growth hacking

5 Easy Hacks That Will Double Your Sales

June 27, 2017 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

I’ve spent the past several weeks planning and orchestrating a virtual summit, so it’s been a while since I wrote my last blog post.

In the near future, I will offer a training course that goes deeper into the parts and process. But for now I want to share what I’ve learned about how to increase revenues, which was one of the questions I asked myself continuously as I organized the summit.

After all, a virtual summit is a huge undertaking, so its success was foremost in my mind. By asking myself several key questions throughout the process, particularly how to double my sales, I discovered several hacks that I’d never utilized for my business.

I realized early on that I’d been missing out on some great opportunities: if I had used these sales hacks earlier, I could have made thousands of extra dollars!

#1: One-Click Add-Ons

I’ve seen several marketers use this strategy. Basically you offer a main product and entice customers to pay a little extra for added value.

This is similar to the upselling model at fast-food restaurants when the cashier says, “Hey, you’ve already bought the hamburger. Wouldn’t you like a side of fries to go with it?”

That’s what the one-click add-on does (minus the body fat).

Now, if you’ve been to a virtual summit, or know the marketing behind it, you know that the All-Access Pass is a popular product choice.

Here’s how I incorporated the one-click add-on strategy into my virtual summit – in addition to the All-Access Pass, notice what else I offer on my sales page:

The Blog Post Promotion Blueprint is a mini training course I created for summit attendees who are looking for added value. Not everyone will opt in to the add-on, but just one click takes the order from $97 to $124.

While I am still in the early stages of the summit process (no partners have promoted it yet), the one-click add-on has already increased my summit revenue by 17%!

So even after the Content Marketing Success Summit (CMSS) has ended, I will continue incorporating one-click add-ons into future initiatives.

#2: Thank You Sales Page

I turned my Thank You Page into a Sales Page, and something magical happened – I got more sales! Here’s the background:

Most Thank You pages say something like, “Thank you for subscribing. The free gift will arrive in your inbox soon.” Some Thank You pages suggest a few blog posts to read while you wait for your free gift.

But I decided to go straight for the sale. After thanking people for joining the summit, I lead them to a video and a link to my sales page.

Here’s what the confirmation looks like:

I transition from “Thank You” to “Here’s my product” with “but first…”

You can use the “but first…” transition regardless of what business you are in. “Let me ask you a question” is also a universal transition into a sales pitch.

#3: The Evergreen Deadline

The evergreen deadline is critical to the success of a Thank You Sales Page. It combines a stacked offer with a sense of urgency.

The evergreen deadline creates a stronger sense of urgency than the “Cart Closes at Midnight” email. Here’s why…

When you reach my Thank You Sales Page, you’ll see the previous image in the confirmation I sent, but you’ll also see THIS:

I set a 15-minute timer for the $47 special. If you buy the All-Access Pass within the next 15 minutes, you get it for $47. If you wait, the All-Access Pass price jumps to $97.

This is a great way to increase sales even before your summit begins.

And to further increase the likelihood of action, I include the following for All-Access Pass customers:

Twitter Marketing Domination Course ($197 value)
My Productivity Cheatsheet ($47 value)
Boost Your Productivity NOW Course ($147 value)
A video tutorial on the prep work for this summit ($97 value)
Outsourcing Mastery Course ($97 value)

The total value adds up to $585, not including the All-Access Pass itself, which now seems like a steal.

But why stop there? This next piece is extremely important for the evergreen deadline. If anyone buys the All-Access Pass for just $47, I also throw in a personal audit of their website, which usually costs hundreds of dollars.

This offer doesn’t apply to the $97 All-Access Pass customers, so if you want it, you have to buy the All-Access Pass on the spot.

See how much urgency that creates?

#4: Host A Webinar

I believe that ‘not hosting a webinar earlier’ is Biggest Mistake #2 for most people, which comes right behind ‘not starting an email list earlier.’

I’m hosting webinars for CMSS. Not only because I want to, but also because I told every speaker and affiliate that I’d be hosting one. That’s one way to make yourself accountable 🙂

While this post doesn’t explain how to host a webinar, I’ll point you to two valuable resources:

First, I got to interview Jon Schumacher in Episode 39 of my Breakthrough Success Podcast. He shared a vast amount of knowledge about generating massive profit from webinars.

Second, I recommend Russel Brunson’s Expert Secrets for crafting the perfect webinar. The title of the book suggests a deep dive into becoming an expert (and it definitely delivers), plus he literally provides the PERFECT blueprint for creating a highly profitable webinar.

Right now, you can get Russel’s book for free if you just pay for the shipping.

#5: Get Sponsors

This is more of a double-your-revenue tip, but if you double your sales, you theoretically double your revenues.

I wish I’d spent more time pursuing sponsors for CMSS. I contacted a few sponsors later in the game than I should have, but I still generated a fair amount of revenue.

In my opinion, pursuing sponsors is a very underrated way to make revenue.

With that said, my general method for pursuing sponsors is different from writing sponsored posts or using sketchy tactics. You can and should pursue sponsors for a virtual summit or podcast as well.

Want to see the true potential of getting sponsors? Check out this case study in which Brian Appleton explains how he made over $20,000 from his summit with sponsorships alone.

In Conclusion

We all want to double our sales. And once we do, we want to double our sales again (or triple them).

These five hacks will allow you to double your sales and revenue with your existing audience. Once you get these hacks down, you can then focus on generating more traffic.

I got all five of these sales hacks down before I asked anyone to promote my summit. Now that I’ve got the system in place, I’m looking for affiliates to promote my summit. You can become an affiliate for my summit here.

What are your thoughts on these sales hacks? Have any others for us? Sound off with questions or suggestions in the comments section below.

Until next time –

Marc

7 Simple As Pie Email List Building Tips For Beginners

May 27, 2017 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Email list building is the most important activity you can do for your business. Your email list is truly your most valuable asset because people engage with emails far more often than social media posts.

In fact, if you have the same number of followers and email subscribers, you can count on anywhere from 3-10 times as many people seeing your email broadcasts than your social media posts.

The difference in click-through rates is even more dramatic. The average click-through rate for email is 3.57%, whereas Facebook and Twitter average click-through rates of 0.07% and 0.03%, respectively.

That’s right. Email gets 51-119 times more clicks depending on whether you use Twitter or Facebook. This isn’t to say social media is bad, in fact, you should be using social media to help you build your lists.

Remember, you own the traffic on your email lists. As for the traffic you don’t own, you’ll want as much of it as possible to join your email lists.

To help you, I’m providing seven simple-as-pie tips that you can implement to bring you email list building to the next level:

#1: Set Up An Email Server

Before you can even think of email list building, you’ll need to have an email server. And not one of those built-in WordPress servers that delivers your latest blog post to people’s inboxes.

