Branding Yourself With A Blog

How To Create An Internet Image With Your Blog

I highly recommend that you set up a blog as part of your branding. Your blog will be your hub for everything you do online. You are going to use it to draw an audience, rank in Google, get people to sign up for your list, and connect to your social media accounts. You are going to provide a lot of value on your blog and inform and help people. You are going to interact with the people in your niche on your blog.

There are a ton of free blog building options out there. Often, depending on the business model, I usually say that it’s totally fine to set up a free blog, such as what you’d find on blogger.com. However, you are working on building a real business here– one that will lead to a full time income. I recommend you go ahead and spend the $10 on a professional domain name that brands you. I recommend you sign-up for a hosting account, such as with Hostgator, where you can find hosting for just a few dollars

a month.

Once you have your domain name and hosting, it’s time to set up a WordPress blog. You can easily do this using the Softaculous icon within your control panel. WordPress is very easy to work with and there are many themes and plug-ins available to change the look and functionality of the blog. WordPress is extremely flexible and is sure to stand the test of time.

On your blog, you’ll have a couple of different purposes. You will create pages that stay static on your blog. You need an “about me” page, a contact page, a squeeze page, and other pages. Take a look at the most popular blogs in your niche and figure out which static pages you would like to include on your own.

These static pages really help to build your brand. People will be able to find out more about you, join your list, contact you, and more. These are the pages that you would typically find on a standard website that people come to expect to see (and so do the search engines).

However, you want your blog to be so much more. You also want to include frequent, fantastic blog posts that help to establish you as an expert. These blog posts can help you keep up with trends, set the tone for your brand, inform people, help people, entertain people, and more. I highly suggest that you have a mixture of posts. Make sure that the posts are high quality so others want to link to them and Google wants to share them.

As part of branding yourself and becoming successful online, you are going to get a lot of content out there all over the web. This can start with your blog, which serves a variety of purposes. Make it clear what your blog is about and why people should subscribe to it and visit it often.

I highly recommend that you write a few posts every week, or at least enough to keep people entertained and coming back for more. The more content you have out there, the more chances people have to find you.

Essentially, you want people to get caught in your spider web of content and your presence everywhere on the web. People should find you on relevant Google searches related to your niche. They should know that if they hang out on your blog they can interact with you, learn a lot, be informed, and be entertained. Interacting with the people in your niche is one of the best ways to brand yourself and to become successful. Remember… people buy from those they know, like, and trust. This is the foundation of making sure that happens.

Eventually, your blog is going to be an excellent traffic generation tool. But your main goal, of course, is to get people to join your list. Add a squeeze page to your blog and give people something extremely valuable for free. You can drive social media traffic, article traffic, and paid traffic to the squeeze page – including a combination of all of the above. In addition, I recommend that you put an opt-in form on the sidebar of your blog so it shows up on every page. You can also include an opt-in form at the bottom of each post you make. Ideally, your blog will eventually be a 24/7 lead generation tool.

Building a successful blog is an ongoing process. It can take a little while for your blog to take off. But then, the effects are massive over time. Check out your favorite blogs within your niche to figure out how you can use your blog to brand yourself and really build a successful and profitable business over time.

Branding Yourself With A Blog was originally published on Adrenaline Digital Marketing

Top 5 FREE Microsoft Office Alternatives

Top 5 FREE Microsoft Office Alternatives

These are the top 5 best free software alternatives to Microsoft Office. In this video, I will show you the best free office suites. These useful and amazing free software computer programs can help you get the most use out of your PC. Hopefully you enjoy these very useful software alternatives that are the best alternatives to other software.

Google Docs: https://www.google.com/docs/about/
WPS Office 2016 Free: https://www.wps.com/office-free
FreeOffice 2016: http://www.freeoffice.com/en/
OpenOffice: https://www.openoffice.org/
LibreOffice: https://www.libreoffice.org/

Top 5 FREE Microsoft Office Alternatives was originally published on Adrenaline Digital Marketing

The Number 1 Hack to Converting Visitors into Leads | Lead Generation Tips

The Number 1 Hack to Converting Visitors into Leads | Lead Generation Tips

RESOURCES & LINKS:
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LeadQuizzes: https://www.leadquizzes.com/

Bucket.io: https://bucket.io/

Interact: https://www.tryinteract.com/
____________________________________________

Before I tell you the solution on how I increase my leads by 280% with one simple hack, keep in mind that if you don’t follow all the tips in this video step by step, it’s not going to work for you.

It’s not as simple as just using this hack, you need to also follow through and use all of the tips as well.

So, what is this hack? It’s quizzes.

