The Secret To Success For The Coming Year

In this post I will reveal The Secret To Success For The Coming Year. But first, WOW! Can you believe it! – This weekend we hit the 12th month of 2018. I can hardly believe it – what a year!

I started in April 2018 (without a plan) I knew I wanted to launch my a website and earn some money online, really just as a proof of concept and in that respect, it has been a successful year. I earned my first affiliate commission and my first $100 from selling other peoples products. I earnt my first $100 from selling a product I made from scratch. This year I launched 5 websites;

This Website; Plr-Printables.com,

thesmallbusinessmarketingkit.com,

facebookmybiz.xyz,

videomarketingabc.xyz,

trafficabc.xyz

and it is scaling! But I know I could have made a lot more and quicker too if I had a plan. looking back I did everything I know is wrong; launch more than one website at the same time (I did this twice) you will hear many IMs saying not to do this, and I can’t agree with them more, I work a full-time Job too, I have a family and 2 children thinking that you can juggle all thses things and launch more than one business (no matter how small) is just not possible. I chose more than 1 authority platform… I could write a whole blog post about this, and I probably will but one think I realised is that, Planning is The Secret To Success For The Coming Year.

Do you set aside time regularly to plan what you want to do in your business? If it’s not something you currently do, I strongly encourage you to embrace it for the remainder of this year as well as the one coming up. Setting aside time at the end of the year, to plan out what I want to do and more importantly what growth I want to achieve in the coming year has been crucial to my own success. Over the next seven days, I want to share some of what I’ve learned and what I’ve found helpful with you.

Let’s start off by taking a look at why business planning is “the secret” to success. There are a few different factors that come into play here. The first is efficiency. When you go in with a clear plan, you can focus on what’s most important. Instead of spending time trying to figure out what you should be working on, what pieces of the puzzle are missing from your product funnel, or what you need to do to break through to the next income level, you know exactly what needs to come next.

As we’ll explore in a future blog post, with a clear goal in mind and a plan for the year, it becomes easy to walk backwards to create effective and efficient daily to-do lists. Work on what needs to get done each day and you will reach your goals.

Next, setting a big goal for yourself helps you think outside the box. If you don’t believe me, try it. Decide on a big income goal for the coming month. Write it down. Keep it in front of you. Then get to work and start to notice what happens next. You start to think of things that didn’t occur to you before. You come up with creative ways to get more traffic. You decide to run a fun promo that adds dollars to your bank account. The same happens when an important deadline comes up unexpectedly. Think back on that time in college when finals rolled around, or the last time your in-laws told you they would stop by later in the day. You got very creative about studying and cleaning respectively.

Last but not least, let’s talk about the subconscious. So far we’ve been focused on what we are actively doing to make progress by making a plan, setting goals and following through. There’s another dimension to all this and that’s what’s going on in our subconscious mind. While we are busy plowing through our to-do list, cooking dinner for the family, and even sleeping, our subconscious mind is working towards those goals as well.

In short, planning and setting goals is important because it helps you grow faster. That means you end up with more money for yourself and your loved ones while spending less time slaving away at your desk. The Secret To Success For The Coming Year is really that simple.

Just because the barrage of consent emails have stopped and it is no longer frontpage news doesn’t mean you can forget about GDPR Compliance. Recently, I have been doing some research and I discovered something that really shocked me. But I guess it is not actually surprising when you consider what we know about human nature and how busy people are. Especially small business owners trying to make a living.

Before I tell you what I discovered – I want to make sure that you understand why you need to care, even if you are one of those people trying to make a living. (who isn’t one of those people?)

Just to make sure we ARE all on the same page, we are talking about the General Data Protection Regulation – GDPR.

And if you have so far avoided finding out what that is let me briefly bring you up to speed. The European Commission set out plans for data protection reform in January 2012, its mission to make Europe ‘fit for the digital age’. GDPR was enforced from 25th May 2018. With some groundbreaking new legislation giving control of ‘personal data as a commodity‘, back to the individual.

