Artificial intelligence agents are autonomous software designed to perform tasks, make decisions, and interact intelligently, with minimal human intervention. They leverage AI to achieve goals and boost efficiency in various fields. In this article, we’ll explore what AI agents are, their core principles, types, and how they are transforming industries through automation and optimization.

Key Takeaways

• AI agents are autonomous software applications that independently perform tasks and make decisions, enhancing efficiency in various business environments.
• The core principles of autonomy, adaptability, reactivity, and proactivity enable AI agents to manage complex workflows and continuously improve their performance through feedback.
• AI agents have diverse applications across industries including finance, digital marketing, and customer management, and their future trends indicate increased integration and enhanced decision-making capabilities.

What are Artificial Intelligence Agents?

AI agents are autonomous software applications designed to perform tasks, make decisions, and interact intelligently with minimal human intervention. These intelligent agents use artificial intelligence to achieve goals and perform tasks for users, setting them apart from other AI technologies with their autonomous capabilities. Imagine an AI agent as a diligent employee who learns and adapts through real-time feedback, enabling it to operate in dynamic environments and address changing conditions effectively.

What sets AI agents apart is their ability to function independently, making decisions and performing actions based on their understanding of the environment. This autonomy allows AI agents to manage complex workflows and enhance efficiency, reducing the need for constant human oversight.

As businesses continue to adopt AI systems, the role of AI agents in automating and optimizing tasks will only grow, making them indispensable tools in the modern workplace.

Core Principles of AI Agents

To understand how AI agents work, it’s essential to grasp the core principles that define them:

1. Autonomy
2. Adaptability
3. Reactivity
4. Proactivity

These principles enable AI agents to manage complex workflows, handle assigned tasks, and anticipate future needs, making them highly efficient and effective at simpler tasks.

Each of these principles contributes uniquely to the overall functionality of AI agents, allowing them to operate smoothly in various environments.

Autonomy

Autonomy is at the heart of intelligent agents. Advanced AI agents possess reasoning, planning, and memory capabilities, enabling them to act autonomously without constant human intervention. This independence allows AI agents to execute tasks and make decisions based on their understanding of the environment, enhancing efficiency and managing complex workflows effectively.

For instance, self-driving cars exemplify autonomous AI agents, navigating roads and making real-time decisions to ensure safe travel without human oversight.

Adaptability

Adaptability is another crucial principle, allowing AI agents to refine their functions by learning from experiences and feedback. Storing data from past scenarios allows AI agents to build a knowledge base, enabling them to tackle complex tasks more efficiently.

Adaptability ensures AI agents can thrive in dynamic environments, continually improving their performance and decision-making capabilities.

Reactivity

Reactivity enables AI agents to adjust their actions based on real-time changes or user inputs. These reactive agents are designed to respond swiftly to environmental changes, ensuring they meet their objectives.

For example, a reactive AI agent in customer service can adjust its responses based on the user’s current needs, offering personalized assistance that enhances the overall experience.

Proactivity

Proactive AI agents use predictive algorithms to identify patterns, forecast outcomes, and act without prompting. These agents can monitor complex systems, identify potential issues, and recommend solutions, ensuring tasks are completed efficiently and effectively with generative ai.

Anticipating needs and taking initiative, proactive AI agents significantly enhance workflow management and decision-making processes.

Types of AI Agents

AI agents can be categorized into various types based on their intelligence level, decision-making methods, and interaction styles with their environment. These types include:

• Simple Reflex Agents
• Model-Based Agents
• Goal-Based Agents
• Utility-Based Agents
• Learning Agents

Each type of AI agent operates on a sliding scale from rule-based agents to fully autonomous agents, performing tasks from simple rules to complex, independent decision-making.

Different AI agents serve unique purposes and suit various applications. Here are the types of AI agents:

1. Simple Reflex Agents handle straightforward tasks.
2. Model-Based Agents use internal representations for informed decisions.
3. Goal-Based Agents aim for specific objectives.
4. Utility-Based Agents maximize satisfaction and efficiency.
5. Learning Agents continuously adapt to their surroundings.

Understanding these types helps in selecting the right AI agent for specific tasks and industries.

Simple Reflex Agents

Simple Reflex Agents operate based on predefined rules to respond to specific stimuli in their environment. These agents do not consider previous interactions, making them suitable for short-term scenarios where immediate responses are needed. However, their lack of substantial memory limits their ability to handle complex tasks, positioning them as ideal for simpler, routine tasks, unlike simple reflex agents, model based reflex agents.

Model-Based Agents

Model-Based Agents use an internal model representation of the world to make informed decisions based on past experiences. These agents evaluate the outcomes of previous actions and adjust their behavior accordingly, allowing them to operate effectively in dynamic environments. The ai model they utilize enhances their decision-making capabilities.

The process starts with a specific task or goal, then involves planning, executing steps, and adapting based on feedback.

Goal-Based Agents

Goal-Based Agents focus on achieving specific objectives by leveraging sophisticated algorithms to analyze possibilities and identify the most effective actions. These agents evaluate various courses of action to achieve their intended objectives, rather than simply reacting to stimuli, showcasing the agent’s ability to adapt and optimize.

Multiple AI agents can work together to solve complex tasks. This collaboration improves overall efficiency.

Utility-Based Agents

Utility-Based Agents are designed to maximize overall satisfaction and efficiency by making decisions based on a utility function and the agent function. These agents consider multiple potential outcomes for each action and select the one that yields the highest overall benefit.

This approach ensures utility-based agents make rational agents’ decisions to optimize performance and resource utilization.

Learning Agents

Learning Agents continuously refine their behavior by adapting to experiences and feedback from their environment. These agents use machine learning techniques to improve their performance over time, making them highly effective in dynamic environments. A learning agent can significantly enhance the adaptability of systems.

Learning from previous actions and past interactions, these hierarchical agents enhance their ability to tackle complex tasks and offer more accurate and efficient solutions.

How AI Agents Work

AI agents are designed to make rational choices based on their environment and data to optimize performance. They operate effectively in various environments by adhering to core principles like autonomy, adaptability, reactivity, and proactivity. These principles guide AI agents in gathering data, making decisions, and continuously improving through feedback mechanisms. As AI technology evolves, agents are expected to exhibit enhanced reasoning capabilities, making more sophisticated decisions and integrating better with other tools.

The workflow of AI agents involves several key components:

1. Data Collection and Analysis: Systematic data gathering and analysis enable AI agents to make informed decisions that optimize performance.
2. Decision-Making Algorithms: These algorithms allow AI agents to foresee needs, take preemptive actions, and adapt to real-time changes.
3. Feedback Mechanisms: These ensure continuous improvement, allowing AI agents to refine their strategies and enhance their reliability.

Data Collection and Analysis

AI agents systematically gather and structure data from diverse sources to facilitate informed decision-making. They utilize Natural Language Understanding to interpret complex human inputs accurately, enhancing their ability to identify patterns and make data-driven decisions.

Effective analysis of gathered data enables AI agents to adapt and function autonomously, improving their overall performance and decision-making capabilities.

Decision-Making Algorithms

Proactive AI agents utilize predictive models to anticipate needs and take preemptive actions without waiting for prompts. They use data analytics to foresee potential issues, enabling them to take initiative before problems arise. In contrast, reactive AI agents make decisions based on real-time data and current environmental conditions, adjusting their actions swiftly to meet objectives.

Goal-based agents evaluate various courses of action to achieve their intended objectives, rather than simply reacting to stimuli. Utility-based agents assess different actions based on a utility function to maximize overall satisfaction and efficiency.

Incorporating factors like environmental sustainability allows AI agents to improve decision-making and contribute to broader organizational goals.

Feedback Mechanisms

AI agents utilize feedback systems to continuously enhance their performance and adapt their strategies. Feedback loops enable AI agents to learn from past actions and refine their decision-making processes over time. Incorporating human review processes enhances the reliability of decisions made by AI agents, ensuring alignment with real-world goals and ethical standards.

Business Applications of AI Agents

AI agents are revolutionizing the way entrepreneurs, digital business owners, course creators, coaches, and small agency founders operate by automating routine tasks, streamlining workflows, and enhancing overall efficiency. Here are some examples of their applications:

1. In the realm of digital marketing, AI agents can automate social media management, analyze trends, and provide insights to optimize campaigns, allowing business owners to focus on strategy rather than execution.
2. For course creators and coaches, AI agents personalize learning experiences by recommending content based on individual learner preferences and progress, enhancing engagement and outcomes.
3. Small agencies benefit from AI agents in project management, where they can automate scheduling, resource allocation, and client communication, leading to more efficient use of time and resources.

Integrating with existing systems, AI agents enhance functionality and streamline complex business processes. Human oversight ensures AI agents align with organizational goals and ethical standards, making them reliable partners in achieving business objectives.

As AI agents evolve, their role in automating and optimizing repetitive tasks will expand, significantly enhancing workplace efficiency and impacting various aspects of life.

Customer Management Systems

In customer management systems, AI agents significantly enhance service operations by automating responses and managing inquiries efficiently. Reactive AI agents, for instance, can process common requests through chatbots, promptly handling tasks like password resets.

Learning specialized AI agents, equipped with advancements in Natural Language Processing, provide sophisticated virtual assistants capable of engaging in more human-like conversations and delivering tailored support to users.

Software Development

AI agents are changing the landscape of software development. They do this by automating workflows and improving security measures. They assist developers with writing, debugging, and optimizing code, thus building AI agents to deploy AI agents in the development process.

AI agents also automate code review, testing, and vulnerability detection, ensuring that software performs as expected and gets code changes into production quickly by deploying agents using agent technology as part of an agent program.

Financial Services

In the financial services sector, AI agents play a crucial role in automating various operations, enhancing efficiency and accuracy. By utilizing a network of multiple AI agents, financial institutions can solve complex business challenges more effectively.

AI agents automate trading processes and optimize risk assessment, leading to more informed decision-making and better financial outcomes.

Best Practices for Implementing AI Agents

Effective implementation of AI agents requires thoughtful integration and coordination. Begin by identifying tasks to automate and exploring AI integration tools. Experiment with small projects to gauge the effectiveness of AI agents in specific contexts. Ensuring data privacy, maintaining human oversight, and ensuring scalability and flexibility are crucial for successful deployment.

Organizations must conduct thorough risk assessments to identify potential data protection vulnerabilities when using AI agents. Implementing encryption, access control measures, and data anonymization techniques are essential for safeguarding sensitive information.

Human involvement is vital for feedback and alignment with organizational goals and ethical standards. Keeping human agents in the loop reinforces accountability, ensuring ethical compliance. AI solutions must be scalable and flexible to adapt to evolving organizational needs, reflecting the nuances of human behavior.

Ensuring Data Privacy

Protecting sensitive data is paramount when deploying AI agents in any business context. Organizations should conduct thorough risk assessments to identify potential data protection vulnerabilities and implement encryption and access control measures to safeguard sensitive information.

Data anonymization techniques can also be utilized to protect user information.

Maintaining Human Oversight

Maintaining human oversight is essential to ensure AI agents operate ethically and align with organizational goals. Human involvement provides necessary feedback, ensuring AI agents’ actions are accountable and compliant with ethical standards.

Keeping human agents in the loop reinforces accountability and enhances the reliability of AI operations.

Scalability and Flexibility

Scalability and flexibility in AI solutions are essential for adapting to evolving organizational needs. AI agents must be designed to scale efficiently and adapt to dynamic environments, ensuring they remain relevant and effective as organizational demands change.

Future Trends in AI Agents

Emerging trends indicate that AI agents will become even more integrated and capable in the near future. Their evolving capabilities will allow AI agents to perform tasks more efficiently and proactively, enhancing their overall efficacy. Sophisticated decision-making will enable AI agents to better assess multiple scenarios and choose optimal actions, making them invaluable tools in various industries.

Greater tool integration will empower AI agents to connect with various platforms, improving their functionalities and enhancing collaboration with human developers. As AI agents continue to evolve, their ability to make complex decisions and integrate with external tools will significantly improve.

These advancements will lead to more intuitive and effective AI agent development, ensuring they remain at the forefront of technological innovation. Enhanced collaboration between AI agents and human developers will result in more robust and capable AI systems.

Enhanced Natural Language Processing

AI agents employ Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques to understand and generate human language, facilitating more natural user interactions. NLP enables AI agents to comprehend user intents, sentiments, and contextual information, improving their responsiveness and conversational experiences.

Gathering and analyzing vast amounts of textual data, Artificial Intelligence agents enhance their language understanding and processing capabilities, continually adapting through user interaction and feedback.

Integration with External Systems

AI agents’ ability to integrate with external systems will be crucial for optimizing complex workflows and enhancing business processes. This integration allows integrating ai agents to connect with various platforms, manage customer management systems, and handle complex tasks efficiently.

Requesting information or confirmation before proceeding ensures Artificial Intelligence agents maintain accuracy and reliability in their operations.

Advanced Multi-Agent Systems

Collaboration between multiple Artificial Intelligence agents can facilitate more complex workflows and interactions, making them highly effective in solving intricate problems. By working together, multiple AI agents can enhance problem-solving capabilities and optimize processes through shared feedback mechanisms.

This collaborative approach ensures that AI agents can complete complex tasks more efficiently and effectively.

Summary

Artificial Intelligence agents are revolutionizing industries by automating tasks, enhancing efficiency, and optimizing workflows. Understanding the core principles, types, and applications of AI agents provides valuable insights into their capabilities and potential. By following best practices for implementation and staying abreast of future trends, organizations can leverage Artificial Intelligence agents to achieve significant advancements and maintain a competitive edge. As AI technology continues to evolve, the future of AI agents promises even greater integration, enhanced decision-making, and improved collaboration, making them indispensable assets in various fields.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are AI agents?

AI agents are autonomous software applications capable of performing tasks, making decisions, and interacting intelligently with minimal human involvement. Their ability to operate independently enhances efficiency and effectiveness in various domains.

How do AI agents work?

AI agents operate by collecting and analyzing data, employing decision-making algorithms, and incorporating feedback mechanisms to improve their performance and adapt to new situations effectively. This combination allows them to function intelligently in dynamic environments.

What are the different types of AI agents?

The various types of AI agents are Simple Reflex Agents, Model-Based Agents, Goal-Based Agents, Utility-Based Agents, and Learning Agents, each designed for particular tasks and environments. Understanding these distinctions can enhance your approach to utilizing AI effectively.

How are AI agents used in business applications?

AI agents are effectively utilized in business applications to automate routine tasks and streamline workflows, thereby enhancing customer management and optimizing financial services. This integration leads to increased efficiency and productivity within organizations.

What are the best practices for implementing AI agents?

To successfully implement AI agents, prioritize data privacy through encryption and access control, ensure human oversight for ethical compliance, and design scalable and flexible solutions. These practices will foster responsible and effective AI integration.

The post Understanding Artificial Intelligence Agents: Benefits and Examples appeared first on Done For You.

Discover the Power of Google Generative AI: A Comprehensive Guide

Google Generative AI uses advanced algorithms to create content, such as text, images, and music. This article explains what Google Generative AI is, how it works, and how it enhances various Google products, transforming your user experience.

Key Takeaways

• Google Generative AI employs advanced machine learning models to create contextually relevant content across various media, enhancing creativity and productivity.
• The integration of generative AI in Google products, including Search, Workspace, and Cloud, significantly improves user experience and operational efficiency while offering personalized interactions.
• Google emphasizes responsible AI development, collaborating with stakeholders to ensure ethical use and protect user privacy, thereby addressing societal challenges through innovative technologies.

Understanding Google Generative AI

At its core, generative AI is a machine learning model that identifies patterns and creates new content across various media forms, including text, images, and even music. This technology leverages advanced algorithms to produce content that is not only contextually relevant but also creatively engaging. Imagine the possibilities – from writing articles to generating unique artworks, generative AI opens up a world of creative potential.

Google’s approach to generative AI is particularly fascinating. Leveraging foundation models that perform multiple tasks with minimal training, Google’s AI adapts to specific needs and transforms user experiences. This integration aims to make interactions more interactive and tailored, boosting creativity, productivity, and knowledge.

How Google Uses Generative AI Across Products

Google’s integration of generative AI across its suite of products is nothing short of revolutionary. This technology significantly enhances user experience and productivity by making interactions more personalized and effective. From improving search results to aiding in document creation, the potential applications are vast and varied.

One of the most exciting aspects is how Google continually improves these features using user feedback and fresh ideas for the future. Analyzing user searches and interactions, Google ensures its generative AI stays cutting-edge and beneficial for users globally.

Some specific applications across Google Search, Google Workspace, and Google Cloud include:

Google Search Enhancements

Generative AI has profoundly transformed Google Search, making it more efficient and user-friendly. This technology not only improves the functionality of search queries but also organizes results in a way that makes finding information quicker and easier. For instance, AI-enhanced features help users navigate complex topics by providing diverse perspectives and quick answers, ensuring a more comprehensive understanding of any subject.

Moreover, Google’s generative AI can handle complex questions and provide thoughtful suggestions, such as last-minute gift ideas or creative workout routines. The Gemini model, with its multi-step reasoning capabilities, allows users to tackle complicated questions and receive comprehensive answers, making the search experience more intuitive and satisfying.

Google Workspace Innovations

Within Google Workspace, generative AI brings numerous innovations to enhance productivity and streamline workflows. For instance, generative AI assists in summarizing and rewriting documents, significantly boosting workflow efficiency. This is especially beneficial in collaborative environments where quick, accurate information exchange is vital, as seen in various ai overviews.

The integration of Gemini 2.5 within Google Workspace further enhances functionalities like text generation and summarization. Companies like Rivian have already seen improvements in team collaboration and communication, resulting in quicker project turnarounds. These innovations not only boost productivity but also foster a more creative and efficient work environment.

AI in Google Cloud

Google Cloud’s generative AI provides a wide range of applications for businesses, from data analysis to content generation. Companies like Wendy’s and Uber use this technology to streamline order management and enhance real-time customer interactions. For instance, Wendy’s has automated its drive-thru service with Google Cloud’s generative AI, greatly improving efficiency and customer satisfaction.

Businesses can also utilize Google Cloud’s Vertex AI to access generative AI capabilities, enabling them to generate personalized chatbot responses and enhance customer service. The platform’s versatility allows for a wide range of applications, making it a valuable tool for companies looking to innovate and stay competitive in today’s fast-paced market.

Responsible AI Development at Google

Google’s commitment to responsible AI developed is a cornerstone of its approach to innovation. The company aims to develop bold technologies that address society’s challenges while ensuring they are used responsibly. This means avoiding technologies that could cause harm or violate human rights.

To achieve this balance, Google collaborates with stakeholders including researchers, governments, and other organizations to promote responsible AI use. This collaborative approach addresses potential challenges and ensures ethical AI development and deployment. Furthermore, Google implements frameworks to manage security and privacy throughout the AI lifecycle, from design to deployment.

In addition to these frameworks, Google emphasizes the importance of safeguarding user privacy and security. By adhering to responsible AI principles, Google ensures that its innovative technologies benefit society without compromising ethical standards.

Getting Started with Google Generative AI Tools

For those looking to harness the power of generative AI and gen ai, google ai offers a suite of tools powered to enhance productivity, aid expression, and improve language understanding through words. These gen tools serve millions of users, making their interactions with technology more seamless and efficient, thanks to ai powered assistance. Users can also develop their skills through these innovative tools that deliver enhanced inspiration experiences.

Users should use these tools responsibly, verifying generated information and reporting inaccuracies through appropriate channels. Additionally, access to these tools may require a free data plan, and users can customize their ability to access the web, which can vary by market and device, reflecting the reality of the situation with various code objects.

Whether you’re an artist, a creator, or a business professional, Google’s generative AI tools provide innovative solutions to meet your needs.

Gemini AI Tools

Gemini AI tools are at the forefront of Google’s generative AI offerings, designed to enhance user experiences across various services. These tools leverage advanced AI technologies to provide innovative features and streamline workflows, making tasks like text generation and document summarization more efficient.

Interested users can sign up for beta testing and experiments as they become available, allowing early adopters to experience the latest AI advancements and provide valuable feedback.

NotebookLM

NotebookLM is another powerful tool that facilitates the organization of research and helps identify relationships among uploaded documents. This tool supports users in categorizing their research, uncovering insights, and discover connections among various sources, enhancing the research process.

NotebookLM helps users streamline research efforts, making it easier to manage large volumes of information and draw meaningful conclusions. This tool is particularly beneficial for researchers, students, and professionals needing to organize and analyze extensive datasets.

Real-World Applications and Case Studies

Google’s generative AI has vast real-world applications, showcasing its versatility across industries. Collaborations with companies like UKG and GitLab highlight Google’s efforts to enhance AI applications and drive innovation.

These case studies provide valuable insights into how businesses are leveraging generative AI to solve complex problems, streamline operations, and improve customer interactions. Let’s explore some specific examples to see how generative AI is making a difference in content creation and business productivity.

Enhancing Content Creation

Generative AI is a game-changer for content creators, enabling them to produce diverse media formats, including text, images, audio, and video. This technology allows creators to engage their audiences more effectively by generating personalized and high-quality content to generate text.

In marketing, generative AI helps create personalized customer engagements and optimize marketing strategies through real-time data analysis. Companies like Agoda use Google’s AI models to generate unique visuals and videos for travel destinations, significantly speeding up content production and enhancing the overall quality of their marketing materials with the help of ai agents.

Boosting Productivity in Businesses

Google’s generative AI tools are also instrumental in boosting productivity within businesses. These tools can automate repetitive tasks, such as generating reports and summarizing data, thereby improving efficiency across various business processes. Artificial intelligence enhances the capabilities of these tools.

Companies like GM and Six Flags have reported significant improvements in customer experience and operational efficiency by integrating Google Cloud’s Vertex AI. For instance, Toyota’s implementation of a Google Cloud AI platform led to a reduction of over 10,000 man-hours annually while enhancing operational efficiency.

These example demonstrate the transformative power of AI in driving business innovation and productivity.

Summary

In summary, Google’s generative AI is a powerful technology that significantly enhances user interactions, productivity, and creativity across various domains. From improving search functionalities to revolutionizing workplace productivity, the applications are extensive and impactful.

As we look to the future, the responsible development and deployment of AI will be crucial in ensuring these technologies benefit society as a whole. By embracing these innovations and using them responsibly, we can unlock new possibilities and drive progress in ways we never imagined.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is generative AI?

Generative AI is a type of machine learning that generates new content, such as text, images, and music, by identifying patterns within existing data. This technology has the potential to significantly impact various creative fields.

How does Google use generative AI in its products?

Google employs generative AI in its products such as Google Search, Google Workspace, and Google Cloud to improve user experience and productivity through personalized and efficient interactions. This integration fosters creativity and enhances overall functionality.

What are some real-world applications of Google’s generative AI?

Google’s generative AI is applied in content creation, enhancing business productivity, and improving customer interactions, with companies like Agoda, GM, and Six Flags utilizing these tools to streamline operations and deliver personalized experiences.

How does Google ensure responsible AI development?

Google ensures responsible AI development by collaborating with diverse stakeholders, establishing frameworks for security and privacy, and steering clear of technologies that may cause harm or infringe upon human rights.

How can I get started with Google generative AI tools?

To effectively get started with Google generative AI tools, explore options such as Gemini AI and NotebookLM, sign up for beta testing, and verify the compatibility of your device and data plans. Taking these initial steps will prepare you for a successful experience with these innovative tools.

The post Harnessing Google Generative AI: Transform Your Ideas into Reality appeared first on Done For You.

Curious about Restream.io? This article provides the best Restream io review of its features, user experience, and value, helping you decide if it enhances your live streaming.

Key Takeaways

• Restream.io allows users to multistream to over 30 platforms effortlessly, making it a top choice for content creators wanting to maximize their reach.
• Its user-friendly interface and customizable features cater to both beginners and experienced streamers, ensuring a seamless streaming experience.
• Restream offers free and paid plans, with the free option providing solid functionality while the paid tiers unlock advanced features for improved streaming performance.

Restream.io Overview

Restream.io, founded in 2015 by Andrew Surzhynskyi and Alexander Khuda, started its journey as a free tool primarily for gamers. Over the years, it has evolved into a robust multistreaming platform supporting over 30 streaming sites, including major players like YouTube, Twitch, and Facebook. The platform’s core functionality allows users to broadcast live videos to multiple social media platforms simultaneously, simplifying the process of reaching a larger demographic.

Content creators can use Restream.io to share various formats, including live streams and pre-recorded videos, extending their reach across multiple streaming channels. This versatility makes it an essential tool for maximizing online presence and engaging a broader audience.

The Restream website provides an intuitive interface that makes it easy to manage multiple sites and streaming channels, ensuring that users can focus on creating engaging content rather than getting bogged down in technical details.

Ease of Use

One of the standout features of Restream.io is its user-friendly interface. Setting up a restream account is a straightforward process, allowing users to start broadcasting with just a single click. This ease of use extends to the restream studio, where navigating the dashboard and conducting a test stream are simple tasks, ensuring that even beginners can get their streams up and running quickly.

Customizable branding options give users more control over their stream’s appearance. Whether you’re a novice or an experienced streamer, the platform’s intuitive design and existing tools make it easy to manage and customize your streams across multiple platforms.

Key Features

Key features of Restream.io enhance the streaming experience. The browser-based Restream studio allows users to go live directly from their web browser, creating custom layouts and utilizing tools like overlays and background editing to customize their streams. For advanced users, the platform supports Custom RTMP, enabling them to stream to different platforms using custom settings.

Another noteworthy feature is the Split Audio Track Recording, which provides the ability to record audio tracks separately, giving users more control over their streaming content.

These features, combined with the platform’s customizable branding options, make Restream.io a versatile and powerful tool for any content creator looking to enhance their live streaming capabilities.

Free and Paid Options

Restream.io offers both free and paid options to cater to a wide range of users. The free plan is ideal for aspiring multistreamers starting out in live streaming, providing access to channels that are most relevant to their needs. While the free version comes with limitations, such as a restream watermark and restricted customization options, it still offers significant value for those just beginning their live streaming journey.

For users seeking advanced features, Restream’s paid options offer increased streaming quality, additional destinations, and more comprehensive data analytics. These paid plans are designed to meet the needs of more experienced streamers, providing the tools necessary to elevate their streaming performance and reach a broader audience.

Live Streaming with Restream.io

The platform caters to various use cases, including live interviews, gameplay streaming, in-person events, and webinars. The platform supports streaming to popular sites like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Twitch, making it a versatile tool for reaching audiences across different platforms.

Optimizing multi-streaming with Restream.io involves following best practices for audience engagement and stream performance. Utilizing the platform’s various tools and features can significantly enhance the quality and reach of your live streams, ensuring that you can effectively connect with your viewers across multiple platforms.

Live Studio Capabilities

Restream Live Studio provides various tools to enhance live streaming. Users can customize their video streams with various tools, including overlays and background editing options, to create a professional and polished look. Invited presenters can stream themselves and share their screens during live sessions, making it easy to conduct live interviews and interactive presentations.

Real-time channel toggling lets users end streams on one platform while continuing on another. Paid plans further enhance streaming capabilities with features like RTMP pull links for real-time translations and commentary, providing even more flexibility and control over your live content.

Stream Pre-recorded Videos

The platform supports streaming pre-recorded videos, useful for users not always available to go live. The Scheduler feature allows users to plan and promote upcoming streams in advance, ensuring that their audience is aware of when to tune in. Users should note that they cannot schedule multiple streams simultaneously on Restream.io.

The Upload & Stream feature converts pre-recorded videos into live streams and video broadcasts, supporting various formats such as MOV, M4V, MKV, and MP4. This feature is available on Professional plans and above, making it an excellent option for those who need to broadcast content even when they’re unavailable.

Audience Engagement Tools

Audience engagement is crucial for building loyalty, and Restream.io provides several tools to facilitate this. Restream Chat aggregates comments from multiple platforms into one interface, allowing streamers to engage with viewers more effectively. Utilizing interactive elements like polls and Q&A sessions can further enhance audience engagement and interaction.

Additionally, Restream offers analytics features that provide real-time insights into stream performance, helping streamers assess their audience engagement and adjust strategies accordingly. By implementing these engagement tools, streamers can extend their reach and build a loyal audience through regular interaction and content engagement.

Performance and Quality

Restream.io delivers high-quality, stable streams. This combination of high quality and stability enhances the user experience, ensuring that streams remain smooth and reliable across multiple platforms.

Video Quality and Stability

The platform supports a maximum streaming resolution of 1080p Full HD and a frame rate of 30 FPS across its Professional, Premium, and Business plans. The platform ensures stable streaming by utilizing a global network of servers, praised for its reliable performance even during peak times.

The platform can automatically fine-tune streaming quality based on the internet connection, with manual adjustments available for optimization. Video resolution is crucial for enhancing the viewing experience during live streams, affecting detail and clarity.

Stream Recording and Analytics

Recording livestreams with Restream is available on standard or paid plans. The Business plan allows users to upload videos of up to two hours in length and a maximum file size of 5GB, with recordings stored for 30 days.

Real-time analytics on viewer engagement, such as live views and chat activity, can enhance streaming performance. Restream provides various stream performance analysis metrics, including Stream, Audience, Chat, and Followers Metrics, allowing users to monitor their stream performance and make data-driven decisions.

Scalability and CPU Usage

The platform scales with audience growth, managing viewership spikes without losing quality. It reduces strain on local hardware, allowing users to stream without significant CPU load and ensuring a smooth streaming experience across multiple platforms.

User Experience

Restream Studio is the primary tool for managing live streams on the platform. With just a few clicks, Restream.io makes it easy to share videos across multiple platforms, ensuring a seamless and efficient streaming experience for users.

Customer Support

Customer support is available through email, live chat, and social media, though response times can vary, especially during peak issues. Some users have reported experiencing bugs that can disrupt live streaming and technical glitches, particularly with specific features like updating stream titles.

Common criticisms also include the limitations of customer support during peak usage times.

Community Feedback

Users consistently praise the platform for its quick responses and effective customer service. In case of technical issues during a stream, users recommend preparing backup internet options and having pre-recorded content ready, including on demand videos.

The community expresses strong support and a proactive approach to overcoming streaming challenges. Community feedback plays a crucial role in evaluating Restream.io’s services and helps in understanding user sentiment.

Comparisons with Other Multistreaming Platforms

The platform excels in multistreaming, enabling users to reach a wider audience across numerous platforms simultaneously. However, it’s essential to compare it with other multistreaming platforms like StreamYard, OBS Studio, and Streamlabs to understand its unique strengths and potential areas for improvement.

Restream vs. StreamYard

One of the main advantages of using Restream over StreamYard is its ability to send streams to more websites. While StreamYard doesn’t support multistreaming on its free plan, Restream’s free plan offers more features, allowing streaming to over 30 channels compared to StreamYard’s limitation of streaming only to one platform.

The platform is ideal for those needing to stream to multiple platforms simultaneously, making it excellent for reaching a broad audience. StreamYard, however, provides additional customization options for stream overlays, catering to different user needs.

Restream vs. OBS Studio

Users often prefer Restream for its straightforward streaming solution and ease of use. While OBS Studio offers extensive customization and advanced features, it requires a more complex installation process, which can be a barrier for some users.

The choice between Restream and OBS Studio often comes down to whether the user prioritizes ease of use or advanced video editing capabilities. Restream simplifies the streaming process, making it more accessible for users seeking ease of use, while OBS Studio caters to those needing advanced editing tools.

Restream vs. Streamlabs

Restream.io allows users to stream live content to multiple platforms simultaneously, enabling broader audience reach and engagement. It offers features like Restream Studio, which allows for layout customization and real-time channel toggling, enhancing the multistreaming experience.

Streamlabs, on the other hand, focuses on features that support donations and chatbots, providing tools that enhance audience interaction and monetization. While Restream excels in multistreaming capabilities, Streamlabs prioritizes viewer interaction through donations and chatbot services, catering to different user needs.

Pricing Plans

The platform offers both free and paid options, making it accessible to a wide range of users. The free plan allows streaming to more than 30 platforms at a resolution of 720p, providing significant value for beginners and those just starting out in live streaming.

Individual Plans

Paid plans start at $16/month, offering reasonable value for the features provided. The free plan, though limited to streaming to two websites and featuring a Restream watermark, is primarily targeted towards beginners. Paid plans offer more features and greater access to streaming channels, making them suitable for more experienced streamers.

Overall, Restream’s subscription options cater to diverse streaming needs, providing a range of features that make it an attractive platform for both beginners and seasoned streamers.

Business Plans

Restream.io offers a range of business plans tailored to varying streaming needs, providing flexibility for companies. These plans include advanced features such as enhanced analytics, additional channels for streaming, and priority customer support. Companies with higher streaming demands benefit significantly from the additional features and support provided by the business plans.

These business plans allow companies to effectively reach wider audiences and improve engagement through robust streaming capabilities, making Restream.io a valuable tool for small businesses and larger enterprises alike.

Pros and Cons

Restream.io offers significant advantages for live streaming, paired with some limitations in video editing and potential technical issues. Its extensive features and wide platform compatibility make it a strong contender in the multistreaming space.

Pros

The platform is recognized for its user-friendly interface, suitable for both beginners and experienced streamers. Its extensive feature set includes accessibility and advanced functionalities, such as the ability to send live videos to over 30 social media sites simultaneously, enhancing its feature offerings.

Supporting a variety of streaming platforms, the streaming platform is versatile for broadcasting content across multiple channels. Overall, the platform’s user-friendly design and comprehensive features make it an excellent choice for anyone looking to enhance their live streaming capabilities.

Cons

Despite its many strengths, Restream.io does have some drawbacks. Starting at $16 per month, some features may be a barrier for certain users. Additionally, users may experience a small delay in video delivery speed, usually less than 2 seconds.

Users may also encounter limitations on advanced features unless they subscribe to a paid plan, which could be frustrating for those looking to fully utilize the platform without incurring additional costs. While these cons are relatively minor, they are worth considering when evaluating Restream.io for your streaming needs.

Conclusion

Restream.io stands out as a powerful multistreaming platform, offering extensive features, ease of use, and wide platform compatibility. Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned streamer, Restream.io provides the tools necessary to elevate your live streaming game and reach a broader audience. While there are some limitations, the platform’s benefits far outweigh the drawbacks, making it a valuable asset for any content creator looking to enhance their live streaming success.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I use Restream.io for free?

Absolutely, you can use Restream.io for free! Their free plan lets you stream to over 30 platforms at 720p resolution.

What are the main advantages of using Restream.io?

Restream.io is great for content creators because it’s easy to use and lets you stream to multiple platforms at once. This versatility can really enhance your online presence!

How does Restream.io compare to StreamYard?

Restream.io shines when it comes to streaming to more platforms and offering additional features on its free plan, making it a great choice for those wanting to broadcast across multiple channels at once. If you need expansive reach with your streams, Restream.io is likely your best bet.

What are the limitations of Restream.io’s free plan?

The free plan of Restream.io has a watermark and restricts you to streaming on just two platforms. For more features and channels, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.

Does Restream.io offer customer support?

Absolutely! Restream.io offers customer support via email, live chat, and social media, though response times might differ.

The post Restream IO Review: Is It the Best Choice for Your Streaming Needs? appeared first on Done For You.

Mastering the OpenAI Playground: Tips and Best Practices

The OpenAI Playground lets users experiment with AI models like GPT-4. This guide covers its features, usage tips, and best practices.

Key Takeaways

• The OpenAI Playground provides a user-friendly interface for exploring and customizing various AI models, making it suitable for both novices and experts in AI.
• Key features such as interactive chat, model selection, and custom system prompts enable users to enhance engagement and tailor AI outputs for specific tasks.
• By automating content generation and coding tasks, the OpenAI Playground significantly boosts efficiency and reduces costs for businesses, facilitating more strategic initiatives.

Understanding OpenAI Playground

The OpenAI Playground is a platform designed for experimenting with various AI models, providing advanced features to specify output formats and test different applications. Unlike traditional AI tools, OpenAI’s playground offers a comprehensive environment where users can interact with the latest versions of ChatGPT, GPT-4, and even older models like GPT-3. This makes it an indispensable resource for both novices and experts in AI exploration, allowing them to delve deeper into the functionalities of OpenAI’s models.

One of the standout features of the OpenAI Playground is its user-friendly interface, which facilitates quick iteration and immediate feedback on changes. This ease of use makes it accessible to a wide range of users, from developers and AI researchers to business professionals looking to enhance their operations through AI. The platform supports a variety of applications, including content generation, translation, and coding, making it a versatile tool for numerous tasks.

Users can write prompts and make updates in the OpenAI Playground’s intuitive interface, enabling seamless experimentation. Whether you’re looking to create marketing content, develop new software, or simply explore the capabilities of AI, the Playground provides the tools you need to innovate and succeed.

Differences Between ChatGPT and OpenAI Playground

While both ChatGPT and the OpenAI Playground are powerful AI tools, they cater to different user needs and offer distinct functionalities. ChatGPT is tailored for casual users who seek interactive conversations with AI, providing a more straightforward and user-friendly experience. On the other hand, OpenAI Playground is aimed at developers and researchers who require a more complex interface designed for extensive customization and experimentation.

One of the key differences lies in the flexibility and customization capabilities. ChatGPT operates within stricter parameters to ensure usability and safety, making it less flexible compared to the Playground. The OpenAI Playground allows users to fine-tune models and customize settings, offering a broader range of machine learning models to choose from. This makes it an ideal platform for users who need to experiment with different model parameters and settings to achieve specific outcomes.

In summary, while ChatGPT is perfect for everyday conversational tasks, the OpenAI Playground is the go-to platform for those who need to dive deeper into AI capabilities and customize their interactions extensively. Understanding these differences helps users choose the appropriate tool, maximizing productivity and creativity with AI.

Getting Started with OpenAI Playground

Accessing the OpenAI Playground is straightforward and user-friendly. Simply visit the website platform.openai.com and log in using your Google account or sign up for a new account if you’re a first-time user. After logging in, you can start testing prompts. This will allow you to explore the various AI models that are available. Remember, to fully utilize the Playground’s capabilities, you’ll need an OpenAI API key, which grants you access to the platform’s advanced features.

The initial setup process is designed to be as smooth as possible, allowing you to dive right into experimenting with OpenAI’s models. Start by entering sample prompts and observing how the models respond, which will give you a feel for the platform’s capabilities and potential applications.

This hands-on approach not only enhances your understanding of the Playground but also sparks creativity as you discover new ways to leverage AI in your projects.

Key Features of OpenAI Playground

The OpenAI Playground is packed with features that make it a powerful tool for AI experimentation and content creation. Key features include interactive chat, model selection, and custom system prompts, each designed to enhance user engagement and productivity.

Let’s delve into these features to understand how they can be leveraged to achieve specific tasks and optimize your AI interactions.

Interactive Chat

The interactive chat feature in OpenAI Playground is designed to generate natural language responses that closely mimic human conversation. This feature allows users to input queries and receive coherent, contextually relevant responses, making it an invaluable tool for exploring the capabilities of AI. Whether you’re looking to develop a chatbot, create engaging content, or simply experiment with different conversational scenarios, the interactive chat offers a dynamic and responsive interface for your needs.

By logging into the platform, users can start experimenting with the chat feature, allowing for real-time feedback and adjustments. This immediate response capability not only enhances user engagement but also provides a practical example to test and refine prompts for various applications.

Whether you’re a developer fine-tuning a chatbot or a content creator crafting compelling narratives, the interactive chat in OpenAI Playground is a versatile tool that can significantly boost your productivity and creativity.

Model Selection

Model selection is a crucial feature of the OpenAI Playground, offering users the ability to choose from various GPT models tailored to specific tasks. The model dropdown menu allows you to select the model that best fits your needs, whether you require the latest version for optimal performance or an older version for specific functionalities. This flexibility ensures that you can always find the right tool for your project, enhancing your experimentation and output quality.

Additionally, understanding the different assistant modes available, such as Assistants, Chat, and Complete, can further refine your interactions with the AI. The numbers in model names, like 16K, 32K, or 128K, represent the context length, which is crucial for tasks that require more extensive input and output.

By experimenting with different models and modes, you can tailor the AI’s performance to meet your specific requirements, making the OpenAI Playground a powerful asset for your projects.

Custom System Prompts

Crafting custom system prompts is an advanced feature that allows users to explicitly define the desired tone and style of the AI’s responses. This aspect of prompt engineering is critical for achieving specific outcomes, whether you’re looking to generate formal business communications or casual social media posts.

Custom system prompts guide the AI to produce outputs that align with your intended message and style, enhancing content relevance and effectiveness.

Practical Uses of OpenAI Playground

The OpenAI Playground is not just a tool for experimentation; it offers practical applications that can significantly enhance business operations and personal projects. Users can create tailored AI tools for specific tasks, from content generation to customer support solutions, using the Playground. The ability to enter sample prompts and see how the models respond provides a hands-on approach to understanding the platform’s capabilities and exploring its potential applications.

Businesses can particularly benefit from the Playground’s versatility, enabling them to automate routine tasks, enhance creativity in problem-solving, and improve user interaction through personalized customer support solutions.

Let’s explore some of the key practical uses of OpenAI Playground in more detail.

Content Creation

OpenAI Playground is a powerful tool for generating various business resources. It can create web copy, marketing emails, social media posts, blog articles, and internal communications. Using the Playground for tasks requiring extensive output or specific instructions allows businesses to reduce costs and streamline content production processes. The ability to create tailored prompts helps in efficiently managing repetitive tasks, saving both time and resources.

Moreover, the Playground’s rapid prototyping capabilities allow businesses to quickly test and refine ideas, accelerating the implementation of new strategies. This not only enhances creativity but also ensures that businesses can stay ahead of the competition by rapidly adapting to market changes.

AI-generated content helps businesses minimize the need for additional staff or outsourcing, leading to significant cost savings.

Audio Generation

The audio generation feature in the OpenAI Playground allows users to create voiceovers and audio content with ease. Users can select from multiple voice presets, enabling them to produce high-quality audio that suits their specific needs.

This feature is particularly useful for creating podcasts, video narrations, and other multimedia content, adding an extra layer of creativity and professionalism to your projects.

Code Assistance

For developers, the OpenAI Playground offers a robust code assistance feature that can significantly enhance productivity. The Assistants models are designed specifically for API use, enabling developers to automate tasks and generate code snippets efficiently. These models allow developers to quickly retrieve information, making it easier to access coding resources and documentation, crucial for development tasks.

Additionally, the code generation process is streamlined, providing developers with instant solutions and suggestions that can aid in various tasks within the Playground. This not only boosts efficiency but also supports coding novices by offering guidance and reducing the learning curve.

Whether you’re pasting sample code or testing new algorithms, the code assistance feature in OpenAI Playground is an invaluable tool for developers of all skill levels.

Benefits for Business Owners

Utilizing the OpenAI Playground can bring significant benefits to business owners, enhancing operational efficiency and reducing costs. By automating content generation tasks, businesses can streamline their workflows and focus on more strategic initiatives.

Let’s delve into the specific benefits of efficiency, productivity, and cost-effectiveness.

Efficiency and Productivity

OpenAI Playground assists in code generation, boosting efficiency for developers and aiding coding novices. The platform’s ability to provide instant code suggestions and solutions enhances coding productivity, allowing developers to progress more quickly in their tasks. Additionally, using role-based prompts helps define the tone and style of the AI’s responses, making interactions more engaging and relevant to specific job requirements.

These tools help businesses save time and resources, enabling employees to focus on more innovative and strategic tasks. The improvements in efficiency and productivity ultimately contribute to faster progress and better outcomes in various projects.

Cost-Effectiveness

Automating routine tasks through the OpenAI Playground can lead to significant cost savings for businesses. Reducing labor costs and minimizing errors enhances profitability and allows businesses to allocate resources more effectively.

Additionally, the automation capabilities allow employees to focus on more innovative tasks, driving further advancements and improvements within the organization.

Advanced Tips for Using OpenAI Playground

For users looking to get the most out of the OpenAI Playground, experimenting with different prompt structures and utilizing feedback loops can significantly enhance the quality of AI responses.

Let’s explore some advanced tips for optimizing prompts and adjusting temperature settings to achieve the best results.

Optimizing Prompts

Effective prompt engineering is key to getting the best results from the OpenAI Playground. Using clear and specific language in your prompts helps the AI understand the desired outcome better, leading to more accurate and relevant responses. Incorporating examples within prompts can further guide the AI, ensuring that it produces outputs that closely align with your expectations.

Additionally, providing specific context and instructions within prompts can significantly improve the quality and relevance of AI outputs. Refining prompts through continuous experimentation and feedback unlocks the full potential of the OpenAI Playground, achieving optimal project results.

Adjusting Temperature Settings

The temperature setting in the OpenAI Playground influences the randomness of AI outputs, allowing users to adjust the level of creativity and diversity in responses. Lowering the temperature typically leads to more focused and predictable outputs, which is useful for tasks that require precision and consistency. On the other hand, increasing the temperature fosters creativity, resulting in more varied and innovative outputs.

To master the OpenAI Playground, strategically adjusting the temperature settings based on your specific needs can help you balance predictability and creativity. This allows you to tailor the AI’s performance to suit different tasks, enhancing the overall effectiveness of your interactions with the platform.

Summary

In summary, the OpenAI Playground is a versatile and powerful platform that offers extensive customization and experimentation capabilities. By understanding its key features, such as interactive chat, model selection, and custom system prompts, users can leverage this tool to enhance their productivity, creativity, and efficiency. The Playground’s practical applications in content creation, audio generation, and code assistance highlight its potential to revolutionize various aspects of business operations.

For business owners, the benefits of using the OpenAI Playground are clear. It can significantly improve efficiency and productivity, reduce costs, and drive innovation. By mastering the advanced tips for optimizing prompts and adjusting temperature settings, users can unlock the full potential of this powerful tool. Embrace the OpenAI Playground, and let it transform the way you work and achieve your goals.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the OpenAI Playground?

The OpenAI Playground is an interactive platform for experimenting with AI models like ChatGPT and GPT-4, offering tools for customizing output and testing diverse applications. It’s an excellent resource for exploring the capabilities of advanced AI technologies.

How does the OpenAI Playground differ from ChatGPT?

The OpenAI Playground provides a more complex interface for developers and researchers, allowing extensive customization and access to a wider range of models, whereas ChatGPT is designed for casual users seeking interactive conversations. This distinction makes the Playground suitable for in-depth experimentation.

How do I get started with the OpenAI Playground?

To get started with the OpenAI Playground, visit platform.openai.com and log in with your Google account or create a new one. After logging in, you can test prompts and explore AI models, but remember to obtain an OpenAI API key to maximize your experience.

What are some practical uses of the OpenAI Playground?

The OpenAI Playground is highly versatile, enabling users to create content like web copy and marketing emails, generate audio voiceovers, and assist with coding by automating tasks and generating code snippets. This makes it a valuable tool for professionals in numerous fields.

What are the benefits of using the OpenAI Playground for business owners?

Using the OpenAI Playground can significantly enhance operational efficiency and reduce costs for business owners. By automating routine tasks and providing instant solutions, it fosters increased productivity and innovation.

The post Mastering the OpenAI Playground: Tips for Effective AI Experimentation appeared first on Done For You.

Napkin AI Review: An In-Depth Exploration

Creating high-quality infographics, charts, and social media visuals can be a daunting task. However, with the advent of Napkin AI, this process has become significantly more streamlined. Among various AI apps, Napkin AI distinguishes itself by simplifying graphic design through AI-powered automation, quickly becoming a favorite for content creators, marketers, and business owners. But does it truly stand out as the best AI design tool available? Let’s delve into this comprehensive Napkin AI review and evaluate its capabilities.

What is Napkin AI?

Napkin AI is a cutting-edge AI tool designed to seamlessly transform text into visuals. It allows users to generate stunning infographics, data-driven charts, and branded social media graphics without the need for advanced design skills. Unlike traditional design software, Napkin AI leverages artificial intelligence to automate layout, color selection, and data visualization, making it easier than ever to create polished content.

Key Features of Napkin AI for Graphic Design

1. AI-Powered Infographic Creation

Napkin AI revolutionizes infographic design by enabling users to create visuals from their key points or data effortlessly. By simply entering your key points or data, the AI arranges them into professional-quality graphics, streamlining the design process.

2. Smart Chart & Graph Generation

For those involved in creating reports, presentations, or blog visuals, Napkin AI transforms raw data into engaging charts with minimal effort. The AI optimizes the design of various visual formats like charts and graphs instantly, eliminating the need for manual adjustments.

3. One-Click Branding & Customizable Templates

Brand consistency is critical in today’s market, and Napkin AI allows users to apply their brand colors, fonts, and styles across all visuals automatically. The platform boasts a library of pre-made templates tailored for different industries and content types, ensuring brand uniformity.

4. Seamless Social Media Integration

Napkin AI facilitates the resizing and optimization of graphics for different social media platforms. Whether you’re designing a LinkedIn infographic, an Instagram carousel, or a Twitter post, the AI ensures that your visuals are perfectly tailored for each channel.

5. Easy Collaboration & Export Options

Collaboration is key in content creation, and Napkin AI enables users to share and develop their visual ideas with teams. Users can export designs in multiple formats (PNG, SVG, PDF) and integrate with popular workflow tools like Trello, Notion, and Google Drive, enhancing productivity.

How Napkin AI Works

Napkin AI is an innovative artificial intelligence tool designed to transform your text descriptions into visual sketches and diagrams effortlessly. By leveraging advanced machine learning models trained on extensive sketch data and visual representations, Napkin AI combines natural language processing with computer vision to understand your intent and create appropriate visualizations.

Using Napkin AI is straightforward: simply write or paste your text content into the platform, and the AI will generate a visual representation of your ideas. This process not only saves time but also ensures that your visuals are accurate and relevant. Once the visuals are generated, you can easily customize and edit them to fit your specific needs, making the design process both efficient and user-friendly.

Benefits of Using Napkin AI

Napkin AI offers a multitude of benefits that make it a standout tool in the realm of graphic design:

• Time-saving: With Napkin AI, you can generate visuals in seconds, drastically reducing the time and effort typically required for graphic design.
• Ease of use: The platform’s user-friendly interface ensures that even those without graphic design experience can create professional-looking visuals with ease.
• Multiple visual styles: Napkin AI can produce a variety of visuals, including diagrams, charts, scenes, and images, providing you with the flexibility to choose the best representation for your ideas.
• Artificial intelligence: The AI technology behind Napkin AI ensures that the visuals created are both accurate and relevant to your text content.
• Customizable templates: Napkin AI offers a range of customizable templates to help you get started quickly and easily with your visual creation.

Getting Started

Getting started with Napkin AI is a breeze. Follow these simple steps to begin creating stunning visuals:

1. Sign up: Create an account on the Napkin AI website to access the platform.
2. Write or paste text: Enter your text content into the platform’s workspace.
3. Generate visuals: Click the “Spark” icon to generate visuals based on your text content.
4. Customize and edit: Tailor the visuals to fit your needs using the platform’s editing tools.
5. Export: Export your visuals in various formats, including PNG, PDF, and SVG, to use them across different platforms and media.

Why It Stands Out

Napkin AI is an essential tool for creating infographics and charts for blogs, reports, and social media posts. Here’s why it’s become a favorite among content creators:

• Saves Hours of Manual Design Work – AI handles the heavy lifting, making graphic creation fast and effortless.
• No Design Experience Needed – The tool’s smart templates and automation mean anyone can create stunning visuals.
• Enhances Blog & Social Media Engagement – High-quality visuals improve engagement, making content more shareable and impactful.
• Affordable Alternative to Expensive Design Tools – Compared to hiring a designer or subscribing to advanced software, Napkin AI is a budget-friendly powerhouse.

Napkin AI vs. Canva vs. Adobe Express

How does Napkin AI compare to popular design tools? Let’s break it down:

While Canva and Adobe Express are great for general design needs, Napkin AI dominates when it comes to AI-driven infographic and chart creation. If your goal is to turn complex ideas into simple, engaging visuals effortlessly, Napkin AI is the clear winner.

Pricing & Plans

Napkin AI offers affordable pricing tiers based on user needs. Here’s a quick breakdown:

• Free Plan – Basic design tools with watermark branding.
• Pro Plan (TBD after Beta ends) – Unlocks premium templates, branding tools, and advanced AI features.
• Enterprise Plan (Custom Pricing) – Ideal for businesses needing team collaboration and API access.

Support and Resources for Napkin AI

Napkin AI provides a wealth of support and resources to help you make the most of the platform:

• Tutorials: Access video guides and detailed articles to help you get started and master Napkin AI.
• Help center: Visit the dedicated help center for answers to frequently asked questions and troubleshooting tips.
• Email support: Premium users can benefit from email support for more personalized assistance.
• Live chat: Premium users also have access to live chat support for real-time help.
• Community: Join a community of users and developers who can offer feedback, support, and share their experiences with Napkin AI.

By leveraging these resources and through this Napkin AI Review, you can ensure that you are fully equipped to utilize Napkin AI to its fullest potential.

Final Verdict: Is It Worth It?

If you create infographics, charts, or social media visuals, Napkin AI is a game-changer. It simplifies design, speeds up content creation, and ensures your visuals look professional with minimal effort.

For business owners, marketers, and content creators who want to stand out with engaging graphics—without spending hours on design—Napkin AI is an absolute must-have. Hopefully this Napkin AI Review has been helpful to your content creation process. 

FAQ

Q: Is Napkin AI beginner-friendly?
A: Yes! Even if you have zero design experience, the AI-powered templates and automation make it incredibly easy to use.

Q: Can I use Napkin AI for business branding?
A: Absolutely! The one-click branding feature ensures all your visuals align with your brand’s colors, fonts, and style.

Q: Does Napkin AI replace Canva or Adobe Express?
A: Not entirely—it depends on what you need. If you primarily create infographics and data-driven visuals, Napkin AI is far superior to traditional design tools.

Q: Is there a free version of Napkin AI?
A: Yes! There’s a free plan with limited features, and you can upgrade to Pro or Enterprise for more advanced options

Did you find this Napkin AI Review Helpful? If so, check out our other Artificial Intelligence related articles!

AI Isn’t the Future—It’s the Present. Are You Using It to Your Advantage?

Most business owners are either wasting time on tasks AI could handle or missing out on powerful automation because they don’t know where to start. If you want to free up hours in your week, increase revenue, and scale without burnout, AI is the answer –> but only if you use it the right way.

Let’s talk. Book a free strategy call, and we’ll walk through how AI can be integrated into your business to make you more efficient, profitable, and unstoppable.

Schedule Your Free Call Now

The post Napkin AI Review: A Simple and Affordable Design Tool for Everyone appeared first on Done For You.

AI-generated content often includes mistakes such as context errors and repetitive phrases. This article identifies common AI content mistakes and provides solutions to fix them. You’ll learn how to use human oversight to enhance content quality.

Key Takeaways

• AI-generated content often lacks contextual understanding, necessitating clear prompts and human oversight for accuracy and relevance.
• Repetitive phrases and outdated information can detract from the quality of AI-generated content; employing diverse vocabulary and regular updates are essential.
• Combining human creativity with AI efficiency improves engagement and emotional connection, while strategic SEO practices enhance visibility and user experience.

Main AI Content Mistake: Lack of Contextual Understanding

One significant problem with AI content mistakes is its often poor contextual understanding. This can lead to misunderstandings or inaccuracies in the information provided. While advanced ai technology systems use machine learning to interpret keywords, topics, and instructions, they can still miss the nuances that human writers instinctively grasp. This often leads to irrelevant or confusing information, such as interpreting the phrase “shooting bricks” literally instead of understanding it as a basketball term. The ability of artificial intelligence to grasp how meaning varies based on context can significantly improve the accuracy and relevance of its outputs. However, without proper guidance, AI can produce content that is disjointed and filled with false information, detracting from its value.

Mitigating these AI content mistakes involves providing clear prompts and ensuring human oversight. Machines can enhance their understanding by considering broader environmental contexts beyond just surface-level data. For instance, AI models can be conditioned to understand specific nuances through better training and more precise instructions.

But ultimately, the role of human writers in overseeing and refining AI outputs cannot be overstated.

Clear Prompts to Avoid AI Content Mistakes

Clear and concise prompts are crucial for ensuring AI generates accurate and relevant content. Clear guidelines help condition AI tool responses, making them more reliable and precise, especially when using the same prompt.

For example, a snippet of writing can serve as a style guide for the AI, helping it emulate a user’s specific tone and manner. Providing numerical data or concrete examples within the prompts can streamline the content creation process and enhance the precision of the outputs.

Clear instructions reduce the likelihood of AI generating incorrect information.

Human Oversight

Human oversight is critical; it ensures the contextual accuracy and relevance of AI-generated content despite advances in technology. Fact-checking AI outputs and integrating human creativity adds depth and nuance. Regular intervention maintains ethical standards, preventing the spread of misinformation.

Combining AI efficiency with human oversight results in content that is both accurate and engaging.

