There’s a term in the advertising world used to refer to someone who’s learned to ignore ads on websites and social media to the point where their brain literally refuses to see, acknowledge or process information in banner ads.
The term is “banner blindness.”
It’s the one type of blindness we are all grateful to develop, even those of us who are Internet advertisers. After all, marketers are people too and we don’t want to be distracted or interrupted either.
With that said, the uphill battle banner advertisers deal with is pretty interesting…
For example, on this heat map study tracking eye movement of Facebook users, you’ll notice that the majority of users pretty much ignore the “Right Hand Side” ads:
(Source: DigitalGrowth.com)
Another eye tracking study tracked eye movement for a news site (similar to a blog) and notice how the banner on the left is completely ignored, relative to the content in the middle:
Over the years, mentors of mine taught us about ‘banner blindness’ and conveyed the importance of doing whatever you could to snap website visitors out of that state of ‘blindness’ and to notice your ad.
Even if you had good ad copy, it wouldn’t really matter unless you could ‘break the blindness’ issue and literally attract eyeballs.
For that reason, a couple years ago, we experimented with the most obnoxiously colorful and seizure-inducing flashing ads, but the effort always seemed futile, because even if you got someone to notice your ad… it was only a matter of time before the audience of a website, as a collective, added your obnoxious ad to the brain file of ‘things to ignore.’
And so we’d restart the “creative process” and produce an even more obnoxious ad.
With this type of traffic generation, I wasn’t too excited about marketing, believe it or not, because the game was less about influence and more about being the “loudest” ad on the website and if you know my personality, I’m not a loud guy.
So for years, I kinda went on a traffic hiatus and let my business partner and team handle the traffic part of our business while I focused on conversions, copywriting and offers.
Now fast forward to today…
How I Turned $20 Into $141,246.00 in Sales by Pushing This Little Blue Button…
As many of our members know, last year I purchased 100% of my No Excuses & SEO Networker business from my former partner and then merged all my business assets with Elite Marketing Pro, to the benefit of our community.
Having the opportunity to be a significant share holder of THE marketing system and community, where I got my start as an Internet marketer in 2006, was quite literally a dream come true. But this dream also came with responsibility and as Chief Marketing Officer of EMP, I needed to re-engage with the world of traffic, as it is the life’s blood of any online business.
So as I did my research into all viable traffic sources, I did find many awesome traffic strategies which included PPV, YouTube (free & paid), Instagram, Twitter PPC, and many others.
However, the one traffic source most dominant in the minds and businesses of the most successful marketers today was in fact Facebook, but I didn’t really know how to approach it.
For years, I had spent $20 here and there boosting the occasional post on my Fanpage, but had no idea what to do beyond that.
However earlier this year, I wrote a blog post about my experience at a network marketing event I went to in Vegas and boosted it for $20 on Feb 28th targeting an MLM audience. That day, I had also landed in Orlando for one of our EMP Acceleration Mentorship Workshops.
I didn’t think I would make much if any money from it, even though I did offer an opportunity to join my AMF Bootcamp newsletter at the end of the post. But I thought the post was way too long and didn’t think people would be likely to read that far — especially if they are reading on their smartphones. (Boy was I wrong!)
All I wanted to do, is to simply share the content with as many people as possible, provide value to people in the network marketing space and maybe a couple folks would opt into the AMF Bootcamp newsletter.
The first day, I got some pretty good interaction on it and said to myself, “Wow! People seem to be digging the content,” so I boosted it again and again every 24 hour period. I had previously never made a sale (or at least not that I knew of or could track) from a boosted post, so I didn’t expect things to be any different.
For me, it was simply a vanity thing, seeing people enjoy, share and comment on what I had written.
Fortunately, the EMP system does allow our affiliates to share any page on our EMP domain, including EMP blog posts, using affiliate tracking, so I did do that just in case, but I still was not expecting any sales.
However, I started noticing commission notifications on my EMP account starting to come in and happening more frequently. I was like, “Well that’s kinda cool. The EMP system must be closing some old leads,” which happens all the time, so I didn’t think anything of it.
(HELLO!!! McFly!!! Anyone home!?!)
Incredibly, for the first 48 hours, it hadn’t occurred to me that the sales in my EMP account were as a result of my boosted post. Then on the 3rd & last day of the Acceleration Workshop, after watching Kate McShea do some FB Ads training for our workshop attendees, the light bulb went off in my head!
“Could it be?!?”
“THIS boosted post…
… was making me money!”