Why? Because these services don’t allow you to communicate effectively with your audience.

Instead, consider servers like ConvertKit, iContact, and Aweber. Personally, I prefer ConvertKit because of its detailed auto responders, and its ability to seamlessly move people from one auto responder to another based on which actions they take (or don’t take). I wrote a more detailed post on ConvertKit here.

When you start using your server to send emails, focus on these two things:

Open rates
Click-through rates

Email marketers focus on other things too, but these two metrics matter most because, in the end, you want more people to open your emails, and more of the people who do open your emails to click on the links.

Besides, what’s the point of email list building if you don’t have an engaged list? By focusing on optimizing your open and click-through rates, you’ll end up with a more engaged email list.

#2: Create An Irresistible Free Offer

The irresistible free offer is the reason most people end up on your email list. Most people don’t subscribe to your email list to get more emails in their inbox. People get enough emails already!

The real reason they subscribe is to consume free content. My most successful free offer to date is an eBook containing 27 different tactics you can use to get more retweets.

You’ll want to be sure your free offer meets the needs of your niche and what you’re selling. When people subscribe and receive my free eBook, for example, they’re automatically sent an auto responder that provides additional value (as well as promotes my Twitter and social media-related products).

My irresistible offer leads qualified subscribers through a sales funnel that introduces my products based on a set of pre-qualifications — the products for which they’ve already expressed an interest — which keeps my messages relevant and on point.

Once you’ve decided on your irresistible free offer (video series, report, white paper, eBook, etc.), you need make sure it looks great. Design matters more than you think. We all judge a book by its cover (don’t deny it), and we also judge the value of a free offer by the way it’s presented.

For example, if all else is equal (including content), which book would you rather read?

A friend of mine was nice enough to create a new version of this eBook cover. And as a result, more people sign up simply because it looks better. You can even pay someone just $5 on Fiverr to come up with a good design. Just take a look at the logo for my upcoming summit:

I’ve made it my screensaver and I think it looks great! Just remember, the way your free offer looks is often more important than the free offer itself.

The title of your free offer is also important for building your email list. Choose a catchy yet simple title that communicates clearly what your free offer provides. If you have to choose between being catchy and being clear, always choose clarity.

As my friend Tom Corson-Knowles says, “Even a worthless book with a good title will sell more copies than a book full of useful information with a bad title.”

I write 10 possible titles for my free offer and then choose the one I like most.

#3: Create A Landing Page

Once you have the free offer in place, it’s time to create a landing page. A landing page is a page on your blog with a one or more CTAs (calls to action) and a form that asks users to enter an email address and possibly some other information (when you ask for less information, more people will actually fill out your form).

I personally use Optimize Press to create my landing pages. Optimize Press is a tool for WordPress.org users that lets you create landing pages, sales pages, membership sites, training courses, and just about anything else you can imagine.

If you don’t use this version of WordPress, you can still create a landing page. In fact, you don’t even need to have your own blog or website to create a landing page. You can simply create a self-hosted landing page on LeadPages or UpViral (they’ll host it for you so you don’t need to buy a domain name).

While it’s better to connect your landing page to a blog where you provide free, high-value content, you can technically go the self-hosted route that LeadPages, UpViral and others offer. The one problem with self-hosted landing pages is that people may not trust it as much since the URL doesn’t tell them who’s providing the free information.

When people don’t know who is getting their email address, for example, they are more hesitant about providing it. It’s often a good idea to say that you won’t share it with anyone!

Now that you know the basics, you’re probably wondering how to get people to subscribe via your landing page. There are two basic ways to do this. And understanding these two basic ideas will help you know what to look for to ensure effective email list building.

Increase the amount of traffic to the landing page
Optimize your landing page’s conversion rate

If two landing pages each have a 10% conversion rate, the landing page with 100 daily visitors will get more conversions than the landing page with 50 daily visitors.

But if the landing page with 50 daily visitors bumps up to a 30% conversion rate, that landing page now converts 15 visitors per day, whereas the other landing page with 100 daily visitors and a 10% conversion rate will convert 10 visitors per day. So even though one landing page gets half as many visitors, it’s still getting more conversions.

Ideally, you will increase traffic as well as your conversion rates. However, if you want to double your results, my advice is to focus on your conversion rates. Psychologically, it feels more doable to go from a 10% conversion rate to a 20% conversion rate than going from 100 daily visitors to 200 daily visitors. Are you still with me?

By focussing on conversions, you’ll only need a 10% increase. With a traffic-based goal, on the other hand, you’ll need an increase of 100 visitors.

#4: Share Your Landing Page On Social Media

Ah yes, here’s where social media joins the email list building mix. You can’t just create a landing page and expect people to visit it. You get those visitors by promoting your landing page, and social media is a powerful tool that lets you do just that.

The easiest way to promote your landing page is to use your bio. While most people link to their blog or website in their bios, why not link to the one page you want your visitors to see more than any other piece of content? I always link to my landing page in my bio.

Once you make this simple change, your email list building efforts will pick up momentum. You can then build on that momentum by promoting your landing page several times a day. But keep in mind that frequency will vary according to the social network.

On Twitter, for example, I promote one of my landing pages every hour. But on Facebook and Pinterest, I promote my landing page only once per day. And on Instagram, I let my bio do most of the talking.

Most social networks also give you the option to pin a post to the top of your profile. I use this feature with Twitter to keep one of my tweets immortal. While most tweets have a lifespan of 20 minutes, this one tweet continues to work wonders.

But I also noticed that as I shared my landing pages on more social networks, I fell into a time crunch. Sure, I was working on my email list building, but I wasn’t seeing the results I wanted from the rest of my business.

Why? Because I didn’t have as much time to communicate with my email list or create new products for them.

Once I realized the problem, I knew I needed to find a way out. So I began outsourcing more and more of my tasks. I delegated social media growth activities, image creation, and editing of my blog posts and podcasts, just to name a few. This decision opened up countless hours of my time and allowed me to pursue new opportunities.

#5: Profit From Your Autoresponder

What’s the point of email list building if you’re not making revenue? Your email costs go up but you won’t be able to pay for them.

To avoid this problem, you need to rely on your auto responders. An auto responder is made up of a series of emails people get after subscribing to your blog. You can set up your auto responders to email your list every few days, weeks, or even months.

Within each of these auto responders, you should be promoting a product. And if people buy one product, you’ll need to direct them to another auto responder that promotes a more expensive product. I refer to these as connective auto responders, since one auto responder leads right to the next.