Overuse of Repetitive Phrases

A common AI content mistake is the overuse of repetitive phrases, which can make the text monotonous and less engaging for readers. This repetition arises because AI models predict words based on learned patterns, often leading to redundancy. When phrases are repeated frequently, the content loses its originality and becomes less compelling. This issue can detract from the reader’s experience, making the content feel robotic and uninspired.

Varying the vocabulary in AI-generated content is crucial to address this AI content mistake. Employing diverse vocabulary not only keeps the content fresh but also prevents predictability. Integrating synonyms and varied expressions can enhance the richness and appeal of the text.

Editing tools can significantly enhance content quality by identifying and eliminating redundant phrases. These tools act as powerful aids in refining the text, ensuring it remains engaging and free from unnecessary repetition.

Varying Vocabulary to Correct AI Content Mistakes

A diverse vocabulary keeps AI-generated content engaging and prevents predictability. Integrating synonyms and varied expressions keeps content fresh and interesting. Large language models trained on vast amounts of data can benefit from a more varied vocabulary, reducing the risk of disengagement and boredom among readers.

This enriches the create content, making it more appealing and dynamic.

Editing Tools

Editing tools enhance AI-generated content by identifying and amending repetitive phrases. They pinpoint redundancy and suggest alternatives, thus improving readability. For instance, powerful text generators equipped with editing capabilities can ensure the content is polished and engaging, free from the pitfalls of monotony.

Using these tools can elevate writing standards, making content more compelling for the audience.

Incorrect or Outdated Information

Another critical AI content mistake is the potential for incorrect or outdated information. AI systems often produce a mix of accurate and false information, leading to the risk of misinformation. This can have serious consequences, such as damaging credibility and misleading readers. For example, AI has been known to generate deepfake clips of politicians misbehaving, which can have real-world impacts.

Moreover, AI models do not inherently evaluate the correctness of the information they provide, focusing instead on generating probable responses based on their training data.

Regular updates and diligent fact-checking mitigate these AI content mistakes. AI’s training data limitations mean it may not have access to the latest information, resulting in outdated outputs. Updating AI systems and thorough fact-checking can prevent misinformation. This maintains the accuracy and reliability of AI-generated content, protecting the credibility of content creators.

Fact Checking AI Content Mistakes

Fact-checking is critical to ensuring the accuracy of AI-generated outputs. Cross-referencing AI-generated content with reliable human-created sources can help catch inaccuracies and prevent the dissemination of false information. Human oversight is indispensable in this process, as it provides the necessary checks to ensure factual correctness and relevance.

Diligent fact-checking significantly enhances the credibility and reliability of AI-generated content.

Regular Updates to Prevent AI Content Mistakes

Regular updates maintain the relevance and accuracy of AI-generated content. Outdated information can mislead readers and damage the credibility of the content creator. Consistently updating content ensures that it reflects the latest facts and insights, thereby maintaining its value.

Regular updates ensure high-quality content remains relevant and reliable.

Lack of Creativity and Originality in AI Content

AI-generated content often suffers from a lack of creativity and originality, which limits its effectiveness in engaging readers. Generative ai tends to produce generic outputs that mirror common themes and patterns derived from its training data. This reliance on established patterns results in AI content mistakes that lack a unique voice and fail to stand out in a saturated market. Without human intervention, AI-generated content can become repetitive and formulaic, missing the creative spark that captivates audiences.

Addressing these AI content mistakes requires human creativity. Human writers enhance AI-generated content with unique insights and personal anecdotes, adding emotional intelligence and depth. Combining AI efficiency with human creativity produces more engaging and high-quality content. This approach leverages the strengths of both, resulting in efficient and innovative content.

Human Creativity to Correct AI Content Mistakes

Human creativity is crucial in the content creation process, especially with AI tools. Human writers add unique insights and personal anecdotes, providing the emotional depth and contextual understanding that AI lacks.

Resources like thesauruses and writing aids diversify language and reduce repetitiveness, making content more engaging and original. This human touch is indispensable in creating content that resonates with readers on a deeper level.

Combining AI and Human Efforts to Avoid AI Content Mistakes

Integrating AI and human efforts in content creation leads to outstanding results. AI tools enhance human productivity, while human writers guide the creative direction. Leveraging AI for efficiency and human creativity for originality produces high-quality, engaging, and effective content.

This collaborative approach combines AI’s capabilities with the irreplaceable human touch, benefiting the content.

Poor Understanding of Reader Intent

AI often struggles to grasp reader intent, leading to AI content mistakes that may not meet audience needs or expectations. This can result in higher bounce rates and poor engagement metrics, as users quickly leave content that doesn’t resonate. AI-generated content lacking depth or substance negatively affects search ranking and user experience. Understanding reader intent allows for the creation of high-quality, relevant, and SEO-optimized content.

Thorough audience research and tailoring content to specific insights can significantly improve the relevance and effectiveness of AI-generated content. Understanding target demographic preferences and behaviors ensures content aligns with audience expectations and needs. This approach enhances engagement and improves overall content quality.

Audience Research to Correct AI Content Mistakes

Thorough audience research aligns content with target demographic needs and expectations. Tools like social media analytics provide valuable insights into audience behavior and preferences. Understanding audience interests and goals enables the production of more relevant and engaging content.

Tailored Content to Avoid AI Content Mistakes

Customizing content based on audience insights significantly enhances effectiveness. Tailored content more effectively engages readers and meets their specific needs, resulting in higher engagement and shares. Focusing on practical applications and avoiding jargon helps produce high-quality content that captivates the audience.

Limited Emotional Engagement

AI-generated content often struggles to evoke deep emotions, limiting its ability to connect personally with readers. This lack of genuine emotional connection can make content feel superficial and mechanical. Emotional engagement resonates with readers and motivates meaningful action. Human writers ensure content retains emotional depth and personal connection.

Storytelling techniques and adjustments in tone and style significantly enhance emotional engagement. Weaving relatable stories and experiences into the narrative creates a more immersive and emotionally resonant experience.

Storytelling to Correct AI Content Mistakes

Effective storytelling transforms data into engaging narratives that resonate with audiences. Conflict maintains audience interest and deepens emotional engagement in storytelling. Incorporate key business lessons with relatable stories and experiences, making the content more impactful and memorable.

Integrating storytelling techniques into AI-generated content ensures it is informative and emotionally engaging.

Tone and Style to Avoid AI Content Mistakes

Adjusting tone and style is essential for evoking the right emotions in readers. Aligning tone, style, and desired emotional response significantly influences audience perception and engagement.

Maintaining a consistent brand tone is challenging for AI, often resulting in AI content mistakes that misalign with desired messaging. Carefully adjusting tone and style enhances content effectiveness and ensures it resonates with the audience.

Issues with Flow and Transitions

AI-generated content often struggles to maintain a logical flow, making it difficult for readers to follow the narrative. Ineffective transitions disrupt the reading experience and confuse the audience. Flawed transitions in AI-generated content create a disjointed reading experience, detracting from overall quality and coherence.

A clear logical arrangement of ideas enhances coherence and effectively conveys the intended message. Transition words and phrases can significantly improve the readability of AI-generated text. Transition words create a more fluid and engaging reading experience by seamlessly connecting ideas.

Logical Structure to Correct AI Content Mistakes

A coherent structure ensures each part connects logically, enhancing overall clarity. This helps readers follow the narrative easily and understand the main ideas.

Organizing content with clear headings and subheadings guides the reader logically, improving readability and effectiveness.

Transition Words to Avoid AI Content Mistakes

Transition words seamlessly connect ideas, significantly improving readability. Transitional phrases enhance clarity and flow, making it easier for readers to follow the narrative.

Phrases like “in addition,” “however,” and “as a result” link sentences and paragraphs, creating a cohesive and engaging reading experience.

Ethical Concerns and Bias

AI systems can reflect and exacerbate biases in their training data, leading to unfair outcomes. This raises significant ethical concerns, as biased AI-generated content can propagate falsehoods and harmful stereotypes. Content creators must uphold ethical standards to avoid misinformation and plagiarism. Ensuring fairness in AI algorithms is a significant ethical challenge requiring ongoing attention and diligence.

Addressing these ethical concerns requires the use of diverse and inclusive datasets in AI training. This mitigates bias and improves the fairness of AI models. Establishing guidelines and ethical standards for AI-generated content prevents misinformation and upholds integrity.

Training Data to Correct AI Content Mistakes

Diverse and inclusive datasets mitigate bias in AI training and improve model fairness. Ensuring diverse perspectives and experiences are represented produces more accurate and respectable AI-generated content.

Inclusivity in training data creates fairer and more equitable AI outputs, crucial for maintaining credibility and integrity.

Ethical Standards in AI Content Mistakes

Establishing ethical standards prevents misinformation and upholds ethical practices. Content creators must adhere to these standards to avoid the propagation of false information and ensure the integrity of their work.

By maintaining high ethical standards, content creators can build trust with their audience and ensure that their content is reliable and credible.

SEO Optimization Challenges

Effective SEO is critical for increasing content visibility and impacting search rankings significantly. However, AI content mistakes often face challenges in SEO optimization, such as the lack of optimized elements like meta descriptions, URLs, and schema markups. Without proper SEO optimization, AI-generated content may not receive any organic traffic, rendering it ineffective. Additionally, duplicate content that offers no new information may lead to penalties from search engines, harming site ranking.

To overcome these AI content mistakes, it is essential to focus on keyword integration and crafting effective meta descriptions. By incorporating LSI keywords and ensuring that content aligns with user search intent, content creators can enhance their SEO efforts and improve search rankings.

Regular audits of internal links and ensuring proper internal linking can also boost SEO performance and enhance user experience.

Keyword Integration to Avoid AI Content Mistakes

Effective keyword integration is essential for enhancing search engine visibility and driving organic traffic. By incorporating LSI keywords into the content, creators can optimize for SEO and improve the chances of matching a user’s search intent. This not only helps in reaching a broader audience but also ensures that the content remains relevant and engaging.

Natural language processing tools can assist in identifying and integrating relevant keywords, thereby enhancing the overall SEO performance of AI-generated content.

Meta Descriptions to Correct AI Content Mistakes

Crafting effective meta descriptions is essential for increasing click-through rates on search engine results pages. Well-written meta descriptions convey the content’s value and entice users to click, thus enhancing overall visibility. For instance, using compelling and concise language in meta descriptions can significantly impact the click-through rate and improve the content’s performance in search results.

Ensuring that meta descriptions are optimized is a crucial step in the content creation process, especially when using AI tools for digital marketing and SEO.

Missed Opportunities for Internal Linking

Internal linking plays a crucial role in improving SEO, increasing page authority, and enhancing user navigation. However, AI content mistakes often generate isolated content without suggesting or incorporating internal links. This can reduce reader engagement and conversion opportunities, as users may not find related content easily. Enhancing internal linking in AI-generated content is essential for maximizing SEO benefits and ensuring a seamless user experience.

Strategic internal linking can significantly improve website navigation and help pages rank higher in search engine results. By leveraging AI to identify relevant internal links, content creators can optimize website structure and improve overall performance.

Strategic Linking to Avoid AI Content Mistakes

Strategic internal linking is crucial for enhancing navigation and SEO. AI tools can automatically find relevant internal links on a website, simplifying the linking process and enhancing content connectivity. Effective internal linking not only improves user experience but also aids in search engine optimization, helping pages rank higher.

By implementing strategic internal linking, content creators can ensure that users easily find related content, thereby increasing engagement and conversion opportunities.

Link Maintenance to Correct AI Content Mistakes

Regularly updating and maintaining internal links prevents errors and ensures a seamless user experience. Updating internal links ensures that they lead to current content, which is essential for maintaining site authority.

Regular audits of internal links are necessary to remove broken links and redirect users to relevant content. Effective link maintenance helps retain user engagement and improves overall website credibility, ensuring that users have a positive experience navigating the site.

Common AI Content Mistakes in AI-Generated Content Creation

AI-generated content creation is not without its common mistakes. AI often fails to recognize the difference between various types of user intent, which can lead to ineffective content. This struggle to interpret nuances in reader intent can result in AI content mistakes that do not meet user expectations. Additionally, the nature of training data and design focus on pattern generation can cause inaccuracies in AI-generated content. If AI produces incorrect information in specialized fields, it can erode trust, damage brand reputation, and even lead to legal consequences.

Common issues with AI-generated content include errors affecting readability, credibility, and SEO effectiveness. The potential for plagiarism is also a significant risk due to reliance on existing data. To avoid these AI content mistakes, it is essential to incorporate human oversight and continuously refine AI-generated content based on user feedback.

Lack of Human Touch

Human intervention is vital to mitigate known limitations of AI. AI systems often generate outputs that lack the depth and nuance that human oversight can provide. A human touch can enhance AI-generated content by adding emotional depth and contextual understanding that AI lacks.

Striking a balance between AI efficiency and the human touch can lead to higher quality content that resonates with readers and meets their expectations.

Ignoring User Feedback

Incorporating user feedback is crucial for improving content quality. Colleagues and friends offer valuable feedback. This feedback highlights both strengths and areas that need improvement. Consistent feedback loops allow creators to refine and adapt their content over time, ensuring it remains relevant and effective.

Implementing strategies such as surveys or discussion sessions to gather and apply user feedback can significantly enhance the quality and relevance of AI-generated content.

Summary

In summary, while AI has revolutionized the content creation process, it is not without its challenges. From lacking contextual understanding to struggling with emotional engagement, AI content mistakes often require human oversight and creativity to reach their full potential. By providing clear prompts, ensuring diligent fact-checking, and incorporating regular updates, content creators can mitigate the risks of incorrect or outdated information. Additionally, varying vocabulary and using editing tools can enhance the readability and engagement of AI-generated content.

Combining AI efficiency with human creativity and oversight leads to high-quality content that resonates with readers and meets their needs. Understanding reader intent, conducting thorough audience research, and tailoring content accordingly can significantly improve the relevance and effectiveness of AI-generated content. By addressing ethical concerns and ensuring SEO optimization, content creators can produce reliable, engaging, and high-ranking content. Ultimately, the key to successful AI-generated content lies in balancing the strengths of AI with the irreplaceable human touch.

Frequently Asked Questions About AI Content Mistakes

Why do AI content mistakes often lack contextual understanding?

AI content mistakes often lack contextual understanding because these models analyze keywords and instructions without fully grasping nuanced meanings, which can result in irrelevant or confusing output.

How can I prevent repetitive phrases in AI content mistakes?

To prevent repetitive phrases in AI content mistakes, utilize a diverse vocabulary and editing tools that highlight redundant expressions. This will enhance both readability and engagement.

What are the risks of using outdated information in AI content mistakes?

Using outdated information in AI content mistakes can mislead readers and significantly harm the credibility of the content creator. Therefore, it is crucial to regularly update content to ensure its relevance and accuracy.

How can human creativity improve AI content mistakes?

Human creativity enhances AI content mistakes by infusing them with unique insights, emotional depth, and personal anecdotes, resulting in more engaging and original material.

What are the ethical concerns associated with AI content mistakes?

Ethical concerns surrounding AI content mistakes primarily include bias in training data, the risk of misinformation, and issues of plagiarism. It is essential to ensure diverse datasets and adhere to ethical standards to mitigate these challenges.

The post Top AI Content Mistakes and How to Fix Them for Better Results appeared first on Done For You.

Are you struggling to get the best responses from ChatGPT? Mastering ChatGPT prompting is key. Learn the essentials of effective prompt creation, from clarity to specificity, to enhance your AI interactions. This guide provides you with practical tips and examples to make your prompts work seamlessly.

Key Takeaways

• Effective prompting is crucial for getting high-quality responses from ChatGPT; clear, specific, and contextual prompts lead to better outputs.
• Prompt engineering involves intentionally crafting inputs to optimize AI behavior, making it essential to understand the AI’s capabilities and limitations.
• Advanced techniques like custom instructions and maintaining a prompt library can significantly enhance the relevance and quality of responses generated by ChatGPT.

Understanding ChatGPT Prompting

Effective prompting plays a vital role in obtaining high-quality responses from AI tools like ChatGPT. The construction of your prompts greatly impacts the answers and the overall interaction. Think about asking a vague question and getting an equally vague response – frustrating, right? Well-crafted prompts can eliminate this issue.

Clarity in prompts leads to more focused responses from ChatGPT. Providing clear and detailed instructions sets the stage for generating relevant and appropriate responses. It’s like giving precise directions to a friend – the more specific you are, the better the results.

Prompting is an iterative process. Refining and adjusting your prompts based on previous interactions can improve outcomes over time. Asking the right questions and providing the necessary context guides ChatGPT towards the answers you seek.

The Basics of Effective ChatGPT Prompts

Creating effective ChatGPT prompts involves a balance of clarity, specificity, and context. The core components of effective prompts ensure that the AI understands exactly what you’re asking for and can generate the desired output. This means structuring your prompts to eliminate any ambiguity.

Specific language and detailed context are vital in crafting effective prompts. For example, instead of asking “Tell me about marketing,” you could ask “Can you provide a brief overview of digital marketing strategies for small businesses?” This approach guides ChatGPT and ensures the response is relevant to your needs.

Effective prompts balance brevity with detail. They should be clear and precise without being overly complicated, ensuring the prompt is neither too vague nor too intricate, making it easier for ChatGPT to generate appropriate responses.

What is Prompt Engineering?

Prompt engineering is the practice of crafting inputs to optimize AI outputs. It involves the intentional design of prompts to influence the behavior of AI models like ChatGPT. Think of it as giving a brief to a writer – the clearer and more detailed the brief, the better the resulting content. A prompt engineer plays a crucial role in this process.

Understanding the capabilities and limitations of the AI model is crucial for crafting effective prompts. This involves knowing what the AI can and cannot do and designing your prompts accordingly. Clear instructions are paramount in prompt engineering, guiding the AI towards accurate answers.

Commands to ChatGPT should be as clear as delivering a brief to a writer. This ensures the AI understands the task at hand and produces the desired output. Mastering prompt engineering can significantly enhance the relevance and quality of responses generated by ChatGPT.

Key Elements of a Good ChatGPT Prompt

Crafting effective ChatGPT prompts enhances the relevance and quality of responses generated by the AI. Well-designed prompts transform vague requests into precise commands, improving user experience and satisfaction. Key elements of a good ChatGPT prompt include Clear Instructions, Detailed Context, and Defined Output Specifications.

Each prompt component should combine into a comprehensive instruction set to guide ChatGPT effectively. Whether creating simple or complex prompts, flexible query structure allows for a more tailored and effective interaction. Specific roles or viewpoints in prompts can also align ChatGPT’s responses with the desired tone and expertise.

Now, let’s delve into the specifics of each key element, starting with Clear Instructions.

Clear Instructions

Specific instructions guide the AI tool towards generating an accurate answer. For instance, when using a commit message generator, including information about the task and the prefix for the task code can lead to more accurate outputs. This level of detail ensures the AI understands the context and produces relevant responses.

Requesting programming-related answers with instructions to reply with the answer only, without explanations, can help maintain clarity and focus. Similarly, specifying the type of corrections desired, such as grammar, typos, and factual errors, can guide the AI in editing tasks. Clear formatting in output, such as bullet points for tech troubleshooting, enhances readability and comprehension.

Complex coding concepts should be explained clearly and simply, using step-by-step instructions and practical examples. Providing detailed and specific instructions ensures that ChatGPT generates outputs that are both accurate and easy to understand.

Detailed Context

Background information enhances ChatGPT’s ability to deliver relevant and contextually appropriate replies. Detailed context allows the AI to generate responses that align more closely with your expectations. For example, when asking for a summary of a complex topic, including key points or specific aspects you want covered can lead to more precise answers.

Submitting large blocks of text may cause ChatGPT to overlook key details, leading to less satisfactory outputs. It’s important to strike a balance between providing ample background and managing the context length to ensure that the AI can produce high-quality responses.

Complex queries with multiple questions can exceed the AI’s context limits, potentially resulting in incomplete answers. Breaking down your queries and providing clear context helps ChatGPT generate more accurate and relevant responses.

Defined Output Specifications

Specifying output details such as tone and format is crucial for obtaining the desired results from ChatGPT. For instance, if you need a formal business report, specifying the tone, length, and structure in your prompt can guide the AI to produce a suitable response. Clearly defined specifications lead to more effective prompts and enhance the overall interaction with the AI.

Including rules, constraints, and output specifications helps ChatGPT produce the desired output. For instance, when asking for a marketing plan, specifying that the plan should include an overview, target audience analysis, and key strategies can ensure a comprehensive and relevant response.

Defining the output specifications in your prompts aligns the AI’s responses with your specific needs, leading to more satisfactory interactions and outcomes.

Advanced ChatGPT Prompting Techniques

Mastering effective prompting techniques requires continuous experimentation and learning. Advanced prompting strategies can significantly enhance the use of ChatGPT and improve the quality of outputs. Here, we explore some advanced techniques that can elevate your prompting skills.

Advanced prompting techniques contribute to the advancement and improvement of generative AI. Methods like reverse engineering, where you provide a sample output and ask ChatGPT to generate the prompt that could lead to that output, can refine your prompts for better results. Techniques like self-criticism and iterative prompting can also refine responses and enhance the quality of output over time.

Let’s delve into the specifics of these advanced techniques, starting with Custom Instructions.

Custom Instructions

Custom instructions allow users to tailor the AI’s responses to align with specific themes or tones, including personal anecdotes. For example, if you’re seeking advice, you can instruct the AI to act as a friend, providing a supportive tone. This level of personalization can lead to more meaningful interactions and relevant outputs.

Using custom instructions enhances the relevance and personalization of the AI’s outputs, leading to more satisfying interactions. Whether seeking professional advice, creative writing, or technical support, custom instructions can help achieve the desired results.

Specific instructions tailored to your needs can significantly improve the quality of the AI’s responses, making your interactions with ChatGPT more effective and enjoyable.

Prompt Libraries

Maintaining a library of prompts aids in scalability and streamlines the sharing of effective techniques. Having a collection of tried-and-tested prompts at your disposal, ready to be used or adapted to suit different needs, can save time and ensure consistency in the quality of responses.

Prompt libraries can be particularly useful for businesses and teams, allowing them to share effective prompting techniques and improve collaboration. For instance, a marketing team can maintain a library of prompts for generating social media content, while an education team can have prompts for creating lesson plans and quizzes.

Building and maintaining a prompt library ensures that effective prompting techniques are easily accessible and can be leveraged to enhance various interactions with ChatGPT.

Feedback and Iteration

Providing feedback on responses helps refine the AI’s outputs for better accuracy and relevance. Users should click the feedback indicators and add suggestions to provide feedback on ChatGPT’s responses. This iterative process of refining prompts based on feedback can lead to significant improvements in the quality of outputs.

Using proofreading prompts can elicit corrections or suggestions for improving the text. If the AI’s response includes errors or lacks clarity, providing feedback and requesting revisions can help achieve the desired results.

Incorporating feedback and iteration into your prompting process continuously improves the relevance and accuracy of ChatGPT’s responses, leading to more effective interactions.

Practical Examples of ChatGPT Prompts by Industry

ChatGPT can generate prompts tailored to various industries, allowing users to create relevant content for specific sectors. Whether you’re in marketing, education, or customer service, tailored prompts can enhance engagement and satisfaction. Here, we explore practical examples of ChatGPT prompts by industry.

Examples of prompts include asking ChatGPT to suggest curriculum related to specific job titles and candidate questions. Tailored ChatGPT prompts can lead to improved engagement and satisfaction in business communications.

Let’s delve into specific examples for Marketing and Sales, Education and Training, and Customer Service.

Marketing and Sales

Marketing prompts can include ideas for advertising campaigns and customer engagement strategies. For instance, an advertising campaign prompt could involve creating a strategy for marketing energy drinks, including target audiences and key messages.

Prompts used for generating startup ideas should encompass details such as idea name, target user personas, intended audience, and sales channels. Tailored prompts can help businesses improve their communication strategies and achieve their marketing goals.

ChatGPT can also help increase brand awareness by generating creative content for a social media manager, blogs, and other marketing channels, leading to improved customer satisfaction and business growth.

Education and Training

ChatGPT can create educational content, including lesson plans and training materials tailored to various subjects. For instance, a prompt for generating a lesson plan on machine learning for young adults could include specific topics, learning objectives, and assessment methods. Prompts can also generate quizzes and worksheets designed to assess student learning and comprehension.

Businesses can leverage ChatGPT for employee training by developing training materials and conducting interactive training sessions. Tailored prompts enable educators and trainers to create engaging and effective learning experiences that support career development and growth.

Customer Service

Prompts can help in formulating responses to customer inquiries, enhancing the overall customer support experience. For instance, a prompt for generating a response to a customer complaint could include details about the issue, the desired resolution, and a tone of empathy and professionalism.

ChatGPT can provide scripts for handling various customer service scenarios, including conflict resolution. Small business owners can use ChatGPT to create content, improve customer service, and provide market insights, ultimately streamlining operations.

By using personalized prompts, businesses can enhance customer satisfaction by quickly addressing common inquiries and reducing wait times.

Leveraging AI Tools for Prompt Generation

AI prompt generators harness artificial intelligence to produce writing prompts that can spark creativity and assist writers. These tools can be especially useful when you’re facing writer’s block or looking for fresh ideas and new perspectives. By providing clear and specific input to an AI prompt generator, you can yield engaging and relevant prompts tailored to your needs.

AI tools can analyze extensive data to offer prompts that enhance users’ writing skills by exposing them to varied tones and styles. If the initial response from a prompt generator is vague or inaccurate, refining the prompt can help improve the quality of the output. This iterative process ensures that you get the best possible responses from the AI.

Using AI tools for prompt generation can streamline the writing process, allowing users to save time by quickly generating numerous ideas. This efficiency can be a game-changer for content creators, marketers, and anyone looking to leverage AI for creative or professional purposes.

Real-World Applications of ChatGPT Prompts

ChatGPT can help craft persuasive sales pitches tailored to target audiences, addressing specific needs and pain points. For instance, a prompt asking ChatGPT to create a sales pitch for a new software product could include details about the product’s features, benefits, and the target market. This ensures that the generated pitch is relevant and compelling.

Companies can use ChatGPT to formulate effective networking strategies, connecting with relevant professionals and events in their industry. Additionally, ChatGPT can assist in research by quickly summarizing vast amounts of information, making it easier for professionals to stay updated on industry trends.

Small business owners can use ChatGPT to identify market gaps and recommend innovative product ideas based on consumer demand. By leveraging these AI-generated prompts, businesses can streamline operations, enhance productivity, and ultimately achieve their business goals.

Common Mistakes to Avoid in ChatGPT Prompting

Prompts for testing large language models (LLMs) should primarily focus on safety and robustness. After issuing an escape prompt, it’s crucial to avoid running harmful commands or revealing personal details. Including constraints like length, format, and maximum word count in prompts is essential for effective responses.

Providing examples of the desired output can reduce the risk of misinterpretation. For instance, showing ChatGPT a sample prompt and the expected response can guide the AI toward producing similar outputs. It’s also important to verify and check the responses received from ChatGPT to ensure accuracy.

Avoid asking if something is correct; instead, ask the AI to work through the problem step-by-step. This approach helps to reduce errors and improve the quality of the responses. Using the R.A.G (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) approach can also help to reduce hallucinations and improve response accuracy.

Online Courses for Learning Prompt Engineering

Learning prompt engineering is essential for maximizing the effectiveness of AI interactions and systems. Recommended courses for prompt engineering include ‘Prompt Engineering for ChatGPT,’ ‘Google Prompting Essentials,’ and ‘Generative AI for Everyone.’ These courses vary in length and have received high ratings, ensuring quality education in prompt engineering.

‘Prompt Engineering for ChatGPT’ is taught by Dr. Jules White, lasts approximately 18 hours, and has 401,767 enrolled students. This course provides in-depth knowledge and practical skills for crafting effective prompts.

‘Google Prompting Essentials’ is designed for beginners, takes about 9 hours to finish, and has 460 ratings. This course covers the basics of prompting and is ideal for those new to the field.

‘Generative AI for Everyone’ is another beginner-level course with an average duration of 5 hours and has 505,490 enrolled students. This course offers a comprehensive introduction to generative AI and prompt engineering, making it accessible to a wide audience.

Future Trends in ChatGPT Prompting

Multimodal prompt engineering is emerging, allowing AI systems to process various data formats, leading to richer and more complex outputs. This trend signifies a transformation in how prompts are created and utilized, offering new possibilities for AI interactions. Continuous prompt learning is also being integrated into AI, enabling models to refine their prompts based on user interactions over time.

The future of prompt engineering will see the rise of automated tools that assist in creating optimized prompts, significantly enhancing user productivity. These tools will streamline the prompting process, making it easier for users to generate high-quality responses from AI models.

Standardization of prompts across industries is anticipated to facilitate better integration of AI systems and more widespread adoption. As these trends continue to evolve, the field of ChatGPT prompting will become increasingly sophisticated, offering even greater potential for innovation and efficiency.

Summary

In this comprehensive guide, we’ve explored the art of mastering ChatGPT prompting. From understanding the basics to diving into advanced techniques, we’ve covered everything you need to know to craft effective prompts and achieve high-quality responses from ChatGPT. Key elements such as clear instructions, detailed context, and defined output specifications are essential for guiding the AI towards generating relevant and accurate answers.

As you continue to refine your prompting skills, remember that the process is iterative and requires continuous learning and experimentation. By leveraging the insights and techniques shared in this guide, you can unlock the full potential of ChatGPT and revolutionize your approach to AI-driven communication. Keep pushing the boundaries, and watch as your interactions with ChatGPT become increasingly effective and impactful.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the key components of an effective ChatGPT prompt?

To create an effective ChatGPT prompt, focus on clarity, specificity, and context. These elements help the AI grasp your request and deliver better responses.

How can I improve the quality of responses from ChatGPT?

To get better responses from ChatGPT, give clear, detailed instructions and context, and let it know what tone or format you want. Don’t hesitate to tweak your prompts based on the feedback you get—it really helps refine the conversation!

What is prompt engineering?

Prompt engineering is all about creating effective inputs to get the best responses from AI, like ChatGPT. By carefully designing your prompts, you can guide the AI to deliver more accurate and relevant information.

Are there any online courses for learning prompt engineering?

Absolutely! Courses like ‘Prompt Engineering for ChatGPT’ and ‘Generative AI for Everyone’ offer great insights and hands-on skills for mastering the art of prompt engineering. Dive in, and you’ll be crafting effective prompts in no time!

What are some common mistakes to avoid in ChatGPT prompting?

To get the best results from ChatGPT, avoid vague prompts and remember to specify length and format. Including examples and asking for step-by-step explanations can really enhance the quality of the responses you receive.

The post Mastering ChatGPT Prompting: Essential Tips for Effective Interactions appeared first on Done For You.

Sora AI is OpenAI’s groundbreaking text-to-video model, designed to generate high-quality, realistic video content from simple text prompts. For marketers, leveraging AI-generated video opens up a new world of possibilities—saving time, cutting costs, and enhancing audience engagement with minimal effort. It represents a major leap forward in AI-driven content creation, enabling marketers, entrepreneurs, and businesses to produce engaging video content without the need for extensive editing, expensive equipment, or deep technical skills.

For marketers, this means the ability to produce high-quality video content quickly and efficiently, without the typical constraints of traditional video production. Whether you’re a small business owner, course creator, or digital agency, Sora AI offers a new level of creative freedom and efficiency.

Why Sora Ai Is A Must Have For Marketers

As it’s been for years, video content is king. Businesses that effectively use video marketing see higher engagement, stronger brand recognition, and increased sales. However, traditional video production is often expensive, time-consuming, and requires technical expertise. That’s where Sora AI comes in—it democratizes video creation, allowing businesses of all sizes to produce high-quality content at scale.

Sora AI eliminates the barriers to entry by making professional-grade video accessible to everyone. Instead of hiring videographers, editors, and designers, businesses can generate engaging, AI-powered content in minutes. This not only saves resources but also enables rapid content iteration, ensuring that marketing campaigns stay fresh and relevant.

With Sora AI, even small teams and solo entrepreneurs can create high-impact marketing videos without breaking the bank. Whether it’s social media ads, explainer videos, or product promotions, AI-driven video production empowers marketers to reach their audience faster and more effectively than ever before.

Here’s why marketers should be paying attention:

• Cost-Effective Production – No need for expensive cameras, actors, or editing software.
• Speed and Efficiency – Generate professional-quality videos in minutes rather than days or weeks.
• Customization and Creativity – Tailor content to specific audiences with personalized, data-driven messaging.
• Scalability – Produce multiple videos for A/B testing, social media, and ad campaigns without exhausting resources.
• No Technical Expertise Needed – Anyone can create high-quality video content with simple text prompts.

By leveraging Sora AI, businesses can create attention-grabbing content that engages audiences and drives conversions.

How to Use Sora AI for Marketing

Sora AI offers businesses an easy and effective way to create high-quality videos, but using it correctly can determine the success of your campaigns. Many marketers dive in without a plan, but those who take a structured approach see the best results. Understanding your goals, defining a clear message, and refining your content strategy before using Sora AI ensures that every video serves a purpose.

One of the key factors in using Sora AI effectively is crafting a compelling text prompt. Since Sora AI generates videos based on your descriptions, the quality of your input directly impacts the output. Providing clear, detailed instructions about the visuals, tone, and messaging will help produce content that aligns with your brand’s needs.

Step-by-Step Guide to Using Sora AI for Marketing

Define Your Objective – Before creating a video, outline its purpose. Is it for brand awareness, engagement, or conversions? Identifying this will help you craft the right messaging and ensure your video serves a clear function.

Craft a Strong Prompt – Provide Sora AI with a detailed description of the video you want. For example, if you’re creating a product demo, specify the setting, mood, and key features to highlight. A vague prompt leads to generic content, while a precise prompt ensures a compelling final product.

Review and Refine – Sora AI can generate multiple versions of a video based on different prompts. Test variations to find what resonates best with your audience. Experiment with wording and structure until you get the perfect balance.

Enhance with Branding – Branding elements like logos, color schemes, and call-to-action overlays should be incorporated into every video. These elements make your content instantly recognizable and ensure consistency across all platforms.

Publish and Analyze – Once your video is live, track its performance. Look at engagement metrics, audience retention, and conversion rates to determine its effectiveness. Adjust future videos based on these insights for continuous improvement.

When used effectively, Sora AI can create visually stunning, impactful content that engages customers and boosts conversions.

How to Create the Perfect Sora Prompts

Mastering prompt creation is the key to unlocking the full potential of Sora AI. The better your prompts, the better the output. Follow these guidelines to create highly effective prompts that result in compelling video content:

Be Specific and Detailed

A vague prompt will lead to generic, uninspired results. Instead of saying, “Create a video of a person walking in the park,” try: “Generate a video of a young woman jogging through Central Park on a sunny morning, with birds chirping and a bustling background of cyclists and dog walkers.” The more detail you provide, the closer the AI’s output will match your vision.

Set the Mood and Tone

If you want your video to convey a specific feeling, include descriptive language that reflects the mood. Words like “dramatic,” “upbeat,” “inspiring,” or “cinematic” can help guide the AI in crafting the right ambiance for your content.

Incorporate Key Visual Elements

If you need specific imagery, mention it. Whether it’s a particular background, camera angle, or lighting style, including these elements in your prompt will help tailor the final video to your exact needs.

Use Examples for Clarity

If possible, reference existing videos, movies, or visual styles to guide the AI. For example, “Create a futuristic cityscape similar to Blade Runner, with neon lights and flying cars at night.” This helps Sora AI understand your expectations.

Iterate and Improve

Even well-crafted prompts may need tweaking. Run tests, analyze the results, and refine your inputs to get the best possible outcome. The more you experiment, the better you’ll understand how Sora AI interprets prompts, allowing you to optimize your future content.

By mastering these techniques, marketers can maximize Sora AI’s potential and produce high-quality videos that stand out.

Maximizing Sora AI for Business Growth

Sora AI isn’t just for creating videos—it’s a powerful tool for business expansion. Companies using AI-generated video for marketing, training, and customer engagement see improved efficiency and increased brand awareness. Leveraging AI to handle repetitive video creation tasks frees up time for strategy and scaling your business.

Businesses can use Sora AI to produce video content at a fraction of the cost of traditional production, making high-quality video marketing more accessible. Instead of spending thousands on video shoots, companies can generate stunning visuals within minutes, allowing them to reallocate budgets to other growth strategies.

Additionally, AI-driven video content enables brands to test different marketing approaches quickly. A/B testing variations of ads, landing pages, and product promos becomes seamless with AI-generated video, helping companies refine their messaging for maximum impact.

For businesses looking to expand into new markets, AI video translation features can remove language barriers, making it easier to reach international audiences. By localizing video content with AI-generated voiceovers or subtitles, brands can connect with customers worldwide without hiring translators or re-recording content.

The Future of AI in Video Marketing

As AI technology continues to evolve, tools like Sora AI will redefine how businesses approach video marketing. Companies that embrace AI-powered video early will have a competitive edge in content creation and customer engagement. AI-generated video allows brands to produce more content faster, enabling them to keep up with the growing demand for video marketing across social media, websites, and advertising platforms.

One of the biggest shifts in video marketing will be the personalization AI offers. With tools like Sora AI, businesses can create hyper-personalized video ads tailored to individual customers based on browsing history, purchase behavior, or demographic data. This means higher engagement rates and more effective ad spend.

AI-driven automation will allow brands to quickly repurpose content for multiple platforms. A single video can be reformatted for TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn, ensuring that businesses maximize their reach without additional production costs.

As the technology continues to develop, we may see Sora AI integrating with AR and VR, allowing businesses to create immersive brand experiences without the need for expensive production studios. The future of AI in video marketing is limitless, and businesses that adopt these tools early will be positioned as industry leaders.

Final Thoughts on Sora AI

Sora AI represents a transformative shift in the way marketers create and distribute video content. By eliminating traditional barriers like cost, complexity, and production time, it enables businesses of all sizes to compete in an increasingly visual world. However, as with any tool, success comes down to strategy. Knowing when, how, and why to use Sora AI will determine whether it becomes an asset or just another tech novelty.

For marketers willing to experiment and optimize their approach, Sora AI is an unparalleled opportunity to elevate branding, storytelling, and customer engagement. The businesses that embrace it today will be the industry leaders of tomorrow.

FAQ About Sora AI

1. Is Sora AI free to use? Sora AI may have different pricing tiers, including free trials and premium features. Always check OpenAI’s official website for current pricing details.

2. Can I use Sora AI for commercial projects? Yes, businesses can use Sora AI for marketing campaigns, product promotions, and branded content.

3. How long can videos generated by Sora AI be? Currently, Sora AI is optimized for short to medium-length videos, but OpenAI may expand its capabilities in the future.

4. What industries benefit most from Sora AI? E-commerce, digital marketing, coaching, education, and real estate are just a few industries that can leverage Sora AI.

5. Can I edit Sora AI-generated videos? Yes, you can refine and enhance AI-generated videos using standard editing tools.

AI Isn’t the Future—It’s the Present. Are You Using It to Your Advantage?

Most business owners are either wasting time on tasks AI could handle or missing out on powerful automation because they don’t know where to start. If you want to free up hours in your week, increase revenue, and scale without burnout, AI is the answer –> but only if you use it the right way.

Let’s talk. Book a free strategy call, and we’ll walk through how AI can be integrated into your business to make you more efficient, profitable, and unstoppable.

Schedule Your Free Call Now

The post Is Sora AI The Future of Video Content Creation? appeared first on Done For You.

OpenAI has introduced OpenAI Orion, its latest AI model, with claims of better accuracy, reasoning, and efficiency. But does it really change how we use AI, or is it just another small upgrade?

Over the past few years, AI development has exploded, but each new version seems to promise more than it delivers. OpenAI Orion is being positioned as the next big thing—but how much of a difference does it really make in everyday business and content creation?

How OpenAI Orion Improves on Previous Models

OpenAI Orion isn’t just about bigger data sets or faster processing—it focuses on refining how AI understands and interacts with information. The goal is to make AI more reliable, efficient, and capable of handling complex requests. Here’s where OpenAI Orion improves:

1. Better Accuracy & Fewer Mistakes – AI hallucinations (false information) have been reduced, making outputs more trustworthy.
2. Improved Reasoning & Decision-Making – OpenAI Orion is designed to process complex questions and provide more logical, structured responses.
3. Faster Response Times – OpenAI has optimized the model to generate content more quickly, making it better suited for real-time interactions.
4. Stronger Context Retention – OpenAI Orion can handle longer conversations without losing track of the discussion.

These are solid improvements, but how much will they actually impact business use cases?

What OpenAI Orion Means for Business & AI Users

The release of OpenAI Orion signals a shift in how businesses can leverage AI for everyday operations, but its impact depends largely on how it’s integrated into workflows. While the model offers improvements in accuracy, speed, and reasoning, businesses need to evaluate whether these enhancements translate into meaningful advantages for their specific needs.

For companies relying on AI-generated content, OpenAI Orion’s ability to refine text with fewer errors means higher quality outputs with less manual editing. This is particularly beneficial for businesses producing large volumes of written material, such as blogs, ad copy, and customer emails. However, human oversight remains crucial, as OpenAI Orion, like previous models, still lacks the depth of human creativity and brand nuance.

In customer service and automation, OpenAI Orion’s stronger contextual retention allows AI-powered chatbots to maintain more natural conversations, reducing repetitive responses and misunderstandings. This can lead to higher customer satisfaction and reduced response times, making AI a more viable tool for handling routine inquiries.

On the data analysis front, OpenAI Orion’s enhanced reasoning capabilities help businesses extract more meaningful insights from complex datasets. While it won’t replace human decision-making, it can serve as a valuable tool for spotting trends, predicting market movements, and optimizing strategies based on data-driven insights. However, AI should be viewed as an enhancement, not a substitute for critical thinking and expertise.

For those integrating AI into their workflows, OpenAI Orion’s enhancements can be useful, but whether they justify an upgrade depends on how you’re using AI.

1. Smarter AI for Content & Marketing

Marketers relying on AI for blog writing, ad copy, and social media posts may see better, more refined results. However, it still requires human editing—no AI tool can completely replace a strong brand voice and personal touch.

2. More Effective Customer Support & Automation

Companies using AI-powered chatbots and automated responses may find OpenAI Orion more reliable, with better handling of customer interactions and fewer irrelevant responses. This could help reduce miscommunication and frustration for customers.

3. AI-Powered Business Insights & Strategy

If your business relies on data analysis and trend forecasting, OpenAI Orion’s improved reasoning could provide more accurate insights—but it’s still not a replacement for real-world experience and strategic thinking.

The Challenges & Limitations of OpenAI Orion

While OpenAI Orion introduces notable improvements, it still comes with its own set of challenges. AI technology is progressing rapidly, but it remains far from perfect. Businesses and AI users should be aware of the following limitations before fully integrating OpenAI Orion into their operations.

Accuracy & Reliability Concerns

Even though OpenAI has reduced AI hallucinations, OpenAI Orion still generates incorrect or misleading information at times. Relying too heavily on AI for factual content can lead to misinformation or inaccuracies slipping through the cracks, making human oversight essential.

High Costs & Accessibility

Advanced AI models like OpenAI Orion often come with higher pricing tiers, limiting accessibility for smaller businesses and individual users. While larger enterprises may afford premium AI tools, smaller teams may struggle to justify the expense, especially if they don’t require high-volume AI outputs.

Over-Reliance on AI & Diminishing Human Input

The ease of AI automation can lead to a lack of critical thinking and originality in content creation, marketing, and decision-making. Businesses that blindly depend on AI-generated insights or strategies risk losing their unique voice, creativity, and industry expertise over time.

Ethical & Bias Issues

AI is only as good as the data it’s trained on, and bias remains a major concern. OpenAI Orion, like previous models, reflects biases present in its training data, meaning responses can sometimes be skewed or problematic. Companies need to be aware of this and ensure responsible AI usage to avoid unintended consequences.

Ultimately, while OpenAI Orion pushes AI forward, it is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Businesses should assess their needs carefully and integrate AI strategically rather than depending on it as a standalone fix.

What’s Next for AI? The Road Beyond OpenAI Orion

As AI technology continues to advance, we’re reaching a pivotal moment where the improvements from one model to the next are becoming more nuanced. Rather than focusing solely on making AI bigger, researchers are shifting their attention to making AI smarter—enhancing reasoning, reducing bias, and improving real-world problem-solving capabilities.

One of the biggest trends on the horizon is AI that learns more dynamically. Instead of relying solely on pre-trained data, future models may continuously adapt based on new information, making them more responsive and better suited for complex, evolving industries.

Another key area of focus is multimodal AI—the ability to process and generate not just text but also images, audio, and video. This shift will have huge implications for businesses, content creators, and marketing professionals, as AI-powered tools become more versatile and capable of producing high-quality multimedia content.

• AI That Thinks, Not Just Predicts – Future models will aim for deeper understanding rather than just generating words.
• Multimodal AI – The ability to process and generate images, text, video, and audio together.
• Industry-Specific AI Models – Expect AI tools built specifically for healthcare, finance, and legal industries, offering more targeted solutions.

Should You Care About The New Update?

If you’re already using AI for content, automation, or analytics, OpenAI Orion may offer some benefits, but it’s not a massive leap forward. The biggest takeaway? AI is evolving, but human strategy and creativity still matter.

Businesses that learn how to integrate OpenAI Orion as a tool, rather than a crutch, will have the biggest competitive advantage.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What makes OpenAI Orion different from previous models?

OpenAI Orion introduces improved accuracy, enhanced reasoning, and better context retention. It’s designed to generate more reliable responses while reducing misinformation and hallucinations compared to previous AI models.

2. Is OpenAI Orion worth upgrading to if I already use GPT-4?

It depends on your needs. If you rely on AI for content creation, automation, or customer support, Orion’s enhancements can provide value. However, if you’re expecting a groundbreaking leap in performance, the improvements may feel incremental rather than transformative.

3. How can businesses benefit from OpenAI Orion?

Businesses can leverage OpenAI Orion for more accurate content generation, better customer service automation, and improved data analysis. The model’s stronger reasoning capabilities can also help with decision-making and strategic planning.

4. What are the main limitations of OpenAI Orion?

While Orion offers notable improvements, it still has limitations, such as potential biases in responses, occasional inaccuracies, and the cost of access for premium AI features. Additionally, AI should be used as a tool, not a full replacement for human expertise.

5. What’s next for OpenAI after Orion?

OpenAI is likely focusing on developing models that improve real-world reasoning, multimodal AI capabilities (integrating text, images, audio, and video), and industry-specific AI solutions. The next iterations of AI will focus on making models more adaptable and responsive to evolving business needs.

AI Isn’t the Future—It’s the Present. Are You Using It to Your Advantage?

Most business owners are either wasting time on tasks AI could handle or missing out on powerful automation because they don’t know where to start. If you want to free up hours in your week, increase revenue, and scale without burnout, AI is the answer –> but only if you use it the right way.Let’s talk. Book a free strategy call, and we’ll walk through how AI can be integrated into your business to make you more efficient, profitable, and unstoppable.

 Schedule Your Free Call Now

The post OpenAI Orion: A Closer Look at What’s New and What It Means for You appeared first on Done For You.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has exploded in capability—and options. With new models launching every few months, it can be tough to figure out which one is the right fit for your work or business. This updated AI model comparison includes a breakdown of the leading tools on the market: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, Surfer AI—and now, Jasper AI, Grok AI, and DeepSeek.

Whether you’re looking for creative content generation, deep research capabilities, or ethical AI practices, this guide will provide a clear, opinionated overview.

Why This Comparison Matters

AI models are evolving at an unprecedented pace. What was cutting-edge six months ago may already feel outdated. As of early 2025, the AI landscape is dominated by a few key players, each offering unique strengths and weaknesses. This ai model comparison guide focuses on general-purpose AI models that are accessible to most users, with an emphasis on paid tiers (around $20/month) for the best performance.

Let’s dive into the capabilities, strengths, and ideal use cases for each model.

How We Tested These AI Models

To ensure a fair and accurate AI model comparison, we tested each AI model across multiple real-world applications. Our goal was to evaluate how well each AI performs in different scenarios that users typically encounter.

We started by designing a structured set of prompts tailored to measure key capabilities. These included creative writing tasks, factual research queries, conversational depth tests, and technical problem-solving challenges. By applying the same prompts to each model, we were able to compare responses side by side, measuring accuracy, fluency, and usability.

Additionally, we considered factors such as response speed, ease of integration into workflows, and limitations in specific use cases. Through this testing approach, we gained valuable insights into where each AI model excels and where it may fall short.

• Content generation: Evaluating creativity, coherence, and structure in long-form writing.
• Research & fact-checking: Assessing the accuracy and sourcing of responses.
• Conversational ability: Measuring fluency, natural language understanding, and contextual awareness.
• Technical problem-solving: Testing code generation and complex reasoning capabilities.

By running identical prompts through each AI model, we gained valuable insights into their strengths and limitations, allowing us to present a balanced breakdown of their capabilities.

1. ChatGPT: The Multimodal Powerhouse

Overview

Developed by OpenAI, ChatGPT is arguably the most well-known AI model. Built on the GPT architecture, it’s a versatile tool for everything from casual conversation to complex problem-solving.

Key Features

ChatGPT’s Advanced Voice Mode allows real-time, multimodal interactions (voice, text, and video). It can generate images using DALL-E 3, analyze data, and even execute code. Additionally, ChatGPT excels at synthesizing complex information into detailed reports through its Deep Research capabilities.

Strengths

ChatGPT’s versatility is unmatched. From creative writing to coding, it handles a wide range of tasks with ease. Its Live Mode is particularly impressive, offering real-time interaction capabilities that feel natural and intuitive. Users can also create custom GPTs for specific tasks, making it highly adaptable.

Weaknesses

However, access to advanced features can be expensive, and the sheer number of options can be overwhelming for beginners. While ChatGPT is powerful, its complexity may require a learning curve for those new to AI tools.

Ideal Use Cases

After reviewing our AI model comparison results it’s clear that ChatGPT is ideal for real-time multimodal interactions, content creation, and data analysis. Its ability to execute code and generate detailed reports makes it a favorite among developers and researchers.

2. Claude: The Ethical and Creative Thinker

Overview

Claude, developed by Anthropic, is designed with a strong emphasis on ethical AI. It’s known for its creativity and ability to handle long-form content.

Key Features

Claude avoids harmful or biased outputs, making it ideal for sensitive applications. It excels at processing and generating lengthy documents, and its conversational tone is often described as friendly and socially engaging.

Strengths

Claude’s creativity sets it apart. It often provides unique and insightful responses, making it a favorite for brainstorming and creative tasks. Its ethical focus ensures that it’s a reliable choice for applications requiring high standards of fairness and safety.

Weaknesses

Claude lacks some of the advanced capabilities of ChatGPT and Gemini, such as web access and multimodal features. While it’s excellent for long-form content, it may not be the best choice for tasks requiring real-time data or complex coding.

Ideal Use Cases

After reviewing our AI model comparison results it’s clear that Claude is perfect for long-form content generation, ethical AI applications, and creative brainstorming. Its friendly tone and ethical design make it a trusted companion for sensitive tasks.

3. Gemini: The Multimodal Innovator

Overview

Gemini, developed by Google DeepMind, is a cutting-edge AI model that integrates text, image, and video processing. It’s designed for users who need advanced multimodal capabilities.

Key Features

Gemini can process and generate text, images, and video, making it a powerful tool for multimedia projects. It also offers robust research capabilities, summarizing vast amounts of information quickly and accurately. With web access, Gemini can pull real-time data from the internet, ensuring up-to-date responses.

Strengths

Gemini’s multimodal power is its standout feature. Its ability to handle multiple data types sets it apart from other models. Integration with the Google ecosystem makes it seamless to use alongside other Google tools, and its deep research capabilities are ideal for users who need comprehensive, up-to-date information.

Weaknesses

However, Gemini’s advanced features may require technical expertise, and access to its full capabilities can be expensive. While it’s a powerful tool, it may not be the most user-friendly option for beginners.

Ideal Use Cases

After reviewing our AI model comparison results it’s clear that Gemini is ideal for multimodal content creation, data analysis, and deep research. Its ability to handle complex tasks makes it a favorite among professionals in fields like media, research, and data science.

4. Perplexity: The Search-Optimized Assistant

Overview

Perplexity is designed for users who need accurate, search-optimized answers. It’s a lightweight, efficient tool for research and information retrieval.

Key Features

Perplexity delivers precise, relevant answers to user queries. It can pull in up-to-date information from the web, ensuring that users have access to the latest data. Its user-friendly interface makes it accessible even for non-technical users.

Strengths

Perplexity excels at providing factual, reliable information quickly. Its speed and accuracy make it ideal for time-sensitive tasks, and its affordability makes it a cost-effective option for users who don’t need advanced features.

Weaknesses

However, Perplexity is more focused on factual accuracy than creative content generation. While it’s excellent for research and information retrieval, it may not be as versatile as other models for broader applications.

Ideal Use Cases

After reviewing our AI model comparison results it’s clear that Perplexity is perfect for research, customer support FAQs, and data-driven decision-making. Its ability to deliver quick, accurate answers makes it a valuable tool for users who need reliable information fast.

5. Microsoft Copilot: The Productivity AI

Overview

Microsoft Copilot is deeply integrated into Microsoft 365 applications, offering AI-driven assistance in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. It enhances productivity by streamlining tasks like document generation, data analysis, and email drafting.

Key Features

Microsoft Copilot offers seamless integration with Microsoft 365, working directly within Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. This deep integration allows users to leverage AI-powered enhancements without leaving their workflow.

One of its standout features is advanced automation. Microsoft Copilot can summarize documents, suggest edits, and automate repetitive tasks, significantly reducing the time spent on administrative work.

The AI is also context-aware, meaning it learns from previous interactions to provide personalized recommendations. This adaptability makes it an efficient tool for those who frequently work on similar projects.

Enterprise security is another major advantage. Microsoft Copilot is designed with built-in compliance and data protection, making it a trustworthy solution for businesses handling sensitive information.

Strengths

Microsoft Copilot excels for professionals who already use Microsoft products. Its seamless integration ensures users don’t need to switch between multiple applications, streamlining productivity.

It significantly reduces manual work by automating repetitive tasks, allowing users to focus on higher-value work rather than administrative duties.

Additionally, Microsoft Copilot boasts strong security and compliance features, making it ideal for businesses concerned about data protection and regulatory requirements.

Weaknesses

One of the biggest drawbacks of Microsoft Copilot is that it requires a Microsoft 365 subscription. This dependency may not be ideal for users who rely on other productivity suites.

Another limitation is that Microsoft Copilot’s capabilities are largely confined to the Microsoft ecosystem. Users who work across multiple platforms may find it less useful than more flexible AI solutions.

Ideal Use Cases

Microsoft Copilot is best suited for office professionals looking to streamline workflow and enhance document creation efficiency.

Teams managing large documents or spreadsheets will benefit from its automation features, which can help with organization, formatting, and summarization.

Businesses needing AI-driven efficiency in daily operations will find Microsoft Copilot particularly valuable, as it optimizes processes within the Microsoft suite, reducing inefficiencies.

6. Surfer AI: The SEO-Focused Content Creator

Overview

Surfer AI is an AI-driven content optimization tool designed to help users create high-ranking SEO content. It analyzes top-performing pages and provides recommendations for keyword usage, structure, and readability.

Key Features

Surfer AI specializes in AI-generated SEO content, optimizing articles in real-time based on competitor analysis. It ensures that each piece of content is structured to meet current search engine ranking factors.

The tool also provides content audit capabilities, analyzing existing pages and suggesting improvements to enhance search visibility. By identifying gaps and weak points in content, Surfer AI helps users refine their digital presence.

Keyword integration is another powerful feature. Surfer AI helps structure content around high-ranking keywords, ensuring optimal placement to maximize visibility and engagement.

Readability and natural language processing (NLP) recommendations are built into Surfer AI, ensuring that content is not only SEO-optimized but also engaging and user-friendly.

Strengths

Surfer AI is ideal for marketers and content creators who need to optimize their content for search engines without extensive manual research. Its AI-driven recommendations help streamline the writing process.

By automating SEO research and content structuring, Surfer AI saves users a significant amount of time, allowing them to focus on content creation rather than keyword analysis.

The tool also provides real-time insights, offering data-backed recommendations to improve search rankings. This ensures content remains competitive in fast-moving digital spaces.

Weaknesses

Surfer AI is not particularly useful for general-purpose AI applications beyond SEO. Users looking for AI solutions in customer service, analytics, or automation may not find this tool beneficial.

A subscription is required for full access to its features. While it offers a high ROI for serious content marketers, casual users may find it cost-prohibitive.

Ideal Use Cases

Content marketers optimizing blog posts and web pages will benefit from Surfer AI’s structured approach to keyword placement and ranking improvement.

