Are you looking for ways to increase the return on your content marketing investment?

Would you like to discover actionable tactics that you can immediately put into use in your business?

Stephen Woessner has helped thousands of clients over the course of 20 years, and he’s collected enough data to be able to confidently predict ROI so that his clients can achieve the maximum impact from their online marketing activities.

In this episode of the Bright Ideas podcast, Stephen is going to share exactly what to pay attention to so that you too can predict (and maximize) your own marketing ROI. In our discussion, you will hear us talk about:

• the #1 mistake that most businesses make when creating their content marketing plan
• the best online marketing activities to use for immediate profit (if you’re not doing these, you should be)
• the importance of measuring baselines and how to do it
• which metrics you need to be paying attention to and why
• how to create customer anticipation
• how his clients are using social media to give a huge boost to their marketing results
• his favorite business book
• and so much more….

More About This Episode

The Bright Ideas podcast is the podcast for business owners and marketers who want to discover how to use online marketing and sales automation tactics to massively grow their business.

It’s designed to help marketing agencies and small business owners discover which online marketing strategies are working most effectively today – all from the mouths of expert entrepreneurs who are already making it big.

Listen Now

Transcript

Trent: Hey there, bright idea hunters. Welcome to the Bright Ideas

Podcast. I am your host, Trent Dyrsmid, and this is the podcast for

business owners and marketers who want to understand how to use online

marketing and sales automation to massively boost their business. And in

this very episode, we are going to talk with my guest about how he’s

helping his clients to massively, and I mean massively, boost their

business, guaranteed no less. So I’ve got to get lots of answers to those

questions because in the . . . I think this is going to be a really

interesting interview. So my guest is Stephen, and I didn’t ask you how to

pronounce your last name so I’m sure I’m going to butcher it, but I’m going

to take a guess. Woessner?Stephen: It’s Woessner.Trent: Woessner, all right. And Stephen is the founder and president

of a company by the name of Predictive ROI, and he is also the author of

two top books in the digital marketing space. So Stephen, or rather Steve .

. . by the way, do you prefer Steve or Stephen? I think we had our first

bandwidth glitch. Did you prefer Steve or Stephen?Stephen: Either’s fine, it doesn’t matter.

Trent: Okay, so Steve, welcome to the show and hopefully we won’t have

any more bandwidth glitches like that. All right, so just tell us a little

bit about who you are and what do you do? Because I don’t imagine too many

of my audience is familiar with you or possibly even your company.

Stephen: Okay. Well, so for the last 20 years, really since the advent

of commercial Internet, I’ve been collecting tens of thousands of data

points that have given me the ability to identify what I call the seven

money drainers, and those are the things that literally cause websites to

leak serious money every day. And what we do is we teach business owners

how to fix them, and how to fix them immediately, and then how to apply

what I call the eight money-making opportunities. And those are the things

that really drive profits online by 200 to 500% or more in 12 months or

less.

And then as you mentioned in the introduction, we take it even further by

then guaranteeing to our personal consultant clients that they’re going to

deliver or receive X for return on investment, and typically it’s 200 to

300% although we’re working on some engagements where believe it or not

it’s about 1,300% return on investment. And if we don’t deliver that, we

pay the entire fee at the end of 12 months.

So before starting Predictive, I really came out of the private sector. I

have about 15 years of private sector experience. This is my fifth business

that I’ve owned, and then I spent six years in academia. So when I get to

share stuff with new clients and people like you, it’s coming from the

perspective of both private sector and academia. So all of my steps and

processes, the patent pending that we have, it’s all based on good quality

academic research as well as private sector data which makes it rock solid

awesome.

Trent: Terrific. So we actually have two really interesting stories

that I want to dive into in our time. One of them is the building of your

company, which I think we’ll cover second, and first just these . . . you

mentioned the seven money drainers, and then you also in our chat before we

went on air talked about eight money-making opportunities which I’m

assuming is kind of like the way you fix these seven problems, but maybe

I’m jumbling things up. In any case, so let’s dive into that first. You

mentioned that you find these seven areas where websites are leaking money.

Everybody listening to this episode has a website. I’m sure many of those

people are generating revenue from their website and would like to know how

they can stop it from, in your words, leaking money. So let’s dive right

into those seven if we can.

Stephen: Okay, sure. Well the first one is what I call the lack of

baselines and smart predict . . .

. The SMART stands for

Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-sensitive. And I’m sure

that you’ve seen this or witnessed this happen many, many times whether

it’s digital marketing or just working with an entrepreneur offline is that

typically a business-owner entrepreneur says I just want more. I just want

more sales, right? I just want more leads, or I want more something.

And so the SMART framework gives us the ability to create very specific

goals and objectives right up front so we know exactly what it is we’re

trying to accomplish and what holes need to be fixed because we know what

our metrics are. So typically, we take some of these unique visitors and

we’ll increase that by 100% or more. That’s the very first predictive we

put in place. So it’s an increase of unique visitors by at least 100% in 12

months or less. And then that first predictive really ends up being the

lynchpin for all of the others, which is bounce rate, typically we’re

looking for a predictive of bringing a bounce rate down from 50 to 60% down

to 30% or less. And consequently, that’s also money drainer number three,

more specifically, about bounce rate.

And then we’re looking to increase leads by at least 100% or more, and

typically it’s by 200% or more. And then the same thing with revenues. So

typically when you ask a business-owner entrepreneur how much did you do

last year in the form of leads or sales or inquiries or traffic? Unless

they’re tracking that data through Google Analytics, sometimes they don’t

know. In fact, the vast majority of the time they don’t know how to capture

that data easily out of Google Analytics, so we can help them. But that’s

why it’s the first money drainer, because they’re not really sure what the

missed opportunity is until you put those measurements in place.

Trent: Okay, so that’s just the first one?

Stephen: It is.

Trent: Then let’s go on to number two. What comes next?

Stephen: So number two is the lack of distinction. And so we work with

clients on this exercise that we call XYZ and we ask a business-owner

executive to answer these three simple questions. So we do X for Y so they

can Z. In fact, we were just kicking off an engagement this morning and

working through that exercise this morning. And the reason why that XYZ is

so important is because . . . and where we feature, we feature it in the

upper left-hand corner typically of a homepage or content page so that

people are insured to see it. Only about 10% of all visitors will actually

scroll below the fold on any content page. You can take that right out of

in-page analytics to Google Analytics.

So we answer those three questions. We do X for Y so they can Z. And then

your audience, self-selects, raise their hand and say yes, that’s for me

and their bounce rate goes down dramatically when that is defined properly.

Trent: Can you give me an example of that? Because I’m still . . .

maybe I’m a bit slow. I’m still not quite clear on the practical

implementation of that.

Stephen: Okay. So let’s say the XYZ for Predictive; we’ll make it a real

tangible example. So we do digital marketing, applying our patent-pending

predictive ROI method, so that’s the X. We do X for Y. And so the Y would

be for companies of a million to 30 million dollars a year in revenue. So

that’s the Y; that’s the customer profile. And then for Z, or so they can

Z, the result outcome, that’s Z . . . so they can increase revenue online

by 200 to 500% or more in 12 months or less, guarantee, or it’s 100% free.

So that’s our XYZ.

Trent: So it’s kind of like an elevator pitch, is it not? It’s the

problem you’re solving, who you’re solving it for and the benefit.

Stephen: Yeah, but it’s putting it in the context of the recipient,

right? The prospective customer and client. Absolutely.

Trent: Okay. So how is that . . . when you talk about fixing that

money drainer, that number two, is that a process that you go through a

client where you say hey, you don’t have X, Y and Z well-define so we need

to get that verbiage or those images or whatever content can phase that

network; we need to do a better job of getting it on the website?

Stephen: Exactly. And so the way you’re saying it right there, it makes

it sound really simple doesn’t it? Because it is. It is not that difficult

of an exercise to go through; it’s actually quite simple to do. But I

suspect that if you go to some of the entrepreneurs that you’ve interviewed

or people within your sphere of influence and take a look at their

websites, it is very easy to have an ambiguous message. And unfortunately,

when you have an even slightly ambiguous message and the result outcome is

not clear, what ends up happening is we experience bounce rate. And then

that leads to the number three money drain.

