In a sense, Automation is the overlooked magic of the internet. It’s what enables you to create such significant products, often at extremely low cost.

The key here is to get the automation in place early in your online life. Then, when you implement all of the leading edge internet marketing strategies that we cover, you don’t just make money – but you do it with ease. The alternative can be an administrative nightmare. Here are the key areas of automation to be focused on:

1 Your Automated Sales Team – Google I estimate that I would need a sales team of around ten people to bring in the customers that those nice people at Google generate for me. Your Google Adwords campaign is your automated sales team. They work 24/7 for you and they don’t take sickies. It’s totally automated and truly amazing.

2 Your automatic Lead Generator – Your Website Your site should be set up to generate leads automatically by capturing peoples’ contact details and communicating to them immediately. It’s essential that this all happens without any human involvement, because otherwise, as the website grows, the process will become un-manageable.

3 Your Automatic Payment System – Your Shopping Cart and Merchant Account

Getting these two areas right is often overlooked. How you structure your shopping cart will have a big impact on sales. Make sure that you test the system regularly and get a couple of friends/family members to try out the shopping cart and tell you any elements that put them off. ‘Abandonment’ (people leaving the shopping cart without completing the process) is an issue for all of us. It’s losing you money and it’s losing me money. The only question is, how much and are we doing all we can to reduce it?

4 The Automatic Follow Up Sequence – Your Autoresponder This is VITAL. Your autoresponder is the system that allows you to automate your entire email process, from capturing email addresses, to sending out follow up sequences and personalising emails. It all gets done automatically while you sleep. The scalability of an autoresponder is wonderful. It involves the same amount of work on your part whether you have fifty emails or five thousand. The autoresponder we recommend is www.listmailpro.com

Enjoy the Automation obsession. It’s one of the most thrilling and profitable elements of online life today.

By opening a ‘two-way’ conversation with your customers, you are building a community around your business, so they feel involved, relevant and cared about. Gone are the days of ‘sterile’, bland marketing messages. People want authenticity and knowledge. Blogs give you the platform to deliver all this and more, whilst attracting and building a regular audience.

Top Tips on How to Start a Successful Business Blog:

1. Set up a blog about your business. You can use a free account at blogger.com or there are many upgraded paid versions such as typepad.com and movabletype.com
2. Write a great ‘About Us’ page. This will be one of your most read pages, make sure you make a great impression and get readers excited about your business.
3. Set up an RSS feed such as feedburner.com to capture email addresses. This is a free, but powerful way to build a list.
4. Write a post every day for about a month to give you some content and to get you into the habit of blogging regularly. You can scale back to twice a week later on.
5. Make your blog posts short and easy to read. Use colloquial language and add personality. Readers need a reason to stay and dull blogs just don’t work.
6. Don’t go for the hard sell. Readers find this off putting. Write about how your
   products/services are improving lives, solving problems etc…
   
7. Use your keywords in your post titles and content.
8. Encourage your readers to comment and always reply to comments. This builds a ‘community’ feel to your business and is a great way to find out what your customers think about your products/services
9. Remember the Call to Action. Have plenty of links back to your main site, or sales page.
10. Comment on other popular blogs in your niche. This establishes you as an expert, and gives you powerful backlinks that help with SEO
11. Use social bookmarking tools like stumble upon and Digg to spread the word.
12. Have fun! Your blog is a great opportunity to connect with customers. Run polls, and competitions, make it interactive.
13. Put your blog link on your email signature and all your PR and marketing literature. A lot of readers prefer blogs to websites when they want to research a company.

But once you’re capturing email addresses, it’s time to test the “Holy Grail” which is to also get their physical address too.

Why? Because combining your online email Marketing with offline Marketing, primarily through direct mail is a very powerful marketing strategy for any and every business.

Here’s the challenge: The general rule is that the more information you ask your website visitor for, the fewer people will give it to you.

So here’s one strategy which works very well. You may have to tweak and test it (and you always should be testing anyway), but there’ll be a way of doing this that should very well for you and your business:

Offer something Free that can only be sent through the post. Obvious examples are a CD, DVD, printed report or a physical sample of your product putting substantial money into tried and tested strategies, correct?

Give the “free” item a value. If it’s a CD or a report, you could put a £27.97 (or higher) price label on it, and make sure you mention this value in the copy on the page. You MUST “sell”this free offer in the same way you sell something they’re paying for, because if it’s not worth anything… why would they want it? Also they are giving you something in exchange – their addresses. Free is NOT the same as “worthless”.