Did you know…

When you employ new staff, when you take on projects for new clients, both you and they need to be GDPR Compliant.  This means that to ensure you are compliant, you are responsible to ensure your staff are aware of their responsibilities under GDPR.

Your new clients and projects you do for them can also put you at risk, if they are not compliant you cannot be compliant. GDPR compliance is a requirement for any business in the world who ‘touches’ the private data of individuals residing in the EU. And the truth is we can never be sure. To do so we would need to keep track of every piece of data both now and in the future of every person on our lists and databases.

I discovered this shocking fact!

Many small businesses think they can sneak under the radar of the EU legislators and be slack with their data privacy obligations, usually because they simply don’t understand what they need to do. And for the most part, this may be ok, but we can’t control when things might go wrong.

• Data hacks cause you to leak data!
• Marketing emails that are sent to EU citizens or EU residents

Yes, if the data subject resides in the EU when they get your email, not when you got their email address and they haven’t given consent you are at risk of being exposed to the heavy-handed fines of 4% of income or up to €20,000,000 (whichever is greater)

The solution…

The best solution is to be compliant. In the first few months after GDPR came into effect, Canada, California, and several other states and nations have stated that they will bring their privacy laws inline with GDPR. So, this will be back on people’s minds again and again over the next few years.

But you don’t need to panic, and you don’t need to spend a fortune on GDPR compliance awareness training. The EU is not out to punish everyone, they just want you to be aware of your GDPR compliance obligations and to genuinely care about the personal data of your customers.

I created this GDPR Webinar ready content as part of the GDPR PLR Content Pack update to help solve this problem. I have completed a similar project for a corporate client, and I am now offering a convenient solution to small businesses, not only in Europe, but across the globe.

I am passionate about data privacy, for the last 10 years it has been a major part of my 9-5 working life and I believe that it is something we all need to care about.

GDPR is not supposed to be about big scary fines thing that could cause you to lose your business.

I know this is not Marketing 101, but think about it this way.

“If someone on your marketing list didn’t give you consent to be on your list it basically means they don’t want to be on your list. And if they don’t want to be on your list then they are not going to buy from you. At best they will be annoyed , at worst they will report your emails as spam, EVEN if your intentions were good and if you get blacklisted you won’t be able to email the people who will buy from you!”

As far as those of us trying to make a living are concerned, awareness is the first and most important thing, we need to do. Actually, it is not that hard and I you can make it even easier for you, your staff, and your clients.

How?

 This GDPR PLR Pack is on sale now! 

Watch the short video below to learn more.

This GDPR PLR Pack is on sale now! UPDATED in September 2018 it includes Brand New Material like this:

PLEASE READ THIS DISCLAIMER

I am really pleased with how this turned out and I hope it continues to give people valuable information and protection. But, most of all I hope it helps keeps all of us on the right path when it comes to GDPR Compliance.

If you have ever experienced the sudden realisation you have lost a few hours to an internet ‘timesuck’ the chances are that Buzzfeed is to blame, or more specifically a listicle.

Listicles are those articles that are structured as a list. There is ‘something’ about the presentation of content in list form that makes it hard to leave the page. The items on the list are usually Top 3, 5, 10 with a paragraph or two explaining each point or massive lists like 45 or 100 ways to… Generally the more items on the list the shorter the accompanying text is.

I usually manage to tear myself away after 15 -20 but maybe I just have a really short attention span.

But as I start to go through a list I am possessed, completely drawn to what’s next on the list. And usually if I do manage to leave the list invariably there is an irresistible title to tempt me into another zombie scrolling session. Although there is one variation that I loathe, with a passion. And that is those structured so that you have to click next page to get the next juicy tidbit. I guess I feel happier when there is a less blatant way to get me to see ads, and view pages.

Listicles are actually not as easy to write as you may think. Condensing ideas or facts into a few short sentences and even deciding which are important enough to include can be challenging.
Now, an article about listicles just wouldn’t be right if it wasn’t written as a listicle so here are my 5 parts of a perfect Listicle.

