No B.S. Guide to Direct Response Social Media Marketing

by Kim Walsh-Phillips

Social media is just a channel to acquire leads and move them toward the sale.

Pull qualified prospects out of social media as quickly as possible and onto a channel you own, such as your website or a separate landing page.

When this is your goal, you’ll realize that effective social media marketing is only part of the equation.

Converting traffic into leads and sales once it hits your website is just as important.

I interviewed optimization expert Tim Ash to learn about the mistakes businesses are making with their websites and landing pages as well as strategies to increase lead and sales conversions.

Tim is the bestselling author of Landing Page Optimization and CEO of SiteTuners. A computer scientist and cognitive scientist by education (his Ph.D. studies were in neural networks and artificial intelligence), he has developed an expertise in user-centered design, persuasion, and understanding online behavior, and landing page testing. In the mid-1990s he became one of the early pioneers in the discipline of website conversion rate optimization.

Over the past 15 years, Tim has helped a number of major U.S. and international brands to develop successful web-based initiatives. Companies like Google, Expedia, Kodak, eHarmony, Facebook, American Express, Canon, Nestle, Symantec, Intuit, AutoDesk, and many others have benefitted from Tim’s deep understanding and innovative perspective.

Tim is also the online voice of conversion optimization as the host of the “Landing Page Optimization” podcast on WebmasterRadio.fm.

Where Testing and Optimization DON’T Intersect

Kim: What are some of the biggest mistakes folks are making that they could correct to make their site more optimized?

Tim: I devote an entire chapter in my Landing Page Optimization book to what I call “the seven deadly sins of landing page design.” They are pretty common, endemic in almost every page we see.

There is too much text on the page, usually for good reasons like SEO, but it’s still too much text. There are visual distractions: an unclear call to action, too much choice. These things overwhelm people by expecting them to digest your stuff.

You have to remember that most visitors are guaranteed to be lazy with short attention spans. They are apt to act in a stupid way because they are not investing the time to understand everything.

They have the attention span of a burning match.

Kim: Companies spend all of this energy on SEO to drive traffic to their site, but if they get a lot of traffic they can’t convert, it’s completely wasted.

Tim: That’s right. There are really three stages to online marketing. One is to interrupt people, get their attention, and get them to your site. This is traffic acquisition. The next is conversion rate optimization, or how to get them to act once they are on your site. Finally, once you have established contact (and hopefully the right to speak to them via email or some other means), it’s time to increase the lifetime value of the relationship by nurturing the lead.

We basically do something that affects all traffic sources. From pay-per-click ads to when people type your URL in the browser to social media or whatever your methods are for getting them there, they still interact with the landing page or website. Those are the things we tune and improve.

Kim: For the average entrepreneurs who are trying to optimize their sites (and maybe want to get into a little bit of testing), what would be a couple of things you would recommend they start testing first?

Tim: Testing is not the same as conversion rate optimization or landing page optimization. They are not equivalent. A lot of people say, “Test! Test! Test!” and that is great, but there are limitations to testing. Maybe you have highly seasonal traffic. If you are dropping emails, you cannot really do too much testing.

A very common problem is not having enough data. People say, “I have a bazillion people visiting my site,” and I ask, “How many conversions do you have, actual form fills, sales, or what have you?” Unless you have ten conversions a day, you cannot even talk about basic A/B split testing where you have the original version vs. another version you are testing.

Testing is based on statistics, and for that you need a large number of conversions. It cannot even be used in a low-volume environment. Unless you are spending a lot of money to drive traffic, yes, the leads have high value, but you do not have enough of them to figure out how to optimize your landing page.

Kim: Let’s say I am getting 150 conversions a day. What is something I might want to look at first?

Tim: We always prioritize when we come up with test strategy, the combination of potentially biggest impact with the least amount of work. “Biggest impact” means how much traffic and value is running through a particular page or part of your website, or how steady that traffic is.

Or how broken is a given page or system, and how easy would it be to fix? If you are talking about a very high-volume page, you might only need a headline change, a button change, or how your call to action is presented. That is very easy. It is just some graphics or text on a page.

On the other hand, if you are saying, “I am going to change my entire registration or sign-up process,” it is a big project for an unknown payoff.

However, you should not think that every test is going to be a winner. In fact, you might have bad ideas that could underperform what you have right now. But it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still try.

Think of it like the DEA. They get part of their budget by selling off the assets of the drug dealers they have taken down. This thing should be self-funding. If you are making money for the company, say, “Give me 10% of the improvement to put back into testing activities.” It kind of snowballs from there.

Kim: I just had a conversation with a client yesterday who said, “Well, I don’t think that program can produce beautiful pages or beautiful emails.” She was talking about a specific product.