This transition from one to the next only takes place when subscribers perform a desired action (i.e. buy a product). The more connective auto responders you have, the more revenue you can make.

Within each of your auto responders, tell stories! In my very first auto responder I share a picture of myself and explain the context behind it, which makes me more relatable, and my customers more attainable.

Plus, virtually every email service lets you check your auto responder stats. You’ll want to check the engagement from your overall auto responders as well as individual messages. That way, you can see what is and isn’t working. Then, based on the analysis, you can make changes.

Not bad, but can it be better? No matter how great my engagement, I always try to improve it.

#6: Get In The Growth Cycle

The growth cycle is the never-ending period of time in which you continue growing without boundaries. The basic set-up is that you pay for your traffic and make more money per conversion than you spend on each conversion.

For instance, if you’re spending $1 per conversion, but earning $2 per conversion, you should continue on that path until the end of time (or until/if these rates fall out of your favor).

But this also means you need to continuously monitor your ads. If an ad performs well, for example, use it as a model for future ads. But if your ad struggles to convert, change the copy, picture, or something else… but only change one thing at a time (A/B test) so you can better determine which variable is working or not working.

If you change more than one thing at a time, the image and the copy, for instance, and your ad continues to get the same results, you won’t have the full picture. As far as you know, the new picture could have doubled your results while the new copy could have halved your results. Thus, the final result is that nothing has changed.

#7: Give Yourself A Public Challenge

A public challenge for a big goal is intimidating because you can’t back out. But you don’t win by staying comfortable. You win by burning your boats so success or public failure (ugh!) are your only options.

Give yourself a public challenge for your email list. By the end of the year, for example, I want to see 100,000 email subscribers. That’s what I told my audience anyway, and I’m telling you (and everyone else) again in order to keep myself accountable.

Share these public goals in a YouTube video or blog post. So EVERYONE will see it, not just a few friends.

In Conclusion

EVERY marketer’s biggest regret is not having built an email list sooner. That fact alone should encourage you to jumpstart your email list building efforts (if you haven’t done so already).

Do at least one thing today that will help you to get at least one additional subscriber tomorrow. If you start with a one-subscriber goal per day, and follow this method for 100 days (1 subscriber on Day 1, 2 subscribers on Day 2, etc.), you’ll end up with 5,050 subscribers in 100 days with small, incremental gains.

That’s an average of 50.5 subscribers per day!

Power question: What can you do today to get more subscribers tomorrow?

Now Here’s What I Want From You

What are your thoughts on finding a target audience? Which insight in this blog post did you find especially useful? Have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below.

Leave a comment now. I read them all 🙂

And if you know anyone else who needs this burst of insight, please be sure you pass it on.

[Tweet “7 Simple As Pie Email List Building Tips For Beginners http://wp.me/p2UPop-29Q”]

If you’re new here, join the mailing list using the form below. You’ll get a ton of free content just like this.

Until next time,

Marc

*image credit: Pixabay.com

3 Strategies To Get Out Of Your Inbox Faster

May 13, 2017 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

A lot of people suffer from inbox paralysis. This happens when they receive so many emails — and believe they must respond to each one — that overwhelm takes over and leaves them inert. Sound familiar?

Even when you do respond to your emails, you probably end up stuck in your inbox for long periods of time. Email is basically invading our lives. To think about the impact of the inbox, consider these statistics:

2.4 million emails are sent every day.
The average person receives nearly 121 emails each day.
50% of Americans check their inbox while in bed.

It’s easy to feel as if we’re chained to our inbox (much like our mobile phones). In reality, the inbox is a double-edged sword. Some people can focus on potential opportunities and good email content, while others complain, “Oh, this is such a time suck!”

To avoid inbox paralysis, you need to become conscious of how you use your inbox. At the same time, you’ll want to make sure you’re capitalizing on the opportunities presented therein. This means taking control of the situation and making sure you are getting the best possible results from the time you spend in your inbox.

One of the dangers lurking in your inbox is the notification. The red icon, or circle, that appears every time you get a new message. You must avoid being tempted by that! How? The following strategies will help you make sure that you are using your inbox more strategically.

The first strategy is called ‘Zero Inbox’ day

This is the strategy I use. Every Monday, I go through all of my emails and respond to every one. This means I’m responding to dozens of emails. And on some Mondays, I’ve responded to over a hundred emails!

Bur rather than scatter this out throughout the week, I prefer get it all done on one day so that I have another six days to address other areas of my business.

If you do a little here and a little there, you’ll end up losing focus and inbox paralysis kicks in. And it takes time to reposition that focus on the projects that you’re supposed to be working on.

So I choose one day to blow through all of the emails and get them done so I don’t have to worry about them for the next six days. Sure, there are lots of emails piling up during the week, but I only respond to the critical emails.

When I was planning my virtual summit, for example, I responded to every potential speaker or any speakers who had questions. I’m very particular about which emails I respond to during my six-day hiatus. But on Mondays, I respond to every single email that is addressed to me.

The second strategy is to shorten your responses

Basically, there are two things that control how long you stay in your inbox: the amount of emails addressed to you, and how long your responses are to each one of them.

If it takes you a minute to respond to 60 emails, averaging one minute per email, you’ll be in your inbox for an hour. But if it only takes you 30 seconds, on average, to respond to an email, and you’re responding to the same 60, you’re only in your inbox for 30 minutes. That is a big difference, and it all comes from writing shorter responses.

My rule of thumb for writing an email response is to keep it no longer than five sentences. Most often, it’s one to three sentences. I’m very quick with it. I have an automatic signature so I don’t have to reenter the same details over and over and over again.

And instead of writing, “Hello Name,” and hitting the enter button twice, I’ll sometimes just include the person’s name on the same line as the message. This basically allows me to write shorter responses, which in turn allows me to address more emails within a shorter period of time.

The people who are really busy and seem like they are getting hundreds, or even thousands, of emails every day, have the shortest responses.

That is very intentional because they have a whole bunch of people to get back to, and they also have projects they want to pursue.

Don’t be afraid to make your email responses a little shorter. Don’t be afraid of coming off as curt or anything like that. It’s just part of the nature of communicating with as many people as possible, as quickly as possible, so that you can free up time for the rest of your business. You can be short and still be polite.

The third strategy is to hire an assistant

You should take this step when you’re getting hundreds of emails every day that require your attention. The assistant can go through the emails that follow a certain rubric. For example, answer all emails that say, “Please be a guest on my podcast.”

It’ll be a different person with a different audience and different podcast link. But the assistant can go through all of them and answer based on your preset recommendations for how to proceed. A good assistant will determine whether or not the gig is a good fit and/or which emails need your personal attention.