SEO specialists analyzing competitor content will find the tool invaluable for gaining insights into industry trends and gaps in their own content strategies.

Businesses looking to improve organic search rankings can use Surfer AI to refine their website content, ensuring greater visibility and higher engagement rates.

7. Jasper AI: The Content Marketer’s Ally

Overview

Jasper AI is built specifically for marketers and content teams. It shines in generating high-quality long-form content, crafting social media captions, writing email sequences, and building out product descriptions—all while maintaining a consistent brand voice.

Key Features

Jasper comes equipped with a library of templates for blog posts, emails, and ad copy, and features a “Brand Voice” engine that lets users train the AI on their specific tone and writing style. Integration with tools like Surfer SEO adds a layer of content optimization, while its AI workflows allow for campaign planning, auto-content generation, and scaling content creation across teams.

Strengths

Jasper is fast, intuitive, and deeply aligned with marketing needs. It’s especially useful for those looking to create content at scale without compromising on quality or branding. The user-friendly interface makes collaboration between marketing teams and freelancers seamless. Jasper also offers multi-language support, making it a solid choice for global teams.

Weaknesses

Jasper isn’t built for technical problem-solving or data-heavy applications like code generation or analytics. It also requires a subscription, and some users may find it less flexible than open-ended AI tools when venturing outside marketing.

Ideal Use Cases

Jasper AI is ideal for content marketing agencies, social media managers, solopreneurs, and e-commerce brands needing consistent, high-volume content output. It’s also a strong fit for those building brand voice at scale across various platforms.

8. Grok AI: The Conversational Wildcard

Overview

Developed by xAI (Elon Musk’s AI venture), Grok is integrated into X (formerly Twitter) and trained to reflect a humorous, human-like conversational style.

Key Features

Grok has access to real-time posts from X, giving it a unique edge in cultural relevance. It was built with a focus on sarcasm, humor, and snarky personality, but it still performs well in question answering and summarization.

Strengths

Grok excels at casual, engaging dialogue and can tap into live social media trends. It’s a novelty tool with growing functionality and shines in short-form, witty exchanges.

Weaknesses

It’s not built for professional writing, research, or deep technical tasks. Grok’s informal tone might not suit business environments or formal communication.

Ideal Use Cases

Use Grok AI if you’re experimenting with brand voice on social, need quick takes on trending topics, or want a fun alternative for general conversation. It’s best suited for personal branding and businesses targeting younger, online-native audiences.

9. DeepSeek: The Research Powerhouse

Overview

DeepSeek is a powerful, research-focused AI language model developed in China, gaining global attention for its depth of reasoning, extensive context capabilities, and multilingual functionality. It was built to excel at high-volume, information-dense tasks like document analysis, summarization, and technical evaluations.

Key Features

DeepSeek’s standout feature is its massive 200,000 token context window, which allows users to upload and process extremely long documents—everything from academic papers to technical manuals. The model excels in generating high-accuracy summaries, comparing data points across texts, and evaluating lengthy content using logic-based reasoning.

It supports multilingual output and analysis, making it a practical tool for global teams and users working with international documentation. Its performance in processing PDFs, spreadsheets, and research-heavy materials is considered one of the best in class.

DeepSeek also includes functionality for comparative evaluation. Users can input multiple documents and receive a side-by-side analysis highlighting key differences, thematic similarities, or inconsistencies—a major advantage in legal, academic, and market research settings.

Strengths

DeepSeek is highly effective for professionals working with large volumes of technical or legal content. Its summarization tools are not only fast but highly accurate, offering clean distillations of long texts without losing nuance.

Its multilingual support and ability to handle multilingual documents in a single query make it a standout for global users. Research institutions, data teams, and analysts will appreciate the structured outputs and logic-based analysis that can be difficult for other models to replicate.

Weaknesses

Where DeepSeek struggles is in casual conversation, user interface polish, and tone generation. Its English responses can sometimes feel mechanical or overly formal, and the platform’s UI is less refined than tools like ChatGPT or Gemini.

The system also tends to lag when processing very large files, making it best suited for high-value research tasks rather than real-time queries or creative brainstorming.

Ideal Use Cases

DeepSeek is ideal for academic researchers needing to summarize large studies, legal professionals analyzing case law or contracts, and market analysts reviewing long-form trend reports. It’s also highly effective for enterprise teams managing multilingual data sets or competitive research at scale.

For users who prioritize accuracy, document structure, and reasoning over creative content or user-friendly chat, DeepSeek is one of the most capable tools available today.

AI Model Comparison: Side-by-Side Analysis

To simplify the decision-making process, here’s a quick comparison of the models:

Future Predictions for AI Models

AI is advancing at an unprecedented pace, and each of these models is evolving in its own direction. ChatGPT is expected to become even more powerful as OpenAI continues to enhance its reasoning abilities. With the introduction of the o1 model, OpenAI is shifting toward advanced reasoning capabilities, making ChatGPT not just a content generator but a true problem-solving AI.

Claude is making strides with its hybrid reasoning capabilities. The latest update, Claude 3.7 Sonnet, allows users to adjust reasoning depth based on task complexity. This makes it highly adaptable for both quick answers and deep, analytical responses. However, some users may find it overanalyzing simple queries.

Gemini is pushing forward with its multimodal capabilities, particularly in real-time data retrieval, image understanding, and even audio processing. This positions Gemini as a strong contender for businesses that need AI capable of handling diverse input formats beyond just text. As Google integrates it further into its ecosystem, Gemini could become a dominant force in search-driven AI applications.

Perplexity remains focused on accuracy and sourcing, solidifying its place as the most reliable AI for fact-checking and research. While it doesn’t have the conversational abilities of ChatGPT or Claude, its commitment to verifiable information makes it a go-to tool for professionals and academics needing trustworthy responses.

It is important to note that as the months pass and AI models improve we will be running further testing to ensure that our AI model comparisons in this article are up to date.

Which AI Should You Choose?

The best AI model for you depends on your specific needs based on our AI model comparison research:

• Choose ChatGPT if you need a versatile, multimodal tool with real-time interaction capabilities.
• Choose Claude if ethical considerations and creative, long-form content are your priorities.
• Choose Gemini if you require advanced multimodal features and deep research capabilities.
• Choose Perplexity if you need fast, accurate answers for research or customer support.
• Choose Microsoft Copilot if your workflows live inside Microsoft 365 and you want to boost productivity within Excel, Word, and PowerPoint.
• Choose Surfer AI if your priority is content optimization for SEO and improving blog/article rankings.
• Choose Jasper AI if you’re a marketer or content creator looking for fast, high-quality branded content at scale.
• Choose Grok AI if your focus is conversational engagement, humor, and real-time trend interaction through social platforms.
• Choose DeepSeek if you work with large documents, need advanced summarization, or require research-driven analysis in multiple languages.

Who Shouldn’t Use These Models?

After our AI model comparison research, it’s clear that not every AI model is suitable for every user. Here’s who might not benefit from certain models:

ChatGPT is not ideal for users who require real-time, fact-checked data for critical decision-making. While it is excellent for brainstorming and content generation, it sometimes provides outdated or inaccurate information, making it less reliable for research-heavy tasks.

Claude is best suited for ethical AI considerations and creative projects but may not be the best option for users needing high levels of creativity or real-time search results. While it excels in summarization and structured responses, it may fall short in generating highly innovative or dynamic content.

Gemini is great for data analysis and research but may not be well-suited for in-depth content generation beyond factual data. Those looking for a more conversational AI with storytelling capabilities might find other models more effective.

Perplexity is designed for AI-driven research and search integration but won’t work well for storytelling, conversational AI, or brainstorming sessions. Its focus on providing search-based responses limits its ability to create long-form, creative content.

Microsoft Copilot is an excellent tool for those deeply integrated into the Microsoft ecosystem. However, users who do not rely on Microsoft 365 applications may find its functionality limited. It lacks flexibility for those who prefer cross-platform compatibility.

Surfer AI is a powerful SEO optimization tool but is not suited for general AI applications. If you’re looking for AI that can handle customer support, technical problem-solving, or conversational AI, Surfer AI won’t be the best fit. It is best reserved for content marketers and SEO specialists.

Jasper AI is highly specialized for marketers. If your work involves technical writing, research analysis, or creative storytelling outside a marketing context, Jasper’s templated workflows may feel restrictive or too niche.

Grok AI is not a good fit for users who need professional communication, data-driven decision-making, or business applications. Its informal tone, limited integrations, and narrow functionality make it best for entertainment and casual content.

DeepSeek is not ideal for users seeking creative writing tools, intuitive UI, or casual conversation. It’s built for heavy research and multilingual data parsing, which makes it less appealing to those needing interactive, conversational AI for brainstorming or brand messaging.

Limitations & Challenges of AI Models

While AI models continue to advance, they still face significant limitations and challenges that users should be aware of. One of the most pressing issues is hallucination, where AI generates confident but factually incorrect or misleading information. This is particularly problematic in research and business applications where accuracy is critical. Even models like Perplexity, which prioritize citations, are not immune to misinformation.

Another major challenge is bias in AI outputs. Since these models are trained on vast datasets sourced from the internet, they can unintentionally reinforce stereotypes, political biases, or misleading narratives. Companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google are actively working on improving fairness and reducing bias, but complete neutrality remains an ongoing challenge.

Lastly, over-reliance on AI can be risky, especially in decision-making. While AI models are excellent for automating tasks and enhancing productivity, they should not replace human judgment in areas requiring nuance, creativity, and ethical considerations. Users must remain critical thinkers, verifying AI-generated insights rather than accepting them blindly.

AI Model Comparison Conclusion

The AI landscape is evolving rapidly, and new capabilities are being added every day. While this AI model comparison provides a snapshot of the current state of these tools, the best way to find the right AI for you is to experiment. Try out the free versions of these models, explore their features, and see which one aligns with your workflow and goals.

Remember, the perfect AI doesn’t exist—yet. But by diving in and exploring these tools, you’ll gain a better understanding of how AI can enhance your work and life. So, which AI will you choose?

FAQ: AI Model Comparison

1. What is the key difference between ChatGPT and Claude in this AI model comparison?

ChatGPT excels in multimodal capabilities (text, voice, and video) and real-time interactions, making it ideal for developers and content creators. Claude, on the other hand, focuses on ethical AI and long-form content generation, making it a better choice for sensitive or creative tasks.

2. Which AI model is best for real-time data and research?

In this AI model comparison, Gemini stands out for real-time data and research due to its integration with Google’s ecosystem and ability to pull up-to-date information from the web. Perplexity is also a strong contender for fact-checking and quick, accurate answers.

3. Can Claude generate images or videos like ChatGPT and Gemini?

No, Claude does not support multimodal features like image or video generation. It is primarily focused on text-based tasks, making it less versatile for multimedia projects compared to ChatGPT and Gemini.

4. Is Perplexity suitable for creative tasks like storytelling or brainstorming?

No, Perplexity is optimized for search accuracy and factual information retrieval. For creative tasks like storytelling or brainstorming, ChatGPT or Claude would be better choices in this AI model comparison.

5. Which AI model is the most cost-effective for general use?

In this AI model comparison, Perplexity is the most cost-effective option for users who need fast, accurate answers without advanced features. However, if you require multimodal capabilities, ChatGPT or Gemini may be worth the higher cost.

6. What are the limitations of these AI models?

All models in this AI model comparison have limitations. ChatGPT can be expensive and complex for beginners, Claude lacks real-time data access, Gemini requires technical expertise, and Perplexity is limited in creative tasks. Additionally, all models can occasionally produce inaccurate or biased outputs, so human oversight is essential.

7. How does Microsoft Copilot improve productivity?

Microsoft Copilot enhances productivity by automating repetitive tasks in Microsoft 365 applications like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. It can generate summaries, suggest edits, and streamline workflows, saving users time and effort.

8. Can I use Microsoft Copilot without a Microsoft 365 subscription?

No, Microsoft Copilot is exclusively available to Microsoft 365 users. It integrates deeply with Microsoft apps, so a subscription is required to access its features.

9. Is Surfer AI only for SEO content creation?

Yes, Surfer AI is designed specifically for SEO content optimization. It analyzes competitor content, suggests keyword placement, and provides real-time insights to improve rankings. It’s not suited for general AI tasks like customer support or chat automation.

10. How does Surfer AI help with search rankings?

Surfer AI analyzes top-ranking pages and provides data-driven recommendations on keyword usage, content structure, and readability to improve search engine visibility.

11. Can I use Surfer AI for non-SEO-related writing?

While you can technically use Surfer AI for general content writing, its core strengths lie in SEO optimization. If you’re looking for creative or technical writing support, a general AI model like ChatGPT or Claude might be a better fit.

12.  What is Jasper AI best used for?

Jasper AI is built for marketers and content creators who need to generate brand-consistent copy fast. It’s perfect for writing social media posts, ad copy, email campaigns, and landing page content with speed and scalability.

13. Can Jasper AI be used for technical or academic writing?

While Jasper AI excels at marketing and brand voice content, it’s not ideal for technical documentation or deep academic work. Its strength lies in pre-trained templates for promotional material, not nuanced research-based writing.

14. What makes Grok AI different from other conversational AIs?

Grok AI is designed to be witty, casual, and responsive to trending topics in real time. Its integration with platforms like X (formerly Twitter) gives it a social-savvy edge that other AIs don’t prioritize.

15. Is Grok AI suitable for business or professional use?

Not really. Grok’s tone is intentionally informal and humorous, which may not align with professional or data-sensitive environments. It’s best used for engagement and entertainment rather than productivity or sales.

16. What is DeepSeek used for in a business context?

DeepSeek is excellent for tasks that involve large-scale document summarization, research aggregation, or multilingual analysis. It’s ideal for law firms, researchers, and analysts who deal with technical or academic content.

17. Does DeepSeek support real-time interaction like ChatGPT?

No. DeepSeek is optimized for precision and depth, not conversation. Its focus is on delivering highly accurate data summaries and insights rather than dynamic back-and-forth chat.

AI Isn’t the Future—It’s the Present. Are You Using It to Your Advantage?

Most business owners are either wasting time on tasks AI could handle or missing out on powerful automation because they don’t know where to start. If you want to free up hours in your week, increase revenue, and scale without burnout, AI is the answer –> but only if you use it the right way.

Let’s talk. Book a free strategy call, and we’ll walk through how AI can be integrated into your business to make you more efficient, profitable, and unstoppable.

Schedule Your Free Call Now

The post AI Model Comparison: Which AI Reigns Supreme in 2025? appeared first on Done For You.

AI Art Tools are shaking things up in the creative world—and fast. Whether you’re an artist looking to experiment, a business owner needing quick visuals, or someone who just wants to have fun generating unique images, AI Art Tools make it easier than ever to create stunning visuals in seconds.

But with a flood of AI Art Tools out there, how do you know which one’s actually worth your time? More importantly, how do you get the best results? Let’s break it all down.

What Are AI Art Tools?

AI Art Tools use machine learning models—trained on millions of images—to generate new artwork based on text prompts, sketches, or even existing images. These tools analyze styles, colors, and patterns to create unique pieces of art that range from realistic portraits to abstract compositions.

And the best part? You don’t need to be an artist. AI levels the playing field, letting anyone create professional-looking visuals with just a few clicks.

Some AI Art Tools are designed for professionals who want high-resolution, editable images, while others focus on casual users who want to experiment with AI-generated creativity.

AI Art Tools isn’t random—it’s built on massive datasets that teach the AI how to mimic artistic styles, textures, and compositions. Many tools rely on deep learning algorithms that continuously improve, meaning the more they are used, the better and more refined their outputs become.

Additionally, these tools aren’t just generating something from nothing. They work by interpreting patterns in existing data and blending them in ways that feel unique. This is why the same text prompt can yield different results depending on the AI tool used—each platform has its own dataset and interpretation method.

How to Use AI Art Tools

Getting the most out of AI Art Tools isn’t just about typing a random phrase and hoping for the best. The quality of your results depends on how well you understand the tool’s capabilities and settings. Each AI generator has different features, and knowing how to adjust things like resolution, style, and creative parameters can make a huge difference.

One of the biggest mistakes beginners make is being too vague with their prompts. AI needs clear and descriptive input to generate the best output. If you simply type “a cat,” you might get something generic. But if you type “a highly detailed, photorealistic orange tabby cat sitting on a windowsill, bathed in warm golden sunset light,” you’ll get something far more compelling.

Using AI Art Tools is easier than you think. Here’s how to dive in and start creating like a pro (or at least have some fun experimenting):

1. Choose a Tool – Pick an AI art generator that aligns with your needs (we’ll cover the best options shortly).
2. Enter a Prompt – Type in a description of what you want the AI to generate. The more specific you are, the better.
3. Select a Style – Many AI Art Tools allow you to choose from various artistic styles, like photorealism, oil painting, anime, or cyberpunk.
4. Generate and Refine – Click generate and let the AI do its thing. Some tools let you tweak the results, adjust colors, or upscale the resolution.
5. Download or Edit – Once satisfied, save your artwork or enhance it further using other software like Photoshop.

Pro Tip: The best AI-generated art starts with a great prompt. Instead of “a futuristic city,” try “a neon-lit cyberpunk city at night with flying cars and digital billboards.” The more detail you give, the better the AI delivers.

Example Prompt for Stunning AI Art:

“A majestic white wolf standing on a snowy mountain peak, looking over a vast frozen landscape, illuminated by the Northern Lights in the night sky.”

This level of detail helps the AI understand exactly what you’re looking for, leading to much better results.

What Can AI Art Be Used For?

If you think AI Art Tools are just for messing around, think again. These tools are changing the game for businesses, entrepreneurs, and creatives—helping people produce high-quality visuals faster and cheaper than ever before.

One of the biggest advantages? No more waiting on designers or expensive agencies. Need an ad image for a campaign? A social media post? AI can generate what you need in seconds. And if you’re someone who constantly needs fresh content, AI Art Tools become a productivity powerhouse.

Beyond marketing, AI-generated art is transforming how creators and businesses develop visual assets. Whether it’s brainstorming concept art for a new project, designing t-shirts for an online store, or even crafting personalized illustrations for a book—AI gives you the power to create without traditional barriers.

• Branding & Marketing – Generate high-quality visuals for ads, social media, and product packaging instantly.
• Content Creation – Create unique images for blog posts, email campaigns, and digital content without hiring a designer.
• E-Commerce & Merch – Design AI-powered product images, t-shirts, and promotional materials for online stores.
• Game & Film Concept Art – Quickly bring creative ideas to life with AI-generated visuals for pre-production work.
• Personalized Client Work – Offer custom AI-generated illustrations, album covers, and book covers as part of a creative business.
• Inspiration & Experimentation – Use AI as a brainstorming tool to explore new styles and ideas without committing to expensive production.

Best AI Art Tools for Beginners

If you’re new to AI-generated art, here are some of the best tools to start with:

With so many AI Art Tools out there, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. Some tools focus on photorealism, while others specialize in abstract or stylized art. The key is choosing the right tool for what you need—whether that’s social media content, business branding, or just experimenting for fun.

Beginners should look for AI Art Tools that are easy to use, produce high-quality images, and offer customization options. The tools below strike a balance between accessibility and creative control, making them perfect for anyone looking to dive into AI-generated art.

1. DALL·E 3 (Best for Business & Marketing Graphics)

DALL·E 3, developed by OpenAI, is ideal for entrepreneurs and businesses needing high-quality, professional visuals. It’s great for ad creatives, social media posts, and branding assets.

2. MidJourney (Best for Stylized & Unique Artwork)

MidJourney is the go-to for those who want striking, artistic, and unique imagery. Perfect for personal branding, social media content, and digital products.

3. Stable Diffusion (Best for Customization & Control)

As an open-source AI art tool, Stable Diffusion is great for users who want full control over their art creation, making it an excellent choice for advanced customization and branding projects.

4. Leonardo.Ai (Best for E-Commerce & Product Design)

Leonardo.Ai is designed for businesses that need product mockups, digital assets, and polished e-commerce imagery—without the high production costs.

5. Runway ML (Best for AI Video & Motion Graphics)

If you create video content, Runway ML is a must. It enables AI-driven video editing and animations, perfect for YouTube creators, marketers, and agencies.

Where to Go from Here

AI Art Tools are breaking down barriers, making creativity accessible to everyone, not just designers and digital artists. Whether you’re using them for business, personal projects, or just exploring new artistic possibilities, these tools can help you bring ideas to life in ways that weren’t possible before.

At the end of the day, the real magic happens when you combine human creativity with AI’s limitless potential. So, what are you waiting for? Pick a tool, experiment, and start creating. Who knows? You might just design something insanely cool.

FAQs About AI Art Tools

1. Are AI Art Tools free to use?

Some AI Art Tools offer free versions with limited features, while others require a subscription or pay-per-use model for higher-quality outputs and advanced options.

2. Can AI-generated art be used commercially?

Yes, but it depends on the tool’s terms of service. Some platforms allow full commercial use, while others may have restrictions, so always check the licensing agreement.

3. How can I make my AI-generated art look more professional?

Use detailed and specific prompts, refine images with manual editing tools, and experiment with different styles to achieve high-quality, unique visuals.

4. Will AI replace human artists?

AI is a tool, not a replacement. While it can assist in generating concepts and speeding up workflows, human creativity, storytelling, and artistic intent remain irreplaceable.

5. What’s the best AI art tool for beginners?

DALL·E 3 and MidJourney are great starting points due to their user-friendly interfaces and high-quality outputs. If you want customization, Stable Diffusion is a strong choice.

AI Isn’t the Future—It’s the Present. Are You Using It to Your Advantage?

Most business owners are either wasting time on tasks AI could handle or missing out on powerful automation because they don’t know where to start. If you want to free up hours in your week, increase revenue, and scale without burnout, AI is the answer –> but only if you use it the right way.

Let’s talk. Book a free strategy call, and we’ll walk through how AI can be integrated into your business to make you more efficient, profitable, and unstoppable.

Schedule Your Free Call Now

The post AI Art Tools: How to Use Them & Best Picks for Beginners appeared first on Done For You.

Artificial intelligence is transforming AI book writing, making the process faster and more efficient than ever before. AI book writing tools can help with everything from brainstorming and outlining to drafting and editing, making AI book writing more accessible than ever. Whether you’re an aspiring author or an entrepreneur looking to create lead-generating content, AI can simplify the journey of AI book writing, helping authors bring their ideas to life more efficiently.

However, AI isn’t a magic solution that writes a bestseller for you. Success still requires creativity, strategy, and refinement. The key is knowing how to properly integrate AI into your writing process while keeping your unique voice and storytelling intact. In this guide, we’ll walk through how to write a book with AI step by step.

The Rise of AI Book Writing

The publishing industry is evolving, and AI book writing is leading the charge. Many authors, marketers, and content creators are using AI to accelerate the writing process, improve content quality, and bring their ideas to life more efficiently.

One of the biggest advantages of AI book writing is its ability to streamline the process. AI can help writers generate new ideas, structure their books, and even assist in the actual drafting of content. This means that authors can focus more on refining their message rather than getting stuck in the early stages of writing.

Beyond writing, AI also plays a crucial role in editing and formatting. AI-driven platforms can suggest grammar improvements, enhance readability, and format a manuscript for self-publishing. By leveraging AI book writing tools, authors can create polished, professional books without the need for extensive manual editing.

How to Write a Book with AI

Step 1: Brainstorming and Idea Development

Coming up with a book idea can be one of the most challenging steps. AI can help by generating ideas, expanding on concepts, and identifying market trends.

Before jumping into AI-assisted brainstorming, it’s important to have a general idea of the type of book you want to write. Whether it’s fiction or nonfiction, AI tools work best when given a starting point. If you have a rough theme in mind, AI can help refine it into a compelling concept that resonates with your audience.

AI book writing tools can analyze market trends and competitor books to see what topics are currently in demand. This helps ensure that your book not only aligns with your passion but also has a viable audience ready to engage with it.

• Use AI brainstorming tools like ChatGPT or Perplexity to explore different book ideas.
• Input a general topic into AI and ask for unique angles or subtopics.
• Research trending book topics and market demand using AI-driven analytics.

Step 2: Creating an Outline with AI

Once you have an idea, an outline helps structure the book logically. AI can assist in developing a chapter-by-chapter breakdown.

Creating an outline is crucial because it serves as the roadmap for your book. AI-generated outlines help ensure that your content flows logically and keeps readers engaged from start to finish. With AI, you can quickly organize thoughts into a structured format, making the writing process much smoother.

Furthermore, AI can help identify any gaps in your outline by suggesting subtopics or relevant points that might have been overlooked. This ensures that your book covers all essential aspects of your subject matter while maintaining clarity and coherence.

• Provide AI with your book’s theme, and let it generate an initial outline.
• Refine the structure to ensure coherence and logical flow.
• Expand each chapter with key points and supporting details.

Step 3: Writing the First Draft

AI book writing tools can generate content, but it’s important to maintain a human touch.

While AI can help speed up the writing process, it lacks the emotional depth and storytelling nuance that make a book truly engaging. AI-generated content often needs refinement to ensure it aligns with your voice and delivers a compelling narrative.

Beyond that, readers connect with authenticity. A book that feels robotic or overly generic won’t resonate with an audience. This is why it’s crucial to review, rewrite, and add your own insights, ensuring that the final product feels uniquely yours.

• Start by drafting one chapter at a time, using AI to generate text.
• Review and refine AI-generated content, ensuring originality and clarity.
• Use AI as a supplement, adding your own voice and insights.

Key Benefits of AI Book Writing

AI book writing brings several advantages that make the writing process faster, more efficient, and less overwhelming. Whether you’re writing your first book or looking to optimize your workflow, AI can provide valuable support.

One of the biggest benefits is the speed and efficiency AI offers. Traditional writing can take months, if not years, to complete, but AI can help generate well-structured drafts in a fraction of the time. This allows authors to focus on refining their message rather than struggling to get words on the page.

Another key advantage is enhanced creativity. AI can help break through writer’s block by suggesting ideas, expanding on concepts, and even helping with phrasing. It can offer new perspectives and insights that authors might not have considered otherwise, making the content more engaging and diverse.

AI also plays a crucial role in editing and proofreading. AI-powered tools refine grammar, improve clarity, and help polish a manuscript before publishing. Additionally, AI can assist with formatting and structuring chapters, making the publishing process smoother and ensuring the final book looks professional.

Polishing Your AI-Written Manuscript

Step 4: Editing with AI

Editing is one of the most critical stages of book writing, and AI can be a powerful tool to refine your manuscript. AI editing tools help identify grammatical mistakes, improve sentence flow, and suggest better word choices, making your content more polished and professional.

Beyond grammar and spelling, AI can analyze readability and suggest structural improvements. It can flag overused phrases, recommend variations, and ensure clarity in your writing. By leveraging AI book writing tools at this stage, you can make your book more engaging for readers while maintaining your unique voice.

AI editing tools can enhance readability and correct grammatical errors.

• Use Grammarly or ProWritingAid for grammar and style suggestions.
• Use Hemingway Editor to improve readability.
• Use Sudowrite for refining creative writing.

Step 5: Formatting and Publishing

Formatting is a crucial step in preparing your book for publication. A well-formatted book enhances readability and ensures a professional appearance, whether it’s an eBook or a printed copy. AI-powered formatting tools help streamline this process by structuring chapters, adjusting spacing, and applying consistent fonts and styles.

AI can also assist with the publishing process. From generating book descriptions to selecting the right keywords for better discoverability, AI tools can optimize your book for online marketplaces. This ensures that your book not only looks great but also has a strong presence where readers can find it.

AI book writing tools can simplify book formatting and help with self-publishing.

• Use Atticus or Reedsy for professional book formatting.
• Generate AI-powered book descriptions and marketing content.
• Publish to platforms like Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) with AI-assisted tools.

Maximizing AI Book Writing Success

AI book writing can be a game-changer, but to truly benefit from it, you need to use it strategically. One of the most important things to remember is to maintain your unique voice. AI-generated content can be helpful, but it should never replace your personal style or storytelling abilities. Readers connect with authenticity, so always make sure to infuse your own perspective into the writing process.

Another crucial factor is fact-checking. AI can sometimes generate misleading or incorrect information, especially when pulling from outdated or unreliable sources. To ensure accuracy, always verify facts, statistics, and references before including them in your book. A well-researched and credible book will stand out and build trust with readers.

AI should be seen as a guide, not a crutch. While AI can assist with brainstorming, drafting, and editing, human creativity and critical thinking remain essential. The best results come when AI complements your writing process rather than taking over entirely. By using AI effectively, you can streamline your workflow while still producing high-quality, engaging content.

Is AI Book Writing Right for You?

AI book writing is an excellent option for entrepreneurs, content creators, and aspiring authors who want to produce books efficiently without sacrificing quality. AI tools can assist in drafting, structuring, and editing, making the process smoother and more manageable. However, it’s important to remember that AI should enhance creativity, not replace it.

For those struggling with writer’s block or time constraints, AI can provide a framework to get words on the page quickly. It can generate outlines, expand on ideas, and suggest improvements, allowing authors to focus on refining their message rather than starting from scratch. This makes it a valuable tool for both experienced and first-time authors.

That said, AI-generated content still requires human oversight. While AI can accelerate the writing process, it lacks the emotional depth and unique voice that make books compelling. The best approach is to use AI as a collaborator, combining its efficiency with your creativity to produce a book that truly resonates with readers.

FAQs About AI Book Writing

1. Can AI write a book entirely on its own?

AI can generate text, but human creativity and oversight are needed to ensure originality, coherence, and quality storytelling.

2. What AI tools are best for book writing?

Popular AI book writing tools include ChatGPT, Jasper, Sudowrite, Grammarly, and Atticus.

3. Will AI replace human authors?

No, AI is an assistive tool, not a replacement. The personal touch of human authors is irreplaceable.

4. How can AI help with book marketing?

AI can generate book descriptions, email sequences, and ad copy, making promotion more efficient.

5. Is AI-generated content copyrightable?

Currently, AI-generated content may not be eligible for copyright protection unless significantly edited by a human.

AI book writing can be a rewarding experience. By using AI as a partner in the process, you can unlock new levels of efficiency and creativity in your writing journey.

AI Isn’t the Future—It’s the Present. Are You Using It to Your Advantage?

Most business owners are either wasting time on tasks AI could handle or missing out on powerful automation because they don’t know where to start. If you want to free up hours in your week, increase revenue, and scale without burnout, AI is the answer –> but only if you use it the right way.

Let’s talk. Book a free strategy call, and we’ll walk through how AI can be integrated into your business to make you more efficient, profitable, and unstoppable.

Schedule Your Free Call Now

The post How to Write a Book with AI: A Step-by-Step Guide appeared first on Done For You.

These business growth strategies help you increase profits, expand your customer base, and create sustainable growth. The best part? You don’t need a massive budget or a complete business overhaul—just small, strategic adjustments that create compounding results over time.

Understanding the Revenue Dials Framework for Business Growth

Scaling your business doesn’t always mean chasing new customers. Instead, optimizing what’s already working can lead to exponential growth. The six revenue dials represent adjustments you can make within your current business model to maximize profitability and achieve sustainable business growth.

Think of them like volume knobs on a soundboard—tweaking each one individually allows you to fine-tune your revenue model. Some businesses benefit most from increasing order value, while others see better results by adjusting pricing or targeting more profitable customers. By understanding these six revenue dials, you can scale smarter, not harder.

1. Increase Average Order Value for Faster Business Growth

If you want to grow revenue quickly, increasing how much each customer spends per transaction is one of the most effective ways to do it. Instead of solely relying on acquiring new customers (which can be costly), focusing on maximizing the value of each sale helps boost profits without significantly increasing marketing expenses.

Increasing average order value (AOV) is a simple yet powerful business growth strategy that boosts profitability without requiring additional marketing spend. By strategically adjusting product pricing, offering bundles, and using premium pricing tiers, businesses can significantly enhance their bottom line.

Strategies to Boost Order Value:

Upsells & Cross-Sells

Offer complementary products at checkout to encourage additional purchases. (e.g., “Would you like fries with that?”) This works well in both physical and digital businesses—software companies offer premium features at checkout, while retail stores suggest related items like chargers for electronics.

Bundling Products

Package related items together at a slight discount to incentivize customers to buy more. A great example is McDonald’s value meals, where the bundled price is lower than purchasing each item separately. Ecommerce businesses can bundle skincare products, fitness gear, or home office essentials to increase order value effortlessly.

Premium Pricing Tiers

Introduce a higher-end version of your product or service with added value. This works well in service-based businesses, online courses, and software subscriptions. Offering VIP or exclusive packages with extra perks encourages customers to spend more while feeling like they’re getting a better deal.

Minimum Spend Incentives

Encourage customers to spend more by offering rewards for reaching a certain threshold, such as free shipping on orders over $50 or a discount for spending $100 or more. This tactic encourages buyers to add extra items to their carts to unlock a better deal.

Example: Apple excels at increasing AOV by offering accessories, storage upgrades, and AppleCare+ protection plans during checkout. Customers frequently opt for these add-ons because they enhance the functionality and longevity of their devices.

By implementing these strategies, you can increase revenue without adding extra marketing costs, making each transaction more valuable while improving the overall shopping experience.

2. Boost Purchase Frequency to Drive Business Growth

Rather than constantly acquiring new customers, one of the smartest ways to grow your revenue is by getting existing customers to buy more often. A business that successfully increases customer retention gains a business growth advantage over competitors. Loyal customers are 50% more likely to make another purchase, making retention-driven revenue a key driver of long-term profitability.

The key to increasing purchase frequency is staying top of mind with your audience while providing ongoing value. Whether through personalized marketing, incentives, or convenience-driven models, repeat sales create a more sustainable business model that isn’t entirely dependent on constantly finding new buyers.

How to Increase Repeat Purchases:

Loyalty Programs

Reward customers for continued purchases by offering points, discounts, or exclusive perks. (e.g., Starbucks Rewards gives customers free drinks and bonus points for frequent visits, encouraging them to return regularly.) Loyalty programs create a sense of exclusivity while making customers feel appreciated.

Subscription Models

Offer convenience through recurring purchases, eliminating the need for customers to actively reorder products. (e.g., Dollar Shave Club delivers razors and grooming essentials every month, ensuring customers never run out of supplies.) This model works particularly well for consumable products like skincare, coffee, pet supplies, and household essentials.

Re-engagement Campaigns

Send personalized email or SMS reminders based on past purchase history. These could include reminders to restock a product, recommend upgrades, or provide exclusive returning customer discounts. (e.g., Ecommerce brands often send “It’s time to reorder!” emails for vitamins, supplements, or beauty products.)

Limited-Time Offers for Past Customers

Encourage repeat purchases with exclusive discounts for returning buyers. A “Welcome Back” offer or a VIP-only deal can be a strong incentive for past customers to purchase again.

Membership Perks

Offer benefits like faster shipping, exclusive access, or personalized deals to make returning more appealing. (e.g., Amazon Prime has mastered this by offering fast, free shipping, which not only increases customer satisfaction but also creates a habit of buying through Amazon rather than competitors.)

Example: Amazon Prime is one of the best examples of boosting purchase frequency. By offering perks like free two-day shipping, exclusive deals, and Prime Video access, Amazon ensures that members continue shopping on their platform rather than looking elsewhere. This membership model has driven higher order frequency, increased spending, and stronger brand loyalty.

By focusing on repeat customers, you can drive revenue growth without constantly needing to acquire new buyers—reducing marketing costs and increasing profitability over time.

3. Optimize Your Price Point for Sustainable Business Growth

Pricing is more than just covering costs—it’s a powerful psychological trigger that influences customer perception, sales volume, and overall profitability. Many businesses unknowingly underprice their products, leaving significant revenue on the table. Others price too high without offering enough perceived value, causing potential buyers to hesitate or look elsewhere.

Finding the right price is about balancing profit margins, customer demand, and competitive positioning. A well-optimized pricing strategy can boost conversion rates, increase customer lifetime value (LTV), and maximize revenue without requiring additional sales volume.

Pricing optimization is one of the most effective business growth levers. A well-structured pricing model ensures sustainable profitability while making your products or services more attractive to the right customers.

Ways to Optimize Pricing:

Test Different Price Points

Experiment with pricing models using A/B testing to find the most profitable and customer-friendly price. This could involve slightly increasing or decreasing prices across different customer segments and tracking which version converts best. Online businesses, especially those with digital products, can quickly adjust prices to test customer sensitivity and perceived value.

Introduce Tiered Pricing

Offer basic, premium, and elite versions of your product or service to appeal to different customer needs and budgets. (e.g., Software companies use “freemium” models where a free plan attracts users, and paid tiers unlock advanced features.) By adding higher-priced options, you allow customers to self-select based on their needs and willingness to pay, effectively increasing revenue without extra effort.

Use Psychological Pricing Techniques

Small adjustments in how you present your price can dramatically impact sales.

• Charm Pricing: Ending prices in .99 or .95 (e.g., $9.99 instead of $10) makes a product seem cheaper, even if the difference is minimal.
• Prestige Pricing: Higher-end brands round up prices (e.g., $500 instead of $499) to reinforce a luxury perception.
• Bundle Discounts: Packaging multiple products at a slightly lower combined price increases the perceived deal value while boosting the average order value.

Leverage Value-Based Pricing

Instead of pricing based on costs, determine what your customers are willing to pay based on perceived value. (e.g., A high-end coaching program can charge significantly more than a standard online course if it promises one-on-one guidance and exclusive resources.)

Use Discounts Strategically

While excessive discounts can damage your brand’s perceived value, limited-time offers or seasonal discounts can create urgency and drive more conversions. Consider running promotions only for new customers or as part of a loyalty program to increase customer retention without devaluing your brand.

Example: Apple rarely discounts its products, maintaining a premium brand image. Their pricing strategy is based on value perception, product quality, and brand loyalty, allowing them to keep higher profit margins. On the other hand, McDonald’s and fast-food chains use value-based pricing, offering affordable meal bundles to drive high transaction volume and repeat purchases.

A well-thought-out pricing strategy ensures you’re maximizing revenue without sacrificing customer trust or brand positioning. Whether you’re testing different models, leveraging tiered pricing, or using psychological pricing tactics, small adjustments in pricing can lead to significant revenue growth.

4. Target a More Profitable Customer Segment for Long-Term Business Growth

Not all customers contribute equally to your revenue. Some are price-sensitive, while others are willing to pay a premium for quality, exclusivity, or convenience. If you want to scale your business effectively, you need to focus on attracting and retaining high-value customers—those who spend more, buy more frequently, and require less hand-holding.

Shifting your marketing and sales focus to a high-value audience is a business growth strategy that increases revenue while improving customer lifetime value. Businesses that successfully attract premium buyers often experience higher profit margins, stronger customer loyalty, and a more sustainable long-term growth strategy.

How to Attract Premium Customers:

Reposition Your Brand

Adjust your messaging, website design, and overall customer experience to signal exclusivity and higher quality. Premium brands don’t just sell products—they sell a lifestyle. Think about how Tesla positions itself as an innovative status symbol rather than just another car brand.

Offer Exclusive Products or Services

Introduce VIP memberships, limited-edition releases, or high-end versions of your products to appeal to those willing to pay more for exclusivity. Luxury brands like Gucci and Louis Vuitton thrive on scarcity and premium craftsmanship.

Refine Ad Targeting and Customer Acquisition Strategies

Focus on audiences with higher purchasing power by leveraging data-driven insights. Adjust your ad targeting to reach demographics that historically spend more, and personalize marketing messages to highlight quality and exclusivity rather than price.

Enhance Customer Experience

High-value customers expect premium service. Offering white-glove customer support, personalized recommendations, and fast shipping can justify a higher price point and foster brand loyalty.

Example: Rolex markets exclusively to high-net-worth individuals, reinforcing its luxury appeal. Instead of targeting the mass market, they focus on prestige, craftsmanship, and legacy, making their watches more desirable and justifying premium pricing.

By shifting your focus to the right customer base, you can increase profitability without having to scale operations significantly. Instead of chasing low-margin sales, invest in attracting customers who see the value in your offering and are willing to pay for it.

5. Expand Your Product Line to Unlock New Business Growth Opportunities

Expanding your product line is one of the most effective ways to increase revenue without constantly chasing new customers. By offering complementary products or services, you not only enhance customer lifetime value but also create new opportunities for repeat purchases. A well-thought-out product expansion strategy strengthens brand loyalty and makes it easier for customers to find everything they need within your ecosystem.

Diversifying your offerings ensures consistent business growth by increasing customer lifetime value. Whether through digital add-ons, complementary products, or premium-tiered services, expansion helps maximize every customer interaction.

Ways to Expand Your Product Line:

Offer Digital Products

If you sell physical products, consider digital add-ons like ebooks, templates, or exclusive online content. These products have low production costs and can be delivered instantly, making them an easy upsell. For example, a fitness equipment brand could sell digital workout guides or meal-planning templates.

Create Complementary Products

Adding accessories, bundles, or related items enhances the customer experience and increases average order value. A brand that sells cameras, for instance, could introduce tripods, memory cards, and editing software.

Develop Premium or Subscription-Based Offerings

Introducing a premium version of an existing product or launching a subscription model can create recurring revenue. This approach works well in industries ranging from beauty (subscription boxes) to SaaS (tiered pricing plans).

License or Partner with Other Brands

Instead of developing a new product from scratch, collaborate with other companies to introduce co-branded products. Strategic partnerships allow you to tap into new markets while leveraging existing brand credibility.

Example: Tesla expanded beyond electric cars into solar panels, battery storage, and energy solutions, creating an interconnected ecosystem that keeps customers engaged across multiple product lines.

By strategically expanding your product offerings, you create more opportunities for customers to buy from you, increasing their lifetime value while solidifying your brand’s authority in your industry. The key is to ensure that every new product aligns with your brand identity and genuinely adds value to your audience.

6. Introduce Add-On Services to Strengthen Business Growth

Service-based add-ons are an excellent business growth strategy that not only increases revenue but also strengthens customer relationships and brand loyalty. Customers often seek additional support, customization, or expertise when purchasing a product, and providing these services creates an opportunity for recurring income. Whether through one-time service fees or ongoing subscriptions, add-on services can significantly increase customer lifetime value while setting you apart from competitors.

When introducing add-on services, think about the full customer journey. What challenges or needs arise after they purchase your product? How can you enhance their experience while generating additional revenue? The best add-on services solve a problem, provide convenience, or elevate the perceived value of your product.

Add-On Service Ideas:

Installation & Setup Services

Many customers are willing to pay extra for professional setup, especially with tech products, appliances, or furniture.

Example: Best Buy’s Geek Squad offers installation and tech support for a variety of electronics, making setup hassle-free for customers.

Extended Warranties & Support Plans

Offering protection plans or priority support can provide peace of mind while generating additional revenue. This works well for high-ticket items like electronics, fitness equipment, or even software subscriptions.

Example: AppleCare+ extends coverage and adds premium support for Apple device users.

VIP Access or Consulting Packages

If your business offers specialized products, consider selling premium support, coaching, or exclusive access to expert guidance.

Example: Online course creators can sell one-on-one coaching calls alongside digital courses, giving customers a personalized learning experience.

Subscription-Based Content or Services

If your product aligns with an ongoing need, offering a subscription service can lock in repeat revenue.

Example: Peloton sells premium exercise equipment but drives long-term profitability through its monthly subscription for live and on-demand workout content.

Customization & Personalization

Customers love products tailored to their preferences. If you sell clothing, offer monogramming; if you sell planners, allow users to choose custom covers or layouts.

Example: Nike’s “By You” program lets customers personalize their sneakers, creating a premium experience that adds to the brand’s appeal.

By introducing strategic add-on services, you provide more value to your customers while boosting your bottom line. The key is to ensure these services complement your core offering and enhance the overall experience, making your product indispensable to your audience.

Leveraging Automation for Business Growth

Scaling a business doesn’t have to mean working longer hours or hiring a massive team. Automation allows businesses to streamline operations, enhance customer engagement, and drive business growth without increasing overhead costs. Tools like AI chatbots, CRM automation, and predictive analytics optimize workflow and sales processes.

Automation isn’t just about convenience; it’s a strategic advantage. Businesses that embrace automation can personalize customer interactions at scale, reduce operational costs, and ensure that no opportunity slips through the cracks. The key is identifying repetitive tasks that take up time and replacing them with systems that run on autopilot, allowing you to focus on high-impact growth strategies.

Ways to Use Automation for Growth:

AI Chatbots for 24/7 Customer Support

Instead of requiring human support agents to answer every customer inquiry, AI-powered chatbots can handle common questions, assist with troubleshooting, and even guide users through the purchasing process.

Example: Many ecommerce brands use chatbots like Drift or ManyChat to qualify leads, answer FAQs, and drive sales conversations in real-time.

Automated Email Sequences

Follow-up emails are crucial for nurturing leads, onboarding new customers, and encouraging repeat purchases. Setting up automated sequences ensures that no lead gets ignored and customers receive timely, relevant messages.

Example: SaaS companies use drip campaigns to educate users about product features, leading to higher retention and upsell opportunities.

Personalized Marketing with AI

Customers expect personalized experiences, and AI makes it possible to tailor product recommendations, promotions, and messaging based on browsing behavior, past purchases, or engagement history.

Example: Amazon’s recommendation engine generates 35% of its total revenue by suggesting products based on user activity.

Social Media Scheduling and Engagement

Staying active on social media is essential, but manually posting and responding to messages is time-consuming. Automated scheduling tools like Hootsuite or Buffer allow businesses to plan content in advance, while AI-powered tools can respond to comments and inquiries instantly.

CRM and Sales Funnel Automation

Managing customer relationships and tracking leads can be overwhelming as a business grows. CRM software like HubSpot or Salesforce automates lead tracking, follow-ups, and even deal-closing sequences, making the sales process more efficient.

Order Fulfillment and Inventory Management

For ecommerce businesses, automation can optimize order processing, manage inventory, and send shipping notifications without manual input.

Example: Shopify users integrate with fulfillment centers like ShipBob or Amazon FBA to automate logistics and focus on scaling sales.

Example: Ecommerce brands using AI-powered chatbots see a 30% increase in conversions because customers get instant answers and support, eliminating friction in the buying process. By automating customer interactions, businesses reduce cart abandonment and improve overall user experience.

Making Automation Work for You

The secret to successful automation is knowing what to automate and what still requires a human touch. While AI and technology can handle repetitive tasks, personalized customer interactions and creative strategy should remain hands-on. The goal is to build systems that work in the background, allowing you to focus on innovation and scaling your business.

By integrating automation into your business model, you create a streamlined, efficient operation that drives consistent revenue growth—without burning out yourself or your team.

The Power of Branding in Revenue Growth

A strong brand contributes directly to business growth by increasing perceived value, improving customer retention, and allowing companies to charge premium pricing. Customers don’t just buy products; they buy into brands that align with their values, aspirations, and emotions. A well-defined brand allows you to command higher prices, differentiate yourself in the market, and turn one-time buyers into lifelong customers.

Branding isn’t just about your logo or color scheme—it’s the entire experience customers have with your business. Every interaction, from social media content to customer service, shapes the perception of your brand. If done right, branding makes your business memorable, influences purchasing decisions, and encourages word-of-mouth marketing.

Branding Strategies That Drive Revenue:

Consistent Messaging Across Platforms

Your brand voice should be uniform whether on social media, your website, or in customer emails. A cohesive brand message reinforces trust and reliability, making customers feel secure in their purchasing decisions.

Example: Apple’s minimalist, premium messaging is reflected in everything from its packaging to its website copy, reinforcing its high-end image.

Emotional Storytelling for Deeper Connections

Customers make purchasing decisions based on emotions, not just logic. Brands that connect with their audience on a deeper level foster loyalty and engagement.

Example: TOMS Shoes built a brand around giving back—customers know that every purchase helps provide shoes to someone in need, making them feel good about their purchase.

A Strong Visual Identity That Sticks

The colors, fonts, and design elements you choose create an instant association with your brand. A distinctive visual identity helps your brand stand out in a crowded marketplace.

Example: Coca-Cola’s iconic red and white branding has remained consistent for decades, making it one of the most recognizable brands in the world.

Positioning Your Brand as a Premium Option

If you want to attract high-value customers, your branding should reflect exclusivity and quality. From website design to packaging, every element should signal value.

Example: Luxury brands like Rolex and Louis Vuitton maintain exclusivity through high-end branding, allowing them to charge premium prices.

Leveraging Brand Advocates and Word-of-Mouth Marketing

Your most loyal customers can be your best marketers. Encouraging user-generated content, referrals, and brand ambassadors helps expand your reach organically.

Example: Tesla’s early adopters became vocal advocates, spreading brand awareness through social media and personal recommendations—without Tesla having to spend heavily on advertising.

Turning Branding into a Revenue-Generating Asset

Your brand is one of your most valuable business assets. A strong, well-positioned brand not only attracts new customers but also increases customer lifetime value by encouraging repeat purchases. Investing in branding isn’t just about aesthetics—it’s about creating an experience that resonates with your audience and keeps them coming back.

By refining your brand strategy, you set the foundation for long-term revenue growth, customer loyalty, and market differentiation.

Your Key to Business Growth

Scaling a business isn’t about guessing—it’s about strategically adjusting these six revenue dials to optimize business growth and profitability. By refining your strategies in pricing, retention, branding, and automation, you can build a scalable and sustainable business model.

Start by tweaking just one or two dials—maybe experiment with pricing, optimize your product lineup, or introduce upsells. Small, smart changes lead to exponential growth over time.

Success in business comes from iteration, data-driven decisions, and continuously refining your strategy. Focus on optimizing what’s already working, and you’ll build a business that scales effortlessly.

FAQ: Business Growth and Revenue Optimization

1. Which revenue dial should I focus on first?

• Start with the one that offers the quickest impact—for most businesses, it’s increasing order value or purchase frequency.

2. How do I test price adjustments without losing customers?

• Use A/B testing, introductory offers, and tiered pricing to gradually increase prices and measure customer response.

3. What’s the best way to identify high-value customers?

• Analyze purchase history, engagement levels, and demographics to find those who spend the most and return often.

4. How can I add services if I only sell physical products?

• Consider subscription add-ons, extended warranties, exclusive access, or personalized product recommendations.

5. Do all businesses need to expand their product line?

No—but offering complementary products boosts revenue and retention by giving customers more reasons to stay with your brand.

The post 6 Revenue Dials to Accelerate Business Growth appeared first on Done For You.

Have you ever been just about to leave a website, only to have a popup grab your attention with a killer offer or last-minute reminder? That’s the power of exit pop software in action. These tools don’t just wave goodbye—they make a compelling case for why you should stick around or take that final step.

If you’re not using exit pop software on your website, you’re leaving money on the table. In this article, we’ll break down what exit pops are, why they work, how you can use them effectively, and the best tools to get started today.

What Is Exit Pop Software?

Exit pop software is a tool that displays a popup message when a visitor is about to leave your website. Think of it as your digital Hail Mary—a last-ditch effort to capture attention, generate leads, or recover potential sales. These popups use behavioral triggers, like when a user moves their mouse toward the close button or back button, to display an offer, a discount, or a request to subscribe.

What makes exit pop software so effective is its precise timing. Unlike popups that appear randomly and risk annoying users, exit pops are triggered by specific actions that indicate a visitor is about to leave. This allows you to engage your audience at a critical moment when their attention might otherwise slip away. By offering them something valuable—a discount, free resource, or an exclusive deal—you create a compelling reason for them to stay or complete an action.

Another key benefit of exit pops is their versatility. Whether you’re running an e-commerce store, a blog, or a service-based website, you can tailor exit pops to fit your specific goals. For instance, a retailer might use them to recover abandoned carts, while a content creator could leverage them to grow an email list. This adaptability makes exit pop software an indispensable tool for any business looking to boost conversions and engagement.

Why Exit Pops Work

Here’s the deal: People are naturally distracted online. They visit your site, get intrigued, but before committing, their focus shifts elsewhere. Exit popups are like your website saying, “Hey, wait! Don’t go yet—we’ve got something great for you!”

The psychology behind exit pops is rooted in two key principles:

• FOMO (Fear of Missing Out): Offers like “15% off if you order now” make people second-guess leaving.
• Convenience: Sometimes, people just need a little nudge or clarity on their next step.

When done right, exit pops are non-intrusive, timely, and hyper-relevant. They can rescue abandoned carts, grow your email list, or even drive event sign-ups—all while enhancing the user experience.

Exit pops also work because they tap into a moment of indecision. When a visitor hesitates to take action, an exit pop provides the extra incentive they need to reconsider. Whether it’s a personalized recommendation, an irresistible discount, or even a reminder of what they’re leaving behind, these popups strategically target the pain points that cause users to hesitate.

Beyond this, exit pops create a sense of urgency. By highlighting limited-time offers or exclusive deals, they encourage visitors to act immediately instead of delaying their decision. This combination of timeliness and value makes exit pops one of the most effective tools for converting hesitant browsers into loyal customers.

How to Use Exit Pop Software Effectively

Exit pop software is a powerful tool, but like any marketing tactic, its effectiveness depends on how you use it. The goal isn’t just to grab attention—it’s to provide value and encourage action. A well-crafted exit pop feels like a helpful suggestion rather than a desperate plea, and it starts by understanding your audience’s needs and behavior.

One way to ensure your exit pops resonate is to tailor them based on user intent. For example, if someone is about to leave a product page, offer a discount or free shipping incentive for that item. If they’re leaving your blog, invite them to download a free guide related to the topic they were reading. Relevance is the key to turning an exit pop from an annoyance into a conversion opportunity.

• Keep It Relevant: Match the offer to the page’s content. A discount on a product they’ve been viewing? Perfect. A random newsletter signup? Not so much.
• Make It Simple: Don’t overwhelm visitors with too much text. Stick to a clear headline, a concise offer, and a strong call-to-action (CTA).
• A/B Test Everything: What works for one audience might flop with another. Test different designs, CTAs, and offers to see what gets results.
• Add a Touch of Urgency: Phrases like “Offer expires in 24 hours” or countdown timers can create that extra push to take action.

Once you’ve nailed the basics, don’t be afraid to experiment with advanced features like behavioral triggers or exit-intent overlays. These tools can fine-tune your timing and messaging, ensuring your popups appear when they’re most likely to make an impact. For example, showing a popup only after a user scrolls halfway through the page ensures it targets engaged visitors rather than casual browsers.

Finally, always monitor your results. Exit pop effectiveness isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution—it requires regular analysis and adjustments to optimize performance. Keep an eye on metrics like click-through rates, conversion rates, and bounce rates to determine what’s working and what needs improvement. By continually refining your approach, you’ll turn exit pops into a valuable component of your overall strategy.

Top 5 Exit Pop Software Options

Ready to get started? Here are five top-rated exit pop tools to help you turn those near-misses into big wins:

HelloBar

• What It Does: Creates attention-grabbing bars, modals, and sliders to display offers and messages.
• Why It’s Great: Perfect for creating simple, no-fuss popups that convert.
• Ideal For: Building email lists, driving traffic, or promoting flash sales.

OptinMonster

• What It Does: Provides powerful exit-intent popups with advanced targeting features.
• Why It’s Great: Its drag-and-drop builder makes it easy to design professional popups without coding.
• Ideal For: E-commerce stores looking to recover abandoned carts.

Sumo

• What It Does: Offers a suite of lead-generation tools, including exit popups and email capture forms.
• Why It’s Great: Known for its user-friendly setup and free version.
• Ideal For: Beginners and small businesses.

Poptin

• What It Does: Helps you create popups, forms, and autoresponders with ease.
• Why It’s Great: Affordable and packed with customization options.
• Ideal For: Businesses looking for budget-friendly yet robust features.

WisePops

• What It Does: Delivers highly customizable and visually appealing popups.
• Why It’s Great: Advanced targeting and analytics tools let you fine-tune performance.
• Ideal For: Marketers wanting granular control over campaigns.

Mistakes to Avoid When Using Exit Pops

Exit pops are highly effective when executed thoughtfully, but a poorly implemented strategy can do more harm than good. It’s essential to strike a balance between engaging your audience and respecting their experience. Overly aggressive or irrelevant exit pops can frustrate visitors, leading to higher bounce rates and potentially damaging your brand reputation.

A critical aspect of success is understanding your audience’s intent. If someone is casually browsing, an aggressive sales popup might drive them away. On the other hand, an exit pop that provides a helpful resource or a personalized discount is more likely to resonate. Taking the time to craft intentional, user-focused messages can make the difference between a conversion and a lost opportunity.

• Too Many Popups: Bombarding users with multiple popups can frustrate them and hurt your credibility.
• Generic Messaging: “Sign up for our newsletter” doesn’t cut it anymore. Make your popups specific and valuable.
• No Mobile Optimization: If your popups don’t work seamlessly on mobile devices, you’re missing out on a huge chunk of traffic.

To avoid these pitfalls, focus on quality over quantity. Instead of deploying several popups throughout the user journey, strategically place one well-designed exit intent popup that aligns with the visitor’s behavior. This ensures that the message feels timely and relevant rather than intrusive.