We talked about how “beautiful” does not necessarily convert the best. I know I have had that same conversation with this client before. She might not love how it looks, but it is the one that has done the best for her.

How do you deal with this kind of response?

Tim: Nearly half of our brain is devoted to processing visual information in one form or another. It is very important to us. We definitely have aesthetic reactions—we love it or hate it. But like you say, the only thing that matters is what rings the cash register.

If the CEO of the company comes in and says, “I like purple polka dot buttons on the landing page,” we say, “Great!”

We test more and throw purple polka dots into the mix.

“Oh, look! The green button won by 20%. That means an extra million dollars a year to you. Do you still want to go with the purple polka dot one?” This is a very different conversation.

Whenever you can, co-opt other ideas. As long as you have the data rate or the traffic, the number of conversions to data test, feel free to throw some other versions in the mix. You just need to find one better-performing version. But for political reasons sometimes you need to throw dumb ideas into the test as well. Who knows? The boss may be right and the purple polka dot one may win! In that case, you are still a happy camper.

Kim: For sure. We just ran one like this. We would have assumed the logo would have been the worst possible thing to run in a social media post, but it did the best out of every ad. You just cannot assume. Ever.

Tim: It’s a new definition of pretty: the one that makes you the most money. That is the prettiest one.

Kim: Can you talk about progressive disclosure as a way of releasing web content?

Tim: Basically, the idea is that if you ask me to take a 30-foot standing broad jump, I’m not even going to try. If you have a form or some kind of registration path or process or checkout flow on your page that is very complicated and imposing, it is unlikely that I’m going to go through the process.

However, if you ask for just a little bit of information now and then over the course of multiple interactions with me perhaps fill in the rest of it, then I am willing to do bite-sized chunks over time.

Basically, you should not ask for a whole form fill, like “What industry are you in? How many employees does your company have? How likely are you to buy in the next three months?”

That works for your salesperson on the phone, but it is not necessarily what I want early in the process. However, if you collected my email in exchange for an educational download, and then got my phone number, and then got my mailing address, and you did that over several interactions and incentivized me to do each of those in baby steps, you are still going to get the lead. It is just going to take a little longer.

In fact, you are going to get more leads because your funnel flows smoothly instead of abruptly requiring I hand over my Social Security number and my firstborn child.

Kim: It is like trying to get someone you just met at the bar to marry you.

Tim: Buy me a drink first.

For more from Tim Ash, visit www.SiteTuners.com. For the conference, visit www.ConversionConference.com. And pick up a copy of Tim’s book, Landing Page Optimization, on Amazon or anywhere fine books are sold.

Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3: The Number-One Way to Prevent Wasted Marketing DollarsTesting, Testing, 1, 2, 3: The Number-One Way to Prevent Wasted Marketing Dollars

by Kim Walsh-Phillips

I have no desire to throw away a single dollar of my hard-earned money. And I am sure the same is true for you.

Along the same topic of conversation I had with Tim in the last section, another reason why social media should be a tool in any sophisticated marketer’s arsenal is the ability to test theories and optimize accordingly in a moment’s notice. Unlike direct mail, print advertising, or other media channels, there is no need to invest significant dollars or wait 30, 60, or 90 days to see if version A, B, or C of your ad works. Tracked correctly, in a day or two you will know exactly what the results are of your different ads and can scale up or down accordingly.

I attended a conference a few years ago and sat in complete disbelief. During an awards program, no one was told why the winners had been selected or how it had anything to do with the dollars-and-sense results of the ad creation that caused them to win.

Nothing.

And this was a major ADVERTISING conference.

It did not matter one bit how much money was spent on the ad campaign vs. how much was earned. Accolades and pretty crystal statues were served up regardless of ROI.

Of course it is much easier to operate this way. Fluffy awareness-based campaigns can be based on assumptions, guesses, gut instincts, or even on the artistic, whims of a quirky creative director. They are campaigns that are “fun” to put together and stress-free as they don’t have any level of accountability. But they should only be used if you are also willing to light your money on fire.

Put the match away.

Foolish companies allow their money to be spent on whims.

Great marketing that produces monetary results is based on facts, not guesses. Optimized results are developed by examining data and changing campaigns accordingly.

In comes the power of social media. In real time, you can optimize an ad campaign based on an audience’s behaviors, likes, habits, and hobbies. You can instantly scale advertising spend up or down depending on the results you are getting.

Split Testing

The reality is, though, that very few businesses use even 20% of social media’s power. So they are wasting their dollars time and time again in this channel. They guess instead of test. They assume instead of research.

One rule of marketing that I have found to be true time and time again is assumptions are usually wrong. When I am speaking to an audience or presenting online training, I share some of our top split tests. And 90% of the time, the audience gets it wrong.