You can also ask the assistant to address common questions, send out thank you notes, or answer others who have written to thank you. Still, I would proceed with caution when hiring an assistant. Personally, I respond to thank-you messages myself. The idea of someone using my email address to respond on my behalf makes me a bit uncomfortable. But it’s done all the time.

If you do use an assistant, be sure they respond to your audience the right way. I suggest monitoring the person for the first week. My own rule is to micromanage for three to seven days only, just until I’m sure that my assistant or freelancer is competent.

Analyzing every little thing that your freelancer does, or micromanaging everyone on your team, makes hiring them to free up your time pointless.

Make yourself available for questions and clarifications the first week. Once you’re confident in their skills, step back and let them do their thing. They can always reach out to you with questions. But you needn’t bother analyzing every single email they send on your behalf.

To save even more time, you can take it a step further and hire a manager who oversees your freelancers.

These are three strategies for spending less time in your inbox.

I hope you enjoyed them. If you know someone who might benefit from these tips, please share this post.

Do you have your own tips to share? If so, please leave a comment. I read them all (and sometimes I end up turning them into a video or blog post).

If you are new to this blog, welcome! Sign up for more content like this using the form below 🙂

But what I’d really like from you is to dream big, achieve greatness, and unlock your potential today.

Until next time,

-Marc

*image credit: Pixabay.com

5 Blogging Habits That Will Turn You Into A Full-Time Blogger

April 3, 2017 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

blogging

The blogging habits we use to guide us play a significant role in our content marketing efforts.

The most successful bloggers live by a series of habits that guide them through the world of blogging. Blog traffic comes easy to these individuals who enjoy hundreds of thousands of monthly visitors.

As part of my New Year’s resolution to surpass 100,000 monthly visitors, I decided to analyze these successful bloggers to see what makes them tick. How do they surpass 100,000 monthly visitors, and how can I achieve the same results?

With this in mind, I’ve written a blog post that details the habits successful bloggers use to attain their goals. There are five blogging habits you should develop if you want to become a full-time blogger.

#1: Write At Least 1,000 Words Per Day

No one said blogging would be easy. This first habit is perhaps the most important because you can’t promote content until you’ve created it.

Not only does writing content matter, but writing lengthy content matters, too. Most blog posts featured on the first page of Google search results exceed 2,000 words.

Writing at least 1,000 words a day will give you a total of 7,000 words each week that you can dedicate to your blog. If you write 2,000-word blog posts, you’ll have at least three blog posts every week.

However, some bloggers write even lengthier content more frequently and consistently. That’s why 1,000 words per day is the absolute minimum. But if you manage to write over 1,000 words, even better.

Writing 1,000 words per day requires time, and time is more scarce than ever. So how is it possible to accomplish this goal every single day?

The best way to free up your time is by outsourcing work to freelancers. If it weren’t for outsourcing, I wouldn’t be able to accomplish many other important tasks for my business.

I simply wouldn’t be able to write lengthy blog posts, produce one YouTube video every day, create training courses, or write books. Many of my ventures would be sidelined if I tried to do all of the work by myself. And I’m always looking for more ways to outsource my business.

The more you outsource, the more time you create for yourself.

With that said, you also need to use your own time productively. Many distractions will try to keep you from writing 1,000 words each day, but with practice, you can overcome them.

Most distractions are a result of bad habits. The best way to eliminate these bad habits is to replace them with better habits such as writing more content for your blog and reading books during your breaks.

Plus, writing 1,000 words a day will make you a better writer. Value will begin to come naturally. The challenge is to write valuable content even when you’re pressed for time.

#2: Conduct Research For Every Piece You Write

For every blog post you publish, you should conduct a massive amount of research. In the past, I would write lengthy blog posts without doing research, and then wonder why I wasn’t getting any long-term traffic.

But ever since I’ve added research to my content marketing efforts, my traffic has gone up. Many of the top bloggers I analyzed conduct hours of content research just to write one great blog post. And it makes sense because linking to great content benefits both you and your readers.

Your readers are getting higher quality content (and are more likely to share it), and you get more search engine traffic. Talk about a win-win. And there are more benefits to linking out than just that: Here’s the complete list from SEO Moz.

Each time you write a blog post, expand upon it by linking to other relevant blog posts found that help strengthen your content. Adding these links helps your blog grow, regardless of whether the links lead to your own content (internal links) or to someone else’s content (external links).

The benefit of internal linking is that people will spend more time on your blog, lowering your bounce rate (likelihood of someone leaving after viewing one page/post on your blog). And a lower bounce rate will help your SEO efforts.

External links to high-authority sites let search engines know that your blog also has authority. Since you’re promoting quality content, search engines think your content must also contain value, pushing it higher up the search engine rankings.

Content research takes a significant amount of time, but you’ll end up with a more valuable blog post. Readers will engage with it for longer periods of time and you’ll get more traffic.

I like to Google my way to the articles that I link to in my blog posts. And sometimes I use other tools for my content research.

Conducting content research becomes much easier as you spend more time writing content and engaging with people in your niche.

#3: Ask Questions To Expand Your Content

Have you ever finished a blog post only to realize that it’s too short for search engines? I have, several times, but not anymore. Before I reveal what I did differently, I’ll tell you what I was doing wrong.

For a blog post like this, I would have come up with the title and jotted down the five tactics I intended to mention within the post. While this approach made it easy to crank out content, I’d often get stuck at a little over 1,000 words. Sometimes I’d fall short at 800-900 words.

Now that never happens. Why? Because I ask myself questions that naturally make my content longer. Socratic questioning (asking yourself questions) is a form of conversation that has been used for thousands of years, and it still works today.

For all of the tactics I discuss in this blog post, I asked myself three questions. When asking these questions, I saw myself as a reader who wanted to learn as much as possible from this blog post.

What are three things people want to know about this particular tip? What would they ask?

By anticipating these questions in advance, I no longer have to worry about word count. Since I focus less on increasing word count, I have more time to focus on providing a better experience.

Here’s an example of an outline I did for the 4th habit I mention in this blog post:

#4: Follow The 80/20 Rule

•What is it?

•How do I market myself most effectively?

•How do I make it easy?

Keep this outline in mind when we get to the 80/20 rule.

Asking three questions definitely adds time to my outline process, but only by about 3-5 minutes, and it’s worth it when you consider my final draft.

So I may spend 5-10 minutes expanding upon my outline with thoughtful questions, depending on how long the outline is to begin with. But, in every case, it never takes an entire day.

I just write down the first three questions that come to mind. If I struggle to think of a third question, I leave it alone and address the next portion of my outline. I don’t want to sit around and ponder because I know I’ve got a behemoth of a blog post ahead of me.

