how to get more sales

5 Ways That Having A Free Prize Can Help Your Business Grow

June 13, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

business growth

If you do not have a free prize, your chances of being successful in your niche go down. Free prizes have become more important than ever because more people offer them. Free prizes are not as rare as they used to be. In fact, it seems as if free prizes are expected. The occasional two for one deal is expected. Getting a free product after entering your email address is expected. Free prizes are expected, and therefore, you need to fulfill the expectation. I went more in detail in a previous post about how you can go beyond expectations, but having a free prize is going to set you apart from the people who still do not offer a free prize.

You may be wondering at this point where you would offer your free prize and why you would do so. There are numerous places where offering a free prize would do you good. Here are the big five:

Blog subscribers. This one seems to be the most obvious reason why someone would want to offer a free prize. More people than ever before are offering free prizes to the people who subscribe to their blogs. This is the area where a free prize is almost expected. Visitors aren’t just going to subscribe to your blog so they can get emailed by you every day. They can just visit your blog every day. If you want someone to subscribe to your blog, you need to offer them more than an email every time a new blog post comes out.
Facebook likes. There are not as many free prizes on Facebook, but they do exist. If you get emails from Facebook each time someone likes your Facebook Page, you will be able to reward the people who like your Facebook Page. By telling everyone that they get a free prize when they like your Facebook Page, you will be able to make your Facebook Page look (and become) more popular. Then, you will eventually be able to get hundreds of likes every day. Better yet, you can also offer a free prize when someone likes or shares one of your Facebook posts.
Twitter retweets. Free prizes are a little harder to announce on Twitter which means you will surprise people when you give them the free prize. When one of your followers retweets one of your tweets, send that person a DM with their free prize. If you want more people to know about the free prize, you can pin a tweet announcing the giveaway at the top of your feed. Since a free prize for retweeting a tweet is so rare, some people will retweet you just to get the free prize.
Email newsletter. If your email newsletter promotes a particular product, give away a free prize similar to the product you are promoting. If the product you are promoting is a 50 video series about Twitter for $497, make your free prize a 7 video series about Pinterest. In this case, the free prize is similar to the product that you will be promoting to all of the people who gave you their email addresses.
YouTube subscribers. Offering a free prize to your YouTube subscribers will entice more people to subscribe. In addition, those subscribers will give you the leverage you need to go viral. Most of the videos and channels that go viral on YouTube are also the ones with thousands of subscribers. Offering a free prize may allow you to get thousands of extra YouTube subscribers.

Those are the five places where free prizes will allow your business to grow. When you promote a free prize at these places, you need to make sure that each of these free prizes are unique. Offering the same free prize to everyone does not encourage someone already subscribed to your blog to like your Facebook Page. In addition, by creating multiple free prizes, your potential customers will love you for it.

How To Create The Best Free Prize Possible

June 12, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Giving away a free prize will encourage people to subscribe to your blog, like you on Facebook, and do other things as well. While the free prize encourages these actions to be performed, it is the best free prize possible that makes people take you seriously and buy your products. If you do a good job with the free prize, your potential customers will buy your products primarily because they believe that your products are much better than your free prizes.

Although it is important to create a free prize that would be worth something, many people only create a free prize just for the sake of saying that they have a free prize. These people create a bad free prize that does encourage more subscribers and Facebook likes, but the bad free prize does not encourage anything after that. Potential sales never happen, and some people go as far as unsubscribing or unliking if the free prize is really bad.

A free prize is just that. It is free, but it is also a prize worth winning. In order to make your free prize worth winning, you first need to decide what your free prize will be. If you want to provide a digital prize (so you don’t have to pay for shipping), you can offer an eBook, Power Point, video, or audio. Those are the options that most people use for their free products. For this blog, the free prize is a video about Pinterest.

Your free prize needs to be a lengthy one. The longer your free prize is, the longer you will be able to keep someone’s attention. A free eBook with 10 pages can be read in under 5 minutes while a free 50 page eBook takes 10 minutes to read. Free 30 minute videos get more attention than free 10 minute videos because the person can watch the free 30 minute video for an additional 20 minutes. By keeping someone’s attention longer with a lengthier prize, that person will think more and more that they need to buy some of your products.

