Tạp trí Internet Marketing Số 30 - Feb -2014

FEBRUARY 2014

> GROW YOUR
BLOG VISITORS
TO 100K

JOIN US ON
FACEBOOK

P16

> 80/20 RULE
CONTENT
P22

> OPTIMIZING
FOR
CUSTOMERS

P26

> ANIMAL PROOF
YOUR
WEBSITE

P30

COVER STORY:
WEBINAR MILLIONS

> WIN THE
BATTLE OF
THE INBOX

STEVEN ESSA
>> THE ORIGINAL AND BEST INTERNET MARKETING MAGAZINE
DESIGNED SPECIFICALLY FOR THE IPAD, KINDLE FIRE, ANDROID AND THE WEB

P33

MEET OUR EXPERT PANEL
Neil Patel

is the co-founder of Crazy Egg, Hello Bar and
KISSmetrics. He helps companies like Amazon, NBC, GM, HP and
Viacom grow their revenue. The Wall Street Journal calls him a
top influencer on the web and Entrepreneur Magazine says he
created one of the 100 most brilliant companies in the world.
He was recognized as a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of
30 by President Obama and one of the top 100 entrepreneurs
under the age of 35 by the United Nations. Neil has also been
awarded Congressional Recognition from the United States
House of Representatives.
Read his article on Increasing Blog Visits on PAGE 16

Chris Garrett

is an online business consultant,
teacher, coach, new media industry commentator, writer (some
might argue that point), speaker, and all-round web geek. Chris
has been involved in several startups and has written for some
of the web’s best-loved blogs.
Read his article on Getting Results with 20% of Content on

PAGE 22

Lee Odden is the CEO at TopRank Online Marketing

and Author of Optimize. For over 15 years, Lee have been
helping many of the most respected B2B and consumer brands
develop winning digital and online marketing strategies that
focus on growing awareness, increasing engagement and driving
customer acquisition.
Read his article on Customizing for Customers on PAGE 26

Jon Henshaw

is the co-founder and Chief Product
Officer (CPO) for Raven Internet Marketing Tools, an online
marketing management and reporting platform. He has been
involved with website development and Internet strategy since
1995.
Read his article on SEO on PAGE 30

CONTENTS

5

1Expert

commentary on
what are the
big plays that have
recently happened
online and how they
affect you.

8

1Steven

Essa
shares his secrets
for getting
high conversions
using webinars in an
exclusive interview
with Internet
Marketing Magazine.

16

1Discover

How to
Grow Your
Blog to 100K Visits
a Month Within 1.5
Years

22
26

1How

to Get
80% of the
Results with
20% of the Content
1Learn

Why
A Transition
From
Optimizing for Search
Engines to Optimizing
for Customers is
Essential

30
33

1Learn

Website

Scott Dudley

is a direct response copywriter from
Perth, Australia, and he specializes in writing sales letters and
emails for his clients. You can find his impressive portfolio at
www.scottdudley.net/blog/portfolio. Or you can contact Scott
for a free consultation at www.scottdudley.net/blog/contact
Read his article on How to Win Battle of the Inbox on PAGE 33

2

internet marketing magazine
february 2014

How
To AnimalProof Your
1Win

the
Battle of the
Inbox

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

W

helcome to the first Internet Marketing Magazine issue of
2014. It is set to be a big year in Digital Marketing, and we
will keep you up to date with the latest news as it happens.

If you haven’t got access to the member’s area please feel free
to do at http://internetmarketingmag.net/become-member/ (it’s
free). This month’s complete audio interview with Steven Essa has now
been added. It has lots of sections in it that were not included in the
magazine, so be sure to check it out.
Our Google Play App is now fixed and gets updated roughly one day
after the Apple Newsstand issue. So please feel free to check it out if
you are on Android.
A special thanks to those who have left reviews in the apple
platforms as it really helps us out. If you are getting good value from
Internet Marketing Magazine and you can spare 1 minute of your time
to click this link to give us a quick honest review that would be greatly
appreciated (click ‘view in iTunes’ then scroll down and click ‘write a
review’, thanks :).
NEW: Send us a screenshot of your review in iTunes (info@
internetmarketingmag.net) and we will send you some great Internet
Marketing Training resources that I have put together in recent
months based on what we are doing in the marketing agency that is
working right now.

Regards,

Greg Cassar
Greg Cassar

is Australia’s leading Internet Marketing Strategist. With
InternetMarketingDoneForYou.com Greg & his team provide traffic, development
and conversion optimization services for medium to large businesses,
enterprises & eCommerce stores looking for serious growth online. You can
follow Greg’s latest updates by subscribing to Internet Marketing Magazine
at InternetMarketingMag.net for the new members area and the latest issue
updates.

february 2014

3

>

INTERNET UPDATE

THE
STATE OF THE INTERNET
In this section of Internet Marketing Magazine our editor Greg Cassar cover’s
the facts and provides expert commentary on what are the big plays that have
recently happened online and how they affect you.
> THE MAC TURNS 30
Whilst this is not a purely ‘Internet’ story it is
important because just about every switched
on entrepreneur that I know runs his or her
business on a Mac. This year the Apple Mac turns
30.
Starting from humble beginnings back in 1984,
the graphical user interface made computing
easier for millions of users as they no longer
needed to type in commands.

Despite it’s radical design, sales on the Mac
struggle for years. The Apple Mac has always
been popular with publishers, educators and
graphics artists. Most corporates stuck with IBM
and its clones running windows.
In recent years the Mac is now cool, largely
riding off the success of the iPod, iPhone and
iPad. Apple has gone from a company that

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february 2014

nearly went bust in the 1990s to now being
the world’s most valuable company. Many
entrepreneurs like Macs for the reliability, clean
quality design and a higher level of resistance
to viruses. Thankyou Steve Jobs for a great
invention.
> GOOGLE’S MATT CUTTS ADVISES GUEST
BLOGGING IS ‘DONE’
Google spokesman Matt Cutts recently advised
“guest blogging is done; it’s just gotten too
spammy. In general I wouldn’t recommend
accepting a guest blog post unless you are
willing to vouch for someone personally or know
them well. Likewise, I wouldn’t recommend
relying on guest posting, guest blogging sites, or
guest blogging SEO as a linkbuilding strategy”

>

INTERNET UPDATE

So does this mean that you shouldn’t do guest
blog posts at all? I don’t think so. If you are
a reputable authority and the post is for a
reputable authority blog then I don’t believe
there is an issue as Google isn’t stamping out
multiple author blogs.

Advertising is about to get interactive as user
can click the ad to expand it and also comment
on it directly from the website they are on.

I believe the point Google is trying to make
here is don’t accept guest blog posts from
people who you do not know; who are not
‘authorities’ in your field; or who are just
fishing for links back to their site. Also don’t do
guest blog posts on low-authority or ‘spammy
sites’.

Until 2013, there were only 22 functioning
gTLDs (Internet Top Level Domains). The most
popular of these are .com followed by .net and
.org.

> +POST ADS TURNS THE ENTIRE WEB INTO A
SOCIAL STREAM
Google has begun testing a new ad type called
+Post ads. These +Post ads are display ads of
brands’ Google+ video, image and hangout
posts.