The cool thing about using Socratic questioning is that you turn each of your tactics (or in this case, habits) into a mini blog post. You’ll want to write a blog post that contains a series of mini blog posts all wrapped up into one because that’s how you provide massive value that ranks well with search engines.

Creating an outline like this is easy. Writing the content is simple, albeit time consuming. But the more time you open for yourself, the more you serious you are about blogging.

#4: Follow The 80/20 Rule — 80% marketing, 20% content creation

The 80/20 rule is also known as Pareto’s Principle. With this principle, 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts.

This 80/20 rule for blogging slightly different. It asks that you spend 80% of your time marketing your content and only 20% of your time actually creating content.

Thus, if it takes you an hour to write a blog post, you should spend four more hours marketing it. And since the Socratic questioning technique mentioned above increases your writing time, your marketing time will also increase.

Of course, you can skip the marketing all together, but you won’t get very far with your blog. There’s simply too much content, and competition, on the web. You’re not just creating content. You’re creating a content brand.

And just like any other business, your brand needs effective marketing to become a surefire winner. Successful bloggers write a bunch of epic blog posts, but their marketing efforts are why we end up reading them.

Most of the efforts you’ll make as a successful content marketer involve connecting with other bloggers. In an interview, Neil Patel explained that, when he was getting started, he would contact anywhere from 400-500 people about his new blog post.

He asked each person to share his latest blog post. Neil found these people using BuzzSumo, his go-to content marketing tool (he refers to it as God’s Gift To Marketers).

BuzzSumo lets you see everyone who has shared popular blog posts in your niche. You can then contact these people and let them know about your own blog post.

Of course, you can try to hunt down these people on social media, but it’s much more time consuming. The best way to do it for free is to use a social network’s search engine and search a blog post’s title.

Here’s what it would look like on Twitter if, for example, you wanted to search for my guest post 5 Ways To Flood Your Blog With Traffic Using Pinterest (currently my most successful guest post).

However, this strategy takes FOREVER and BuzzSumo does the same thing much faster. If you can fit $99/mo into your budget, BuzzSumo is a worthwhile investment for your content marketing efforts.

Regardless of which option you use, contacting hundreds of people involves a lot of work on your part. The best thing you can do to cut down your work time is to create a rubric message.

Rather than re-write the same email over and over, you can simply copy and paste the body of the email and change a few things to personalize it (addressing each person by his or her first name, for example).

#5: Voraciously Read Other Blogs

Successful bloggers constantly read other people’s blogs. If you look at any of their blog posts, you can tell they’ve read several other blog posts on the subject before finishing their own.

You wouldn’t be shocked to hear that authors read several books before writing their own. So it should come as no surprise that bloggers read several blog posts before writing their posts.

Sometimes a blogger will write two blog posts back to back, but even then, intense research goes into each one. The research is based on blog posts that were read in advance.

However, successful bloggers don’t just read any blog on the web. They read blogs related to their niche. They want to gather as much insight as possible. But they also want to see what’s working for audiences in their niche.

Which pull-words result in more engagement? How is this blogger getting more shares? How is the blogger making revenue? Successful bloggers ask themselves all of these questions, and they find the answers by conducting research.

During this exploration, more content ideas emerge. And it’s easier to learn something when you actively write about what you are learning. By repeatedly writing content about subjects they want to master, bloggers eventually become experts in their field.

Try to read other people’s content for at least 30 minutes every day. The great thing about blogs is that they’re available online as compared to books (unless you read eBooks, but I prefer paperbacks).

If you have your smartphone with you, you can easily search for blog posts anytime you’re waiting for something to happen. Read a blog post while you’re waiting for a performance to begin. If you are waiting for an Uber driver, read a blog post until he shows up.

As you read, take notes on what you learn and write down content ideas as you go. That way, you’ll be armed with more knowledge that you can refer to within your next blog post.

In Conclusion

The most successful bloggers spend hours upon hours in a given day on their blogs. They treat their blogs like a full-time brand because that’s exactly what they are.

You may only be able to commit to your blog part-time, but you can still live by these blogging habits. A blog post like this is a lot to soak up in one sitting. However, you can always start small and build upon these success habits.

Habits by nature are obtained through gradual development. Out of every success tactic I came across during my analysis, contacting 400-500 people for each of my blog posts seemed the most daunting.

Why does it have to be 400-500? Why not start with 10? You can then inch your way towards 20 people, 30, 40, and gradually make your way to the 400-500 threshold.

Neil no longer contacts 400-500 people every time he writes a new blog post. Why? Because he doesn’t have to. But when he was just getting started, he made those contacts in order to build momentum.

All of these habits will become easier over time and yield greater results as you exert more effort towards each.

Now Here’s What I Want From You

Which of these habits do you think is most important? Do you have a 6th habit for us?

Have a question for me? Leave a comment now. I read them all!

And if you know anyone else who needs this burst of insight, please be sure to pass it on.

[Tweet “5 #Blogging Habits That Will Turn You Into A Full-Time Blogger.”]

If you’re new here, join my mailing list using the form below. You’ll get a ton of free content just like this.

Until next time,

-Marc

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How To Surge Your Blog Traffic

March 29, 2017 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

Every blogger wants more blog traffic. It doesn’t matter how much traffic you currently enjoy. What does matter is that you want more of it.

A surge in my blog traffic has made the difference between being relatively unknown to having a successful content brand. Here’s the surge that I’m talking about:

I achieved this by changing the kind of effort I was putting into my blog. Anyone can get these results, and even better, with the right kind of effort.

If you want to surge your blog traffic, here’s what you need to do:

Publish More Content, More Often

The consistency and frequency of your content publishing schedule plays a big role in your blog’s success. To grow my own blog, I wrote as many as two blog posts per day. While these blog posts were much shorter than the ones I currently write, I still published two every day.

I then changed my strategy to write one long-form blog post per week. Apparently, Google likes long-form content, but ironically, that’s when my traffic started to dip. So I increased my frequency to two blog posts, and one podcast episode, each week.

And I’m beginning to see traffic gains now that I’m posting content more consistently and frequently. Eventually, with the help of guest posts, I plan on publishing one blog post per day on this blog.

Getting into the groove requires the formation of daily habits. Daily habits make it much easier for you to get into the flow. My daily habit is to write at least 1,500 words per day. This daily habit earns me a total of 10,500 words each week. That’s anywhere from 2-3 blog posts per week.

Some days I write more than 1,500 words, but I never write less than 1,500 words in a given day. This habit allows me to stay consistent with my blog while writing additional content for my Kindle books.

Another thing that works for me is to set a time and day each week to publish my blog posts. This way, I end up writing the posts well in advance so there’s no last-second cramming.