Additionally, always consider the mobile experience. A significant portion of traffic now comes from smartphones, and poorly optimized popups can alienate mobile users. Use responsive designs and test your popups on various devices to guarantee they deliver a seamless experience, regardless of the platform. When done right, a mobile-friendly exit pop can significantly enhance engagement and conversions.

The Takeaway

Exit pop software isn’t just a tool, it’s a game plan for capturing attention when it matters most. By adding this strategy to your website, you can turn fleeting visitors into loyal customers or engaged leads.

Start simple: Choose one of the tools above, test it out, and see how your audience responds. With a little experimentation, exit pops could become one of the most impactful parts of your marketing arsenal.

Remember, the key to success lies in continual refinement. Analyze the performance of your exit pops, tweak the messaging, and optimize the timing to align with user behavior. As you gather insights and improve your strategy, you’ll unlock the full potential of exit pop software to boost engagement and drive meaningful results for your business.

FAQs About Exit Pop Software

1. What is exit pop software?
Exit pop software is a tool designed to display a popup message when a visitor shows intent to leave your website. It leverages behavioral triggers, like mouse movement toward the browser’s close button, to present offers, discounts, or calls-to-action that encourage visitors to stay or take specific actions.

2. How does exit pop software work?
Exit pop software uses exit-intent technology to track user behavior. When the system detects that a visitor is about to leave, it triggers a popup with a tailored message or offer to re-engage the user. This strategy helps capture leads, recover abandoned carts, or drive conversions.

3. What are the main benefits of using exit pops?

• Increase Conversions: Exit pops can turn hesitant visitors into paying customers.
• Reduce Bounce Rates: They provide an opportunity to engage users before they leave.
• Grow Email Lists: Exit pops are a proven method for capturing email subscribers.
• Encourage Action: Offers like discounts or free resources can nudge users toward desired actions.

4. Are exit pops effective on mobile devices?
Yes, but it’s crucial to use mobile-optimized exit pops. Poorly designed mobile popups can frustrate users and lead to higher bounce rates. Always test your popups on multiple devices to ensure a smooth user experience.

5. Can exit pops hurt the user experience?
If misused, exit pops can feel intrusive or annoying. To maintain a positive user experience, use them sparingly, keep the messaging relevant, and ensure the design is non-intrusive. A single, well-timed popup is more effective than overwhelming visitors with multiple popups.

6. What kinds of offers work best with exit pops?

• Discount Codes: For e-commerce, offering a discount on a product the visitor was viewing can be very effective.
• Free Resources: Downloadable guides, eBooks, or checklists work well for blogs and educational websites.
• Exclusive Deals: Highlight limited-time offers to create urgency and drive action.

7. How do I measure the success of my exit pops?
Track metrics like:

• Click-Through Rate (CTR): The percentage of visitors who interact with the popup.
• Conversion Rate: The number of users who complete the desired action (e.g., make a purchase or subscribe).
• Bounce Rate: Monitor if the popup helps reduce the rate of visitors leaving your site.
• What are some common mistakes to avoid when using exit pops?
• Overusing Popups: Too many popups can overwhelm and annoy users.
• Generic Messaging: Tailor the message to the user’s intent and the content they’re viewing.
• Neglecting A/B Testing: Regular testing ensures you’re optimizing performance for the best results.

The post Exit Pop Software To Maximize Conversions with Strategic Popups appeared first on Done For You.

Let’s be honest: in today’s fast-paced digital landscape, capturing attention feels harder than ever. You’ve got just seconds to hook your audience and make them care about what you have to say. So how do you do it? By making your content not just informative but also memorable. And one of the most powerful ways to do that? Integrating movie clips into your video marketing strategy.

Movie clips tap into shared cultural memories, evoke strong emotions, and make your brand instantly relatable. Whether it’s a single iconic line or a moment that perfectly encapsulates your message, the right clip can turn a good campaign into an unforgettable one. But it’s not as simple as just plucking your favorite scene off YouTube. To do this right, and legally, you need a solid game plan.

Here’s how to level up your video marketing strategy with movie clips while staying focused on your goals and maintaining professionalism.

Why Movie Clips Can Transform Your Video Marketing Strategy

They Boost Engagement by Tapping Into Shared Experiences

Think about this: when someone hears, “I’ll be back” from The Terminator, they immediately connect it with resilience and determination. Using culturally resonant moments like this instantly grabs attention and keeps your audience hooked. Familiarity creates connection, and connection drives engagement.

They Simplify Complex Ideas

Sometimes you need to explain a tricky concept, but words alone won’t cut it. A quick scene from a film can act as a metaphor, making your message crystal clear. For instance, a clip from The Pursuit of Happyness showing the protagonist’s relentless drive can help you illustrate perseverance in a way words simply can’t.

They Entertain While Informing

Let’s face it… we’re all competing for attention. Adding an entertaining element, like a well-placed movie scene, makes your audience more likely to watch your content all the way through.

Where to Find the Right Clips for Your Video Marketing Strategy

1. YouTube: The Giant Toolbox
   
   YouTube’s massive library makes it a treasure trove for finding movie clips. You can search by movie, scene, or even specific quotes. But remember, legality varies—you’ll need to cross-reference with copyright rules. 
2. Archive.org: For Nostalgic, Public Domain Gold
   
   If your brand thrives on vintage vibes, Archive.org is the perfect place to find public domain footage. From classic films to old-school news reels, there’s plenty to work with. Just know the library leans heavily toward older content. 
3. Clip.cafe: The Marketer’s Secret Weapon
   
   This platform is a dream for marketers. With advanced search filters, you can find clips by dialogue, actor, or even theme. Everything is categorized, high-quality, and optimized for professional use, making Clip.cafe ideal for a polished campaign.

How to Use Movie Clips Strategically in Your Video Marketing Strategy

1. Align Clips With Your Brand Message
   
   Every clip you use should reinforce your message. If you’re launching a campaign about overcoming challenges, a scene from Rocky training for his fight could amplify your story. 
2. Create Emotional Peaks
   
   Movie clips work best when they amplify the emotional highs and lows of your message. Think of them as the punchline or exclamation point that leaves a lasting impression. 
3. Stay Legal
   
   This one’s non-negotiable. Platforms like Clip.cafe prioritize copyright-safe clips, so you don’t have to worry about compliance. Always double-check licensing agreements to avoid legal headaches.

Beyond Movie Clips: Building a Holistic Video Marketing Strategy

While movie clips can be a powerful tool in your video marketing arsenal, they are most effective when integrated into a broader, well-rounded strategy. Here’s what you need to think about:

1. Storytelling That Resonates
   
   A great video marketing strategy begins with storytelling. Audiences connect with stories that evoke emotion—whether it’s hope, excitement, or inspiration. Movie clips can amplify these emotions, but the core narrative needs to resonate with your audience. Start with a story that aligns with your brand’s mission and values, and weave the clips into the larger arc to amplify the message. 
2. Consistent Branding
   
   Every video should reflect your brand’s identity. From color palettes to tone of voice, consistency is key to building trust and recognition. Choose clips that fit naturally within your brand’s vibe. For instance, a playful brand might lean toward lighthearted, humorous clips, while a luxury brand might use elegant, cinematic moments. 
3. Clear Objectives and Calls to Action
   
   Your videos need a purpose. Are you driving traffic to your website? Encouraging sign-ups? Building brand awareness? Make sure every clip, transition, and narrative supports that goal. And don’t forget the call to action: whether it’s a clickable link or a verbal prompt, guide your audience toward the next step.

The Tools That Make It Easier

Creating a successful video marketing strategy doesn’t have to feel overwhelming. The right tools can simplify the process and improve the quality of your content. Here’s how:

1. Clip.cafe: The Go-To Platform for Marketers
   
   Clip.cafe’s advanced search capabilities make finding the perfect scene incredibly efficient. Whether you need a specific quote or a theme-based clip, this platform helps you locate high-quality, copyright-safe content quickly. It’s a game-changer for marketers who value both quality and legality. 
2. Project Management Tools
   
   Managing multiple video projects can be chaotic without the right organizational system. Platforms like Trello or Asana allow you to track your progress, collaborate with your team, and ensure deadlines are met—keeping your marketing efforts streamlined and efficient. 
3. Video Editing Software
   
   A great marketing video is only as good as its editing. Software like Adobe Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, or even Canva’s video editor allows you to seamlessly integrate movie clips with your own footage, ensuring a polished final product. Many tools also offer templates and effects that align with your brand’s aesthetic. 
4. Analytics Platforms
   
   Understanding how your audience engages with your videos is critical for fine-tuning your strategy. Use tools like Google Analytics, YouTube Insights, or third-party platforms to measure view times, click-through rates, and overall performance.

By incorporating these tools into your process, you’ll not only save time but also ensure your videos are both impactful and efficient.

Incorporating Copyright Compliance into Your Video Marketing Strategy

When incorporating movie clips into your video marketing strategy, ensuring compliance with copyright laws is a critical step. Using copyrighted material without proper permissions can lead to legal complications, fines, and even damage to your brand’s reputation. Here’s what you need to know to stay on the right side of the law while creating impactful content.

Understanding Copyright Basics

Copyright protects the intellectual property of creators, including filmmakers. This means that using clips from movies or other media without authorization is generally prohibited. Even if the content is readily available online, like on YouTube, it doesn’t mean it’s free to use.

Leveraging Platforms for Fair Use Clips

Platforms like Clip.cafe offer a curated library of clips designed with creators in mind. These clips often fall under fair use guidelines, which allow limited use of copyrighted material for purposes such as commentary, criticism, or parody. However, fair use is a legal gray area and varies depending on jurisdiction and the specifics of the use case.

Tips for Staying Legal

1. Use Public Domain Footage: Some older films and clips have entered the public domain and can be used freely without legal repercussions. Platforms like Archive.org specialize in public domain content. 
2. Seek Licensing Agreements: If you want to use a specific clip, consider obtaining a license. Many studios and distributors offer licensing options for marketing purposes. 
3. Transformative Use: Ensure your use of the clip adds new value or meaning, such as commentary or educational purposes. This can help strengthen a fair use claim. 
4. Consult Legal Experts: When in doubt, consult a legal professional who specializes in intellectual property to ensure your marketing materials comply with copyright laws.
   

Benefits of Copyright Compliance

• Peace of Mind: Knowing your content is legally compliant allows you to focus on creativity and strategy without fear of repercussions.
• Professional Credibility: Operating ethically reflects positively on your brand and builds trust with your audience.
• Long-Term Strategy: Staying compliant ensures your campaigns are sustainable and can scale without legal interruptions.

Incorporating copyright compliance into your video marketing strategy doesn’t have to be a hurdle. By leveraging resources like Clip.cafe, seeking proper permissions, and focusing on fair use, you can confidently use movie clips to enhance your campaigns while maintaining your brand’s integrity.

Final Thoughts

Integrating movie clips into your video marketing strategy isn’t just a creative choice, it’s a strategic one. By tapping into the emotional power of film, you can captivate your audience, simplify your message, and leave a lasting impression. But remember, it’s not just about the clips. Your success lies in how you integrate them into a broader strategy that includes storytelling, branding, and actionable goals.

With platforms like Clip.cafe making it easier than ever to find high-quality, legally usable clips, there’s never been a better time to elevate your content. So go ahead… turn those unforgettable movie moments into unforgettable marketing. Your audience will thank you for it.

FAQs About Video Marketing Strategy

1. Can I use any movie clip in my marketing videos?
   
   Not all movie clips are free to use. Platforms like Clip.cafe provide fair-use content specifically for creators, ensuring compliance with copyright laws. 
2. How do movie clips enhance engagement?
   
   Familiar scenes evoke nostalgia and emotion, helping viewers connect with your message on a deeper level. 
3. What’s the best way to ensure quality?
   
   Use platforms that prioritize professional-grade clips, such as Clip.cafe, to maintain high production standards. 
4. How do I know if a clip is copyright-safe?
   
   Always verify licensing details or choose services that focus on legally compliant content. 
5. Are movie clips effective for all industries?
   
   While universally engaging, movie clips work best when aligned with your brand voice and campaign objectives. Adapt their use to fit your audience and industry.

The post Maximizing Your Video Marketing Strategy with Movie Clips appeared first on Done For You.

Mastering Video Marketing Tactics: 10 Strategies to Boost Engagement and Sales

You ever feel like you’re putting your heart and soul into your brand, but it’s just not getting the traction it deserves? Trust me, I’ve been there. That’s why I’m a huge fan of video marketing tactics. Video content is hands down one of the most powerful tools you can use to connect with your audience, build trust, and drive serious results.

The best part? You don’t need a Hollywood budget to make it work. It’s all about being strategic, consistent, and, most importantly, authentic. So, let’s break down 10 must-try video marketing tactics that will not only boost engagement but also help you turn those views into actual sales.

1. Define Your Audience

Look, you can’t create content for everyone and you shouldn’t. The first step to nailing your video marketing tactics is knowing exactly who you’re talking to. Who are they? What do they care about? What’s keeping them up at night? These are the questions that guide everything else.

When you get crystal clear on your audience, your content naturally resonates more. It’s not about guessing—it’s about listening, learning, and meeting people where they are.

• Create audience personas to define your ideal viewers.
• Use tools like Google Analytics to dig into your audience demographics.
• Survey your existing audience to understand their needs.

2. Choose the Right Platform

Here’s the deal: not every platform is the right fit for your audience or content. One of the smartest video marketing tactics is knowing where your people hang out and focusing your efforts there. YouTube is amazing for tutorials, TikTok is great for quick tips, and Instagram Stories are perfect for behind-the-scenes peeks.

By playing to the strengths of each platform, you’ll maximize your reach without spreading yourself too thin. Work smarter, not harder, right?

• Research platform demographics to align with your target audience.
• Experiment with short-form (TikTok, Reels) and long-form (YouTube) content.
• Repurpose your videos to fit multiple platforms efficiently.

3. Create Compelling Content

Nobody has time for boring content. If you want your videos to work, they’ve got to be engaging, valuable, and entertaining. Think about what your audience needs and deliver it in a way that’s impossible to ignore. This is the heart of effective video marketing tactics.

I’ve found that storytelling is the ultimate game-changer. People don’t just want information; they want to feel something. Use your videos to connect on an emotional level, and you’ll keep them coming back for more.

• Hook your audience in the first 5 seconds—attention spans are short.
• Use visuals, animations, and storytelling to keep them engaged.
• Always leave viewers with a clear takeaway or action step.

4. Optimize for Search Engines

Creating a killer video is great, but it won’t do much if no one sees it. That’s where optimization comes in. Using video marketing tactics like SEO ensures your content gets in front of the right people. Think titles, descriptions, tags, and even closed captions.

Here’s a quick win: include your focus keywords in your video script, then add transcripts to make your content more accessible (and search-friendly).

• Use keyword research tools like TubeBuddy or VidIQ for inspiration.
• Add timestamps to help viewers and improve your SEO ranking.
• Optimize thumbnails to increase click-through rates.

5. Use Calls to Action (CTAs)

If you’re not telling people what to do next, you’re leaving money on the table. Every video you create should include a clear and compelling CTA. Whether it’s subscribing, visiting your website, or signing up for a freebie, CTAs guide your audience to the next step.

Don’t overcomplicate it—just be direct and make it easy for them to act. When you include CTAs, you turn passive viewers into active participants in your brand’s journey.

• Add CTAs at the beginning, middle, and end of your videos.
• Use clickable buttons or on-screen prompts for extra clarity.
• Test different CTAs to see which drives the best results.

6. Leverage Influencers

Let’s face it: people trust people more than they trust brands. Partnering with influencers is one of the most effective video marketing tactics out there. These collaborations let you tap into an engaged audience that already trusts the creator.

But here’s the key: choose influencers whose values and style align with your brand. Authenticity always wins.

• Research influencers in your niche and evaluate their audience engagement.
• Co-create content that feels genuine and not overly promotional.
• Track campaign performance to ensure it’s worth the investment.

7. Experiment with Live Video

There’s something raw and real about live video that pre-recorded content just can’t replicate. Whether you’re hosting a Q&A, announcing a launch, or giving a behind-the-scenes tour, live video lets you connect in real-time.

The beauty of live video is that it doesn’t have to be perfect. In fact, the unscripted moments are often the most memorable.

• Schedule live sessions in advance and promote them to your audience.
• Engage with viewers by responding to comments and questions.
• Save and repurpose your live streams for future use.

8. Repurpose Your Content

You worked hard on that video—don’t let it sit idle. Repurposing is one of the best video marketing tactics to get more mileage from your content. Think of it like this: one video can become a dozen pieces of content across various platforms.

Not only does this save you time, but it also helps you reach different audience segments.

• Turn long-form videos into short clips for social media.
• Extract key insights to create blog posts or email content.
• Use video stills to design graphics or quote cards.

9. Analyze Your Results

Here’s the thing: if you’re not tracking your results, you’re guessing. Use analytics to measure how your video marketing tactics are performing. Look at metrics like watch time, click-through rates, and conversions to understand what’s working.

Once you have the data, use it to refine your strategy. It’s all about continuous improvement.

• Monitor metrics on platforms like YouTube Studio or Facebook Insights.
• Set clear goals for each video and measure against them.
• Use feedback to improve future content.

10. Keep Learning and Evolving

The world of video marketing doesn’t stand still—and neither should you. Staying ahead means constantly experimenting with new video marketing tactics, tools, and trends. Every piece of content you create is a chance to learn and grow.

The key is to stay curious. The more you adapt, the more your brand will thrive.

• Follow industry blogs and experts to stay informed.
• Test new formats like interactive videos or AR content.
• Invest in your skills with courses or workshops.

Final Thoughts

Video marketing is about more than just creating content it’s about building connections and driving results. These video marketing tactics are your roadmap to more engagement, better brand visibility, and stronger sales. Ready to take your video strategy to the next level? Let’s make it happen.

The post 10 Must-Try Video Marketing Tactics for Explosive Growth: Boost Your Engagement and Sales with These Proven Strategies! appeared first on Done For You.

Discover the Best Sources for Products with Dropshipping: Your Guide to Finding Profitable Items

Are you planning to start a dropshipping business but struggling to find profitable products to sell? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. Many entrepreneurs face this challenge when starting a dropshipping business. In this guide, we’ll show you the best sources to find products with dropshipping so you can create your business on the right foot.

What is Dropshipping?

Dropshipping is a business model where you sell products online without keeping inventory. Instead, you partner with a supplier who fulfills the orders on your behalf. When a customer orders on your website, the supplier ships the product directly to the customer.

Dropshipping has become popular because it allows entrepreneurs to start a business with minimal investment. You don’t need to invest in inventory or a warehouse, which reduces your startup costs.

Why Finding Profitable Products is Crucial

Finding profitable products is crucial for the success of your dropshipping business. You need to sell products with high demand or low profit margins to make enough profit to sustain your business.

Therefore, finding products with high demand and a high-profit margin is essential. But how do you find these products? Here are the best sources to find profitable products with dropshipping:

1. AliExpress

AliExpress is a popular marketplace for drop shippers. It has a wide range of products at low prices, making it an attractive source for drop shippers. You can find almost any product on AliExpress, from electronics to home decor to fashion.

To find profitable products on AliExpress, you can use tools like AliExpress Dropshipping Center and AliExpress Product Analysis. These tools allow you to analyze each product’s demand, competition, and profitability.

2. SaleHoo

SaleHoo is a directory of wholesale suppliers and drop shippers. It has over 8,000 suppliers and 2.5 million products, making it a valuable source for drop shippers.

SaleHoo’s suppliers are verified and trustworthy, which reduces the risk of getting scammed or receiving low-quality products. You can also use SaleHoo’s market research lab to find profitable products based on demand, competition, and profitability.

3. Oberlo

Oberlo is a dropshipping app that allows you to import products from AliExpress to your Shopify store. It has a wide range of products at low prices, making it a popular source for drop shippers.

Oberlo’s product statistics allow you to analyze each product’s demand, competition, and profitability. You can also use Oberlo’s trending products feature to find currently popular products.

4. Google Trends

Google Trends is a free tool that allows you to analyze the popularity of search terms over time. You can use it to find products that have a high demand and are trending.

To use Google Trends, enter a keyword related to your niche and analyze the search volume over time. If the search volume increases, it’s a good sign that the product has a high demand.

5. Amazon Best Sellers

Amazon Best Sellers is a list of the top-selling products on Amazon. You can use it to find products with high demand and a high profit margin.

To use Amazon Best Sellers, go to the Amazon website and click on the Best Sellers tab. You can filter the products by category, which allows you to find products related to your niche.

Conclusion

Finding profitable products is crucial for the success of your dropshipping business. You can find products with high demand and a high-profit margin using the sources mentioned in this guide. Remember to analyze each product’s market, competition, and profitability before adding it to your store.

Good luck with your dropshipping business – let us know if you need help getting started!

The post Unlocking Hidden Treasures: 10 Unconventional Sources for Your Dropshipping Products appeared first on Done For You.

Maximizing Profits with Shopify Dropshipping: A Beginner’s Guide to Success

Are you interested in starting a dropshipping business with Shopify? If so, you’ve come to the right place! This guide will cover everything you need to know about dropshipping with Shopify and how to maximize your profits.

What is Dropshipping with Shopify?

Dropshipping is a retail fulfillment method where a store doesn’t keep the products it sells in stock. Instead, when a store sells a product, it purchases the item from a third party and has it shipped directly to the customer. This means the store never sees or handles the product.

Shopify is a popular e-commerce platform that allows you to create an online store with ease. You can easily set up a dropshipping store with Shopify and start selling products immediately.

How to Get Started with Shopify Dropshipping

1. Choose a Niche: The first step in starting a successful Shopify dropshipping business is to choose a niche. You will focus on This area or industry, such as fashion, beauty, or home decor.
2. Find a Supplier: Once you have chosen a niche, the next step is to find a supplier. You can find suppliers on platforms like AliExpress, Oberlo, or SaleHoo. These platforms allow you to find products to sell in your store easily.
3. Set Up Your Store: After you have found a supplier, it’s time to set up your store. Shopify makes creating a professional-looking store easy without coding or design skills. Choose a theme, customize it to fit your brand, and add your products.
4. Optimize Your Store: To maximize your profits, you need to optimize your store for conversions. This means ensuring your store is easy to navigate, your products are well-presented, and your checkout process is smooth.
5. Market Your Store: Finally, you must market your store to drive traffic and sales. This can include social media marketing, email marketing, influencer marketing, and more.

Tips for Maximizing Your Profits

1. Offer Free Shipping: Customers love free shipping, which can increase your sales and profits.
2. Upsell and Cross-Sell: Upselling and cross-selling can increase your average order value and boost your profits.
3. Offer Discounts and Promotions: Discounts and promotions are a great way to attract new customers and increase sales.
4. Focus on Customer Service: Providing excellent customer service can lead to repeat business and positive reviews, increasing sales and profits.
5. Analyze Your Data: Use analytics tools to track your sales, traffic, and customer behavior. This can help you identify areas for improvement and optimize your store for maximum profits.

Conclusion

Dropshipping with Shopify can be lucrative, but it requires careful planning, execution, and optimization. 

By following the steps and tips outlined in this guide, you can start a successful Shopify dropshipping business and maximize your profits. Happy selling! Let us know if we can help you with getting started. 

The post Shopify Mastery: A Blueprint for Success with 10 Proven Dropshipping Strategies appeared first on Done For You.

Will Dropshipping Make You Rich? Uncovering the Truth Behind the Hype!

You might have heard about dropshipping if you have searched for ways to make money online. Dropshipping is a business model where you sell products without holding inventory. The supplier ships the product directly to the customer, and you profit from the difference between your selling price and the supplier’s price. Dropshipping has been touted as a way to get rich quickly, but is it really true? In this post, we will uncover the truth behind the hype and answer the question: will drop shipping make you rich?

What is Dropshipping?

Before diving into the question, let’s define what dropshipping is. As mentioned earlier, dropshipping is a business model where you act as a middleman between the supplier and the customer. You set up an online store and list products from the supplier on your website. When a customer makes a purchase, you place an order with the supplier, who then ships the product directly to the customer. You profit from the difference between your selling and supplier prices.

The Pros and Cons of Dropshipping

Like any other business model, dropshipping has its pros and cons. Let’s take a look at them.

Pros

• Low startup costs: Unlike traditional retail businesses, dropshipping has low startup costs. You don’t need to hold any inventory, so you don’t need to invest in a warehouse or a physical store. All you need is a website and a supplier.
• Location independence: You can run a dropshipping business anywhere in the world if you have an internet connection. This makes it an excellent option for people who want to work remotely.
• Wide product selection: Since you don’t hold any inventory, you can list as many products on your website. This gives you a wide product selection to choose from.

Cons

• Low-profit margins: Since you are acting as a middleman, your profit margins will be lower than if you were selling your products. You will need to sell many products to make a decent income.
• Customer service: Since you are responsible for the customer experience, you must handle customer service issues such as returns and refunds. This can be time-consuming and stressful.
• Reliance on the supplier: Your success in dropshipping depends on the reliability of your supplier. If the supplier is out of stock or delivers a faulty product, it reflects poorly on your business.

Will Dropshipping Make You Rich?

Now that we have looked at the pros and cons of dropshipping let’s answer the question: will dropshipping make you rich?

The answer is it depends. Dropshipping can be a profitable business model if you do it right. However, it is not a get-rich-quick scheme. You will need to put in a lot of time and effort to make it work.

To be successful in dropshipping, you will need to:

• Choose the right niche: You will need to choose a profitable niche with low competition. This will require some research and analysis.
• Find reliable suppliers: You must find reliable suppliers with good quality products and competitive prices.
• Optimize your website: You must optimize your website for conversions using persuasive copy, high-quality images, and a user-friendly design.
• Drive traffic to your website: You must drive targeted traffic through various marketing channels like SEO, social media, and paid advertising.
• Provide excellent customer service: You must provide excellent customer service to ensure customer satisfaction and repeat business.

Dropshipping can be a profitable business model if you are willing to put in the time and effort. However, it is not a guaranteed path to riches. It requires hard work, dedication, and a willingness to learn and adapt.

Conclusion

Dropshipping is a business model that has gained a lot of popularity in recent years. While it can be profitable, it is not a get-rich-quick scheme. To be successful in dropshipping, you will need to put in a lot of time and effort. You must choose the right niche, find reliable suppliers, optimize your website, drive traffic, and provide excellent customer service. 

Dropshipping can be a rewarding business venture if you are willing to do all these things and we can help you get started.

The post From Rags to Riches? Navigating the Reality of Wealth with Dropshipping Business appeared first on Done For You.

Introduction

Choosing the right ecommerce platform is crucial for small businesses. Each platform has its strengths and weaknesses, and the best choice depends on your business needs. In this comprehensive guide, we'll explore the top ecommerce platforms and help you make an informed decision.

Top Ecommerce Platforms Compared

1. Shopify: Best for Physical Products

Shopify is an excellent choice for businesses selling physical products, whether you're dropshipping or managing your inventory.

Key Features:

• Easy setup process
• Wide range of customizable themes
• Seamless integration with shipping and tax services
• Multiple fulfillment location options
• Supports digital downloads

Best For:

• Dropshipping businesses
• Retailers with physical inventory
• Businesses selling digital downloads

2. WooCommerce: Cost-Effective WordPress Solution

WooCommerce is a free plugin that adds ecommerce functionality to WordPress websites.

Pros:

• No monthly fees
• Highly customizable
• Integrates seamlessly with WordPress

Cons:

• Requires additional plugins for advanced features
• May need developer assistance for complex setups

Best For:

• WordPress users
• Budget-conscious entrepreneurs
• Businesses requiring high customization

3. Kajabi: Ultimate Platform for Digital Products

Kajabi excels in selling digital products, courses, and memberships.

Key Strengths:

• Robust course architecture
• Built-in funnel capabilities
• Excellent knowledge management system

Ideal For:

• Online course creators
• Coaches and mentors
• Podcast hosts
• Community-based businesses

4. SamCart: Simplifying Online Sales

SamCart focuses on streamlining the checkout process and order management.

Features:

• User-friendly order forms
• Easy integration with major platforms (Kajabi, Teachable, Zapier)
• Simplified payment collection

Perfect For:

• Digital download sellers
• Businesses prioritizing easy checkout processes

5. ClickFunnels: The Standard Funnel Builder

ClickFunnels is popular among info marketers for its funnel-building capabilities.

Advantages:

• Quick funnel setup
• Variety of pre-built templates

Disadvantages:

• Potential slow load times
• Sometimes tricky integrations

Suitable For:

• Info-marketers
• Businesses focused on sales funnels

Choosing the Right Platform: Factors to Consider

When selecting an ecommerce platform, keep these factors in mind:

1. Your business model (physical products, digital goods, services)
2. Budget constraints
3. Technical expertise
4. Scalability requirements
5. Integration needs with other tools and systems
6. Customer support and community

The Impact of Your Platform Choice

Selecting the right ecommerce platform can significantly influence your business success:

• Streamlined operations
• Enhanced customer experience
• Maximized sales potential
• Improved scalability

Future Outlook and Emerging Trends

As technology evolves, keep an eye on these emerging trends in ecommerce:

1. AI-powered personalization
2. Augmented reality shopping experiences
3. Voice commerce integration
4. Improved mobile shopping experiences
5. Sustainable and ethical ecommerce solutions

Conclusion

Choosing the best ecommerce platform for your small business is a crucial decision. By understanding the strengths and weaknesses of each platform, you can make an informed choice that aligns with your business goals.

Remember, ecommerce success isn't just about the platform – it's also about:

• Effective marketing strategies
• High-quality products or services
• Exceptional customer service
• Continuous adaptation to market trends

For personalized guidance on setting up your ecommerce business or implementing inbound marketing funnels, visit Doneforyou.com to book a consultation.

Have you found this guide helpful? Don't forget to like and share it with fellow entrepreneurs. Stay tuned for more valuable insights on growing your small business through ecommerce!

The post 5 Ecommerce Platforms That Will Help You Skyrocket Your Sales appeared first on Done For You.

Customer service

Customers need to feel supported and appreciated, from discovering your brand to any post-purchase care. That way, they’ll spread good word and organically drive your business.

You want to build a trustworthy brand that people feel comfortable with. You can achieve this via:

• employee training
• timely support
• boosted responsiveness

Implement employee education and training programs that will equip them to handle all customer concerns. They must be knowledgeable about your products and services, up-to-date with upgrades and deals, and capable of quick research if a customer asks a tricky question.

Likewise, ensure your employees are patient, tolerant, friendly, and good at conflict management. Successfully de-escalating an upset customer can convert them into an organic brand ambassador.

Always have call operators or email monitors available to handle customer communications. This includes complaint tickets, online reviews, and generic question forms. Provide answers in a timely and professional manner.

Make sure everyone knows how to handle negative feedback tactfully. Conversely, make a point of appreciating positive comments and acknowledging constructive criticism. Make your customers feel like their opinions carry some weight.

You might also automate part of your customer care process to make it more efficient. Consider investing in a chatbot for your website to streamline the most common questions. The bot could direct customers to your help center and forward the query to a human agent if none of the prepared material answers their concern.

Marketing strategies

Invest time and resources into digital marketing. To begin with, you need a professional website. Your blog is an enormous plus. If a blog is not viable right away, compensate with social media content.

Establish professional company pages on several platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, etc. Choose the ones that are the most relevant to your target audience.

Create a content calendar to maintain a consistent level of posting. Share valuable and visually appealing content. Photos and videos always grab attention and are multipurpose. They can be promotional, entertaining, or sharing stories.

Optimize your pages for easy navigation on your website and social media, implement a robust search function, and adapt your digital presence for mobile.

Workplace condition

Your place of business reflects your values, company culture, and overall attitude, so invest in it. Make it look, feel, and function at the highest possible level. This includes design, organization, equipment, decor, and maintenance.

Consider relying on Strata maintenance professionals for the day-to-day tasks of this aspect of your business. They can take over landscaping, interior painting, waste management, communal space management, periodic repairs, and other specifics of keeping your premises in optimal order.

This leaves you free to tailor the finer points of your business location, such as the visual themes, equipment installation, management, and overall feel of the space. Office atmosphere plays a significant part in employee motivation and productivity. It also indirectly affects interpersonal relationships in the office.

For example, your choice of wall paint can have a soothing or dynamic effect. Plants offer a breath of life and relaxation to stuffy offices, and quality lighting arrangements boost employee alertness and focus.

By contrast, dull, gray surroundings with poor lighting and no hint of the outdoors adversely affect your employees’ mood and concentration levels. They become less productive, grumpy, and prone to workplace conflict or unhealthy office dynamics.

Finances and budgeting

Achieving target growth largely depends on money management. It would be best to have a long-term financial plan and a way to implement it into your operations on a daily or weekly basis.

Select a period in the immediate future, like the next quarter or six months. Outline the income you expect in that time and project any known expenditures. These include office space, utilities, equipment, marketing, payroll, etc. Add a buffer for unexpected expenses as well.

Then, decide how much funds to dedicate to each expenditure category and stick to that. Implement other money management policies to support your efforts, such as:

• paying bills immediately,
• avoiding debt,
• cutting unnecessary spending,
• backing up all financial documentation, etc.

Strategic goal-setting

Every business has its desired goals (and growth is a goal in itself). To maximize your chance of reaching them, you need to account for five key factors:

• clarity,
• buffering,
• actionability,
• tactics, and
• metrics.

Clarity depends on your communication skills. Everyone in the company needs to know what you’re collectively working towards, their individual roles, and how best to cooperate to achieve your targets.

Buffering means accounting for inevitable setbacks. Plan for cash flow problems, market changes, losing employees, changing stakeholders, etc.

Actionality means having several smaller in-between goals on your way to the big ones. Divide your long-term plans into manageable chunks to keep your employees continually motivated and prevent burnout.

Tactics will vary between businesses, so take the time to reflect professionally. What business methods will get you where you want to be? Which of those are best suited to your particular needs? Which are the most appealing to your clients and investors? Which are the most realistic, given your resources?

Metrics enable you to monitor and optimize all of the previous. They precisely measure how well your tactics are working and how your goals have been communicated. Accurate metrics enable you to make the right decisions at critical moments.

In summary, the key factors affecting a small business’s growth are financial planning, marketing, and the customer experience it provides. The condition of the business space also affects productivity. Above all, ensure your growth is strategic and clearly communicate your goals to staff. When everyone knows their part, the whole company functions optimally.

The post 5 Key Factors Affecting the Growth of Small Businesses appeared first on Done For You.

All the “know, like, and trust” stuff!

If you’re the sort of person who is afraid of the camera (like I used to be!), exposure therapy is a great thing.

If you’re not afraid of video – then live streams, product sales videos, etc. Is all a great way to improve your marketing.

Leave your questions and comments below!
To watch on the Done For You channel, go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1D2gEy3sElY

Read the transcript below:

The post GSD 215: Why Is Video Marketing So Effective? appeared first on Done For You.

Now, Amazon and Apple are selling digital products. There are these things called MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), and so much more.

So today, we’re going to talk about where creators can sell their digital products!

Please LIKE and SHARE the video if you got value from it…

And if you have any questions, go ahead and comment below!

For more revenue-producing tips, tricks, and tools like this, subscribe to our newsletter: https://gsddaily.io/

And if you’d like a hand putting together an inbound marketing machine for your business, book a call here! https://doneforyou.com/start/
To watch on the Done For You channel, go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SujmAHcnQTM

Read the transcript below:

The post GSD 208: Where To Sell Digital Products Online appeared first on Done For You.

If you have any questions, go ahead and ask below!

For more revenue-producing tips, tricks, and tools like this, subscribe to our newsletter: https://gsddaily.io/

And if you’d like a hand putting together an inbound marketing machine for your business, book a call here! https://doneforyou.com/start/
To watch on the Done For You channel, go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuaVFZliz54

Read the transcript below:

The post GSD 206: Which Digital Products Sell Best Online For Creators? appeared first on Done For You.

There’s no better content medium for storytelling than video, and it can hugely impact the success of your campaigns and marketing. It’s also a great way to connect with your customers and create a deeper relationship with them. And don’t think this praise of video marketing has no coverage. Video is such an important part of marketing strategy that it accounts for 80% of all consumer internet traffic; social media videos generate 1200% more shares than regular posts and almost 90% of marketers today use videos in their marketing efforts.

What you put in videos depends on your choice, but one is for sure, there has to be a spot for video content in your marketing strategy. Also, once you finally decide to employ video marketing, there are strategies that can help your videos find the right viewers and boost sales and traffic. Here’s how to achieve that:

Find your audience

You can’t make marketing videos for everyone—this doesn’t work. It’s great if you manage to create a viral video everyone is sharing to boost your online popularity, but in general, you need to aim your video marketing towards achieving your business goals (drive brand awareness, boost sales and traffic, etc.) To achieve your goals, start by finding your ideal clients, studying what they like to watch, and creating that specific content.

Brand your videos

No matter what kind of video content you create, from improvised videos to professionally edited webinars, you need to brand your material. Branding not only allows people to instantly recognize your videos, but also makes it easier to find your content. Additionally, it gives away the impression that your company is highly professional and can be trusted. There are various branding elements you can rely on such as your logo in the corner, a short intro or outro, recognizable jingle in the background, unique outfit you’re wearing, etc.

Showcase your personality

People are quick to scroll over a boring video, and who can blame them. Instead of focusing on facts and stats, engage people with interesting things that set your company culture apart from the competition. People are willing to watch and share videos that are full of personality, so be unique and be you.

Tell a story

Video marketing relies on storytelling. Viewers usually don’t register any numbers or stats, but they soak up all the inspirational stories or funny material they can connect with. And don’t worry, you don’t need a movie director to tell your story! It’s easy to find a free video maker for amateurs and professionals that allows you to quickly edit clips, add sound and text and turn your little story into an amazing video. The content you create will cost you nothing, yet it will serve your business goals in many ways.

Optimize your videos

Google indexes everything, YouTube videos included, so if someone searches for your brand, your videos can pop up more than once. To make sure your videos are optimized for this, include keywords in video descriptions. If you’re posting on YouTube, take advantage of their tagging feature which takes videos of different relevance and groups them together. This way, it’s possible for your content to appear in a “related video” section and reach a wider audience.

Include a call to action

It’s useless to have a video that people watch, yet have no idea what to do after watching. This is a huge waste of money, time and effort. No matter the purpose of your video, it’s easy to include a call to action element and instruct viewers to make desired actions while or after watching your content. You can do that by including text in your videos that link to your website. Or you can invite people to like, share and subscribe to your channel to get new videos every day/week/month. All of these will improve your standings and boost your popularity.

Post consistently

Your marketing videos need to be considered as campaigns, not random posts. Think more in terms of a series instead of a movie. After you’ve come up with the content for your videos, you need to divide it into parts and create a coming-out schedule. If you have a consistent schedule, it might encourage your audience to come back regularly. If you properly space out your videos, you can use video marketing to create hype over a new product or an exciting announcement.

Analyze your video performance

Every company that takes their marketing seriously is performing analysis of their websites and social media efforts—you need to do that with videos too. It’s important to see whether the time, money and effort you’re investing in your videos are worth it. A/B testing is a great way to see which elements are working and which need to be tweaked or replaced. Test many times until you find content and timing that is helping you achieve your marketing goals.

People are highly visual creatures, so it’s not a surprise we react so strongly to video marketing content. Use this habit of ours to boost your sales, get money and grow your business.

The post 8 Simple Ways to Lift up Your Video Marketing Strategy appeared first on Done For You.

In this GSDdaily episode, we’re going to talk about how to get awesome clients. There are lots of definitions of awesome clients. Awesome clients might be high paying clients or might be the kind of clients who leave you alone for the most part.

They might be the ones who are taking massive action on your strategies and recommendations and mentorship and all of that stuff. And they implement quickly and they get results quickly. I mean, everybody has their different definition of what an awesome client is, but all in all, awesome clients are what makes your business go round. If you are selling coaching, consulting services, digital products, all that stuff.

Yesterday, we talked about assisted learning. Or digital courses, digital learning, and how you can maximize your revenue and make good money selling training, and assisted kind of group coaching courses. And what that was, if you remember, we had the diagram of a triangle and we had digital courses across the bottom. And then a level above that we had our assisted learning varieties. So it was assisted in group learning, so there was some group coaching in the middle.

And then above that was assisted one-on-one. So you have a course as a kind of foundational education. Then it was a one-on-one. One-on-one coaching, one-on-one mentorship, or teaching or whatever was the ascension there. Then you have like a done for you service and then you had masterminds. So that was kind of the ascension of that model.

At the very base level, assisted group coaching. What that is, is college. Especially now in this pandemic when people are needing to self-learn. They are taking their courses online.

They have some sort of group office hours where they might get in and be able to talk to the professor and they have a forum where they can go and ask questions and get help from students and whatever. But they are learning through a computer. It’s distance learning, but there’s that group component. That would be like an assisted group.

So really, you, as a product creator or service creator, you’re going to be able to deliver the same type of experience that a university would if you structure it that way. Which is pretty powerful if you think about it.

Landing High-End Clients

Now, today, we’re going to talk about landing high-end clients. We’ve got another little diagram here that we’re going to go through. Basically, the idea of this is, how to get more high paying clients. All in all, everybody wants a great subset of clients.

Now, if you are in business on your own, you want to have eight clients, 10 clients, 12 clients, whatever. The thing about clients is, if you’re doing one-on-one engagement, then you’re going to max out at some ceiling.

Each of them, you’re working with an hour a week. You’re going to need an hour’s downtime for each of them or so to take notes or to think about their projects or whatever.

There’s always that ceiling when you are working from a one-on-one standpoint. Now, yesterday, we talked about digital courses and that’s the beauty of the assisted learning format, which is when you can package your material into a body of work. Might be a digital course. It might be an ebook, it might be a book, whatever.

Then you’re magnifying your capability as an educator or as a business owner. So now you can have a hundred people go through that digital course, and then maybe you’re only offering group coaching to 10 of them and only one-on-one coaching to two of them.

So you’re able to sell a hundred copies of the course. And then you’re able to grab the 10 group coaching students, maybe it’s 2,500 a month for them.

Then you’re able to grab two one-on-one students, and it’s five grand or 10 grand a month for them. It just depends on how you want to structure it. But qualifying those students is where the challenge ends up coming in. And it’s where so much of our work comes into play when we start automating sales processes.

Three Ways to Build Clients

So, how to get more high-paying clients? There are three ways to kind of build the front side of this out.

1. Automated Webinar

You can do an automated webinar, which last week we talked entirely about automated webinars. So an automated webinar that plays at a certain time every day or immediately after somebody else and you can do it through a sales video.

2. Sales Video

The sales video has a form that pops up underneath when the call to action is made. They can fill in the form. Maybe it’s a conditional logic form. So depending on how the questions are answered, it gets routed one way or the other way. One way might be to a sales page. And the other way might be to a consultant or a sales guy or something. You can also do it through the contact form in the blog post, that’s kind of the third way.

3. Blog Post

So you write a 2000 word blog post that talks about some of the core desires or the core fears or whatever that your prospect is going through. Then you close with a call to action and the contact one might be to sign up for, or to apply for your coaching program, to apply for your digital product, whatever. That call to action might go to the sales video, too, where they end up moving into like the matrix, which is your sales funnel. And then they end up applying and getting on a call that way.

Now, no matter how they find … No matter how they approach it, whether it’s a webinar, a sales video, or whatever, the next step is always to sign up for a strategy session. It’s always to sign up for that sales call.

Sometimes this is an application where somebody is going through and answering some questions. And we’ll talk a little bit about that.

Sometimes it is just a straight-up, they pick a call on your calendar and then they fill in the form afterward. But regardless, the next thing is they need to pick a time on your calendar.

So it’s one of the great inventions of technology, is the fact that you can send somebody a link, and then they can pick a time on your calendar. And it’s when you’re available.

And then they can like to slot themselves in. They can get a calendar reminder, they get emails, they get all of that stuff. And then they can answer the questions that you predefined. So, it’s a lovely thing when it works well.

We use them in marketing automation all the time, but I always take … if it’s a referral like if somebody comes in and they’re referred to me, I usually don’t just send them to a calendar link.

I think it’s pretty disrespectful. If you get that one-on-one invite or that one-on-one recommendation or the one-on-one referral, and then you send them to a cold piece of technology, I don’t really like that.

But if it’s like a function of a sales funnel where the link is shown because somebody presses a button, it’s a different story. Because when they press the button, then they’re expecting to see a calendar. So different kinds of scenarios. But they need to be able to pick a time in your calendar.

So some software for it, Calendly is one. Acuity Scheduling is another that works out nicely. We have ours called Time Slots, which is currently being recorded. It’s being put into Access, which we’re excited about. But Calendly and Acuity are both good.

So once they pick a time, then usually they end up being asked questions and then they get a confirmation. And the confirmation is usually, thanks so much for the booking time. Here’s the link to schedule it on your calendar.

That kind of thing. But this is the part that I want to dive in on. So the questions that somebody asks … Let’s see if I can … Can I make this bigger? I can. All right. Can you see this? There we go. So these questions are an important part of this whole process.

So the questions that we ask, or the questions that we ask for them to answer, are application questions. You always want to include the big three, which is their name, their email address, and their phone number. And then the fourth one is, what is their Skype contact?

Or like, if you’re outside of the country, how do I get ahold of you? Because not everybody can dial an external phone number. An international phone number, I should say. So name, email, phone number. And if outside the country, what is your Skype ID?

So those are always the big four. Now, then we get into some questions. Questions important for us to find out if we’re able to facilitate the transaction of the sale or whatever. Basically to make sure that we add as much value to the sales call as possible. And these are just the general things that we ask. So the first of all is the number one challenge. Nobody is signing up for a call with you because they’re bored or because they feel like it.

They’re signing up for a call because they’re challenged by something. And they believe that you have a solution to their challenge. That’s literally what all business revolves around, is this idea of solutions. Even if it’s a widget, a video game, the solution is fun. All business revolves around this idea of solutions.

So by asking somebody what their number one challenge is, then we’re able to bring that to light, bring it to the surface. And we know how to address it before we even get on the call because they fill out these questions as they’re booking the call. We have days or hours to prepare our answers for this.

We also want to ask them any kind of qualification questions. Qualification is our requirement. A qualification might be, how big is your business? How many employees is your business? How much revenue does your business do? Qualification could be, how long have you been at your job?

Qualification could be, what degrees and experience do you have before we place you in a different employment scenario, whatever. But all of your qualification questions should be answered before they jump on the call with you so that you know who you’re dealing with. you know how the call is going to go before you get on the phone.

Then you want to ask anything about aspirational … Aspirations or goals. Examples are what is your number one goal for this strategy session, what is your goal for working together, what is your goal for the next year and what is your goal for the next three years?

We want to know that stuff so that, A, we know if we can serve them, and B we know where they’re headed. Because if we know we can serve them and we know where they’re headed, we know how to work that call. So we’re already putting a plan in our mind for how that call is going to go, what we’re going to be able to offer them, what we’re going to be able to bring to the table in that relationship.

Then we want to do some future pacing. Basically, what does your life look like a year from now, having worked together? Similar to the goals, but what we’re trying to do is to get them to future pace themselves. Future pace their life, their business, their growth, whatever. We’re getting them to answer that question.

We also want to know what kind of help is needed.  What specifically are they looking for help with? If we’re looking at business development services, maybe they have marketing, copywriting, content creation, but they don’t have a designer. I’m looking for a design.

Or if it’s from a personal growth standpoint, they already have a coach. They own a business. What they specifically need is somebody to be accountable … Somebody can be accountable for, like an accountability partner. So trying to get that out of the questions too.

Then the last thing … And I say this is optional, anymore. And that’s money. So for a really long time … And if you look at some applications for some coaches and mentors and high-end digital products, a lot of them ask the money question. And the money question is primarily to qualify whether they’re going to be able to pay for the offer or not. Sometimes with our clients, I’ll add it.

If the brand is big enough, the market is big enough, the offer is big enough, I will add a money question. You know, what is the size of your business? How much revenue do you do? What is solving this problem worth to you, is it worth $25,000? It just depends on the context and the scenario of the business and the offer.

I oftentimes leave it off though, because if you have the right offer, then the money question is irrelevant. We start from a place of serving. So if I’m even able to get on the phone, or if my team is even able to get on the phone for 15 minutes with somebody and point them in the right direction, it is worth it to us, so that it shortcuts their path … It’s a worthwhile contribution and investment on our part.

So I don’t necessarily ask a money question anymore. We used to … And I didn’t see that there was a difference with it on or off. So I would encourage you in your applications to test both. Test the money question.

Or take it off and see what happens. See if you are getting more tire kickers if you are closing more. I’d venture to guess that it probably won’t matter … The strength of your offer is going to dictate how well you’re selling or not. So it’s just something to test, something to think about.

So I think that is that’s about all I got on this one. Let’s see if I have anymore. No … Oh, yeah. So just a little highlight. Do you like these kinds of Daily? Just in the question box, just let me know. That way … I enjoy kind of this mind map, mind share process map kind of thing, it helps me diagram something. And then I think it also has some value for you too.

For Questions and Guide

If you have any questions at all, if you would like to jump on the phone and talk to us about your offer, your marketing executing some automation, doing some traffic, whatever, go to doneforyou.com/start. We can put all this in place and work on a plan to get you higher-paying clients, more awesome clients. And if there’s anything you need, just go to doneforyou.com/start and just jump in the chatbox in the lower right-hand corner, and we’ll get that taken care of.

And I’ll be back tomorrow. So we’ll see you soon. All right. Thanks. Bye.

The post 3 Simple Methods For Attracting High Ticket Clients appeared first on Done For You.

In today’s episode of GSDdaily, we’re going to talk about course stuff. This week we’re going to talk about course ascension. We’re going to talk about selling and creating bigger box digital offers, things like accelerators, things like boot camps, not necessarily your introductory kind of digital course, but your upper-end stuff, your upper-end material. So today, I kind of retooled this week a little bit real quick, it was going to be kind of self-help, kind of personal development. We’ll probably do a personal development one next week, but today I wanted to dig into this material.

For those of you who don’t know who I am, my name is Jason Drohn, creator of Done For You. We specialize in creating offers, building sales funnels, and then also setting up marketing automation and traffic for your offers or offers in general. It doesn’t have to be yours, just in general. Today what we’re going to talk about is this idea of course ascension or digital product Ascension to have a better money mindset. Right now digital products are fucking crazy. Everybody is trying to package their knowledge in a way to sell something to somebody. It’s just one of those things like I’ve had more conversations that deal with, how do I package my course? How do I sell my training? How do I sell it for $1,000, and $2,000, and $5,000?

Digital Product Ascension

Your knowledge, information and experience are very valuable to the right person. Product Ascension can be answered in twofold.

1. How do you transfer your knowledge into somebody else’s brain in a way that makes the biggest impact in their life, the biggest transformation?

2. How do you segment your prospects down into your ideal kind of customer avatar so that they pay top dollar so that they can experience the transformation?

How we do this, how you end up doing a high ticket product, a high ticket offer that is backed by some sort of a digital thing, is this. We set it up like a triangle or a pyramid if you will.

Here you see that we have our course ascension process. The course ascension process is pretty simple.

Course Ascension Process

1. traffic and sales material

So much of what we’ve done in these dailies is the traffic and the sales material. We’ve talked about Facebook traffic, content marketing and about SEO traffic. We have also talked about many, many, many different types of sales funnels. The automated webinar sales funnels, and the high ticket sales funnels, and the VSL upsell sequences, and all that stuff.

2. Offers

The thing that is in the middle of the triangle, are your offers. Those are your digital product. Those are the ways that you communicate your knowledge to somebody, you transfer your knowledge into somebody else’s head.

Digital Product

At the very, very, very base level, we have a digital product. The digital product is a collection of videos. It is a collection of PDFs. It is a collection of written material, audio, basically all of the things that are needed to package your information, to package your expertise in your material. Most of the time that digital product is created at least in its very, very early stages, like a table of contents. We’ve been through mind mapping quite a few times in this series. We’ve been through mind mapping your ideas, turning your products into something saleable online.

Oftentimes, it’s like module one is a discovery module. It’s kind of foundational. You bring everybody together with module one.

Module Two, you’re digging into the basics of the thing you’re teaching. Module three, module four, module five, all build on each other. And you might have five modules, you might have six modules. You might have five or six videos per module. How you build it, we’re going to talk a little bit about that later in the week. But the digital product itself is the container, the thing that you are selling. Oftentimes, a simple digital product, you’re looking at selling it for $97 or $497, or $397, or $997. It just depends on what kind of transformation somebody is going to get from it. It’s going to be, what is the value that they receive? If you’re teaching somebody how to build a business that is going to make half a million dollars a year, that is a pretty high value.

So that course is probably not going to be $67. That course is probably going to be a couple of thousand dollars. Do you know what I mean? Because it has such high value associated with it. Now, if you’re teaching somebody how to build a nightstand with two by fours, that course might only be $7 because it doesn’t necessarily have that big of a transformative value in it. So that’s the idea behind a digital product. The pricing, depending on the pricing, you’re looking at selling it with a webinar or selling it with a VSL upsell sequence or something like that. Now the next evolution above a digital product is what we call assisted group. Your assisted group offers assistance in the course. What you’re doing is you’re using the course to be the baseline educational piece of the offer.

What happens is every week somebody goes through the course. They get a week unlocked or a module unlocked, or a couple of lessons unlocked or whatever. They’ll learn, so maybe Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, they go through the course material. They take all of that in, maybe they do a homework assignment or whatever. Then on Thursday or Friday, they have some sort of group coaching or group training that brings everybody together and answers all of their questions. Now, the assisted group is a higher-priced experience than just a digital product that you consume and go through on your own. The assisted group also, if you think about it is college or high school, especially now.

Your assisted group kind of courses you, now with so many schools in the country just being digital-only, it’s really kind of an assisted group process. COVID is teaching your people, your customers how to do these assisted group digital courses. And so it’s just something to think about. Whereas before this kind of stuff was very like, it wasn’t weird or it wasn’t an alternative, but it kind of was. So we’ve been selling digital courses and eBooks and everything online forever, but now everybody’s being thrust into the mainstream here for the digital course, digital product kind of thing. So the assisted group is what everybody’s going to be learning from.

You have a baseline course that you go through, whether it’s videos, whether it’s textbook, whether it’s material or whatever. And then you have some sort of teaching experience or a group coaching experience, or a group learning experience that bolts everything together. And that might be done in a Facebook group. It might be done in a Zoom call. It just depends on your preference. Then the next level up above the assisted group is assisted one-on-one. Assisted one-on-one is pretty infrequent. Assisted one-on-one is you go through the lesson material, the digital product yourself first, and then you get on a one-on-one call with your mentor, your teacher, you’re whatever, your coach, you get on a one-on-one call to review the material.

Now this assisted one-on-one, this is going to be like a $2,500 a month kind of experience, or 2,000 or 5,000. Again, it depends on the transformative impact of it, but you’re looking at a much more expensive offer, which means that when you were selling this assisted one-on-one when you create the base digital product and then you’re doing like biweekly one-on-one calls, you can charge a lot of money for it because there’s only one of you and you have your experience and everything. And then you’re answering questions of your student and making the course material applicable in life for them. So you’re able to help them use it in their life. Now, above that, so assisted one-on-one infrequent would be like twice a week or maybe once a month, or once every two weeks or once a month.

Above that, you have your assisted frequent one-on-one. So this is like weekly one-on-one coaching. It’s also like, there’s, one of the things we’ve been doing a lot of for clients is like virtual CMO, virtual CFO, virtual COO kind of offers. So that would be like your assisted one-on-one. So a lot of times the virtual CXO offers have a course that the team or companies go through. And then they get access whenever they want to the person, whether it’s through Slack or text message, or whatever. So that would be like an assisted one-on-one frequent. And that of course, is a pretty high dollar price point.

Above assisted one-on-one is done for you. So any kind of a done for you offer that is hands-off for the client, hands-off for the customer, and then you do it for them because they’re not required to learn. They’re not required to jump on a coaching call. They don’t need to jump on a one-on-one call. All that they’re paying for is a done for you offer. And then above that, you have a mastermind. So a mastermind is where you have a bunch of people who are in a networking relationship with each other. They’re able to bounce ideas off of each other and able to pick each other’s brains. There are so many different benefits from a mastermind just in terms of being exposed to other people’s viewpoints, being exposed to what’s working in other industries, or even in your industry.

But the mastermind is the upper, upper, upper level of how you’re going to ascend through digital courses. Almost every highly respected course creator has a mastermind. Sometimes the mastermind is $10,000 and sometimes the mastermind is 25 or 50 or 75, or even $100,000. But there’s usually a mastermind at the top end of that pyramid. So when you’re looking at your business model when you’re looking at what you’re trying to create, consider a mastermind, consider a done for you offer, consider the assisted course offers down below. Now, if we go up the side on the left-hand side, you see that we broke it down here. So the digital product itself is very DIY. It’s a very self-starter. So somebody is going through the offer, going through the product on their own time. It’s a self-study, home study kind of an offer.