Here’s a very cool online Marketing strategy that some of the world’s best use very successfully. Offer something for free that can be downloaded in exchange for just a name and email address. Then on the ‘thank you’ page offer the physical version (CD or DVD) in exchange for the physical address. Why does this work so well? Because the people who are willing to give their physical address will obviously do so. But you haven’t lost those who do not want to give you their address. You still have their email address. The best of both words.

There are other variations of this. One is asking for the person’s telephone number. Again, that may suppress sign ups BUT the people who are willing to give you the most information are normally good leads. There’s no right or wrong approach, just what’s right for your business. So the key is to test extensively. Either way, capturing the contact details of people who visit your site must become an essential part of your online Marketing strategy.

SEO: -Brings traffic – this means more eyeballs on your business

-Increases visibility so you can be found

-Is usually a necessary step to marketing your business online

I’m going to take a fictional business and show you some of the basic steps to SEO, so you can do the same for your business.

Fictional business – Townsends Carpet Cleaning Service Location – Nationwide Franchise Typical Customer – Homeowner who uses the service twice a year Goal – To optimise webpages to attract more business

Website Domain – www.TownsendsCarpetCleaning.com – the domain contains the keyword ‘Carpet Cleaning’, making it easier for the search engines to find.

Keywords – Carpet cleaning, carpet cleaning service, carpet shampoo, carpet cleaning tips. After extensive research using keyword tools, these are some of the most profitable keywords for the business, ie: most likely to be used in a search. Knowing your best keywords is the essential first step to good SEO.

Page Titles -Carpet Cleaning Coupons, Carpet Cleaning for Spring. Google sorts by pages, not websites, so each page has a keyword title. This is very important as it tells the search engines what each page is about.

Metatags -Same as the keywords. These are not as important as they used to be, but they still help along with a brief description of each page.

Content – Articles, tips and testimonials about carpet cleaning, plus a FAQ. All of these contain optimised keywords that are carefully placed and balanced

Link Building – This is the big one. Google is obsessed with incoming links. This business gets good incoming links from quality sites by writing articles, commenting on forums, writing a blog, commenting on related blogs, registering with directories and using social media to promote all the above marketing efforts. Search engines reward good quality incoming links by giving the site a higher page rank.

If this seems like a lot to do – welcome to SEO – and this is just the beginning. Good SEO takes time. It’s not a race (and if you try to do it too fast, Google can penalise you.) We’ll be coming back to SEO frequently in the months ahead. For now, focus on optimising your pages for relevant keywords and building incoming links each month. Then you’ll be well on your way to increasing your search engine listing and attracting more business.

Clever research methods where viewers’ eyeball movements are electronically tracked over time as they read a variety of web-pages, show us conclusively that there’s a preferred viewing path which the majority of people follow with their eyes when they view your web-page.

Here’s how this relates to your online Profits.

Let’s remember our task: to grab our visitors’ attention and make them stop for the vital 8 seconds or so it takes for us to get over the “hump” of their short attention span. Chances are, if we can keep them for those precious 8 seconds, we can keep them long enough to get them to take the action we want.

Given that this is our task – doesn’t it make sense for us to make sure the page-elements we know make the biggest difference in response are placed where they statistically get more attention, so we can get that attention earlier?

The typical reading path is top to bottom, left to right, just how we read a book in the Western world. Your eyes begin at the top on the left and then follow a zig-zag pattern down the page as you read.

We can take advantage of this in two ways.

First, we have the headline at the top (so the first letter of the headline is in the top-left corner, right where the eye begins scanning the page), followed by any images or pictures we’re using to help make the sale.

It’s vitally important that any pictures you use have a caption with a meaningful sales message in them: picture-captions get high readership so putting them right up in the top-left corner is guaranteed to give them the very highest chance of being read (remember those 8 seconds!). The top-left is also a great place to put video: remember, it’s where the eye gets to first in the vital 8 seconds – it means your video is more likely to be watched! We need to reveal our biggest and most powerful promises and tools at the earliest point we can to ensure we’ve got the visitor’s attention. If we don’t do that, then anything else on the page is irrelevant, because they’ll have surfed off to another page.

The second thing that we can do is ensure the logical path of the page contents follows the physical path – meaning this is a good time to remind yourself of the AIDA formula: Attention, Interest, Desire, Action.

This might seem obvious, but if it is, then a lot of people are missing the obvious, probably because website designers typically know if something looks “nice” without knowing what makes it actually useful!