Trent: Which would be?

Stephen: Which would be?

Trent: Yeah, which would be what? Your turn.

Stephen: The number three money drainer is high bounce rate.

Trent: Okay.

Stephen: So for example, the typical, un-optimized website will have a

bounce rate of between 50 to 60%. So to say that another way, for those

listeners who aren’t quite sure what bounce rate is, so when somebody comes

to any content page within your website, whether that’s a homepage,

article, doesn’t matter. Public service page, doesn’t matter. When they

come to that page and they look at it, for whatever reason they puke in a

bucket; they just didn’t like it. And they immediately leave without making

just one single click? Then the site has passed.

So typically a small business site, small business owners with a website,

their bounce rate is going to be between 50 and 60% if they haven’t done

anything to dramatically bring that down. So to say that another way, we’re

spending all this time on social media and marketing and advertising to

bring all this traffic in, and 60% of them leave without making one single

click.

Stephen: So the way that we fix bounce rate, there are really three

things we do to fix bounce rate. And the first one is the XYZ, and defining

XYZ. So when people come, they self-select and they know they’re in the

right place. It’s not ambiguous; they know what the result outcome is. It’s

very simple. They’re going to dig a little bit deeper and the bounce rate

goes down. Just by putting the bounce rate onto the homepage, we’ve been

able to reduce bounce rate by 10 to 20% in like two days.

Trent: Sorry, by putting what onto the homepage? Because you said

bounce rate.

Stephen: Yeah, by putting the XYZ message on the homepage we’ve been

able to reduce bounce rate by 10 to 20% in just two days.

Trent: Okay.

Stephen: And the second way to reduce bounce rate, so that’s the first

way . . . the second way is to reduce visual clutter or eliminate visual

clutter. And what I mean by that is when you go to a website and there’s 15

different types of either graphics or photos or copy blocks or offers or

sign up for this or download that? I just did a two-day intensive with a

client in New York and we looked at their homepage with their team and

there literally were 15 different things on the homepage.

Unfortunately what happens is, and in fact the Harvard Business Review did

a great story on this in their March 2013 issue, and that was that when you

give more choice, you unfortunately have no action. So we reduce the visual

clutter by removing 15 things and go down to three. Again, it’s very simple

but it has powerful impact. And then lastly, to reduce bounce rate, it’s to

have a very clear call to action like a 1-2-3 step process. Again, these

are things that business owners can absolutely fix on their own, which is

why we teach them, and because they’re not hard you can absolutely do it on

your own if you know what levers to pull and knobs to turn.

Trent: Yeah, what you’re describing right now is exactly what I have

been going through on my own site for the past month. I tested a different

landing page than what is there currently. So what is there currently is

essentially a squeeze page. There’s one call-to-action. It’s join,

subscribe or in faint letters you can click your way through to the blog

without subscribing, and it has a couple benefit statements below. And when

that one was my homepage, the bounce . . . the bounce rate I’m looking at

right now is overall to my site, but the vast majority of traffic goes to

my homepage. It was 62.78%. Then I switched that page temporarily to what

is now the blog page, which is BrightIdeas.co/blog, and my bounce rate went

up to 74.74% and my opt-in rate plummeted as a result of that change which

is why I switched it back. And just in speaking with you, I can see I don’t

think I’ve XYZ’ed my homepage very well. I think there’s probably a fair

amount of room for improvement there.

So when you see, and I’m diverting from the seven but it’s my show and I’m

allowed to do that . . . when you see a properly-optimized opt-in page such

as my home page, what conversion rate would you . . . have you seen? Not

your guess. What conversion rate are you seeing with your clients as an

achievable benchmark?

Stephen: Okay. And so typically, well, a couple things to that. So first

thing, your typical conversion rate of unique visitors is between 2 and 4%.

You know, the global standard, right? And my guess is you’re doing at least

that. But the litmus test we like to use is if it’s less than 2%, there’s

likely a content problem. If it’s more than 4% then you’re doing above the

global standard and that’s great. So now how do we optimize that further?

But when that traffic is coming from social media, we’ve seen that

conversion rate be as high as 22%. That’s a 780% increase because of the

like and trust factor; the relationship that’s in place.

Trent: Yeah, that’s not surprising.

Stephen: Right. So my guess is, what’s your conversion right now? I

would imagine it’s above four.

Trent: Two.

Stephen: Two? Okay. So you’re obviously on the bottom side of the

acceptable range, so I think that just adds validity to your theory that

you were surmising a couple minutes ago about the XYZ issue and so forth.

So yeah, there’s a content issue there for sure.

Trent: Which you can bet I will be working on as a result of this

conversation. All right, let me not divert too much down the rabbit hole.

Let’s go on to point number four.

Stephen: Okay. So point number four or money drainer number four is SEO

done poorly. And specifically what I mean by that is the biggest misstep in

my opinion, with respect to SEO, is poor keyword selection right from the

very beginning. And so we put this process into place for selecting what we

call predictive keywords. Kind of like Gordon Gecko said back in the movie

Wall Street, I bet on sure things? It’s kind of like that with keywords.

Now it might seem fundamental. Yeah, I can go to the Google AdWords tool

and I can type in entrepreneur toolbox and I’ll get a list of things and

that type of stuff. But that’s not deep enough for us.

So here’s what we do. We use a tool called SEOBook.com. That website is

owned by a friend of mine, his name is Aaron Wall. He happens to be one of

the foremost SEO trainers in the world. Just as a disclaimer, I have

absolutely no financial affiliation with Aaron. I just think he has a

rocking, awesome tool and we use it every day.

So you can go to SEOBook.com. You can create a free account and then you

can begin using what he calls the keyword suggestion tool. What I really

like about it is it provides you with data that’s even more precise than

even Google’s AdWords tool. So you can type in any keyword that you could

possibly think of, and it will tell you the number of times every single

day that somebody searches on the keyword in Google.

Now in and of itself, that may not be completely revolutionary. But then we

take that data, which we call the Google Daily Estimate, we take that and

combine it with something else. So once we know that the keyword is used

every single day and is relevant to our business, then we go into Google

and we do an exact match search for that keyword. We put it into quotes.

And as long as that keyword has at least a million or less competing pages,

then following steps 4 through 14 in my SEO book we can get a top 10

ranking on Google in 30 days or less for that keyword.

Trent: When did you write your SEO book?

Stephen: August of 2009.

Trent: So the SEO landscape has changed. I used to get lots of sites

ranked on the first page for long-tail keywords without too much difficult

because I was an opportunistic link builder we’ll say. And that doesn’t

work.

Stephen: Is that code for link farm?

Trent: I have no idea what you’re talking about. That does not work

anymore. So how is it? Because I’ve been around SEO for a few years now.

I’ve built, I don’t know, just shy of 100 sites and I’ve ranked a lot of

them on page one. And the big thing that I had a big bone of contention

with, so I’m calling you out on it here because I want you to explain it to

me, is the number of competing sites is in my opinion irrelevant. It’s the

strength of the top ten, because those are the only ones I care about. So

whether there’s 500 competing sites or 500,000 competing sites, if I can’t

beat any of the top ten, the number of competing sites doesn’t matter. And

you just said as long as it’s less than a million competing sites when you

put your phrase in quotes . . . why? Why is that still true in your

opinion?

Stephen: Okay, well a couple of things. First of all, so I was just out

in Southern California doing a speech and presentation to a group on

Saturday. And some of those people who were engaged in let’s say the

financial planning industry or investments, okay? And so one of the

keywords that we looked at first was financial planning. Okay, I searched

on almost

or unless you’re . . .

Trent: Steve? Sorry to interrupt you, but the bandwidth froze for

about four or five seconds and we missed what you said so I want you to

repeat it if you would please.

Stephen: Okay, sure. So the initial keyword that we started looking at

was financial planning.