Then we have assisted group, assisted one-on-one. Those are done with you. So those are done with your offers. It is up to them to go through the material, up to them to go through the course. However, you’re able to interact with them and help them, and anchor them in the course material and help them implement that stuff in their life. Then we have the done for you, which is DFY, of course. And then we have a mastermind. So everyone has an upper-end mastermind offer. Like I said, most digital products, most creators, most vendors, have a mastermind or they’re part of a mastermind that they sell. So that’s the essential model of courses, of digital products. As I said, it all starts down here with the traffic, kicks up through the sales material.

Oftentimes, there’s a low-end digital product, then that goes through an ascension ladder. And the ascension ladder usually has assisted group, assisted one-on-one, done for you offers, and then masterminds. So that is how most of it looks. Sometimes people end up just hanging out down here in the digital product space. They don’t want to get on the phone with clients, don’t want to get on the phone with customers and don’t want to do coaching or mentorship. If they do explore those upper-end models, then they’ll hire somebody for it. They will teach coaches their methodology, and then the coaches will run people through this. But it’s a way of generating quite a bit more revenue once you have a body of work that you can use to anchor the rest of your process.

Does anybody have any questions about that? It’s all kind of a shotgun scenario. But let’s see comments here. Okay, cool. So we’ve got one. When can you introduce a mastermind? Great question. You can introduce a mastermind really whenever you want. I would say that you have to be anchored in the space a little bit. You need some customers that you’re going to sell it to. You can’t necessarily go zero to mastermind without being either, A, pretty entrenched in the market, or B, very well networked. So it’s one or the other. You can start at a low-level mastermind. Masterminds have this weird… There are mastermind groups that are $197 a month, free mastermind groups and mastermind groups that are $50,000 a year.

It just depends on what you’re trying to put together. If you’re trying to put together an elite level mastermind, then the charge is $25,000 a year for CEOs who are at the helm of businesses doing 10 million or more per year, then it’s a different scenario than somebody who is looking to put together a mastermind of digital product creators who are just starting. Yu always have to consider your target market when putting together the mastermind. You read Think and Grow Rich. I don’t know that that’s where the idea was introduced, but I think that’s where the idea was popularized. But a mastermind is just a collection of people who can feed off of each other and uplevel themselves and their businesses and their lives, I guess collectively.

That’s the idea of a mastermind. It doesn’t necessarily have to be business-related, but it can be. So in starting your mastermind, it doesn’t need to be something that you have, it’s $50,000 a year. It can be a free mastermind just among friends and then it can grow. So it just depends on what it is you’re trying to put together. In the course ascension model, masterminds typically end up at the top of the pyramid in terms of price scenarios. And they also help you greatly increase the revenue that you’re getting. There are a couple of masterminds that start at masterminds and they don’t have anything below them. They don’t have like assisted one-on-one, don’t have a digital product or books. It’s a little bit more difficult to pull off that way, but it’s doable.

Let’s see. You said you can charge up to $1,000 per digital product. Typically, for digital products, you can charge up to 997, 995, $1,000 for a digital product alone. In some spaces, the financial space, the real estate space, you can usually charge up to $2,000 for a digital product, business development too. Every once in a while, you see an outlier that’s like 3,500 or $4,000 for a digital product. But usually, that outlier has some of these assisted models. They have assisted one-on-one or the assisted group or whatever. Just be mindful when you’re going to introduce a product into the market. Like, do you want to take on some clients? Do you want to do some group coaching with it?

Because oftentimes if you do, you’re able to generate quite a bit more revenue that way because some people just want the course, but then other people also want the coaching and mentorship in it too. So just something to think about. I think that’s about it for today. For the rest of this week, we’re going to talk about courses. So I’m not real sure the blow by blow, but we will get it all squared away. I will talk to you tomorrow, have a fantastic Monday.

For Questions and Guide

If you need anything at all, just go to doneforyou.com/start, fill out the little form, and we’ll jump on a call and talk about it. I’ll talk to you soon.

The post Growing Your Business Through Digital Products appeared first on Done For You.

Today we’re going to talk about the software that you’re going to use to run your membership site or choosing how to choose the right software to run your membership site.

Last Monday we talked about membership sites and how you can charge for membership sites and you know how to build them and content for them and all that other stuff. Yesterday, we talked about content. Today we’re going to talk a little bit about the tech part of it. The setup and just to bring it all home because up until this point, we have brainstormed content for your membership site. We’ve picked a niche or a market. We brainstormed some content if you remember inside that mind map.

Then yesterday we talked about creating that content and how there’s a couple of different modalities for content. There is your text-based stuff, you know, PDF downloads or blog posts. There is a video, and then you can pull the audio out of the video so that you have a video and an audio presentation. We also talked about some different ways that you can deliver content, whether it’s monthly, whether it’s a big block, whether it’s whatever. And we talked some about some pricing stuff too, like how to price, whether you sell monthly or annual, how to use that inside of an upsell sequence or whatever.

Software for Membership Site

Today, we’re going to talk about the software to use. Now a membership site in and of itself is pretty simple. I mean, all it is is a collection of web pages that are protected, and the only way to get to those pages or those files is when you’re logged in.

I mean, almost every website has some sort of a protected membership login. It’s the same thing, you know? The difference is you in having a membership, you’re charging a subscription for access, or maybe you’re charging a gateway, an entry fee for access to your information. But the subscription part is the membership. The membership is just kind of the portal. You log into the membership, you get added into a membership dashboard and the dashboard is where you see your video courses or your audio courses or PDFs or whatever it ends up being. And you can have one course or two courses or four courses or a couple of memberships, or however, it is you decide to kind of split it up.

1. Moodle

There were a lot of different ways to build, functionally to protect that content. If you remember a couple of years ago, or earlier in the week, I talked about a decade ago, there was a course called, Teaching Cells that came out, and Teaching Cells was just incredible software for what it was … or it was a membership course on how to build membership courses, which is a little bit tongue in cheek, but they had some ground material. It was put out by a guy named Brian Clark who started Copyblogger. He went through and walked through this entire model of how to build this membership website software in a piece of software called Moodle. This is a CMS. Also protect it with a piece of software called aMember, which is very, very old now. I’m looking at their website. I don’t think they updated it.

This is how we used to build membership sites. We would take a piece of software like Moodle and Moodle looks like it’s been updated a little bit, but Moodle is what is known as a learning management software, LMS. The LMS software, there are very sophisticated forms of LMS software that are very, very, very expensive. They are what is powering all of these digital learning platforms. Every college is doing distance learning, especially right … I mean right now, and has a membership login and all that other stuff, they are using a form of an LMS, a learning management software. There’s a lot of very expensive software applications out there that they can run. There are corporate versions of Teachable and stuff that people use.

Moodle is a very simple free one. It’s an open-source piece. It’s open-source software that you can download. You can install it on your web server. You can configure it, use it, put your stuff in there. It puts everything behind a membership login. Now the part that controls the payment is usually different. Usually, you have Moodle, which is your software, your LMS software that controls how the content is delivered, that controls the video, that controls the login, all that stuff. And then what you do is you pair it with some sort of money software, like a collection gateway kind of membership site software.

2. aMember

The software called aMember was actually how I learned how to build membership sites. I built a Moodle site and then I wrapped it in aMember here, and aMember had the portal for putting your credit card information in and sending it to a merchant processor, all of that stuff. It was a very time-intensive process. There was a lot of handholding and things because by the time you have an LMS and then a payment software, payment gateways like an aMember tied to a Stripe or authorized.net, you have an email sending software, then you have a couple of other different random integrations and shit starts breaking real quick.

3. Wishlist Member

We found out quickly that this is not the right way to do it. It’s not an advantageous way of doing it. We started looking for other options and we found, the first kind of big membership software that was created for WordPress was this WishList member. I would say it’s probably the industry standard. Here, “Trusted by over 103 active membership sites.” So a lot of membership site software. It’s a lot of people using the software.

It’s very easy and integrates directly with WordPress.  You can have a WordPress site that powers 25% of the internet and add in this WishList Member plugin. Now all of a sudden you have a membership website software so it has members login; member login, pages, widgets, you know, functionality. You can protect any page, any category, any image that is on your site. So even if you want to retroactively protect some of your pages because they’re great content, you can do that with WishList Member. You can also show the first a hundred words of a blog post and then have a read more button. No, go … Go Erie is where I live, it’s the newspaper here. But if you look at any of these online newspaper places where you can only read three or four articles, this payment gateway or Paywall, is what it’s called.

But you read the first a hundred or 200 words, and then to read more, you have to become a subscriber for 99 cents a month or whatever. Then WishList Member has that functionality too. You can protect all your blog posts if they want to read them. There are lots of different things you can do with a membership plugin. A lot of different ways you can make money with that membership plugin. WishList Member is a great, great tool. We use it for a lot of client sites.

4. LearnDash

LearnDash is another one that we have since started using lately. They have some really interesting functionality for content licenses. They have some great dashboards and really … It’s a very pretty software whereas WishList Member is not. WishList Member is not a whole lot to look at. I mean, it’s nice and it’s functional and it works great, but LearnDash has some cool tools that tie in with a lot of other things.

5. Ontraport

If we just want to cut right to the chase, we use Ontraport, which is a CRM, and it has a WordPress plugin, which will create your membership website software for you. It will protect all of your membership content and tie it to the customer record inside your CRM so that when somebody buys, it sends them their username and password, which is nice. It’s kind of a pain in the ass to set up originally but you know that when somebody buys something, they have their login. It isn’t up to them to go give their login and their password and all that other stuff.

Ontraport has worked well for that for more sophisticated membership website software or for more sophisticated … just protecting content in a more sophisticated way. if somebody buys, somebody sets up an email account with you and then they purchase maybe a month down the road, then they get their membership unlocked, Ontraport tracks how many times they’re logging in and all that other stuff. So really, really nice stuff. If you have a WordPress site, that’s how you would end up integrating it.

6. Kajabi

Now, if you want a more robust platform that isn’t WordPress based. Some people do, Kajabi is my favorite. Kajabi is a knowledge commerce platform. They very much, pride themselves in building robust membership website software that helps people learn. Content creators create, sell and help people, build the software and solutions that they want their members to go through. And brilliant software works well. It’s intuitive to use, they have pipelines and all kinds of other crazy stuff. They do email marketing and it’s just a very robust platform anymore. It’s great software.

7. Teachable

A competitor of Kajabi, somebody is like a Teachable. Teachable has also very nice software. If I had to pick one, I would pick Kajabi, just because they have a lot of marketing functionality and a lot of marketing tools like a Teachable, which is just kind of an off-the-shelf LMS uses. Kajabi is very much marketing heavy. Whereas Teachable is just very much course heavy, you know? So it just depends on how much marketing you think you’re going to need to do. And if you’re going to handle it doing something else.

If you have an email marketing platform, if you have a merchant processor, if you have like all of these things kind of in your business, Kajabi is probably the better way to go. Whereas Teachable, they have had some course creation stuff, and it’s nice to use, this drag and drop and all kinds of other stuff, but they both work well. So that is kind of how we ended up structuring how we end up building membership website software from a restriction standpoint.

Now let’s see. All right. Do you have any questions here?

What can you charge for membership?

All right. We went through creating content yesterday. What can you charge for membership? We kind of covered this Monday, but we’re going to run through it again real quick. From a membership standpoint, anything below $10 is an easy membership. People are going to stay typically for years for anything on $10, in terms of membership. They’re great for qualifying buyers and then building a tribe of buyers and building a tribe of people who you can cultivate and nurture and stuff into some of your higher-end programs. It’s really where a lot of the low dollar membership website software come in. Anything between like $20 and a hundred, ends up being kind of that middle of the road membership that people are going to stay for between three and five months for as long as you give value. That becomes a profit center in your business.

When you’re at those levels, if you’re charging $67 a month for your membership, then you can also sell like a year-long, an annual version of that membership and give a lot of value. The annual version might give them three months free, but you collect the nine months. Whereas your normal membership is only five months. That’s what your normal churn is. You’re able to almost double your revenue by selling the annual version. And then you just let them know a little bit beforehand that their annual subscription is almost done. And then you rebuild them into the next month. Above a hundred dollars a month, you can do, but it usually needs to have live elements in it.

A live coaching call, group coaching, maybe a Facebook community, a Facebook group, something that is alive and more dynamic than just the kind of login and consumes material. That’s where those groups work well.

For Questions and Guide

I hope that answers the pricing question and software question. Do you have anything at all, anything at all, just go to DoneForYou.com/start and fill out a little application and book a call on our calendar and we will make sure to put together an action plan for you for your funnels, your traffic, your optimization, whatever. If you have any questions anywhere on the DFY site, there’s a little button in the lower right-hand corner. You can open up a chat and start talking with our team there, and I will talk to you soon, all right.

The post Software To Launch Membership Website appeared first on Done For You.

In today’s episode of GSDdaily, we’re going to continue our conversation on membership sites. Specifically, we’re going to talk about how to create valuable content. Now, this whole create the valuable content thing, we’ve talked about many times before, in past dailies. There’s a lot of different types of content that you can create. There’s a lot of different ways to create content. And just to kind of back up a minute, so your membership site is a collection of material.

A membership site, largely, is the simple fact that your shit is kind of locked behind a membership login. Anything you sell online is probably a membership site to some degree because you’re always going to be protecting and create valuable content. Most of the time, like if you buy any book online or you buy a set of videos or something, then you have to log in to get to them. That’s just kind of how things are protected, so you don’t want people sharing your stuff.

Your membership site, like your subscription website, the only fundamental difference between a subscription website, a membership site, and just kind of everything else, is that you’re delivering content regularly. As I said Monday, a very simple subscription site. Netflix, or even Apple news, deliver news to you every day. And then you pay the 10 bucks a month or whatever. So they consistently feed and create valuable content. It’s up to you whether you want to log in and read it, consume it, love it, whatever.

Your members are going to be the same way, your subscribers. It’s up to them to log into the membership site. Now you can do all the things you need to do to help them consume that content, because if they don’t consume it, they’re not going to continue paying, of course. I mean, if they go for a month without logging in, chances are they’re going to unsubscribe pretty quickly. So you can send them emails and you can send the texts, but truly the material inside the membership site is the thing they’re paying for.

That’s the thing that they need to be getting value from. Now, today, we’re going to talk about a couple of different modalities of stuff. Bill wrote in and had a great, great bunch of questions that I’m going to answer today, too. He was commenting the last couple of days, cause he’s putting together a membership site right now. So first, let me start by talking about the modalities, then we’re going to talk about sourcing material. And then from there, we’ll talk about creating material if you decide you want to create the material yourself.

Modalities of Membership Site Content

First of all, the modalities. There are three forms to create valuable content that you’re going to end up putting on your membership site.

1. Written

There’s written content, so that is anything… At a very elementary level, it’s a blog post. It’s a blog post of value, or it’s a newsletter that is maybe emailed to somebody. Think of somebody like Agora. You know, financial newsletter publications. They email once a week, their picks of the week, or whatever. Whatever it ends up being. It’s written and create valuable content that somebody can go through, learn from, they can choose to open that email or log in for that day or not.

The next kind of iteration of that is a PDF, so like creating and packaging maybe one professional report a month, or one professional report a week. We’ve had quite a few lower dollar membership sites over the years, where we have delivered that. It’s a new report for a month.

Then when somebody signs up, they get access to blog posts, they get access to webinars and calls, and they get access to some sort of like an industry insider kind of report. So great membership sites, it’s a great membership site structure. In that material, create valuable content for the membership is a PDF, and then we’re doing some on-demand stuff, like webinars or live streams or whatever, whatever it ends up being.

2. Audio

The next iteration of that used to be audio. So where you would have an audio program or audio snippets, and you had MP3s that people would download and listen to, or, way, way back, way before ClickFunnels started, Russell Branson kind of made a name for himself in doing these six part continuity programs called the Micro Continuity, and he would actually mail a physical CD, and then you would pop it into your CD player and listen to it.

This was probably 10 years ago. I remember buying it and then also implementing it way, way a long time ago, way before sales funnels were even a thing, like five years before ClickFunnels was born. But audio used to be a thing. Audio is not anymore. Now, audio is consumed by podcasts. Most of the audio that is created is a rip of a video. So this video that we’re creating right now is a perfect example of it. We’re creating the video, we can take the video and the video can be the membership content, but then we can also separate the audio track from the video, save it as an MP3 file, and then that is its modality.

3. Video

The best way to do it is to create the video, which then you use to create the audio. Do you know what I mean? It kind of goes text and writing, and then video, and in the middle is audio. But it’s more just a rip of the video now. So it doesn’t have to be a full-motion video like this. You can do screen recorded video. I’m going to show you some tools after this. We’ve talked about them quite a few times. So you can use a screen recorded video where you do a PowerPoint presentation, and you just speak through the PowerPoint presentation, and then that becomes your content. It’s kind of like learning from a college or an institution, like the voiceover PowerPoint presentations.

It’s very no fluff, no-frills. There’s very little to get wrong, truly. You know, it’s not like you have to be worried about being in front of a camera, cause you’re not in front of a camera. It’s just your voice and the text. Do you know? So those are just some of the modalities of what makes up the membership site content. Text, audio, video. There are some other things that you can add-in. You can add coaching programs. You can add a group coaching, you can add like a little mastermind, you can add a Facebook group.

People find incredible value in that kind of stuff. And oftentimes, we add those additional mediums to increase the price of a membership. So the membership, like a text video-based membership, that has some monthly content, might be $37 a month or $67 a month. But then if they want to have a virtual coaching piece, it’s maybe $197 a month or something like that. So, there’s a lot of ways you can play with the material of the membership site to generate the revenues you need or to put that offer wherever your kind of have a hole in your product mix. Do you know what I mean? So a lot of different ways you can cut that up.

Sourcing Content Materials

Now that we understand the modalities of membership, here are some ways to the source material, and this kind of got into Bill’s questions quite a bit. So one of his questions was, is there a way to outsource video content? Or is there a way to outsource the material? Yesterday we talked about putting together a woodworking membership site. If you remember, we kind of detailed this woodworking course DIY. The first month was tools. The second month was like introductory projects, where we talk about maybe DIY shelves, gallery shelves, bookcases.

We get over into medium difficulty projects. End tables, picnic tables, kitchen tables, and then month four, some of the more complex stuff, entertainment consoles, cupboards, cabinets, credenzas, some of the more complicated things. So the question was about that, and it was, can you outsource that material, so that somebody else creates it? And the answer is absolute. You just need to find that person. So there are lots of ways to find that person.

1. Upwork

You can search on a site like Upwork, where they would create your how-to articles. Maybe it is a picture based article. We talked last week actually about getting paid to write. So you’re just looking for the woodworking enthusiast who wants to get paid to write. Literally. So you could post a project on Upwork and say, I am looking for five 2000 word articles with pictures, on how to make a shelf, a bookcase, what were some of my other ones? So how to make shelves, gallery shelves, bookcases, two by four projects, and pilot projects. And maybe it’s one tutorial per, and then you just know that you’re going to be spending $200 per tutorial or $100 per tutorial, or even 50 bucks.

I mean, it just depends. You have to put the project out there and see what people bid, and then you can choose whoever bids the project well, and you’re happy to spend the money on their skill and talent, and so that it’s done for you, or you can choose not to, and then you can create the material yourself. That’s where you own the content. So you own the contents, you can package the content, you are a product creator at that point.

2. Fiverr

Another way to do it is, and it’s not where they come to you, but it’s where you go to them. Is going to a Fiverr, and you can type in woodworking articles, and maybe somebody here can write woodworking tutorials for you. And it’s going to be more than five bucks. It used to all be five bucks, but it’s going to be more than $5 now. Fiverr has become a pretty big operation. And again, you are the content creator, or you’re paying for the content to be done. So it’s your content, you’re the content creator.

3. Youtube

Now, another idea is where you go to YouTube and you embed blog posts. So you can go here and type woodworking shelves. And we have all kinds of plans here. Easy DIY floating shelves, DIY floating shelves with hidden storage, easy DIY floating shelves, no bracket. So if you just click on this, most of these videos are supported by ads. So they’re given away for free on YouTube. They’re supported by ads.

Most of them, you can disable this inside the settings inside YouTube, but if you hit share, and then embed… You can embed this video right on your page. So from a very simplistic standpoint, you can embed it as blog posts on your site. Your content creators encourage this because they make money through ads. So if you’re giving them more views, then they’re able to make more money. That’s just how it goes. Now there’s nothing that says you can’t put this inside of a membership site that people are paying for. So you could go in and have four, five, six, 10, 20, 30 simplistic DIY videos, all on YouTube, all by different creators. And that is what they’re paying for.

They’re paying for the curated experience of a DIY woodworking channel. They’re not paying for you to create the content but for the duration. It’s no different than walking into a museum. I can’t say I’ve been to like a ton of big museums in my life. But when you pay to get into a museum, you’re paying the entry fee. And then there’s usually the curator who is sourcing everything that is in the museum, and hangs them and displays them and makes them all nice and everything. You are the curator of your membership site. So in this way, you’re not creating the content. You don’t own the content, but you own the museum. So you own the real estate, which is where that material is displayed. So it’s a quick way of getting content for your membership site, that doesn’t cost you anything.

I would say that you want to make sure to include some of your stuff in here. It is your membership site. You should have your videos. You should have your tutorial. Your voice should be the voice in the emails that are going out. You’re still a business owner. You’re still the membership site owner, but you can use all of this kind of stuff as all of the YouTube videos, and embeds, and all that other stuff. You can link off the blog posts. You can use all that material to fill up the virtual shelves of your membership. So month one, they get… We can even look at here, let’s see if we go back to… I would say, well, we can do the same thing for tools. We can do the same thing for complex plans.

I mean, this was just shelves, but we could do the same thing for woodworking or bookcases, two by four projects, pallet projects. We can just literally have a category that is two by four projects and then just… It’s all YouTube videos. So, makes perfect sense for both the content creator and then also for you, because you’re curating the content. For this first month of tools, I would say, you’re going to want to dig in and do the research yourself, and then include your affiliate links. So you might even have somebody source the tools, whether it’s cutting, drills, sandpaper, you’re going to want to source all that stuff. You could probably just do an Amazon search, pick the top ones that show up, throw your affiliate link in.

Then that becomes the buying list that somebody gets in month one. And then you can link off to some YouTube tool walkthroughs, like maybe by Ryobi, or Dewalt might have some Dewalt specific tool videos on how to use their tools. So use and leverage the content that is already out there. A lot of times you don’t need to make more. If you do make more, you want to make sure that it’s branded to you, and you want to make sure that it furthers your brand as opposed to furthering somebody else’s. But, perfectly acceptable to do that. So, Bill, I hope that was good for you. Let’s see. All right, cool.

Let’s see, what else do we get? What other questions? Bill said museum analogy. Nice. Cool. So I hope that helps, Bill. It should give you a good start without having to get all kinds of crazy, without having to go nuts with the create valuable content creation piece. There are all kinds of people that create valuable content, all kinds of content and they want eyeballs, so it helps to give them eyeballs.

Another question he had was, does YouTube dilute and take away the membership’s uniqueness from our site? No.

I would say that people go to the museum to look at curated create valuable content or curated art, so they’re going to come to you because you have more of exactly what they want than going to YouTube and searching. Truly, we just searched YouTube and said, give me all of your shelf things, but this is where your brainstorming and thinking outside of the box comes in, because if they can log into one place and then they see all of your shelves and all your bookcases and all your boom, boom, boom, boom, then it has value.

But if it’s just shelves and they could just go to YouTube and just type in shelves, then that doesn’t have as much value. I would also vary the medium too, so create some text-based stuff with your YouTube videos or walk through and put it together… Do some of the projects and take pictures of those projects as you go through them, so you don’t have to create your material… So, you are creating your material, but you’re using that as inspiration and then kind of tie it to that YouTube video.

Let’s see, I will be doing PDF MP3s. Okay, cool. So Vimeo and a plugin player would be how I put them on the site. Yes. Well, or you could just do YouTube, but Vimeo has a Vimeo business. People can’t search and so it looks like you were set on all of that stuff.

Software and Tools

The last thing I wanted to talk about was just software and tools.

1. Google Docs

Google Docs is helpful when it comes to creating written material. The link is going to be drive.google.com. So you’re going to log into my account here or Google Docs. Docs.google.com is going to be your Google Docs. It’s an online text editor. You can do PowerPoint presentations, you can do all kinds of stuff from there. It’ll export to PDF, which is all you need to create written material.

Last week, we had an entire week on how to get paid as a writer. So this is an extension of that. And the only difference is, is rather than sell your stuff directly to end-users or sell advertisement, or making money indirectly through your content, you’re going to be just putting it in a membership site, which you get paid for. That’s the idea of a membership site.

2. Zoom

For writing, for creating written material, reference all of last week, for creating videos, so there are several ways to do it. What I have found lately, so, so many people are looking at… They’re turning on Zoom and then they’re turning on Zoom, creating a Zoom account, turning it on, and then literally just hitting record. And that is how they create valuable content, which is perfectly fine. So it’s a quick, easy way of creating material quickly.

3. ScreenFlow

Another way that has some built-in editing capability, so we have ScreenFlow. ScreenFlow for Mac. I don’t believe they have a Windows version of it yet. So ScreenFlow is what I use for all of our screen recording stuff and even some of our full-motion video, I’ll pull it into ScreenFlow and then edit it out.

4. Camtasia

If you are on a Windows machine, Camtasia is going to be the one you want to use. I think it’s pretty much the best and only Windows… I haven’t had a windows machine probably for eight or nine years, maybe 10 years now, but Camtasia works nicely. Does the same thing. You can record your camera, you can record your screen, you can record your voice, and then you can edit all those things together to create your material.

Zoom helps to create a video a whole lot easier than it ever used to be. It’s a software which you can control easily enough. The nice thing about your membership content doesn’t have to be perfect. Usually, people are okay with screw-ups and restating yourself and not saying that you don’t want to have something very highly unprofessional out there, but at the same time, you’re expressing your true you. That’s why membership sites and courses and all that stuff, have a less rigorous form of editing than what a public side, the public-facing video would.

But, the other side is live streams have just been so prevalent lately that people are okay with fuck-ups. So they’re all right with mistakes. They’re all right with the genuine stream of consciousness kind of video because it is truly authentic to the person. There isn’t an editor. Like this video, there’s not an editor who… Well, there is one, when you see those little vertical videos, obviously an editor goes through and puts all those together. But these live streams, it’s just you and me hanging out, talking. They’re just authentic.

Your membership content should be just stuff like this. It should be very, very simple. You can tie it into a PowerPoint presentation. Sometimes we do. Other times, it’s just a full-motion video. So really, it depends on what you want it to do.

5. Final Cut Pro

I’m a Mac, like I said, I use Final Cut Pro for any complex video editing. Final Cut Pro is a fantastic piece of software that is very similar to iMovie but an upgraded one.

6. iMovie

But if you have a Mac, you have iMovie already, so you can do a tremendous amount of editing inside iMovie, and then basically edit your stuff, put it out there, put it up on your membership site, and then you’re good to go. You can get the audio of your video once you use Screenflow or Final Cut Pro.

7. Rev.com

Rev.com is who I use to transcribe all of our videos, and you can see just a ton of files in here, but Rev is $1.25 per minute, or you can use Otter.ai, which is getting very good with free transcription, it’s a machine based though.

8. Otter

Otter works great if you have shorter videos or your videos are highly edited because you don’t have any of those connector words in there. However, if you do, like me, do a stream of consciousness live streams, then it’s much more advantageous to have a human editor go through and transcribe and take out all that shit. So it’s well worth the $1.25 a minute to have them do that, so you don’t have to spend the next 45 minutes or an hour taking out all your stupid shit, in the words, which for me is ridiculous.

So some of these live streams, it’ll be 4,500 words. The first, probably, 10 of these I did, I thought Otter was a good idea. I was like, it’s going to be fortunate getting all this stuff transcribed, and it would take like an hour, an hour and a half. It would have been shorter for me to write the article than it was for me to edit the article. And I started looking at all of the paragraphs and every single paragraph was like, “So, um, so, um, so, um.” Down.

I was like, wow, there’s a lot better ways to turn this into a good intelligible transcript that isn’t machine-based, so that’s why we went with the human transcriptionist at Rev. So ideally, you create the video, you pull out the audio, you get it transcribed, which turns into your blog post, now it is your membership content. In a nutshell, you do a couple of those a month. Then you have something that you can charge monthly for. So I think that’s about how to create valuable content for your membership site.

For Questions and Guide

Does anybody have any questions? If you have any questions, go ahead and hit the comments, just throw it in there. I’ll stick around for a couple of minutes and just answer the comments. If you would like to talk about putting together a membership site or optimizing a membership site or running traffic to a membership site, go to doneforyou.com/start, fill in the application, and then schedule a time with my team to jump on a call and just talk about sales funnel, automation, traffic, set up, creating offers, all that stuff. I’d be happy to lend a hand, and I will talk to you tomorrow. I think we’re going to talk about maybe sales copy. I’m not 100% sure what our topic of conversation is going to be, but we will find out. So I will talk to you soon. All right. Thanks. Bye.

The post How to Write The Most Valuable Content For Your Members appeared first on Done For You.

Today, we’re going to continue how to write to make money bandwagon. We started on Monday. We talked about some different ways that you’re able to generate an income online, whether it’s freelance or whether it is writing your blog to sell your stuff, your services, whatever. But at the end of the day, content marketing is based on writing, of course. If you’re able to write anything, whether it’s sales copy or webinars or blog posts or whatever, if you’re able to write, you can generate revenue. You can make money. It is that easy.

The problem, and mostly because everybody fucking hates to write mostly. They’re always too busy. They want to put it off. They don’t feel that their writing is worthwhile. There are all kinds of reasons why people don’t like to write, maybe because it feels too much like school. I don’t know. But as a writer, if you’re able to show up and write for that company or that individual or that blog, then you’re able to generate money. It is as simple as that.

We talked about freelancing yesterday. I showed you where to set up a freelance account, and then you can start bidding on gigs. And there was a little bit of a hiccup halfway … not halfway through, but it took us a couple of minutes to get our profile image right, but then once that happened, we saw all of those projects that were open to bidding.

Writing Blogs and Articles Online

Today what I want to cover is some websites that pay you to write blog posts on an individual basis. Now, these are not simple tasks. I mean, you’re going to see a bunch of different websites that pay you to write, $150, 200, $250 per blog post that you submit, but the requirements are pretty stringent. When you excel as a writer, the world is open to you. You can write books, you can write blog posts, you can sell your stuff. You can offer services to people who are looking for writing. And that’s all there is to it.

For those of you who don’t know who I am, my name is Jason Drohn, creator of DoneForYou.com. We build … We create offers, we build sales funnels, and then we do marketing automation and traffic for companies. And we are always looking for great writers, because writing is one of those skills that are difficult to find, truly.

I had sat in a panel with a friend and client of mine, so he was on the panel and I was kind of in the audience. He just asked me to come down and kind of bounced some questions. And the room was full of graduating seniors. And I told them when it was part of the Q and A answer session, I told them, I was like, “Anybody who is here who can write is going to be so uniquely positioned for the future of marketing, it’s not even funny.”

Those are the skills you need to nurture. It isn’t necessarily about strategy. There’s a lot of people that can execute strategy. It’s not necessarily about running paid traffic. There’s a lot of people who can do that, but when you can write persuasively or just write in general, then you can do a lot of things. There are so many different ways that you can generate revenue when you’re a content creator that you can make money.

The foundation of everything online is content.

It’s the foundation of everything online is content, is the written word. I mean, email copy, webinar copy, even video scripts. I mean, all of it, writing is the foundation of it all. It is a very important skill to have. I told them, I was like, “You have English majors. If any of you have minored in English or whatever, you’re great at English, then you can do whatever you want.” But at the end of the day, showing up and writing is how you’re going to make an impact.

Now, today, this is a simple lesson. If you want to learn how to make money, Google this magic phrase. Google websites that pay you to write. Just do a Google search, websites that pay you to write, and you will find that there are a lot of websites that pay you to write. I’m just going to open up the first couple here. This one is 14 … Little Google breakout box, 14 Websites That Pay Writers $100 Plus. And there is another one, Websites to Pay You to Write 2020 Edition. We’re just going to kick through these. If you want to write, you want to get paid to write, go do this. It’s that simple. 14 websites that pay writers 100 bucks plus. The Cooking Detective so extended guides that pay 150 to $250 depending on the topic, and then articles pay 50 to $75.

These are not simple tasks. This doesn’t usually show up and write 500 words and you make 150 bucks. This is you show up and you provide clarity of thoughts. You provide good, structured material backed up by images that have some keyword phrases in it. You need to be a good writer to make $150 per article, but you can then game the system by writing a bunch of articles for $150 a pop. They can’t be the same article that you submit to four different sites, of course, because that’s duplicate content, but you can rework articles to be on multiple sites. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the same article, but it can be chunks of the same article in different places or arranged into list posts or curated content or whatever.

Websites That Pay You To Write

There are so many different ways to write and add value where it’s not necessarily you coming up with the creation itself.

1. A Fine Parent – pays 75 to $100 plus a $150 bonus for top shared articles

2. Christian Science Monitor

3. Barefoot Writer and Upworthy – which $200 per story

4. Graphic Design School – $100 to $200 for every accepted article or tutorial.

Now, that’s the key, accepted. I mean, when you’re paying 100 or $200 bounty per article, you’re competing with a lot of other writers. You’ll get a payment if your article is accepted.

5. Freelance Switch

Earlier in the week, I talked about a site called Freelance Switch. It was owned by Envato and then Envato, they created the PSD Tutees and everything else, but Envato paid, I think it was 50 or $75 per article and it was just a freelance blog post article about 10 years ago. And then they turned that model into PSD Tutees, and they paid $150 per tutorial. I mean, these are pretty complex, long tutorials, very image-oriented. It’s how to run Photoshop and stuff, so it was pretty specialized stuff. And then they ended up kicking over into Envato.
They knew this model well, and they had hundreds.

I was friends with the founders, and they had hundreds of submissions at any given time that they could literally just kind of pick through and find a really good one and then post it and then they would PayPal the money to the author. When it was published was when they got paid. It’s an important distinction when you’re going this route, but you’re able to generate quite a bit of money from it.

6. Earth Island Journal – pays $100

7. The Great Escape Publishing – pays $100

8. Cosmopolitan – pays $100

9. Parents.com – pays a buck 75 per word for a feature in the print publication.

10. Babble

11. Working Mother

There are lots here. But then if we go to that other art site that I opened up, it was a 100 websites that pay writers in 2020.

We have A List Apart, Today I Found Out, Cracked, The Diplomat, Screen Rant, Site Point. There are so many opportunities to make money and get paid for writing. You just have to look. You have to find a website that you want to write for and then approach it. And like I said, they’re paying you to write, so perfecting your craft and just realizing that there’s a lot of other ways to generate revenue online than strictly selling websites or selling services or selling products. You can freelance. You can write directly for a blog post. Is pretty, pretty easy. You just have to ask the question, “What do I want to do? What do I want to do? How do I want to work? And how do I want to capitalize on this initiative?”

Now, the fact is, so many blogs, websites, companies, had to let go of their people because of the pandemic or their people are working from home. There’s been such a transition in the way work is done that this is a time that you can capitalize on it because everybody is looking for help, but they’re not in their offices or work has just been completely disrupted so they are relying on people to work from remote locations. That means that when they want to ramp up their content, which they are because most companies kind of took a pause in ad spending when the pandemic happened and then started ramping up the content. We’ve ramped up our content hard. I mean, that’s why we started doing these lives. It’s not why, but it was a natural benefit to why we started doing these live streams.

I did it because I wanted to help people in my local area and around who were open to this idea of digital moving online and this is what happened with it. And so many other companies moved the content route, too, so they started producing a lot more content, doing a lot more blogging. Well, of course, and now with remote work, people are working from home, they’re looking, they’re engaging in other writers. They’re engaging other writers for more stuff, more content, faster content, written from home. There are so many other writing-based opportunities that you can work from home if you know where to find them. This is one of those places.

For Questions and Guide

If you have any questions, just go to DoneForYou.com/start and there’s a little chatbot, which is in the lower right-hand corner. Just click it, open it up, ask questions. My team is there and if you have anything else, just walk through the prompts and we’ll go from there. I will talk to you soon. I’ll see you tomorrow. This was a pretty simple lesson because it’s, you ask the question and you go to Google, you find some websites that you like, and then each of them has their submission guidelines and you just follow those. They make it pretty easy. Tomorrow we will be back with a wrap-up. I think we’re going to talk about becoming an ebook author. It’s an additional way to write and make some money online and we’ll talk to you soon. All right. Thanks. Bye.

The post Be A Freelance Writer and Earn Online appeared first on Done For You.

Today we’re going to talk about professional blogging, which is exciting because it’s kind of where I started. At least being enchanted with professional blogging, if you will. Basically what happened was, and I told the story a little bit on Monday. It was this half-done PDF that was how to become a professional blogger, how to start writing, and getting paid. How to create a blog and make money. I printed a PDF and brought it to Pennbriar which was the place where I worked out when I was working at Pepsi before. I remember being on the stair stepper reading this PDF and then went home and built the blog.

The website I built was on Blogspot. I ended up turn around, building it out on WordPress, getting into WordPress. Then that started the journey into Internet marketing and the world and life that I now live. So it all started as being a professional blogger or wanting to be a professional blogger. So the first thing is, what qualifies you as a professional? And that was a question that I had. I remember actually at the time I was in college, I was going to school full time, and I was working full time. So I was working about 60 hours a week and going to college full time, so 20, 30 hours a week and doing homework and whatever. But I remember asking my professor at the time in an eCommerce class, I was like, “What is a professional?

What is a Professional Blogger?

Because I was thinking like, “I want to be a professional blogger”. That sounds fun, right? But what is a professional blogger? What is that? The definition that I came to was having a blog that makes money. Having a blog that generates revenue. Now in my estimation, that is what a professional blogger would be. You are a professional blogger if you have a website or a blog that you make that makes money. I am a professional blogger. Anybody is a professional blogger who has a business and writes articles for a living. Now going into yesterday’s topic, we talked about the single stream of income or the multiple strings of income from a blog, and basically where you’re paid directly for the blogging or the writing activity, or being paid indirectly through services and software that you sell, or whatever.

A professional blogger is usually doing the latter, meaning they are usually paid from the products that they sell, from the ads that show up, from the affiliate’s revenue that they generate, from the services they sell. That’s how a professional blogger usually makes money. No, I mean, you might have sponsorship, and their ads show up, or your writing because of sponsorship or whatever, but nobody pays you for the act of writing on your blog. So that’s just an important distinction, but there are so many different ways of generating revenue once you have a blog up.

Finding Your Niche

The hardest part is finding the inspiration for the content. That’s where things like niche come in. Your passion, your purpose, finding the thing that drives you, the thing that you want to write about because I mean, let’s face it. You’re going to be doing this for years. You’re going to be writing blog posts. You should be, you should at least have something that you’re writing about that you’re happy writing about for years. I can tell you, in my early days from an SEO standpoint, we started sites on all sorts of crazy shit just to generate an affiliate income, and it was fine. We would put up a quick site, we would add two or three blog posts, we’d get it ranked for a certain keyword phrase, we’d drop an affiliate product, and then we just kind of let it go.

Consistency

It was all very smash and grab, let’s promote an affiliate product, let’s make 10 or 20 grand, then wait until it relaunches in a year or six months where we can make a bunch more money. Which is fine, but the problem is, is that kind of quick hits sites when Google re-optimized, like re-indexed everything, those sites went away. Now, I mean, one of the biggest ranking metrics is consistency. Writing and publishing every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, or every Monday and Thursday, so your consistency in writing is essential, at the end of the day, you’re writing for readers. The readers, who visit, watch and listen, are the people who ultimately are going to end up providing revenue to you in some way or another. Whether it’s ads, affiliated, buying products or services, you’re not just writing to an empty chamber and then hoping to make money.

I wrote a blog post for a friend’s site years ago called The King, and I’ve referenced it quite a few times in the 14 years that I’ve been online, but this blog post was like all the things that I fucked up when I first started. And one of them was posting banner ads. I had like 18 banner blocks on one sidebar, even though I only had seven visitors a day coming to the website. Of course, I wasn’t making any money, and it was ugly as shit, so they’re not clicking on anything, which means I’m not making any money.

How to succeed at being a professional blogger?

It’s important to know that you’re going to be happy, passionate, and purposeful about creating content that is going to add value in somebody’s life, to make a difference. 

If you write a couple of articles and then you give up, obviously it’s not going to work. If you trail off writing articles because you don’t have passion for the thing, then it’s not going to work. So you want to pick something that you enjoy. Maybe it’s fitness, maybe it is DIY projects. Maybe… For me, it’s marketing and business. My first blog, JD’s blog that I started 14 years ago, just kind of let it die. And then I, whatever. But so JD’s blog was about specifically, was the intersection between technology and business, which is still where I live.

It’s still the thing I do, except the technology has taken the form of advertising, so it’s what I do is ad tech. By and large, it’s just a more specialized version of the technology, and everything we do is very sales psychology focused on marketing and business. So I’m still pursuing that same thing that I started with years and years and years ago, it’s just a slightly more focused version of that. My point being your passion and purpose, pick that thing that you’re still going to be, it might take a couple of forms, and you might go through a couple of iterations, a couple of life cycles of that thing, but find, figure out something that you like and then evolve to that, and let it help you evolve. And then blog about that.

Tools on Setting Your Own Blog

Today I want to talk about some things and ways that you’re going to be the professional inside professional blogging. I’m going to assume that you have your passion, purpose, like a site set up, all of that other stuff. I probably shouldn’t assume that, so we’re going to go through a small little… We’re going to step back to the beginning, and I only have 12 minutes to get through this. I didn’t decide that it was going to be this. What we’re going to do is I’m going to show you some real quick little tools that I use all the time to kind of discover domain names, set up hosting, all of that stuff.

Now it is way easier to start this professional blogging thing than it was when I started. Blogs are prevalent. Everybody’s got one, shit, I mean, even on Facebook is considered a blog and you can publish posts to it, LinkedIn you can publish posts to it. The problem with those platforms is you don’t control them. You don’t own them. You can’t advertise maybe quite the way you would want to on those platforms, which is the challenge. I mean, you always want, if you’re going to invest this much time in writing something, you want to own the platform that you are writing for. Do you know what I mean?

1. Finding Good Domains

Domainer.com is my favorite place for finding good domain names. If you go up in this top chatbox, then you can just type in a domain name. I just picked up over the weekend digital accelerator, which you’re going to see some cool stuff happen with. So I picked up the.io but we have, .com, .net, those were all taken. But what it does is it lets you see all of the new-age kind of TLDs that are available and it’s updated all the time. I had a domain awhile that I bought like four years ago, DigitalAcademy.io, which we started, which I started building out over the weekend, too.

You’re going to see more about Digital Academy. But if you wanted to, let’s say, what’s good, probloggerintraining.com is available. You can register it. But it gives you a big long list of all the domains that can be registered. You can click right through here and go and purchase this domain through GoDaddy. I want my name, of course, they get the affiliate commission, but they deserve it because they’re awesome. And that’s their incentive for continuing to run this tool. Now there’s a couple of different ways, so once you get a domain name, it’s kind of like your address on the internet. You have to hook that up with a web hosting account.

2. Web Hosting

A Web hosting account is a place on the internet where your website files are living. So whenever you type probloggerintraining.com, then it goes and hits a server out in the middle of cyberspace somewhere, and then it pulls up all of those website files and it loads them on your screen. Hosting is just another piece that you need to have. Now I’ve used Media Temple owned by GoDaddy for years. I like Media Temple. I think most of the web hosts online now are owned by GoDaddy, but Media Temple is real nice. It used to be a premium level of hosting. I think it still is. GoDaddy is the biggest, as far as I know, it’s either GoDaddy or HostGator which are the biggest website hosting platforms. But setting up hosting is pretty simple.

You can register your domain and host it from the same place. The GoDaddy hosting used to be kind of shitty but they’ve done a lot to make it better. All you need is you need just this web hosting. You can do web hosting if it’s going to be a simple little personal blog for a while. Then you can just do this deluxe plan, which is $5.99 or $6.99. Oh, it’s $7.99 a month. So unlimited websites, unlimited storage.

It’s a nice plan to kind of grow into. Once you get to a point where you’re running 3,000, 5,000 visitors a month, you’re probably going to want to upgrade into a bigger, dedicated hosting plan. But of course, you’re going to be generating revenue as a professional blogger. You’re going to be generating revenue that you’re then going to reinvest back into your business for more traffic, for better hosting, for quicker load times. All of that stuff becomes important once you start running a real business from your blog.

3. Content Management System – WordPress

So this is GoDaddy, then the software that we use is WordPress. So wordpress.org. Now, WordPress is an open-source content management system, it’s CMS. WordPress was just a blogging platform before but they’ve expanded to being a content management system over the last probably three or four years. WordPress, from what I know, WordPress powers like 24% of all websites online. It is ridiculously powerful and useful and prevalent. There are thousands of plugins, thousands of themes that help you extend the functionality of WordPress. Install is super quick. So in fact it probably lists it here. The ultimate plan is to use WordPress. You don’t necessarily need to have this ultimate plan for GoDaddy to use WordPress, but WordPress is a one-click installation for most hosting providers. So it is not that difficult. You don’t even need to know about WordPress.org to install it.

And install is a breeze. You set it up, you throw up your theme, your plugins, all that stuff, and then you just start blogging. There are millions of tutorials on WordPress, so it’s really easy to learn, it’s really easy to customize, so that’s where you would start. Now, once you start, once you get your domain name and your hosting and WordPress set up, and you pick your theme and all of that initial setup stuff, then it’s time to start figuring out what you’re going to write. We’ve covered a lot on content marketing and researching keywords and all of that stuff. But what I will say originally is you just want to get some momentum.

Writing Your First Content

I’ve had clients who like, “Well, I’m going to start marketing content”. I’m like, “Okay, cool. Awesome”. And they’re like, “I’m going to create three articles a week for the next year, which is going to give me 150 articles”. And whenever I hear things like that, I’m like, “No, no, no, no, no. You’re going to create one article tomorrow. And then once that one article is done, then we’re going to talk about the article that you’re going to make in two days after that”.

It’s really important to take small steps when accomplishing a task that can be as large as this. Just figure out what your first piece of content is going to be, and write that article and post it, and then give it a couple of days, and then write the next article, and post it and then give it a couple of days, and write the next article and post it. The reason I’m saying this is because when you make up your mind to become a professional blogger when you decide to start messing with this, it is really easy to let your head get the better of you, and say, “Oh man, 150 articles in a year. Like that’s fucking ridiculous”. It’s a lot of words. It’s a lot of words, especially like our average article, when I write an article it’s 1,500 to 2,000 words.

When I transcribe it from these videos, it’s about 4,000 words. For 150 articles, that’s a lot of words. Don’t let the size of that dissuade you from doing something. One article is all it takes. Just let it hang out and be an article a week, and that’s what you commit to. You’re going to have 52 articles by the end of the year. Once you get more comfortable with it, add more in. That is how you build some great content. Don’t try to bite off this huge lump of work that you haven’t even started yet. Because once you, if you commit to writing an article a week, then you look back in six months, and you’re like, shit, that’s awesome. I wrote 25 articles, 30 articles, you know what I mean?

That is where you start to pick up momentum. You’re getting search traffic because it’s all really good content. You’re able to post affiliate links and all that other stuff. So, I have three minutes now to cover some different ways that we can generate revenue. In terms of making money blogging, there are 12 revenue generators. And this is a recap for literally everything we’ve covered in the previous 96 episodes of GSD daily. You can sell your products, eBooks, video courses, membership sites, masterminds, or any of that sort of stuff. It is also possible for you to sell your services.

Whether it’s financial planning services, or marketing agency services, or website design services, or whatever, you can sell them all from a blog, too. You can sell affiliate offers. So whether you find something on clickbank.com that you want to sell as an affiliate, or JBzoo or Commission Junction, or whatever, you can sell affiliate stuff right from your blog post. You can post banner ads. So there are lots of ways that you can get a banner ad snippet and make a couple of cents per ad impression or ad click. Ad sense is one of them, Buysellads.com is another one. There are text link ads, which isn’t so much of a big thing anymore. It used to be huge 10 years ago when I started.

I was making $600, $700 bucks from a little tiny block of text links. Now, when you start blogging and start getting search traffic, I get hit up probably 10 times a day for, they’re going to pay me 50 bucks to put an ad or put a link in an article, or whatever, and just pay me through PayPal. I don’t take them, because we’re trying to promote our things, but that will happen. The sponsored listing, sponsored posts, and all that stuff. Sponsored content is another one. You’ll get the best pay just by writing reviews on products, Amazon products, review services, software, mobile apps, all that other stuff.

Site sponsorships, where somebody does a whole site sponsorship and pays you X amount, $2,500 bucks a month to sponsor your site and their ads show up in front of your readers. Job boards are another one I haven’t played with much. You need to have a lot of traffic to have a good job board up. Sponsored mailings is another one. If you are using your blog to generate an email list, then you can sell $1,000 per mailing to somebody else. You would mail your list on their behalf. So it’s another way to generate revenue. Brokering. So being that you are the center of the action between buyers and sellers, you have creators and consumers, you can connect them in meaningful ways into JV partnerships and stuff, where you take as a second-tier commission.

You can do podcast advertising if you have a podcast. Same with video advertising if you have a video, or if you do video content. So let me drop the link for this blog post here in the chat. There’s a lot of different ways you can generate revenue as a professional blogger. Start writing your content is the most important thing. That is going to, by far and away, getting started in just writing an article a week is going to put you on the path to getting your traffic, to helping people solve problems, and then ultimately to generating revenue in your life.

For Questions and Guide

If you have any questions at all, go to Doneforyou.com/start, fill out the little application, book a time on our calendar, and we will go through an action plan call with you. Where we talk about your business, your content marketing, your ads, your client attraction strategies, your sales funnels. If you have any questions about the content or anything in for a future episode, just go to our website. Click on the little chat box in the lower right-hand corner, either select one of these options to go through and ask a support question. Just type in your chat below and our team will jump on it.

The post Learn To Be A Professional Blogger and Earn Online appeared first on Done For You.

Our GSDdaily this week will focus on internet marketing, of course, digital marketing, internet marketing, that whole thing, but we’re going to go on a slightly different trajectory for this next probably two or three or four weeks. Basically what we’re going to be doing is we’re going to start deconstructing different ways of making money online, building a business, doing the small foundational things that are important for your growth online, and moving a business online. Here is why that matters. As it comes to internet business, online businesses, and stuff, everything boils down to some very simple activities that you just have to do over and over and over again; you have to master; you have to show up and actually partake in, or you need to find somebody to do it on your behalf.

One of those things is writing.  We have talked so much about writing copy, about creating products. We’ve talked about eBooks, video courses, membership sites, sales funnels, webinars, email copy, all of it. Also, we’ve talked about so much stuff, but at the end of the day, it comes down to writing.

Writing is the foundation of doing business online.

Get Paid To Write

This week, we’re going to talk about how to get paid to write. We’re going to talk about a lot of different ways to get paid to write and to make money writing an article. Let’s face it, the people who know how to write online are the ones who can build an audience. It doesn’t necessarily have to belong to blog posts. Some can be short-form, social media posts. Also, it can be Instagram, captions. It can be sales videos, sales letters. There are so many different ways to grow your audience and to generate revenue when you know how to get paid to write, or when you employ writers, or you have a writer on your team and you know how to guide them.

But if you don’t write, then it’s very difficult to get traction. If you don’t write, when really you’re not able to get your message out. You’re looking at the only medium that you have to convey your message in is video, which is fine. Video is great, but video employs lots of other things like body language and all the nonverbal communication that you pick up through it. So you’re factoring in a whole lot of other things rather than just the message that you’re trying to convey. So writing: fundamental skill.

1. Single-Stream Writing

Now this week, as I said, we’re going to talk about different ways to write. What is on the docket for this week? We’re going to talk about blogging. Let’s see. We got blogging, freelancing, copywriting, getting paper articles, that kind of stuff. So every day we’re going to kind of unveil one of these gets paid to write strategies. Today, though, I want to introduce this idea of single-stream revenue from writing or multi-stream revenue from writing, single-stream versus multi-stream. Single-stream is basically where you are paid for the act of writing, meaning you get paid for writing an article. Maybe get paid $100, or $50, or $300, or whatever. You are being paid to ghostwrite a 20,000-word ebook or to be a freelance writer. You’re actually getting paid to write.

The single-stream is you’re looking for a writing job; you’re looking to ghostwrite a book; you’re looking to write articles and have somebody pay you, which is great. You can absolutely make a great living as a writer. If you’re an SEO content writer, you can make $200, $300 per article. You can make excellent money writing. We’ve built sales funnels where people ghostwrite books for $25,000. So if your target revenue is $250,000, you don’t need to ghostwrite that many books. You can find Filipino writers, and that’s what she did. She found Filipino writers to write, and then she was basically an editor. So there are lots of different scenarios for earning through writing.

2. Multiple Stream Writing

This idea of multiple stream income from writing is where you don’t necessarily get paid for the writing itself. You will be paid because of writing. So it’s not like the act. It’s not like a job where you write something, you get paid. But in this idea of multi-stream, you get paid to write, but it’s not directly through writing. You get paid to write because you’re selling something because of the writing because you’re linking to something because of the writing because you’re bonding with an audience because of the writing. Now, it’s just a different idea. It’s a different thought process behind this single-stream and multi-stream.

This multiple stream idea though, you’re writing a blog post to then link it to a product, or link to an affiliate product, or link to a software offer. That software offers is how you end up getting paid. Maybe you get paid 100% of the revenue because it’s your offer. You may get paid 50% of the revenue because it’s an affiliate offer, but regardless you were still writing. It still takes writing in order to pull that off.

Ways To Get Paid For Writing

There are lots of different ways to get paid for writing and we’re going to talk about single-stream writing for a little bit, just to just flesh out some of these ideas.

1. Become an Author

The first is, and it’s the most obvious one, getting paid to write books, getting paid as an author. Getting paid for paperbacks, writing paperback, writing hardcover books, writing reports, writing guides, writing whatever. Whether that is a guide or a book, or report that you want to write and then put out into the world and you want to sell it on your website, or you want to sell it on Kindle, or you want to sell it on ClickBank, or whatever, there are lots of different mediums, lots of different marketplaces that you can sell your book, your ebook.

You just need to be a master of something. So if you are a paleo cooking expert, you might write a paleo cookbook. And then of course that begs the question, how do you get followers? How do you build an audience? And that’s where more writing comes into play.

What you will find when you’re trying to sell your own thing is you’re never done writing. You’re always going to be writing. You’re always going to be producing content. And eventually, you get to a point where you’re like 10 years into it, and you’re just kind of reworking the content that you’ve already made, which is what I find myself doing a lot because we have content from years, 14 years worth of content.

You’re always going to be writing…

One of the big things when people create courses and stuff is they think that once the course is done, once the book is done, once it’s published, once it’s life, that they’ve done. And that is not true. Oftentimes they’re just getting started. They’re just getting started with the writing because they have another a hundred blog posts they need to write in order to promote that thing, or a bunch of videos that they need to create that all need to be captioned or whatever.

In the simplest form, writing is how you get your material out there. Kindle books, reports, guides, all good stuff. You know, so of course a guide, or a report, or short two, three, four, six-page lead magnets, that’s going to be the thing that you’re going to create for an email address. The 20, 30, 5,000, 200-page book, that’s going to be the thing you sell for $37, or if it’s on Kindle is going to be $14.95, or $19.95, or whatever the number is. Paperback is going to be $14. So none of those are going to get you rich. The upsell offers after that book are what is going to make you a lot of money.

2. Ghostwriting

Another way to make money writing is ghostwriting, offering your services up to another person to write their book, or their report, or their whatever. Ghostwriting, again, hugely, hugely profitable. As I said, we’ve worked with clients who have ghostwritten books. They turn it into multimillion-dollar businesses where that’s the offer, ghostwriting books. At the end of the day, everybody hates to write. There are very few people who like to write. I remember back when we were doing a lot of SEO stuff. The number one challenge that we heard or the number one problem that people had was they were like, “I don’t like to write.”

There are some people that like to write. I enjoy writing. I just don’t have time for it anymore, which is why we do video and transcription and stuff, but you still need a written word in order to promote your stuff, in order to get ranked in Google, in order to get the results really that you’re looking for online.

As a writer, you have an unfair advantage because most people don’t like to write. And just understanding that and knowing that there are lots of ways to actually make money writing is a good deal. So ghostwriting, you put an offer together where you’re going get paid to write the report, their book, whatever, and maybe it’s $5,000, or $10,000, or $25,000 to ghostwrite their book. You’re going to dig into their information, maybe listen to some of their videos or their audios or whatever and find out how they write, learn about their stories, interview them, and put together a book that they would have written themselves. That is what effective ghostwriting is. That’s what’s going to make you a lot of money as a ghostwriting author, I guess.