So, because the call to action is the last thing you want them to do, then the means to do that should be at the bottom of the page. It can be useful to have links in the body copy under appropriate “mini calls to action”, but there’s still the logical flow.

The key is to marry the physical reading path of the eye with the logical reading and decision-making path of the brain: start with the biggest promise at the top left to get their attention, then follow the natural zig-zag pattern down to the logical conclusion – and the sale.

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But when I see an Internet Marketing Strategy that I know can make any business owner significant amounts of money – and then I see people not doing it – it drives me crazy.

Countless businesses have spent millions of pounds researching what works and what doesn’t on the internet. I myself conduct hundreds of tests every year.

The verdict is in – and it’s clear.

Using the internet as a ‘lead generation’ vehicle by offering your potential customers a compelling Free offer on your homepage or internal ‘landing pages’ (the pages you send visitors to) will produce a response that’s often 500% -1000% higher than just trying to sell to them straight away.

That’s a lot of %

It’s also a lot of money that you’re leaving on the table every month if you’re not doing this.

People say “Oh this does not apply to my business.” Trust me. It does, because it’s dealing with basic human psychology.

One of the reasons your website may not be doing as well as you want it to, is because it’s too much to ask someone who’s never head of you, who stumbles on your website, to immediately make a decision to spend money with you.

But it’s not too much to ask them to begin a relationship with you, by you offering something for Free in exchange for their basic contact information (at least name and email address) You could offer them a Free Report, Article, Sample of your product, Video…the list is endless.

I’ve been advising people to do this for several years and I’m still surprised at how few Entrepreneurs are actually doing it. By the way, a tiny box, hidden in the corner of your homepage offering visitors your newsletter doesn’t count! (Just offering a newsletter does not work any more. It’s perceived as boring.)

So please do this for me in 2008. Create a big, bold offer on your website, offering visitors something they can’t resist, for Free, in exchange for their contact information.

Then follow up with them in a sequence of emails and let your emails do the selling.

This one strategy can transform your results on the internet. Please use it.

But what we tend not to realise is we can vastly improve (or conversely completely destroy) response by using the wrong words. No joke: a single “wrong” word can stop your website visitor dead in their tracks just at the point they were going to give you their details (or even their money!).

And the most common one of these is “form”, as in “Fill in the form below and we’ll send you the information”. The trouble with the word “form” is it sounds so official. We get forms from the tax-man and the government. They imply contracts, obligation and commitment. They put us off. So a far better way of phrasing this kind of thing is like this: “Just leave your details below, click the button and we’ll take care of the rest”

How easy and gentle does that sound compared to the other one?

Here are some more “bad” words you want to avoid, and the ones you want to use instead.

Sometimes you might have to re-cast sentences, but it’s always worth it:

“Sign up”. Instead write “join us” or “subscribe” or “claim”

“Buy”. Instead write “When you own” (we want to own stuff… we just don’t want to pay for it)

“Price” and “cost”. Instead use “amount” or “sum”. Caveat: you CAN use “price” and “cost” when you’re talking about your competitors.

“Contract”. Instead use “paperwork” or “agreement”.

These might seem like small details, but believe me they all add up and make a huge difference to the way your website visitors are going to respond to your pages

Ultimately it’s going to increase response and increase profits. So watch your words – and watch your bank account grow as a result

Once a business becomes really large, the menace gets out of control and starts wreaking havoc.
The name of that menace – ‘Meetings’

I used to do a great deal of business consultancy. One of the reasons I stopped was that I could not tolerate the long meetings that most clients insisted on having.

Most meetings in companies are a complete waste of time. Even when they’re not, 80% of what’s discussed is irrelevant. Meetings are a highly effective way for employees to waste time – simple as that.

Anyway, of all the nonsense discussed in most business meetings, Internet Marketing has to be the favourite time waster.

Here’s how it normally goes: Someone proposes a change to the website. So a discussion (ideally a really long one) has to follow. In that discussion everyone gives their opinion on the proposed changes.

Fred thinks it’s a good idea.Sharon thinks it’s a good idea but there should be more blue on the page because that’s her favourite colour.

Steve thinks the website lacks graphics

Julie thinks the whole website is too sales oriented and ‘pushy.’ (You can guarantee that Julie does not own this business)
Pete thinks the website isn’t the problem. The real problem is the lack of a corporate growth strategy.

Nobody else in the meeting really knows what a corporate growth strategy is (actually neither does Pete) so they all agree with him.

And so it goes on……

Now hopefully your Entrepreneurial business will never have these types of meetings – but the problem remains. People are obsessed with trying to decide if a change to a website is ‘right’ or ‘wrong’.