Trent: Competitive keyword, I’m sure.

Stephen: Right. It’s searched on 800 times a day and on the services,

like wow, that’s great. Wouldn’t it be awesome to have a top ten ranking

for that keyword? And I can’t remember exactly how many competing pages

were listed for that keyword, so it fell out from the competitiveness

standpoint. But also like you just said, the top ten sites that are ranked

for that are going to be really strong sites. It’s going to be large

investment banks; it’s going to be financial planners; it’s going to be

just large companies. So the hope of a small business owner getting on that

first page of results is likely nil.

However, there are a number of adjacent keywords related to financial

planning like financial planning for retirement. Now it’s obviously a

little bit longer tail. It’s searched on 64 or so times per day, and

there’s only 70 or so thousand competing pages. So I think that you’re

right in obviously measuring the strength of the top ten pages, or excuse

me, top ten sites. But what we like to do is we like to look for niche

keywords that are still very relevant to the customer’s business or

client’s business that still provide an influx of traffic. And then we

expand the digital footprint of the site dramatically. We go from ten pages

to maybe 100 pages or more of really great content spread out over many

different keywords. Traffic goes up, leads go up, revenue doubles and lots

of happiness comes as a result. What we don’t do is we don’t try to spend

all of our time to try to get a ranking for a keyword that’s impossible,

because that’s just not a good use of resources.

Trent: Okay, so let me feed that back and make sure that I got it,

because that’s pretty much what I understood. What you more or less just

said is focus on the long tail, build a lot of content and don’t target one

word, target 100 words that are all long-tail so the traffic in aggregate

from those 100 words will be meaningful.

Stephen: Great. You said it much better than I did.

Trent: Okay.

Stephen: You did. That sounds very good. I’ve got to steal that from

you.

Trent: By all means. I’ll trade it to you for a consulting session,

how’s that? [Laughs]

Stephen: Fair enough.

Trent: I’m having fun here so far. Thanks for being on the show. Okay,

number cinco, number five.

Stephen: Okay. So number five is not knowing your customer.

Trent: Oh, I wrote a 2,000 word blog post on this yesterday.

Stephen: Did you seriously?

Trent: I did. I haven’t published it yet. It’s going to be published I

think probably before this interview is published, but yeah. Huge, huge

issue.

Stephen: Totally huge. Yeah, and so I take this actually from Darren

Hardy who’s a good friend of mine from Success Magazine. He’s the one that

actually taught this to me, and I love this so much we worked it into our

process. So we create what we call or he calls the client avatar. Now

again, it sounds simple right? And it’s not a persona. It’s a real person.

In Predictive, we call her Sally. And so Sally had read lots of books;

Sally’s ambitious; Sally is tired of losing money and missed opportunity

and doesn’t know who to believe anymore because she’s been sold a bill of

goods so many different times.

And Sally has literally looked at me and said I need you to deliver on your

promises and that you can do what you actually say that you can do. And so

that’s, within Predictive ROI, that’s our client avatar. So anything that

we put out, whether that be an article or my next book or teaching a class

or whatever, we’re speaking to Sally or her counterpart Harriet.

Trent: And in my case they are Adam and Melissa. They’re on my about

page; you can read all about them. So how does one go about identifying

their Sally? Do they just pick and use their intuition and then say I know

that there’s . . . well I’m not going to answer the question. How does

someone pick their Sally?

Stephen: No, I think you’re on the right path because you obviously have

some experience with this. And so it’s being able to take the group of best

customers and really understanding what their hopes and dreams and fears

and challenges are from an emotional perspective. It’s not necessarily

about widgets and result outcomes. I mean that’s XYZ. It’s more about what

keeps them up at night, that very possible expression. And Darren likes to

say, and I think this is pretty good, it’s like you need to lay in their

bed at night to really understand what is causing them heartache at night

and how your solution could truly be a solution. How you can connect

emotionally.

So much of us are trying to throw out the features, advantages and benefits

and hope that something sticks on the wall, when the reality is people do

business with the people that they like, and they feel that they get them.

Does Trent really understand me? And if we can speak that language, we can

be really successful. I’ve literally in new client presentations, have

given them on a slide what the Predictive ROI avatar is, who Sally is, and

have literally had people on the phone say that’s me. How did you nail

that? So that’s not only the benefit of defining it, but then how to use it

by blatantly putting that out there and letting the prospect self-select

and say that’s me.

Trent: Well how do you do that? I’ve got them on my about page because

I want people to read it and come and say yeah, I’m Adam or I’m Melissa, so

this place is for me. But is that too simple? Is there a better way to do

it?

Stephen: No, I mean I’m trying to think that that’s one . . . that’s a

fantastic way to do it. And then when I’m writing articles or I’m writing

blog posts, I’m literally writing it to Sally. Not to this massive

universe; I’m writing it to her. Or when I’m writing the book that I’m

working on right now, it’s to Harry and Sally. Or when I’m out delivering a

presentation to a new client, I’m speaking to Sally. I’m looking at Harry

and Sally right now. And so it isn’t anything more complicated than that;

it’s a shift from features and advantages and benefits. That comes later.

It’s really speaking emotionally to connect.

Trent: So I’m just going to quickly read to you how I’ve define Adam,

and I’m interested in your feedback. So agency owner Adam runs a marketing

agency with fewer than 25 employees. Adam is busy managing human resources,

marketing, sales operations and the finance for his company and has little

time left for executing new ideas. His biggest challenge is that cash flow

is not predictable enough because he does not have enough retainer clients.

His top priority is lead generation and new client acquisition. Is that

enough? Have I clearly, for my own purpose and my audience, have I defined

Adam enough? Or is that too vague?

Stephen: Yes and no. So really, what’s keeping Adam up at night? The

fact that if he loses an account, he has to let Steve go or he has to let

Becky go? He feels like we’re really ill-equipped in being able to handle

digital, and that scares me to death that there’s these missed

opportunities and I feel like we’re not educated? I don’t want to look like

an idiot in front of my competitors? How come they’re outranking us? That

makes me nervous when I go to a cocktail party or a chamber event or some

sort of industry thing, and I know that I’m behind. It makes me fearful

that there’s all these missed opportunities where if a client asks me a

question, that I feel like I’m not prepared.

So if you are the resource that can help Adam be more prepared, that’s

awesome. That then solves what’s making him nervous at night. That then

gives him confidence that when he’s out in the industry, that he truly is

an expert because maybe he questions whether he’s truly an expert or not.

So I think that you’ve got the surface there, but I think you can peel the

onion even deeper to really cut to the core of what’s bothering Adam.

Trent: And how do you think I should do that? Do you think I should do

a survey, or do you think I should just send an email out to the people who

interact most with me, because I use InfusionSoft and I can see who clicks

what link and how often they click and all that business, and just say hey,

give me a call and talk to them?

Stephen: Personally, I don’t know that you need to. I think you have it

all up here already based on your years of experience and doing it. So I

don’t know that it . . . and here’s the thing. In all the years that I’ve

done surveys, statistical analysis, hundreds of focus groups, the reality

is unless you’re really maybe eyeball-to-eyeball with somebody and somebody

gives you an answer and you say now why was that important to you, Trent?

And they think about it for a second, then they give it to you again; it’s

a little bit deeper. You can say that’s interesting, I haven’t heard that

variation before. Now why is that important to you? And then they give you

something else. Oh my gosh, that is awesome. Why was that important to you?

You have to ask that question three times before you get to the meat and

potatoes of it. You can’t do that in a survey.

Trent: Yeah, so that’s where the phone calls and the one-on-one

interaction can be really beneficial.

Stephen: Yeah, and my guess is that if you really think about those pain

points that Adam was feeling and how you can deliver a solution to that, I

think you already have it. It’s just maybe being able to think about it in

a slightly different way. But I think you’re already there.

Trent: Okay.

Stephen: Most business owners don’t need more data.

Trent: Yeah, you’re right. I’ve been doing . . . I’ve been a business

owner for 14 years now. My business was very, very similar to that of a

marketing agency so I like to think I understand what keeps them . . .

because it’s what used to keep me awake at night, which is predominately

how do I get more leads and how do I get more customers?