Finding the right Ghostwriter

Finding that person, you might be able to find them on social media. You can definitely find them on a freelance service like Upwork, family, and friends. You might have somebody who was looking to ghostwrite a book, and there might be a deal that you can work out with them. But the freelancing side is kind of the next step. How do you become a freelance writer? We have, it was a product that I put together a long, long time ago, and it was basically how to start a freelancing career. Now, freelancing as a writer is pretty easy anymore. You just set up an account on upwork.com, and you start posting bids for projects. It really is that simple. Upwork is a publicly-traded company now. E-Lance and oDesk came together to create Upwork; maybe one of them bought another or whatever, and then it became publicly traded.

It is a publicly-traded company at the moment. Their stock’s doing okay, especially in this pandemic. Everybody needs outsourced work, or maybe they don’t need outsourced work, but there is going to be a growing demand for remote labor in time. So Upwork, you just create an account on Upwork; you let them know where they need to send your money, then you start posting on the job. And you can write anything. We’ve hired lots and lots and lots of writers off of Upwork. And there are expensive writers, and cheap writers, and overseas writers, and stateside writers, and every type of writer you can think of. The most important thing is making sure that your feedback is good; you have a good five-star rating; you finished up on time. And don’t be expensive, but don’t be cheap, in the number though, the price that you put.

Ghostwriting is a perfect way of getting paid for writing.

If you don’t have your own site, don’t have your own products and you don’t have really your own thing or your own presence, ghostwriting is a perfect way to get paid. If you feel like writing, just go ahead and freelance it, and eventually, you’ll probably be able to pull some of those clients off of Upwork so you don’t have to pay their percentage commissions, so you have a more intimate relationship with the client, so you can become more one on one with their team. Do you know what I mean?

3. Copywriting

The next way to make money writing is copywriting. So copywriting is sales copy, email copy, webinar copy, all of the stuff that we talk about. Now, I never really liked writing a whole lot, was never really good at it. Well, I can’t say that. I was pretty good at it. Didn’t really like it until I was in college and I had this exposition writing level one or something. Expository writing I think was the name of the class. And I wrote papers like I did in high school, very research-oriented, very everything.

Basically, this class was to get you to open up your writing. I had a great teacher, professor, and the professor basically said, “Anything goes. You can write whatever you want. Use your imagination. Write whatever you want.” And by the end of this class, I was able to start opening up in terms of how I wrote.

Gaining more confidence…

I was gaining a lot more confidence in how I wrote. And then, I think I was in school for three years or four years, and I started writing a blog. My first blog was jdsblog.com. I earn for writing when I started blogging. Then I was posting ads all over the place and whatever. And I started writing just whatever I thought. I started writing and putting essays together and stuff the way that I thought that they should go together, and I started getting much better grades in that class.

My confidence started going up as a writer. I made the transition online, I started blogging, started trying to find traffic, realized that I wasn’t getting any traffic. Started keyword bloating blog posts, and then learning how to write sales copy and everything else. And I really fell in love with the persuasiveness of writing, to the point now where, you should watch me write an email. It’s ridiculous. I overthink every word.

In terms of getting paid to write, copywriting is a very, very high dollar skill, running webinars, writing sales copy, writing, email copy. When you are a copywriter and you’re good at what you do, you can command money, because, from a direct response standpoint, you are 100% in control of the revenue that is produced by that sales copy. The highest-paid copywriters in the world will charge 25- $50,000 for one sales letter because they know that that sales letter is going to make the company a million dollars, or $2 million or $5 million, and it’s just one sales letter. That is how really high-end copy works.

How to be a great copywriter?

• practice copy
• write a lot of copying
• rewrite
• test
• tweak
• rewrite
• continue seeing what works best.

What are some of the tricks? How do you use headlines and sub-headlines? Also, how do you tie emotion and logic into sales copy, and where should you do that? Furthermore, how do you do price drops? All kinds of other stuff, as it relates to just writing persuasive copy. That is where copywriting gets a lot of its value. If you like psychology, if you like persuasion, if you are a good sales guy, and you also like to write, copywriting is probably going to be right up your alley. Again, you can be a freelance copywriter. You can post jobs on Upwork, or not post jobs, but you can take jobs. Upwork posts all kinds of sales copy projects. It’s a very in-demand skill. It always will be. You’re not going to be at work.

Challenge is, there isn’t a lot of really great copywriting courses because it’s very difficult to teach. It’s very difficult to teach copy because, at the end of the day, the people who write a lot of copy are not usually the best teachers. I’ve listened to a lot of audio programs on copy and how to sequence things. The only way for it to work really well is when you listen to the courses and the programs and then you write. In writing, you have to write; you have to write. In any of these things you have to write, but for copywriting, you have to write a lot.

Websites That Pay Per Article

We’re going to cover this and during the week, but there are sites that you just get paid per article, $50 an article. Years ago, years and years and years ago, there was a site called FreelanceSwitch, which the makers of Envato, the creators of Envato were running. Basically, they were paying people $50 per blog post that they wrote and published. The site had a stack of 2,000 blog posts that people submitted. The website picks the best articles and the writer will be paid $50 bucks. The chosen articles were published on their website. Then they ended up taking that model to their PSD tutees, which was all their tutees series. They started paying like $100 and $150 per tutorial that somebody sent in and then they published. It is now Envato Elements Envato Marketplace, the whole marketplace thing.

From what I remember, they kind of pioneered the model. There were some sites that were doing it. Now there are quite a few sites that we’ll pay you for submitting articles. I will drop those. I think it’s on Thursday we’re going to be covering that stuff. Of course, the big one is just being a professional blogger, having a blog on your own that you have set up is your own website. We’re going to go through how to do all of this stuff.

We use WordPress, a self-hosted version of WordPress. You can set up the domain name of website hosting at GoDaddy, then you can just install WordPress and start blogging. Really, simple stuff. I think we’re going to go through and actually do that all on a live stream. It might be a little bit longer episode, but just so it’s in the can. And then if you learn something, that would be awesome.

Basically blogging as a profession is you!

1. need to restart writing content
2. you need to start getting some traffic
3. you need to figure out how you’re going to make money with that traffic, whether it’s sponsorships, posting ads, or selling your own thing, which I recommend.

Being a professional blogger isn’t about the writing. It’s not about traffic. It’s about the offers that you make after you get the traffic. But in order to get traffic, you also need to write. So that’s one of those multiple stream things. That is what we’re going to be talking about this week in get-paid-to-write week.

For Questions and Guide

If you have any questions at all, just go to doneforyou.com, fill in the little box in the chatbox. And if you would like to talk about setting up anything business-related, whether it’s traffic, setting up sales funnels, automation, just go to doneforyou.com/start, and fill in the little form, and we’ll get started.

The post How To Become A Blogger And Get Paid appeared first on Done For You.

Content marketing isn’t just about creating content and publishing it on different social media platforms, but the most crucial part begins just after that – measuring and analyzing its success.

Although it is important to evaluate your content marketing activity, only 8% of marketers consider themselves ‘good enough’ at finding the right way to analyze and measure their content marketing success. If you’ve been finding it hard to track results, you desperately need to find a way to measure the impact of your efforts. Before we delve straight into it, let’s get our basics straight.

What is content marketing?

According to the Content Marketing Institute, “Content Marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly-defined audience – and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”

If you read the definition again, you would realize that the main purpose of content marketing is to get more conversions. Having a specific process does help you to achieve that.

Here are some basic content marketing metrics that will give you a starting point and an overview to form and analyze your strategy in the right way:

1. Unique visits (website traffic)

One of the easiest and most basic ways to analyze your content is to track the number of visitors that viewed the content on your website within a specific time frame. The major part of measurement should revolve around website analytics because your content is web-based.

Having an analytics solution like Statly is a great way to keep track of website traffic, understand the game of keywords, crawl rate, bounce rate, and more. Collecting this information could be game-changing for you and ultimately, improve conversions in a big way.

However, if you’re using Google Analytics, here’s what you need to know:

To measure unique visitors in Google Analytics, click on Audience in the top left and then click on Overview. You will get a graph indicating the number of times a unique visitor has visited a site over the last 30 days.

Analyzing this information could be game-changing for you and it could, ultimately, improve conversions massively.

2. Social media metrics

The content you share on various social media handles could often reveal your true standing in the market in the form of likes, comments, shares, and an increase in followers.

Likes and comments: The number of likes and comments directly reflect if the content resonates and can evoke a reaction or not.

Shares: The high number of shares means the audience finds the content relatable and valuable.

Follower growth: The rise in the number of followers over a specific period of time is indicative of whether your brand is headed in the right direction or not. LinkedIn, Facebook, the Instagram following are some great platforms to check the total rise in your followers.

You don’t have to take the pain to find the analytics as there are plenty of tools like HootSuite that help track shares and scheduling posts.

For instance, in Hootsuite, you get to see real-time results, insights into trends that can help you measure the impact of your content across various platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Apart from HootSuite, some other popular tools which you can use are Klout, Quintly, and SproutSocial to name the major ones.

3. Email and newsletter metrics

Email is used worldwide and according to Radicati’s Email statistics reports, emails will be used by more than 3 billion people by 2020. While there are many benefits of using email marketing, the one that is surely going to keep you in the business is the fact that email’s return on investment is massive.

With email metrics such as:

• the number of opened emails
• email click-throughs
• conversions 
• bounce rate
• overall ROI,

you can easily gauge if your product can strike a chord with prospects or not.

Here is a look at how to calculate each of them.

To calculate the click-through rate:

(Total clicks / Number of delivered emails) * 100

To calculate the conversion rate:

(Number of people who completed the desired action ÷ Number of total emails delivered) * 100

To calculate bounce rate:

(Total number of bounced emails ÷ Number of emails sent) * 100

To calculate the overall ROI:

[($ in additional sales made minus $ invested in the campaign) ÷ $ invested in the campaign] * 100

It is worth mentioning here that the statistics you need to track to measure your email marketing success may vary based on what you are trying to achieve with your content. Therefore the list mentioned here is not strictly exclusive of these metrics.

These metrics give you an overall idea of whether the efforts you are putting are going in the right direction or not? Based on the results you can either plan to change the entire strategy or make amends in the existing one and crack the code of successful content marketing.

4. Lead generation

The ultimate aim and top organizational goals for content marketers are generating leads. Needless to say, one should definitely track these metrics and observe how they can be incorporated into your strategy. Don’t just stick to blogging – explore other avenues, like that of ebooks, which could massively boost your leads. 

Using content for lead generation is one of the oldest and most dependable methods. However, to measure the success of your content marketing lead generation campaign, make yourself well-aware with lead generation metrics such as:

Click-through rate (CTR)

(Total number of clicks / Total number of visitors) X 100

Conversion time

Total time spent by all visitors / total number of leads

ROI

But before you do that you need to be well versed with the basic lead generation funnel. Here’s a pictorial representation that might help you understand it better:

Source: Singlegrain.com

Lead scoring is the best way to identify high-quality leads which is a process of ranking and identification of leads in terms of their chances to convert into sales.

Apart from these basic metrics, it is always a smart idea to keep a check on the cost you are spending on the campaigns. Hence you must also track metrics such as Cost-per-click (CPC), Cost per lead, etc.

The most important reason behind keeping track of the metrics is well explained in these words by Peter Drucker, “If you can track and measure something, you can also manage and improve it.”

5. SEO metrics

If you see a considerable rise in page visits, website rankings, and conversions, then SEO had a big role to play. Knowledge of the right keywords and advising writers on how and where to use them in the content and title are some surefire ways to increase traffic and generate increased click-throughs from search results.

Here are the basic elements of a successful SEO strategy:

Keywords: To target what people are searching for when discovering their business in a search engine. Google Keyword Planner is a great tool that can help you in this.

Meta tags: To help Google look at your page title as a signal of relevance.

Content: Creating quality content is the best way to create a great user experience and Google agrees to it. when it comes to creating and curating the most impactful content on the web, Curtely is a tool that can be of great help.

Backlinks: If the content is the king, backlinks are the queen, and quality matters a lot here.

Social media: To send signals of authority to the search engines.

It is essential to leverage the importance of SEO and incorporate the elements mentioned here with content that is crisp, out-of-the-box, engaging, and actionable.

To help you perform the analysis of your SEO strategies better, there are tools such as BuzzSumo and SEMRush that are very useful to discover the most shared content and relevant keywords in just a few seconds. You can use them to good effect and see how they can be game-changers.

6. Subscribers

Your subscription-list could be a direct indicator of the value and impact you leave on your audience. After all, you haven’t made your business blog only to get a huge list of followers, right?

Having a large and loyal fan-base is an effective way to get more views, reads, and visits on your blog. The larger the list of subscribers, the more chances of getting them converted. If the number of subscribers is nose-diving or becoming stagnant, it could be a hint to produce more engaging content to get more traffic, which would further become your subscribers.

What are the metrics that matter to you the most?

The most successful content marketing strategies are those that smartly tick off most of the above methods to track and analyze results. It is advisable to make use of capable social media tools to gain more insights and get more leads.

What are your key content marketing metrics for measuring content marketing success? Are there any other ways or metrics that you would like included on the list?

How to measure content marketing success?

For our GSDdaily today, we are going to be talking about how to measure content marketing success.

TOPICS:

1. how to measure content marketing success results
2. measuring performance
3. how to create content
4. how to do keyword research
5. what kind of content to create
6. how to split test subject lines for your blog posts
7. all kinds of different how to measure content marketing success related things.

At the end of the day, that is really what is going to drive the success of your business, the success of how well that content is going to perform. We’ve talked about advertorials, we’ve talked about a lot of different stuff.

Today we’re just going to dig into the stats side, the numbers side of content, so that you can start to take a look at how to know if what you’re doing is actually working, which is difficult to tell sometimes because you put a lot of time and a lot of effort and a lot of money into creating content, and we kick this whole thing off with the idea that there’s no free traffic. You are either going to pay for traffic in time or money. If you want quick traffic, then the quickest way to do it is to pay for traffic in money, is to do Facebook ads or Google ads or any of those other things.

If you are okay investing time and knowing that it’s going to take a little bit longer to get results, then you can absolutely write content, have content written for you that then ends up ranking on Google, or ends up bonding with your clients, or you end up being able to use it as advertorial content, that kind of thing. At the end of the day, it’s really just about figuring out what people want to read, what people want to learn about, what people are coming to you for in terms of problems, and then putting content together that is posed as solutions for those things. That’s really going to be what ends up moving the needle for your business. Now, we have a blog post that we’re going to cover today.

We’re also going to go through some stats and some of the stuff that I look for our content, for our business. So here is the link. Let me just share this inside the comments section here. This is going to be the post, that’s every morning post, there we go. That’s the post that we’re going to start riffing on today. Then let me just share this screen here real quick. You should be able to see that now.

1. Unique Website Visitors Metrics

Probably the biggest number one driver that your content marketing is working is going to be unique visitors. How many unique visitors is your content serving up for your business? How many people are coming into your, or hitting your website, or reading your content from a unique user standpoint? That is one person, one set of eyeballs that come to your website within one month. How many users, how many individual people are you bringing in?

That is metric number one. But oftentimes it doesn’t really start there. One of the things that we track a lot is impressions, SEO impressions, organic impressions. And the reason we track that so much really is because before you get a sale, you got to get somebody to opt-in, or you got to get them to raise their hand and say, yes, I have a problem. Content is the same thing. Before you get a unique visitor, you have to get ranked in the search engines and it will guide you on how to measure content marketing success.

You are not going to write a piece of content and then, well not anymore, and then two days later you’re going to get ranked on the first page of Google and get a flock of traffic. It is a gradual process. You are going to write a piece of content and then it’s going to rank on the fifth page of Google. Then you need to be aware that it ranks on the fifth page of Google so that you can then optimize the content so that it ranks to the third page and the second page and the first page of Google. That is when you start getting traffic.

But you have to be aware that it’s ranking before you can start optimizing for it. Do you know what I mean? It all follows this kind of content optimization process. Now, you might get lucky. You might write a blog post, put a video out, do a podcast, or whatever, and it’s just a freaking barn burner and it gets shared. The likelihood of that is, you’re probably better off being struck by lightning before that actually happens. So you can take the analytic and procedural approach and watch rankings, watch traffic, see where your opportunities are and then influence those opportunities. But unique visitors is the primary number one metric before you can start digging into everything else.

2. Social Media Metrics

There are social media metrics too, page likes, shares. We don’t do a lot with social media marketing, with social media virality. Of course, building an audience is building an audience. But like I said, posting a piece of content and then having it be awesome is a rare occurrence. But you can use a tool like Hootsuite, which we use Hootsuite for our social media posts. We don’t have great engagement with our staff. But for us, it’s more about being present and being on, being seen in the social media spheres and then we augment that through paid traffic.

3. Email and Newsletter Metrics

There’s also email and newsletter metrics. If somebody is coming in because of your content, they are opting in for your reports, buying your products, all of that kind of stuff. Then, of course, there are metrics there. So you’re looking at new leads, you’re looking at sales, you’re looking at the number of opened emails or the email click-throughs, the bounce rate of the pages. Basically, overall like ROI, return on ad spend kind of stuff. Then there are some useful little nuggets here, little equations to help you calculate that stuff.

4. Lead Generation Metrics

Lead generation is a big one. So much of our content, we try to generate leads from, whether it’s an exit pop or whether it’s a native ad or something like that. But generating the ROI from the content is… The content itself doesn’t generate ROI. Content frames the sales piece that generates the ROI. Content is always a piece of the funnel, it isn’t the funnel. So you have to just be diligent in understanding that whenever you’re putting your own campaigns together.

5. SEO Metrics

The last one is SEO metrics. We have what pages are you ranked for? What keywords are you ranked for? How many impressions does that particular keyword phrase get? Those are all the big questions when it comes to organics that guides us on how to measure content marketing success. And we’re going to walk through some of the things that I look through in stats. Then we have subscribers, subscribers to your YouTube channel, subscribers, followers, views, time watched is a big one on YouTube. All of that stuff, useful metrics to take a look at. I would say pick three that are important to you.

My personal pick:

1. Users
2. SERP rankings
3. daily leading

My own personal three that I look at all the time and I actually have a little dashboard set up for myself are users – organic users and SERPs. The rankings inside the search engines. Users, SERP rankings, and then the third one is daily leading. How many leads you are signing up for. When those three things are in line, then the business is doing really well. None of them have to do with revenue on the outset, but they’re all correlated in some way. More leads, more search traffic. More search traffic means less money we’re spending on ads to acquire new customers, that’s a good number. The more leads we have, the more people in the email sequences and open up stuff inside sales funnels. Anything we do to drive those metrics makes a lot of sense and will help on how to measure content marketing success.

Now we’re going to kick over to, there are three things that we’re going to dig into. One of them is Google Analytics. Let me just open it up here, analytics. google. We’re going to dig into Google Webmaster Tools, and then we’re also going to dig into SEMrush. All right. We’re going to start with Analytics. I’m just going to walk you through what I look at when I’m digging into Analytics. So we’re going to go here. All right. When I’m looking at Google Analytics… I’m just going to make this big so you can see it here. All right, I don’t know that that’s quite big, but let me widen this out a little bit. Yeah, I think that helps a little bit. Okay.

Google Analytics

When I’m looking at Google Analytics, basically what I’m looking at is, of course, we have us, this is users within a week. What I tend to dig down into is I’m looking at acquisition and then I’m looking at search console and I’m looking at mostly queries. What I want to know when I’m looking at queries is what are we ranking for, where is our traffic coming from and how to measure content marketing success? Where is our opportunity? When we’re looking at this number here, let me get back here, here we go. So when we’re looking at our query information, then what it’s going to do it right now it’s organized based on clicks.

The number of clicks we received for these particular keyword phrases. Really, really good information, but this isn’t necessarily where I always start. This is good to know. Done For You, we get a lot of traffic for done for your agency, done for your service, done for your marketing agency, webinar creator. But oftentimes, what I do is I sorted a little bit differently. I sorted based on impressions because when I sorted based on impressions, then what I’m seeing is we have 21,000 impressions for keyword phrases and only 229 clicks. So there’s a lot of opportunities there that we can play with.

I’m going to drop this down to a hundred queries here, and we see that one of our biggest opportunities is the keyword phrase business consultant, Done For You showed up and got 763 impressions for the keyword phrase done for you or the keyword phrase business consultant. But we got zero clicks. So where did that happen? Our average position is 74, which means it’s on the eighth page of Google, the eighth page, seventh page. And it’s way deep in Google, but still 763 impressions. Marketing automation agency, 529 impressions. We’re 41 in Google. What is a flash sale? 255 impressions. We got 10, average position tens, we are at the bottom on the front page.

When I’m looking at results, I’m like, okay, where can I exploit some of these things? Can we have a lead magnet blog post about business consulting or how to become a business consultant, which we do? How do I continue growing the traffic with these particular keyword phrases? So this is the question that I’m asking myself. Like Done For You services, 142 visitors. We got 18 clicks and we were in spot three for that. So how do we get to spot two? How did we get to spot one? These are just some of the things that I look at when I’m looking at data and saying, okay, how do we exploit this stuff? How do we get in here and rank for these keyword phrases a little bit better?

Now, you can do the reverse of this. Like if we go in and we’re looking at business consultants, we can go into the pages and say, what are our best, what are our top pages? So it’s going to list all of our top pages and then our impressions, and then we have the number of clicks.

Here we see that the top 15 fastest ways to increase online sales have got 967 impressions, but yet it only got three clicks. Why is that? And the click-through rate is 0.31. Our average position is spot 44, which means it’s on the fifth page of Google. We, of course, can click here or we can go visit the page. So let’s go visit the page. We’re just going to take a look at it. Actually, it opens in another window, which you cannot see. So let me just copy this. Here you go. This is the other window.

This is the blog post. There was a podcast episode 17. So this video is quite old. I made that video last year sometime. When you have a lot of content, this is one of those things that happens. Some shit gets old. Here, we have a podcast, we have some stuff, whatever. But from a blog standpoint, there’s an opportunity there. Top 15 fastest way to increase online sales, we got 967 impressions. So let’s click this URL. When we click this URL, what it’s going to do is it’s going to give us the search queries that we’re ranking for. So these, it looks like 86 keyword phrases. If you look way down here, this is the first 10 of 86 keyword phrases.

What we’re going to do is we’re going to expand this to a hundred and then we’re going to run a similar little thing. To increase online sales, that particular keyword phrase, we are spot 41 and there were 168 impressions, but zero clicks. Now, how to increase online sales, 50 impressions, spot 32? Boost website sales, 39 impressions, spot 31. Basically, what I’m doing is if I can rank for any one of these keyword phrases on the blog post that is already there, if I can push the phrases up so I’m ranking in on the first page, second page, third page, whatever, then I’m able to increase my traffic without having to do a whole lot of work. So I’m seeing how I can generate more free traffic for these particular keyword phrases to a blog post.

These are just all things that I look for in quantifying how to measure content marketing success. This is just one little area, we can dig in. We’ve done some dailies on content optimization. It’s probably going to take a little bit longer to put together a content optimization. Maybe I’ll do a content optimization week at some point. So these are just some of the stuff that we look at.

Google Webmaster Tools

Now, Google Webmaster Tools, actually, this search console tool, this is what we’re looking at inside here. This gives you some good, solid analytic data. I tend to find some different opportunities if I go look at the same type of data, but from the inside, let’s see, I have too many accounts. This tool will help on how to measure content marketing success

So here inside the search console, we see different kinds of stats. So if we go to a performance, then what we can do is we can open up. We have in the last, so we’ve got 7,000 total clicks, 361,000 total impressions. Then we have our average position site-wide, it’s spot 42. Then we have our keyword phrases down below. We have all of our ones and we can resort from impressions. Now, notice how this gives us a little bit of different information. So when we did this over inside Google Analytics, the business consultants came up first and the number was smaller. Then a marketing automation agency came up below that. But marketing automation agency, it’s huge, it would be a huge win for Done For You to rank for. That’s what we’re trying to rank for.

Now, if we click on a marketing automation agency, it is then going to show us, it’s just going to single it out. Then what we can do is if we add, if we just hit pages then, so we have pages, Oh, I’m sorry, we got queries. That’s it. We have a marketing automation agency. Here, there’s a way that we can see. Yeah, there we go. This is the page that we can optimize for marketing automation agencies. Now let’s pull this back and if we can go into queries, or here, let’s do this. We’re going to look at doneforyou.com and see all the keyword phrases that we’re ranked for the homepage. So we’re just looking at Done For You, we got 27,000 total impressions, 2,100 total clicks.

If we look at queries, you will see that we’re ranking for 211 keyword phrases in total on the homepage. Done for you, done for your services, done for you, do for your agency, blah, blah, blah. Then all the keyword phrases were ranked in the top 10 pages of Google.

SEMrush

Some of them are like 10 and then other ones are like, there’s a spot 75. Sales funnel development agency, we are spot 75 in Google. So anyone of these is great opportunities to rank for too. Of course, just tracking all of it tends to be one of the challenges, which is why there’s a tool called SEMrush, which makes it somewhat easy. Maybe not totally, totally easy, but easy enough. So we’re going to log into SEMrush. If I can remember my password here, I usually do this on my other computer. Here we go.

All right. Here, we have Done For You, and this is our main dashboard. Let’s see, we’re going to do position tracking here. What position tracking is going to do is going to tell us all of our position tracking in time. So our landscape is, over the last, we ended up getting a pretty good bump in position. If we go into overview here, we’re going to see how our visibility has changed. And some of it is due to just algorithm updates, they always do an algorithm update checker, but here we have Done For You. Position one on July 16th, position one on July 22nd. Then we have a self-hosted landing page builder. We were spot 35 and now we’re spot 32. For the promotion of our affiliate products, we were spot 99, but we fell out of the top 100.

There are lots of ways to track the keyword phrases here. SEMrush tends to be one of the best ones that we have found. You can also do a lot of paid traffic stuff and competitive intelligence. Whenever we are trying to put together with intelligence reports for competitors, like for our paid traffic clients, we’ll jump into SEMrush and see how much traffic their competitors are spending. If we can find some competitors that we maybe didn’t know existed for that ad spend or for their Google ads or if somebody is ranking for a particular keyword phrase, or when we’re looking at doing a site audit or investment or whatever, we’ll come in here and see how much traffic their website is really getting. Before we have to do a deep dive into their analytics, we can get a good idea of what we’re seeing just through SEMrush.

There’s a lot of different ways you can cut up this tool, but bringing the whole thing back around, tracking metrics and tracking for your content marketing and for your search results and your organic views and all that stuff. It’s really just spending 10, 15, 20 minutes a day looking at your traffic, seeing what you can do to better it, taking action on that and implementing those changes, and then moving forward the next day. It sounds easy and it is easy, but it just takes a little bit of time. You just have to be diligent, write content, and track it. Also, you have to know what you’re looking at and optimize it. The only way to get good at it is really to do it. Just do it, get some experience in it, track it, see what influences your rankings, and go from there.

For Questions and Guide

If you have any questions at all, any thoughts, just go to doneforyou.com/start, fill out the little application. We can jump on a call and we can go through and look at your content. Look at your traffic stats. We can go through, do a marketing audit, put together an action plan for your sales funnels or your paid traffic strategies, whatever, make sure you got the right sales funnel in place. If you have any questions, if you just hit Done For You, just go to the Done For You main page, in the lower right-hand corner, there’s a little chatbox. You can go in, you can search from the dropdown. You can ask the question here, it’s going to get routed to our team. If there’s anything we can do, just let us know. Doneforyou.com, and have a fantastic weekend.

Next week, I’m not real sure what we’re going to talk about yet. It’s episode 96. Next week is episode 96 to 100. And then the week after, is that it’s going to be episode 101 when you’re going to be, it’s switching things up. We’re still going to do dailies, but we’re going to do them in different categories. I’m not real sure how it’s going to look yet. It’s going to be like just create, just the automation, scale and expand. I’m not sure if we’re going to do it weekly. If we’re going to do them weekly, we’re going to put them into their own podcast channels. I’m not sure yet, but we’re still going to do them daily. So we’ll still have those.

The post Measuring Content Marketing Success Of Your Business appeared first on Done For You.

You create content and publish it on your blog continuously. Amplify your content distribution using social media and you also strive to grow your email list, and maybe you run paid advertising campaigns with targeted and complete sales funnels.

Over 80% of everyone who arrives at your website or your landing pages will leave without taking action. This, in turn, means that you are losing over 80% of your potential prospects.

That hurts; you don’t want to lose your potential customers, do you?

On average, less than 2% of your web visitors will ever buy. You want to do much better than that. Retargeting is a great way to refuel your funnel, boost conversions, and bring back all those potential customers you could have otherwise lost.

What is retargeting

Retargeting helps you reach out to those exact people who visited your landing pages or website by targeting those audiences exclusively in your paid campaigns. It works on advertising platforms such as Facebook and Google. Furthermore, retargeting will show ads to web visitors regardless of their initial source.

For instance, you could launch retargeting campaigns to traffic from any of the paid traffic sources. Or you could retarget to all the visitors of your website or landing pages (including organic traffic).

Retargeting is often overlooked and not many businesses actually make the best use of it. The fact is that your inbound marketing funnel is never optimized without retargeting.

You have regular funnels that you use for advertising campaigns with the goal to reach out to new audiences and expose them to your brand and offers. You then have retargeting funnels which are slightly tweaked versions of your main funnels with the goal to bring back visitors who left your site and convert them into leads.

How to make retargeting work

To make retargeting work you should follow these tips today:

Start with well-defined audiences

To begin with, build only one general audience on your advertising platform. This should consist of everyone who visits any of your web properties.

A general audience could be all visitors to your website and/or all visitors to your landing pages or both combined — regardless of the platform on which you are building an audience (Facebook or Google).

Every other audience you’ll build is going to as specific as it can get.

Here’s an example of a high-intent audience for a service business.

1. People who read your blog.
2. Then, those who checked out your products or services.
3. Those who visited your pricing page.

Or an audience of an e-commerce store, which has the following behavioral attributes:

1. Visited store.
2. Browsed products.
3. Added items to cart & did not make a purchase.

You can get as specific as you can. The more specific you get with an audience, the better results you’ll be able to get with laser-focused retargeting campaigns.

Don’t wait too long or launch too early

Whether you are building audiences on Facebook (using the Pixel) or on Google (using Google’s Audiences feature set), don’t make the mistake and launch too late or too early.

If you launch too early, your audiences won’t be populated yet. In plain English, this means that your potential audience doesn’t know you well enough to make a purchase yet.

If you are too late, your retargeting campaigns might not be able to catch your potential customers hot on the button and ready to buy.

The appropriate time to launch your retargeting campaigns is to launch when you hit the sweet spot with your audience size. An exception to this is the default generic audience, as this is an audience you can target anytime you want.

For all other audiences, aim to gain at least a couple of hundreds of unique visitors before launching a retargeting campaign.

Don’t ask for the sale

With Amazon, people don’t have a problem clicking on the “buy button”; they trust Amazon and believe that their purchase is secure (among other things).

For other businesses, an instant purchase is a little too much to ask from a new web visitor. No matter what kind of a campaign you run — regular paid ads or retargeting ads — newly acquired traffic won’t convert that fast.

Taking that credit card out and purchasing from you is not going to come naturally to most people who aren’t familiar with your brand yet. You’ll probably make a few sales but it’s not something that’s sustainable or would work in the long-term.

Instead, try launching retargeting campaigns with much less friction and a high-conversion offer, like a free trial, a free download, a free sample, or a sneak peak.

Follow up with automated email campaigns to make those sales happen, over a period of time.

Don’t push too hard

Retargeting is meant to be an assertive way to follow up, follow through, and to just keep showing up around people almost furtively, as they browse online. It is not meant to be aggressive, “I’ll follow you no matter where you go, till the end of the world” kind of a campaign.

For that reason, keep an eye on “frequency caps” that every retargeting platform or channel allows you to control. Don’t set it frequency cap as “infinite” and then throw your lifetime earnings on campaigns.

The best way to let ads show to a particular visitor is much like how you’d follow up with a potential client on a phone call or an in-person meet — soon after the first contact? Once a week? Once a month? Not all of the time though because pushing too hard will irritate the prospect.

Retargeting demystified

By now, we hope you can see that following these advanced retargeting tips you’ll be able to optimize your campaign and see better results.

Remember, maximizing the potential of your advertising efforts is an ongoing process. Test. Review. Optimize. Repeat.

How are your retargeting campaigns managed? If you’d like to discuss your existing campaigns, sales funnels, or your marketing strategy, get on a scheduled call with us.  If you’d like to build out a paid traffic strategy, including retargeting, from scratch…  We’ve got a number of ad management packages that you can pick from!

GSDdaily Episode 90

Today, we’re going to summarize, put a capstone on the retargeting week. Basically, we covered everything retargeted related. I mean we talked about how it’s usually the quickest way to generate sales from the traffic that has already been to your list. We talked about how to set up banner ads and creating audiences. Also, we talked about pixels and all that other stuff. So today we’re just going to recap it and talk about what your next steps are if you want to implement retargeting or you would like somebody to do it for you.

First of all, for those of you who don’t know who I am, we’re always getting new people, there are always new folks who are watching these videos and stuff and learning about internet marketing and whether it makes sense for their business and everything, which of course it does because we are living through a pandemic at the moment. My name is Jason Drohn, creator of doneforyou.com. We specialize in creating offers, building sales funnels, and also doing the marketing automation and the traffic to drive sales for your business. Today we’re finishing up the retargeted piece.

Here’s a post that is going to walk you through the basics of retargeting campaigns, stuff that we’ve covered in the last couple of weeks. This top video here is us right now, so this is the Livestream.

First of all, what is retargeting?

We covered this on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday, but retargeting is when somebody comes to your website or they watch some of your video or they are on a customer list or a prospect list and you upload them into a system. Retargeting is where you show that person a banner ad or an ad of some kind to bring them back into your website, to bring them back into a sales process, to bring them back to an order form. That’s what retargeting is.

Retargeting goes by the phrase remarketing too in Google language. Remarketing, retargeting, same thing. If you have ever gone and looked at a hotel in Las Vegas and then you’ve found that they’re following you around. You go to the hotel and then you start seeing their ads everywhere, which is retargeting at its finest. I know that the explanation might be belaboring the point because retargeting is something that’s four or five years old, but at the same time, it’s the most powerful form of advertising, especially if you’re not doing paid traffic.

It is the way to do paid traffic, it is the way to get started with paid traffic. Even us, we drive a lot of traffic. The sole purpose of the code traffic we drive is to grow the retargeted audiences. The retargeted audiences are actually the things that generate a tremendous amount of return on ad spend.

How retargeting works?

We set up a pixel, the pixel gets added to a website and basically every time somebody comes to that website then a cookie gets added to the web browser. Basically, that cookie travels around with them everywhere else they go. So if that cookie is present in the web browser then your ads show up to them, so it’s a way for a company like AdRoll, which is an ad platform. It’s a way for AdRoll to basically match your visitors with your banner ads and then it serves up those banner ads.

It’s very, very nice, very easy, and the audiences can be as generally wide as you want them to be. An audience could be all visitors who have come to your website in the last 180 days. They can be an audience who could be everybody who reads your blog. The audience could be only the people who visit your products or only the people who visit your services. They can be only the people who add that item to a shopping cart are actually going to see my ads.

There is a lot of different customization when it comes to audiences, and then you also want to exclude all of your buyers, all of the people who took action with your business, all of the customers. You don’t want them seeing ads for things that they just bought. That’s where the audiences come into play. You have a big audience of people who’ve been to your website and a small audience of people who have bought, so you want to make sure that they don’t see your ads.

Now, when it comes to retargeting you don’t want to wait too long to actually show them ads. If somebody hits your website and then they don’t see ads for 30 days that’s too long. If they hit your website and they’re seeing your ads 60 or 90 days later but they haven’t been back to your website then you’re wasting money. The sweet spot is understanding that there’s a warm area. If they’ve been to your website or they’ve watched a video in the last seven days, they are hot. They know that there’s a problem that they need to solve and they know you are a potential solution for it. Showing them ads is a great idea.

Now if they’ve been to your website for seven to 30 days, so in that other… little bit farther out but they haven’t engaged with your website your brand in any other way between seven and 30 days they’re warm. Those people you should still retarget, but maybe you retarget with a lower ad budget, so those people aren’t nearly as hot as the newer folks.

Then you have your 30 plus day crew. Your 30 plus day crew is they haven’t been to your website, they haven’t watched a video in 30 or more days so those folks can actually come back and buy, so you can have the least retargeting budget for those people or you can just cut them out entirely, it’s up to you how much you want to stretch your budget. The other nice thing about retargeting campaigns is they let you do a lot of cool things on the code traffic side.

You can give a lot of value, you can drive clicks to blog posts, you can have a video that people are watching 10 seconds, 15 seconds, whatever. So you throw this video up and then you can retarget only the people who watch that video. It lets you be really cool upfront and give a lot of content.  It will give a lot of value and engage with people and grow your audience where they are. Then if they are interested in taking that next step with you, then you can retarget them into a product offer or a service.

One of the nice things about retargeting is because you’re building your warm audience by bonding and engaging with them.

Retargeting Frequency

Now you also do not want to push too hard on the retargeting campaigns. When retargeting first started, AdRoll had a really bad problem. All of the platforms, but AdRoll who is the retargeting platform that we like, had difficult frequency issues. Basically, inside AdRoll there are six recommended banner ad sizes that they have. What AdRoll would just literally just litter the whole page with your banner ads. You had a header bar and a sidebar and a footer bar. Some would have banners all over the whole page, so it looked absolutely terrible. Well I mean if you’re a prospect it looks really, really, really spammy.

They have since dropped the frequency, so it’s kind of like who is it? CW, have you ever watched the CW app? It’s funny, my wife and I joke about it but I forget what we were watching, The Flash or something. You see the same commercial five times in a row. That is a remnant ad buy that somebody basically just said, “We’ll take all your remnant space”. They just had to fill holes in the commercial slots. Was it State Farm? I don’t know, one of the insurance agencies or the insurance companies it was four and five in a row. Domino’s pizza four and five in a row. So, bad retargeting is when you have four or five banners all on the same page.

The platform needs to allow for the room so it doesn’t feel spammy even though you’re still following them around. When I say don’t push too hard, be mindful of that. There are some platforms you can even cut down the retargeting frequency. Also, there are some platforms that control the retargeting frequency, so just know that.

When your frequency goes up in retargeting campaigns then it’s not always a good thing. Other than that, from a retargeting standpoint, we talked a lot about AdRoll. We logged in to AdRoll and we created a campaign and our audiences. Talked about Canva for creating banner ads. Canva can create rapidly prototyping different size banner ads and designing them. Another tool that in your retargeting tool belt you’re not going to want to miss.

The other option is Photoshop. You can do Photoshop and create a royalty-free image creative company like Envato Elements has a nice subscription. It’s a subscription service that you get access to a bunch of royalty-free downloads, video stock images, all that kind of stuff, icons, some 3D stuff. You can download this, use it in Canva, use it in Photoshop, but it’s going to give you some nice images that you can use that aren’t necessarily something that you have to create. I mean with retargeting sometimes we’ll end up uploading a lot of different variations of the same creative to see what tests better and then we’ll go through, look at the CPMs, look at the click-throughs, look at the conversions, all that stuff of the creative and disable the stuff that doesn’t work. The same optimization rules hold true for retargeting as any other app platform.

Facebook ads, Google Ads, retargeted ads, whatever, you still want to optimize it, you can’t forget about it, you want to make sure that you’re always optimizing and bettering the creative and always driving people to the next thing that they need to see and making sure that you’re excluding the audiences of the people who already took action. You don’t want them seeing the same ad for the thing that you already did. That’s definitely bad.

Applications For Creating Banners

All right, so now if you would like to… This whole time I’m sitting here talking I’m not sharing my screen.

1. Envato Elements – where we end up grabbing some stock photography.
2. Canva– where we design a bunch of banner ads
3. Photoshop
4. Adobe Creative Suite – which is just a monthly subscription
5. Illustrator

If you’re not a hugely adept graphic designer, Canva’s going to get 98% of the way there. Very, very nice piece of software. AdRoll is the retargeting platform that we use for banner creative. You can also use Facebook retargeting in there, and then you can use Google, of course, Google remarketing. They have their own campaigns that you can use for remarketing. AdRoll is going to give you retargeting on both platforms.

It also gives you a way to back up all your retargeted data. If your Google Ad account gets banned, Facebook ad account gets banned all of your stuff is still safe because it’s inside AdRoll. And this is the article that we were using.

For Questions and Guide

If you have any questions or would like to set up retargeting campaigns or would like to at least chat about it, go to doneforyou.com/start. Fill out the little form and we will get on like an action plan call and walk you through what a retargeting campaign is going to look like, what it’s going to do for your business. Obviously the important parts there are how big is your audience? Do we need to build the audience? Do we need to add some video ads and stuff so that we can build that audience for you and then move people into retargeted traffic? But the quickest path to cash for retargeting is if you have a website that is getting some traffic and then you install the pixel and then you set up the retargeting.

Back on Monday I said, I told you, “Set up the AdRoll account, install the pixel. We’ll be creating audiences in the next couple days,” and that’s exactly what we did. If you want to get into retargeting, you have a website, or you’re getting some traffic and you want to start capturing that traffic into retargeting banner ads, set up an AdRoll account, install the pixel. Give us a call and we will work through the banner ad stuff for you. Have a fantastic weekend. It’s Friday, so it’s the last episode of the week. Monday we will be back with something new. Monday, 10:00 am Eastern and I’ll talk to you soon, all right? Thanks. Bye.

The post Best Retargeting Campaigns For Your Website appeared first on Done For You.

It just becomes a discipline in knowing where people are going on your website, what they’re doing once they get there, and then just making sure that people are seeing the right ad and the ad is sending them to the place that you want to send them to. So that’s probably the primary sticking point of setting up Facebook retargeting ads, are you just really have to realize and understand where somebody is going.

This entire week we’ve been talking about retargeting. Monday we kind of set up the reasons why retargeting works. Tuesday we talked about pixel data. Yesterday we talked about banners and we kind of rehashed pixel data and audiences. And today we’re going to talk about Facebook. So Facebook, there’s a couple of different ways to set up Facebook retargeting. We’re going to talk about setting it up natively, inside the Facebook platform, but if you were on yesterday’s call, then you know that AdRoll also lets you set up retargeting. For those of you who don’t know who I am, my name is Jason Drohn, creator of DoneForYou.com. We specialize in three things, creating offers, building sales funnels, and sending out marketing automation traffic.

Today we are going to talk about that third thing, which is basically re-engaging people who have already been to your website, who have watched a little bit of a video, or maybe a lot a bit of a video. Maybe they signed up for a webinar, watched a video on Facebook with a live stream for 10 seconds, or 15 seconds, or 25%, and we’re trying to reengage them back into your website, or sales video, or a sales page, or an order form, or an add to cart or whatever. That’s all the stuff that retargeting is really good for. By and large, though, retargeting is really, really great in terms of reengaging and generating some crazy return on ad spend and return on investment when you are looking at all of the different types of ads that you can run.

Using Pixel Data

One of the things that we always talk about early on is using your pixel data, using your buyers, using your people who have already been to your audience or already been to your website. They’ve already watched some videos. They already know who you are. Then very simply showing them the ad to then send them to your next product, or your next service, or whatever. Those people are uniquely positioned to buy faster and to buy a lot more.

Now, today we’re going to dig into Facebook. There are basically two different things that we’re going to need to talk about.

1. a quick way of generating some nice Facebook banner ads
2. about audiences who are the people who see your ads

We have a post here that walks through. This is the second Facebook retargeting ads campaign presentation we’ve done. I’m just going to drop it here. You can check out the old video if you’d like, and then the new video is up at the top of the presentation. If you want to subscribe to our show, just hit the subscribe button.

Two Elements of Facebook Retargeting Ads

1. Audience

The first thing you need is needing audiences. Yesterday we set up audiences inside Facebook, and an audience setup is really as simple as this. You create an audience, and you can create the custom audience, you can create a Lookalike or Special Ad Audience. We’re going to go into the custom audience.

You have lots of choices here. Now your website audience is going to be anybody and anything website related. If they were on a specific page if they were in on an order form if they were on your homepage, or a sales page, or a blog page, or a content page, or whatever, so basically anything that is website related. Then you have your customer list. This is data related. You have a prospect list of 10,000 prospects, a buyers list of 5,000 buyers.

Basically, you can upload them right to Facebook, and Facebook is going to match 60% of those people, maybe a little better now, but they’re going to match as many of those email addresses as it possibly can to user records on Facebook. Then it’s going to show your ad directly to them. That’s Facebook retargeting ads. Then we have an app activity in which you can create an audience of people who have launched your app or your game inside Facebook. And then we have offline activity. These two, you don’t see a whole lot, not in our world.

2. Facebook Sources

We have some other Facebook sources. We use videos all the time. If somebody watches 10 seconds or more of a video, or 25% of a video, all the way up to 100% of a video, you can put them in a special campaign. We have an Instagram account and we can create an audience of people who visited or liked an Instagram page, lead forms, events, Facebook pages, shopping, and Marketplace listings. The three that we use most often a website, customer list, videos. Well for our influencers, we always do the Instagram account stuff too. Lead forms for our service-based companies for the most part, like somebody who wants instant leads for then callbacks. You can think of cash for house kind of real estate professionals, any financial planning, legal, all of that stuff we do with a lot of lead forms with the events, in some experiments.

Facebook page, we do a little bit of here and there for somebody who has a lot of similarities to the Instagram account, the influencers. If you have a lot of data on your Facebook page, then we will use that, but by and large, website, customer list, video. If you’re setting up a website audience, what you do is you hit the website. How you create this thing is we end up going into grabbing the pixel, and then all website visitors who have visited some page in the last 30 days. We are going to just customize this a little bit.  People who visited specific webpages and the URL has to contain, let’s say the word funnel. What this does is it lets you build some audiences on the words in the URL. And of course, the words in the URL have to do with the subject titles.

Setting Up Facebook Ads

Group Audience According to Engagement

You can basically put together buckets of people who just are on your website for funnels, or just ad management, or just woodworking projects, or just supplements, or whatever. So you can create silos of people doing something like this. Then we want to name the audience, and usually, I just have a denotation. Sometimes it’s like cold, warm, hot. What I’ve been doing lately is X1, X2, X3. They’re the levels of engagement. X1 is gold, X2 is warm, X3 is hot. We’re just going to say the X1 website. This is going to be a funnel of visitors.

We’re going to create that audience. It’s going to ask us if we want to create a Lookalike Audience or create an ad. We don’t want to do either at this point. We could. Then we have our audience up above and it’s populating. So it’s not available yet, but we can add it to an ad if we want.

Creating Ad Banners on Canva

What we’re going to do is we’re going to go over to Canva and we’re going to create an ad. And I actually created one yesterday. Is this the one I created yesterday? Yeah, automated profits. Let me just check and see what the size. 1200 x 628. So we’re going to download this guy because this is a Facebook level ad, it’s Facebook size. So we’re going to download this, and we can do all kinds of things. Like if you wanted to do some split tests, we can drop some different photos in the back.

We can drop some different photos. We want it to be the background. Then we can make this a little bit gradient. We can move this whole thing over, and maybe make this bigger. All right. So then I’m probably going to want to clean this up a little bit, so there. And then we’re going to move that over. And there we go. Not that that’s a great ad, but automated profits, click here to register.

Creating New Campaign using Ads Manager

Now we have a couple of different ads that we’re going to split test. All right. It looks like we got two. Our audiences are created, our ads are created, and what we’re going to do is we’re going to go over into Ad Manager here. We’re going to create a new campaign. All right, so Ads Manager. There we go. Now we’re going to just create, and so we’re going to load the creation process. Now, this is an image-based ad. It’s going to be facebook retargeting ads.

1. Create Campaign as a Traffic Ad

The first thing we’re going to do is we’re going to set it up as a traffic ad. We can do engagement, we can do conversions, but traffic is always good to start with. Then we want to name the campaign. This is a retargeted ad. I’m going to call it an X3. The upper level of Facebook retargeting ads. This is going to be a funnel retargeted ad dynamically. We’re just going to set it up as dynamic because we have two images on there.

We have an ad set. This is going to be X3 – 45 to 64 males. Then the ad is just going to be X3 dynamic. But we’re setting this ad up from scratch. We’re going to hit continue.

2. Widget

Now we’re in our little creation screen or creation widget. This is our campaign name. The campaign looks okay. We’re going to do a campaign budget optimization. Then this is an auction, this is a traffic campaign. That’s all good.

3. Ad set

We’re going to set up the ad set. Because this is a Facebook retargeting ads campaign, it gets really, really simple. We’re going to add dynamic creativity here too, but because this is a retargeted campaign, there’s only one audience that we need to target, and that’s that X1 funnel visitor. That’s the funnel visitor that we just set up. Our potential reach is unavailable at the moment because it hasn’t got done calculating.

We’re going to take off the United States. It can be anywhere around the world, as long as they’ve been to a page on DoneForYou that has the word funnel in the URL. Then the age group, we kind of already defined it up top, but it’s going to be 45 to 64. 45 to 64, all genders, all demographics. Languages, I usually just have English. And show more options, you can get into these, but this is retargeted ads, so it’s going to be automatic placements.

These people already know who you are, so if it shows up on their mobile, it shows up in a video, it shows up on whatever, it’s fine, on an audience network, it’s fine. Then we’re going to click next. Here we’re going to set up the app. It goes campaign, then ad set, the ad, and here we’re going to scroll down.

4. Ad Images

We’re going to select the two images that we just grabbed from Canva there. We’re going to hit downloads. These are the two images that we just created. These are the ones we just pulled down, and neither one of them are particularly great, but they serve a purpose, which is just setting this thing up. Then optimize creativity for each person. That’s fine.

We’re just going to fill in the primary text. We’re going to fill in the headline. The headline shows up. Let’s see, we need to set the destination links. The headline is going to click here for more, the description is to learn more about sales funnels. This is not the best ad, I’m just merely showing you how to set one of these up in the system. HTTPS, doneforyou.com. All right, so there’s our ad. Then we have doneforyou.com. Click for more, that button, whatever. Facebook pixel. Then we can add some URL parameters here so we can track them from a UTM standpoint.

That’s it. In this particular ad, we can show some different primary text up top. We can add some different options, and that’s the dynamic part. Facebook is going to serve multiple images, multiple primary texts, multiple headlines, multiple descriptions.

It finds the best set of them, and then it basically reports back to you. Not reports, you have to go find it, but it’ll show you what combination of ads works the best. Then you can really drill down on those, and then pull out the non-performers, and then add more in. It’s super, super nice. Facebook rewards you for doing this by giving you cheaper clicks, cheaper leads, and all of that stuff, which we were really, really hesitant to do it this way at first because it’s like Facebook is controlling the split test, so we’re kind of worried that some of the data would get lost, we couldn’t actually see the winners, but it ended up working out really well.

The dynamic creativity is how we roll out a lot of stuff now.

Under the primary text, we can add a couple of different scenarios. What would another one be? I’m not real good at writing copy on the fly. Talking through it, obviously sitting down thinking about the copy, I can get it, but writing while I’m talking doesn’t work a whole lot.

Writing a copy for a new funnel. Let us give you some ideas. All right, there you go. When you preview this, so if we view more variations, then we can see that we basically have two levels of texts. We have two different things. So we go here, and then our second variation is this, writing copy for a new funnel. Let us give you some ideas. Then we have two images. One image is that, and then the next image is that, and Facebook is going to rotate this on-demand. Then we only have one headline, one description, one call to action.

If you scroll through these, you see all the different formats that this ad is going to show up under, Facebook in-stream video mobile. So this is just a mobile ad. This guy, to deliver the Facebook and stream video change the media for this placement to a video. So not all of these are viewable through this little preview tool, but you get a pretty good idea of how it all works. And then you just hit publish.

I’m not going to publish it. It’s just going to be a draft. I just wanted to set up the scenario for you. But by and large, you’re going to be able to set up some really, really great retargeted campaigns using Canva to design your banners, and thinking about your audiences. And that’s really the hardest part is just coming up with how the audience is going to be structured, what you need to do to ascend a prospect from one level to the next. So from somebody who just learns about you, just becomes aware of you all the way to somebody warm, they’re engaged, they’re interested, and then ultimately to somebody is turned into a buyer, who is a buyer. That ascension is where retargeted really comes into play.

With the Facebook setup strategies that I just showed you, you should be able to set them up pretty quickly.

For Questions and Guide

If you have any questions at all, if you would like some help, you would like to go through an action plan call where we look at your funnel, we look at your ads, look at your traffic sources, all that other stuff, go to doneforyou.com/start, set up a call with my team and me, and fill out the little form, which is going to tell us about your business so that we can do a little bit of research before we get on the phone with you.  That way when it comes time for the call, we already know what you’re doing.

Video Transcript: GSDdaily Episode 33

Hey, What’s up? This is Jason Drohn. Welcome to today’s GSD Daily. Today we’re going to talk about Facebook retargeting ads and I just got off the phone talking about Facebook ads. It’s been a little weird, but whatever. Today we’re going to be setting up a retargeted ad for one of our little mini-courses, one of our little offers. The biggest part of setting up a retargeted ad is just knowing how to sequence your pages. So if you can sequence your pages correctly, then really the hard work is for the most part done. Because people … how Facebook retargeting ads work is if they go to this page and they leave, then they see this offer, they see this ad.

Where somebody is going and what they’re doing after they leave, it’s the biggest thing. So the ad that we’re going to be setting up, so I’m just going to split this out into its tab so that I can share it with you. All right, so I’m going to stop sharing the screen there and we’re going to share the browser window.

All right. So, we’re going to go back to Canva. There’s a lot of different ways that you can create the Facebook retargeting ads, but we’re going to go back to Canva and look at the ad that I set up this morning that we’re going to be using as the ad for this retargeted offer. So yesterday we talked about setting up a cold traffic ad to an advertorial or to a video, which is great. And the cold traffic ad welcomes people into our world.

It’s people who don’t know us, they’ve never heard of us, maybe they’ve seen us, but they haven’t been on the website in the last 30 days. So once they come into our world through our cold traffic ad, then what we do is we show them a different ad. Now in this case, in the case that I’m setting up, basically what we’re doing is everybody who opted into our list but did not purchase the offer that showed up for them after they opted in, are going to see this ad.

Now, this offer is called, “Funnel Flow Made Simple.” So we’re going to go to Done For You and I’m just going to show you the page real quick that we’re going to be Facebook retargeting ads. So we can’t necessarily retarget directly to that same confirmation page because, in the sales [inaudible 00:03:47], you opt-in for the report, and then the next video says, “Thanks for downloading the report, blah blah blah. You’re going to learn such and such.” And then you transition into the next offer. With this though, what we’re doing is we’re going to go to products and funnel flow made simple. Same page layout, same type of page, slightly different video. So the video has that first 20 seconds lobbed off … or the first minute or so lobbed off. And basically, the front side of it is lobbed off.

So this is the sales page that somebody can go in and click through to buy the offer. Now, this page is going to be the website that we’re sending traffic to, and this “Funnel Flow Made Simple” is going to be the ad that we’re using on Facebook to send traffic here. And the ad is going to be showing up for everybody who was on our website but did not buy it. Does that make sense so far? Over in the chatbox, comment box. Just let me know. All right, cool. So it looks like it is good. Cool. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to log into the Facebook ad manager, and I’m just going to do that here. And then we’re going to go through and set this campaign up. Life, pretty exciting, right? I know, I think so at least.

For anybody who’s getting website traffic, Facebook retargeting ads are probably the best and easiest way of reclaiming some of those people and dipping your toe in the paid traffic world. Dipping your toe in digital advertising and paid advertising without necessarily going crazy for it. Do you know what I mean? Because if you’re just very simply … anybody who’s been to your website, if you’re just showing them Facebook retargeting ads for the thing they didn’t buy, but they’re already aware of, there’s a pretty good chance that they’re going to come back around and buy something. That’s just the fact of the matter.

Here I’m going to go ahead and download this ad. I don’t know if I downloaded it to this machine, so I’m just going to go ahead and download this guy. So we’re going to download it as a PNG. Yeah, it’s kind of ugly. I’m not going to lie, the ad’s kind of ugly, but it works out pretty well. So then we’re going to go, I’m going to switch the view here to look at the ad manager.

All right, so … now, for the most part, I use a different browser. I use Firefox a lot of times, just to do the ad manager stuff. Just because at the end of the day it’s just one browser that I can log into and I don’t have to get too sidetracked in the rest of the Facebook world, looking at newsfeeds and scrolling through stuff and all that other stuff. All right. Now, my browser is locked up for a minute. All right.