> THE WEBS BIG DOMAIN GOLD RUSH

About 1,000 new generic top-level domain
names, or gTLDs (the last bit of an internet
address, such as the com in google.com) have
come into existence now as of February the
4th.
You may be thinking ‘why create a whole new
bunch of gTLDs if .jobs, .travel and the like got
so little interest?’ It is because .com is running
out of available suitable names.

The ad format effectively takes Google+ and
spreads it around the web in ad format for
brands. Website visitors can comment on posts
in the ad and share them within their circles all
from within the Ad.
Google plans on rolling this out on a big scale
across 2 million Google Display Network sites.
Google advises “This lets brands think of the
entire web as their social stream.”
Below is an example of a +Post ad from early
testers Toyota on the Google Display Network.
Certainly there will be some brands that
really do well out of having a domain that is
not a .com eg. Bit.ly. But for many years to
come I believe that the .com will still be the
premium domain. The reason why is because
most people are trained to go to .com and by
building a brand name at another high level
domain, whoever owns the .com version of your
brand name will be able to steal your traffic
without any effort because of human nature
and habits.

february 2014

5

>

INTERNET UPDATE
> FACEBOOK PAID “FREE TRAFFIC”

best quality content is being produced, surfaced
and shared. Our latest update to the News
Feed ranking algorithm helps ensure that the
organic content people see from Pages they are
connected to is the most interesting to them.”
What this effectively means if we put it into
plain English is that when you make a post on
Facebook it will now only reach a fraction of the
people that it did just a few months ago. You
can still get the same visibility for your personal
or brand posts but you will need to ‘boost’
them.

An example of ‘Boost Post’

Facebook recently announced on their business
blog “Our goal is to show the right content to
the right people at the right time so they don’t
miss the stories that are important to them.
As part of that we want to make sure that the

Effectively Facebook has made previously
free traffic now be paid. I don’t believe they
will achieve what they set out to achieve as
people’s newsfeeds will now be just wedding
pictures and cat pictures from people they ‘like’
regularly as well as brands who have paid to put
their messages in the middle.
Personally I welcome the change as most
marketers won’t know to boost their posts or
will be too tight to do so. IMM

>

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february 2014

ADVERTISEMENT

february 2014

7

> COVER STORY:

EXPERT INTERVIEW

“

If you can’t close someone
at the end of a 90-minute webinar and they don’t buy, you
have a very, very slim chance
they’re going to come back
later and buy from you.

“

8

february 2014

ALL ABOUT
STEVEN ESSA
• Steven Essa is an Australian Internet Marketer
with a large track record of success, particularly in
the Webinar space.
• Steven has an interesting background with going
from a Panel Beater to a Rock Star playing large
arena’s such as at ‘The Big Day Out’, to now being a
full time digital marketer.
• Steven and his clients have done over $20m in
sales from Webinars

> COVER STORY:

EXPERT INTERVIEW

STEVEN ESSA
WEBINAR MILLIONS
An Interview by Internet Marketing Strategist Greg Cassar
How did you get started online?
Steven: I came back from Los Angeles
following my music business days.
I started building up a portfolio of property
really quickly, with zero down, and then the
crash came in 2008. I remember thinking ‘this
property strategy’s not very good, if you don’t
have cash flow - how can I generate cash flow?’
I then re-read the Robert Kyosaki ‘Rich Dad
Poor Dad’ book. He said build a business, and I
knew that there was no better business to build
than an Internet business.

medium that has really taken the world by
storm, and I’ve been teaching it now since the
end of 2008.
It’s a platform that gets a higher conversion
rate than any other form of Internet marketing.
I believe it’s because you’re engaging more of
people’s senses. They get a sense of who you
are. It’s much more powerful than a website.
A webinar can be live, or it can be prerecorded. You can access people globally, and
you can do it easily through a system called
GoToWebinar.

I went to a seminar to learn how to help my
boss’s business, initially. I believe that if you
don’t have an idea or a product then go and
build someone else’s business on the Internet
first for them. I learned some strategies there
that made my boss around $106,000 in the next
4 months.
Of course, I couldn’t have done it without his
customers and without his database. It was six
months later that I quit and I started my own
information business. I’ve never looked back.
It’s been a great ride.

What is a Webinar and why do you like
webinars so much?
Steven: Webinar is short for ‘web seminars’,
so you can do a seminar on the web. It’s a

My first 10 websites never made me any money,
but my first webinar made me $594 in sales.
I didn’t even have the product ready at that
point. It’s just a powerful tool that’s leveraged.
You can interview experts, you can do all
sorts of things, but basically it’s the higher
conversion rate, and the ease at which you can
launch new information out to your database
and keep them connected that I love the most.
february 2014

9

> COVER STORY:

EXPERT INTERVIEW

Greg: What’s Your Experience with Google
Hangouts?
Steven: Recently I did a Google Hangout
and then I did the same presentation with a
PowerPoint the normal webinar way. We test
everything all the time, and we just found
that it worked much better with the standard
PowerPoint webinar model.
The audience don’t have to see you. If you
want them to see you, they can. We believe
you will get a higher conversion if the audience
is not looking at your face unless you are an
amazing highly polished presenter.

What are the Different Webinar Business
Models?
Steven: I use all different models, but in a
nutshell, I do what’s called the show and tell
webinar model. This is basically where you
take a product or a service or some information
that you have and, just like when you were in
school, you show and tell people what it is.
If you’ve got experience in buying property,
for example, you can show people how to buy
property in a specific style or technique.
Then, if you’ve got a product, you can basically
do a demonstration on your product. Its
commonly handled in this way “Welcome to
the webinar today. We’re going to demonstrate
how this software works and take some
questions,” and then at the end, they can pitch
the software and they’ll buy it. That’s a show
and tell webinar. Normally they run from 60 to
90 minutes, and you can sell pretty much any
product. I’ve sold products from $30 to $15,000
this way.
There’s one for interviewing experts, and this
is a great for list building. We previously set
up a one year-long webinar schedule, where

10

february 2014

we set up a one hour show every week. We
interviewed a different expert every week.
In the first couple of months I got over 1,000
subscribers.
This model is also great for building your
authority, and for meeting people that you
could possibly JV with in the future. I always
tell my students, “You only need three or four
really good joint venture partners to make
$100,000-plus in an Internet business.”
Greg: Do you prefer 60 or 90 minutes webinars?
Steven: As a general
rule, I always teach
my students that, if
you’re selling anything
above $1,000, it’s
going to need to be
more around the
90-minute mark.
If you’re selling a
$30 eBook or a $297
course, it’s fine to run it for 60 minutes, but
always make it as long as it needs to be.
Don’t drag it on. That’s a big thing. Keep your
webinar exciting, keep the content really good,
make it flow nicely, and basically just get out
of there when you need to. Don’t hang around
any longer than you need to and waste people’s
time.

What traffic strategies have you found work
well for getting people onto webinars?
Steven: Well, we use everything. Number one
on the list is joint ventures. We launched over
30 webinars last year, and all of them I think
made money except maybe 1 or 2 of them,
which we go back to the drawing board and
say was the target market right and all of that.
But we use joint ventures primarily as the
main source, so I’ll either promote my list to

> COVER STORY:
someone else’s webinar, because most people
on your list haven’t bought your product.