1. The Title Goes First.

The Title of a listicle needs not only to give the audience details of the content it needs to convince them to read it. It is estimated that only 20% of people continue to read an article while 80% never get past the title
You can, of course, edit the title after completing the listicle but deciding on the title before writing the list will control your writing style and the information you research.  Remember,we need short to the point text not rambling prose to make a good listicle. The title needs to capture target the reader’s attention, state what information a reader will learn and how much of information the listicle contains (the number of point on the list).  There are a number of styles of lists Top 10 lists, Random lists, Guides, and Checklists, cheat sheets and so on. So, 5 reasons to… Top 20… 200 ways to… are the kind of titles you will see on listicles

2. Do the Research

If you are going to list the most important parts of a subject then you need to know more than just what you list so unless you are already a subject matter expert (well even if you are a subject matter expert) you need to do in-depth research on the subject
Effective research is time-consuming, but important. Make sure you find and use trustworthy sources and know your subject well.

3. Choosing the Content

To decide What Information to Include it is a good idea to research your competition. Don’t copy their list, find out things they missed and build your list out of those facts.
Make your listicle more useful and detailed than others on that subject or choose a slightly different angle, if it will benefit the reader.

4. Break it Up

If your list is long or contains lots of text add pictures or use subheadings to break it up and  make it easier to read. Especially if you are writing a 100 ways to… article you may wish to group points that logicall go together under a subheading to enable skimming, as it is unlikely anyone will read the whole list.

5. Add an Introduction and Conclusion

You may be forgiven for thinking that if you have a great list and a great title then you are done, but if your title has enticed someone to read more then a strong introduction will draw them in further. Just like the title the introduction needs to make them hungry for more.
Reward the readers who make it to the end of your listicle with a strong conclusion, don’t just leave them wondering why they read it. In your conclusion repeat what you think your readers need to remember. Don’t add anything extra just summarize what you said previously. Encourage feedback from your readers or encourage them to take action.

Conclusion

The key to a perfect listicle is a compelling title, good research, great content, well organised text, and a strong introduction and conclusion. Listicles are still effective pieces of content, but as they are so popular it takes skill and hard work to make them stand out. Try including these 5 parts in your listicle and let me know the results.

Reviews and testimonials are traditional forms of social proof. They are so valuable for marketers because of how real they are.

There are a number of ways to present social proof to your prospective customers.

A short form that works well for high sales volume sites a simple plugin for showing notification boxes showing recent purchases to visitors can be really effective especially by adding a sense of urgency when the stock is limited.

Quotes from satisfied customers are slightly longer and can be quite detailed adding profile photo’s raises authenticity and value.

Testimonials can be slightly longer, and if written by people in your niche or industry, can be very powerful because they provide a good level of detail and Authority.  They could also be written by people know in your industry much like getting a foreword written by someone well known in a book.

If you sell B2B you can get video-based reviews, but it is unlikely that members of the public will want to record a video testimony unless you have an exceptional product or you offer a good incentive.

Consider the Health industry and personal training niche, if you successfully help someone lose weight and get in shape, they may be interested in sharing their achievements and their journey.

At the other end, the long form is case studies are more in-depth stories and work better when written by clients who have bought and used your products and services and have achieved or exceeded their expected results.

Case studies deal with the before-and-after – the problem and the solution and include the action they took, and what the end results were. Case studies often provide images and statistics to visualise what was done and what results were obtained.

• What problem were you experiencing?
• What other products had you already tried?
• Who implemented our product?
• What results did you get in the end?
• Why was our product the right solution for you?

Ask for screenshots and reports if possible. Get a legal release form that will allow you to use the material. Be sensitive about not disclosing any information that might harm the person or company in any way.

Getting Social Proof

In order to get customer stories, you have to ask. If you sell info products like eBooks, you can ask reviews to be written on sites with high authority, that your product is sold on, like Amazon and replicate them or link to them from your own site.

A post-sale survey or follow up could be a good way, especially if you target repeat customers, that way you know that they must be pleased with their purchases.