Nine times out of ten, they are wrong.

Meaning that if ads are only created on assumptions as to what will work the best, then ads would never be optimized. Just think how much money is wasted! Just think of all the vacations at the beach with a hot sun, a cool breeze, and an ice-cold drink in your hand could have been taken with this money. Stop assuming and start testing.

On the following three pages are some split tests to challenge your wits. Guess which one you think won. The answer for Figures 14.1 and 14.2 is on page 271. The answer for Figures 14.3 and 14.4 is also on page 271. The answer for Figures 14.5 and 14.6 is on page 272.

How many did you guess correctly?

If you are like my audiences, not many.

Do you know the one thing I am 100% sure about in marketing?

That is, I don’t know all of the answers (or even most of them).

In my career I am blessed to be able to do a lot of professional speaking and am often asked questions about the best ways to execute strategies. I get questions such as how often to post a new Facebook status, the best times to send out an email, or the most effective headlines to generate the biggest response. While I can offer general best practices (post at most once per day, don’t send out your emails on a Monday, and make the headline about the target audience’s pain), I can’t offer specific strategies without one very important step—testing.

FIGURE 14.1: The Fertility Center Split Test Ad #1

FIGURE 14.2: The Fertility Center Split Test Ad #2

FIGURE 14.3: Bath Planet Split Test Ad #1

FIGURE 14.4: Bath Planet Split Test Ad #2

FIGURE 14.5: GKIC Split Test Ad #1

FIGURE 14.6: GKIC Split Test Ad #2

FIGURE 14.7: The Fertility Center Split Test Ad Winner

FIGURE 14.8: Bath Planet Split Test Ad Winner

FIGURE 14.9: GKIC Split Test Ad Winner

Testing communications strategies to a small segment of the target audience before launching to the entire audience is a way to gather data on the most effective method of communication. Testing small is the number-one way we prevent wasting money in our clients’ marketing campaigns and can show continuous improvement.

Imagine an ice cream manufacturer releasing a new flavor. It doesn’t just put something together and send it directly to the stores for sales. It creates several versions, tests in-house, tests out-of-house, and then chooses the option that performs best.

Your marketing should be treated the same way—with no guesses or assumptions.

We recently split-tested email time-of-day for one of our clients and found that sending email in the evening received double the response rate vs. the same email sent in the morning. We can (and will!) use this data to optimize its future messaging.

Take the emotion out of your marketing, and execute your strategies based on measurable results from your testing.

Our motto: Test small and launch big.

When testing, keep the following social media ad-testing best practices in mind:

• Track conversions, not clicks. You want to optimize your overall ROI, not waste dollars on clicks. An ad that gets 100 clicks is NOT better than an ad than only gets 25, if the second ad gets more conversions.

• Set up the target market demographics so you are always testing only one thing at a time. If you combine too many variables in your ads, it will be difficult to optimize them well. (Was it the moms who did best or those who were recently engaged?)

• Start with split-testing the demographic, and then use the best performing demographic in the rest of the tests. (Do moms who like rugby do better than moms who like HGTV?)

• For the ad image that performs the best, test changing the ad’s coloring to see if it performs better. (Does a black background perform better than blue or white? Better than red?)

• Take the best coloring of the ad, and test different wording to see if that makes a difference. (If we tell them to “click here” vs. “download now,” does that do better?)

• Test adding a call-to-action button vs. running without a button. (Does adding a call to action hurt sales because your social media post now looks like an ad or does it help sales because there is a clear path the prospect can take for action?)

When you have run all of your optimization tests, it is time to move onto the landing page.

Here’s a quick checklist of the items to test for:

Ad images

Headline

Text

Target market demographics, interests, and behaviors

Landing page copy

Opt-in form

Text below the photo

When the ad is run (time of day, day of week, week of month, month of year)

Daily budget

Type of bid, automated or manual

Placement (Newsfeed, right side, mobile app, mobile and/or desktop)

Unfortunately, social media is like any other form of marketing. If you want a continued high ROI you have to keep testing. Steven Spielberg was rejected by the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts multiple times. He went on to create the first summer blockbuster with Jaws in 1975, and has won three Academy Awards.

Do not rest on your laurels. Status quo never got anyone Academy Award Success. Continue to test to earn your next blockbuster actually deserving of an award.

You’ve Gotta Play to WinYou’ve Gotta Play to Win

by Kelly LeMay

Side note from Kim: Often companies, brands, or movements have one face, person, or personality that stands out front to represent the organization as a whole. For my firm, Elite Digital Group, that is me. But in reality, there are nearly 20 people working behind the scenes to produce our client campaigns successfully. The author of this chapter, Kelly LeMay, has been with me for over ten years and is the one employee who transitioned with me from fluffy public relations firm to direct response social media agency. As much as I have been a serious student of direct response, she has been right alongside me learning, experimenting, optimizing, reporting, and improving. And in reality, she works with clients more than I do, so she maybe/probably is better at the fine details of testing than I am. After I was witness to a presentation by her about one of the apps we have done some work for, Tennis Central, I asked her to share it with you as an example for why you should NEVER assume anything about your ads.

