Are you an Entrepreneur?

There is a lot of discussion these days about what defines a true entrepreneur and whether financial success is a pre-requisite of being an entrepreneur. Well, rather than argue moot points, let’s look at this from a practical, self evaluation perspective and see what is revealed. Below I compare and contrast being a freelancer with being an entrepreneur – I can’t wait to read your comments:

1. A freelancer is about the work. An entrepreneur is about the business…
2. A freelancer is a doer. A freelancer knows the tactics. An entrepreneur is a negotiator, a visionary and a thinker. An entrepreneur builds strategy and is constantly testing it.
3. A freelancer thinks the work is the business. An enterpreneur knows the business supports the work.
4. A freelancer is disinterested in ‘business controls and necessities’  – including thinking, budgets, invoices, business plans etc. which all get in the way of the ‘real’ work. An entrepreneur understands that without those ‘business controls and necessities’, it is simply not a business – it’s a job.
5. A freelancer might want to grow a Client base. An entrepreneur knows a business either grows or decays, and is constantly looking for ways to keep the growth managed and within reasonable risk parameters.
6. A freelancer lives in the now with an eye to long term Client relationships that might afford some security. An entreprenuer is looking to a vision of the business, now is a reflection of what the business will be.
7. A freelancer often doesn’t invest in his or her own equipment, training, or help. Many freelancers don’t delegate low-level skills or tasks that they don’t do well, because they think in terms of cost rather than investment and best use of time and resources. An entrepreneur knows that time is money, invests in future development and the business vision. An entrepreneur will pay for skills that he or she doesn’t have knowing that it is money well spent on quality and commitment.
8. A freelancer works from day to day. An entrepreneur has a business plan.

Landing Pages

Landing Pages are the weapon of choice for many marketers.
Marketers who do not employ Landing Pages either do not understand the
concept, or they are just plain lazy.

A Landing Page is more than just a duplicate of your sales page renamed
for a PPC campaign. A Landing Page often strips out many elements of
“effective design” and focuses on selling the product or service.
The main purpose of your Landing Page is to give the visitor two
choices: Buy or Leave. Nothing else. Don’t distract them with other
options. That is why they are there – don’t make the mistake of giving
them too much to choose from. If you want to get them to subscribe for
more information, fine. Then create a “name squeeze” page, but don’t
confuse yourself. Landing Pages are for one reason and one reason only
… to make a sale.

Here is a short laundry list of what I do when I create a Landing Page:

Font Face, Color & Size:
There is one thing that most people hate, and that is 4-5 different
fonts that clutter up the landscape of the page. Different Fonts for
headlines is fine. Different fonts in your body text is not good, it is
distracting. Don’t do it. Keep to one font in your body text. Testing
shows that the best “off line” (print) font is Times New Roman. This is
why it is the default font on the internet. Big mistake. Testing shows
that Times New Roman is one of the worst fonts online. Why? It causes
rapid eye fatigue.

The best fonts? Verdana and Arial. Standardize on Verdana as it
consistently outperforms every font out there in terms of reducing eye
strain and increased readability. Use standard fonts in the body of the
page, if you want an usual font for a headline, create it as a graphic
so it will look the same on every computer. You want your message to
have the look you intended.

The text should be readable. The standard size is “2”. Text should
always be dark on a light background (black text on a white background
is preferred). Landing Pages aren’t designed to allow you to show off
how “cute” you can be. This is serious stuff, you are selling. Put on
your “best face”.

Make the Links Easy to Find:
Now, having a cool CSS file that makes the links change colors, add or
remove underlines is fine on your site. Knock yourself out. However,
they have no business on your Landing Pages. Why? Because confusing a
visitor is not your priority, getting them to buy is.
Use standard linking practices to avoid confusion. If a potential
customer can’t distinguish between text and a link you are going to
lose. That’s not good.

Standard colors are:

* Unvisited Link – Underline in Blue
* Active Link (when the mouse “hovers” over the link – Red
* Visited Link – Purple

I recommend not messing around with the visited link, just have the
standard unvisited and hover so the visitor has some interactivity and
the link will “catch” their eye. I have done a ton of testing and the
standard linking practices always have better conversion ratios.