You can create a template that offers suggestions on what to include in a review. It could be something like:

• What problems they had.
• What other products they tried
• Why your product was chosen
• What were the end results
• Why would they recommend your product, service, or solution.

This will help get more authentic and real-life details and avoid all your reviews looking the same, it also eases the burden on the writer. You need to make it as painless as possible for your customer.

Promoting Social Proof

Once you get your social proof, you need to share it:

• On your site
• In your emails
• On your blog or landing page
• On other sites like Amazon
• On social media
• As part of your email signature in emails
• discussion boards

Gather some social proof from your customers and use it in your marketing and see what results you get.  Trust is everything and buyers are greatly influenced by what other people say.

In this post, there are 5 Tips for telling your story, which when done correctly, will increase customer loyalty and boost your sales.

Most Marketers know the Rule of seven, it is an old marketing concept that has stood the test of time. It basically means that you need to build a relationship with customers before they buy.  Don’t focus on the number too much, 7 is cited as the number but it is by no means a magic number and the number of interactions that need to take place before a sale varies greatly depending on a number of factors. Just know that it is a number of times and closing a sale straight away is rare, it happens, but it is rare.

These days the best way to build that relationship is through story-based marketing, and it is not just for big brands, it is just as important for small companies too. When customers feel connected to your brand it builds loyalty and helps generate sales.

Here are 5 Tips for telling your story

1. Be Relevant

Your Brand Story Is Important but It Is Not All about You. Many people admire those like Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Steve Jobs because they founded multibillion-dollar companies from nothing with very humble beginnings like their parents’ garage. They had a vision of success and followed it, and never gave up. Their brand stories help us to forge an emotional connection that makes us feel like we are part of their success. But, your brand story is not just why you started your business and what drives your efforts,  it is not only about you. It is about the effect your story has on your target audience.

There could be any number of personal reasons why you started your business, like starting a college fund for your kids. But consider what your wider concerns were – such as going green, helping with animal rights, or to give yourself the flexibility to care for loved ones. Then your mission will be about so much more than just making money.

Your brand is not just about shopping; it’s about enhancing lives, so anything you can include in your story that emphasizes this should resonate with your audience.

2.  Be Consistent

Your story should be consistent across all channels. Who you are, what you do, and why – what is it that motivates you to do it?  If you follow Tip 3 and are authentic then this should be easy.  You need to know who you are, why your company exists and reinforce it everytime you tell your story.

3. Be Authentic

Your story should be real, honest, and authentic – not hype. It is unlikely that you are the best boss in the world but showing how you care for employees. It is also unlikely that your ‘product’ is world-changing, but you can show what difference it makes to the lives if your customers.  If your content isn’t getting shared, it might be because it doesn’t feel authentic enough to your target audience. Or perhaps they feel they have seen it before and your story is a bit cliche or scripted. There is a trend at the moment in B2B marketing, of employees recording short video clips on their high-quality mobile phones, you can be walking about, sat at your desk, or in your factory give tips and share knowledge, let your customers know you are real.

4. Be Varied

Anyone in your company can contribute to the storytelling. They can talk about where they get their ideas to help people, why it is so great working for your company, why they joined your mission. If you implement the video clips from tip 3 you can get other staff to record their tips or how their story is tied to yours.

5. Mix it up

Everyone loves good images that support the text. Offer written stories, with images, or make it fun for people to consume by mixing it up and using video and audio. Encourage your customers to record their testimonials. Consider giving them a few questions or prompts to help get the ball rolling, or sending them a questionnaire. Use images, memes, infographics and more to make your stories stand out.

Storytelling can take your brand to a whole new level. Use these 5 Tips for telling your story to make the most of this form of marketing.

How to create engaging content

This post is all about Creating Engaging Content that Readers Will actually want to share!

This type of post always starts with the phrase ‘Content is King’ but using such cliches is something you may want to avoid. Writing original engaging content is easier than most people think.
If you follow these tips you will be creating Engaging Content your target audience will be eager to share. And while sharing might be caring (oops! too cliche?) in content marketing sharing = more traffic, subscribers, sales and engagement.