But I wanted to verify, so I went into my backoffice under the “My Prospects” area and noticed that there was a flood of new leads that had come in over the past 3 days into my EMP account and the data showed that they had all opted in to AMF list, after visiting my boosted blog post.
Now realizing what was happening, yet without any formal Facebook Ads training, I simply continued to boost the blog post so it could be shared with as many people as possible.
After about 5 days, I had spent a total of $200, was generating up to 100 leads per day and had already made over $2,000 in commissions with my EMP account.
Damn! Let’s Pour Some Gasoline on It!
While still not knowing quite how I did it, I didn’t want to let this “honey hole” pass me by so I just ramped up my ad spend on the boosted posts from $20 per day to $100 per day and then at one point to $300 per day. (I don’t recommend you be quite this aggressive with a new FB account.)
From Feb 28th thru March 31st, I spent a total of $2,997.99 and I had generated over $21,212.50 in sales! That’s an ROI of 607% in just 1 Month.
All because of this little blue button:
But that’s not all!
Over the next 6 months, through continued advertising of about $50 per day (total ad spend of $9,524.90) and the compounding effect of the EMP Follow-Up system including 1-on-1 mentorship provided by our Ignition Coaches and the support from our community, the new customers I generated through that ad, would pretty soon upgrade into our higher ticket coaching programs resulting in $141,246.00 in total sales.
Let me say that again…
$9,524.90 in ad spend over 6 Months, resulting in $141,246.00 in sales! An ROI of 1381%.
But Enough About My Results! It’s Your Turn!
It’s safe to say that once again, I was pretty stoked about traffic and I made it my mission to dissect what I had done here, not only for myself but for the betterment of our community.
Now throughout this process, I’ve been sharing with our community what I’ve been doing here and there. But in the coming days, we are finally going to unleash the most comprehensive & bad ass traffic training we’ve ever done, based on the secret sauce I discovered AND featuring the best traffic experts available anywhere! (Can’t tell you their names yet, but it’s BIG!)
For now though, I want to breakdown the principles which made my boosted post work and how you can experiment with your own versions of these ads to sell whatever you want.
Principle #1 – Location, Location, Location!
Remember what I said about “banner blindness” earlier? Well, principle #1 is all about NOT having your ads placed in the traditional banner locations on ANY website.
Instead, your calls to action should actually be in the middle of the page – PERIOD!
Whether it’s a blog, Facebook or any other site, the prime real estate is right smack in the middle. I’m not saying that side bar banner ads don’t work, because they certainly can.
What I’m saying is that you’ll get tons more traffic if you can put your “ads” in the middle of the page, because that is where most of a reader’s attention is focused on.
How is that done you may ask?
Principle #2 – People Hate Ads, So Don’t Tell Them It’s an Ad!
In recent years, Facebook has allows advertisers to place ads in the News Feed, to the dismay and annoyance of Facebook users!
There was a time when my former business partners use to take the obnoxious ad approach and apply it to the News Feed driving people to a capture page and it worked for a little while, but unfortunately Facebook got some blow back so they came up with a system, which basically allows users to complain about your ads even if you weren’t necessarily doing anything wrong.
News Feed ads became a “catch 22.” Facebook wanted you to buy ads, but they didn’t want your ads to be perceived as advertising by it’s users.
Um…what?! You want to sell me ads, but you don’t want me to post actual ads?!?
Basically, Facebook and it’s users are forcing us to deploy an old ad strategy, which has existed for over 100 years in Magazines but is only now catching fire online.
It’s the rebirth of the ‘Advertorial.’ You know, the article in the magazine which isn’t really an article, but a clever way of engaging you with content and lead you towards a product sale.
(Universal Media Syndicate ad in local newspaper)
In the online marketing world, this is also referred to as ‘content marketing’ or ‘native advertising.’
I like to use the term ‘native advertising’ because the ‘native’ literally means that it belongs there!
You see on Facebook, people are accustomed to having their friends and business colleagues share interesting articles, videos and other content. That type of stuff belongs in the News Feed and your goal in using Principle #2 is to make your ad not look like an ad.
In fact, all principles of traditional ad copy go out the window in this case.
What you should be doing when advertising on Facebook is leading/sharing valuable content, which your target audience would likely be interested in and let the content do the selling for you. That’s why my blog post earlier this year performed so well – people didn’t perceive it as an advertisement.
It was just great content they enjoyed reading and learning from.
In terms of medium, some folks use video, but I’ll leave it to the Kate McSheas and Michelle Pescosolidos of the world to teach you about that type of native ad.
