Kent provides a summary of his first month marketing Empower Network, noting several key lessons. He found that getting results takes longer than anticipated, with people typically needing 5-7 exposures over 2-3 weeks to decide to join. Thanksgiving also slowed responses. While his click-to-opt-in rate was originally 25%, it fell to 20% due to some underperforming marketing sources. He achieved his click goal but fell short of his opt-in target, and has 3 sales so far. For December, he has committed to ads guaranteeing 4,400 clicks at a cost of $1,810, hoping for 1,100 opt-ins and sales in the 2-3% range.

1. Inside Empower Network – the REAL story – the 1st 90 days – end of month
#1
by Kent Spoerlein | on December 2, 2012
Well, I’ve completed the first month and it’s fair to say there were a few surprises…
First of all, things take a bit longer to get into motion than I had anticipated. Whe you run a paid
ad, it may take anywhere from several days to several weeks for it to actually run – be released.
Since this was, and still is, my primary method of getting visitors to my “capture page”, I was anxious
to get things rolling…but I’ve found it isn’t productive to be impatient when there’s really nothing you
can do to expedite the process.
Then, when the solo ad is released and you begin to get responses, people simply do NOT go from
responding to the email to giving their email address to viewing all the various videos on my sales
pages to signing up, paying the $25 initial cost to becoming affiliates and “joining the team”. It’s more
of a “process” than that. Turns out, people typically need somewhere between 5 to 7 to 10 exposures
to the initial sales videos and then the whole series of follow-up auto-responders to get to a place
where they’re ready to move forward. 2 to 3 weeks following the release of the original ad seems to
be the normal/average lead time between initial exposure and joining the team. An apt analogy would
be turning on your garden hose at the spigot and waiting a few seconds until water starts spurting
from the other end of the hose. It’s on it’s way but has not manifested itself yet – you can even feel it
running through the hose, but no water yet. I’ve talked with people who’ve taken over a month to
decide to join and, on reflection, it probably took me about 2 weeks or so to actually “pull the trigger”
and get started so I should not have been surprised at this delay in results – they’re coming but
they’re not immediate.
Compounding my (relatively mild) frustration, the arrival of the Thanksgiving holiday seemed to put
everything into slow motion. It was clear that people’s attention was diverted by parties, festivities of
all sorts and for several days, considering and evaluating a business opportunity was put on the back
burner. Responses dropped off considerably. This is a clear “heads-up” that I had better conclude
whatever advertising I do in December by the middle of the month. I think once you get much past the
15th+/-, you would be wasting your money to run paid ads until at least January 2nd.
So I learned a lot in my first month – mostly about things NOT to do, places that are NOT profitable to

2. advertise and the simple fact that it takes longer to get off the launching pad than I had anticipated.
Some of my conversion percentages are lower than I had hoped they would be, but again, perhaps
that was due in part to the Thanksgiving holiday – don’t know for sure about that.
As mentioned in my previous post, my conversion percentage was originally running in the 25%
range from initial “click” on my capture page to opting-in, giving their email address and viewing my
sales pages. By month end, the percentage was closer to 20%, but that’s because it included several
suppliers/ad sources that were not very productive and those responses skewed the numbers and will
not be repeated. If I go with the more productive sources, I’m pretty confident I can get at least 25%
responses and sometimes into the low 30% range. So I will continue to use the best sources and the
poor performing ones go bye-bye. I’m OK with that too…sometimes you have to experiment to see
what works – or – “…you’ve gotta kiss a lotta frogs to find a Prince”. I found a few “princes” and will
expand upon the original tests with those sources in December.
I did not do any pay-per-click advertising in November. I tried. I “booked” and paid for a test campaign
for about $195 from a source that had been recommended to me – but after 2 weeks I had heard
NOTHING, they would not respond to either follow-up emails or voice mails so…I canceled the test,
reversed my payment and don’t have any results yet on this possible source of leads. Perhaps I’ll test
another source this month…haven’t decided yet
My target for November was 3,000 clicks and I ended up with 3,065 which was pretty much right on
target. Opt-in conversions were less than anticipated at 635…I was hoping for 750-ish. I think that
was due to a combination of some sources that did not produce well – I used one source that gave
me lots of clicks (1,000+) but almost no conversions for example…and the Thanksgiving holiday
probably cost 6 or 7 days in activity – 3 before and 3 after the actual holiday.
My ads ran from the beginning of the month to the end so when you factor in the lead time of 2 to 3
weeks, I will likely be getting sales in December that were actually started in November so it makes it
challenging to track sales vs. opt-ins connected to specific ads. I can now better appreciate how it’s
easier to track and evaluate results over 90 days versus 30 days – especially if it’s the FIRST 30
days.
I was targeting 15 sales – @2% x 750. If I use the actual 635 number, it should be around 13 sales. A
number of those are still within that 2 to 3 week period where people are deciding, so the verdict is
not in yet. So far I have 3 sales and 16 unpaid members (sort of a limited access “test drive” of the
blog and seeing some details of the EN network website). I’m not certain what to expect or anticipate
from these unpaid members, what percentage eventually convert to paid members etc. I’ll just have to
monitor this and see…I sent them all welcome emails and referred them to a coaching video by David
Wood that will hopefully move them toward becoming full, paid members but I just don’t know what
these people will do.
For December, I’ve committed to solo ads that guarantee a minimum of 4,000 clicks and I expect they
will over-perform…I’m anticipating 4,400+/- from these sources. They are my best performing sources
from November so I have some confidence and an established track record to depend on. They will
all run between December 1st and December 12th with the second half of the month with no new ads
– don’t want to compete with Christmas.
4,400 clicks should give me about 1,100 opt-in leads, maybe more (30% would be 1,320). The cost of
these ads is $1,627, plus my “fixed” expenses of $183.90 (see prior post www/joinkent/blog/inside-

3. empower-network-the-real-story-the-1st-90-days/ for details) = $1,810.90 total for the month.
Now we have to see what percentage of these leads convert to sales – I’m still thinking somewhere in
the 2% to 3% range. We’ll see.
By New Years I will have more data, more experience – and hopefully more sales.
My advertising cost will be about the same as November – $1,600-ish, but my lead generation should
go up from 635 (November) to 1,100 or more in December – a 73% increase in results with no
increase in cost by simply eliminating the poor results suppliers and expanding the size of the ads
from the better ones. And, I will have been at it long enough to better track, measure and evaluate
results.
Stay tuned – next post (on THIS subject) should be right about New Years day.