1. Focus on a Single Topic

Your content should be focused, clean and concise, don’t try to cover too many things, if possible stick to a single post and if you find yourself writing lengthy articles covering a broad topic, this is the perfect opportunity to take chop it into several posts or a series.

2. Focus on a Single Goal

Each piece of content should have a goal you can measure. Do you want more:

• Traffic
• Subscribers
• Reach
• Engagement
• Sales

Having a clear goal will help you write engaging content with a clear focus to help you reach it

3. The Correct Call to Action

The call to action needs to align with your goals for the content. If your goal is to increase the reach (audience) of your content and you are publishing an image of a dream holiday destination, you can ask readers to tag someone they want to go there with.

4. A Great Headline

When people are scanning for things to read, and/or searching online, they will always read the headline and decide on the basis of that whether or not they want to read more.

• The headline should be no more than 60 characters in length so it will be fully visible on the search engines.
• It should make people curious, have at least one keyword in it related to your niche, and
• It should have a word that connects with the emotions of your readers. For example, if you want to talk about significant price reductions on some of your products, you could use the words “cut” or “slash.”

5. An Interesting Introduction

An interesting introduction will also encourage them to read more. Next time you read a full article go back to the beginning and think about what it was about the introduction that made you want to read more.

6. A free item

Some marketers argue that the most powerful word in the English language is “free.” Offering a free eBook, eCourse, or useful download can help you build your email marketing list and get people to share your content more often with friends and family who might also be interested in your niche.

7. Keywords

Keywords tell people and search engines what the content is about. Using words related to your niche in your headline, introduction, file titles and so on can all help them find what they are looking for, which is hopefully your engaging content.

8. A Variety of Formats

Content isn’t just words on a web page or blog. It’s also:

* Audio files
* Video files
* Images
* Infographics
* Templates
* Top 10s
* Frequently asked questions (FAQs)
* Checklists
* Memes
* And more

Offering engaging content in different formats helps cater to the learning styles and preferences of your followers. With more than 70% of all people being visual learners, if you are not already offering video content, now is the time to start. I have use Lumen 5 in both the PLR content I create and by setting up Lumen5  with your Blog, it will automatically create videos from RSS feeds Even on a free account for each of your blog posts

9. Sentences Should Be Short and Scannable

Your target audience will be reading on screens ranging from small mobile to full panorama on a desktop monitor. Having short sentences makes your work easier to read than huge chunks of text. Think about how the published post looks on your screens.

10. Use Bullet Points for Important Elements

Bullet points, although now frowned upon in Powerpoint presentations, are great when used in blog posts and eBooks they will also make your engaging content more scannable.

11. Use Subheadings

These make the entire piece of written content more scannable. Try to make the subheadings keywords if possible, not only for SEO, but also so your readers know what to expect.

12. Include Relevant Links with Keywords as Anchor Text

Link to pages at your side as needed. Instead of using the words “Click here,” try, “Visit URL for your free eCourse about X topic.”

Now your turn

Try out these 12 tips you an you will be creating more Engaging Content readers will share. Tweet your own tips for creating engaging content @printablesplr

Image Credit: Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash

If you use Instagram for anything more than food and selfies then you have probably wished (more than once) that you could place a link in a post or more than one link on your profile, well there is a “free” (or paid) solution from Australian digital and creative agency BLSTR group under the name Linktr.ee

What is Linktr.ee?

It is a really simple solution –  Sign up for free Linktr.ee account with your Instagram profile and you’ll receive a single link to put in your Instagram profile. With the forever free account you get; Unlimited links, basic Analytics (number of clicks) and a choice of background themes.

Linktr.ee pricing policy is as simple as the solution itself with only one paid option. Signing up as PRO gets you a rapidly increasing feature set for $6/Month:

• Get help quickly with priority support.
• Capture your visitors email addresses with the email / newsletter signup integration.
• More Linktree themes.
• Remove Linktree branding.
• See a day-by-day breakdown of link traffic.
• Complete customization of your linktree colors, button styles and fonts.
• Highlight your most important links with priority links.
• Change the title of your linktree.
• Time your links to go live in-line with scheduled posts.
• Retarget your Linktree visitors on Facebook and Instagram by adding your Facebook Pixel ID.
• Add a beautiful background image.
• Give access to your team to manage your linktree and links.
• Show traffic as ‘Social’ in Google Analytics.
• Custom UTM Parameters.