Yann Auzoux, a former professional tennis player, has won over 60 national and international events. He started playing tennis when he was 11 years old, which would be considered late to most pro players, but quickly accelerated to be the national champion within one year. Nowadays, Yann has a passion for teaching others the game of tennis. He has coached several professional tennis players, was the head coach at George Washington University, and taught private clients through his prestigious FifthSet Academy (http://fifthset.com/).

What was once a hugely popular sport in the ’70s and ’80s has steadily been on the decline. Yeah, a lot of the old-timers are still picking up the racquet and hitting the court, but there has been a significant decline in the number of younger Americans playing the sport, whether it be socially or competitively.

This is how the brainchild of Yann Auzoux was born. Being the highly motivated tennis player and entrepreneur that he is, Yann saw an opportunity in the marketplace to reach this younger demographic, a way to reach an audience who is always on-the-go, glued to their phone, and doesn’t have the time to invest in the game. He developed an app that allows players to track their progress, access a library of video tutorials, find players in their neighborhood, and find available courts. Users could even engage is some friendly “smack talk” through the app. The app was called Talk to Da Back Hand. Kidding (although it has a nice ring to it). The app was named Tennis Central.

We were introduced to Yann in the summer of 2014 through our friends at the web development company who built the app and website, Sonjara. It needed a partner to help design the site and app interface. The site needed to speak to many audiences: the social player, the competitive player, and the networking player. Through imagery and a series of playful slogans like “Mixing Business and Pleasure,” the site and app were launched in fall 2014.

Step 1: Image Testing

With the app launched, and the inevitable initial tech kinks worked out, we began work on our Facebook campaign to get qualified users to download the app. We knew we had a lot of testing in front of us. Even the most savvy marketers (that would be my boss, you know, the one with her name on the front of this book!) can’t predict which combination of text and imagery this audience will respond to. And so we test. And we test some more. And then we do some really geeky nerdy tests.

The first test up was imagery. We started with four different images, all with precisely the same text. (See Figure 14.10 on page 277.) If you test too many variables at once, it’s hard to know what the catalyst is. First up to bat:

• Celebrity Image. In this case it was a still shot of a training video that Yann did. I love this image for a couple of reasons: the image catches him mid-serve, which subconsciously triggers a “need to know more” flag in the viewer’s brain. Also, Yann is wearing a red shirt, as he does in most of his training videos. Red shirts statistically convert at a higher rate than any other color shirt.

FIGURE 14.10: Tennis Central Split Test Ads Using Four Different Images

• Blonde Pretty Lady. Another image that often outperforms others is a pretty lady. And this lady just happened to be playing tennis. Bonus! This particular image speaks more to the social aspect of the app than it does to the technical or competitive side.

• Brunette Pretty Lady. If blondes aren’t your thing, don’t worry, brunettes use the Tennis Central app, too. This woman, slightly more approachable than her bosomy counterpart, is on the court and ready to play. She’s a bit more universal in that she could be meeting up with a friend for a casual match, working on perfecting her serve, or networking with other young professionals.

• Blue Ball Image. This image had me juggling my words for quite some time. I used to refer to it as “the guy who is holding a tennis ball that is blue,” which rolls off the tongue like an 18-wheeler. It wasn’t until recently that I came to grips with just calling it the “blue ball guy.” Yeah, I said it. This image is great because it’s unexpected, and anytime we can stand out in a sea of stock photography is good.

Results: It didn’t take us long to recognize that the image that was converting at the lowest cost per download was the image of Yann. (Because he’s pretty much awesome at everything he does, it’s only fitting that he’s awesome at winning Facebook image split test competitions, too.)

Armed with this knowledge, we decided to dive deeper and test the original image vs. two additional images with a simple text overlay. (See Figure 14.11 on page 279.) We went with the red, white, black color scheme that consistently outperforms any other color scheme. Still no change in pattern. The original image stood strong producing 40% more downloads at 38% lower cost per download.

FIGURE 14.11: Tennis Central Split Test Ads with Different Images of Yann Auzoux

Step 2: Text Testing

We dove deeper. The post text we had been using was somewhat all-encompassing. It covered every aspect of the app from the technical to the social aspect. What would happen if we split those two ideas up and created one post that was just about personal connection and another that was about improving skill? (See Figure 14.12 on page 281.) Well, we found that when we simplified the text, the post “Easily connect with tennis enthusiasts in your area” won the audiences’ approval. Furthermore, it gave us some insights to the Tennis Central audience as a whole. Connecting to people is one of the main drivers for downloading the app. This phrase is slated to be rolled out in some offline marketing pieces as well.

