensure you can’t log back in again.

Apparently this is a task which would take several hours if you tried to do it manually, but now you can kill your social self with just one click… brilliant.   (They plug the benefit of “discovering your real friends again”)

Now,  whether or not this is a good idea for a marketer really depends upon how judiciously you’ve been using social media, and what results you’ve been getting.

The majority of marketers I’ve spoken with seem to be aggressively TRYING to profit from social media, at the expense of time and energy which could definitely be put to better use in more traditional direct response efforts.   (NOTE: there ARE a small minority, however, who seem to be leveraging social media, particularly Twitter and Facebook… it’s still not clear to me the exact principles and techniques they’re using which distinguish them from the riff raff… as soon as I can find someone who talks about it clearly and cogently I’ll get them for an interview!)

What I think the emergence of the Social Suicide Machine does point out is, it’s worthwhile beginning the year by asking yourself  “Are you spending too much time in Social Media?” Is it possible you’re inadvertently committing marketing suicide by doing so?

What do you think?  I’d really like to know!

Dr. G

Glenn Club |   Coaching |  A to Z Product for Newbies |   Advanced Adwords Seminar

More Emotional Marketing Examples

A few months ago I made a post about “rational purchasing consciousness” the essence of which was to underscore the need to communicate emotional benefits subtly in order to avoid harming the consumer’s desire to perceive themselves as a smart shopper.

In other words … “Show Them, Don’t Tell Them”

At that time,  several people asked for more detail on exactly HOW to do this.

So Sharon and I recorded this little audio … hope you enjoy!

Dr. G

www.HyperResponsiveMarketingSecrets.com

How to Make Decisions Easier

Being an entrepreneur inevitably means having way more projects and opportunities than you can possibly handle.  Around this time of year, we all get busy with our planning systems and spreadsheets, setting goals, and making plans.

The bad news is,  the longer you work as an entrepreneur, the more opportunities you’ll get, and the harder the decisions seem to become…

But the good news is, there are tools and systems for making these decisions much easier.

One of my favorites is a simple little spreadsheet technique for calculating weighted averages.  I just list out my projects or choices one per row, and evaluate them against all the factors which I consider important to the decision in the columns.  Finally, I assign a relative importance level to each of the factors, and the simple spreadsheet calculates a “batting average” (overall score) for each project.

Have a look at the video to see what I mean, and feel free to download this example here

NOTE: be sure to download the spreadsheet here to follow along.
(My apologies for the visual quality of this particular video)

Hope it helps,

Dr. G

PS – Are you relatively new to the game, or still struggling to make your first dollar of profit online? If so, I’d highly recommend you pick up a copy of the Internet Marketing Truthprints