Your linktr.ee link is permanent so you can update the links as often as you want through the linktr.ee site.

If Instagram is your marketing tool of choice Linktr.ee, gives you extra options for directing traffic to certain pages in your site, or (other) sites. So, you can direct Instagram followers to your blog, your demo site, other social media accounts, special offers. You could target any page anywhere – like a webinar signup and so on.

However, it is a learning curve for your followers too!

Since I set this up on my Instagram, CTR has not been great and even I keep forgetting the functionality is there, so you will need to encourage people to click on it when you post a relevant post linking to it.  Instagram users are just not used to having this feature. Maybe they are not aware or maybe they, like Instagram, are not keen on clicking on a link that will interrupt their endless scrolling of food pics.

At the end of the day – the simplicity of the solution and the opportunities it potentially brings make it a pretty cool add-on, that I really want to work – by that I mean that Instagram users will adapt to interact with it.

A key attraction of Linktr.ee for me is that you can use your posts to direct people via linktr.ee to the pages or posts on your blog that are most relevant at the moment, I just wish it was possible to make a post clickable to take users there.

Are you using Linktr.ee?

Ready to start your dropshipping business?

If you think you are ready to start your dropshipping business – this page contains everything you need, training guides, plugins, suppliers – Click the links to find out more – you will be transferred to the vendor’s site – (Yes these are affiliate links)

Links to everything you need?

The rise of the machines, no I am not talking about the Terminator threequel  of the same name Today I am talking about messenger bots which are becoming increasingly more popular in the B2B sector where I live in my day Job

Messenger bots, also known as chatbots, are not exactly new technology but their use is on the rise for a number of reasons.  Despite spectacular failures at trying to train AI to act like a teenage girl which went from “humans are cool” to full-on Nazi in shortlived (suicidal) Microsoft experiment Tay (bot) (not the rise of the machines that anyone wanted) consumers and businesses alike are finding them an invaluable tool for giving and getting information and making connections like never before.

What Are Messenger Bots?

Messenger bots are robots which send out pre-prepared messages. They are similar to the autoresponder in your email marketing platform, except they are triggered by certain keywords and phrases into giving what will hopefully be an appropriate matching response to the message that has been sent.

Messenger bots use a combination of artificial intelligence (AI) and “natural language processing” to try to determine the meaning and give a suitable reply.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Each company should have a list of FAQs in order to streamline their customer services. Many question keywords can be set in a messenger bot, with matching answers uploaded into the system for a hopefully seamless experience that gives the customer what they need without them having to interact with a human. No system is perfect, but they have gotten to the point where the technology is good enough to match a high percentage at a time. The tech has also reached the point where people are willing to use it.

The Meteoric rise of B2B conversational marketing platform Drift pays testimony to that – or their exceptional marketing.

The New Generations of Consumers

I still remember when people would call a business on the phone. which was replaced by email. And then social media customer service, whereby tweeting your complaint ‘publically on twitter usually yields the swiftest response. But, these methods of communication all heavily rely on human involvement to process the customer request.

And perhaps most importantly all of these also take time. There is no human on the planet who wants to wait on hold for an hour, or wait a day or two for an email reply? People in “question mode” and “buying mode” want their answers about a particular microwave ASAP so they can make a decision one way or the other and buy something quickly. A messenger bot is the best solution to catch the customer when they are really ready to buy.

Younger consumers like the convenience and speed. They are moving away from social media to even more direct connections. They also like to feel as though a company cares and that they “know” each other. Some people just love messaging technology anyway, so it makes sense to them that if you offer it, they will use it.

