Archive | August, 2019

Warning: Big, bold audacious claim coming up… If you’re selling Kindle books but not using these tips, you’re losing money. It’s that simple. Why? Because these tips work wonders to increase your sales and even build your mailing list.

Get your Kindle readers onto your mailing list. Inside your book, offer a bribe so tempting your readers will leave the book, go to your website and give you their email address in exchange for the bribe. You are now building a list of buyers with whom you have instant credibility because you are the author of a book they read.

Get your Kindle prospects onto your mailing list, too. When a prospect views your Kindle book on the Amazon website, they can read the first 10% of the book online without ever purchasing. If you offer your bribe within this first 10%, you’ll get plenty of people who never purchase your book to sign up to your list to get the bribe. And if you’re really more interested in building your list than you are in selling books, then your bribe can be the audio version of your book. Thus people can get your book’s content without ever buying it.

Use a combination of the above two tactics. A list of prospects is great, a list of paying customers is even better, and a list of each is best of all. In the beginning of your book, let them know you’re offering TWO amazing bribes – one you’ll divulge right then and there, and the other one will be revealed at the end of the book. Describe both in delectable detail. This way non-buyers still go on your list, but they have a great incentive to buy your book to get your second bribe.

Email your lists when your book is free. If you use the technique of offering your book for free for a few days when it’s new, then email your lists and let them know about it. You’ll build up goodwill and your download numbers will skyrocket, making your book much more likely to appear in search results for your topic.

Use your books to advertise your books. If you’re writing several books in a series on the same subject, then inside each of your books have a section where you tell them about your other books. Don’t get too wordy on this – say just enough to get them interested to go look at them on Amazon. Then every time you write a new book, update all of your other books to include it.

Bundle your books. Take two or more of your books and bundle them into one money-saving offer.

Beef up your author page. Put plenty of great content on your author page. The more people can read about you and especially about your topic, the more likely they are to see you as the expert that can help them. Or if you sell fiction books, consider adding a book excerpt to the author page, or reviews that do or don’t appear on your Amazon listings, etc. Little known fact: The longer you can keep your prospect on your author page, the more likely they are to buy your book. Also, add an author video. Again, people are typically more likely to buy your books after they watch your video.

Make your book really stand out. People really do judge your book by its cover. In fact it’s the very first thing a prospect sees when they land on your book’s sales page. So how does it look? Does it convey professionalism and trust? Or does it appear to be someone’s first attempt at graphic design? Is the title clear and easy to read? What about the subtitle? Do the graphics or artwork go well with your topic, or do they merely confuse the viewer? Take a look at the current bestsellers for ideas on how to make your title and cover stand out and look like a ‘real’ book – not something thrown together by a newbie.

Don’t settle for just Kindle – do paperback and audio, too. Kindle books are great, but let’s face it: “Real” books lend an air of credibility to your work. So use CreateSpace to make your book into a paperback, and ACX for audio books. Then price your paperback and audiobooks at $9.99 or better. This will make your Kindle price look like a steal by comparison.

Get your fee in book sales. If you perform some kind of service like writing, speaking, consulting, coaching and so forth, you can waive your fee in exchange for them buying a certain number of copies of your paperback or hardcover book. This works especially well if you’re in the business niche and work with companies, since they can hand your book out to their employees. And if you get several companies to make their large purchases on the same day or week, it can propel your book to the bestseller list, too.

Once you make ‘bestseller,’ be sure to tell prospects. Change your book cover to add your ‘Amazon #1 Bestseller’ status as well as adding this information in a prominent place in your book description.

Drive traffic from your Kindle books to your website. We’ve already talked about building your list, but you can do more than that. Because you can insert clickable links into your Kindle books, you can send traffic to any pages you like, including your blog, your squeeze page, your social media pages and even a sales page.

Bottom Line: Using these simple methods can greatly increase your Kindle sales, build your mailing list and help you grow your online marketing and publishing empire faster!

Weird but true… In the early part of the 20th century there was a massive campaign in the U.S. to abolish alcohol. Weirder still, this campaign actually won the day, and Prohibition became the 18th amendment. This made the U.S. a dry country in 1920 until the amendment was rightfully abolished in 1933.

So how does a movement influence people to take away one of their own rights?

With smart marketing.

First, in their campaign rhetoric the Anti-Saloon League made the issue an either/or choice.

Either you’re for children or you’re for alcohol.