Offering a lengthier prize also shows people that you went the extra mile to provide more free content. People love it when others go the extra mile to help them. Some of the people who get your free prize will eventually return the favor by buying one of your products.

While length is a big factor towards how good your free prize is, the quality of the free prize also determines how much attention it gets. If the free prize is a 50 page eBook with low quality content, then most people will “x out” of the book without saving it or bothering to read it any further. In addition, a poorly performed 30 minute video will lose attention as the seconds go by.

Your free prize needs to be lengthy and contain quality content. It is the job of your free prize to answer all of the readers’ questions about a particular area in your niche. That is all you need to do to create a free prize that entices people to buy your products.

What are your thoughts on the free prize? Do you have any tips on creating a free prize? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

Are You Throwing Away Your Blog Traffic?

June 4, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

There are many bloggers who dream of getting hundreds of visitors on their blog every day. These people believe that getting these extra visitors will translate to more sales, more shares, and more subscribers. However, there are some people with hundreds of visitors who are not satisfied with their results. Even though these people took the time to grow their presence on the web, they are only getting 5 extra sales.

I noticed this problem for my books. I used to show all of my books on my blog’s sidebar, and when I did this, the links generated over 200 clicks every month. Alas, I only made two sales from those clicks. Having those pictures on my blog also made it slower (and hurt SEO). The people who clicked on the links left my blog, and I lost a visitor who could have possibly subscribed to my blog.

If people leave your blog to click on a link to one of your products or a link to one of your social networks, that traffic is being thrown away. Even if someone follows you on a social network, who knows when that person will see one of your social media posts. I do my best to make sure all of my followers see one of my tweets. However, if someone does not log in for an entire day, then there’s nothing I can do about it. The better option is to have people subscribe to your blog. It is better to have 1,000 subscribers than it is to have 1,000 followers. Subscribers get emailed every time a new blog post gets published, and who doesn’t check their email? Followers may not see all of your posts.

If you are getting someone to subscribe to your blog, you are not throwing away your traffic. If anything else occurs, traffic is being thrown away.

The big question you may have right now is how it is possible to still gain followers even though it is bad to have links that lead to your social media accounts. The solution is to have a button on your blog that will allow someone to follow you without leaving your blog. The button for my Twitter account allows anyone reading my blog to follow me without going on Twitter. All a reader has to do is click the button and that’s it. Not only do you make it easier for people to follow you on Twitter, but you also allow them to stay on your blog. Even if you have to make your social media buttons smaller to get the desired effect, it is more important to keep someone on your blog (and possibly get that person to subscribe) than it is to get another follower. 100 followers are not going to be the difference between your book becoming a bestseller, but 100 people on your email list (in some cases, big fans) who can get notified the moment your book comes out will be very likely to buy that book.

Getting someone to stay on your blog for an extra minute can be the difference between someone who subscribes to your blog and someone who walks away. Over the long-term, it can be the difference between getting a lot of sales and getting no sales at all.

Why You Need To Have A Platinum Priced Product

May 26, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Underpricing is a common tactic to use to boost sales. Self-published authors only charge $2.99 for their books to get a higher volume of sales. The people who underprice their products forget to create a platinum priced product. A platinum priced product is exactly what it sounds like, a very expensive product that will scare some people away because of the price tag alone.

However, having a platinum priced product will boost your volume of sales. Having a platinum priced product will make your lower prices look more attractive. If you wrote 1 book for $9.99, and you sold your other books for $2.99, the books for $2.99 would look a lot cheaper than they really are.

Brendan Burchard sells his Total Product Blueprint training course for $1,997. For many people, that training course will seem ridiculously expensive. However, when you see Brendan Burchard’s books, The Millionaire Messenger and The Charge both at under $15 for both Kindle versions, they look a lot more inexpensive for $2.99 books.

$2.99 is less expensive than $15, but when you have to choose between $15 or $1,997, changes are you will go with the $15. The $15 is a smaller investment which means less risk. In the end, some of the people who buy Brendan Burchard’s $15 books end up buying his $1,997 training course.