Please don’t fall into this trap. It is a horrible waste of your time.

I promise you this: In 90% of cases, you or I or your colleagues will have absolutely no idea if a proposed website change is right or wrong. The only people who can tell you are your customers and they will ALWAYS surprise you.

So stop trying to mind-read what your customers will like or dislike. When I suggest a new Internet

Marketing approach to you, don’t waste a moment debating it – just TEST it. If it works, great. If it doesn’t work, move on and immediately test something else.

I’m serious when I tell you that many corporations have MONTHS of meetings to decide on a website change. Take advantage of their incompetence. While they’re busy talking, you get Testing. The results of continually testing new online methods (many of which we cover on the VIP Inner Circle website) will almost certainly astound you.

If you’re already doing Pay per Click, I am going to ask you a favour and let me address those VIP members who are not doing it. (I’ll have some advanced tips for you next month.) Our research indicates that at least 50% of members are not doing Pay per Click. That figure is way too high and it means many members are losing out.

If you’re totally new to the concept, Pay per Click (PPC) refers to the sponsored links to websites that you can place on Google (and other search engines) at or near the top of the search results when people search for phrases (known as ‘keywords’) that relate to your business. Go to Google and do a search for ‘car insurance’ and you’ll see examples of those ads at the top and down the right hand side of the page. Here’s why you must at least test PPC:

1 It is a revolution in Marketing because it is the best way to find people who are searching, right now, for your particular product or service.

2 It is a revolution in Advertising because you don’t pay for your ad to appear. You only pay when people click on it – hence Pay per Click. You choose how much to pay for each click and that helps determine how high up the page you’re going to appear. This type of pay per performance Advertising is music to the ears of smart direct response Marketers (that’s YOU!)

3 There is a science to doing Pay per Click extremely well. I do not know of any other form of Marketing where becoming an expert on it can improve your performance so radically. It’s well worth you getting really good at this. And if you’ve tried PPC in the past without success, it’s worth re-visiting if equipped with some of the tools and strategies I’m going to share with you.

4 It’s more predictable than Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). One of the biggest problems with SEO is that Google can change its algorithm and your listings may disappear overnight. Although PPC has its challenges, it gives you a much stronger, predictable base to work from.

5 There’s virtually no downside to testing PPC. Google lets you set up an account in minutes and you can test it for a few pounds. Do a search for ‘Google Adwords’ to find out where to get started (or just click the ‘Advertising Programmes’ link on Google’s homepage.)

6 The first step to a successful campaign is deciding what your ‘keywords’ are going to be. These are the phrases that people search for on Google that you want your ads to appear for. There’ll be a few obvious keywords – plus, you should go through all of your Marketing material looking for good keywords – and there are online keyword tools such as Google’s and also www.wordtracker.com

This month’s Internet Profit Strategies has one, sole purpose. To sell you the idea that Pay per Click is something you should be testing TODAY.

That’s why I find it frustrating to see business owners wasting so much money within effective websites.

It’s useful to consider your home page as the “concierge” of your business – it’s the place they’re directed to when you place a PPC ad or offline ad to drive them online.It has to act like a concierge – because all your future business with your visitors depends on it.

So if you’re not doing everything you can to maximise the results you get from your home page, you’re wasting money.

Your online profits come down to two things: the amount of traffic you get, and then the percentage of visitors you convert to paying customers or clients.

With that in mind, here are some tips and strategies you can implement today, right NOW in fact, to make our home page more effective.

First, you MUST have a headline. It’s the first thing people see when they visit your site, and you have about 8 seconds to capture their attention and keep them there.So your headline needs to be big, bold and promise a huge benefit to them to keep on reading. Your logo and your company name is not a headline: it’s a cop-out and an example of either a lack of imagination or laziness. Perhaps both.

Secondly, your home page must have one purpose and one purpose only. Sometimes this is called the “most wanted response”. I strongly urge you to make your home-page’s purpose to get the email address and name of the visitor so you can start marketing to them (see next month’s Strategies).

And thirdly, begin your relationship with them by giving. Most home-pages either ask visitors to buy something or, perhaps worse, say nothing at all (the page has no real purpose). Instead, offer something of value (free report, CD, trial-run of something,free sample, etc.) in return for their details.

Once this is all in place, the next step is to MEASURE the response to your new home page and then TEST variations to improve that response rate. The good news: Very few people are doing this and those who take the time and trouble are well on the way to having a Recession-Proof Web site.