And if you go to neilpatel.com/quiz, you’ll see my quiz.

This has helped me increase my leads by 280%. It’s that much more effective than lead forms.

But it’s not as simple as just saying “Hey, put in the lead! “Hey, give me your information!”

If you just do that, quizzes do not work. So let me break down the exact steps you need to take to make this work for you.

First off, you need a tool to create these quizzes.

You can use LeadQuizzes, Bucket.io, or Interact. If you use any of those tools it’ll help you create the quiz and generate the lead after.

The second thing you need to do is you need to provide value in your quiz.

So, for example, whatever your quiz is on, if you don’t provide value at the end, you’re going to lose people and they won’t convert into a lead.

So, for example, if I tell people how they can grow their marketing traffic I make sure that I send them a report or something that fixes their problems.

If you don’t send them anything or give them something of value, people are going to be upset and it doesn’t work well.

The next thing you want to do is use qualification questions in your quiz.

See your quiz questions isn’t just about understanding the customer and figuring out how to get them to the end point and get them their results.

At the same time you want to understand if that lead is a good fit for you.

You want qualified leads and that’s why quiz is so amazing because you can drive them through the steps and qualify them with some questions that not only helps them with the end solution, it also helps you.

The next thing you want to do is send them a custom asset based on their answers.

So, whether it’s a PDF, a webinar, a course, whatever asset you send them, should be based on the responses that they fill in.

It they fill in responses saying like, “I have a ton of traffic, Neil, “I don’t need your help,” why would I send them a PDF that says “Hey, here’s how you get more traffic”?

I should send them a PDF being like, “Now that you have traffic here’s how you boost your conversions.”

You see how you want to tailor around the problem solution, what they should be doing.

That’s also how you create better quality leads.

The next thing you want to do is avoid using the word survey.

Any time you use the word survey, you’re going to notice your quiz will get a lot less completed by people.

You’re always going to have a drop-off but you don’t want to use the word survey.

And I know you’re thinking this is crazy, like Neil, you’re teaching us tips on a quiz, why would people use the word survey?

I don’t know why but people do. It’s a really common mistake that I see.

The last thing you want to do is make sure you don’t have too many questions.

So you want enough to qualify people so that way the lead is relevant, but you don’t want to have 20 or 30 questions because that’s too many.

I recommend anywhere from seven to around 13 questions. I try to keep it in the seven to 10 range.

That way I’m getting super qualified leads. When you start asking three or four questions, you get way more leads but they are not going to be relevant and your close ratio for your sales team or through your email marketing campaigns won’t convert as high.

So make sure you’re asking enough questions and when you ask the questions, don’t have like 20 open-ended answers or 10 radio buttons per question.

You want to keep it simple. No more than three or four options per question, ideally one or two, and then go from there.

The Number 1 Hack to Converting Visitors into Leads | Lead Generation Tips was originally published on Adrenaline Digital Marketing

Tracking conversions on a website with AdWords

Tracking conversions on a website with AdWords

Google AdWords is now Google Ads.

Tracking conversions on a website with AdWords was originally published on Adrenaline Digital Marketing

How to Start Affiliate Marketing STEP by STEP for Beginners! 2019

How to Start Affiliate Marketing STEP by STEP for Beginners! 2019

How to start affiliate marketing step by step for beginners in 2019!

How to Start Affiliate Marketing STEP by STEP for Beginners! 2019 was originally published on Adrenaline Digital Marketing

Creating A Branding Strategy

An Overview of A Complete Branding Strategy

In order to brand yourself, you’re going to have to get your name out there on the web. You’re going to help people, differentiate yourself from the competition, and spread your name far and wide. You are going to put a focus on providing value to the people of your niche. You want to appear helpful, demonstrate your expertise, and be present by networking whenever you get the chance.

You are going to be putting up web properties to get your name out there and start to build an audience. This should include creating a blog, being present on social media, and taking advantage of other branding opportunities.

You are going to create a consistent image for yourself and your brand. For instance, you might consider creating a consistent look, including colors and graphics, across all platforms you belong to. You’ll streamline your graphics, your interactions, your free and paid materials, and so on.

This is a real business, so you’re going to treat it that way from the very start. This part of the process is done a little bit each day, not for hours upon hours each day. Once you set it up, you really only have to check in every now and then, a little bit at a time. Branding yourself doesn’t have to be time-consuming, you just have to focus on staying in touch with what’s going on in your niche and making sure you are a consistent and helpful presence.

Figure out Your Unique Selling Proposition

You really need to figure out why people should pay attention to you. You need to figure out what it is about you that sets you apart from everyone else. This is so important that it needs its own section. This is how you build your brand, get more sales, and really succeed online. There’s a lot of competition out there, so there has to be a reason people will be turning to you.