The Business Benefits of Messenger Bots

The more you can automate your business, the more time you have for other tasks. Messenger bots can help improve efficiency even as you cut down on the number of hours staff have to spend answering customer service queries, for example. This will help save companies money, because you can either hire fewer people, or add more duties to their jobs – tasks which could help you earn more money.

Marketing messenger bots can help you make more money. They can stimulate sales by answering the many questions potential customers might have about a product, and by promoting the product in the first place. For example, whenever you launch a new product, you can message your list of contacts with information about it. The message will be highly visible and therefore a lot less likely to be ignored compared with an email.

Expect to interact more an more AI customer service agents from now… until anything like Tay (bot) sends us all running back to 42 minutes of “Your call is important to us but we are experiencing high volumes of calls at the moment…   I say the rise of the machines is a refreshing relief from that!

You may have heard the saying “If you have 3 hours to cut down a tree, spend 2 hours sharpening the axe”, planning and preparation is everything and these 3 steps to PPC success are your solid foundation to every campaign.

Like most things in life, the more time you spend planning and preparing the easier it is to execute and the better the result will be. And PPC ads are no different.

Whichever ad system you decide to use there is a basic 3 step formula for creating successful ads. In my previous post I wrote talked about why you should not reject paid advertising 

Step 1. Plan

There are 3 parts to the planning phase in the 3 steps to PPC success.

Set your goal.

You need to have a goal. Not just for your call to action but also so you can measure your success. The call to action (CTA) in your ad is, what you want visitors to do after seeing your ad. This will vary depending on what your goal is. Decide what is the objective of your ad campaign, what do you want to achieve with your investment in this campaign? do you want:

• More Traffic
• More Subscribers
• More Sales

Decide which asset you have that is going to help you meet that goal.

For Example, if you want more traffic

• A downloadable  3 step plan checklist to  help you succeed at PPC, available from your blog
• A checklist on how to make money selling information products

Or if your target is to get more Subscribers

• An ebook on email marketing
• A multi-lesson online or email course on how to succeed at affiliate marketing

Sales

• A new product you are just launching
• A product you have had for some time that you know is popular

Tired of reading? Watch the 3 Steps to PPC Success for the highlights

 Set your Budget to Calculate what you need to succeed.

You need to understand what a successful campaign will cost.

To calculate your CPA customer acquisition cost you need to Estimate your maximum cost per click (CPC). The formula is simple and logical.  The Maximum Cost per Click is the Profit per customer x the sales conversion rate. let’s say you have an ebook that you produced yourself, therefore with no production costs, and you priced it at $17 your profit will be $17. If your conversion rate is on average, 1%, your maximum CPC = 17 cents.

Max CPC = profit per customer x sales conversion rate

 $17.00 x .01=.017

If you are selling a physical product you need to factor in the production cost and the shipping and handling costs

As an example, if your product is a printed Journal based on a template you designed, and you sell it at $17, including printing shipping and handling. The cost of producing the journal is $3 and the shipping and handling $2, for a total fulfilment cost of $5. Your profit, in this case, is $12, so using the same formula ($17 – $5 =) $12.00 x .01=.012.

When you start succeeding at PPC you will be able to get a higher conversion rate. 

$12.00 x .02=24 cents maximum CPC

$12.00 x .03=36 cents

$12.00 x .04=48 cents

…

and so on.

Like everything in an online business, you should always test and refine. Most importantly, set a test advertising budget and stick to it. Test your ad and offer. Start with a small amount and increase it if the ad converts well.

Step 2. Target

Now you know what your target is, what your offer is, and what your budget is it is time to define your target customers and start building the keyword list to use in your ad campaigns.

Know your customers

You hopefully already know a lot about the customers in your niche. You may even have created a buyer persona or avatar. This is a mini-biography of your ideal customer.

Try to imagine this ideal customer as a real person, give them a name and write down details about their interests, family and Job and anything else that you think is relevant

What to include in your Buyer Persona

• Name
• Gender
• Age
• Marital status
• Kids (ages) /no kids
• Pets (how many, type/s)
• Level of income
• Level of education
• What Job they do
• Hobbies and interests
• Personal values (religious, green, interested in animal rights, etc.)