EXPERT INTERVIEW

least seven figures.
Greg: Wow, so JV’s more than anything else?

Make sure they’ve got a good product, make
sure they’ve got a good reputation and make
sure that they can back it up.

Joint venture is definitely the best. Every day,
you should think about who are the people, the
players in my field that I need to be getting out
to their database? You should be able to name
them in your industry. Go and research them
on Google. Look who the big players are. Go to
seminars, work out who’s got the list, and then
you should be emailing them and then following
up with a phone call every week, until they say
yes or no to you.
One of the webinars we launched was with
one of our students who is a joint venture
expert. She took a company from $700,000 a
year to $4.3 million in 4 years, and they sold
the company for over $11 million. She would
get big companies, like even AON Insurance
to joint venture with her, that put hundreds
of thousands of dollars of meat on the table
for that company, and she said, “I just kept
following up.” She was polite; she’d just ring
them up, “Hey, I just wanted to know if you’ve
looked at my proposal yet. I’ve sent you the
email, if there’s a win-win we can talk it
through” and six months later sometimes she’ll
get a yes, and then bang, that would be it. Just
with that strategy alone, someone can have at

Steven: JV’s, that’s it. There’s someone with a
list right now, who’s got a database right now,
who is not mailing them something like your
product, you could fit perfectly in with them
and they could make a ton of money and you
could make a ton of money. Right now, they’re
there, and tomorrow, you could go from where
you are right now in income to skyrocketing. If
you haven’t made any sales, you could go with
a webinar right now, from zero to $10,000,
$20,000, $30,000 in one webinar. I’ve got
clients that have done $105,000 in their first
webinar, just putting someone else on speaking
to their database and bang, just making money
that way, or going to someone’s database who’s
got a list, and then you’ve got the product, and
then making sales there. It’s a very, very fast
way to accelerate your wealth.
If you don’t want to do it that way, another
thing we’ve done, and we’ve had great success
with, is Facebook ads. But again, you’ve got
to be mindful. You’ve got to make sure your
targeting is right. You should get someone to
do it for you that knows what they’re doing,
and you should have a bit of a budget for it as
well, but not every campaign I’ve run has made
money. I’ve lost money on campaigns, but
just the other day, I did a campaign. We spent
$330 and I made 10 grand in sales, two $5,000
products were sold. Facebook ads are definitely
something to consider and look at.
Right now, we’ve got a campaign running for
a seminar, and I sent out a direct mail. Direct
mail is another great way to get traffic. Fortytwo percent of people have signed up as a
result of sending a letter to them, and I’ve got
less signups from my database. I think I’ve got
21 percent signups from my database, 44 or 45
percent opt-in rate from the direct mail letter.
february 2014

11

> COVER STORY:

EXPERT INTERVIEW
of this webinar, you’ll know
the step by step formula for
doing that,” so I make you a
big promise there, and then
tell them who the webinar’s
for. This is perfect for you,
if you’re a coach, if you’re a
trainer, if you’re an author.
Webinars are fantastic for
you.

Social media has been pretty good. Actually, out of the social
media that we’ve been promoting, Facebook profiles have been
the best. We’ve been promoting through our profile, so build up
your personal profile. Have lots of interaction, and then when
you’re doing something, launch it on there to your Facebook
community. Just make sure you can segment in Facebook different
friends. I have it segmented. Whenever I meet someone from the
Internet marketing business or we get a fan wanting to be friends,
I’ll be friends with them, but I created a list called Internet
Marketing, and then I have my personal friends. Whenever I
broadcast on Facebook, I send it only to that Internet marketing
list.

What about the presentation? How would you outline the main
stages of that webinar content process, from intro right through
to close?
Steven: As a general rule that we teach our students, if you’re
doing a 60-minute webinar, you want to have an introduction, a
middle, and a close. The introduction on a 60-minute webinar
might run for 10 minutes, no more than 10 minutes.
I’m sure you’ve seen webinars where the introduction just
keeps going and going and going, and by introduction, normally
the ingredients in there are just to give you some meat in this
interview. Normally I want to introduce, “Hey everyone, welcome
to the webinar. Today I’m about to reveal to you how you can–
seven secrets for making big money with webinars. By the end

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february 2014

Then talk about yourself. Say
what led me to this webinar.
“Well, I was trying to make
sales the traditional way,
and I was doing this and this
and this, and then I found
the webinar. The webinar
converted 10 percent, so it
was way better than just
doing a normal website, which
had made me zero sales, or 1
percent. That’s how I found
webinars. Here’s some case
studies and proof, bang, bang,
bang,” and if people don’t
have proof, they can just show
some stats. “Hey, industry in
webinars is a multi-billiondollar selling industry now,”
and that should be no more
than 10 minutes, to build your
case on why they should hang
around, why they should listen
to you in the first 10 minutes
on a 60-minute webinar.
Then we have the content
section, or the middle section
of the presentation. What I
like to teach is break it down
into steps. People love steps.
People can remember no more
than seven steps. It’s like a
shopping list.

> COVER STORY:
Yes, seven steps maximum, but listen, there’s
a caveat to that. If you’re doing a 60-minute
webinar, five steps is all you’re going to get
through. I always look for three, five, or
seven steps. Test it out. Don’t be afraid to
change. When I first started, I had seven steps.
Then I went to five steps. Now, when I do my
presentation on a webinar, I do three steps. The
less is best. If you can fit your stuff into three
steps and make it make sense, then do it.

Let’s talk about the close. It’s obviously the
most important part, and it can really vary,
depending on your personal style and taste,
as well as price point, which we spoke a little
bit about before. What’s your thoughts on the
different types of closes?
Steven: I have three very simple closes. A lot
of people don’t like to sell. I know, it’s hard to
believe, and we’ve done research, but most
people hate selling. There’s three types of
closes that I’ve developed.
One is what I call the soft sell. The soft sell
is as simple as saying, “Hey guys, if you’ve
enjoyed this webinar, then you’re going to
absolutely love our book or our video course,
which takes you through step by step in
detail how to put a webinar together. It’s
got the PowerPoint slides, and you just fill
in the blanks. There’s email support there,
everything you need to put together a webinar
the fast way. If you want to go and do it

EXPERT INTERVIEW

yourself, fine, but our course is already done.
It’s called Webinar Magic. It sells every day
for $3,000 online, but if you grab it right now,
then it’s only $2,000. Here’s the site where you
can go and grab it.”
Then we have a medium sell, which goes into
a bit more detail and shows a couple of slides
about what each product is. Let’s say, for
example, you offer a course, a webinar course
with some support and maybe with some Skype
sessions. You might show in detail, on a few
slides, what you’re covering in that course. Say,
“Hey guys, if you’ve enjoyed this webinar, I’m
going to take a moment if it’s okay with you,
just to tell you about our course that’s called
Webinar Magic, and here’s what it is. Here’s
the eight webinars. This webinar, we talk
about this and the benefits are . . .”
And remember, when you’re selling in the
close, the most important thing is to tell them
the benefits. They don’t care if it’s a webinar.
They don’t care if it’s a book. They want to
know what they’re going to get out of it, right?
There’s a thing we get, as when we create the
product ourselves, we get into the steps, into
the process. That’s what we get excited about,
but people don’t care. They just want the
results. They just want to make money, or they
just want to have the property portfolio or they
just want to have that result. Whenever you
say something in the close of your presentation,
like you say you’re going to get this DVD set,
you have to say, “Which will help you to
achieve this and this and this result, so you
can be financially free, so you can kick back, so
you can automate your sales process and work
on other parts of the business, et cetera, et
cetera.”
Greg: Yes, so you’re turning those features
into benefits, and ultimately the emotions that
those benefits bring.