Consider what is so special about you and your brand. What do you bring to the table that no one else can? Remember, it might be something about you, your approach, your methods, and so on. You have to figure out what you have to offer that no one else does.

Very few people follow copycats. People follow others that bring some “special sauce” to their lives.

This is number one when branding yourself. If you just blend in with the crowd, there’s no reason for people to pay any attention to you and to join your list. You have to declare that you are the best at something. This can make you a little bit uncomfortable if it’s not something you’re used to. But when you keep in mind that your main goal is to help people, and that you can provide something that no one else can, it gets a little bit easier to brand yourself and to push your USP.

Once you figure out what sets you apart, you are going to use it in all your marketing materials. Think about the slogans and concepts other marketers and businesses have. I’ve branded myself as the 5 Buck A Day guy – breaking Internet marketing down and making it approachable and achievable for absolutely everyone. Consider the slogans and the USPs of the companies and the people you admire.

Really do some brainstorming, take some time on this. Once you figure out your unique selling proposition, it becomes so much easier to make headway in this business. You can use your USP when trying to attract an audience, trying to get people to join your list, and when making sales.

Don’t give up before you figure out your USP. Absolutely every person in every business has a USP or can easily develop one. You need to have knowledge of your marketplace and your niche, what people need and want, and what you bring to the table. Figure this out and make sure you have it firmly in your mind because it will guide you with everything you do in your business.

Creating A Branding Strategy was originally published on Adrenaline Digital Marketing

The Art Of Pre-Selling

Pre-Selling With Reviews

In this information age we live in people naturally want to know more about products they’re considering purchasing. They don’t want to choose blindly, not when there are so many options.

The days when consumers only choice was to purchase items in their local stores is just a memory. There really was no need to read reviews in those days because regardless of the quality, they had zero options other than to go with what was available.

That’s not the case these days. Today, people can buy whatever they want online. It doesn’t matter if they live across the country or even across the world– they can access the exact products they want.

This gives people many more choices. It’s a wonderful thing, although it does have its downsides. For one thing, there are so many choices that it can be hard to make a decision. Should you buy this thing or that thing? Would this product serve your purposes better or would a different product serve your purposes better?

The fact that there are so many choices out there and that people are afraid of making the wrong decision is what drives people to research the products they are interested in online. People search for product reviews every day. They compare and contrast different products. They really want to make a smart decision.

Not only do they want to make sure that the product they choose will be the best possible option, but they also want to take price into consideration. They want to find a great deal. People feel good and are more positive about a product when they find a good deal on it.

It also helps if they know that others are enjoying the product they’re interested in. This social proof gives people a sort of confidence they wouldn’t otherwise have. If they know others love it, then the chances are good that they will love it as well.

These are all important factors to take into consideration for you as a copywriter. Your job is to get people to buy things. So yes, this means using the psychology of sales. This means persuading people to buy things.

But, they aren’t going to buy it just because you tell them to. There’s so much more that goes into it with today’s savvy consumers.

They’ll want to buy if they know that it’s the best possible product option, if it’s the best possible price, and if they know that others love it too.

In fact, you might find that you start to get even more sales than you previously did if you focus on what humans really want. Humans don’t really want to be marketed to. Sure, they want all of the things we’ve already talked about. But that doesn’t mean they love to be sold to. Or at least, they don’t want to be conscious of the fact that they’re being sold to.

So, as a copywriter, you can take on sort of a different role than you ever have before. You can become that trusted friend who is showing them that the product you are promoting is the right one for them. You can do this by writing product reviews.

You don’t have to paint a pretty picture of the product. You can be honest about its flaws – be honest about its good parts and not so good parts. You can compare it to other products on the market. And, yes, you can use the psychology of sales to really entice people to go ahead and buy.

You want people to trust you. People don’t always trust marketers, commercials, and advertisements. But, you know what they do trust? They trust product reviews. When people are open and honest with them within a product review, they are a lot more likely to buy.

You want to win people over and start to build that relationship right away. You want to show people that you have their best interests at heart. Product reviews can be a fantastic way to do that.

Instead of writing straight sales copy and ads, you can also write product reviews to present to your audience. You can also do a comparison and contrast within your sales copy.

This doesn’t have to be difficult. You just have to think about what people really want. Think about how you can best present the product you’re trying to sell while being honest about its flaws and honest about whether or not it will really help the people in your target audience.

You can create product reviews for a product you’re promoting as an affiliate or products that are your own. Product reviews can work better if you do not own the product. People tend to trust those outside of the source than the source itself. With that said, there are ways that you can adopt this philosophy and way of promotion even if you are the product creator.