Color Scheme:
The colors you choose should match the product or service you are
selling. Soothing yellows, greens and blues are best for skin care. Pick
your color carefully as they will either bring the visitor in deeper
into the sales process or turn them away. A site for men shouldn’t have
pink as the primary color … or secondary color for that matter.

Not sure the colors to use? Look at the competition, as it is a great
place to start. And if you still aren’t sure, test.

White Space:
White space has been referred to as “negative space” by many designers
and thus, avoided. All of those designers should lose their jobs. This
is not high school art class. You are selling here, remember? White
space is good. White space is your friend.
When I look at a Landing Page with effective use of white space, I see
perfection. Without white space, text becomes unreadable, and the
graphics and other important elements become “washed out” and the
message is lost.

White space is more than just a background “color” – it is a part of
your conversion design. This also leads into another area, page
backgrounds. Don’t use them. Over the years I have seen floral designs
on iPod sites, vacation pictures as backgrounds, and even a woman and
her cat as the background …. and these were ALL landing pages.

Page Width and Page Height:
Have you heard the term “above the fold”? I am sure you have. It comes
from the newspaper industry and referred to ads and information that was
above the folded area. Testing found that 86% of the people who picked
up a newspaper at an airport, train station, office waiting room, never
“flipped” the paper over … they just looked “above the fold” only. The
same is true online. Did you know that of the people who don’t scroll
down that 6% of them don’t because they don’t know how?
Yes, you read that right. They don’t know how.

If your landing pages scrolls vertically on a 1024×768 resolution you
need to redo it. And if you are forcing a visitor to scroll
HORIZONTALLY, you are guilty of one of the worst web design mistakes of
all time. The scroll bar is your enemy. All of your important
information, including your Call to Action must be above the fold. Period.

Page Theme:
A Landing Page is geared to sell a particular product or service. So, if
I am doing a search for left-handed golf clubs or a Hawaiian vacation, I
am expecting to see a page about those topics. Don’t be lazy. Deliver
what I want, and I will be more likely to buy. Don’t dump me on a cookie
tracked version of your home page either. The content needs to match my
search. If not, I will most likely leave.
Stress Benefits, Not Features – Very few people care about features,
most care about benefits. Stress the benefits of the product or service
and you will increase your conversions.

Call To Action:
A no brainer, right? Wrong. Too many sites fail to have an effective
Call to Action. This is typical of most new and non-experienced sales
people. They fail to ask for the order. They just assume that the
prospects understands. Newsflash: They don’t. Explain what you want them
to do in easy to understand language, or an effective graphic. A “Buy
Now” is a Call to Action, and often a very effective one.

That’s it – we know you’ll be able to put these simple, but tested and
proven landing page strategies to work in your own business, whether
you’re an affiliate or marketing your own products.

Are You Running a RevGen Machine?

Here are 10 things I think about when a Client comes to us for help with their website.

1) Is there actually a market for your product?
By that I mean, are you absolutely positive that you’re selling a product or solution that people are actively looking for online – and not finding? That, by the way, is the formula for a successful business. The best way to answer this question is to do keyword research and confirm whether people are using search engines to look for a solution to the problem your product addresses — but not having any luck finding one. Our two favorite keyword research tools are Wordtracker and those available to Google Adwords users.

2) Are you getting enough traffic?
Before you can really judge your website’s effectiveness, you need at least 1,000 unique visitors (not pageviews). If you’ve only had 100 visitors and haven’t made a sale, be patient! You just need more traffic. Once you’ve reached 1000 visitors, then you can begin to assess how effective your site really is.

3) Are you getting targeted traffic?
If you’ve had 1,000+ visitors to your website and you still haven’t made a sale, find out where your visitor traffic is coming from. That’ll help you know if it’s targeted or not. The best way to get top-quality traffic to your site is by bidding on extremely targeted keywords in the pay-per-click search engines. By “targeted,” I mean, keywords that speak directly to the people who are most likely to buy your product. If you drive 1,000 visitors to your site using targeted keywords in your PPC ads and you still don’t make a sale, then we know the problem isn’t the quality of traffic you’re getting. It’s your website.