february 2014

13

> COVER STORY:

EXPERT INTERVIEW

Steven: Yes, absolutely. That’s where the
gold is. That’s where the sales come from.
People don’t care about it. I’ve seen so many
webinars; we pull up our students all the time.
They go, “You get webinar one, where we show
you how to do research. Webinar two, we show
you how to set up a landing page. Webinar
three -” it’s like, who cares? You’ve got to say,
“Webinar two, we show you how to set up a
landing page, so you get higher opt-ins, so you
have to do less work, so you spend less money,
so when you send traffic, you get 30, 40, 50
percent opt-in rate, which helps grow your
business and make more money, so you can
retire faster,” as opposed to, “Yes, we show
you how to set up an opt-in page.”

whatever your guarantee is. Make it irresistible.
Build it right up, so at the end, it’s not going
to be five million dollars, for today only, it’s
going to be bang. Then, “Go here now to buy
it. Go on now.” Really make a big push, really
pressure them hard. It’s called the hard close.
If you can’t close someone at the end of a
90-minute webinar and they don’t buy, you
have a very, very slim chance they’re going to
come back later and buy from you.
Many people are interested in automation,
especially for webinars. What’s the process
for getting an automated webinar working? I
know you’ve got an excellent platform in this
space. I had a bit of access to that as well.
Steven: Yes, just on automated webinars, the
best way is just to set up–have a GoToWebinar
account and set up a live webinar and just
record it. What I find is when you put yourself
on the spot, your voice goes up. Your passion
goes up, when you know there’s people there,
whereas when I tried to prerecord videos on
the early days, there’s no one there and you
just don’t get as pumped up.

Then we have a hard sell, which is like typical
infomercial style where we say, “Hey, if you’ve
enjoyed this webinar, then you’re going to love
this package. Here’s what it is. You get this
part,” and it’s like eight webinars with this and
this and this, and put the value on each thing.
You say, “These eight webinars are valued at
$2,000 by itself. Then you’re going to get email
support, and in the email support, you can
email me personally for twelve whole months.
I’ll answer them personally for you, within 24
hours. That’s worth $5,000. Then, I will coach
you as well,”
You’re stacking everything up. Then you offer

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february 2014

You can do it with a prerecorded, with
Camtasia or Screenflow, and then what you
do is you need to upload that. There’s many
ways to prerecord a webinar. Our software,
Webinator.biz, will make replaying a webinar
easy for you.

> COVER STORY:

EXPERT INTERVIEW

How can our readers, listeners, subscribers, and members best
find out more information from you online?
Steven: We’ve got an event coming up called the Web Business
Breakthrough, and you guys can come along for three days and get
trained by my wife and I. I’ll be taking someone from the audience
on the first day, to set up a webinar for, a random person, and
then we’ll launch it on the Sunday. You can see how this whole
process works, from me taking random people. It’s a three day
event. We’ve sold it for $2,000 in the past, but you can come
along for free, if you go to that website. Come along and learn all
about it at that workshop. Just go to WebBusinessBreakthrough.
com, and they’ll be able to sign up for that. We’re doing it in all
cities around the world. Just register for that there, and we’ll
email you next time we’ve got one coming up, if you can’t make it
to those ones. IMM

february 2014

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>

BLOGS

HOW TO

GROW YOUR BLOG TO 100K
VISITS A MONTH WITHIN 1.5
YEARS
By Neil Patel

I

’ve done marketing for 20 of the top 100
blogs on the web, and I’ve created 3 blogs
for my own businesses that achieved at least
100,000 visits a month.

And with Crazy Egg, it took me 1 year and 6
months to hit 100,000 monthly visits:

With Quick Sprout, it took me 4 years and 9
months to hit 100,000 monthly visits:

As you can see from the graphs above, the
amount of time it took me to hit the 100,000
mark decreased. I went from being able to
achieve the goal in 4 years and 9 months to 1
year and 6 months.
With KISSmetrics, it took me 1 year and 10
months to hit over 100,000 monthly visits:

Luck has nothing to do with this achievement.
I actually have a formula, which works every
time. And if I leveraged it again today, I bet
I could achieve similar results in less than 12
months.
Here’s the formula I use to get blogs to 100,000
visits a month:
Quantity is king
With Quick Sprout, I noticed slight gains when
posting 2 pieces of content a week instead of
1. KISSmetrics only started to see big traffic

16

february 2014

>
increases when I started to publish 5 pieces of
content a week. But with KISSmetrics, we went
from publishing 2 a week straight to 5 a week.
This is why KISSmetrics had a much faster
growth rate than Quick Sprout. In addition
to that, we recently started testing posting 6
pieces of content a week instead of 5.

BLOGS

blogs like Mashable, and it’s what caused a
huge spike in traffic at KISSmetrics.
Within 2 years, we were able to generate
2,512,596 visitors and 41,142 backlinks from
3,741 unique domains from 47 infographics.
Just look at this screenshot of our traffic in
August 2010:

When we posted 5 a week, we had 422,885
visits a month.

When we tested posting 6 articles a week, our
traffic went up to 501,573 visits.

And now look at our September 2010 traffic:

By posting an additional blog post each week,
we were able to increase our blog traffic by
18.6%. My experience of working with 20 of the
top 100 blogs showed that if we published 3
pieces of content each day (21 pieces a week),
we could easily get our traffic to over a million
visits a month over time.
When posting in high frequency, make sure
you are still maintaining the quality of your
content. Writing a lot of blog posts that are low
in quality won’t help you see a big increase in
traffic.
Infographics
The simplest way to increase your traffic is
through infographics. This has worked well for

We went from 56,380 to 146,197 visits because
of infographics. This strategy was so effective
that we started to create an infographic each
week to boost our overall traffic. Still, today,
even if we don’t publish an infographic, old
ones generate at least 50,000 visits for us each
month.

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>

BLOGS
Write headlines for both people and search
engines
The one thing that all three of my blogs have
in common is that they all get a lot of search
engine traffic. “Why?” you may ask. It’s
because we write blog headlines that appeal to
both people and search engines.

The beautiful part about these surges is that
when they are over, your traffic is still a bit
higher than it was before the spike.
If you are interested in covering trending
topics, you can use Google Trends to see what
is hot. Make sure you don’t write on just any
topic. The content needs to be relevant to your
niche. With a quick search on Google Trends,
you should be able to get a good idea on what
is increasing and what’s decreasing in search
volume.
Write in a conversational tone
Have you noticed that I get over 176 comments
per blog post on Quick Sprout? It’s because I
write in a conversational tone.