This combination of imagery and text worked for us for a long time. We were getting app downloads at $2 a pop, and we’d ride that train all night long until we got kicked off. But slowly we saw the cost rising and we knew we had saturated the audience. So, we went back to the drawing board.

Step 3: More Image Testing

Going back to our original image test, the pretty lady images didn’t win, but they also didn’t perform so horribly that we wouldn’t give them another shot. (See Figure 14.13 on page 282.) There was a new pretty lady in town, and she was wearing our favorite color . . . red. And just to make her more interesting, she was throwing a tennis ball in the air that got cut off the top of the image. Instant interest. And to boot, she came ready to play, bringing app downloads in around $1.30 each.

FIGURE 14.12: Tennis Central Split Test Ad with Three Different Texts

FIGURE 14.13: Tennis Central Split Test Converting Ad with New Image

Step 4: Audience Testing

When it comes to audience testing, there were many different avenues we could take to hit each type of player.

In our testing, the following target audiences performed the best:

• Look-alike of FifthSet emails. Whenever we start a new campaign, we want to start with something we know. Yann had a list of emails from his FifthSet Academy training. We knew we needed people like them, so we created a look-alike audience to find people with the same likes, behaviors, and habits.

• Look-alike of current app users. Once we reached 1,000 email addresses, we could create a lookalike audience of actual Tennis Central users (while this was more than likely similar to the lookalike of the FifthSet email list, it was more accurate from a statistical standpoint).

• People who have visited www.TennisCentral.net. This was an obvious hot lead list (and yes, we excluded existing members). Our numbers proved this was a key list to use, and web retargeting continues to be one of the top audiences for most of our client accounts.

Engaging with Fans

Aside from Facebook ads, we wrote posts and managed daily content on the Tennis Central Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn pages. What I loved about these posts is that we got to play a bit as this brand is a bit conversational, super fun, and a little risqué. (See Figure 14.14 below and Figure 14.15 on page 284.)

FIGURE 14.14: Tennis Central Risqué Ad Increased Engagement

FIGURE 14.15: Fun Tennis Central Ad Encourages Audience Engagement

The Social Effect

No matter how fun posting may be, the bottom line is really all that counts. And for Tennis Central, social channels continued to be the top referral source for TennisCentral.net as well as app downloads. To me, it seems only natural. Things are a lot different than they were back in the day when tennis ruled. Now we live in a world where technology rules, but we can use that technology to connect other humans to play a game of tennis and maybe engage in some quality smack talk.

Why Doesn’t a Click Turn into Business?Why Doesn’t a Click Turn into Business?

by Parthiv Shah

Side note from Kim: If you have made it this far in the book, congratulations are in order. I believe you have a greater chance of implementing the strategies contained in it. And if you do, then you are going to need to do something with all of those leads you begin to bring in. If you leave it up to you or your team to manually facilitate them, then you have a great chance of losing leads and the dollars and time spent bringing them in. To effectively manage your lead flow, you need a system in place, something that can be automated and optimized. In this chapter Parthiv Shah, President of Elaunchers, www.Elaunchers.com, shares how to develop a system for social media.

Let’s say your social media has done its job. You have attracted your ideal prospects, patients, or clients to your Facebook fan page. They liked your page. Then you ran clicks to a website ad and drove these people off Facebook to your website.

What happens once they get to your website?

If you are like 97% of most businesses, nothing happens.

You spent all that money on a website. Why doesn’t a click turn into business?

Does your website tell your prospects what you want them to do? Is that information displayed front and center, above the fold? Is your website too cluttered?

After studying thousands of websites and working on hundreds of websites and landing pages, I developed a formula for building a “perfect” website. I call it “Parthiv’s Perfect Website Layout.” Here is my philosophy. There are four types of people visiting your website:

1. Clients who visit your website for logistical reasons (login, request appointment, seek driving directions)

2. Prospects who have never heard of you before and are there for the first time

3. HOT prospects and referrals who are ready to interact with you and need a strong call to action

4. Information seekers who want to read up on you, check you out, and build trust and credibility in their own minds before they decide to engage

In this layout we cater to ALL FOUR VISITOR SEGMENTS individually. (See Figure 14.16.)

FIGURE 14.16: Website Mock Layout Caters to All Four Visitor Segments

• In Parthiv’s perfect website layout, there should be a video or a slide show on the left two-thirds area directly below the navigation bar and a squeeze form to the right of video/slider. This area caters to prospects who have never been to your site before. The soft squeeze will get them started in a lead nurture sequence.