I was in the middle of showing my ad manager, we could get this retargeted ad set up here. Logging into the ad manager. I should be able to see it in a minute. What we’re going to be doing is we’re setting up this retargeted ad from scratch. Now we’re going to go into the “Create” button. I’m going to hit the “Create” button. If you remember yesterday we set up all kinds of different audiences and stuff. What we’re going to be doing is here we’re going to be doing a retargeted ad. Yesterday we named that these things cold, warm, or hot. We’re going to do the same thing. This is going to be a warm ad, and then we have … Let’s see. This is going to be, “A Funnel Flow Made Simple.” Funnel Flow Made Simple Course promo.

The buying type is going to be an auction. The campaign objective at first is going to be traffic. Like yesterday, we set it up so that the campaign objective was conversion … or was traffic to get started. And then once you have enough conversions, typically 50 conversions in a week, you can switch it to a conversion campaign and Facebook will only charge you for conversions. We went through that yesterday. But so our campaign objective is traffic. The daily budget is fine. The ad set name, we’re going to do “Retargeted website traffic.” And then the campaign ad is going to be “Ad.” So this is going to be just an image ad, version 1.1. So then what we’re going to do is we’re going to save it to draft.

The ad set up process is very, very similar to what it is for cold traffic or the same thing. It’s the same thing as what you’re used to there. Now underneath the setup, we’re going to go traffic and the buying type is going to be an auction, it’s going to be a traffic campaign. Once we get some data, then it’s going to flip to a conversion campaign. We’re going to go into the retargeted ad set, the RT ad set. We’re going to use dynamic creative for this guy. We set up our ad with dynamic creativity. We’re going to do the same thing today. Then this is where the retargeted ad is different than the cold traffic ad. This is the only difference in setting up the two different ad types, which is who the ad gets shown to.

In this scenario, we’re setting up the warm traffic ad. What we’re going to do is we are going to target our warm people. Yesterday I showed you how I set up audiences with basically cold, warm, or hot. So warm is our funnel factor leads. These are people who downloaded the report but did not buy it. So those are the only people to who we could be showing this ad. Now this course, this Funnel Flow Made Simple, is made to everybody who downloads this report. So they already know of this offer. We could add our video views here, we could add our website traffic for the last 30 days. I think I’m going to do that. So website traffic for the last 30 days.

Now this potential reach, they don’t give me a potential reach. So they’re not going to tell me how many people have been to the website or how many people downloaded. But I know the numbers. So they don’t give you the potential reach unless it’s an astronomically big number, anymore, for the most part. So these are the two audiences that we’re going to be serving Facebook retargeting ads to. The age group we’re going to keep pretty open. So 18 to 65 plus. What this does is it lets us not … if somebody comes to the website and they fall outside of our demographic characteristics, so they come to the website and they don’t like, let’s say, [inaudible 00:13:22]. Well, that doesn’t mean they’re not going to see this ad.

If they were on the website from search engines, then we understand that they are probably into what we’re talking about because they came from a search engine. So 18 to 65 usually. Sometimes we can go up to 25 or 30 if we want. It doesn’t matter. Then we have gender, most of our buyers end up being men. Although we’re going to end up having both males and females there and we’re not going to add any more detailed targeting. This is a retargeted audience. So these people are qualified because they were on the website, they opted in for something, they watched an entire video, whatever. And then that’s it. So the big thing, the big difference is we’re targeting people we know. People who know us, I should say. Automatic placements are fine, and then we’re going to go to the ad itself.

In setting up the retargeted ad, a lot of times with Facebook retargeting ads we do images at first, we don’t necessarily always do a video to set everything up. Images will work just fine. The identity is just a Facebook page, it’s going to be a single image or video. This is dynamic creative, it’s going to let us do a couple of additional things in the things that we’re going to upload. The banner ad that we just created in Canva at the beginning of this video. We’re going to grab downloaded items, Funnel Flow Made Simple. It’s uploading that into our mix here. We’re going to select it and then we’re going to continue. Now we have Funnel Flow Made Simple. We have the image. Let me scroll down a little bit farther. The primary text is the bit that goes above the image or the video.

So we have primary text. “Don’t miss out on the Funnel Flow Made Simple Course.” We’re going to add a different headline or a different text variation here. So this is going to be, “Funnel Flow Made Simple for only $4.95” and then we can continue adding different headlines there. And then the headline is what’s going to show up underneath the ad. So we’re going to say, “Funnel Flow Made Simple.” Then we’re going to say, “Save 90% today.” All right. So, “Click the button to learn more about the course.” And then we have our sales page. The sales page is … I’m just going over and grabbing the sales page link. Here we go. So … and [inaudible 00:17:10]. And the man missed it. There we go. Copy link location. Then we’re going to drop this guy in. It’s going to clear this error and show us something.

All right, so the Facebook retargeting ads would say something like, “Don’t miss out on the Funnel Flow Made Simple Course” and we can add different primary text headlines. We can add some headlines here. What does dynamic targeting, what it’s going to do is it’s going to split test these images and videos and texts and headlines for us. It’s a black box, we don’t know what’s going to win. And actually, I was just talking to a friend and we were discussing whether or not it’s because it knew what it was doing or because it was Facebook’s way of you doing what Facebook wants you to do. So it’s a little bit up in the air as far as which way that is going. But all in all the dynamic campaigns work pretty well. To display the link, we’re going to leave it there.

We can do a different one, sign up, book now. Yeah. Learning more is going to be the best one there. And then we’re just going to hit publish. I don’t think we have any errors. I think we cleared our errors. Yep. Cleared our errors. So we’re going to hit publish. Now, this ad is only going to show up to our retargeted audience. The people who have been to the website, the people who have downloaded a lead magnet, and then it’s going to send them directly to the sales page. And then so once they come back to the sales page, this funnel flow made simple sales course here, then they’re going to kick over into the order form. So order form, funnel flow made simple, there’s an upsell for access after this. And then there’s an upsell for some other stuff.

But this is one of our channels. We’ll add some additional retargeted offers for some of our other lower-end things like this convert book. There’s the create book, there’s some other lower-end stuff that we’re going to end up getting into. But all in all, that’s how you set it up. Now, earlier when I talked about setting up URL based things, so when you’re setting up your Facebook retargeting ads, you want to know where people are going. One of the ways to preclude who goes where is if we go to audiences, we’re going to set up an ad for everybody who hits our order form.

So we’re going to go to Funnel Flow Made Simple and we’re going to go to the order form. And so this is the order form for this funnel flow made simple course. Now to do shopping cart abandonment … so what we want to do is we want to see how many people clicked the ad and then how many people went to the sales page and then out of those people, who clicked over to the order form. The people who bought, it’s easy to figure them out because we have their email address.

They bought something, they hit a confirmation page or an order fulfillment page. But the shopping cart abandonment is an interesting thing because they’d hit this page and then they leave. So yes, we can trigger some emails and I’ll show you how to do that at some point. To do URL based marketing automation with email. But with Facebook retargeting ads what you do is you go into the audiences here and I’m going to create a new audience. And the new audience is going to be a custom audience that’s going to be websites. But rather than then show the entire website, everybody who comes to the website like this campaign. So this campaign down here is all the website traffic in the past 30 days, well we don’t care about all the website traffic. We just want to see how many people hit that order form.

And then so that we can show them an ad that says, “Hey, come back. Come back and buy something.” So we’re going to target people who visited specific web pages in the last 30 days. And 30 days is probably a little bit longer. That should probably be closer to 10 days. Think about yourself. When you buy something, typically you buy it … or let’s put it this way when you don’t buy something, you’re thinking about buying something. You usually pull the trigger on that thing within a couple of days or a week. You get hot on something and then you’re like, “Well, I’m going to buy it or I’m not going to buy it.” But after a week or after 10 days or whatever, your interest dies down.

So that’s one of those things. We don’t want to target the people whose interests may be dying down. What we want to do is we want to target the people who keep coming back to that checkout page or they keep coming to our thing again and again. So what we’re going to do, anybody who has visited our order form in the last 10 days and the URL is … so here’s another little secret Ninja strategy. So it doesn’t have to be the entire URL. It can be … it contains. If this URL contains any of these words, so in this case, it is /activation/systematic sales boot camp. What we’re going to do is we’re just going to paste this in and what that lets me do it now I can split test order forms without having to recreate pages or recreate the pixel information.

I can have systematic sales Bootcamp-V1 or systematic sales Bootcamp-V2. And this pixel is going to track it all because it’s contains a systematic sales boot camp, no hyphen. Does that make sense? Okay. It’s just one of those things. You run enough of these things and you’re like, “Well how can I make it easy the next time.” and when you’re split-testing a lot of pages, you either have to go in here and just go, “Boom, boom, boom.” And just add and come back and remember to edit it. Or you can just do contains at first and then just adopt a naming convention for the shopping cart abandonment. And then after that, it’s easy because this one pixel is automatically tracking everything and then you’re serving Facebook retargeting ads up to the people who hit the order form and they’re good.

Now, so you can continue dropping in. You can continue adding variables. So if they go to the sales page and then also to the order form, they get put into this audience. The order form is fine though. Then you just want to name it. So this is going to be … I would say this is a warm to hot person. So we’re going to say, “Warm Funnel Flow Made Simple.” Add to cart, ATC. And then we just hit create an audience. So what Facebook is doing now is it’s going back to creating the audience, looking at all of the data it has, and says, “Okay, how many people hit this order form?” Then let’s serve up some Facebook retargeting ads to those people. What we want to do is they become a very warm audience.

We can then create look like audiences based on this warm audience of people who hit the order form before we get enough data to create a lookalike audience of buyers. It’s just one of those things when you’re looking at audiences, you want to ascend your audiences. You want to start with, “All right, who are my cold traffic people? Who are people who raised their hand and said, ‘I want more information from you.’ Who watched the video?” The more and more action that they take, then that’s who you want to establish your lookalike audience from. Because every single time, every single step up that ladder, it becomes a more and more qualified person that you can then retarget and run through your conversion campaigns. So that my friends are how to set up a retargeted ad.

Not that bad. I mean Facebook retargeting ads are pretty easy to dial in. So it’s good. Any questions? So many questions over in the … all right questions? Perfect. All right, so let’s see where else we want to go. Talk about some retargeted traffic. We went through some dynamic sequencing in there. We talked about some shopping cart abandonment. I think we’re about good for today’s session. Tomorrow we’re going to do … we’re going to have a guest on and we’re going to talk about some optimization. So we’re going to talk about how do you take a campaign that is doing well and turning it into something that is doing even better. So that is going to be a lot of fun. Her name is Jennifer. She’s a new friend.

For Questions and Guide

We’re going to do optimization and I was thinking we do something data-driven. We look at some stats and how to figure out how you know if somebody is buying or not buying or opting in or not opting in based on age and demographics and stuff. This way you can optimize your campaigns even further. That’s always a lot of fun. I like looking at that kind of stuff, so. All right guys, thank you so much for watching today. If you have any questions at all, go to doneforyou.com/GSD. And if you would like to set up an action plan call, go to doneforyou.com/start and we will set up an action plan for your business and I’ll talk to you soon. All right. Thanks. Bye.

The post Quick Setup To Get More Conversions From Facebook Retargeting Ads appeared first on Done For You.

Consider this: If you have an e-commerce website, only 2% of all your visitors will shop on their visit. The other 98% are just gone, according to Adroll.

Or maybe you wanted them to sign up for an offer you made on your landing pages or funnels or have your visitors contact you using your contact form.Perhaps you just wanted your visitors to create a free account for the SaaS product you just built.

Only 2% of your entire visitors will ever take action.

All the rest are gone, if you don’t do something about it, that is.

Retargeting helps you get those 98% of visitors back. It helps improve your overall conversion rates while simultaneously bringing your costs down. If you just threw money at a retargeting campaign and expect your users to come back to your site to finish what they started, it’s not going to happen.

Your retargeting campaigns will need the same diligence, attention to detail, creativity, and hustle for them to work for you. Here are some smart ways to make your retargeting work for you.

Build your audiences

Retargeting has everything to do with the kind of audiences you build on platforms. Facebook audiences, Google Ads Audiences, Adroll Audiences, or Retargeter audiences. Each platform allows you to build your audiences as you deem fit.

While we all know that there’s going to be at least one audience that’s a default audience (everyone who visits your website and/or landing pages). For the most part, the onus is on you to build specific audiences based on their browsing patterns, the URL paths you want them to take, or specific pages they visit on your site.

Depending on your website, you might want to develop audiences such as:

• People who visit all pages of your website (this is default)
• People who signed up as leads, downloaded a free document (PDF, eBooks), people who’ve contacted you, or people who signed up for an appointment.
• The complete list of your customers (always updated)
• List of customers who’ve added items to their cart but did not complete a transaction
• Potential customers who’ve initiated checkout but did not complete

Stay relevant

Relevance is big with retargeting and staying relevant (by showing the exact kind of content that your visitors would be interested in) goes a long way to make retargeting more effective.

By working with your audiences and with attention to detail, you could serve more relevant content with your retargeting campaigns.

If you had an e-commerce store, for instance, you could use Adroll’s Dynamic Ads to show your visitors the exact products that they were considering or those that they initially had an intent to purchase.

Here’s an example of an Adroll Liquid Ad:

Rework your creatives for retargeting

If you use specific ads and landing pages for your main paid campaigns, you shouldn’t use the same creatives for your retargeting campaigns.

Change your creatives (ads and landing pages) or tweak your main creatives to make it more relevant for your retargeting campaigns. In fact, if you could, create completely new creative assets for your retargeting campaigns.

Businesses that are serious about their retargeting campaigns generally create a dedicated set of ads and matching landing pages to launch specific retargeting campaigns.

Try retargeting email

The average shopping cart abandonment rate is at a whopping 67%, according to Baymard research.

That just hurts. A personal, engaging, and highly-effective way to try to counter the huge abandonment rate — and also boost revenue and profits — is to use retargeting email.

Email customers are at least 11% more valuable than your regular Twitter followers other social networks (with Facebook being the only exception)

According to Moz, email retargeting can give you 4X the revenue and 18X profits.

Leading retargeting platforms such as Adroll and Retargeter already provide you with features to send retargeting emails.

Include & exclude audiences

Don’t waste your budget by choosing “everyone” as an audience.

As you launch your retargeting campaigns, not everyone who visits your website and leaves is the apt audience. By including and excluding audiences, you get more control on who sees your ads and who doesn’t.

How you manage your audiences determines how effective your retargeting campaigns are going to be. For example, Shioban McGinty of HubSpot advocates that you should ideally exclude anyone who spends less than 10 seconds on your website (testing the time frame helps you identify your unique time frame, however).

By using “include and exclude” features available on every platform that you’d use for retargeting, you can:

• Identify and include high-intent audiences who are most interested in your business, products, or services.
• Include only those people who might have followed a specific path or pattern while on your website (such as people who read your blog, and then checked out your services page, and also landed on your contact page).
• Exclude people who might have already purchased your products or those that don’t need to see your campaign at the moment.
• Exclude people who “bounced”, “didn’t spend enough time on your website”, or those who might have accidentally landed on your website.

How do you manage your retargeting campaigns?

If you’d like help to strategize, launch, and manage your retargeting campaigns, or if you’d like to discuss your paid marketing strategy, our team is on standby and we’d love to talk. Hop on a call now. 

GSDdaily Episode 86

This entire week we’re going to talk about retargeting. It has been such an important part of our business and our clients‘ business because the people who see a retargeted ad, this isn’t the first time that they have seen you, or they’ve seen your videos, or they’ve seen your brand, or they’ve taken part in your message.

The people who see your retargeted ad have already been to your website. They’ve already seen a Facebook video or a live stream. They may have already interacted with you and your business at least once, and that is the power of retargeting. That’s why retargeting turns into such a fantastic marketing medium, especially when you’re just starting up or when you’re trying to scale because your retargeted budget is going to flip into cash a lot faster.

Somebody who has been on your website, they’re going to come back to your website, they’re going to go to your sales page, your offer page, whatever, and they’re going to convert that much more quickly. Because let’s face it, only about half a percent, 1%, 2% of people who are going to buy something from you the first time they see it or the first time they land on a website. Most of your sales though are going to come from your retargeted traffic, people who come back to your website and they purchase after they’ve had some time to think about your offer.

Today, we are going to go through a guide. Retargeting Campaigns: Smart Tips To Get More From Less. This is the article, I’m going to add it here to the chatbox. Here’s the post, and you should see that on Facebook and YouTube and wherever else you’re watching. For those of you who don’t know who I am, my name is Jason Drohn, creator of DoneForYou.com. We specialize in creating offers, building sales funnels, and setting up marketing automation and traffic campaigns, basically everything that you need to have in order to scale a digital business.

Retargeting Campaign

Today, and this week, we’re talking about retargeting. Mostly because it’s super easy to set up. It’s super easy to set up, it’s super easy to build retargeting campaigns from, and the software is really pretty prevalent. It doesn’t take too much to get going and you’re going to be able to get some success from it pretty quickly. We’re over here on the tutorial page here, Smart Tips To Get More For Less, this is the video that you’re watching right now, go ahead and hit that subscribe button right there and subscribe to future videos so that way, even if you miss the email or whatever, you still know the link for our daily live streams.

Now, retargeting helps you get all of the visitors back who come to your website. They don’t do anything or watch a video. They don’t convert. There’s a couple of steps. As you can see here, there’s a couple of scenarios. First of all, you have your prospect. Your prospect doesn’t know who you are just yet. Your prospect hits your website, and then they browse around, they click around. They’re tracked once they get there. There’s a little tiny, what’s called a cookie. That cookie that is installed in their browser, pixel fires is what it is, and now we have the ability to follow them around the rest of the internet.

We use a piece of software called AdRoll to do this, and I’m going to show you how to set it up. In a video this week, we’re going to talk about banners, and then we’re going to talk about setting up AdRoll, and then we’re going to talk about setting up the pixels. We’re going to go through and set all of that stuff up in the rest of the episodes this week. Today, I wanted to lay a good foundation for what retargeting is though.

Pixel Fires

When somebody hits your website, pixel fires and installs a cookie on their browser. Now, what that does is it lets your banner ads override all of the other ads that are on the websites that they’re visiting. If somebody comes to your website and then they go to Woot.com, let’s say. They go to Woot, and they will see your banner override whatever banner is supposed to be there. There are always banners that are circling, but basically what happens is that the retargeting overrides the banner placement, and you pay a little bit more because all of the banner ads are built on a bidding mechanism.

It overrides the banner that is there. You pay a little bit more, but this person is super, super hyperactive because they’ve already been to your website. They already know about you. This is their second, third, fourth, sixth, seventh, twelfth impression. At the end of the day, they’re more likely to convert, and they do. Your return on ad spend from retargeted ads is the highest it is going to be in all paid advertising. When a prospect is tracked, then they leave, and then they see your ad on other sites.

Now what happens is when they come back, then it resets that ad. It resets that pixel. One of the things we do on Facebook a lot is we do, if they’ve been to the website in the last five days, show them this ad, if they’ve been to the website in the last 10 days, show them this ad and then exclude the previous five. You can use banner ads almost like an autoresponder, which is kind of cool.

Audiences

Retargeting has everything to do with the kind of audiences you build on platforms – Facebook audiences, Google audiences, AdRoll audiences.

Your audience is the people who visit a specific website or a specific landing page or a specific confirmation page or whatever. That is your audience. And your audience can be just the people who buy X products, or it can be just the people who signed up for Y lead magnet. It can be super, super specific, or it can be everybody who has been to the website in the last 30 days or the last 180 days. It can be very, very broad. You can have audiences of different sizes, and your use of audiences is how the banner network knows what to show and when to show it.

For example, you can have people who visit all the webpages on your website, people who signed up as leads, a complete list of customers, all your buyers. On Facebook, you can upload your buyer’s list and create custom audiences and build lookalike audiences from those. The list of potential customers who have initiated checkout, but did not complete, so will be added to cart or cart abandonment buyers, or cart abandonment prospects. What retargeting does really is let you stay relevant. People will be reminded of your brand whether they buy from you and do business with you or not. They’re reminded of your business and your offers.

There’s a lot of companies that we work with where sometimes their customers forget about them. Even big contract manufacturers and stuff, every once in a while, if the email list isn’t really engaged or the prospects don’t have a reason to come back to the website, they don’t. Then it’s out of sight, out of mind. What banner retargeting lets you do is for a very, very minimal budget, you can continue to show ads to your website visitors for up to six months. Seven if they’ve been to the website, they’re going to think you’re still everywhere. In the next six months, your audiences will continue seeing your ads as long as that cookie is still installed in their browser, which is awesome.

Banner Ad Sizes

What you want to do though, is you want to make sure that your creativity is on point. When you get into banner ads, which is what retargeting mostly is, or AdRoll retargeting, which is what I’m going to show you how to set up, it’s all banner ads. There are six sizes, six specific ad sizes that are the most popular on AdRoll, but they also have video ads, they have some odd sizes for websites that have odd placements. There’s a lot of different ways, but you need to have good creativity.

Designing Banners

We use Canva for a lot of our own projects for the stuff that we do because we test a lot of stuff. We use Canva, we use a lot of Photoshop. Canva and Photoshop are really kind of the big ones. Photoshop tends to be the place where we do a lot of very specific creativity. I have some Done For You ads running right now that are just simple ones done in Canva. It’s really just meant to test a bunch of different creative quickly and see what flies, then we can perfect the images and all the text and all that other stuff.

I try to put new creative up about once every 45 days to 60 days for us. That tends to be when it starts to play out a little bit from a retargeted banner standpoint. But anything less than that, you don’t necessarily reinforce the message. I was actually just kicking through AdRoll this morning, and that’s our project. That’s what we’re going to do is we’re going to create some new creative this week, and then I’m going to show you how to post it and show you how to set AdRoll up. That way you see actual retargeting campaigns going live, and then you’re going to see campaigns while you’re out and about because you’re on the website too. That’s going to be a lot of fun.

Include and Exclude Audiences

Now, one of the important things about AdRoll, is you want to include and exclude audiences. How that works, the exclusion tool is really pretty interesting, because the idea is you have your big whole. Your big whole is all of your website traffic. And then you want to not show your ad to certain buyers, and the buyer’s list is going to be just a smaller segment of the overall whole. You have your big pool, all your website traffic, and then a smaller group of people who bought. We want to exclude this group from our AdRoll, from our banner campaigns.

What ends up happening is, because you include the whole, you have all of your website traffic. You exclude your buyers, none of those people are going to see your ad. Now, all that’s left is everybody who hasn’t purchased. It’s just a math problem, basically. If you have 15,000 people who have been to your website and 2,000 buyers, then you’re going to be marketing to 13,000 people, 13,000 non-buyers. Your main audience, and then your buyers.

Then those 13,000 people are going to be seeing your ad until they buy. Once they buy, they’ve obviously put it into the exclusion list, then they don’t see you. That is how you start building complex kinds of retargeting automated sequences. You start doing things like abandoned cart sequences, and very specific segments where only certain buyers see certain offers. You can really go down a rabbit hole on it. Two segments that you need,

1. prospects
2. buyers

People who paid you money and people who haven’t paid you money yet.

The people who haven’t paid you money yet, you send to an offer. The people who have paid you money, then you can put them in the next offer, you can put them in some sort of onboarding or a webinar, or a customer appreciation, or discount code or whatever. There are lots of things you can do there. But that is really probably the simplest way to start setting up the audiences and the exclusions. That is kind of just a very broad-brush, as I hit my microphone, a very broad-brush explanation of retargeting.

AdRoll – Banner Retargeting Platform

Now, some of the things that we’re going to talk about this week, just to kind of set up the rest of the week is, there are a couple of things we need to do. The first is AdRoll is a fantastic banner retargeting platform. They actually do quite a bit more now, they do email retargeting, they have some cold traffic, they have some email matching stuff, but we’re going to be walking through setting up AdRoll for your business and your website. You can actually just grab an account first, and that way you already have it all set up for when we’re ready to dig into AdRoll throughout the rest of the week.

The setup is free. You can create an account for free. They will give you a pixel, and then you put the pixel on your website. As soon as the pixel is installed on your website, then it’s going to start tracking all of your audience, the people who are coming to your website. And with that, it’s going to track. Everybody who comes to your website, it’s going to pixel them, cookie them, and then it’s going to put them in an audience. It doesn’t charge. I don’t believe it charges any money for just putting together those audiences. It doesn’t start costing something until you start running ads to those audiences.

I am very much a believer in more data is a hell of a lot better than no data. Set up an AdRoll account, install the pixel, and start tracking the people who are coming to your website. We can always work with those audiences. We can always say, “If somebody landed on this webpage, then they are a buyer. If they landed on this webpage, they are a prospect because they signed up for something,” like a confirmation page. Or if they signed up for none of this stuff, then they are still just a prospect. We can always set up those audiences later, I will walk you through the audience set up this week. But you need to have audience data in order to set up those audiences.

Designing Banner Ads on Canva

The banner ads, we’re going to design in Canva. I believe it is also free to set up banner ads. There are paid plans where you can do animated gifs and stuff, which we do a lot of. In Canva, you can set up a banner ad, and we’re going to talk about sizes. There is some very specific kind of sizes. I believe 468 by 60 is the size. We’ll give you the sizes. Basically, how I ended up setting Canva up is I kind of start with one. I clone it and resize it to a bunch of different sizes. Then I drag the text and stuff around that it fulfills the needs I have for AdRoll. That’s how I do the banner ads.

And then we’re going to upload those banner ads into AdRoll. AdRoll also does Facebook, but we set up Facebook retargeting inside Facebook. That is the plan for the week. We’re going to use AdRoll for banner retargeting, we’re going to install the pixel. Well actually, you’re going to install the pixel today. And then tomorrow, we’re going to do some banner ad designs. We’re going to talk about some retargeting more in-depth on a banner creative level. For the rest of the week, we’re going to set up banner retargeting on your website. We’re going to do that by walking you through audiences, exclusions, inclusions, and then, of course, optimizing the ad campaigns.

For Questions and Guide

I hope you liked today’s presentation. If you have any questions at all and you want to go through a little action plan call where we actually book a time in the calendar, talk about your business, talk about your sales follows, your traffic strategies, your offers, your marketing automation, all of that stuff, go to DoneForYou.com/start, fill out the little form, and book a call on our calendar. If there’s anything we can do in the meantime, just go to DoneForYou.com. There’s a little chat box in the lower right-hand corner. Just click the little chat box and then just pick an option here. Fill in what we can help you with, and we’ll be happy to lend a hand.

That’s about it. I will talk to you soon, have a fantastic Monday. I’m looking forward to the rest of this week where we kind of uncovers retargeting.

The post Retargeting Campaigns: Best Tips For Selling More appeared first on Done For You.

We are going to talk about lead funnels and basically generating leads online. We’re going to cap off everything we’ve learned up until this point.

• Monday we talked about pay traffic, free traffic, lead generation, lead generation systems, and scenarios.
• Tuesday, we talked about lead magnets.
• Wednesday we went through some lead generation strategies that are some paid traffic stuff, some free traffic stuff, some affordable stuff.
• Thursday, we walked through some plugins that you would be able to use on your WordPress site to generate said leads.

Today, what we’re going to do is we’re going to wrap everything up. We’re basically going to walk through a lead funnel and walk through how it’s built out. If there are any questions you have, you can just go ahead, go to DoneForYou.com/start. Fill out the little form and book a call on our calendar and we will help you walk through this. We will figure out what you need for your business, for your offer, to start generating leads online and start generating sales online. Now if we go over to the blog post, basically a lead funnel.

A lead funnel is a system that generates leads to demand for your company, for your organization.

Two Scenarios of Lead Funnel

1. Email Lead

If all you need is an email address to build your list, then you can set up your lead funnel specifically for just building your list.

2. Fully Qualified Lead (FQL)

If, however, you need a more complete record, a more complete lead, to call them back, to send them direct mail, then it’s called a fully qualified lead. In our world, it’s FQL. What we have is we have these channels, these traffic channels, over on the left-hand side, and this is just who works with the most frequently.

These traffic channels are your verticals, your sources of traffic. Depending on your offer, you’re going to pick Facebook or you’re going to pick Google or you’re going to pick LinkedIn or Pinterest or email lists, or retargeting. You’re going to pick the channels where your prospects live, where your people go and hang out, where they check in on their kids, photos, where they search for stuff.

Interruption-based Traffic or Search-based Traffic

Now, we have talked a lot this week and in previous weeks about this idea between interruption-based traffic or search-based traffic. Facebook is a great example of interruption-based traffic. Somebody is scrolling through their newsfeed, and then they’re like, bam, this ad shows up on my newsfeed because I’m interested in something that the advertiser thought I should be interested in to see that ad.

Your search traffic, however, is when somebody goes to Google, types something into the search bar, and then your ad pops up. You know about search traffic because you see it all the time. Also, you see Facebook traffic, you see interruption-based ads, you see both these scenarios.

You just have to think, “How are my prospects going to find me the quickest and how are they looking for a solution to their problem?” For instance, if somebody is looking for custom contract manufacturing within Pennsylvania, let’s say, they are going to Google to look for contract manufacturing. Do you know what I mean? They are not waiting for a video to show up in their Facebook newsfeed, because one never will.

On the other hand, if you were selling a direct to consumer, let’s say a T-shirt, if you’re selling a T-shirt, you’re probably not going to go to Google and type funny T-shirt to wear to my aunt’s birthday party because you know the results of that are going to be shit. If you see a funny T-shirt pop up in your newsfeed, you, chances are, are going to buy it. Do you know what I mean? The scenarios are different. The contexts are different in both of those platforms.

Extend that to LinkedIn or Pinterest or Twitter or any of these other traffic channels. That’s what makes up the left-hand side here. Now, the reason it’s important to understand that is that, depending on how somebody finds you, that will dictate the conversion on the lead magnet. Right here is our trivial, quintessential lead magnet. We’ve talked a lot about lead magnets. Tuesday was entirely about lead magnets.

Fully Qualified Lead VSL

The other thing that we’ll do here is a fully qualified lead VSL, basically a video sales letter or sales video that is two minutes, three minutes. Then during that video, underneath you say, “Click the button below” or “Apply,” “Fill in the form below and schedule a call on our calendar.” Now that is going to give you a fully qualified lead.

They watched the video, like what you have to say, and they fill out the form. Then they become a fully qualified lead in your world. It gets sent to a sales guy; it gets sent to you. You get a text message, however, you have the automation set up. You’ll get that lead coming in your door. You may call them back and say, “Hey, I noticed you just filled out a form on my website. Thank you so much, blah, blah, blah.” Or you wait for them to schedule a call on your calendar. That’s an FQL. That’s a fully qualified lead sales video.

Email Lead

Now, if you are looking for just an email lead, then you can have a simple lead magnet up, a simple landing page that gives away your lead magnet, your pdf, your checklist, your free software, you’re whatever. This is the page we looked at yesterday. It can be as simple as just a headline and a couple of sub-headlines. Then you can go off and talk through a bullet point or you read the bullet points and then you can opt-in.

It can be an automated webinar landing page. It can be something like this: headline, sub-headline, video. This is an example of an automated webinar, but it’s still a lead magnet because we’re still generating a lead here. All we’re looking for is an email address. There’s a lot of ways that you can generate the lead in your lead funnel. The most important thing is you need traffic, you need your lead magnet.

Then once they opt-in, what’s next?

The best thing to do, once they are opt-in, is to kick them over into a confirmation offer. On the sales page, you have a short video that says thanks so much for your opt-in; thanks so much for downloading the report or grabbing the checklist or whatever. In your email, you will get your download link, but while I have you here, one question that we get asked often is how to X, Y, and Z. That is the perfect transition into your offer. It can be more elegant than that. It can be a little bit better scripted than that, but that is the transition that turns your free lead into a paying buyer.

Somebody comes in. They are opt-in for your lead magnet and sign-in. All of them can download your report. They agree to give you their email address and they are now on your marketing list. Then you pop up with a video and say, “Thank you so much. One of the questions we get asked so often by people who download this report is how to build something out of two by fours,” let’s say. “Well, as luck would have it, we have 27 projects that we will give you the plans for on how to build something out of two by fours, and that, my friend, is only $4.95. Click the button below to download said tutorial.”

Then they download the tutorial. Awesome. $4.95. You just worked a little bit of that ad cost off, meaning you just self-liquidated a little tiny bit of that offer. Now you can throw upsells after that. You can do one-click upsells and down sales. You’ll do so much stuff after that first sale is done.

Importance of Confirmation Offer

In that confirmation offer, that really is where this lead funnel turns into a VSL ascension funnel or a webinar funnel or a self-liquidating offer funnel or any of the other things that you can do. At the end of the day, you want to sell them something quickly so that you are paying for this traffic.

Right now, if you’re generating leads for $3 or $4, an email lead for $3 or $4, you’re doing pretty good. If you’re generating a fully qualified lead, something with a name, address, phone number, all that, for 20 bucks, 30 bucks, 50 bucks, you’re doing pretty good. You want to flip that lead into cash quickly so that you can then reinvest back into more traffic.

That’s why this confirmation offer is important in a lead funnel because we want to self-liquidate this funnel. We want to self-liquidate the traffic. Then after that, you can drop some upsells. You can do some down-sells. You can do automated webinars. That is what turns these little systems, these engines, into something that are doing five times the return on ad spend, or 10 times the return on ad spend, where they’re literally printing money every day.

You’re not paying for your leads. You’re literally getting paid to generate leads and to grow your list. That’s what digital business should be. Right? Traffic channels, you got a lead magnet, then you put a confirmation offer behind that lead magnet. Then after that, you’ve just got to worry about the fulfillment of the thing, make sure that somebody gets the pdf that they just downloaded, or they get the offer that they just downloaded, whether it’s video access or membership access or whatever. Then oftentimes you go through an onboarding scenario.

Now, if you have a high-end offer, let’s say you have a $2,500 a month coaching package. You are going to generate leads right here. You’re going to take Facebook traffic, Google traffic, re-targeted traffic, whatever. Then you are going to send them through your lead magnet, you offer. Maybe you’ve got a book and you can sell your book for $4.95 or $9.95 or $4 or whatever. That can work on your self-liquidating piece.

At the end of the day, if you can qualify your buyer and then you can onboard them into your coaching or you can call them on the phone and say, “Thanks so much for buying the book. What were the specific goals that you had in buying the book because maybe there’s something that I can help you out with pretty quickly.” That conversation will oftentimes turn a book buyer, course buyer, a lower ticket offer buyer, into a client, somebody who is paying you quite a bit of money every single month to transform their lives in a way that not just a book can do.

Accountability in Coaching and Consulting World

Oftentimes, in the coaching or consulting world, people are looking for accountability. In looking for accountability, that’s where your personal services are valued, whether it’s a mastermind or a coaching program or a digital course or whatever. That is how you flip these lead funnels into revenue generation monsters.

Now what we haven’t covered here is in this middle. As you know, sales funnels, lead funnels, whatever, they’re not just a collection of pages. They are, yes, the pages; they’re the pdfs that you download, but they’re also the emails in the marketing automation that go out, the text messages that go out, the emails that go out as somebody ascends. Oftentimes, we’ll do an exit pop on the lead magnet, so that when somebody hits the lead magnet page and doesn’t opt-in, well, they exit pop into an email sequence that brings them back to the lead magnet.

We want them to come back and say, “Hey, you didn’t download this yet.” Or we want them to come back into the offer. If they download the lead magnet, but they didn’t buy that confirmation offer, we want to send them emails to say, “Hey, come check out this $4.95 book, come check out this digital course,” because then once they’re a buyer, they get put into your fulfillment campaign,  they are now a buyer.

That is the lead funnel. That is how you turn a lead funnel into an offer, a self-liquidating offer funnel. Basically, you can just modularly build on this thing. You don’t need this whole thing upfront. All you need is some Facebook traffic, a landing page and a confirmation page. You can then add this email copy and add some different forms of traffic.

The most important thing is you want to make sure that you put an offer in there as quickly as possible, you’re able to self-liquidate some of that traffic. You have your Facebook traffic and it’s dropping into a lead magnet page. From there, on the confirmation, you’re making an offer. You’re making an offer for the product that you have or the product that you built or an on-demand program or whatever. You make the offer, you fulfill the buyers, and then that’s it.

For Questions and Guide

If you have any questions at all on this, the lead funnel, the scenarios, the creative that you need here, the traffic channels, whatever, go to DoneForYou.com/start, fill out the application on that form and then book a call on our calendar and we will get you all squared away. We’ll put together an action plan and traffic strategy, what you need to have, where you need to have it, all that stuff.

If you have any questions at all, go to DoneForYou.com and there’s a little chatbot in the lower right-hand corner. Just open it up. It’s got a little chatbot, but then you can feed right to a live person, just fill that out and then let us know. I will talk to you soon. All right? Have a fantastic weekend. If you need anything, just reach out. See ya! Bye.

Video Transcript: GSDdaily 004

Today, we’re going to chat about generating leads with a lead magnet, through a lead funnel. It’ll be loosely tied to this article:

The Ultimate Guide to Creating the Perfect Lead Magnet

Hey, what’s up? This is Jason Drohn, welcome to today’s Get Shit Done Daily. We’re going to talk about lead funnels and basically setting up a lead generation system that you’re generating leads for your business, for your enterprise, for your nonprofit, whatever, all the time, 24/7, when you’re working, and when you’re not. That’s the idea, right?

We are actually using a new streaming software today called StreamYard, which is pretty damn cool. Better than the preview. It’s far, nicer than what we were using, Restream, and that I can do some really, really cool stuff. Like I can share my screen like that and I can remove it, which is pretty cool because of that way… I mean, a lot of times this isn’t just riffing, I’m creating content for blog posts, but kind of talking through this stuff, and I already have 400 blog posts that have been written on Done For You, and all the other material and lead funnel stuff. Sometimes it’s easier just to kind of walk through that stuff and then if you want more you can obviously go click the link and do all that. That is kind of some of the low down.

Now for those of you who are new to this every day, 10 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, we stream live and the idea is to help you work through whatever it is kind of is catching you up in the moment. Because many new people are working from home, it’s a unique challenge because you don’t get to bounce anything off of coworkers. There’s a certain level of just masterminding coworking and stuff that happens through this when you’re working together when you’re working in the office and literally I haven’t had that experience in 13 or 14 years, 14 I think now because I’ve been working from home forever and there are unique challenges to pulling it off well.

I know after Charleston and I moved in together there was just… It’s different working from home, it just is. There are certainly some things, some best practices that go along with remote working and stuff. We’ll get into that stuff. I mean, by all means, if you have anything, go ahead and comment on it and I’ll kind of chat below, but at the end of the day, working remotely is in some ways better, in some ways worse than working in an office. I mean, from a better standpoint, there’s all kinds of tools and tech and stuff that you can use and it really puts the priority on getting things done, because in getting things done, that’s what your clients want, that’s what your boss wants, that’s what the company you’re working for wants.

All of the water cooler talk and the looking busy and all of that is literally stripped away. I mean, because your boss, your team, your clients, they don’t see any of that. All they see is what you are actually doing and what you’re delivering and what you’re turning around. That’s probably the biggest change to remote working.

Now today what we’re going to talk about is generating leads through a lead funnel. And there’s a couple of ways, so what I’m going to do is I’m going to pull up a blog post that we wrote on how to create a perfect lead magnet. Now your lead magnet is the thing that is going to… Is the thing that people are going to opt-in for.

Basically your lead magnet, somebody clicks on a banner ad and somebody clicks through a blog post, whatever, they go to your website, and then for the most part they land on a landing page. A great example of a landing page is actually right here. You probably can’t see that. I think you can see this if I open it up into a new tab though. This is an example of a landing page.

Literally, business accelerator toolkit for coaches and creators. Hit the download now button. This is a two-step opt-in. Basically, poop, enter your email address, enter their email address, and then they are off and running. It ends up being pretty cool, right? Now, what we need to do though is we need to give them something in exchange for their email address. That thing is typically what is called a lead magnet.

Now lead funnels take a lot of different shapes, a lot of different forms. At the end of the day, what you want to do is you want to give them something of value that you could pay or you could charge for and will help them in their life. And the best way to think about this is to think of your primary target market, your customer avatar. Like what little tip can you share with them that will get them taking action and will get them to opt-in, join your email marketing list and move them closer to buying. In a lot of markets, a simple PDF is really going to do the trick. A six to eight-page report, you can type up in Apple Pages or Microsoft Word, export it as a PDF, and then give that PDF away for free.

We just want to be really, really specific. Here are some example headlines just… Seven secret persuasion tricks to increase webinar conversion, or seven WordPress plugins that increase visitor engagement without them even realizing it, or seven email templates to re-engage the email subscribers who have already written you off. Every market has those little tips, those little strategies that somebody will opt-in for. And then what you want to do is you want to build a landing page around that market. Now in this example, literally our landing page is the simplest, cleanest looking thing ever. This converts really, really well. In other markets that might not, you might want to have a big background image or whatever, but all in all, works out nicely. There’s another example of a landing page and the survival space and then another landing page.

But down here below we start talking about the different types of lead funnels and lead magnets.

The seven types of Done For You lead magnets, one is a report or guide. Like I said, six to eight-page report that you can type up and you probably already have this thing done. I mean, if you’ve written a couple of blog posts, you can put those blog posts together, give them away for free as a PDF, and then boom, you’re in the game. You can give it away for free. You might not even need to export it as a PDF, you might just be able to literally link them directly to the blog post and call it good. It’s opt-in form and then the blog post and bam, you get their email address, they get the thing that they opted in for, and then you’re good.

The other thing is a cheat sheet or a process map. I actually just recorded a video on giving away one of these things for sales funnels. You will see that in the future, but basically, a flow chart that walks somebody from point A to point B. It might be whatever your market, I mean, whether you are an accountant or whether you are selling digital products or a coach or whatever, is there a process that somebody can go through and then give that thing away for free. Give it in exchange for an email address. A checklist is another great one, the software is another great one. I actually just had a call yesterday with a guy who writes software and he was going to give the software away for free to generate leads, but that was also his offer.

My advice to him was, look, let’s create a lead funnel that we can give away for free to your prospects, and let’s sell the software because the software is expensive to write and it’s also expensive to maintain. A checklist, another great freebie to give away and we’ve talked about this. I actually just recorded a video for one of these too. Videos, you can record a video and then give it away for free as a lead funnel generation.

We have typically had less luck giving away a video from a lead funnel standpoint in a lead funnel because the video was kind of synonymous with YouTube, people don’t necessarily value video the way they previously did and they don’t necessarily want to wait eight minutes to get the full impact of that video, to actually absorb the content. What they would rather do is download a checklist, download a process map or a flow chart or even a short PDF, skim through it, figure out what the hell you’re talking about, and then they kind of scroll back up to the top and then they watch the rest of it.

With a video, they can scrub of course, but then they miss it. Do you know what I mean? They might miss the payoff that they are hoping for. Oftentimes we don’t see videos work swell from a lead generation standpoint if it’s not highly visual in nature. Now a visual kind of thing, visual in nature, I mean it might be golf, might be fitness, might be even some survival stuff, but those are going to be some niches that video will be a little bit more impactful on when they’re actually learning how to do something.

I was just talking to Chelsea about how I have a couple of DIY Builds videos up and they’re in crazy traffic right now. Not necessarily views, but when somebody watches, they’re watching for a really long time. Like the last couple of weeks we’ve kind of entered into this kind of content consumerism, people are watching videos, they’re staying for longer, click costs are going down, banner impressions are going up. Lead cost is going down because there are just more people online and they’re staying for longer, and they’re doing more things. It’s nice that way. Do you know what I mean? Tutorials always, always, always a great way to generate leads and prospects. It is through a lead funnel is to give tutorials and offer tutorials. Now oftentimes, there was a piece of software called Clarify-it which lets your screenshots and then document the screenshots.

I don’t know of another piece of software out there that does that. I’m sure there is. I know Clarify-it kind of morphed into another brand, but I haven’t done it in a while but screenshot-based tutorials always work really well because they move somebody through like learning… Let’s see, quizzes and surveys, and chatbots, huge for regenerating leads. We actually just implemented a chatbot on the homepage of Done For You to see how it would work.

It’s already sending leads through our lead funnel to people who are already moving through it, which is fantastic. We’re actually using it for what you’ll see in pretty soon. It is a Done For You button that you can add into your membership area or coaching area. Also, an offer done for your services, and get paid a commission. It’s all based on this quiz survey chatbot model. The idea is that if you ask somebody a couple of qualifying questions before you ask somebody for their email address. They are more likely to give you their email address in exchange for results or in exchange for marketing or whatever thing that they want by going through the survey.

Now it can’t necessarily be kind of a weird survey, but you can also segment them into buckets and then send marketing material out based on how they answer. That is also really, really hot. Let’s see. We have some lead magnet ideas for coaches. In setting up lead funnels for coaches, lead generation for coaches, I mean there are some lead magnets you can use. For health coaches for foods, you can buy at the grocery store that they give you instant energy or three steps to changing any habits, no matter how addicted you think you are. Those are just some general kind of lead magnet ideas.

Real estate finding deals, flipping properties, that kind of thing. All in all, your lead funnel has a couple of core components. It has your traffic, you need a traffic source to have a lead funnel of course. You need eyeballs coming to your website, hitting your landing page, and then ultimately opting in or becoming prospects in one way or another for your business, for your thing. You need traffic, you need a lead magnet, you need something to give them for free in exchange for their email address. And then not only do you need to give them that thing, but you also need to market to them tomorrow and the next day and the next day and the next day and for years, I mean this is not open-ended or this is not a closed-loop thing.

You don’t write five days worth of email or seven days’ worth of email and then call it good and hope that they convert because they won’t, the majority of them won’t convert until the end of the first week or second week or month. We have people coming to us that are literally just getting started in some of our services six years later. If we would have stopped marketing to them then, I mean they would not have turned into customers. That’s the point of lead generation. You nurture them again and again, you move them through buying cycles, you nurture them, you send them blog posts, that’s the point of lead generation. It doesn’t just end after five days. You need traffic, you need lead funnels… You need a landing page.

A landing page, a great example is this. Nice and simple. We have other landing pages inside of our access CRM. There are landing page builders and all kinds of ways to create landing pages. But the most important part of the landing page is that it converts somebody to going from just traffic, somebody who’s visiting your website to ultimately opting in for your marketing message, and that’s how they become a lead. Your lead funnel is how you scale this thing from 10 leads to 20 leads to 50 leads to 100 leads. And then ultimately it’s how you convert that lead into a paying buyer so that you can then scale faster and stronger and harder and all of that other happy fun stuff. That’s the idea behind lead funnels.

Now if you guys have any questions, I think this question box actually works, the one that Restream didn’t. Go ahead, ask some questions. Let’s see. Otherwise, I’m just going to kind of click around here. It looks like we got some private chat options, which is kind of cool. Let’s see. Got a couple of banners, I’m going to post them… All right, I just chatted out, how are you doing to everybody. Let me know if you see that it would be awesome. All right, I think some of the platforms are coming back. It looks like it hit. All right, cool.

All in all, that’s lead generation. If you’re watching this and you have any questions on lead magnets, let me know. Like this, share it, whatever, that’d be awesome. In terms of lead magnets, some of the most successful lead magnets that we have ever produced are, one of them was the 100 email subject lines, it was nice, simple, quick to get going. And at the time we were generating email leads for about $2 apiece. Now that same lead magnet generates email leads for about $4 apiece.

We have seen very, very specific lead magnets converting for far less. In their survival market right now, we have a lead magnet that is converting for about 40 cents. 40 cents per email lead. It was 80 cents per email lead, but then it kind of… We have now, amiss the coronavirus and the lockdowns or shutdowns and everything else. It has really spurred the survival mentality so that lead magnet is performing really well.

It’s a 30-page ebook or something. It’s quite a bit longer, but checklists and build maps are working tremendously well. It is because they’re just compact and nice and focused. You immediately know what it is you are getting into. Now if your lead funnel starts with something like that, four ways to double the revenue of your business in the next 60 days.

It is generic and general and whatever that people just keep swiping, whatever, whatever, whatever, okay, fine. That’s the problem, that’s why you need to make these things super, super, super-specific.  Even this one, business accelerator toolkit for coaches and creators, this isn’t specific enough, but we don’t… This is very simple just to exit pop traffic. We don’t necessarily need… We are not paying for traffic or paying for leads here. That is the idea. Now, let’s see. All right, we got… That’s good.

All right, if you guys have any questions at all go to consultingsession.com, fill out the little form. Book a call with me and I’m happy to get on the phone and talk about your business.  We can talk about ad campaigns, or anything else, whatever you need. Literally, I am here at 10 o’clock every day, Monday through Friday. I will answer your questions and deliver content. Teach you the things that I know might help move your business forward. If you have any questions at all, go to doneforyou.com/gsd. Let me see if I can throw this in here. Ask questions for the next show at doneforyou.com/gsd.

All right, ask questions for the next show, you can type that in. I’m going to play with these banners over here. Let’s see. I’m going to create a banner and say, ask questions for the next show at… Let’s see what this does. All right. I’m going to show you this thing. Let’s see what this does. Woo, that’s pretty. Maybe I don’t want to scroll it as a ticker. Okay, let’s see what this one does. I’m going to show this guy… Oh, there it is, nice and big. Cool. No. All right, here’s another one. Get an action plan call at… All right, how about this one? We’re going to do this. Show this guy, bam, get an action plan call at doneforyou.com/start.

If you have any questions at all, go to doneforyou.com/start, sign up for an action plan call, and then we will put together a plan for web design, web optimization, ad management, whatever. As I said, we just want to get your shit figured out and help you move forward, help move your business online, help you get leads in sales and traffic, and all that stuff because literally I mean, I don’t know when this is going to kind of be fixed. I was just reading a business report that could be changed for the next 18 months or whole life could be changed for the next 18 months and we might have this rolling kind of blackout window or something, I don’t know.

All I know is that business will be different after this than it was before. And many people are going to now be turning online to do business because they have had to do it for a couple of months and they’ve gotten accustomed to it, same with remote work. And the companies who shut down, might not call people back or it’s not even they won’t call people back, but I mean, the entire country might go remote. I mean, there’s all kinds of random stuff that could happen. For me, I just want to help you get ahead of it. That’s really the idea. Now, if you have any questions, let me know and I will talk to you soon. All right, thanks. Bye.

The post How To Create A Lead Funnel For Your Website appeared first on Done For You.

The Need for a Marketing Automation Agency

A marketing automation agency can be your secret weapon when seeking to enhance your business’s marketing efforts. Contrary to popular belief, marketing automation isn't only for giant corporations but can be a game-changer for businesses of all sizes. In this guide, we'll focus on how to pick the right marketing automation agency to meet your specific needs and objectives.

Debunking Myths: Marketing Automation is For Everyone

Is Marketing Automation Overwhelming?

The term "marketing automation" might seem daunting, particularly if you're a small business or a creative agency. Rest assured, the right marketing automation agency will make the process seamless, efficient, and highly effective.

Marketing Automation Across the Board

Marketing automation agencies cater to businesses, big and small, spanning various industries. Whether you're a tech startup or a local retail shop, marketing automation is applicable and beneficial.

Critical Advantages of Partnering with a Marketing Automation Agency

Achieve Scalability and Efficiency

Its scalability is one of the most compelling reasons to work with a marketing automation agency. Automation handles repetitive tasks around the clock, freeing up your valuable resources.

A Hands-Off Approach to Lead Generation

Imagine generating qualified leads without lifting a finger. With the right marketing automation agency, you can set up systems that acquire, nurture, and convert leads automatically.

Not Just Set It and Forget It: Ongoing Benefits

Investment and Returns

While implementing automation requires an initial investment in time and capital, the long-term benefits far outweigh the costs. Your selected marketing automation agency will ensure that your systems work tirelessly, growing your business even when you're not actively involved.

Beyond Email: Multi-Channel Capabilities

The Misconception: Email is Everything

A common misconception is that marketing automation only involves email campaigns. In reality, a competent marketing automation agency can do much more.

What Multi-Channel Means for You

From SMS marketing to social media discovery and CRM synchronization, the right agency will allow you to reach your customers at every touchpoint. This ensures a customized and highly effective marketing strategy beyond simple email campaigns.

The Ultimate Advantage: Deep Customer Connections

What Meaningful Connections Can Do

A significant advantage of working with a marketing automation agency is forming more meaningful connections with your customers. Whether through personalized messaging or timing your customer interactions perfectly, automation enables a whole new level of engagement.

Final Thoughts: Simplifying Marketing Automation

Marketing automation may seem complex, but it's straightforward and highly effective with the right agency. If you're interested in diving deeper into this topic, we have a free webinar to watch to learn how easy it is to implement automation for your business.

By choosing a competent marketing automation agency, you’re not just buying a service; you're investing in your business's scalable growth and long-term success.

[Video Transcript]

Today, we will discuss what working with a marketing automation agency should look like. Now, there's a lot of different automation play. There are so many other things about marketing automation, so many different ways to cut it up and so many different ways to generate revenue from it, profit from it, and use it. But at the end of the day, some straightforward tools tend to be plug-and-play. From a marketing automation standpoint, how you combine those tools is just up to your imagination.

For those who don't know who I am, my name is Jason Drohn, creator of doneforyou.com. We specialize in creating offers, building sales funnels, and doing marketing automation and traffic for clients. Marketing automation tends to be a place we thrive in because it's the glue between many different things. It's the glue that brings a lot of other elements together. It brings the pages together, and it brings the email marketing together, and it brings outbound kind of SMS stuff, and sales, and sales staff, and sales teams and, pipelines, and workflows. It all comes together in this idea of marketing automation.

What should be the goal in setting up a Marketing Automation?

When setting up marketing automation, the big thing you're looking for is making sure that the different pieces talk together. They go through, and you have your marketing. You have your CRM that speaks to your sales pages and your sales page; they talk to your CRM, and then all of that.

What we're going to talk about today is what a marketing automation agency is going to do or should do to help you grow your business online.

First, as marketing artists, we do a lot of marketing automation. We're a marketing automation agency. Although, I don't classify that as what we are. We're more like a growth team that does marketing automation.

Marketing automation is a key fundamental kind of building block of what sales funnels are and what sales funnels do.

Everybody does a small amount of marketing automation. Some agencies specialize in marketing automation, though. I would say that we specialize in marketing automation. We can make the website do things you haven't seen before, even in some of the stuff we do.

DFY website Marketing Automation

It's funny because we have our page visits tracked to Slack every once in a while. If we have somebody's email address or phone number, and they come to our website and hit a specific page, then it will send up kind of a warning flare and say, "This person is on your page." Ding and the whole deal.

When that happens, it also outputs their phone number and email address. If you have been to our website and any of our sales pages, and you get an email from me or one of my staff, it's a personalized email. That is why. It's because we have Slack configured through Zapier. We have our CRM send an alert over to Zapier. Zapier makes connections between software. It's the API hub between a bunch of different, 1000s of other, applications. A CRM sends a Zap to Slack and says, "Show, basically ping, these people on Slack every time this person, or we know who a person is, who hit a sales page.

Every once in a while, if you get a call from somebody on my team or an email from somebody on my team or even me, it's because we're watching that channel. You showed up on that page and ping; we see your email; we see your phone number because you've given it to us in the past. Not because it's weird, and we're spying on the world. But it's because it's all used from our collected data.

There have been times where we've noticed, I've seen, somebody be on page two or three or four days in a row. I don't even wait for them. I'll call them and say, "Hey, what's up, blah, blah, blah. This is Jason. You know, I saw you were on the page." And they're like, "What? You know, like, that's creepy." I'm like, "Yeah, it's creepy, but this is what we do. This is marketing automation. It's what we do. We wrote a book on it. You know what I mean?"

A good marketing agency must be able to implement workflows that will reap benefits and rewards from marketing automation.

That is one of the blessings of marketing automation. When you can run it correctly, a good marketing automation agency can do that for you. That's the idea. They're going to be able to implement those same workflows so that you reap the benefit and reward from it. There are marketing automation agencies, and then there's marketing automation for agencies. Both of those things they're the same. Marketing automation is marketing automation, whether you are an agency that is using it for your clients or you're an agency that's using it to acquire clients. It's all the same thing.

It's connecting different pieces of software so that things talk and trigger.

Zapier

There are lots of ways to do marketing automation. Zapier tends to be the place that everything comes to. It's kind of the head between all of the different sides. If you're running a Facebook lead ad, you will use Zapier to put that email address inside your CRM. Let's go over here to apps. There's all kinds of stuff, Google Sheets.

Most of the Google Suite has some pretty exciting stuff:

• Google Drive
• Facebook Lead Ads
• ActiveCampaign
• Facebook Pages

All of the things that it can do. We can get or send Gmail emails to new leads from Facebook Lead Ads, which I don't recommend.

You can also get emails with new Facebook Lead Ads leads. You can send lead ads to different rows in Google Sheets. We do that all the time, especially for our real estate clients.