Just look at the Crazy Egg blog. Last month,
we had 127,373 visits from search engines. All
because we write headlines for both Google
and people.
In the short run, you won’t notice much traffic
from this strategy, but within 6 months, you’ll
notice a nice increase in your search engine
traffic. From that point, you’ll continue to see
increases quarter over quarter.
Cover trending topics
Our biggest traffic days tended to be those
when we covered major events within our
niche.
For example, with Quick Sprout, when I
covered Google updates like Panda and
Penguin, I saw a surge of traffic. The same
thing happened when Hummingbird was
covered on KISSmetrics.
We also saw similar traffic trends when we
blogged about Apple’s marketing around its
events.

18

february 2014

Sure, you can use tricks like “top commenters”
to try to boost your numbers, but by making
your blog posts sound like a conversation,
instead of an essay, you’ll invite more
comments from people naturally.
You can create the same effect on your blog by:
• Using the words “you” and “I” within your
content.
• Asking questions throughout your blog
post.
• Making sure anyone can understand your
content... In other words, write for a 5th
grader.
• Keeping your paragraphs short and to the
point.
Comments are a great way to increase your
readers’ loyalty. If people continually comment
on your blog, it means they are reading your
content, and they are more likely to share it
via the social web.
Having multiple authors on your blog,
instead of just one, decreases comments

>
and engagement as your readers don’t have
a chance to build a connection with you.
Just look at the Crazy Egg and KISSmetrics
blogs. We have multiple writers, and most of
them don’t write in a conversational tone.
As a result, those two blogs get far fewer
comments than Quick Sprout’s blog does.
If you take my friend’s blog (he ripped my
design…you can too if you want), you’ll see
that he only gets 2,000 visits a month, and yet
some of his posts have 13 comments. That’s
because he writes in a conversational tone.
And if you are thinking about using Facebook
comments to increase your engagement and
social traffic, don’t. Every single popular blog
I’ve worked with always receives more Google
traffic than Facebook traffic. With Facebook
comments, the comment text doesn’t get
indexed by Google, which means you will get
less search traffic.
Collect emails through offers and opt-ins
All the blogs I’ve created have a common
trend… email is one of the biggest sources of
traffic.

BLOGS

with your new blog post every time you publish
it. Why? Because it will drive traffic, create
more comments and, best of all, generate
social shares. Email subscribers are3.9 times
more likely to share your content than your
other blog visitors.
Content marketing doesn’t have to be a hitor-miss game
The most important element of a blog post is
its headline. No matter how good your content
is, if your headline sucks, very few people will
read the post.
In most cases, content marketing is a hit or a
miss: your content will be widely read or just
ignored. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
You can use tools like Social Crawlytics to
see what sort of content has done well on
competing blogs. For example, if you had a
marketing blog and you wanted to see what
was hot on Quick Sprout, you would just type
in www.quicksprout.com and see a table that
looks something like this:

For the month of November, emails made
up 18% of the traffic to Quick Sprout, 6% to
KISSmetrics and 4% to Crazy Egg.
Those percentages may not seem high, but
there are two good reasons for that:
1. All three blogs get a lot of traffic, so
small percentages still add up when it
comes to visitor count.
2. Except for Quick Sprout, the blogs do
a terrible job of collecting emails.
If KISSmetrics and Crazy Egg were
optimized like Quick Sprout, the numbers
would have drastically gone up.
Once you have an email list, you should blast it

You can then sort the data by social site or by
total count. In essence, it will show you all
of the popular blog posts and their headlines.
If you look at the top 5 posts, the advanced
guide to seo, content marketing and growth
hacking are 3 of them. That shows that if you
create advanced guides and use similar to

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19

>

BLOGS
mine headlines for marketing-related topics,
you too can get a lot of traffic.
Build up your social media profiles
Another commonality among all three of the
blogs I created is that they all get a lot of
traffic from social media sites. In the last 30
days:
• KISSmetrics received 36,862 visits from
social sites.
• Crazy Egg received 5,976 visits form
social sites.
• Quick Sprout received 25,350 visits from
social sites.

Partner up
Within a few months of launching the Crazy
Egg blog, I was able to grow it to over 30,000
visits a month. Do you know how?
No, it wasn’t through SEO or even social
media. It was through partnerships. The first
partnership I went after was the Smashing
Magazine Network. Because we were included
in their RSS feed, we were able to get from
them 22,181 visits a month.

How are we able to achieve these results? It’s
because we build up our social profiles. You
can do it too if you follow this strategy:
• First, tackle the social media low hanging
fruit through these 12 steps.
• Then, follow the steps and data in this
infographic to maximize your Twitter
traffic.
• Accept all of the friend requests on
Facebook and then follow these steps to
maximize your Facebook traffic.
• Lastly, make sure you are publishing your
posts during peak hoursso you get the
most social engagement.

The cost for this was $0. All we had to do was
place a badge on our blog that stated we were
in the Smashing Magazine network.

When building up your social profiles, you
have to be patient. It typically takes 6 months
to see consistent social media traffic to your
blog.

It’s not the only network on the web… before
that, I was part of the 9rules network. There
are a lot of blog networks out there. You just
have to find the ones your space.

In addition to focusing on major social media
sites, consider leveraging smaller ones in
your niche. For example Inbound and Growth
Hackers are two social sites that focus on
the marketing niche. In an average month,
Inbound drives around 1,700, and Growth
Hackers around 400, visits to my site. It may
not seem like a lot, but it all adds up.

But don’t stop with blog networks. You can
also share your content with other blogs in
exchange for them driving traffic back to your
blog. Business Insider has taken posts from
Quick Sprout such as this one. I asked Business
Insider to link back to my blog within the post,
which they gladly did.
Popular blogs like Business Insider are looking
for more content. If you provide it to them,

20

february 2014

>

BLOGS

they won’t have an issue linking back to your site and driving
thousands of visits to you.
To get these partnerships, you have to continually reach out to
popular blogs in your space. Most won’t accept your content or
let you join their network, but for every 10 blogs you hit up, at
least 1 will say, “yes.”

Conclusion
It may have taken me years to get Quick Sprout to 100,000 visits
a month, but it shouldn’t take you that long. When I started
Quick Sprout, social sites like Facebook and Twitter weren’t as
popular as they are now.
You have more sites and partnerships you can leverage today than
you ever had, and people are craving more good blog content
than they ever did before.
Why not give it a shot? Follow the steps above, and you should hit
100,000 visits a month in no time.
So, what other tactics can you use to get to 100,000 visits a
month? IMM

february 2014

21

>

CONTENT

HOW TO GET 80% OF THE RESULTS
WITH 20% OF THE CONTENT
By Chris Garrett
When should you write?
How often?
How long should your blog posts be?
Should you have a schedule?