4) Is your headline effective?
If your site doesn’t have a compelling headline that clearly communicates a powerful benefit, your potential Customers aren’t going to stick around to read your offer. Writing a better headline is usually the easiest way to fix a floundering website. If you get more people to stay on your site and read your offer, more people will buy your product.

5) Are you distracting your visitors from your main sales message?
You need to get rid of everything that distracts your visitors. This includes: links to other websites, Google Adsense ads, banner ads for other products, free articles that don’t support the sale…
Keep your visitors focused only on buying your product and your sales will go up.

6) Are you using testimonials effectively?
Like I said in last month’s editorial, testimonials are one of your most powerful selling tools. Nothing says, “Buy it now!” like an unbiased third-party recommendation. If your site is brand new and you don’t have any testimonials yet, give your product to a few friends or better still – industry colleagues and ask them to provide you with testimonials and photos / videos on how well it worked for them.

7) Does your guarantee take away the risk of buying?
A good guarantee is an essential selling tool – especially on the Internet. Unless you’re a major brand (like Sony, Apple, Nintendo) that your Customers inherently trust, you need to let them know you’ll stand behind your product. Reassure them that if they’re not 100% satisfied they can send it right back for a full refund. And remember, a longer guarantee usually results in more sales – and fewer refunds!

8) Is your price too high? or too low?
Most people know that if you price your product too high, you’ll hurt your sales. But this can also be true if your price is too low. People get suspicious when the price is far below their expectations. They think it’s probably “too good to be true” – and as a result, they don’t feel confident making a purchase. Use some common sense when it comes to setting your price and do your market research to know where you fit into the market – consider your objectives… How do you want to be perceived – as a high end provider or a low price outlet etc.

9) Is your ordering system easy to use?
Just because you can figure out how to navigate through your ordering process, it doesn’t mean your average Customer can. If you want to make sure your ordering system is “user-friendly,” find a few friends who aren’t very Internet savvy and get them to order your product. Watch over their shoulders and take notes. Where did they get stuck? Make sure you fix whatever problems they encountered – because your potential Customers are encountering them, too!

10) Do you have good salescopy?
If you aren’t using well-written salescopy to sell your product, then you’ll never achieve online success. It’s that simple. It doesn’t matter whether your particular site needs short copy or long copy, the fact will always remain: Your product isn’t going to sell itself! You need to find the right words to do the job. If you are not confident with your sales message, your text or your pitch, let us know, this is something we do for our Clients all the time… in fact, all of the above 10 items help to give you an idea of some of the services BoxOnline offers Clients to move their business forward so that they too can succeed with their online ambitions.

Marketing vs Sales

Ok, I admit it. I’ve wanted to tackle this one for years and now I’m going to do it. Ready?
Most entrepreneurs and many business people confuse and combine marketing and selling and this has got to stop because they are two very different types of activities. Please allow me to explain.

What exactly is Marketing? (most entrepreneurs get it wrong)
Marketing is bringing the market to desire your product or service. The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous. The biggest obstacle to marketing effectiveness is attention span. Human attention has become the scarce resource of the information age. When you add it all up, more information is being generated in the next 24hrs than you could absorb in the rest of your lifetime. Paying attention is rare because time is scarce. Your marketing needs to break through the ever present information smog so that it gets the attention you want from your target audience. In an attention deficit society, consumers are forced to look for shortcuts. One of the most popular shortcuts today is to find an expert or a specialist that can do the thinking for you and then, even make decisions for you. Dan Kennedy said “Most people are simply wandering around with their umbilical cord in hand looking for a place to plug it in” Give them something to plug into with your marketing message.

What is Sales?
Sales activities get people to take action. Selling is about converting a prospect into a paying Customer. You may achieve this verbally in person, over the phone or in a recording or you may get results by using a well written and compelling sales letter. Your focus with sales is to get the order. Your focus with marketing is to create desire. It is usually that simple.

A bit of comparision: Sales effectiveness can be easily measured. Marketing effectiveness is a bit softer and thus, I would suggest to use marketing systems, strategies and tactics whose performance can be measured with metrics relevant to your business. Spend money on a good sales person and measure his/her performance but never throw money at marketing campaigns that don’t allow you to track conversion rates easily.