Stephen: Yeah, I think . . . so what we’re talking about here, I think,

is kind of a very common thing for business owners is that we tend to de-

value or maybe mis-value the beautiful things that we do every single day,

and the really awesome value you deliver every single day. You obviously

have it. I don’t think you need more data; it’s just maybe being able to

tweak the story a little bit. But you obviously have the experience. I mean

that’s very, very clear.

Trent: Okay, let’s move to number six.

Stephen: Institution speak.

Trent: Jargon, my favorite thing.

Stephen: Yeah, exactly. And isn’t it really easy to kind of fall into

either institution speak, trying to make ourselves seem bigger than we

actually are because we think that that is somehow more attractive? And so

instead of talking about I or we, we end up using big, corporatey buzzwordy

terms? And the reality is that Trent is the man, right? The business owner,

he or she, is the man. They are the brand. So it’s time to really embrace

that, to be forward-facing with that, and realizing that people do business

with people; humans like humans; so let’s be human and let’s be that person

out in front and then great things happen. Leads go up, revenue goes up,

bounce rate goes down, lots of great things happen.

Trent: Makes perfect sense. All right, and the final money drainer,

unlucky number seven. [Laughs]

Stephen: That’s awesome. It’s really the ambiguous call-to-action. And

so what I mean by that is haven’t you ever been to a website, I know that I

have, and you want to give them money? You want to give them your

information. You want to convert and you just can’t. You can’t figure out

how to give them your MasterCard. It’s ambiguous. And so having an

ambiguous call-to-action is a huge money drainer when customers can’t

figure out what next step they’re supposed to take. You need to make it

simple. On the surface that sounds simple, but having a very clear 1-2-3 is

a real great way to solve that.

Trent: Okay, so obviously we have just skimmed, and I emphasize the

word skimmed, the surface of these even money drainers. And we’re going to

talk about some more stuff yet; I want to get to these eight money making

opportunities. But for people who want to know more about the seven money

drainers, do you talk about this in great detail in one of your books?

Stephen: In the one that I’m writing now, yes.

Trent: Okay. So they can’t get that yet. Are you pre-releasing any of

that content on your blog? Is there a report people can get?

Stephen: Actually on my blog right now, I’ve just released I think a

pretty in depth actual instructions and so forth on money drainer number

two. Actually, it was a combination. I did a blog post on money drainer

number two and three. So if they go to my blog, they’ll be able to get that

and follow the steps. I mean there’s nothing hidden there; it’s all right

there in a very clear way.

Trent: Okay. And what about this morning, actually, before I recorded

this, I was spending quite a bit of time in analytics trying to get better

at what I’m looking at and really figure out what the key metrics I should

be focusing on are. Have you got any written material on this? Number one

was lack of baselines. Do you have any documentation that is currently

accessible on that?

Stephen: I was just at the Ritz Carlton in Orlando in one of their board

rooms shooting a training video actually specifically on money drainer

number one. It hasn’t been released yet. And the reason I did that in video

is there’s a whiteboard there and I sketched it all out and I create

several different examples. And really to make it nice and tangible and

crisp. But anyway, we haven’t released that yet but I would think in the

next several weeks we’d have that done.

Trent: Okay. All right, let’s try and make sure that you give me a

link to that because this interview won’t be live for a number of weeks

anyway, so the two will probably time well. So before we move on, and I’m

assuming because I’ve seen you look down at your monitor when we were

talking about my own site, that you’ve probably got it up in front of you.

Just based upon the experience that you’ve had, what would you tell me

would be wrong in the context of these seven money drainers? And you don’t

have to go over all of them; just pick one. The biggest glaring error that

you see?

Stephen: For your site?

Trent: Yeah, for BrightIdeas.co.

Stephen: Actually, I wasn’t looking at that. Hang on a second. Bright

Ideas . . .

Trent: So if you’re listening to this in the audience, I would

encourage you to punch up my site so you can listen along with us as we

pick apart all my mistakes.

Stephen: Would you stop it? I’ve been in the business for 14 years . . .

sorry about that.

Trent: No problem.

Stephen: Okay, so I’m looking at the homepage and you’re asking me to

critique the homepage?

Trent: Yeah. Yeah, I’ve only got a 2% conversion out of that so it’s

not as good as it could be, and maybe it’s the X, Y, Zed issue, or X, Y, Z.

There’s my Canadian in me, saying Zed.

Stephen: When you’re saying conversion, I just want to make sure I’m on

the same thought path as you. Are you talking subscribers where you’re

asking people to give you first name and email?

Trent: Yes.

Stephen: Okay. All right, and so actually that fits in really well with

our second money maker which is build your list. And so you’re obviously

trying to get a list here, and build numbers of subscribers which is really

cool. First of all, it looks like you’ve got a good, responsive design

there; nicely done. I can still see . . .

Trent: Yeah, I had it custom-built for me.

Stephen: Yeah, it looks good. All right, so here’s what I would suggest

is to put it in a place what we consider or what we call value exchange,

something that’s screaming cool. Okay, so like right there, the headline,

learn from the brightest entrepreneurs. Learn what?

Trent: Yep.

Stephen: Okay, so learn what? If you want to succeed in business, the

best thing you can do is surround yourself with other smart entrepreneurs.

Why? At Bright Ideas, we make it easy, how? For you to do exactly that.

What? Just fill out the form below. It gives you free access; free access

to what? And what is the value proposition? So what is the result outcome

by me giving you my private information, what am I getting in exchange

that’s going to help me build my business?

My guess is you can probably articulate that in a really rock solid,

awesome way; it’s just not right here is all. So when that value exchange

is put in such a way that the person looks at that and says oh my gosh, I

need to connect with Trent because of this? We see that conversion rate go

up to 6 to 13%. And typically it’s in the form of something screaming cool

like a book or several free chapters or maybe it’s Trent’s exclusive

insights that have never been seen before or my five interviews with top

executives or these rocking cool business donors that I don’t share with

anybody else, but you can opt in here to get it. Something like that, you

will see your conversion rate go up to 6 to 13%.

Trent: Here’s the funny thing is I actually, and I’m laughing at

myself as I think about this, I have what’s called the Massive Traffic

Toolkit which is a combination of really effective traffic generation

strategies that have been shared with me by the guests here on Bright

Ideas. And once you get past the page you’re looking at, the Massive

Traffic Toolkit is the lead magnet that’s used all over the site. Yet on

the splash page I don’t mention the damn thing.

Stephen: [Laughs]

Trent: What an idiot.

Stephen: Well, okay.

Trent: I hope people listening to this are laughing right now.

Stephen: Okay, so the reality is it takes time. It’s easy to forget some

of the specialness and awesomeness that we each do every single day, and

you were asking me before the interview hey, you’re the social media

expert. Why in the world do you have 358 followers on Twitter? It doesn’t

make any sense. Why? Because I haven’t applied some of my own stuff, which

is almost ridiculous to say, but it’s also easy to do, getting caught up in

running other aspects of our business. So okay, you know how to fix it;

it’s just a matter of doing it.

Trent: Yep, very true. All right, I will be working on that. Let us

continue along then into the eight money makers, and if we have time

because I know we’re almost even closing in on an hour already. Can you

keep going?

Stephen: I can, yeah. I can. Yeah, for a little bit longer, yeah.

Absolutely.

Trent: All right, because people can come back to this. If they can’t

listen to it all in one session, that’s what the pause button’s for. All

right, money maker numero uno, rob banks?

Stephen: Okay, rob banks?

Trent: You know why bank robbers rob banks?

Stephen: Because there’s money there?

Trent: Because that’s where the money is.

Stephen: Yeah, so money maker number one, create your own Ponzi Scheme.

Trent: Wow.