I

gget asked these questions and similar every
week, between emails, Q&A calls/webinars,
and clients.
Content is becoming super important. We used
to talk about if content was king or not. Now, I
see a shift.
The content creator is now king.
Keeping the crown is getting tougher than ever,
though.
The problem is, people get caught up in
thinking they don’t have time, are not good
enough, not creative enough. People who have
a lot to share are giving up out of frustration,
feeling like they are just not cut out for this
whole content business.
And that’s not true in almost all cases.
Business as usual is not helping. The old
dogma is causing frustration. There are a few
challenges here.
1. First, while there are standard answers that
have grown around the blogging world, that
doesn’t mean those answers are right for
you.
2. Next, it could be that giving yourself a bit
of flexibility means you are more likely to
succeed, and too rigid an approach causes
you to be less productive.

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february 2014

3. Finally, it’s really not about the writing, but
about what the writing does that counts.
Let’s start with a discussion of the options …
The benefits of more content, more often
It’s fair to say, if you can, then producing more
content has certain advantages.
Each piece of content is potentially another
soldier in your promotion army. More content,
in general, means more traffic, links,
engagement, opt-ins, and so on.
Posting more articles, more often, also sends
strong signals to your audience and also search
engines that you are still around. When you
don’t hear from someone for a while, you
forget or wonder if they are still relevant. I
know I have had questions about if I am still
blogging here or not!
Writing schedule
In some niches the expectation will be that
not only do you have something new daily, but

>
maybe multiple times per day. I am thinking
niches such as tech and gadgets.

CONTENT

• You can source better graphics and links.
• You can repurpose your content into
different media.
• You can spend more time promoting your
article.
What about content length? If you write less
often then you can write longer articles, right?
It’s difficult for me to tell folks to write short
articles because I tend to write quite long.
In fact, in this article, I made an effort to write
less than I ordinarily do, but it still ended up
over 1,000 words.
There is no right or wrong answer about
content length. Write as much as it takes,
and then stop!

If you write about breaking news then you need
to get your content out immediately, because
the early bird catches the worm. If, though,
you write editorial, how-to, or anything not
on a super strict timescale, then take a pause.
The second mouse gets the cheese.
So does this mean you should write on a
schedule? Perhaps starting with weekly?
Not necessarily, but we will get to that in a
moment. There can be a significant audience
benefit if they can start to anticipate new
content on a regular basis, however.
The benefit of fewer articles
If you have to write less often then you can
spend more of your time on those few articles
to get them just right.
• You can spend more time researching.
• You can polish and edit more.

Usually an article will benefit from editing.
Trimming down will aid consumption, especially
in these distracted times. Attention spans are
stretched, but that does not mean you can
not write in-depth articles. They just have to
capture attention and be worth it.
Which brings us to the main point.
Don’t judge content on length or frequency!
The most important question is not “when” or
“how much”, but “what”.
Only write when you have something to share.
If you have to force your writing, because you
haven’t written enough, or you have a schedule
to keep, then your writing will suffer.
It’s more important that you have impact than
a tick in a box.
Agree? If you write for people and not page
views or search traffic then you should at least
consider it.
So how do you write with impact?

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23

>

CONTENT
Writing for impact rather than page views
Writing for impact is an art rather than a
science, but there are certain things that you
need to do:
1. Write with a goal – what is the outcome you
intend to create? If your writing does not
have a purpose then it is difficult for you to
know if you have succeeded or not.
2. Mine the emotion – if you want to get
people to think a certain way or do a
certain thing then you need to move them.
Inspire, motivate, tell emotional stories,
reveal your inner truths and vulnerabilities.
Share your challenges and struggles.
3. WIIFM – most of human interaction has an
element of “What’s In It For Me?”. If the
reader doesn’t grasp what’s in it for them
right away, well, then you have failed.
4. Consumption – I am not super strict on
grammar (as you can probably tell), but
I do attempt to edit. Editing for brevity
is great, but also edit to make things
crystal clear and remove any road-blocks
to consumption. If your audience doesn’t
consume your message all the way through
then they won’t take action on it, and
they won’t spread it. Make it skimmable,
engaging, and easy to get through.
5. It’s not what you mean, it’s what they
understand – Closely related to the last
point. I know for a fact there will be people
who read this article and will take away
a message I never intended. It always
happens. Sometimes people take what you
say out of context intentionally. Sometimes
people hallucinate whole phrases you
never wrote. People will second-guess your
intentions. You can’t help that, but you
can work on your message to get it across
as well as you can. It’s your responsibility
to communicate with as few chances of
distortions as possible.
6. Get agreement – If you want to persuade
then you need to be on the page. Get

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february 2014

agreement early and often. Build up to your
main point with sound arguments. Don’t just
bludgeon people with ideas or facts. Can
you see where I asked questions in this post?
7. Link back – Linking to your older articles
gives them new life and also gives strong
hints to search engines. If you do nothing
else, make sure you always link back to your
older gems from your archives.
8. Link out – Not only will linking out help your
audience, but it is great for search engines
too. It might get you noticed by other
bloggers if you are lucky.
9. Images – You must have noticed with
Facebook and Pinterest that people LOVE
images. I like to use my own photographs
because they add some unique personality
to my pages, but you don’t have to be an
artist or photographer, as the images on
today’s article prove!
10. Call to action – Go back to your goal. Tell
people what you want them to do, what’s
in it for them, and what to do next. Make
it easy to share. Make headlines and URLs
work in social media.

Best of both?
Now you know why so many sites like
Copyblogger, Social Media Examiner, and so on
are multi-author blogs. It’s difficult to sustain
quantity, schedule and quality on your own.
For the solo operator, you will probably have to
make a choice.

>
What you have to keep in mind if you go the
team route is the audience still needs you to
captain your ship. Don’t lose your voice by
creating a crowd.
Bottom Line
What do you remember from this article? What
would you take away?
If I have done my job correctly then you ought
to remember that it is the impact you have
that counts, not how much you write and not
how often.
There is a good reason why my list has
continued to grow despite not writing for
weeks!
That said, you have to take into account …
• Niche expectations

CONTENT

• The kind of content you are creating
• Your intentions behind the content
• What you are capable of
I write in order to gather a smaller audience
of people who grow to want to hear what I
have to say, not for page views, ad clicks, or to
break news. It’s better for me to write a few
more impactful articles than try to write four
times a day, even if I had time and energy for
that.
You need to look rationally at what you can
produce, and what you are likely to be able to
produce in future, and keep the quality and
impact of your content top of mind, as well as
things like traffic and search results. If you can
post four top-quality articles per day and keep
that consistency, then go for it. I know I tried
before and nearly burned out. IMM

february 2014

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>

OPTIMIZATION

WHY A TRANSITION FROM

OPTIMIZING FOR SEARCH ENGINES TO
OPTIMIZING FOR CUSTOMERS IS
ESSENTIAL
By Lee Odden

J

udging by the daily new business inquiries
we get every day, there’s a groundswell of
companies that have become frustrated at the
lack of cause and effect data from their SEO
programs.
Sure, there are workarounds for things like
“not provided” keywords, but the lack of
information and uncertainty about what Google
will take away next is causing many marketers

26

february 2014

to diversify into other owned, earned and
organic areas: social media, content marketing,
online public relations, and certainly into
online advertising.
At the same time, as SEO practitioners have
matured as marketers, the shift from keywords
as the driver for content optimization and
creation have been displaced by a focus on
answering customer questions along the sales
cycle.