You might have more than one type of customer, so you can create a number of personas.  Don’t create too many, you don’t need to describe all your buyers, just your ideal customer.

If you don’t know much about your customers now is a good time to start understanding who they are. You can do this through surveys, your various analytics metrics, such as Facebook Insights, Instagram follower demographics and so on. You can use the Buyer Personas for a number of other tasks such as creating products, writing sales or email copy.

Tip: Use the persona every time you create any new product, or new marketing campaign, to make sure they will speak to the needs of your target customer.

Research your keywords

Again you should already have keyword list related to your niche, that you will be using to help plan the content you want to publish and your blog posts and page content that you are using for SEO, Search Engine Optimization to rank your site to rank highly on Google search results. This is especially important if you are preparing ads to run on Google or Bing as they use keywords for their ad matching. Social Media sites tend to us demographics, such as age and interests to select the audience to display your ads to. However, they are still useful in describing the needs of your target audience.

Look at your google analytics logs and use google search console to check the top 20 keywords that people are using to find your site. Decide if they make sense for your campaign.

You can use Google’s Keyword Planner or Neil Patel’s Ubersuggest to check on search volume per month for your selected keywords and find any other recommended and related keywords.

You just need a free google account, which you will probably have for using Google Analytics or Gmail. In fact, I recommend you to get a Google account anyway, read this post to find out why. You don’t have to run ads on Google to use the tool and both tools that I have mentioned are free to use

Industry Insider Hack

In Google’s keyword planner enter a competitor’s landing page in “my landing page” instead of your own, to reveal different Keywords.  Try it with the top ranking search results and see what different ‘long tail’ keywords you can find.

Look at the search volume on your selected keywords and look for those that are more than 1,000 but less than 10,000.  Many people make the mistake of going after the highest volume keywords but this won’t work, as large companies will have likely put a lot of money into their ad strategy on these words.

Tip: Choose keywords with a search volume between 1,000 to 10,000. Too high and your ads won’t show as the large companies will be investing more on those words and too low and you won’t notice any change in traffic.

You should also put together a list of negative keywords. Unless you are trying to get subscribers and are giving away a free eBook avoid words like free, will attract freebie seekers clicking on your ads and if you are paying per click you only really want to attract customers with the intent of buying

Another strategy that all great PPC and SEO and PPC marketers use is to Spy on competition’s keywords.  Use https://www.spyfu.com/ to see the keywords that your competitors are using and add any you might have missed.

You can also separate your keywords into two categories. Words that signal; they are just looking, or they have moved to the stage where they are getting ready to make a purchase.  This will allow you to identify how ‘valuable’ they are to you.

Tip: You can use the following to sort your keywords.

1. Research keywords
2. Buying-Intent keywords

Step 3. Give Value

You should choose one offer for each Ad you want to run. The offer should be something that is valuable to the customer.  Valuable doesn’t mean financially, it means something that is useful to your audience Your offer will depend on your goal and the free or paid item you wish to promote.

Searches your top keywords on Google. Which of your competitors are in the top results? Have a look at what they are offering.  You don’t need to copy their offer, but it should be of similar value to the customer, and this will give you some ideas that you have maybe overlooked.

You can employ other popular tactics to get people to click on your ad.

• Tell the story – What is the reason you’re making the offer
• Include a Deadline -it is a limited time offer only so they need to move fast. (FOMO Fear-of-missing-out)
• A special Launch – it is an all-new product never seen before

Sometimes asking a question can help to appeal to your customer’s needs.

• Tired of struggling to grow your list? Grab your free ebook now
• Tired of tiny affiliate commissions? Sign up for your free webinar and watch them soar

Some ideas for an Ad offer are:

• Free ebook (sample)
• Special discount
• Checklist
• Template
• Invite only webinar access

Congratulations! You reached the end of the post and you now know the 3 steps to PPC success.

Wait! I know what you’re thinking we haven’t created any ad’s. I will cover that in my next post, but the first 3 steps to PPC success are the foundation for maximising your ROI.