How To Differentiate Your Business – February 2008
Welcome to the February 2008 edition of the APD newsletter.
Well, what an interesting month it has been! The markets have been on a rollercoaster
ride (I’d hate to be a trader right now) and everyone is now running scared of the big
“R” word!
It is now more important than ever that you heed the messages I’ve been giving you
these last few months and make sure you ride the waves to personal profit. I won’t
repeat those messages, but what I will give you are some great business
“differentiators” this month. Ideas that will help you stand out from the crowd no
matter what business you are in.
So, without further ado, let’s get going, there’s a lot to cover.
The first thing I want to impart to you is something that is really very simple and is
something that I will be implementing in my business this coming month.
I was watching a video on a sales page of a diet and detox product this week. Nothing
special you say, quite a few people do this now. This particular video was actually
very powerful and made me really look into the product very deeply. OK, I am trying
(not very successfully if you’ve read my blog) to lose some weight and get a bit fitter
myself. So, I did have a vested interest.
However, the point is this, the video made me stay on a site I would otherwise have
left…and it made me buy the product in the end.
That got me thinking!
So, I did some research and this is what I found out…putting video on your sales page
can increase sales…massively.
Now the percentage varies depending on what you read, but it’s anywhere from 30 –
250%.
So, as the big “R” digs in its claws, this would appear to be an excellent way to
differentiate your site and to increase sales. As I said, I will be implementing some
video very soon, and I’ll be making sure I keep a close eye on the results. I’ll report
back in due course.
The second differentiator is one that I do use. Ask your customers what they want.
It’s all too easy to get stuck in your own little world, particularly if you run a small /
Internet business from home.
The best, most successful business people are constantly asking their customers for
feedback, ideas and what else they can offer.
This is just a sensible, good business discipline, but out of all the sites I subscribe to,
very few actually do this. Funnily enough, this again happened to me this week. And guess what?
I responded to give feedback and the person concerned (who will be reading this) came back to
me and said: “Great idea, I’ll do it.”
Who wins?
We both do. He has a couple of ideas for new offerings to his customers and I get
some cool information that I’ve been after for a while.
One of the common themes in questions I get asked is: “How do I find new product
ideas? ” Well, what better way than to ask people what they want from you. This is so
powerful and is a much overlooked technique.
Another way of increasing business is to become invaluable to people. There are a
couple of ways of doing this.
Firstly if you are an authority on your subject the advice and information you give,
provided it is good and profitable for your customers, will make you invaluable. This
is especially so if it is new, detailed or cutting edge information. Your customers will
refer you to other potential customers and word of mouth will become a powerful
weapon for you.
The other way to make yourself invaluable is once you have customers paying you for
a product or service, is to offer them something else (maybe free), that locks them into
your main product line.
You will need to have a repeat or residual income model for this to work. If you do,
then if you offer something of real value (for free) that is taken away if the customer
subsequently decides to stop receiving your main product, you have a very powerful
method of making yourself invaluable.
So, for example, if you have paid for a monthly newsletter, you might offer free
access to your online archive for as long as they subscribe. This is another very
powerful and easy to implement method to keep you ahead of the competition.
Finally, invest in yourself! This is a really interesting one. I’ve championed the “you
should never stop learning” ticket in the past. For my money, the second you stop
learning is the second you start to die…at least mentally. You should always be
looking to push your boundaries, get out of your comfort zone.
If you do this, interesting things will happen…and here’s an example.
This last month or so, I’ve been learning Adsense. I made three really quick pages as
an addendum to my diet and detox blog (please…don’t ask, I need to get properly
committed, yes…I know, here am I waxing on at you).
Anyway, very simple pages, here’s an example…
www.apd-marketing.co.uk/hoodia.htm
I took a blank Frontpage document, coloured it blue. Inserted a table (one cell) with a
white background and sized it as I wanted. I found a few relevant articles on the
Internet, did about 10 minutes further research and mixed and matched to come up
with my own article which I wrote in about 30 minutes.
I added one 468 x 60 AdSense module and hey presto…I had my first AdSense site.
It’s made me $2! Don’t laugh…I’ve made money using AdSense which is more than
95% of people do! And it wasn’t difficult.
It took me about three hours to go through the tutorials, learn what I needed to learn
and get a basic site up.
OK, I know, what’s so good about all of this?
Here’s what’s good. I took my new knowledge and merged it with some old knowledge and came up with an 80 page AdSense website.
Most of you know I worked in recruitment for 20 years. In 1997 I wrote a book about
how to get a job. In fact, Chapter 2 of the book is available on the APD Free Stuff
page as a free download. It’s about deciding what you want from life, so I thought it
would be useful.
Anyway, I purchased some AdSense templates from one Cody Moya.
I had a look through and picked one I liked. I then dropped the book into the template
on 80 separate pages, dropped in the Adsense code and I have an 80-page website.
It took me roughly three complete days to get it 100% right. Not bad for a first
attempt.
It will be live, hopefully, early next week. You can see a sample page at…
(Edit 2009, the site went live in early March 2008)
Now, if each page on this site makes me $2 / month, that is $160 / month every month
for…ever. For just three days work. As it happens, the hoodia page just has the one
AdSense module, while the Get A Job pages each have four. Now I don’t expect I’ll
get four times the income because of the extra modules, but maybe twice. So…that
makes it $320 /month, now that’s a bit better!
As I know many agencies I’ll be mailing them all offering this as a free resource, so
hundreds, maybe thousands of agencies, will be linking to the site, so, say that
doubles income as well…Hey, $640 /month. Now we’re talking!
So, as you can see, investing in yourself can pay good dividends. How would you like
to increase your income by over $500 per month in a so-called recession?OK, that’s it for today. I hope you agree, a very powerful newsletter this month, with
plenty of food for thought.
As always, please feel free to email me with your thoughts, ideas or with anything
you’d like to know about. I always answer all of my emails.
Until next month, get out there and do something…for yourself.
If it’s to be…it’s up to me, it’s people like you that can make the money to help keep
the economy afloat! Go for it!
As always…to *YOUR* success
Cheers now…and remember – have fun!
Derek
Internet Marketing from APD