The medium that’s worked for me has been a written blog post.
Principle #3 – Content is King and People Still Hate Ads
Now just because you got someone to click on your News Feed ad, doesn’t mean it’s time to hammer them with a sales pitch. In fact, just because they left Facebook and are on your website, doesn’t mean they won’t go back and file a complaint against your ad.
Which is why, for the most part, we don’t recommend leading people to capture pages from your News Feed ads, unless you really know what you’re doing.
We recommend leading with content, like I did with my blog post. And your goal in writing that content is to totally OVER DELIVER with value!
That’s Principle #3 – if your content rocks, people will want more, which leads us to…
Principle #4 – Be a Leader
You’ll notice that we have banner ads in the sidebar of the EMP blog, but that’s there just to cover our bases. The majority of people that opt into our newsletter on our blog, do so through the blog post itself.
What I do, is I make an offer for more in depth training and provide a link for them to opt into my AMF or EMP newsletter.
In essence, it’s simply a continuation of what people already want to do when you provide them value. They’ll naturally want more value and now that you’ve gotten their trust and established your credibility, asking for their name and email is no big deal and they happily hand it over!
So all you need to do is BE A LEADER and tell them what you want them to do next and what benefit they can reap from that action.
- Offer value in exchange for their information
- Make an Offer after optin for something even more valuable
- Automatically follow-up via email to deliver more value and make and make the offer again
- When they buy your offer, OVER DELIVER on the product and if possible, make another irresistible offer
- If they buy 2nd offer, OVER DELIVER on that and if possible, make another offer
- … well … you get the idea!
OH… and retarget people that didn’t opt into your newsletter, so you can bring them back!
If you are new online marketing and advertising, then I’ve got good news:
You actually don’t have to worry about the VAST majority of this process, because here at Elite Marketing Pro, we provide you with ready-made offers to promote, so you can earn while you learn.
We also handle the follow-up and continuous over-delivery of value to maximize your conversions and ROI.
And, if at any point you want to create your own offers and graduate from our system, we’ll help you do that too! But we’ve got you covered in the meantime.
So we basically handle steps 2 through 6 of the above process.
All YOU need to be concerned with is step 1:
Offer value in exchange for contact information
As you learned above, the best way to collect contact information isn’t through obnoxious ads, sleazy capture pages, or banners that everyone’s blind to anyway, but through leading with valuable content using native-style advertising (much like this blog post you’re reading now).
Now…
Yes, this does mean you’ll do some writing.
No, you don’t need to be a “natural” writer or have impeccable grammar (…far from it, in fact).
But the question you really really need to ask is…
“Is writing valuable, content-based advertising worth the extra effort?”
Well, remember the post I mentioned earlier, the one where I wrote about my experience at a network marketing event? It took around 4 dedicated hours to write, and recall that it generated a 1,381% ROI for me over the next 6 months—which is certainty better than any mutual fund, interest rate, or even ponzi scheme promise I’m aware of. ;-)
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you’ll necessarily hit it outta of the park on your first swing.
However, you can learn our exact process for quickly crafting high-converting content right now in this 100% free video.
(See, told you offering value works!!)
You can use this methodology to promote absolutely ANYTHING you want, from affiliate offers to organic, non-GMO zebra chow.
But if you really want to learn about the power of the Elite Marketing Pro system, I suggest paying close attention to the entire presentation—taught by my good friend and business partner Tim Erway—because we pay hefty commissions to everyone that promotes our products.
And just as I made $141,246.00 in sales in just 6 months, your sales can compound over the next couple months too, as YOUR customers decide they want to become a part of our exclusive mentorship opportunities, offered exclusively via EMP.
Essentially, we’ll get those folks upgraded for you while YOU sit back and earn passive commissions.
And of course, we love our members because without you, our system, community and opportunity would not exist and there would be a massive void in our industry.
So thank you!
Another Great Article for Your Reading Pleasure is:
"How to Avoid Getting Overwhelmed When Starting An Online Business" (It’s Free!)
Hope you enjoyed the traffic training. More to come!
PPS: If You Don’t have a Team, Haven’t Recruited Anyone (or less than 10 people), This is the FREE Course you Should Get –Network Marketing Training Course
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This article was reprinted by permission from: Ferny Ceballos
This post by ferny never gets old, thank you for sharing it :)
ReplyDeleteJohannes
Http://Johannesgjeset.com
This post by ferny never gets old, thank you for sharing it :)
ReplyDeleteJohannes
Http://Johannesgjeset.com