Stephen: No, so money maker number one is something we call harmonize

the offer with the need. And there again I’ve adopted something from Darren

Hardy that he likes to call the White Knight Strategy. So money maker

number one is the white knight. And so it goes something like this. It

takes the XYZ. It blends it with the client avatar and serves it up to make

Trent the white knight solution to all of those pain points that Adam is

feeling. For example, this is what we say at Predictive. Since the advent

of commercial Internet, I’ve collected tens of thousands of data points

that have given me the ability to identify what I call the seven money

drainers. And these are the things that literally cause a website to leak

serious money every day. I can show you how to fix them, and how to fix

them immediately. And then I can show you how to apply what I call the

eight money making opportunities, and these are the things that drive

profits online by 200 to 500% or more in 12 months or less.

And then here’s the kicker, I can even show you how to predict your

financial return on investment before you even begin. So more visitors,

more leads, more sales. And if we don’t deliver the return on investment we

promised, it’s 100% free, guaranteed. So that white knight strategy

delivers our XYZ and it serves it up in a format that Sally is really going

to like because she has been abused before, treated poorly in engagements

before, false promises, under delivering, all of those things. It’s like

you can do all of that and you’re willing to guarantee it? We are. You’re

willing to put that in writing? Yes.

Trent: Where do you communicate that particular piece of information?

Is it going to be in a video of you that pops up? Is it written on the

homepage? Where does it go?

Stephen: Okay, so the way that I deliver the white knight is typically

during presentations, you know, speeches, presentations, training, where

I’m live. It’s typically not in written form. And then we use snippets of

it within articles that I write as we’re working on the next book and that

kind of stuff. It’s in our proposals. It’s actually right in the executive

summary of our proposals. And it’s in the introduction to all our training

videos, like when I was down in Florida recently, last week that I

mentioned, I shot these three training videos. And so I start off by saying

hi everyone, this is Stephen Woessner, founder of Predictive ROI. And in

case this is the first video you’re watching for me, here’s a brief

introduction. Then I go into white knight.

And at the end it’s like this is rock solid, awesome stuff. I’m going to

step into a boardroom here at the Ritz Carlton and I’m going to teach you

all about money drainer number two. And then I deliver ten minutes of

awesomeness with money drainer number two. There’s nothing left on the

table. It’s all give, give, give. There’s no smoke and mirrors or I’m

hiding stuff or anything like that. I’m giving the whole thing and I hope

it serves you well. And so then that establishes trust because I truly want

people to take that stuff and use it. This isn’t some sort of underhanded

marketing scheme; I want people to benefit from it. And I think that that

establishes trust and being genuine, and really sticks with the white

knight.

Trent: Okay, so number two on the money makers is what?

Stephen: Number two, going back to your homepage, it’s what we call

build the list. The reality is the most valuable asset in any business is

the list. It’s not employees; it’s not product; it’s not inventory; it’s

not capital, equipment, buildings. Because all that stuff could burn down

and all your employees could walk out and you could completely reinvent the

business if you have to. You certainly wouldn’t want to, clearly. But if

you had to, there was a time when it was just you anyway. So if you had to

rebuild it again, you could.

But I’ll tell you what, if all your customers walked out one day, that

would suck really bad. So the most valuable asset in any business is the

customer list. So what can we do like immediately to build the list

rapidly? And so we put these value exchanges into place. And I didn’t look

to see how your site is coded. Is that a WordPress site?

Trent: It is, yes.

Stephen: And so we do a lot of dev work in WordPress. It’s escaping me

right now, I can email it to you later, but there’s a very inexpensive

WordPress plug-in. I think it’s like WP Email Capture I think. Don’t quote

me on that, but I’m almost positive that’s what it is. I think it’s free to

maybe being a couple dollars. And we take that WordPress plug-in, and that

creates a popover. Not a popup; not an annoying pop under; not all these

goofy windows that when somebody wants to leave your site, we harass them;

none of that stuff. But we put up a good quality popover which is

essentially a layer between the homepage and the viewer, and then we give

them this screaming cool offer. You know, the very best insights from Trent

that nobody’s ever heard before, just for you. Or my exclusive audio series

or whatever. Something that delivers huge value. And then what happens when

we put that in place to any visitor, whether it’s homepage or one of your

articles or whatever, between 6 and 13% of all visitors will opt in and do

that.

Trent: I’ve got one of those now. I use a plug-in called Pippity which

is I think $47 and I’m a big fan. The controls are phenomenal. You can put

in . . . so you can have, so the way I’ve got it for example, on anything

other than the homepage, on your visit there’s a fade-in, just what you’ve

described. It makes an offer. Then on your second, if you click X on that

one and you keep reading, as you scroll down I have another strip that

comes up from the bottom when you get to the bottom of the post that has

another message on it. That’s the Pippity plug-in; it works really well. It

doesn’t take any rocket science to put in all the features and

configurations and so forth. So I’m a big fan of that, but I’ll tell you

I’m not getting 6 to 12% conversion so my XYZ is obviously not as well-

defined yet as it needs to be.

Stephen: Yeah, that sounds like it.

Trent: Okay, number three.

Stephen: Number three, and I’m looking at my notes which is why you may

see my eyes shifting, is nurture relationships and increasing sales. So

once somebody opts in and you use InfusionSoft, we’re big fans of Instant

Customer. Are you familiar with Instant Customer?

Trent: No, I’ve never heard of that one before.

Stephen: It’s really great. Now again, just as a disclaimer for you and

your audience, I have absolutely no financial affiliation with Mike

Kennings who created Instant Customer. But my opinion, it’s rock solid

awesome because the downside with InfusionSoft, and maybe you’ve

experienced this, is a couple times a year, the entire thing goes down

because a lot of spammers use InfusionSoft. I’ve gone toe-to-toe with

InfusionSoft about that issue, and they’ve admitted that sometimes they get

blacklisted.

In fact, a very good friend of mine actually just forced a refund from

InfusionSoft because of their deliverability issues. Not good. So if you

haven’t experienced any problems, that’s great, but lots of other people

have with InfusionSoft. So with that said, what I really, really like about

Instant Customer are two main things. So when somebody signs up or they opt

in, on value exchange, they immediately go into Instant Customer. And then

Instant Customer sets up the automated sequence.

So we deliver then three or four more value-based emails that come as a

result of downloading the first book. So that in and of itself is not

necessarily rocket science. But the content that we put into those emails

is, because again, we’re using Client Avatar; we’re using White Knight; and

so we’re putting out an offer and additional value that is in the right

language and context. Then what we typically do is we lead somebody into

what we call the no like and trust funnel. I take that from John Jantsch

from Duct Tape Marketing. I thought he hit the nail right on the head when

he said that.

So the no like and trust funnel, so we’re delivering these emails, moving

them through the no like and trust. Then at the bottom we’re inviting them

to an exclusive webinar just for the people who downloaded the book or

whatever. We’re giving them an exclusive webinar. We then deliver 60

minutes of awesomeness, really great stuff, not holding anything back. And

then at the end we give them an opportunity to either buy something, become

a lead, talk to a salesperson, convert on this membership opportunity,

whatever it might be. And then huge conversion rates go up.

For example, one of our clients had a relatively small list, about 2,000 or

so people. She had been using that list for years. I mean it was the

epitome of list burnout, okay? And was not getting any conversions off the

list. And I’m not trying to be overly dramatic; that was just the reality.

So we put this system in place that we nurture and developed sales over

time. We put a value exchange in place on that company’s website. We put an

instant customer funnel in place that led to a webinar, actually two

webinars. She did an incredible job of creating that campfire effect during

the webinar where people felt really, really good about the content she

delivered.

Trent: Are these live? Sorry to interrupt, but are these live webinars

or can they be recorded and put on autopilot?

Stephen: It was a live webinar because then we dealt with live Q&A. Then

at the end we did two things where we said for the next 48 hours, you have

access to this offer and after that it goes to the full distribution list.

So we sent out that email to all the webinar attendees, or registrants,

excuse me. Then we did that twice in four weeks and we generated $110,000

in revenue in four weeks off of presumably a dead list.

Trent: What was the offer?