>

OPTIMIZATION

Ironically, this emphasis on solving for the
customer and architecting content according to
satisfying customer information is in alignment
with Google’s Hummingbird update – i.e. the
move away from “keyword SEO” to creating
useful, customer-centric content that answers
their questions is actually good for SEO.

management wants tactics to affect certain big
picture measurables like “rankings and traffic”
that are not necessarily tied to other important
metrics like increased orders, sales, revenue,
customers added, sales cycle duration, and cost
of marketing/sale. It’s the old KPIs vs. business
outcomes thing.

But so many marketers have relied upon and
benefitted from traditional SEO tactics and
reporting, that they have a hard time letting
go. Their internal marketing performance
reporting is often keyword driven and a
ridiculous number of companies cannot answer
the question: “What is the profile of the target
customer you are optimizing for?”. What does
the sales cycle look like? What topics are
important during the customer journey?

So how can you move from that all-SEO
program and mindset to a customer focused
online marketing program? How can you
put SEO in it’s place within the marketing
mix without discrediting yourself and past
advice? What’s the go forward and how can you
continue to provide value with roots in SEO but
with an emphasis on customer targeting across
the sales cycle?

Think about that.
There are numerous companies that have
top tier writers creating keyword optimized
content with no clear identification of who the
content is for, or what the specific intended
outcome is. Or where one content object fits
with other content and how they are connected
to the customer experience.
What legacy SEO focused marketers often care
about is rankings, organic referred traffic,
and page views with trend lines that go up
and to the right. There’s not a lot of focus on
customer experience, customer journey or
differentiation amongst segments.
Even if marketers were convinced that keyword
lists and ranking reports are no longer the
primary way (yet still useful in some ways) to
manage a website marketing program, they
aren’t set up to move to something else other
than various online advertising options.
I’m sure more than a few brand marketers
reading this can relate to situations where

Fundamentally, it comes down to cracking
the nut that is your target customer and
how solving information problems for them in
a way that leads to achieving business goals –
leads, revenue, profitability, referrals, lower
marketing costs, retention and advocacy.
Optimize covers this in depth. That’s not a
book pitch, it’s the truth.
Every week I know that companies are
contacting their SEOs and saying, “Hey, we love
the work you’re doing, but we’re shifting our
focus. What else can you do for us?” When that
happens, you’re up to bat, what are you going
to do?
february 2014

27

>

OPTIMIZATION
Are you going to start rambling on about
algorithm changes? Or maybe say that social
media is the new SEO? Better yet, talk about
how content marketing is the new SEO!
Content Marketing is NOT the “new SEO”
My challenge to companies still focused on
keyword vs. customer driven online marketing
is to take a step back and maintain perspective
on where SEO fits in the marketing mix.
Content is the reason search engines were
created, so broaden your perspective and
think about answering the why, for who and
what outcomes are expected with content.
Understand who the target audience is and why
they buy. See the relevant topics and stories
you could tell in your content and let that
drive creation, optimization, amplification and
engagement.

approach has helped keep SEO in perspective.
After all, SEO is just marketing.
The last thing you need, is to pay a SEO
consultant for advice only to later find out the
effect of that advice (quantity, not quality
content, overly aggressive links) is now working
against you. Next you’ll be asked to pay to
undo what you paid to have implemented
in the first place. Whether that comes as a
result of SEO hucksterism or brand greed,
it’s expensive and potentially deadly. And it’s
completely avoidable.
Not all SEO consultants put their clients at risk
like this. Not by a long shot.
The reason to transition from keywords to
customer optimization isn’t just to avoid
risky SEO tactics. The drive to make the
transition should be a clear picture of how your
company can better serve your customers.
Start speaking customer and focus on content
that helps your brand become the best answer
for customers, where ever they may be:
search, social, email, publications, mobile.
More important than getting into the weeds of
how to make the transition is acknowledging
that the change needs to be made. Then having
the confidence that what you evolve to is
something that actually works – for customers,
for your business and especially for you in your
role as an agency or a brand marketer.

Some marketers will say, “We don’t have
people who know how to do that.”.
The good news is that agencies like ours that
integrate multiple marketing disciplines have
been helping companies with these discussions
and transitions for years. You may not know
this, but our company roots are an integration
of public relations, direct marketing and SEO
– since 2001. That long standing “SEO plus”

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february 2014

Has your company made a transition from old
school SEO tactics to a more customer focused,
integrated marketing approach? Do you ever
feel stuck with SEO focused reporting and want
something more strategic? IMM
* This article is originally published on TopRank
Blog

february 2014

29

>

SEO

HOW TO ANIMAL-PROOF
YOUR WEBSITE
By Jon Henshaw

I

remember when Google algorithm updates
were named Bourbon, Vince and Florida.
However, since 2011 we’ve been on an animal
roll.
While I would have picked more ferocious
animals – like mosquito, hippo and Brazilian
wandering spider – instead we’ve been
subjected to the cuddly-looking panda, cute
penguin and sweet hummingbird.
But as any seasoned SEO knows, these are
actually the most foul, cruel and bad-tempered
animals you ever set eyes on. With a vicious
streak a mile wide, they’re killers!
OK, maybe they’re not that bad – unless, of
course, you’ve been doing risky and sloppy SEO.
In this post, I’m going to show you how to
animal-proof your websites against each of
these beasts. The good news is that it’s a lot
simpler than you thought, and you can do most
of these things directly in Raven.

The Panda update mainly affects site content
– things like low quality content, duplicate
content, and content spam. The three best
tactics to Panda-proof your site are:

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february 2014

• Find duplicate content: Canonicalize
duplicate content or remove it from your
site. You can find duplicate content using
the Site Auditor.
• Find low traffic content: Review the traffic
for your landing pages and find content
that isn’t performing well. Then – on an
individual basis – decide if the content
should be removed, redirected to better
content, rewritten or noindexed. This
information is available in Raven’s Google
Analytics tool.
• Find irrelevant content: If you’ve published
content that’s irrelevant to your site and
target audience, consider removing it.
(A content audit can help you find it).
Exceptions include necessary pages, like
privacy policy pages. Raven’s Blog Manager
can make this process go quickly.
Unlike Panda, the Penguin update focuses on
link quality. That includes the type of sites that
link to you and how the links are implemented
(anchor text, etc…). There are several things
you can do to combat Penguin-related issues.
• Research backlinks: Perform backlink
research on your site and look for low

>
quality sites. You can do this in Raven using
Research Central.
• Find toxic links: If the site has used poor
link building practices in the past and/
or is the victim of negative SEO practices,
consider using a service like LinkRisk to find
toxic links.

• Disavow links: Most sites won’t ever need
to use Google’s Disavow Tool. However, if
you have a link from a site that fits the toxic
link description above, you may want to
submit low quality links to Google just to be
safe.
• Diversify your anchor text: With the
exception of your brand, it’s important
to keep the anchor text of your backlinks
diversified. Using a tool like Raven’s Link
Manager, find links to pages that may benefit
from more diverse anchor text.

SEO

question, instead of many answers to a
generalized question.