The less time you have to write a blog post within your deadline, the less value it will provide to readers.

Writing all of this content will help you rank better on search engines and give your readers a better experience. However, you can 1-up your efforts by optimizing your content for success.

On the SEO side, the Yoast plugin is the most valuable plugin in your arsenal. This plugin makes it easy to optimize your blog posts for search engines.

But you also need to optimize your blog posts with internal and external links. Internal links are links to your own blog posts. External links are links to blog posts and articles from outside sources.

Internal links help your SEO efforts by doing the following:

Decreasing your bounce rate
Increasing the average time a reader spends on your site

Both of those outcomes are great for SEO.

External links (to high authority sites) let search engines know that, because you’re linking out to authority sites, you must be an authority site, too.

That’s why I add at least three internal links and at least three external links to each of my posts. Setting small goals like these makes them easier to meet, or even surpass.

Assess Your Marketing Strategy

It’s great practice to assess your marketing strategy once every 1-3 months. By looking at your overall strategy, you’ll see what’s working and what missed the mark.

Look at which blog posts earned you the most visibility. These blog posts have high demand, and your audience will want to read more posts like them. The general rule of thumb is to write content of interest to your audience.

Writing more blog posts based on your high-performing posts will result in even more demand for your content. Assessing your marketing strategy allows you to discover what your audience wants and plan more ways to give it to them.

This also applies to writing books and creating training courses. You want to create a product on a proven topic that is in high demand among your audience. That’s why my first training course was about Twitter.

When I created that course, my audience’s demand for Twitter knowledge was higher than their demand for any other knowledge that I was providing.

The best place to analyze your marketing strategy is the WordPress stats dashboard. While Google Analytics offers more, it can become overwhelming. So I prefer to stick with WordPress stats, which clearly communicate everything I need to know.

One important feature I recently utilized is one that let me discover when most people are visiting your blog. I noticed that most people visit my blog on Wednesdays at 10 am.

Based on this information, I began publishing my podcast episodes on Wednesdays at 9 am. The episodes have just enough time to sit on my blog until 10 am when it’s populated with the bulk of my readers.

The week before, the same insights told me that Tuesday at 10 am is the best time to publish new blog posts based on my traffic stats. That’s why I always publish fresh content on Tuesdays at 10 am, in addition to my Saturday blog posts.

Always apply the 80/20 rule to your marketing assessment in order to leverage influencer marketing. These two methodologies can completely transform your brand’s presence.

How to Leverage Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing has never been as easy as it is now. Not only does the web connect people from all over the world, but the influencers in the digital marketing niche are generally nice people.

I like to mention at least three influencers in my blog posts. The more influencers you mention, the better it is for your influencer marketing efforts. Here’s the idea:

Promote several influencers in your blog posts
Contact each one
Some will share your blog post

In some cases, getting a single influencer to share your content can yield great results. But more often, several influencers join forces to dramatically expand your reach. There are several great case studies about influencer marketing.

You may feel excited about the idea, but not sure how to implement it. What’s the best way to contact an influencer?

Anytime you approach an influencer, NEVER explicitly ask him or her to share your content. The more influential someone is, the more emails they’re receive of this nature. I can see a share request coming a mile away, and they’re annoying.

Share requests can make you feel like your audience is the only thing this blogger cares about, so it doesn’t feel like the blogger is genuine. On the other hand, if you don’t ask for a share, the outreach email feels more genuine.

When you don’t ask for a share and show your appreciation, you usually get the share! At the end of my podcast interviews, I never ask for a share; I simply say that I’ll provide the link.

And I honestly don’t care if guests share it or not. The knowledge I get from each podcast episode is far more valuable than a social share. Show your appreciation, not your desire to get more reach.

Here’s an email I recently received:

Hey Marc,

My Name is Daniel from The Experiment (www.iaexperiment.com).

I know you’re a fan of creating and growing an amazing blog and website. At least that’s the impression I got from this post:How To Build A Successful Blog From Scratch.

When I published this combination case study and guide about generating a consistent stream of traffic from Quora, I thought you’d appreciate it.

You can pop on over to check it out here:

http://www.iaexperiment.com/blog/quora-traffic

Stay Awesome,

Daniel

This is exactly how you should communicate with influencers.

I know this was influencer marketing in action, but emails like these feel so genuine. Here’s why:

He introduced himself in the first line
He’d done some research on me to illustrate that he actually reads my blog
He wrote content and thought I would appreciate it
Then he provides a link to his post

You can tell from the email that he knew a little about me. In influencer marketing, some people just discover someone with a big number of social media followers and act as if they were a big fan all along.

This was respectful and enjoyable to read as compared to some of the other influencer emails.

My best tip for influencers is to talk to them as if they are people, friends, not as if they are influencers. Influencers are people too, but we forget that far too often.

Get More Subscribers With Your Blog Posts

Out of all of your marketing assets, your email list is the most valuable. The email list is the main reason why many bloggers can make a full-time income by writing content.

It’s no wonder that getting more subscribers is critical. Time and time again, people continue talking about why the email list is your most valuable asset and how their biggest mistake was not starting an email list sooner.

Once people realize that their email list is their most valuable asset, they want to grow that email list as much as possible. There are plenty of methods to choose from. In fact, I compiled a list of 50 tactics that you can use to grow your email list.

My favorite approach is to promote my landing pages to my social media audience and optimize my blog to increase my site-wide conversion rate. I promote my landing page on Twitter at least once every hour and have a pinned tweet which also promotes my landing page.

That pinned tweet has stayed there for a while which allowed it to generate some strong social proof over the years.

On my blog, I provide a variety of options for people to sign up:

Welcome mat
Sidebar picture
Pop-up on the side (HelloBar)
Opt-in form at the bottom of every blog post
Occasional promotion within a blog post

To me, this is a great start, but by no means a finishing point. Buffer released an extensive list on different places to promote your free offer, and there’s no reason to halt your expansion efforts.

Increasing the number of opportunities people have to subscribe (without being spammy) will result in a higher site-wide conversion rate.

ThriveLeads and Optimize Press give me a variety of ways to promote my free offers. These are my two preferred tools for lead generation. Both of these tools respectively feel like 100-tools-in-one type of deals.

Follow The 80/20 Rule

With the 80/20 Rule, you focus most of your time on your top priority, such as your branding efforts. The rest of your time goes towards a secondary priority. In a successful blogging strategy, the two main ingredients for success are content creation and content marketing.

Most people spend 80% of their time creating content (or more) and 20% of their time marketing the content (or less). While it takes time to create your content, marketing is how you get your content seen by more people.