Stephen: She is in . . . she’s in the financial industry, and so she is

selling a very high-end mentoring type sort of coaching program if you

will, actually like a licensing program. It’s about five grand a year. It’s

a premium-type price, so it’s not like it’s a $69.95 type offer. It’s a

relatively big-ticket item for somebody in that space. And again, these are

people who had known about her for years, or her business I should say for

years. She’s not a one man band; she’s across the country. And knew about

this company for years. So she had credibility in the marketplace, but the

offer just wasn’t right. And she is an expert. We just tweaked the message

and great things happened.

Trent: Yeah, no kidding, 110,000 of them. All right, I am . . . I do

want to ask a question about Instant Customer, because I am a pretty big

fan of InfusionSoft but I have not, out of sheer laziness more than

anything else, checked what the sender score on my server is. And for those

of you who are listening, if you don’t know anything about email

deliverability, your sender score is a number between 0 and 100 that the

ISPs use to determine how much of the email you send will get into the

inbox of the recipient. It was a shocker to me before I knew anything about

this stuff that just because you send out 5,000 emails doesn’t mean they’re

all going to get to the inbox. As a matter of fact, if your sender score is

low enough, less than half of them will get to the inbox.

So as a customer of Instant Customer, a couple questions. One, do they give

you . . . can you get the sender score on the IP address of the server

that’s sending the email? Do you have to ask or do they easily make that

available for you?

Stephen: That is a great question, Trent, and I have never asked for it

and so that’s something I will have to ask them because I’m not sure.

Trent: Okay. Number two, what I particularly like about InfusionSoft,

and I’ve looked at other systems and they’ve not been able to match this

yet, is the campaign vendor. So you need to segment your list. If you want

maximum conversions, you can’t treat everybody the same because they’re at

different points; they have different priorities. They’re at different

points in the buying cycle. So you need some way to let the behavior of

your list segment the list for you. I call it behavioral segmentation. I’m

sure I didn’t coin the team, and if I did, lucky me. But the point of it is

that InfusionSoft allows me to build a campaign on their campaign canvas

and it’s all drag-and-drop. It’s really easy to do once you have the logic

in your head of what you want to do. Implementing it is very easy.

And then based upon what links people click in your various emails . . . so

instead of having a single path through your funnel, so email number one,

number two, number three, number four in series? You can actually, to use

an electronics term, you can have things happen in parallel. So you can

have multiple paths through your funnel, and the path that a given prospect

goes down will be determined by the links that they click and the

subsequent tags, which is just a method of categorizing people that get

applied within InfusionSoft. I think that’s really badass. Does Instant

Customer allow you to do something similar, or is it more like an AWeber

where you just send them in and they get email one, two, three, four, five,

six, seven? I mean with AWeber you can make them join other lists, but it’s

kind of clunky and it’s a pain in the ass to do. How does Instant Customer

deal with that?

Stephen: You know, it’s a little bit of a hybrid between those two. But

I will tell you the learning curve, at least for us, on Instant Customer

was a bit significant because one of the cool things, I agree, with

InfusionSoft is it’s visual. I mean it looks almost like a schematic.

Trent: Yeah, it does.

Stephen: Drag-and-drop, that’s kind of cool. And Instant Customer is not

that way. So it’s a little bit of a learning curve for us, and so I have

not found it to be very intuitive. Now with that said, to be able to go

into different campaigns based on behavior and so forth, yes they give you

that option. But my guess is it’s not going to be as sophisticated as what

you’re used to with InfusionSoft.

Trent: So what’s the big reason you like Instant Customer so much?

Stephen: Oh, okay. So the second piece to that is aside from setting up

these auto-responders which are cool, the other thing I really like is, and

I’m pretty sure InfusionSoft cannot match this, is let’s say Trent is out

giving a speech someplace and there’s 1,000 people in the room. You’re out

there, you’re delivering great content, and you see people just rapidly

taking notes and trying to catch everything you’re saying, right? All this

great stuff. You’re like hey, hang on a second. We’ve got 60 minutes

together. I want you to stay here, listen to what it is I’m saying instead

of frantically trying to write it all down. In fact, just text me your name

and email address to the number you see here on the screen and I’ll

instantly send you the PowerPoint so you have it.

You’ll end up scraping probably 70 to 80% of the emails of the people who

are in that room because they want to get that PowerPoint they’re trying to

copy down, then they instantly go into a funnel. Or we all have smart

phones, and if you have an iPhone, Instant Customer has a great app where

if somebody comes up to you, instead of exchanging business cards, they get

your card, you take it, you shoot it with your phone and it instantly goes

and sends them a PDF or whatever sort of deliverable. So we like those

kinds of things.

Trent: I interviewed the founder of . . . his name’s Chris Branson, of

a company called Call Loop. And I’m pretty sure . . . I know he integrates

with InfusionSoft, and I’m pretty sure he does what you just described. But

again, we’re kind of getting off track. If people want to investigate that,

they can do it on their own or send me an email or what have you, or send

you an email. All right, so we’re at three of eight. We need to get through

. . . I want to finish this list of eight. So what is number four? Number

three was nurture relationships which obviously is done with whatever

software platform you choose to use. But number four, what happens there?

Stephen: Okay, so number four is what I call no friction lead

generation.

Trent: Okay.

Stephen: And so what I mean by that is taking sort of the essence of

what you have on the homepage, right now on the BrightIdeas.co, and just

tweaking that by putting again the value exchange next to that form. So

people know the financial value or result outcome or whatever it is by

giving you their first name and email address, so it’s very, very clear. If

I give you this, I’m going to get that. So it’s the balance of the

give/take relationship.

Because don’t you hate it when you go to a website, and yours doesn’t do

this, but don’t you hate it when you go to a website and they ask you like

27 different things? It’s almost like they want your DNA sample in order to

sign up for a newsletter. It’s like what are you doing? Why are you asking

for all of that stuff? So no friction lead generation is where we combine

value exchange, where we’re giving something, in exchange for first

name/last name and email address. And that’s the only thing we’re asking

for.

So this is pretty close, what’s on the homepage now. And by going through

that XYZ we were talking about before, I think even if you just did that

you’d see your conversion rate go up. Substantially, probably.

Trent: I will be running experiments on that and I will actually be

blogging about the results of those experiments. So if you are listening to

this and would like to participate in that as a voyeur, make sure you go to

BrightIdeas.co and join the email list because I will be sharing those

experiments with my subscribers. And by the way, just another tip too on

this opt-in form with no friction, what I and others do is on the first . .

. because the more forms, the more fields you have for someone to complete,

the higher the abandonment rate of the page. So why ask them everything at

once? Why not just get the email address and when they submit, when they

click submit, take them to another page that says hey, why don’t you tell

me more about yourself? What’s your last name? What do you do for a living?

What are you interested in? What keeps you awake at night?

Because they’ve already then made their small purchase, their psychological

purchase decision and you have their email. Whether they choose to fill out

the second form or not, you have now the opportunity to ask them as many

times as you’d like in the future by giving them value exchanges to get

more information, to learn more about them. But that first one, that’s why

I only ever ask for first name and email because I can get all the other

stuff. I can work at getting the other stuff later, but if I don’t get the

email, I’m done. I can’t do anything.

Stephen: Right.

Trent: Okay, how about number five?

Stephen: Creating anticipation. And this is where we do what’s called

seeding and opening loops.

Trent: Yep.

Stephen: And so within those value-based emails we’re sending out,

again, we say things like there’s nothing to sell here or you just

downloaded those seven tips and here comes number eight. Actually, there’s

47 steps in our entire process. We can’t go through all of those right now,

but here’s number eight, ten minutes of awesomeness. Then you deliver on

your promise of giving them ten minutes of awesomeness on the sales pitch.

And then a few days later we come back with hey, if you like number eight,

here’s number nine. This is number nine of 47. So we’re seeding and opening

loops, the fact that there’s 47 total tips. And then we’re delivering on

that promise. We’re giving eight, we’re giving nine and so forth.