• Use semantic diversity: Instead of focusing
on one keyword phrase, use synonyms and
related concepts (i.e., use a thesaurus).
This will help Google better understand your
content and thus increase the chances of it
being presented in the SERPs.
• Build smart, relevant links: This isn’t
necessarily specific to Hummingbird,
but the reasons for doing it are related.
Hummingbird is about semantic
comprehension of diverse, but related
entities. The sites that link to your pages
can help amplify the meaning and authority
of your content. So be diverse and strategic
in your link building efforts.

Additional tips – not exclusive to Penguin,
but related – include seeking out fewer links
of higher quality, versus more links of lower
quality, and making sure you leverage social
media with highly linkable content.
The Hummingbird update is about speed and
comprehension. It’s about Google having
a better understanding of what searchers’
intentions are, regardless of whether they
use the ideal words in their query. There are
several ways to approach Hummingbird as an
SEO, which include:
• Write focused content: Write for longtail search and consider related entities.
For example, write very specific content
that comprehensively addresses a single

Use these techniques – along with a continued
focus on site speed, engagement, structured
data and algorithm signals – to survive whatever
wild animals of Google bring. IMM

february 2014

31

32

february 2014

>

EMAIL MARKETING

HOW TO WIN THE
BATTLE OF THE INBOX
By Scott Dudley
Let me explain...
There are three types of emails which amateur
marketers send out to their list.
• Straight sales pitches (some may call this
spam)
• Straight content which is presented in a
text book like fashion
• Emails about themselves which don’t
interest the reader
My personal opinion about the above is...

“Email is dead.”
“It’s just too competitive in the inbox these
days.”
“Email open rates have plummeted over the
last few years.”
These are the common opinions about email
marketing in 2014.
And in a way... they’re right. But let me
clarify. They’re only right if the marketer is
sending out dull, dry, bland emails. The fact is
most marketers have no idea how to do email
marketing the right way. You can’t expect high
response rates if you’re not engaging your
subscribers.

The last thing people want in their inbox is
blunt sales pitches. It’s a bit like when someone
knocks on your door, and tries to sell you alarm
equipment. Straight sales pitches simply don’t
work. Especially if you hammer your list with
them.
As for content emails...
Very few people look forward to receiving
dry content in their inbox. They can easily
go to Google.com and find a huge selection
of information on any topic. Or they can buy
magazines such as this one to read. There is an
abundance of information out there.
Don’t get me wrong - content has it’s place,
but it’s not in the inbox.
And as for the emails which discuss the life of
the sender, not much more needs to be said.
Unless it’s a celebrity or someone who leads an
exciting lifestyle, most people couldn’t care
less.
february 2014

33

>

EMAIL MARKETING
These are the sorts of emails which get
promptly deleted, ignored or marked as spam.
And there is zero engagement.

The idea is to weave the information and
entertainment elements together. And to then
point them in the direction of a solution. Which
is obviously your product or service. And it’s
usually done at the end of the email with a soft
call to action.
Some advice for those selling information
products...
It’s crucial not to give away important secrets
which are contained in your product. In this
case, you tell them what to do in your emails.
But you don’t tell them how to do it. The “how
to” is covered in your product. And to get this
information they need to buy it.

So it’s no wonder some marketers struggle to
get their emails opened if they are sending out
garbage. Bottom line is... you have to send out
emails which are worth reading. Otherwise it’s
just a waste of time.

But if you’re selling physical goods (or
services), you don’t need to hold back. The
more information you provide them, the more
you demonstrate that you’re the expert in your
field.
But, you make sure you do it a fun, interesting
way.

Put it this way...
Your subscribers should be better off in some
way after reading your email, than they were
beforehand.

What You Should Be Sending Your Subscribers
Instead
In a nutshell, you need to make your emails fun
to read. It’s not education that people want
in their inboxes. What they’re really craving is
entertainment and solutions to their problems.
And if you mix the two of these together you
get what is called..
INFOTAINMENT

34

february 2014

Which leads me to explaining how you should
go about writing your emails. In this article I’m
going to talk about the best two methods to get
your subscribers excited about receiving your
emails.

>
The Story Email
The first type of email that works (if done
properly) is the story email.
If you want to illustrate a point which can be
tied into your product somehow, you’re much
better of explaining it through a story than
plain facts. Dry facts which are put together
into content are boring more often than not.
And when sent in an email they’re very rarely
read.

EMAIL MARKETING

You haven’t bored them.
And you haven’t hard pitched them either.
More than likely they haven’t even realised
you’re trying to sell them something.
You could call it selling without selling.
And stories can be based from anything.
Some examples being:
• Your own personal life (or someone you
know)
• Movies, novels and TV shows
• Businesses or entrepreneurs
• Other famous people
• Events from history
and so on...
Any of these examples can work as long as:
• they’re of interest to the reader
• and the moral of the story can be tied into
your product somehow

Think about it...

So the formula for a story email goes something
like this:
1. STORY
2. MORAL OF STORY
3. CALL TO ACTION

Fiction books are generally a lot more popular
than non-fiction books. And for good reason.

The Problem Email

But when framed as a story instead, your email
takes on a completely different dimension.

Good stories have an effect on the reader.
Images, feelings and emotion flash through
their mind. They can temporarily escape their
own world and visualize themselves as being a
part of the story.
And when you can tie the moral of the story
into your product, the reader is naturally a lot
more inclined to click on your call to action.

This type of email is a no-brainer to open if the
reader is frustrated with a problem (or pain)
they’re experiencing.
It’s human nature to want to read about a
persistent problem that won’t go away. Most
people can’t get enough of reading about their
pain.
They’re obsessed with it.

february 2014

35

>

EMAIL MARKETING

And if you have a product
which solves their problem, it
should be easy to write emails
talking about the problem.

To finish off this email you
include the call to action to
your product as the perfect
solution to their misery.

Step into your prospects shoes
and see things from their
point of view.

So the formula for this email
would be:
1. PROBLEM
2. AGITATION
3. SOLUTION (CALL TO
ACTION)

Once you have covered the
problem in detail, you then
agitate the problem.
Here you want to reinforce
just how painful it is, and
highlight the need for a
solution. You might want to
talk about what will happen
if they don’t fix this problem.
If the consequences of
not taking action are dire,
there shouldn’t be too much
resistance.
This is basically intensifying
the desire for a solution.

36

february 2014

These are not the only
ways to engage your email
subscribers, but in my
opinion, they are the most
effective.

And to stand out, you don’t
want to be doing what the
masses are doing. You want
to be in a position where
your emails are the first to be
opened. Your subscribers will
actually be looking forward to
hearing from you.
Entertainment is the key.
People crave entertainment.
An escape from reality.
That’s why sports, movies and
music are so popular. And why
the performers are paid so
much.

Give it a try yourself.
And you should see a far
better response rate.
The point is... you want to be
sending emails which appeal
to the needs and desires of
your target market.

There is huge demand for
entertainment.
And if you can incorporate it
into your email marketing,
there’s a good chance you’ll
make a lot more sales. IMM

>

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37

Tạp trí Internet Marketing Số 30 - Feb -2014

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