When my oldest son was born, the docs had barely scrubbed the ink off his tiny feet before the marketing started. The beaming nurses handed us a “new parents kit”—a bag bulging with free goodies. Mostly these were samples from companies like Huggies and Enfamil, eager to grab a new customer. But a few sly […]
Continue readingEmail copy clinic is in session. Recently I was working with an entrepreneur, who I’ll call Sam. Sam has a 7-figure business providing marketing services for small businesses—mostly dentists. He’s a superstar marketer in a lot of ways—but his autoresponder sequence is a massive pile of fail. That’s why he was talking to me. Dentists […]
Continue readingGot a voicemail from a client the other day, wondering about the copy I’d written for his sales page: “Is this all, or were you planning to write more?” he asked. “I thought it would be longer.” If you hang around with marketers for even a little while, you’ll discover that there’s a HUGE debate […]
Continue readingOne common question I get is this: “How do I remove the ‘Powered by KingSumo’ badge on my giveaway landing page?” People are nervous about their competitors noticing what they’re doing and spinning up a giveaway of their own. That’s understandable–after all, I found out about KingSumo Giveaways from clicking that very badge on a […]
Continue readingThe team behind DroneU was flying high. With just 24 hours left to go on their giveaway, they blasted out a “last chance” message to their social media followers. And their traffic EXPLODED. Thousands of hits per minute. Signups were pouring in, until … Well, I’ll let Tim Ray tell the story, since he was […]
Continue readingTo run a contest with the KingSumo Giveaways plugin, here’s what you need: A website or blog that runs on WordPress The ability to install WordPress plugins (wordpress.com sites won’t work) The ability to send emails from your website. Installing the KingSumo plugin KingSumo Giveaways is a premium WordPress plugin, and it installs just like […]
Continue readingNote: This is a loooooong post, almost 5,500 words, which originally appeared on Pat Flynn’s Smart Passive Income blog. It details, blow by blow, exactly what I did to grow my email list by nearly 200,000 addresses. If you don’t have time to read the whole thing, I understand, but be sure to check out […]
Continue readingI’m a member of a small Google group that likes to talk about marketing, and recently one of the members, James, posed an interesting question. One of his clients is a novelist who is trying to build an email list to help market a novel. And James has no idea where to start: Assuming I […]
Continue readingDuring my workout this morning at the local YMCA, I noticed a couple of the other lifters gathered around a small placard on the decline bench press station. I hit pause on The Fizzle Show (awesome podcast, by the way, you should subscribe) and wandered closer to hear what was going on. The little card, […]
Continue readingLast week while we were recording the Entreprogrammers Podcast, John Sonmez hit me with a painful proposition: Has my entire marketing strategy for my books been wrong? Let me back up. Over the last couple of months, sales of my two Sublime Text books have tapered off. I recognized the downward trend in April, and […]
Continue readingOf all the sparring partners in my karate class, I feared Adam the most. I was a skinny teenager, maybe 120 pounds soaking wet. Adam was a college student, about my height but built. He had at least 60 pounds of muscle on me. One evening we were squared off, circling each other and throwing […]
Continue readingA few weeks ago, I was talking with another self-published author, comparing notes about how we market our books. His sales had slowed recently, and his email signups had dropped off as well. He wasn’t sure what was causing the issue, but as we talked, one root cause became apparent. He admitted that he’d gotten […]
Continue readingIn many cases, the success of a blog post or sales page rests on the strength of the headline. Says David Ogilvy, among the most successful copywriters of all time: On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent […]
Continue readingI’m in the middle of what I’m calling Marketing Month. (It started as Marketing March and has now bled into April.) My main goal for the past few weeks–and the coming weeks as well–is to get a better handle on which of my marketing efforts are most effective, and then find ways to do more […]
Continue readingWhen I first decided I wanted to get serious about my health and fitness, I started where any self-respecting geek would — research! I spent a few weeks trying to read so I could formulate a plan of attack. But I quickly hit an obstacle — there’s just too much information out there. The mountains […]
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