You’ll soon discover that it’s better to spend 80% of your time marketing your content. This idea is repeated by people like Neil Patel, who said that in the beginning he’d individually contact 400-500 unique people about every new post he wrote.

Brand marketing is an integral part of blog growth.

You need marketing to achieve the traffic surge you’re looking for. Finding a few hours to commit to your marketing each week seems like a daunting challenge, but there are some ways to make it work.

You can start by boosting your productivity. The smarter you work, the more time you will have to market your business. You can also outsource some of the marketing to someone else. Why do it all yourself when someone else can help you?

I personally prefer a mix of outsourced marketing and doing some of it on my own. That way, I don’t get overwhelmed by the workload but I’m still in the game. I use Upwork to find freelancers, and outsourcing has worked wonders for my business.

I truly believe that without outsourcing, I couldn’t do most of the things that I’m currently doing.

In Conclusion

Any blog can experience a traffic surge. That traffic surge and its impact on your brand are both dependent on how much effort you exert towards content creation and content marketing. Out of the two, more of your attention should go towards content marketing.

Make the connections now that will expand your reach in the future. Don’t be fearful of sending hundreds of emails to people you don’t know. It’s all part of content marketing.

The easiest way to make any type of change is to approach it gradually. For content creation, Jeff Goins recommends writing at least 500 words per day. While I write at least 1,500 words per day, the 500 word per day goal is much easier to attain for a blogger who wants to become more consistent.

The easiest way to get started is by getting your feet wet. You can’t get the traffic surge without even starting. And you must always start what you finish.

Now Here’s What I Want From You

What tips do you have for acquiring a surge of blog traffic? What’s working for your blog? What isn’t working?

Have a question for me? Leave a comment now. I read them all 🙂

And if you know anyone who may appreciate these tips, please be sure to pass this on.

[Tweet “How To Surge Your #Blog Traffic.”]

If you’re new here, join our mailing list! The form is below. You’ll get a ton of free content just like this.

-marc

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7 Secrets To Find Your Target Audience

March 25, 2017 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

Every marketer’s mission is to find, and understand, their target audience. Once you find your audience, you’ll come in contact with people who warmly receive your message.

My target audience doesn’t consist of music lovers. You may love music, but you’re probably here to learn about digital marketing and productivity. If you want to learn how to play the guitar, this blog isn’t for you.

We all know the importance of a target audience, but how do you find YOUR target audience? That’s what this blog post is all about!

#1: Identify Your Target Audience

If you don’t know who you’re trying to reach, you’ll struggle to find your target audience. Before you do any research or write any new content, you first need to understand exactly who you are trying to reach.

Instead of thinking of your target audience as a large group of faceless people, think about one person who would be interested in hearing your message. Is this person a guy, a gal, or does it matter? My brand is for guys and gals alike, but other brands like WBENC cater more to women.

When I began to identify my target audience, I asked myself the following questions:

What are their goals?
What problems do they have?
Where do they work?
What is their age and occupation?
Where do they hang out on- and offline?
Who are their friends?
What do they do for fun?
How do they think and feel?
What leg of the journey are they in right now (beginner, intermediate, or advanced)?

Try to answer these questions as specifically as you can, you should create customer personas for each use case, or user type, relevant to your product or service.

At the most basic level, personas allow you to personalize your marketing for different segments of your audience. For example, instead of sending the same lead nurturing emails to everyone in your database, segment according to your buyer personas to tailor your messaging according to what you know about each.

Here are some practical methods for gathering that information:

Interview customers either in person or over the phone to discover what they like about your product or service.
Look through your contacts database to uncover trends about how certain leads or customers find and consume your content.
Take into consideration your sales team’s feedback on the leads they are interacting with most. What types of sales cycles does your sales team work with? What generalizations can they make about the different types of customers you serve best?

You can also use the forms on your website to capture important persona information. For example, if your personas vary based on company size, ask each lead for information about company size on your forms. You could also gather information on what forms of social media your leads use by asking a question about social media accounts.

In sum, for each persona you should identify background, demographics, identifiers such as demeanor and communication methods, goals, challenges (and how you meet them), plus real quotes and common objections.

Once you identify your buyer personas, you should try to provide free value that matches the needs and preferences of each. For example, one individual within my audience suggested that I write a blog post about finding your target audience.

This individual certainly isn’t the only person who wants to find and grow a target audience, but he or she likely represents others in my audience who have similar questions. I wrote this blog post for that individual, but by so doing so, I will reach other members of my audience at the same time.

In the beginning, you’ll do an intense amount of investigative work to understand your target audience. But once they start embracing your content, your audience will begin to grow by default.

#2: Grow A Targeted Social Media Audience

Social media is a free tool that helps content creators grow a target audience. Most social networks follow the same path to growth.

Find an influencer in your niche
Follow that person’s newest followers
Watch your own follower counts grow

If you use this tactic, day after day, you could end up with results like this:

target audience

Growing my Twitter account in this way has resulted in 100,000+ people visiting my blog every year from Twitter alone. The additional social media traffic also has a significant impact on my SEO traffic.

However, simply following others doesn’t guarantee people will follow you back. To earn a follow, you must be worthy of that follow. More importantly, you’ll never be worthy of everyone’s follow. Rather, you want to position yourself in such a way that you attract followers who are part of your target audience.

You can do this by posting valuable content to your social networks. Valuable content is defined as content that helps specific people. With this definition, each person has a different view of what value means. Fashion articles don’t provide much value to me, because I’m not very interested in fashion.

On the other hand, a productivity book would grab my attention and provide me with an immense amount of value (as long as it’s a great book). Not everyone will like your content, and that’s okay. Stay focused on your target audience and the rewards will come.

This is how you find your target audience on social media: find people of interest and make it as easy as possible for them to find you, follow you, and consume your content.

Once you start growing your target audience, you’ll want them to perform certain actions. You may want your social media followers to join your email list, for example.

Some people try to push their social media followers through their sales funnel, directly from the networks themselves, but this tactic almost always results in failure.

You shouldn’t promote your products directly on social media, at least not very often. However, social media is a brilliant indirect sales machine.

Promote your call-to-actions daily to increase sign-ups. For my Twitter strategy, I tweet one of my landing pages every hour. I even have a pinned tweet of my landing page that generates powerful social proof for my offer.

target audience

If you want your audience to perform a certain action, put that call-to-action in front of your target audience as much as possible without being annoying. You may be surprised to hear that tweeting your landing page every hour isn’t annoying if you’re generally tweeting about other things every 10 minutes.

But on Facebook, and most other social networks, you shouldn’t promote your landing page at that frequency. The best way to determine the ideal frequency for any social network is to experiment. I experimented with my tweeting frequency 10 different times before I decided on my current plan of action.