The Art Of Pre-Selling was originally published on Adrenaline Digital Marketing

Top 3 Autoresponder Companies For Internet Marketing

Rating Autoresponders For Internet Marketing

As stated in earlier posts, I personally use Aweber. GetResponse, and SendLane are also great choices for people promoting digital products.

Aweber is considered the “Gold” standard in professional autoresponders by many. They have earned their reputation by delivering countless emails for many top email marketers reliably for longer than anyone else.

Aweber probably has the easiest user interface to learn of all the autoresponder services listed here. Add that to their very complete free training and you have a great choice for those who are new to email marketing.

Over the past several years Aweber has added multiple automation features to their platform. Unlike Aweber in general the automation features are actually pretty self explanatory and easy to use.

Don’t be put off about Aweber being “hard to learn” as there’s a wealth of free information available on mastering this very trusted autoresponder company.

GetResponse is by far the hardest service for email marketers to use affiliate links on. If you plan on using GetResponse and you primarily promote affiliate products you will need to use a URL shortener or link cloaker of some kind unless you want to create a landing page on one of your sites for every

campaign.

GetResponse has better automation features than the others listed with the exception of Active Campaign which offers a true CRM allowing you to segment users into target groups by the actions they take.

Active Campaign is not featured here because it is a true CRM, and carries the appropriate big price tag placing Active Campaign out of the scope of this post.

SendLane is somewhere in the middle with analytics and automation. SendLane is very popular among digital marketers because they don’t make a fuss about affiliate links.

Founded by well known marketer Jimmy Kim, SendLane is known as the “Internet Marketers Autoresponder” because Kim designed the company to serve Internet marketers.

Most of the marketers I know who have used SendLane say the deliverability is as good or better than Aweber and GetResponse.

SendLane has a relatively simple interface so it’s easy to maneuver where you need to be and do what you need to do without having to sit through extensive training. and sports opt in form templates made for digital marketers doing email marketing.

There are many other autoresponder companies out there, but the services listed above are affordable and time-tested. No matter what you’re doing in business, you’ll typically be covered with either SendLane, Aweber or GetResponse.

Many people like MailChimp, just note that they don’t tend to care for those who promote affiliate offers, so that’s something to remember if you’re an affiliate marketer.

Take a look at the help documents and different offers of these three companies, or of another reputable company someone whom you trust has recommended to you.

Don’t Wait Another Day…

Hopefully, you can see that paying a little bit of money ($10-$20 a month to start) is well worth it when it comes to getting your emails delivered, easily managing your list, having tools to build your list, getting your emails opened, and oh yea, making sales.

Top 3 Autoresponder Companies For Internet Marketing was originally published on Adrenaline Digital Marketing

5 Tips for forming your Online Marketing Strategy

Online marketing is an incredibly powerful tool that any business can benefit from. Online marketing will help your business to reach consumers that you would never be able to reach through traditional marketing mediums. Online marketing can help you give your image a boost, increase interest and awareness in your business, and drive more traffic to your site.

With that being said, online marketing is more than running a Facebook ad or sending an email to a list. Online marketing provides multiple venues from which to promote, each requiring specific tactics. You need to identify which of the available options you feel best using in order to form a strategy. As the saying goes, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail”.

Feel free to ignore the above advice if you’re only doing this for a hobby. However if you are actually trying to make money, get ready to start planning…

These five tips will help you to form your own strategy. This strategy will become the base you build your business upon.

Niche Selection

Most marketing “experts” are big on selecting a niche that you have an interest in. While it’s nice to be vitally interested in the niche you market to I would not get stuck on this. There are plenty of people making a rather nice living selling things they would never need or want themselves. The most important thing you need to do before choosing a niche to market in is to make sure there is actually money to be made in that niche.

A great way to get an idea about the income potential of a niche is to simply do a keyword search in Google’s PPC ad platform AdWords (you don’t have to run ads to have an account) and look at the per click rates for advertising. The higher the rates, the more profitable the niche is. If you are finding rates way under $1 per click through all keywords, this is not a niche to make money in.

Know Your Audience

Once you have found a profitable niche your next task is to make sure that you understand everything that there is to know about your target market. You need to understand exactly what motivates people in order to effectively market to them. Unless you know what drives sales in your niche, you will not be able to effectively reach your audience with your marketing strategy.

Who are they? What do they dream of? What is their secret fear? What keeps them awake at night?Those are the questions you need to find the answers to if you want to be successful.