Either you’re for our brave boys fighting the war, or you’re for alcohol.

As one advertisement featuring a picture of Whistler’s Mother read: “Which Gets Your Vote: Mother or The Saloon? Vote Dry.”

That’s right – either you’re for mothers or you’re for alcohol.

No middle ground. You don’t want to abolish alcohol? Then you hate your children, your boys overseas and your own mother.

A campaign like that wouldn’t fly today, would it?

😉

Today you either use the advertiser’s product or you’re not sexy, not worthy, not relevant, not important, etc.

If you don’t believe me, watch a few TV commercials and see for yourself.

Of course, you’ll want to be much more subtle when using this tactic in your own campaigns, but the tactic itself works as well as ever.

Second thing they did in their campaign was to eradicate the competition.

You’re a member of a state congress and you don’t want to abolish alcohol? Then we’ll run a smear campaign on you and get someone else elected who will vote our way.

No competition means easy victory.

Translate that to today’s marketing, and we don’t mean you should photoshop pictures of your competition doing evil deeds and post them on the front page.

Instead, you eliminate all competition by inventing your own class.

For example, instead of being one of a 100,000 weight loss coaches, you become the only sexy shape expert.

Third, they enlisted their competition in their crusade, working side-by-side with politicians who drank booze as long as those same politicians would vote against drinking.

In the world of online marketing, this translates into working with your nearest competitors as long as it increases sales.

This might be in the form of joint ventures, interviews, affiliate sales and so forth. No marketer is an island, and even those who appear to be in direct competition to your interests can often help you in your quest.

Fourth, they didn’t try to convince the masses, because they didn’t need to. All they had to do was switch just enough voters to their side to gain their 51% and win the day.

In online marketing, you don’t need to win every customer, nor should you try. Some customers will buy from you no matter what, and you should reward them but you don’t need to convince them. Some will never buy from you, and there’s no need to waste any time on those folks.

It’s the ones in the middle that you want to focus your efforts on to get them converted over to customers.

Fifth, they employed a new device that showed, not told, of the ‘horrors’ of alcohol. For a nickel viewers could see something new in the world – a motion picture version of the play, “Ten Nights in a Bar Room.” In this movie a drunken husband squanders his pay on drink, his daughter is injured while trying to bring him home, the man dies of drinking and the wife despairs of her lost family.

What a great piece of propaganda for the anti-booze movement, which helped to reinforce the belief that even one drop of alcohol could destroy not just individuals, but entire families.

Pretty crazy, right? But again there’s a lesson to be learned here: Show, don’t tell. In just a few minutes of showing how ‘evil’ alcohol was, the movement gained tremendous ground in convincing and converting voters to their side.

YouTube, anyone? 🙂

Bottom Line: The techniques that influence people don’t change, they just get more sophisticated with time. What influenced people a hundred years ago can still be translated into today’s terms to increase your own conversions.

Since you’re making videos anyway, why not shoot for the zenith of online video marketing and go for viral? While you can never totally predict what will go viral and what won’t, there are some tricks to make it much more likely your video is the one your viewers will forward to others. Here’s 15 proven tips to make your next video go viral:

Don’t use a sad ending, even if it’s true. This reminds me of a time a video was shot of a firefighter resuscitating an unconscious kitten that had been trapped in a smoky home. Viral magic, right? Absolutely. This video went viral for every outlet that left out a key piece of information – despite being resuscitated, the kitten later died of smoke inhalation. Neetzan Zimmerman, editor at Gawker, was told by his editor to include the epilogue. Result – “That video did tremendously well for practically everyone who posted it, except Gawker.”

In fact, don’t evoke any sadness if sadness is the only emotion. Videos that inspire sadness are far less likely to get shared than videos that evoke almost any other emotion. However, a video can be sad and still be uplifting: For example, a heroic person who fought a disease, lost, but left a great legacy. It’s sad that they died, but it’s uplifting that they tried so hard and left a positive mark on the world.

Do use other emotions in your video. The emotions most likely to elicit that coveted share? Surprise, anticipation, joy, anger, awe, anxiety, happiness and humor. The stronger the emotion evoked, the better. Just think of what you like to share with others – odds are it’s videos that surprise and delight, or videos that inspire anger against a common enemy. What we don’t share are videos that might make others sad, unhappy or depressed.