• The squeeze form can be either a single offer squeeze or it can have other layouts.

• You can have multiple offer buttons in that area that would take you to offer-specific landing pages.

• OR you can have one squeeze form with an option button, “Which free report would you like to read?”

• Notice the four black boxes below the video and squeeze. These are called “HARD” Call to Action. The four HARD Call to Action buttons cater to warm through hot prospects and referrals that come to your website who already know you, who have seen your stuff before, and who are ready to make an initial commitment. We always recommend the following four HARD OFFERS:

1. Special Offers

2. Current Events

3. Testimonials

4. Tell-a-Friend

• The interior pages are offer/product specific squeeze pages with HARD calls to action like “Buy Now” or “Download a coupon/gift certificate.”

The header area will be constant throughout the website. It should also be visible on the mobile-friendly responsive layout. Therefore, the header should not be ONE BIG IMAGE. It should be a collage of multiple elements including:

• Your logo

• Your tag line

• Your telephone number (as text, not as image)

• Your social media buttons

• Your customer-friendly interaction buttons like:

• Login to portal

• Request appointment

• Driving directions

Now let us look at this layout in action: Here are a couple of pictures (see Figures 14.17 below and 14.18 on page 289):

FIGURE 14.17: Campbell Wealth Management Website

FIGURE 14.18: Petrover Orthodontics Website

These sites are clean, comforting, and professional. On the right—where your eyes go first—is a squeeze form where you should offer a free report or a free three-video course when a prospect fills out your form. Now the prospect has entered your funnel, and you can start building a relationship.

Underneath that offer is a newsletter and video update.

In short, it is an easy-to-understand website with multiple clear calls to action that result in sophisticated follow-up marketing. Much better than a car dealer.

What would make it even better is if your Facebook ad led prospective clients to a specific landing page that only referenced the offer from the ad. That way the visitors would know they were on the right page, and not “mistakenly” sign up for anything else before doing what they came there to do.

If this whole process of attraction, engagement, and conversion seems familiar to you, it should. It’s just like sex. (See Figure 14.19 on page 291.) I explain this concept in great detail in my book Business Kamasutra: From Persuasion to Pleasure (www.businesskamasutra.com).

Think about it: Relationships between businesses and their customers are very much like those built between humans.

Let’s talk about sex. How does it work? Well, the first step is segmentation. You don’t want to sleep with just anybody; you want to be picky.

Kim and Dan have done an excellent job in this book sharing with you how you can use social media to target your ideal client, customer, or patient.

Once you know who you are, once you know who you want to go after, then you are going to organize, orchestrate, and execute an approach.

Do you walk up to the first person you meet in a bar and ask them to marry you? Of course not. You want to approach in the right way. You are seeking consent. And you should not be seeking consent for mating, you should be seeking consent for dating. Make sure your message is using the right moves so you don’t get a drink tossed in your face.

Once you approach people, what happens? Will they ignore you? Will they like you and consent to continue the conversation? Or will they get upset that you had the audacity to approach them?

If you are not meant to be together, accept the “no, thank you” and move on. The world is filled with other opportunities.

FIGURE 14.19: Audience Attraction, Engagement, and Conversion Is a Courting Process

Let’s say you are successful in persuading someone to raise a hand and say yes. He is interested in talking to you (or at least in getting your irresistible free offer). Now what do you do? He didn’t give you consent to mate. He gave you consent to date. So date! (See Figure 14.20.)

FIGURE 14.20: Audience Courtship Can Be Segmented Into Routine Processes

What happens during the dating and courtship period? How long should you date? While you are dating, what are you going to do? You are going to establish trust. How do you establish trust? Trust is a very mathematical thing. In my opinion, trust is 10% emotions and 90% mathematics. You can build your business in a way that you establish trust with whomever you wish to build a relationship with. If trust is controlled by data and can be mathematically measured, you can manage and maintain trust. You can elevate trust. You can improve your intimacy by increasing levels of trust.

How do we do this from a marketing perspective? First, you have to deliver what you promised.

If you offered a free report as your lead generation magnet on social media, there should be:

1. An instant PDF download of that report,

2. An opportunity to receive a hard copy via direct mail (to capture full contact information),

3. Perhaps an email that goes out right away with a link to download the report, and maybe, just maybe . . .

4. A tell-a-friend page where the prospective customer can send his friends a copy of the report as well.

We are going to talk about monetization of trust. (See Figure 14.21.) That’s the mating part. Well, hopefully dating and courtship will reach to a point where you get consent for intimacy. When you get consent for intimacy, you are ready to mate. You are approaching a point where you are about to get intimate. It is a very delicate moment, what do you do?