Facebook Groups can be really helpful in doing your niche research. Find one or more groups dedicated to your niche and join them. Don’t try to sell anything, just make sure you turn on notifications for the group so whenever someone posts you will be able to check it out. And go as far back in the group thread as you can. Pay attention to what people in the niche love, hate etc.

Branding

To have a cohesive marketing strategy you will need a brand. Your brand can be as simple as your name, or you can choose to use a company name. Either way, whatever you choose you must use at all times. Your brand needs to stay consistent across everything you do. Your emails, your domain, your social media accounts.

Otherwise you will simply confuse your target audience and dilute your own message.

Do check to see if a business name is registered before using it. This can save you both headaches and money as trademark infringement cases tend to be expensive.

The best way to check if a business name is registered is to go to the United States Patent Office’s (USPO) web site and check. Go to: http://www.uspto.gov/main/trademarks.htm and select search. Just enter the name you want to use and search. The free tool will let you know if the name is registered or not.

Content Marketing

Love it or hate it you need to be ready to put out niche based content. Authorities make money online, everyone else struggles. You don’t need to be a certified card carrying expert. You simply need to know more than those you are trying to guide.

If you hate writing, do videos. Don’t want to be on camera? Do a podcast. If nothing else find good content by others, share it with attribution to the source, then add your take on the content below.

Most of all, be consistent in publishing your content. People may be interested in what you have to say, but they easily forget about you if they never know when you will publish next. Marketing is all about gaining and keeping momentum. Making a regular schedule and sticking to it is essential for maintaining momentum.

Social Media

There’s more to social media than Facebook. Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat and more can be invaluable when it comes to finding new customers. Although Facebook covers practically any niche you can think of there are some niches where other social media sites give you better results.

To find out if your niche is active on a particular social media site just create an account if you don’t have one and search for your niche on the site. The results will give you a good idea of the interest in the niche within that site.

As with content marketing you must post consistently on your social media accounts to gain an audience. Pay attention to the kind of posts people react to the most. Try to emulate those types of posts whenever appropriate.

Use these tips to formulate your business plan and you will have a solid foundation on which to build a successful business.

5 Tips for forming your Online Marketing Strategy was originally published on Adrenaline Digital Marketing

Why Every Email Marketer Needs A Paid Autoresponder Account

Why Choose A Paid Autoresponder Service?

You should know that the very best paid autoresponder services have high quality tools for you to use which they consistently update. You won’t have to worry about things being out of date or not having the analytics you need to build and manage your list effectively. Good autoresponder services have these and are constantly tweaking them to make using them faster and easier.

The best paid autoresponder companies also have a good reputation with email services like Gmail. This is so important because the fact that names like Aweber, GetResponse, and Sendlane are more trusted than most other companies (such as the free ones or ones you host yourself) and that trust can help keep your emails out of the dreaded “Promotions” folder in Gmail. Using a trusted email provider helps get your emails into the in-box giving you more emails opened along with more sales and better engagement.

This next point is important especially if you’re new to email marketing. Good, solid autoresponder companies have staff who can help you and answer your questions. It can be daunting at first, even though the companies try to make their tools as easy to use as possible.

I personally use Aweber, which not only has a highly trained support staff to help you but also a comprehensive selection of training videos and PDFs on everything from sending out your first email to advanced email marketing strategies.

These paid services help you manage and maintain your list. They make it easy to add and delete subscribers.

You can even easily import subscribers from other autoresponder services you’ve used in the past. That comes in really handy if you’ve already made the mistake of going with one of the free autoresponder options at first.

The Facts You Need About Free Autoresponder Services

The main thing you need to know about free autoresponder services is that they are often unreliable. And reliability is the key when it comes to successful email marketing.

Some of these free autoresponder services or scripts might be run on your own hosting account. The typical web hosting account simply won’t be able to handle it. The reliability will be awful, you won’t have the tools you need, and your business and your list won’t be secure.

Important Note: I’m not talking about the free introductory offers that reputable autoresponder companies sometimes have. MailChimp is a reputable autoresponder company, which even has a free version you can use if you have a smaller list and don’t need any of the premium tools like analytics.

While some would argue that any autoresponder account is worthless without good analytics, you can hold off on this if you must at first. Something like MailChimp is just fine in this instance. But be really cautious before you choose anything else unless it has a stellar reputation and someone you know and trust has actually recommended it.

Aweber, GetResponse, and Sendlane are all great choices, plus all three have free trial offers so you can try their service out. I have nothing bad to say about that either. Those are all great companies and if you are interested in the services they offer then take advantage of the free intro offers to see if you like a particular service.

Why Every Email Marketer Needs A Paid Autoresponder Account was originally published on Adrenaline Digital Marketing