Make the sharer look smart. Surprisingly, data compiled by Chartbeat – a company that measures online traffic – demonstrates that people forward things they haven’t even read or watched. This is ego-driven sharing; trying to look smart by sharing smart material. So for example, if your video teaches some cutting edge techniques, it’s likely to be shared by many who simply want to look smart to their friends. Of course, whether or not anyone will actually watch it could be another matter.

Make it practical. Useful content is highly viral because people love to share “news you can use” for two reasons: It helps others AND it makes them look good.

Tell a story. Even when you think stories aren’t applicable to your topic, they probably are. Stories are universal in that they can teach anything and people are hard wired to listen to them. Tell the story well enough, and it will be passed along.

Be outrageous. Do you remember WePay’s stunt of leaving a 600 pound block of ice at the front entrance to a PayPal conference? PayPal had been freezing people out of their own accounts, and so WePay froze the words, “PayPal Freezes Your Accounts” along with cash inside the giant ice block. Great stunt that got a lot of press, but WePay really blew it – they didn’t film the delivery of the ice block or people’s reaction to it. If they had, there’s no doubt their video would have gone viral.

Be controversial. Is everyone in your field saying one thing? Then perhaps you might want to say the opposite, especially if you believe it’s true. For example, in Internet Marketing everyone says “the money is in the list,” yet an excellent case can be made for other forms of IM that don’t involve list building. The key here is to debate issues that don’t hurt feelings. For example, a ‘chunky vs smooth peanut butter’ debate, or a ‘cats vs dogs’ debate won’t ruffle anyone’s feathers, yet they can inspires a lot of interest and interaction.

Be surprising. We alluded to this earlier – surprises get passed along and talked about more than almost anything else. Remember that video of a serene, tranquil scene that suddenly turned into a screaming demon? That wasn’t just surprising, it was shocking. You don’t have to go that far – hiding ‘easter eggs’ in your videos can make them viral. For example, a hidden URL that takes the viewer to something special, or what appears to be a naked person walking past in the background, or anything that is unexpected and fun.

Another kind of surprise is the “Cracker Jack Box surprise,” a toy hidden inside every box. It’s no surprise there’s a toy in there – they tell you that on every box. What is surprising is what the toy is. If you make a lot of videos, you might plant a ‘surprise’ in every one – it could be a bit of eye candy or a link to download something useful.

Make it an “experience.” This one takes some planning, but the potential upside is nothing short of huge. Remember the Blair Witch project? The movie promos made the movie ‘real’ to the viewers, and the viewers then become a part of the movie, getting pulled in as though it were a real life event. In fact, some people actually thought it was.

Make it interactive. Remember the Subservient Chicken from Burger King? Millions of people made that chicken dance. Or how about Office Max’s viral phenomenon, Elf Yourself? Upload photos of you and your family, and suddenly you’re in your own dancing elf holiday video.

Be funny. Or cute. Or both. If you can work footage of your kitten doing something hilarious into your video, go for it. People never get enough funny or enough cute. Then there’s just plain silly – like the Old Spice commercials. Short, fun and full of surprises, these go viral every time.

Capture the attention of a taste maker. Remember the video of Yosemite Bear Mountain saying “oh my god, oh my god” about the double rainbow? That video was online for 6 months before it took off and eventually got tens of millions of views. So what happened that finally started the flood of traffic? Jimmy Kimmel tweeted about the video, and after that it was a viral phenomena.

How do you get a taste maker to share your video? First, go after small taste makers within your own niche. Second, actually make the video with them in mind. What do they love? What do they share? Incorporate that element into your video and your odds go up dramatically that they’ll share it. Third, ask them to share it. It never hurts to ask.

Add a trigger. In the video “Friday,” the trigger is of course “Friday,” and while the video was popular it was shared and watched far more on Fridays than any other day. Remember Alice Cooper’s song, School’s Out? That song was released decades ago, yet it’s still played every late May and early June on thousands of radio stations.

Capture the attention of a particular community. This can be as simple as opening your video with something like, “This video is for avid gardeners only.” Or, “This video is for avid Red Sox fans only.” Then at the end of the video, ask them to share the video with fellow avid gardeners or die hard Red Sox fans. If you’ve incorporated other viral elements, this simple step can give your video the added push it needs to begin its viral journey.

Next time someone forwards you a video, ask yourself why they did that. What was it about that video that made them want to share it? You can learn a lot simply by watching viral videos and asking yourself, “how can I apply this to my videos?”