FIGURE 14.21: The Anatomy of Trust

What does mating mean from a business standpoint? You are about to make your first sale.

You want to make sure the process is filled with pleasure.

What does it take to make someone happy, prepare them for mating, and make the experience pleasurable? When did you last experience pleasure during a business interaction? Think. Was an experience at Starbucks pleasant? Was an experience at Marriott pleasant? Was an experience at Walmart pleasant? How about at the used car dealer? Or the dentist?

What happens if the experience is not pleasurable to people? Well, if you are the only game in town, they will stay. But if they are doing business with you and you constantly agitate and annoy them, it’s still not going to work.

They will proactively look for someone else who does what you do who can take care of them better. If they are not annoyed, realize they will still be approached by other businesses. You may lose your customers to a better looking supplier who promises a better experience.

People buy emotionally and justify rationally. If your process is filled with pleasure, they will give you a tight hug back. They will repel your competition. They will keep buying from you. They will buy more. They will generate a better relationship

Now let’s talk about transforming your relationship after mating. You need to provide good value in exchange for the money they are paying you.

Spend enough time, energy, resources, and money to make someone comfortable. Establish the relationship and then capitalize on it.

If your deliverables are shallow and if you are unable to please your constituents in a meaningful way, you will not be able to monetize your relationships.

You cannot afford to do segmentation, organize, orchestrate, and execute your approach, get consent, build relationship, do the whole dating routine, make them comfortable when they are ready to mate, engage in foreplay before mating, and then mate—only to lose them after the first sale. Too much time, money, and effort are at stake if you don’t build a long-term relationship with your customer.

Now it’s time to have babies. The term “having babies” means asking your customers to help you build your world—asking for referrals, asking them to usher you into relationships where you can do business with someone they already know, like, and trust.

If they can usher you into new relationships, you will not have to work so hard to organize, orchestrate, and execute an approach. The dating ritual will be shorter, foreplay will be more pleasurable for you and your clients, and mating will be more meaningful. Relationship building and seeking referrals from existing customers is the end game.

Now that you see where this is all going, let’s break it down into bite-sized manageable chunks.

What is your irresistible free offer? Do you have one? Does it convert well? What I mean by conversion is, if 100 people were to visit that offer, how many of them would take you up on it? How do you know if you should be happy with the number of people who take you up on that offer? Every industry is different, and every offer is different. I would be happy to give you some perspective as to how many people should be signing up for your offer if you call me at 301-760-3953 to request a free consultation.

You see? I just practiced what I preached. I made an offer to you if you are ready to take the next step with me.

In order to craft an irresistible free offer that gets a good number of ideal prospects to sign up for it, you have to think like prospects. What do they want? What pain are they feeling that led them to seek you out? What keeps them up at night? What are they hoping someone like you can do for them?

My clients at Elaunchers are small-business owners with $500K to $2.5MM in revenues. They fiercely compete against larger rivals with deeper pockets. They often feel they need 18 arms to run their businesses. They don’t have enough hours in the day to get everything done, let alone learn all they want about marketing their business. They are tired of money going out the back door of their company without coming in the front door at a much faster pace. They are frustrated with how demanding their business has become. Sometimes they feel like all they did was create a job for themselves that doesn’t pay enough for the level of stress they have to deal with. They lay awake at night wondering when it will ever get easier.

Does that sound like you? If so, then you will love our “Step-by-Step Profit Multiplying Marketing Automation Blueprint.”

You see how that works?

When you communicate your irresistible free offer to your target market, you are looking for one of the following reactions: 1) How do you do that?; 2) How can I get one of those?; and 3) Where have you been all my life? If you get one of those reactions (or they offer to give you money on the spot to alleviate their pain), then you know you hit the nail on the head.

You want them thinking that you understand them, and wondering if you have installed a secret webcam in their office (that’s a joke—forgive my Indian sense of humor).

So let’s review what we have done so far:

1. Picked a target market that has a pain you can get rid of and who can afford to pay you what you want to charge to fix this pain.

2. Crafted an Irresistible Free Offer that follows Dan Kennedy’s proven copywriting formula. (For more on this formula, get a copy of The Ultimate Sales Letter and the Magnetic Marketing course by Dan Kennedy.) The formula is: Problem—Agitate—Solve. You want to identify their problem, make sure they are agitated by it, and then position the next step with you as the solution for their pain.

FIGURE 14.22: Communicating the Irresistible Free Offer

3. Ideally you would use a marketing automation system like Infusionsoft to capture their contact information, deliver the irresistible free offer, and follow up with them to take the next step with you.

4. Of course, you need to promote that offer to your target market, and in this book you’ve seen numerous ways to find them and get your offer in front of them.