Brendan Burchard’s platinum priced training course makes his books look a lot more attractive. While free giveaways plays a part in this, both of Burchard’s books have over 150 reviews on Amazon (mostly positive). Instead of going cheaper, create a platinum priced product that makes the products you already have look a lot cheaper.

5 Methods To Create A Compelling Free Prize

May 18, 2014 by Marc Guberti 1 Comment

Free prizes are only effective if they are compelling. The free prize needs to be something that your visitors would want that could have been a paid product. However, many people make the mistake of offering a free prize that is not compelling. A compelling free prize encourages people to subscribe to your blog. A compelling free prize encourages people to buy your paid products later down the road. If you want your free prize to be compelling, follow these 5 methods.

Have an eye-catching design. People do judge a free prize by the cover. You need to come up with an eye-catching design for your free prize so your visitors will have a reason to subscribe. Some people will get your free prize just because it looks cool.
Make it essential for your target audience. The free prize you give away must match your target audience’s interests. If your target audience is people who want to grow their social media presence, a free guide to gaining more followers on any social network would be a compelling free prize.
Get people to mention your free prize. If your free prize gets mentioned on other people’s websites, more people will subscribe to get the free prize. Positive reviews are a big factor towards how many sales your book makes. Getting positive reviews for your free prize will make people want to get their hands on your free prize.
Make it different from the other free prizes out there. The free prizes in cereal boxes used to be a big deal. Now that more companies have a free prize in their cereal boxes, the free prize in the cereal box has gotten old. There are millions of free prizes out there, but if you want your free prize to be compelling, your free prize needs to stand out from the other free prizes.
Make getting the free prize easy. If someone has to fill in their address, phone number, and date of birth to get the free prize, your free prize will not be compelling. Instead of appreciating the free prize for what it is, visitors will only think of how complicated it was to finally gain access to the free prize. Instead of making it hard for your visitors to get the free prize, only ask for their email address (asking for the person’s first name is optional). By making it easier for your visitors to get the free prize, those visitors will be more likely to enter in their information.

Those are the five methods to make your free prize compelling. What are your thoughts about the list? Do you have any suggestions for the list? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

5 Ways To Engage With Your Customers

May 18, 2014 by Marc Guberti Leave a Comment

Business Engagement

Customers need to have a reason to buy a product. Once the customer buys your product, they need another set of reasons to become a returning customer. One of the reasons customers will buy your products is if you engage with those customers. Many people miss the importance of engaging with their customers. Engaging with customers gives them a reason to buy your products and come back. Engaging with the customers shows them that you care about them. In order to engage with your customers, follow these tactics.

Use social networks and reply to the people who mention you. Thank the people who share your blog posts and buy your products. Thanking someone shows that you appreciate that someone read, shared, and/or bought your content. If someone buys your eBook, ask that person what their favorite part of your eBook is and strike a conversation. As the conversation develops, ask that person if they would write a review for your eBook.
Allow people to contact you on your blog. Some people prefer to email their questions than to ask them. If you allow people to contact you through email, you will be able to build stronger connections with your customers. For your email signature, include links to your social networks and products so the interaction can continue.
Build your credibility. In order to get people to contact you, you need to be someone who is worth contacting. The bestselling author who is crushing it on Kindle is the person worth contacting. The professional athlete is someone worth contacting. Make yourself worth contacting so more of your customers contact you.
Respond to emails as quickly as possible. I respond to emails every day for 30 minutes in the afternoon. That is the ideal time for me to respond emails because I do not write as many words in the afternoon.
Build an email list. Promote a free product in your eBooks so you can capture your reader’s email address. By building this list, you will be able to identify all of your customers. Amazon does not make it easy to identify the people who bought your products. However, if you get people to enter their email address to gain access to a free product, you will be able to identify your customers. Then, send those customers a personalized message thanking them for buying your product. After that, be sure to stay in touch with that customer.

Those are the 5 ways to engage with your customers. Engaging with your customers is one of the most underrated ways of boosting your sales. What are your thoughts on the list? Do you have any additional tips you would like to mention? Please share your thoughts and tips below.