As you grow your social media audience, it will take additional time to engage in consistent interaction and to provide even more high-value content. At this stage, you may want to outsource certain tasks to lighten your social media, and overall, workload.

Outsourcing helps keep these various tasks from taking over your work day. You’ll have more time to explore new opportunities and build upon the opportunities you’re currently pursuing.

When outsourcing, just make sure you don’t over reach. The ideal approach is to grow your freelancer army gradually.

#3: Answer Questions On Quora

Quora is perhaps one of the most underrated sources of blog traffic. Not only will you increase your blog traffic, you’ll also find your target audience in a powerful way — through their questions.

Quora is a social networking site that has 160,000 monthly users who ask questions and submit answers. Back in 2015, Quora’s CEO, Adam D’Angelo had this to say about Quora’s traffic.

quora ceo post

Wouldn’t you want a slice of that pie… especially if it helps you find your target audience?

I make it a goal to answer at least three questions on Quora every day. That way, my content gets seen by more people. The case study I mentioned earlier does a good job at depicting how Quora can lead people in your target audience to your blog.

While I currently don’t get enough results worthy of a case study, it’s great to know that a good number of people are viewing my answers.

target audience

I posted most of these answers several weeks ago. Here are the initial spikes I got when the answers were recently published:

target audience

As you can see, answering questions won’t lead to immediate gratification from your stats. But if you continue answering questions, hundreds, thousands, or even millions of people will eventually view your answers on a daily basis.

Plus, they make for great starting points for future blog posts.

Getting this many views on Quora requires that you consistently answer questions from your target audience. I personally prefer to answer as many questions as possible, regardless of popularity.

Most questions on Quora have the potential to spread like wildfire. A good rule of thumb is to answer questions that have under 10 responses and little more than 10 followers. These questions have more potential to spread, and if you answer first, you’re in a position to reap most of the traffic.

On Quora, the first few answers tend get more views and traction than those that follow. But sometimes you can piggyback off a popular question with hundreds of answers and still get a lot of views.

In the beginning, I advise that you answer at least three questions each day and don’t focus on getting more views. Once you get comfortable with answering questions, then get serious about increasing your views.

If you answer a lot of questions related to a particular topic, you can set up notifications. With a preset notification, you’ll receive emails with new questions related to the topic. This way, you are often one of the first people to answer the question.

Answering questions first puts you in a position to get more views and earn more respect from the person who asked the question, and everyone else who reads your answer.

#4: Comment On Blogs In Your Niche

Some people believe that commenting on blogs in your niche to increase traffic is a futile approach. If you’re one of those people, then marketing guru Neil Patel disagrees with you. Commenting on blogs in your niche (and your guest posts) still matters. The reason is simple:

That’s where you find your target audience.

Your target audience doesn’t only read your blog. They read other people’s blogs, too. If my visitors read a post on Jeff Bullas’ Blog, and see my comment at the bottom, they are instantly reminded of another blog they can visit.

At the same time, if I get the original blogger’s attention, I am scoring points for my influencer marketing efforts. It’s easy to get an influencer’s attention simply by leaving a comment on his or her blog. For instance, if you leave a comment on this post, I will certainly respond.

When you leave a comment on someone else’s blog, make sure it provides value. To provide value in a comment, you can either add some relevant insights or ask a great follow-up question, which indicates that you took the time to read the entire post.

Your comment will attract attention from incoming visitors and possibly garner a response from the person who wrote the blog post. However, don’t use comments to promote your own content.

Linking to your blog or landing page within the comment itself is a big no-no. But you often get the chance to include a link to your website and/or landing page before you even begin typing your comment.

My advice for commenting on other blogs is to avoid commenting simply for the sake of leaving a comment. When you reach the end of a blog post, leave a comment only if you can add value to the conversation. It only takes 30-45 seconds and, more often than not, will result in more exposure.

#5: Engage In Twitter Chats Related To Your Niche

A great way to find your target audience is by engaging in Twitter chats related to your niche. Twitter chats usually take Twitter by storm and sometimes end up as trending topics… as long as there’s not a football game at the same time.

While Twitter chats are rare finds, you’ll often come across recurring Twitter chats that take place every week or month. Every time these Twitter chats occur, engage with the people who use the dedicated hashtag, and follow them. You’re bound to get many follow backs from people interested in your niche.

Right now, Tweet Reports is the best tool for finding Twitter chats. Simply subscribe to various bloggers and brands within your niche and pay attention to when they’re conducting Twitter chats.

#6: Pay Attention To Where You Spend Your Time

When you begin the journey to find your target audience, always remember that you are also part of the audience you seek. My target audience consists of people conscious of their productivity and eager to get better digital marketing results.

I’m also a part of that audience. I read blog posts related to digital marketing and have bought more productivity books than I can count. I’m not the only person in my target audience reading those blog posts and buying those books. I can reach people in my target audience simply by leaving a trail of where I go and what I do.

That’s why I encourage you leave a comment on blog posts that you read from start to finish. People who read the entire post are more attentive. They often scroll and read comments. If you don’t spend enough time consuming the content within your niche, you are stunting your growth. Expand upon your knowledge so you can provide more valuable content and give your target audience more reasons to pay attention to your brand.

#7: Partner With Influencers In Your Niche

You’ll spend countless hours in the pursuit of identifying and finding your target audience. But there’s one method to turbocharge your results. This method is to partner with influencers in your niche. Here’s how it works:

Contact an influencer in your niche with a similar audience size as your own
Agree to promote one another’s content or landing page
As your email lists grow, new subscribers benefit both sides

You can make this process easier with an affiliate program that rewards people for getting people to subscribe to your email lists. And you can take this method to an entirely new level by hosting a virtual summit. Virtual summits can do wonders for email list growth and income.

In Conclusion

You must be willing to commit countless hours of your time to spread your message in order to reach the right people. The best way to find your target audience is to understand where they hang out online and build a presence there.

That’s why I have a big presence on several social media platforms. It’s the reason why I take the time to answer questions on Quora, and leave comments at the end of every blog post I read.

This series of actions, carried out over a long period of time, will most certainly result in a goldmine of traffic that helps you prosper.

Now Here’s What I Want From You

What are your thoughts on finding a target audience? Did you find any of the insights in this post especially useful?

Have a question for me? Sound off in the comments section below. I read them all 🙂

And if you know anyone else who may benefit from this post, please be sure to pass it on.

[Tweet “7 Secrets To Find Your Target Audience.”]

And if you’re new here, join our mailing list! The form is below. You’ll get a ton of free content just like this.

-Marc

*image credit: Pixabay.com