So let’s hypothesize that all this worked. Your ideal prospect clicked on the ad to like your Facebook page. Then they clicked on the ad from your fan page that took them to your website. They signed up for your offer, and you delivered it to them. Congratulations! You have just established trust. You did what you said you were going to do. Now you need to get them to take the next step in your relationship.

That next step could be:

• Opening your next email

• Clicking on a link in your next email

• Sharing your Facebook page on their news feed so their friends see it

• Filling out a Tell a Friend form on your website to spread the word about you

• Using your website to book a consultation with you

• Attending an event (either in person or online)

• Coming in to your office

• Buying something from your website

• Showing up at your store or restaurant with some type of tracking code that lets you know how they got there

You get the idea. This list is only limited by your imagination.

No matter what you have them do, you need to make sure you can track that behavior. As you can imagine, the more ways they have to interact with you, the more data that behavior will generate inside of their contact record in your customer relationship management or marketing automation software. (See Figure 14.23 on page 299.)

Let’s talk about how you manage and monetize all of that data, or as I like to call it—establishing your rhythm.

Why is establishing rhythm important? Because without rhythm, you will be randomly doing things that may or may not help you get where you want to go in regards to your new relationship with your new prospect.

To establish rhythm, create an annual marketing calendar. It should have a list of proposed daily marketing activities, weekly marketing activities, monthly marketing activities, quarterly marketing activities, and annual marketing activities. The calendar my company creates also has a marketing ROI calculator and a monthly marketing expense budget.

FIGURE 14.23: The Breakdown of the Role of Data in a Relationship

So, how do you go about establishing your rhythm, and why don’t you feel that you have a rhythm already established? Do you feel like you have a bunch of people living and working on an island and they just do whatever they do but there is no synchronization or harmony among them?

Unfortunately, you are not alone. Most growing businesses have this problem. Some often refer to it as “growing pains,” but in reality it is a problem that can be avoided or fixed.

Here is the root cause of the problem. Most businesses start with A HUMAN. The human buys or builds the apparatus that the human is comfortable or experienced with. As a business grows, the human brings more humans, and more humans bring more apparatus that they are comfortable with. A growing business is a random collage of humans, apparatus, processes, and silos of data. Eventually, everything gets out of hand, so the first human buys a management book or hires a management consultant who comes in and tells you that everything you have ever done is WRONG and you have to start over and build a so-called “system.”

The problem with that line of thinking is, it’s a bit too structured, too bureaucratic, too rigid, and it slows down the pace of a GROWING business. You can’t put a toddler in the military. A business needs to grow to a certain maturity before the “professional” project management and/or process management systems can kick in and actually work. Therefore, a successful, growing SMALL business should use a simplified version of process management. I call that RHYTHM.

Here’s one way to build your RHYTHM without disrupting what you already have working. You first start with your MONEY line. How do you make money, and how do you spend money (who pays whom, when, how, how much, how frequently, and why)?

Once you have your stakeholders listed in this way, you are ready to draw the “data line.” You can do this exercise with either “toy soldiers” or “Lego pieces.” Just put something on the table that gives you a visual.

You want to write down who consumes what data at what frequency and at what velocity—before, during, and after the money exchange.

Start with money, add humans to money, figure out how humans consume data and what VARIETY of data needs to be generated by what process in what VOLUME at what VELOCITY.

Once you have your three Vs of Big Data figured out, build ONE central database that captures, warehouses, catalogs, analyzes, and displays the VOLUME and VARIETY of data at the VELOCITY that is meaningful to you and your ecosystem.

Once your central database is built, connect your current apparatus and your current humans to the new Rhythm and train them.

If your business is at $500k to $2M in revenues, you might benefit from a workflow called “Perfect Customer Lifecycle” from Infusionsoft. Please visit www.perfectcustomerlifecycle.com to request a copy. To get the most out of it, be sure to ask for the digital, fillable PDF of the book.

I just made you another irresistible free offer!

Now that you better understand how the courtship begins, I hope you’ll jump into the dating pool with YOUR business and start building stronger relationships.

To find more about marketing automation, Parthiv Shah, or ELaunchers, visit www.Elaunchers.com or call 310-760-3953.

#NoBSsm Tweetable Takeaways#NoBSsm Tweetable Takeaways

Aim for “biggest impact” website traffic, meaning traffic that is high quality and goes where you want it to on your site. #NoBSsm

Don’t ask a new marketing lead to hand over a Social Security number and firstborn child. #NoBSsm

If ads were only based on assumptions, they would never be optimized. Stop assuming and start testing. #NoBSsm

Track conversions, not clicks. Optimize your overall ROI. Do not waste dollars on clicks. #NoBSsm

Too much time, money, and effort are at stake if you don’t build a long-term relationship with your customer. #NoBSsm