And so at the end of those training videos that I just produced in Florida,

I talk about the event that we’re having in January down there, January 14

at the Ritz Carlton. We’re inviting 350 high-performing business owners and

executives to come. I talk about the result outcomes that they’re going to

be able to get. They’re going to hear from people like Darren Harvey and

Avanosh Kashik and Phillip Magoffin from Marketing Experiments and Mech

Labs; from me; from Don Yaeger; from some really amazing people who are

going to help them build their business. And then I also say that

registration’s not open yet. It won’t be for several more months, so

there’s no sales pitch here. But I do want you to know that when

registration opens, there are only 350 seats available so good fortune’s

going to go to those who act quickly. More details on that later. I hope

this ten minute video serves you well and farewell. So what I’ve just done

is seeded an open loop that at some point they’re going to get something

about the event, so they’re more aware of it. It creates anticipation.

Trent: Did you ever used to watch the TV show Lost?

Stephen: No. I mean I know of the show but didn’t see it, no.

Trent: Lost . . . open loops is a screenwriter’s concept as I’m sure

you’re well aware that is as old as dirt, and Lost was brilliant, brilliant

with open loops. I never missed an episode of Lost because invariably what

they and every other TV show does is at the very end of the episode, they

open a new loop that you’re dying to know how that . . . because we all

want closure. We’re human beings; we’re just wired to have closure. We all

want to know how it’s going to turn out, so we tune in next week.

And they even go so far as to open mini loops before commercials. I don’t

think it’s as effective now because people skip . . . who watches live TV

anymore? We just skip past all the commercials. But back in the day, I

think that it was probably more effective. And they would create that level

of curiosity so you would hang around for the end of the commercial so you

figure out what’s going to happen.

Stephen: Right. It’s a masterful thing.

Trent: It is indeed. All right, numero six. What do we have there?

Stephen: Social media done right which is a bit ironic because of how

you were beating me up before we started our call.

Trent: Yeah, I was beating you up wasn’t I?

Stephen: [Laughs] That’s okay, I deserve it. It’s fine.

Trent: You know, I love being candid so I’m going to say . . . because

I was referred to you by another, by Nancy who I enjoyed interviewing

immensely. When she referred you I just automatically said hey, do you want

to be on my show? And then some weeks later when I was actually preparing

for the interview and I’m looking at your website which you said needs a

big upgrade, and then I’m looking at this guy’s written a book on social

media and he’s got no social media following. I didn’t know you were the

founder of Predictive ROI. I thought wow, this guy’s an academic with a

book about social media and he’s got no social media following; what the

hell am I going to interview him about?

And I was nearly going to cancel, but I didn’t because I thought well,

Nancy was kind enough to refer him. And I enjoyed . . . so there must be

something I’m not seeing, and I need to talk to him to figure out what it

1. And now I’m glad I went ahead with the interview.

Stephen: Well, I’m glad that you did too because I’ve enjoyed the

conversation immensely. So social media done right, we’ve talked before

about how conversion rate changes when they come from . . . visitors come

from Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, whatever, because of that relationship.

That no like and trust funnel, again, as John mentions in Duct Tape

Marketing. And so specifically there’s a recipe that we use that’s actually

right out of my book, right out of the data. In fact, the data from my book

was actually published, like the foundational data, was actually published

in the journal of e-business and so it’s both peer reviewed scholarly

research, but then I’ve also made it private sector applicable.

And so that conversion rate changes. Here’s the recipe. You want to post at

least two times a day, once in the morning, once in the afternoon. Not any

more than that. Monday through Friday, two times a day, once in the

morning, once in the afternoon. And then you want to make . . . so you and

I being business owners, and we represent the brand, right? New demand. So

we want to do what I call six life and profession related posts to every

one product or service related post.

So Trent talks about new articles that he’s written, new interviews that

he’s done, birthday parties, vacations, kids, all this other type of stuff.

So we really get to understand who Trent is as a person. I want to see

Christmas morning at your house. I want to see kids opening birthday

presents. I want to see family over. I want to see you out catching fish,

or whatever it is you like to do. I want to see those things because then

that makes you a very tangible person.

But also, or in addition to that, I want to know when you were just

speaking at some event. I want to know if you did a keynote. I want to know

the latest article that you did or the research or these blogs that you’re

talking about or these studies that you’re going to do, the experiments.

That is awesome. That adds to your value. So I want to see six of those to

every one time you invite me to come to a webinar or to a . . . something

that’s product or service related, buy this thing, download X or whatever.

Six to one. So on Monday, you’ll be

, on Tuesday, two life and

profession related posts. On Wednesday, same thing. And on Thursday morning

it’s attend this or buy that or whatever. Six to one.

Trent: Let me jump in with a question and comment. Now is this . . .

when you say two posts, is this on your Facebook wall or is this Twitter?

Because I do a lot more on Twitter, and Twitter is my largest source of

traffic.

Stephen: Yeah, and so actually I do . . . within the book, two posts a

day across all channels. So with Twitter, I think Twitter is phenomenal,

especially if somebody has something that’s time sensitive. If you’re

promoting something with the element of time, Twitter’s fantastic. In doing

things correctly, I mean Twitter should be at least 10% of your traffic,

maybe more. How much traffic, a percentage basis, does Twitter represent

for you?

Trent: Less than . . . just shy, probably about 8%.

Stephen: Okay.

Trent: It’s just of my social referrals from any and all social

networks, Twitter is twice the second source which is Reddit. I should say

this is over just the last 30 days; I’m not looking at a window currently

any longer than that. And I think the reason for that is when I do

interviews with people, the day that it publishes, I contact my guests and

ask them to tweet it out and many of my guests have very large followings

so I think that’s why.

Stephen: That makes sense.

Trent: I don’t think it’s that I’m any Twitter genius.

Stephen: And how many Twitter followers do you have?

Trent: Me? Oh man, I don’t even know. I can tell you real quick. I

don’t even think I have a thousand; I think it’s in the hundreds. I will

tell you in just a second here, as soon as I get logged into Twitter. I

have 1,252 followers, not that I’ve ever put any particular great effort

into it to be honest with you.

Stephen: Well, it sounds like you’re using Twitter in a very strategic

way, asking your guests to tweet that out on your behalf. That’s coming

back to traffic to your site. That makes sense. Again, that’s time-

sensitive right? You just did something. There’s the element of time;

that’s great. Mark Cuban, he’s an investor in a pizza chain down in New

Orleans called Make It Pizza. And every day, they attribute 15% of their

sales to Twitter. Again, it’s an element of time. And so that makes a lot

of sense. Where are we going to get lunch today? I don’t know, I just got

this tweet from Make It Pizza so let’s go there. So that’s where Twitter, I

think, in my opinion, really, really fits well. But for people to just be

tweeting 18 to 20 times a day about every little thing that’s going on in

their life, from a business perspective I don’t think there’s a lot of

value.

The whole point, in my opinion, of social media is to do these two times a

day, move on with life. You’re running your business. You can do social

media by following these steps in like 10 to 15 minutes a day. I’m a huge

advocate for 10 minutes a day. Not sitting in Hoop Suite all day long

because I’ve got other things to do.

Trent: Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Okay, number . . . I’ve got so many pages

of notes I’ve got to turn it over. Number seven, two to go.

Stephen: Okay, so number seven and number eight really run parallel with

one another. And that’s how do we increase conversion rate by 200 to 400%

or more? So number seven is we’re big fans of retargeting. I really like

the company called Ad Roll. Google’s rolling out and doing a very good job

of remarketing as well within Google Analytics. I like the Ad Roll product;

I think it’s great.

Trent: Ad Roll or Admiral?

Stephen: No, Ad Roll. So you can find them at AdRoll.com. And so their

gift in life is retargeting, so for those of your listeners who are not

quite sure what that is, somebody comes to BrightIdeas.co and then Ad Roll

sets a cookie so next time I’m out at like the Wall Street Journal or any

place that accepts Google Ads, then I see an ad for Trent and I see an ad

for Trent’s latest webinar or latest book or latest whatever. And then what

happens is conversion rate goes up by 6x to 8x because I already have some

level of relationship with Trent. So the conversion rate goes up

dramatically.

Trent: This is assuming Trent is an advertiser with Google AdSense. If

you’re not buying any paid ads, retargeting’s not going to do you any good.

Stephen: Oh no, no, no. If you’re doing a placement through Ad Roll,

completely different from AdSense. Completely different.

Trent: Sorry, I used the wrong term. I need to be buying ads from Ad

Roll or whatever retargeting platform I’m using for retargeting to work is

the point I was trying to get at.

Stephen: Yes.

Trent: So using Ad Roll, that’s my one-stop shop or that is a one-stop

shop for buying traffic and having retargeting happen. You know, the first

time I purchased an engagement ring for my fiance a couple months ago, and

I got it from Blue Nile, I’ll tell you I was seeing Blue Nile ads on every

website I went to. And I’m thinking what the hell is going on here?

Stephen: [Laughs] We’ve got a live one here.

Trent: Yeah, because I’d put the ring in the shopping cart and it sat

in the shopping cart of Blue Nile for I don’t know, two or three weeks or

something like that while I pondered whether I had made the right choice. I

was just getting hammered with Blue Nile ads everyday after that.

Stephen: That’s right, it’s a full quarter press on Trent.

Trent: Pretty much. All right, so retargeting helps conversions a

whole bunch.

Stephen: Indeed. And then lastly we’re big fans of A/B testing, and so

what we use is . . . the tool is Visual Website Optimizer. You can find it

at VisualWebsiteOptimizer.com. Again, no financial affiliation with VWO; it

just happens to be, in my opinion, the easiest A/B testing tool that’s out

there. I can literally create an experiment, a B variation for a content

page, I can literally create that in about ten minutes, launch the test,

increase conversion rate by 200% or more in ten minutes.

Trent: I’m actually doing . . . I use Optimizely myself. So if you’re

listening to this, check them both out. The interface . . . the demo videos

seem very, very similar. I think, if I remember correctly which is why I

chose it, I think Optimizely is a little bit less expensive. Maybe it’s not

as good as Visual Website Optimizer; I haven’t used it. But I will say

creating the B version, again, super, super, super simple to do. And you

should always be testing. Always, always, always, always because how are

you supposed to . . . that’s the great thing about online marketing is you

can test everything. But you shouldn’t test everything all at once because

then you won’t know.

Stephen: Indeed.

Trent: All right. All right, so I still have more questions. I wanted

to talk to you about the building of your business, but I have kept you on

this podcast now for an hour and a half so I think maybe we should wind it

up.

Stephen: Wow, it has been an hour and a half. Holy cow, that went really

fast.

Trent: I think you may be the longest podcast on record with Bright

Ideas, and the ironic part is I didn’t even want to do this with you.

Stephen: [Laughs]

Trent: I was thinking to myself how do I get out of this without

getting egg on my face? And I’m glad that I didn’t cancel.

Stephen: I think that makes me feel special.

Trent: It should. I was sitting in front of my monitor last night at

11:30 and I had the draft of the I’m going to not have you on my show

email, and I couldn’t click the send button because I thought Nancy who I

really enjoyed interviewing, I thought she’s a smart woman. She didn’t

introduce me to some goofball; there’s got to be a reason why she told me

I’ve got to interview this guy. So with full credit to Nancy, and Nancy I

hope you’re listening, that this interview happened. It’s been terrific; I

really enjoyed it.

Stephen: Thank you. And I’ve really enjoyed it as well, so thanks for

having me on. Good conversation. It’s been fantastic, so thank you for

that.

Trent: Yeah, and I want to have you back because I’ve got so many

things I want to talk to you about. I might even want to see if you want to

team up with me on what I call a master class, but we’ll talk about that

here when we get off the air. Before I finish, I always like to ask just a

couple quick questions at the end. What are you most excited about, Steve,

for 2013?

Stephen: Wow, I think it’s really . . . a couple things. But I think it

really sort of involves around this event that we’re doing. And take like

the promotional stuff out of it for just a second, but one of the things

that I have built into Predictive is this message of empowerment and

education probably comes from my academia background, that I truly,

sincerely, genuinely want people to be able to learn this stuff and be able

to teach that. So I wasn’t trying to hold anything back today. There was no

hold barred. You could ask me anything you want whatsoever. And that’s the

way we approach it with clients. That’s the way we approach it when I teach

a class or seminar. And that’s what I really, really love.

So as that builds up to our event, it’s such an awesome opportunity, and

also responsibility, to be able to teach 350 business owners and

entrepreneurs. That’s going to be a really exciting two and a half days.

I’m so looking forward to that.

Trent: Yeah, I’ll bet. Favorite book that you have read in the last

six months? Business book.

Stephen: Business book? Let’s see. Well, I’ve read several that are

really good. But the one that I’ve read most recently that I thought rocked

was the I think now third edition, maybe even more than that, John

Jantsch’s recent version or latest edition I should say of Duct Tape

Marketing. I think he crushed it. It’s a phenomenal revision. I think it’s

really, really good. I highly suggest it for anybody. And then also the

book with John Wooden and Don Yaeger. So Don Yaeger wrote the book with

John Wooden about the Game Plan for Life. It’s a phenomenal book on

mentoring, and I’m studying it right now. In fact, I think I’ve . . . here

it is.

Trent: Wait a minute, isn’t Game Plan for Life . . . because Coach Joe

Gibbs has also a book called Game Plan for Life.

Stephen: Yeah, so this book was actually written by John Wooden and a

good friend of mine, Don Yaeger. It is phenomenal, and I’m using it right

now as I’m developing the new employees and training them. It’s really

taught me amazing weapons on how to be a better leader, about mentoring.

It’s phenomenal.

Trent: Okay. The confusion is that one of the books by Joe Gibbs is

called Game Plan for Life, and the one you’re talking about is A Game Plan

for Life. I don’t know what publisher genius allowed that to happen, but

anyway. Okay, so A Game Plan for Life. And how can people get a hold of

you? Do you want to give up your email address or your post office box or

website? Whatever you want to give.

Stephen: Sure, they can go to StephenWoessner.com. And my email address,

my direct email address, is just sw@stephenwoessner.com. So they’re welcome

to contact me there.

Trent: Okay, and your company website, which I’m assuming . . . it’s

being rebuilt now, but by the time this goes live it’s probably going to be

back online. It’s PredictiveROI.com right?

Stephen: It is.

Trent: All right, thank you so much for being on the show. It’s been a

blast. I’ve learned plenty. I have homework to do now, darn you, and I hope

the listeners also have got a lot out of this. You will be able to ask

questions, listeners, so if you hear, as soon as I wind up the recording,

I’ll do the little outro that I always do and tell you how to get to the

blog post for this and if you have questions for Stephen or myself, make

use of the comments to do that. So thanks very much, Stephen.

Stephen: Thanks very much for the time.

Trent: All right, to get to the show notes for today’s episode, go to

BrightIDeas.co/45. If you run a marketing agency and you want to get access

to the 2013 Marketing Agency Industry Report, go to

BrightIDeas.co/2013Report. And finally, if you’re looking for some traffic

generation strategies that actually work, go to

BrightIdeas.co/MassiveTraffic and enter your email address. You’ll be given

access to the Massive Traffic Toolkit which is a compilation of many of the

very best traffic generation ideas that have been shared with me by my

guests here on Bright Ideas. I’m your host, Trent Dyrsmid. Thank you so

much for tuning in to this episode. I had a blast. I hope you had just as

much fun listening to it and you got a lot out of it. And if you did,

please do me a favor. Down at the bottom of the blog post, there’ll be a

link that’ll take you to the iTunes store where you can leave some feedback

for this episode. I would love it if you would leave five stars and your

comments, because every time you do that it helps the show to get more

exposure, more entrepreneurs become aware of Bright Ideas, and the more

entrepreneurs that we can help to massively boost their business with all

the bright ideas that are shared by the guests here on the show. Thanks so

much for tuning in; we will see you on the next episode. Bye-bye.