1. We'll set the trigger.
2. Facebook sends the lead-in.
3. Then, it adds them to the CRM.
4. Then, finally, it puts them in a spreadsheet.

The CRM triggers, then the email marketing workflows, and then the spreadsheet is what somebody would call a sales guy would start screaming and working those leads.

If somebody comes in from a Facebook lead ad, we can add or update active campaign contacts—lots of different things you can do there. Your imagination is the limit when it comes to marketing automation. It is that simple. There are so many ways to trigger all kinds of cool stuff.

Slack

Slack is huge. There are so many integrations you can run with Slack. Microsoft Teams is fantastic, too, but Slack will integrate with everything. I'm not in a Microsoft environment at all. I don't think I have any Microsoft products installed on my computers, maybe Skype. We set it up with our CRM. We'll have Facebook Lead Ads ping Slack whenever there's a new sale.

A new conversation goes off into Google Sheets. We can set up some stuff in Airtable in Slack for project management. We're used to having it, so we get a Slack notification every time a base camp task is updated. We've set it up so that there are KPIs inside ad managers that will ping a Slack notification.

There are lots of different ways to work. There are lots of different ways to work on that moving forward. Now, let's see if we go to some of the other methods.

Anyway, your marketing automation agency will know all of this stuff. They will learn to trigger things that will move somebody through your prospect's scenario and pipeline. That's just what marketing automation does.

Benefits of Marketing Automation

1. The first is you're going to sell more.

You're going to sell more because people are in front of you or your brand is in front of them, I should say. You're going to generate more revenue in the long-term from that.

2. Your brand will be remembered better.

You will also, and perhaps more importantly, you will be remembered better. If somebody is seeing your ads, emails, text messages, or whatever for months and years to come, they're much more likely to buy. I can't tell you how many times we ended up getting somebody. They come in, and the first time they ever bought anything, a book or maybe a video course or whatever. Then, all of a sudden, they're our best customers. They've been on the list for six years.

They're our best customers because it just took a long time to warm up to us enough or to be ready to buy something. But once they do, they're committed because they're getting results. They know our process, and they know us without working directly with us. It ends up working out that much better for them. Marketing automation makes that possible.

Our marketing and marketing automation agencies work to set it and forget it.

It's a big question. We get asked all the time, and the answer is not. Marketing automation will make you money long-term, but there are always rules and things that break.

I mean, marketing automation is very much you're looking at Zapier. I just got one yesterday. My Instagram Zap broke between Instagram and Google Drive. I have no idea why. I haven't investigated. But it shows that even though something has been working for years, sometimes it breaks. Sometimes, there's a coding issue. Sometimes, a lot of these integrations have three parties.

They have your ad account. You have two sides. Let's say Instagram and Google Drive, and then you have Zapier in the middle. You have three coding teams who are all trying to work together technically. They're building the frameworks for everything to coincide. Sometimes, it doesn't work out all that well. Sometimes, something will break for a few days, and then it will magically get re-enabled. There are just some things to look at there. Here are some things to take note of.

You are always going to think of ways to do things better. You're going to say, "Oh man, I should've sent lead ads to Slack rather than to a spreadsheet." As I'm talking about it, I think that because we go into a spreadsheet for our clients. Like, "Well, why don't we set them up with a Slack account?" There are always ways to do things better. You have to keep your mind open to it.

As I said earlier in the week, if you're researching and thinking, some of my best, most transparent marketing automation "gotchas" happen when I'm mowing the lawn. I don't know why. I'm just driving around, riding on a lawnmower, but then I'm like, "Oh, damn, I shouldn't do this. Or I should do that."

Some of my most significant kind of aha moments come from when I'm driving, which my wife pointed out. In the middle of this pandemic, she's like, "Yeah, we don't drive anywhere." She's like, "So you don't have any processing time." And it's right. She's absolutely 100% right, as always. And I don't. That's always what I did when I drove. I'd process things that happened during the week because we don't go anywhere, as you can tell by being in this office. However, we will start shooting some on-location live streams, which I'm excited about, at a co-working place in town.

Marketing Automation Tips

You want to email, SMS, significant, big marketing automation components—any alert, triggers, or anything important to your business is also essential. Suppose you need your sales rep to know immediately when something comes in the door. In that case, you can set up a marketing automation trigger, put it in Slack, send it to a text message, put it in a spreadsheet, whatever the motivation, or some other bell or whistle. There are all kinds of exciting things to do. You can download an app called If This, Then That: I-F-T-T-T, IFTTT.com. If This, Then That, it's on iPad, probably Android too. But it's kind of like Zapier, only it's mobile, and you can trigger all sorts of cool things. When a sale comes in, it can ding. You can change the lights in your room, and all kinds of fun stuff there.

Advantages of Marketing Automation

Now, one of the most significant advantages of marketing automation is it creates a customized personal; it just customizes your marketing message for your end-user. You can do so much to customize the way they're marketed. If you have a survey and there are four answers on a survey, and depending on how they pick one of those answers, you enter them into an email sequence. That's one way to do it. You can send them down different paths based on a link they click in an email or a page they visit.

They go to a particular page, like a Facebook traffic page or how to make a garden table out of two by fours pages, then you can send them three or four two-by-four emails. You can think about all kinds of really cool stuff if you just sit back and think, "What do they want from me? What can I give them to help them grow or help them transform their lives or help them do something better?" That's all marketing automation is.

For Questions and Guide

With that, if there's anything we can do to help, we're happy to. Go to doneforyou.com/start, fill out the little form, and book a time on our calendar. We will dig in and figure out where in your business, what in your business can be automated, where we can find traffic, and what kind of automated processes and sales systems we can set up so that everything scales well and fast and as mechanical as possible inside the framework that you're already working in. That ends marketing automation week.

The post How to Choose the Right Marketing Automation Agency for Your Business appeared first on Done For You.

This is marketing automation week and at the end of the day, everything we’ve been talking about is how to automate your marketing. We are going to talk about Facebook advertising or Facebook ad. In most cases, this marketing automation involves CRMs. It involves email and email automation. Outbound email, outbound SMS. Somebody comes in, something triggers, something happens, and then all of a sudden, they get an email. Or they get a notification is sent, or whatever.

What we’re going to talk about today is what I like to call two-stage remarketing. Basically, on a Facebook ad, we can segment down. When somebody hits a website, or somebody watches a video or whatever, including these live videos, what we can do is we can start a timer. That timer counts down until they move to the next phase of retargeting. If somebody visits your website today, then you’re going to show them one ad. But then if they do not reengage with that ad, with that website, you’re going to show them a different ad in six days.

It’s ninja stuff, and part of the reason we started doing this, and part of the reason why we started kind of thinking out of the box when it came to this kind of setup was really that so many of our clients have multiple offers. They might have a report, like a book offer, so they’ll sell a $27 book, and we want to remark it though. Everybody who comes to their website gets axed, can seize the ad for their book.

But then they also have an automated webinar, so how do you advertise two different offers to the same group? The same group being the people who are already engaged with your brand. I mean, it’s not hard when you have 20, 30, 50, a hundred thousand people inside of a retargeting audience. But when you have a very small number, let’s say 5,000 or 2,000 or 1,000 when you’re just kind of getting started, then this multiple-stage retargeting is important.

It kind of adopts some of that same methodology of when you’re like an exclusion. When somebody buys your thing, you want to exclude them from seeing future advertising. If somebody comes in, they hit your website and then they register for your webinar. Well, you don’t want them to then continue seeing the webinar registration ad. You want them to move to the next evolution of advertising, which is going to be promoting the offer that they were pitched on the webinar. Really, important to identify and address the ways people are engaging with your ads, your website, and all that stuff, and playing it all out through remarketing.

What I’m going to do, I’ve tried describing this to clients in a bunch of different ways, and it’s always kind of fell short, or at least it seems like it falls short. What we’re going to do is we’re going to draw it out inside of just Google drawing. Then, I’m going to show you how to set it up. We’re going to flip over to the share screen.

For those of you who don’t know who I am, because every day we’re meeting new people from these live streams. For those of you who don’t know who I am, my name is Jason Drohn, creator of doneforyou.com. We specialize in three things, creating offers, building sales funnels, and setting up marketing automation. That’s really where our skills and disciplines live.

Two Primary Things To Track for Retargeting

What we’re going to do is, we’re going to just go to go through and just draw out what this multistage. This two-stage remark retargeting is.

1. visits your website
2. watching more than 15minutes video

I mean, there’s more, if they like a page, if they add something to a cart, if they, whatever. But those are the kind of the two primary things that we’re going to be tracking. What we do is we’re just going to move. We’re going to bump these down a little bit. Then up above, we’re going to, just going to add a little text box, and this is going to be five days out. This is it’s going to be less than five days.

2-Stage Retargeting Set-up

We’re going to say more than five days. This is going to be a multistage, two-stage retargeting setup.

1. What we’re going to do is, everybody who comes in, we’re going to use this shape. If they watch, if they visit the website or watch more than 15 seconds, they see the lead magnet, or we’re going to say book offer.

2. If they watch for more than 15 seconds or visit the website, and it’s been more than five days, we’re going to show a webinar registration.

Now, we’re going to draw a couple of arrows. We’re going to do lines pink, and then there.

Audiences for your Retargeting

What this gives us, is it gives us two audiences. We have our primary retargeting audience.

1. If all you’re doing is retargeting, then basically you’re just kind of lumping all of these people into the same audience. The same audience is everybody who’s been on my website or everybody who’s watched more than 15 seconds of a video in the last 180 days. Last six months.

2. Your warm audience is going to be everybody who watches a video or has been to the website in the last 30 days. This is going to end up being six to 30 days. After 30 days, they’ve kind of forgotten about you, so it’s probably not worth reaching back out to them. Their time has passed. They’ve probably already moved on. If they didn’t choose you, they chose someone else. The problem was that dire and they needed a solution, or they were just tire kickers.

Again, if they’re still around after 30 days, then you’re engaging with them through email and whatever, but it’s not. It doesn’t make sense to kind of go back after them or spend significant dollars, ad dollars going back out after them from a retargeting standpoint. It’s just simpler just to cut everybody after 30 days. If they come back awesome, and if they don’t awesome, but still that gives you 30 days of branding. They see your Facebook ad all over the place, which is awesome.

Now, what we do is split. This is our primary retargeted audience, website watched more than 15 seconds. Now we’re just going to do a segment of who has done those things in the last five days.

1. If you’ve been to a website, or if you have watched a video in the last 5 days
2. If you’ve been to a website, or if you have watched a video in the last six to 30 days

When we separate the groups, we’re able to put a different Facebook ad up, so we can show we’re just going to do this. We have our Facebook ad for the book offer, and we have our ads for the webinar registration. They’re not the same. They’re not advertising to the same person. What’s happening is, is you’re getting the best of both worlds. They are seeing an offer switch up, live, in front of them. They see your book offer for five days. And then they see, after six and on, you see your webinar registration offer. They don’t know that it changed. All they know is that it changed. They don’t know what triggered the change. It might just be that you took the book offer off. But in this way, you can daisy chain different offers to a retargeted audience, so you can go far out.

A caveat on this 2-stage retargeting set-up…

When you do this, you always want this offer to be the most pressing, because if they are day 60, or if they are six plus. Let’s say they’re day seven. They’re seeing your webinar registration. They go to the webinar registration, but they don’t opt-in. This method, what it does is it bounces them back to the book offer because they were active on your website in less than five days.

What you want to do, is you want to make sure that this is always your prevalent offer. This is the main focus, the primary offer in your marketing funnel is this first offer. Then, this offer is in terms of priority is less. Obviously, like last week we talked you can only have one priority, but in terms of priority, from a marketing standpoint, this is of lesser priority, your second offer, than your first. It only makes sense, because people are the warmer they are, the more recently they watched a video, and the more recently they were on your website, it means the warmer they are. Your best offer should always be your first offer, your primary offer. Then, you can drip them to the next lesser priority offer.

You can continue down that path. They don’t opt-in for that, they’re going to bounce back to the book, and then they’re just going to go right back through the same sequence, which isn’t a bad thing, but it doesn’t need to be your priority.

Facebook Ads Manager

The magic of this is all done inside of your Facebook ad manager. Inside the ad manager, we’re going to go to our audiences. If you open up your business tools, you’re going to go to audiences. Now in audiences, you see that I have two different groups here. I have video views, 15 seconds for five days. Now, if you look at the drawing here, in less than five days, we’re going to be promoting a book offer. Right here, video views, anybody who has watched more than 15 seconds of a video view, and these are the videos that we have so far, there are 13, 14, 17 total videos in here.

In the past five days, and then we give them an audience name. Now, we’re going to have, that is going to be a special ad inside of the ad segment itself. The ad’s set, we’re going to specifically target that audience, the five, the 15 seconds, five days audience, and then also the website traffic five days audience now. Now, and then, that’s the only people we’re going to target. If they’ve been to the website and watched a video in the last 15 seconds, then they are going to see that first ad.

Now, if you look down here a little bit, we have another. We have website visitors, 30 days. And then, we have video views, 15 seconds. These are our two groups of folks who are plus six days. If we look back at our little sequence, here we go. If we look back here, those two audiences are our website traffic that is plus six days. And our 15 seconds of video that is plus six days.

Now, once you have those audiences set up, and like I said, when you have small audiences, it makes all the difference in the world. But if we go into, we’re going to go back here, and then I’m going to show you how this is all set up. We’re going to go into the book offer. All right. Okay, here we go. Five to 30 days, we got a webinar registration. Zero to five days, we got ebook traffic. Check this out.

If we open up the ad set, we’re going to go in here and look at how this is set up. We have a warm, zero to five days, ebook sales, traffic. And this is a dynamic creative audience for both males and females. Now, if you scroll down, you see that the website traffic, the only custom audiences that we’re marketing to, we have website traffic five days, and video views, 15 seconds, five days. Those are the only two segments that this ad is going to. And then, everything else is pretty well open. Age 25 to 54, because that’s the market, both genders, and then, we have the United States. Demographics, this is all retargeted. If they’ve been to the website or watched more than 15 seconds of a video in the last five days, then they see the ebook offer.

Now, where it gets tricky. Not even tricky, but just the one little hack. The one little hack is here. If we open up this warm on this warm, not five days, we have warm five to 30 days, webinar registration, and this is a conversion campaign. This is a not five days, creative, dynamic, creative ad. What we’re doing is, we’re including website visitors who are more than six days. Six days. We’re including all website visitors. If you’ve been to the website in the last 180 days, or if you’ve been to the website in the last 30 days, or if you have watched 15 seconds or more of a Facebook video, then you see these Facebook ads. But we’re excluding. Excluding. This is the big gotcha. We’re excluding website traffic five days, and video views, 15 seconds, five days.

We’re taking everybody who’s been to the website, and then we’re cutting off the five-day people. Only six-plus days are seeing this webinar ad. It ends up working out, really, really nice. It’s dropped the conversion cost because when you retarget two offers, two different Facebook ad to the same group of people, then the ads compete with each other. Because of Facebook ad, the algorithm is always trying to figure out how to make the most money using the parameters that you set for the people in your audience.

If you have two different ad campaigns that are going to the same audience, it’s going to default to the one that makes it more money.

In this case, we were doing a conversion campaign and a clicks campaign. It was defaulting to the clicks campaign, which meant that we needed to split up the audiences, and to do that, to split up those audiences from just a very easy way of doing it was to then drop days in.

Five days, or six-plus days, we can always do it again. We could do, if you’ve been to the websites, in the last 10 days, then you see the webinar. Or, if you’ve been plus 11, then maybe you see a different offer. Maybe you see a coaching call or something. There are lots of other, really, really creative ways that we can get into doing this staged Facebook ad retargeting.

I just really wanted to go through all of this stuff, talk through it in a better way, I think. One of the reasons I do these videos is so I can kind of point down the road.  Say, “Yeah, this video explains it better than I just did.” And I’m kind of hoping that this video did it. I’ve tried explaining this to probably four or five clients in the last four or five months, and we’ve been doing it a long time, and every single time, it’s like, well, I kind of get it, but I don’t. This, I think, is a little bit better way to describe it.

For Questions and Guide

For those of you who have any questions about this, or you would like to go through, put together some Facebook ad, put together an action plan for your ads, for your funnel, for your marketing automation, just go ahead and go to doneforyou.com/start, and fill out the little application. It’s going to direct you to a calendar that you can set up a call with my team and me, and if you have any questions at all, just drop them in the comments below this. I always take a look at them, so I’m keeping track as we go. Tomorrow, we’re going to finish up marketing automation week.

This was kind of a big little big hack. That didn’t quite email, wasn’t quite a text. But this will get you results, especially if you have small budgets and small audiences.

The post Ways In Setting Up 2-Stage Facebook Ads appeared first on Done For You.

Automated, sequential email messages are a great way to describe drip campaigns in plain English.

Often referred to as drip campaigns but also known by other names – automated email campaigns, drip marketing automation, email automation, lifecycle emails, autoresponders, and sometimes marketing automation – the idea is the same…

Drip campaigns are a sequence of marketing email messages that are sent out automatically on a preset schedule.

Picture this – one email will be sent out as soon as a new subscriber joins your list, another will go out two days later featuring your services, and one more will go out four days later asking people what they’re struggling with. That would be a time-based sequence.

The emails in the drip campaign can be triggered by actions the subscriber has performed or some behavior they have demonstrated on your website. For example, an effort is when a link in your email is clicked; A behavioral trigger can be a visit to a particular web page or a purchase.

NOTE: If you'd like to forgo the rest of this guide and skip right to the fun part of getting it set up, make sure to set up an Action Plan call with us through the Done For You Email Marketing page...  We'll get you dialed in quickly :0)

Table of contents

In this complete guide to drip campaigns and email automation, we're going to discuss the following:

Chapter 1: Why Your Marketing Needs Drip Campaigns
Chapter 2: Infographic: Drip campaign basics
Chapter 3: How is email marketing different from drip campaigns?
Chapter 4: When should you use a drip campaign? Drip use cases.
Chapter 5: Who runs drip email campaigns?
Chapter 6: How to create effective email drip campaigns
Chapter 7: Best drip campaign examples
Chapter 8: 7 Lessons Learned from high-performance Drip Campaigns
Chapter 9: Where drip campaigns go off the rails
Chapter 10: The tools you need for drip marketing
Chapter 11: How to measure drip campaign results
Video Transcript: Quick Strategies For Drip Marketing Automation

Why you need drip marketing automation campaigns

Combining marketing automation with drip campaigns can generate 20% more sales opportunities.

Every organization needs to run drip campaigns to reap the following benefits:

Be relevant with timely communication

With drip campaigns, you can deliver relevant information precisely when your users need it.

The information delivered through drip email sequences is activated by how a user engages with your brand and web assets and where they reside in the sales cycle.

Nurture leads until they are sales-ready

Drip marketing nurtures warm leads until they are sales-ready.

Drip campaigns can provide your business development team with an ongoing supply of prospects ready to close, making the most of marketing and sales effectiveness.

Work smarter with marketing automation.

Drip campaigns allow you to put tedious parts of the sales process on auto-pilot. Drip campaigns inform and nurture your business leads without you lifting a finger. This way, you can spend less time pitching your services and more time closing clients.

Infographic: Drip campaign basics

Want a closer look at drip marketing automation? Pardot has put together the infographic below to present the basics of what you can do with automated email campaigns. Click on the drip campaign infographic to zoom in.

Back to the table of contents.

How is email marketing different from drip campaigns?

You might be wondering how email marketing is different from drip email campaigns. Watch the video below, which explains where the two terms intersect and how they follow different paths.

When should you use drip campaign automation and drip campaign software?

Drip marketing is an umbrella that covers several different marketing techniques. But the end goal remains the same: keep users immersed in your product.

Let's look at a few use cases where creating an automated drip campaign may help you deliver better information to targeted viewers and convert them into paying customers. You might want to try some of these drip marketing examples with your subscribers, or perhaps these use cases will spark your imagination for other approaches to marketing your products using drip campaigns.

Nurture leads

You can't take every user by the hand through their buyer's journey, but drip email campaigns can do that difficult task for you. You can use welcome, onboarding, or abandoned cart autoresponder sequences to nurture your leads and prepare them to become paying customers.

Welcome

You could use a welcome email sequence to automatically send a new list of subscribers some of your most popular blog posts. Or, if you get a new free trial signup for your SaaS product, you could try a drip showcasing an example of how other customers use your product features.

Onboarding

Pageviews and free trial users are good, but ultimately, you need your users to purchase something from your business. That's where an onboarding drip campaign would come in handy: combined with welcome campaigns and newsletters, onboarding emails provide targeted messages to the customer, which are small wins for your business.

Abandoned carts

You designed compelling newsletters, offered flash sales, and tempted your user to click the "add to cart" button. But then, the user leaves empty-handed. Shopping cart abandonment can be a plague for an e-shop. But with a drip campaign to recover abandoned carts, you can reengage those customers and drive them back to complete the purchase.

Renewals

Whether your user renewed their membership or the subscription is about to end, you can leverage drip campaigns to captivate subscribers. For automatic renewals, you might use an autoresponder that sends users a notification that their account is about to be charged.

However, you need to test the effectiveness of this because, in some cases, it might result in people canceling their account before their subscription is extended.

If your subscriptions don't auto-renew, create your drip campaign with a clear CTA, asking users to commit to your service for another term or year.

Engagement

The math is quite simple: the more often someone interacts with your website, the more likely they are to become a paying customer.

Engagement email sequences are a drip campaign that encourages the recipient to return to your site and browse, triggered either by some on-page activity or complete inactivity.

Social networks are a fantastic example of using activity-based triggers for drip campaigns. If somebody on Twitter mentions you in their tweet, Twitter can send an alert-style email, motivating you to visit Twitter, see the tweet, and respond.

Courses

Putting together a drip campaign to deliver a multi-part online course is a way to repackage old content or promote new content, and it helps you attract more targeted subscribers. Plus, once the user receives the last email, they know your product and are ready to move deeper into your funnel.

Back to the table of contents.

Who runs drip email campaigns?

Bloggers

Promote a new freebie (ebook, checklist, or free course), automatically share your recent blog posts, and engage your audience in pre-launch campaigns.

Course sellers

Grow your list by dripping free email courses to new signups, segmenting your subscribers into interest groups, and send highly personalized emails to increase course sales. Build a referral program, so every student can refer their friends and earn a gift.

SaaS businesses

Warm up your leads and nurture them until they leave their free trial and become paying customers. Create an onboarding sequence to showcase your product features to new users. Reduce churn by timely managing subscription renewals.

Realtors

Stay ahead of the competition and follow up on your prospects effectively. Drip campaigns can do the work for you, as well as take care of most recurring tasks. The sky's the limit. Drip campaigns can nurture your real estate leads.

Insurance brokers

Any solopreneur or freelancer can deploy drip marketing campaigns and automation to their benefit. Take insurance brokers, for example. They need to constantly be in touch with different segments of their audience, i.e., cold leads, warm leads, customers, health plan customers home insurance customers, and so on.

Fashion industry

Set up drip campaigns to send out flash sales offers, happy birthday emails, customer satisfaction surveys, abandoned cart drip campaigns... you name it!

Beauty professionals

Track and automatically reward your most loyal buyers, use upsell and cross-sell to increase your revenue, or send personalized product recommendations based on behavioral patterns or the location of your customers.

Ecommerce

Cart abandonment drip campaigns, product replenishment drips, VIP customer reward campaigns, and upselling/cross-selling sequences are the most typical drip email examples in eCommerce.

Online entrepreneurs/affiliate marketers

There are unlimited ways to use drip marketing automation to grow your business. With drip campaigns, you can achieve any of the goals mentioned here, plus create any customized campaign, like promoting an affiliate program to grow your business even further.

If you are an affiliate marketer, you'll be interested to read this post about high-conversion affiliate marketing email sequences.

Back to the table of contents.

How to create successful drip campaigns

1. Determine your goal

If you have no idea what you intend to achieve, how can you even accomplish it? You have to choose whether to warm up your leads, get them to purchase, or take other action that serves your marketing goals. When describing your plan, you need to be specific if you want to be able to measure it.

2. Optimize your messages

Simply having a drip campaign in place won't bring you much. The information in these emails must be excellent. If you send poor content, the outcome will be lousy. If your drip campaign doesn't add value to the email recipients, it can harm your marketing because people will unsubscribe or even report you for spam.

Keep the emails short (up to 250 words), or your list won't bother to read them. Know that most of your customers are not exactly reading your newsletter instead, they are scanning through the content, so make your emails scannable.

3. Focus on your CTAs

When you start developing content for the drip campaign, think about this: What is it that my leads need to make a decision or take action? For example, suppose your objective is to activate more users of your SaaS. In that case, you might want to create an email drip campaign that describes the best functionality of your drip campaign software and shows success stories of how other people used it and got results.

On the other hand, you should aim to enhance people's confidence in your brand by building credibility - that is, if your objective is to sell them your products and services. You should be able to do this by educating them, addressing their concerns (i.e., removing friction), and presenting proof of how your product helps them materialize their aspirations.

4. Set frequency and timing

When it comes to the optimal email sending times, check your email marketing platform stats to see if any particular times of day generated more opens. About frequency, there is no one-size-fits-all guideline here. Typically, you should send emails more often when someone is new to your list and slow down as they go further down your funnel. You could start with sending emails once a day, then every couple of days, then once a week, and finally once every two weeks or so.

Of course, there are exceptions. Someone might be on your list for a long time, but suddenly, they express their purchase intent by visiting your e-shop and by abandoning a product in their cart. In this case, it makes sense to email them daily to recover the cart while the user is still warm.

Or you might segment old subscribers by having them sign up for a new ebook or whitepaper. Then, you could also email them frequently to educate them more on the particular subject and entice them to opt-in for one of your relevant offers.

5. Segment your lists

So, a way to optimize your drip campaigns, especially if your list has more than 600-700 subscribers, is to create segments. With segmenting, you can send different parallel campaigns but tailor them to specific groups of subscribers.

For example, you can design two separate landing pages for two different list segments. Now, when people subscribe to your list on one of those two pages, you'll be able to know what interests them more and add them to the better-suited email drip campaign.

6. Always measure performance

This goes for all your marketing efforts. You must measure the results to find and fix bottlenecks and optimize your marketing spend. With email marketing come basic KPIs like open rate and click-through rate. Besides those, we suggest that you measure the revenue your campaigns generate. The impact on your bottom line is all that matters. Set up UTM links within your drip campaign emails so you can track the complete funnel and identify the source of a sale.

Now, let’s move on to some drip campaign examples so you can get inspiration and ideas for your next drip campaign.

Back to the table of contents.

Best drip campaign examples

1. Example of an onboarding drip campaign

When someone turns into a buyer, you can schedule a series of email messages to encourage them to use your product and be satisfied. Here is an example of an email drip campaign for customer onboarding:

Email 1: Encourage customers to finish setting up their new accounts. Take them through the basic steps they need to take to start using your product. If the account is fully set up automatically, use the first onboarding email to welcome new customers and let them know you are available for a demo.

Email 2: Show them your training material and user guides. Give them links to resources, videos, your knowledge base, community forums, or FAQs. Encourage them to contact support if they need extra help.

Email 3: Point new customers to your blog, ebooks, or relevant beginner resources. Educate them, show them best practices, and anything else that will help them move forward and succeed. Show them that their success is your success.

2. Welcome email drip

The most basic drip that you need to have is the welcome email sequence. This is the first sequence activated after a new subscriber has joined your list. This is often the first impression people will get from your brand.

So, the welcome email is super important. Welcome email drips also serve to increase your bottom line. According to Experian, they generate 3x more revenue than other types of emails.

Have a look at this illustration of a welcome email from Yoga Pod. It offers a brief greeting, a vibrant video with real customers, links to explore the class schedule, and details about the business location.

SmartrMail also did a comprehensive review of the welcome drip series from Barnes & Noble. This drip campaign consists of an initial welcome message, then an email with a 15% off coupon, then recommended products, followed by an email summarizing the value of Barnes & Noble, and finally, an email informing customers about their mobile app. After this email series come the regular newsletters.

The value of this complete drip campaign example is that it gives users a thorough look at the Barnes & Noble brand and highlights the brick-and-mortar locations of the stores.

3. Retain current customers' drip example

There's a perfect chance that you will want to return the favor when somebody does something nice for you or gives you something. This natural urge to even the scales is called the reciprocity effect. Reciprocity can have a significant impact on customer advocacy, loyalty, and retention.

For instance, one of the top ways to keep current clients is to help them obtain more value from their investment in your product. You can deploy an automated drip campaign to share helpful content about market trends influencing their situation, inspiration, ideas and ways to use your product, and other practical resources to keep them engaged with your product and brand.

Look at this use case: After closing the sale, Contently's business development team sends customers regular emails sharing popular blog posts that bring practical value.

4. Drip campaign example to acquire referrals

About 83% of happy customers are more than willing to transform into your advocates.

The Yesware sales team sends out automated email campaigns to follow up with active customers two months after they join. When your team makes sure customers are satisfied and are seeing the value of the product and your support, it becomes easier to get upsell and referral opportunities.

In this example, the dripped sequence of messages looks like this:

Forty-five days post-close: The sales team sends the buyer a reminder email to confirm that they are satisfied and doing well. Then, they schedule a two-part email campaign to send to the client, with the first of the two emails going out that day.

Sixty days post-close: Email #2 is automatically delivered, wishing the client a happy two months. Yesware is asking if they know of any other organizations that would potentially benefit from Yesware's products.

5. Offer and promotion drips

Anything like offers, sales, promotions, other in-store campaigns, or seasonal campaigns can be added to a dripped series to automate the workflow. Such a drip campaign could include promo codes, discounts, limited-time offers, freebies, VIP access, or anything else you may use to drive a purchase.

You've got a 24-hour coupon! Claim this offer before it expires! These are great drip campaign examples of the subject lines of a promo email.

Moreover, customer milestones make fantastic reasons to present a one-time offer to your clients. Plus, contacting them as they progress lets you make your communication more personal. Email drip campaign ideas are when you send them a birthday email or celebrate their anniversary of becoming a customer.

Here's how Nike makes the most out of email drip campaigns to put birthday emails on auto-pilot:

So, instead of sending a primary "happy birthday" email, Nike rewards customers with a unique coupon code for a 25% discount on a product. It makes sense that you need to provide value, not just wish your customers happy birthday for the sake of it.

Back to the table of contents.

Lessons learned from high-performance drip campaigns

Neil Patel has published a fascinating blog post on seven lessons learned from top-performing drip email campaigns.

He studied seven branded drips that achieved their goals and presented the results in this article. In brief, here's what the best practices are:

1. Highlight the next step

Most free trials (~50%) don’t turn into paying users. People need guidance on what to do next, especially if they haven’t seen that ‘first win’ yet.

Neil gives the example of how Time Etc., a virtual assistant service, sends an early task or feature highlight to new free trials to activate them. The goal is to prompt people with a specific next step.

2. Use psychology and personalization

Neil uses drip email examples from different brands to demonstrate how psychological triggers (like urgency and scarcity) and personalization elements (e.g., location-based email campaigns) can generate more sales.

The lesson learned is that more sophisticated drips can increase your bottom line.

3. Reduce cart abandonment

While as many as 67% of potential e-shop customers might abandon a loaded cart, 81% of people looking to book a hotel or trip might also bounce.

In that article, there’s an example of how Expedia sends behavioral, event-based emails shortly after the user abandons the search for hotels in specific locations.

The moral of the story is that you can build a winning drip campaign when aligning what a web visitor was doing on your site with the email subject line. This aligns with what they were thinking about and will get their attention.

4. Start slow and escalate

Neil also teaches, when he brings up the example of one of Ramit Sethi’s campaigns, that you can fork a drip campaign to segment users according to their behavior (e.g., clicks) and use these segments to transition seamlessly from mentioning pain points to offering a solution.

5. Reduce churn proactively

A churn rate of 5-7% might be typical and acceptable, but anything more excellent can quickly send you out of business.

To cater to that proactively, you can utilize email drips that will be triggered at some points where you sense or predict churn. You can avoid churn by proactively responding to it.

6. Set up personalized notifications

Another drip campaign lesson is learned when Neil mentions how Mint uses email notifications to help its users recognize and understand their difficult situation and then explains how Mint can help.

One example of how Mint does that is by tracking personalized historical averages and then sending notifications or alerts when aberrations appear.

7. Timely and stylish communication

Finally, a lesson learned from op performing drip email campaigns is that contacting new user within a short time after they’ve signed up can help to activate them. The communication style and content, as well as personalization elements, are essential to keep your users coming back to your site and keep them engaged with your brand.

There’s a pattern among all drip campaigns that have a significant impact on their success. Personalization. Keep in mind that the more you can personalize your drip campaigns (using name, location, job title, stage of the customer journey, or anything like that), the better results you will get.

Back to the table of contents.

Where drip campaigns go off the rails

For every effective drip campaign, dozens crash and burn. But what makes a campaign go off the rails? These are some of the most frequent missteps with drip marketing:

Don't: Send too much email

A subscriber's level of engagement and stage of their journey can give you a hint about the ideal frequency of your emails. As we discussed, it's normal to contact the new lead every day soon after they've subscribed to your brand's mailing list. But when the user is mature, maybe once a week or every two weeks is best.

Don't: Email your list more than once a day.

Some marketers would say that mailing more than once a day can increase engagement. According to our experience, that's not true. It's a bad idea. It can come off as too salesy or aggressive, even intrusive, if you mail people more than once a day. They might think you are too desperate to get their attention - and that's not good.

As time goes by, you can look at your drip campaign stats and see what time of the day brings the highest open rates. That's the best way to do it, instead of sending a lot of emails to make sure the subscriber opens at least once.

Don't Resend old content.

Repurposing content for publishing on different media is a good content marketing strategy. But sending the same old content repeatedly to the same people will not go unnoticed.

Your audience will soon realize they are part of a robotic drip campaign that has lost the human touch. They will also think that your company has nothing new to say to them.
Make sure your drip email content is delivered once to every customer or lead, or else it will have the opposite effect.

Don't: Leave your sales staff in the dark.

In most companies, there is a gap to bridge between marketing and sales. What you need to do is use account-based marketing (ABM). ABM will help your business align sales and marketing efforts so that you derive the maximum benefit. If your marketing team launches a drip campaign but neglects to loop in your sales team, then prospects will wind up receiving both a drip campaign and a direct call the same day. This wouldn't be the end of the world, but can be confusing to receive mixed messages.

Establish regular sales and marketing meetings to discuss outbound strategies and campaigns.

Back to the table of contents.

Email Drip Campaign Software

Axis One: Convert customers with email marketing and automation

Axis One helps you contact and convert more customers by building email marketing campaigns that work. From sending broadcast messages to deploying triggered autoresponder sequences, all is done for you in Axis.

With this tool, you can achieve the ultimate goal of every business: get as many conversions as possible from the prospects that visit your website.

Watch the video below to learn how simple it is to use Axis and how it stacks up against competitive email marketing tools.

Some of the benefits you can reap from Axis include:

• Grow your email marketing list the simple way
• Send one-off broadcasts, i.e., email blasts
• Automate new subscriber onboarding with autoresponder sequences
• Create triggered email sequences that will automate your communications
• Effortlessly stay in touch with your past customers
• Reengage your list and convert more subscribers into customers.

All these reasons make it a worthy investment for your business. After all, you need to do email marketing if you want to grow your business. There is nothing quite like reaching your customers’ inbox when we talk about conversions!

Other Drip Email Software

There are dozens of tools available for managing your emails and crafting an effective drip campaign -- Drip, MailChimp, and Active Campaign are some of the most popular ones. But each of those marketing automation tools has a different set of features, limitations, and price points, so you'll want to review them thoroughly before committing.

Scripting: Autoresponder engine with email swipes and DFY scripts

Scriptly provides professionally written scripts that you can use as they are or customize to suit your business better. These scripts or email swipes will help you write high-converting sales copy immediately, even if you’ve never written a line of sales copy before.

As a Scriptly user, you’ll get instant access to:

• Autoresponder engine – This is a set of dozens of email sequences that are completely done for you. Anything from affiliate autoresponder sequences to webinar sequences is there.
• Page builder – Create any customizable landing page. All templates are tested and proven to convert to paid traffic.
• Customer avatars – There is no need for a separate tool to define different customer avatars to customize your marketing material to address other target groups. We have it all covered in Scriptly.
• VSL creator – Video sales letters can be easily created using Scriptly’s well-structured templates. For every part of the sales letter script, you can choose the sales copy that resonates with your audience.
• Webinar creator – Create your next webinar in minutes, not hours, with this unique fill-in-the-blank formula. The webinar creator is a handy tool that will help you get past writer’s block instantly.

Statly: Understand marketing data to improve sales performance.

If you want to succeed in drip marketing automation, you must be able to track and analyze data. See, you may be successful at attracting tons of targeted website traffic. But what if only 2% of those visitors convert, while the rest remain anonymous? Don’t you want a way to identify who they are, track their behavior, and keep them coming back? Of course you do.

How are users acting when they visit your website? In today’s competitive times, obtaining meaningful data is an integral part of a successful marketing plan.

This is where Statly comes into the picture. As the complete tool that helps you in real-time tracking of users leveraging the sales funnel strategy, it can immensely help your chances of converting traffic into sales. Statly enables you to obtain meaningful data to make the right business decisions.

But how does Statly work? Statly gives you a comprehensive idea of how your sales funnels are converting. It helps you spot opportunities and the parts of your funnels that need to be improved. Watch this video to learn more about what our patent-pending tool can do for your business.

Here are some of the salient features of the tool:

• Real-time website analytics
• Conversion tracking through sales funnels
• Tracking conversion opportunities
• Tracking sales and user behavior on the website

If WordPress powers your site, then all you need to do is install the latest version of our plugin to get started with Statly’s advanced analytics and sales funnel tracking. Click here to sign up for a free Statly trial!

With Statly in your arsenal, you can better optimize your automated marketing campaigns and the buyer’s journey so you entice more web visitors to convert into paying customers. Sitting in front of a load of data wouldn’t do any good, would it? But with Statly by your side, all these previously intimidating numbers will finally make sense.

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How to measure drip campaign results

As with all business endeavors, establishing a set of metrics you will use to track the success of your drip campaigns is crucial to making the right decisions. So, what's the best way to keep track of how users are engaging with your content?

One of the best strategies to accurately track sources of traffic (and the funnel that follows) involves UTM codes (alternatively called URL parameters) -- small text strings that come at the end of a URL. UTM codes don't affect the destination. They add tags to the URL so you know where the visitor came from.

UTM

UTMs track web browsing via cookies in Google Analytics and other analytics suites. Using UTM tags, Google Analytics can show you exactly where a user has been before they visited your site and whether or not they've been to your website before, amongst other information.

When you use UTMs in your drip campaigns, you can track visitors coming from each email message that is part of your drip.

Google has built a custom URL builder that you can use to create custom UTMs.

The beginning of a UTM code is a question mark. At the end of a URL. Here's an example:

https://doneforyou.com/?utm_source=dfyblog&utm_medium=drip-campaigns-post

Whether you use the part after the question mark or not, the user will land on the same page. But if the URL is tagged, you'll know where that user came from.

A lot of the time, if you're using an app to manage your drip campaigns, the app will automatically tag URLs. So, you need to set up the tagging pattern once, and your app will do the rest for every newsletter you send.

Now, here are some vital drip campaign metrics or KPIs you need to measure regularly.

Depending on the sort of drip campaign software you are using, you should be able to find most of these metrics on your dashboard. For the rest, simple calculations would give you what you need.

1. Open Rate

Open rate shows the percentage of your email recipients who opened your message. This is an essential metric to evaluate because your email drips won't do much unless your list subscribers are clicking to open your emails. Opening an email means reading it in most cases.

How to calculate open rate: Total Opens / Total Emails Delivered

2. Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is the percentage of your emails that weren't delivered to your subscribers' inbox. There might be a lot of reasons for bounces, but the most common one is that the email address does not exist.

How to calculate bounce rate: Total Bounces / Total Emails Sent

3. Click-Through Rate

Click-through rate is the percentage of clicks on a link inside your email over the total number of emails delivered. Typically, getting your list members to click on a link within your email message will be the main objective of your drip campaign because clicking a link is equal to taking action.

How to calculate click-through rate: Total Clicks / Total Emails Delivered

4. Unsubscribe Rate

The unsubscribe rate is the percentage of people who unsubscribe following an email blast. If you send 1,000 emails and ten people click on the "unsubscribe" link inside your email, then the unsubscribe rate is 1%.

How to calculate unsubscribe rate: Total Unsubscribes / Total Emails Delivered

5. Conversion Rate

It's all about conversions. So, the conversion rate is the percentage of the people on your list who completed an action (e.g. filling out a form or purchasing a product) after receiving your email.

As explained before, you will need to have UTM links in place to track the whole funnel from click to purchase. Click the link to read more about how to keep track of the complete customer journey.

How to calculate conversion rate: Total Conversions / Total Emails Delivered

6. Drip Campaign ROI

Your campaign's Return On Investment is the overall return on your money spent on the email drip campaign.

How to calculate drip campaign ROI: ($ Sales-- $ Invested)/ $ Invested

7. List Growth Rate

This is a generic measure of how good you are doing growing your email list. List growth rate is the rate at which the number of people on your list has grown over a specified period of time.

How to calculate list growth rate: New Subscribes-(Unsubscribes + Complaints) / Total Subscribers (over a period of time, e.g. the last month).

So, that was it! The Complete Guide To Drip Campaigns And Email Automation.

We hope we did a good job explaining what drip campaigns are and how marketing automation works towards optimizing your processes and increasing your revenue.

Email drips or email automation or marketing automation, whatever you call it, is here to stay; jump on the bandwagon to reap the benefits of automated lead generation, lead nurturing on auto-pilot and sales conversion 24/7 using email drips. Click here to go back to the top of the article.

Video Transcript: Quick Strategies For Drip Marketing Automation

Today we're going to be talking about drip marketing automation.

This is going to date me a little bit but back when I first got into internet marketing 14 years ago, but I remember listening to an audio program from this guy named Eben Pagan and Frank Kern. They were talking about the miracle of email marketing in building your email list, and this thing called an email autoresponder.

The magic of an email autoresponder

This email autoresponder, basically somebody will go to a landing page, they'd fill in an opt in form for a lead magnet or a freebie of some kind, a bribe, and this autoresponder would send them email, after email, after email, after email. Day one it would send an email, day two it would send an email, day three it would send an email. So, that was this autoresponder. The big company back then was a company called AWeber, and they're still around. They're still actually a great drip campaign software. They're also in Pennsylvania here, but AWeber created this autoresponder so that an assistant, or you, or whoever wouldn't have to actually email your list every single day based on when somebody signed up. So day one, the email goes out. Day two, the email goes out. Day three, the email goes out.

So, everybody is happy and everybody is being marketing to automatically. It's the beauty and the magic of technology. Now fast forward to today, and that autoresponder has since been renamed a drip email sequence or drip marketing.

The evolution: drip marketing automation

So, drip marketing is same thing as an autoresponder. Email one goes out, email two drips out the next day. Third email drips out the next day. Fourth email drips out the next day. Your membership content is dripped out week, after week, after week. So, this drip is now basically what the terminology is calling automation or autoresponders. Now, when we get to drip marketing automation really, the automation piece just adds another layer on top of it. So, the automation piece adds a trigger. So, now you have this email, this drip marketing sequence that is set to go out. Email one, two, three, four. It's set to go out.

Now the automation piece adds in a trigger, and the trigger might be a tag is added to a contact record. This person visited a landing page. This form was filled out. This webinar was attended. This survey result was submitted. So, there's lots of triggers that will fire that drip marketing automation, and that's where the magic all comes together. So, it's the trigger. When we build sales funnels for our clients, we will go in and we will set up a bunch of drip marketing already because we already know how people are going to be moving through the sales funnel.

Ideas for drip email examples

Some of them, the biggest, most common drip email examples are we will set up a lead magnet fulfillment sequence. So when somebody downloads a lead magnet, then they go into this fulfillment sequence. The fulfillment sequence drips out, day one, drips out the link, the download link that they can get the report. Day two, maybe it drips out the social media profiles for our client. Day three, what we're trying to do is we're trying to bond them. It's called an indoctrination sequence. So day two it might be social media profiles, day three, "Hey, this is what we do." Day four might be the about page of day five is, "This is why we do what we do." So, it's basically telling the story of our client.

Webinar Promo Campaign

Another example of a drip marketing automation campaign that we have, that we put together for our clients, would be a webinar promo campaign. It's a four email sequence that promotes a webinar, or a webinar replay sequence, which is a six email sequence that we use to promote the webinar replay. Or, a strategy session promo sequence. So, these we already have all loaded up inside whatever CRM our client is going to be using, because we know that these emails are going to be used.

We're going to be increasing website traffic fast through a sales funnel. Now we have to figure out what triggers.

1. automation piece of the drip marketing automation
2. triggers are going to fire
3. forms are going to be figured out
4. pages are going to be visited
5. webinars are going to be attended
6. if that person signs up for the webinar and doesn't attend, what happens?

All of those triggers then put people in different drip marketing campaigns.

It layers all of that complexity in on top of itself. So, that's some great drip marketing examples. Ways that you can engage your folks through your sales funnel. Another thing is an affiliate sequence, so finding three, or four, or five, or eight affiliate products in your space that you can promote and get paid commission. Another drip marketing example would be looking at all of your blog posts over the last six months and then taking your best ones, putting it all together into an autoresponder, and then letting your prospects go through it on autopilot. So that they're bonding with you and engaging with your company without you actually having to do something.

Deploying the best drip campaigns now in terms of the best drip campaigns, there are so many examples.

Many different ones to use. My absolute favorite are Axis One, Infusionsoft, Ontraport, and ActiveCampaign. We have clients using all of them. Infusionsoft, a little bit bulky. It's Keap now but like I said, I've been doing this a long time. So, it will always be Infusionsoft to me. Ontraport is one that we use personally for our stuff. We use Axis One personally for our stuff, and then we also use ActiveCampaign for a bunch of clients. ActiveCampaign, brilliantly awesome drip campaign software however, it doesn't let you do much from a sales pipeline standpoint. It doesn't let you do much from an API tie in standpoint, so it's one of the reasons why we choose the other three unless our client is just looking for drip marketing automation, that's it.

What is an excellent open rate in an email marketing drip campaign?

That's an interesting question because when somebody is brand new to you, your open rate is going to be high. So if somebody signs up for a lead magnet, then that first email that they're going to get is going to be an open rate of 50%, 60%, 70%, even if it's not double opt-in. Then from there, it's going to go down. It might go down to 20%, 30% for the next couple of emails. Once you get to two weeks, three weeks, four weeks out then your open rate is going to be probably between 16% and 20% unless they purchased something.

If it's actually a buyer's list, then your open rate is going to be high for a really, really long time because these are buyers. As long as you didn't sell them some shit product, then they are going to love you for a while. Especially because you're emailing them. So, that is one of the biggest reasons why your buyer's list, the metric is at 16% more profitable than your prospect list, and that is why. So if you are looking for drip marketing automation software, then check out AxisOne.io. If you would like to talk about setting up marketing automation for your business, setting up your products, setting up services, and figuring out how best to use drip marketing automation for you or for your clients even, then go to DoneForYou.com/Start.

GSDdaily 078

This is episode number 78, how to set up drip campaigns and email automation. This week is marketing automation week. It was so funny, I actually talked to a guy yesterday named Clint who literally geeks out on marketing automation the same way that I do, which is, I mean, it's this magical thing, really.

When you have one piece of software that can talk to another piece of software and you can send all kinds of interesting things back and forth and really is, it's magical, because you can set the few things up so that if somebody hits a website, then you get a ping and slack. Nuts, right? You're able to literally see the life of your website, the life of your sales funnel, who is coming to your sales funnel, what their phone numbers are, what their email address is. Then you just pick up the phone if you want, if you want to be that aggressive from a business development standpoint.

It's pretty cool the way marketing automation or marketing technology or martech or adtech or whatever kind of fun little synonym you want to put into play. I mean, it's funny how all of those things come together to just give us something us marketing nerds can geek out on. That is pretty cool when you can reach out and have an impact in somebody's life, help them make some transformation, help them on their journey without having to do it personally, without having to do it one-on-one. That's the fun part.

How to Set Up Drip Campaigns and Email Automation

For those of you who don't know who I am, my name is Jason Drohn, the creator of doneforyou.com. We specialize in three things, setting up offers, helping build offers, helping build sales funnels, and then also setting up marketing automation and traffic. That is where we live. It's the thing that I have spent the last 14 years of my life perfecting. It's what my team does every single day.

This is called The Complete Guide To Drip Campaigns And Email Automation. We're going to talk through it. I'm going to show you some cool stuff.

Now for those of you, if you have marketing automation set up in your business, just say, "Yes," because marketing automation really is super, super important.

It started back a little while ago. I don't even know how long ago, 16 years ago, 14 years ago maybe. It started as just an email autoresponder. The simplest form of that is in Gmail. When you set up your vacation message, that is an autoresponder. When you get an email, then a vacation message triggers out, so it alerts the person that you were on vacation and you will not be getting back to them, and here's the number to call if you have an urgent problem. That's the simplest form of an autoresponder.

Sequence of Autoresponders

Now the next level higher is actually just a sequence of autoresponders. It's an autoresponder that's set up and sends multiple emails or multiple text messages or whatever. What this lets you do is it lets you predefine how people, what copy is going to be going out for somebody to read. You get to write five, seven, 10 emails once, and then on day one, that email goes out and somebody gets it. On day two, the next email goes out and somebody gets it. On day three, the next email goes out and somebody gets it.

It's powerful in simplicity because when you have a sales call, you can literally just put somebody on that list, and then they get the next 30 days' worth of email from you. You aren't writing any of it. You're not sending it one-on-one. It doesn't even enter your consciousness. The software just sends it and the person receiving it, usually knows it's an email autoresponder at this point, but they didn't use it. But even now seeing your name pop up in the inbox, seeing your image, your logo, the copy, the content, all of that stuff, it helps them know, like, and trust you. That is what good marketing automation does. That's what drip campaigns do.

Now drip campaigns, there is a sequence of marketing email messages that are sent out automatically on a preset schedule. That preset schedule can be daily, it can be every other day, it can be every three days, it can be at 7:00 a.m. every morning, it can be at 11:00 p.m. We try to send them out first thing in the morning. We try to make sure that they are going out a first thing or as first thing as possible.

Why you need drip marketing automation campaigns?

1. You want to be relevant with timely communication.

You don't ever want somebody to forget about you. Never, ever do you want them to forget about who you are, what you do, what you stand for. You want them to remember you, to remember your brands, remember doing business with you, to remember getting value from you. That is one of the biggest things, one of the biggest reasons why email automation is so important.

2. You want to nurture leads until they are sales-ready.

Not everybody who comes to your website is going to be ready to pull the trigger and buy something right now. You want to help them get there. That might mean a month's worth of warming up to you. It might mean days or hours worth of warming up to you. It might mean years of warming up to you. Marketing automation buys you that time so that you are able to market to that person without it involving considerable mind share from you.

If you have a list of 70,000 people, you might only actively be doing business from maybe a consulting standpoint, with 150 of them and at any time. But that also means that how many tens of thousands of them are engaged with you ready to become your next customer. It's all because of marketing automation.

It also lets you work smarter. It lets you work smarter with marketing automation. Think about it hard once and then you put it together and then you dial it in forever.

Infographic On Some Drip Campaign Basics

Now here's a little infographic on some drip campaign basics. I will let you explore that, some other little videos and stuff. Just some very simple sequences that you want to have in place when you start. You want to nurture your leads. That might involve podcasts and blog posts, other pieces of content that you create. You want to welcome them onto your list so that they are seeing what you do. They're being onboarded correctly. You want to make sure to send abandonment cart emails. Those abandonment cart emails, it's a marketing automation thing. If somebody hits your order form but then doesn't buy within an hour, you want to send them emails and say, "Hey, you really should go back and buy. Your discount is expiring. Your whatever is expiring," and hit them with a couple of emails there. That's marketing automation.

Anytime there's a renewal, so whether it's a monthly subscription renewal or an annual subscription renewal or whatever, and they're almost at their end. The subscription renewal is every 30 days usually. On day 27, day 28, you should email them a report or email them something nice.

Reengage them in your brand so that they feel value a couple of days before it's time for them to renew.

This encourages them to stick around longer. It's a very simple trigger. It's like if they sign up now, that first one goes out on day 27, the next one goes out 30 days after that, so it's day 57. The next one goes out 30 days after that, day 87. Let the software track it, let the software handle it. All you got to do is think about it. Just think about it hard for an hour and put a couple of blog posts together, put a couple of leads together, whatever, figure out what you're going to do for that person, and then let the software handle it.

Engagement is another one. If somebody needs to be reengaged, if they haven't done anything, you haven't seen them, heard from them, they haven't been to your website, they haven't opened an email in 90 days or more than you want to try to reengage them. If they don't reengage, you cut them from your email list because you want your sender score to stay high.

Drip Your Course Through Email

One of the cool things about drip automation is you can actually drip your course material out through email. Rather than go through the hard work of protecting your membership website, doing the login and the password and all that other stuff and protecting the pages and then worrying about some folks not being able to login or some password reset reminders or all of the customer support that goes with membership, which there is a lot, you can literally just automate in an email. They buy a course on day one, they get the first email. In that email, they get access to all the videos. On day eight, or seven, whatever, they get access to the next lesson, the next module, and that's all the videos.

You don't have to worry about a login. There are benefits to log in, of course, but there's also a lot of drawbacks to forcing a login. It just depends on how committed you are, if you have a support team. If your mind getting support reminders about passwords and stuff, it might be simpler just to kind of let it publicly available, but not have that URL show publicly, like in Google so you can have them de-index it.

Who runs drip email campaigns?

Bloggers, core sellers, SAS businesses, realtors, insurance brokers, fashion industry, beauty professionals, eCommerce online. Basically, if you have a business, you should be running email, you should be running marketing automation. That's really all there is to it.

Now we talked a lot about this yesterday, but basically, there's a couple of different things. Every marketing automation lives in this triggered category right up here, so in the center in the white there. Every automation has a trigger. That trigger activates the content. It activates the dripping material that's going out, it also activates any nurture sequences, but everything has a trigger. The automation doesn't start until the trigger fires. That trigger might be a URL visit, it might be a form fill out. It might be somebody logging into a CRM and manually adding a tag. Everything has to trigger in order for it to go out.

Determine your goals for your marketing automation

You want to make sure to determine your goals when it comes to marketing automation. That is a very kind of macro question. What do you want your prospects to do? If your goal is to have your prospects sign up for a strategy session with you, then everything, all roads lead to Rome. All roads need to end at that strategy session. It might be a call to action in your blog posts, it's going to be a PS, and all of your up on emails, all your webinars are going to pitch that strategy session. All marketing automation needs to be constructed around that idea of your goal is X so all automation is pointing to that one area.

That lets you optimize your marketing messages. It lets you know what your language is going to be like. It lets you focus on your CTS so that your calls to action there. All of that stuff, super, super important.

Frequency and Timing

Then your frequency and timing. We talked about this on Monday, but how often do you mail? How often do you set it up so that somebody gets something from you? Personally, we do usually daily. Daily emails go out and if somebody doesn't want an email, they just delete it. But most of our folks open and they at least open and read. Then there are the people who are engaged, click, go over and watch the live stream, go watch a video, go read a blog post, whatever.

Very little of what we do is a direct link to a sales video. Most of it is content-based, and that's by design. The people who want to buy something, end up buying something down the road. But a lot of that is based on the segments. Who are our more engaged buyers, who are the folks who just signed up, who signed up through a webinar, and maybe they're going through a replay sequence, or did they just find us by visiting the website and opting in for something?

Those segments tell us a lot about their intention. Inside your CRM, you want to set up groups. The group might be a tag, it might be a sequence, it might be a thing. But then that group is how you trigger the marketing automation itself.

Make sure to measure performance

Then you will always want to make sure to measure performance. What are your clicks, opens, or 90-day engaged numbers? How many people did you sign up for your list yesterday? How many emails did you send? All of that stuff is you can just set up a good dashboard for it. Most good CRMs have dashboards like that, how many emails were sent, how many people are on your list, all that stuff.

Onboarding Drip Campaign

Now, some campaign examples. There's an onboarding drip campaign. Email one might encourage customers to finish setting up their new accounts. Then email two shows them around your training material, maybe user guides give them some demo videos and stuff. Email three is going to point customers to a blog, maybe some updates, maybe some ways to keep track of what is new and exciting in your world.

That's an example of a nice onboarding campaign. A lot of these you can just kind of click-through. There's a welcome email drip sequence that we talk through a little bit. You can retain a customer or current customers. There is a drip campaign example to acquire referrals. That one I think is going to be really good for a lot of you. Email example, email two examples.

Offer and Promotion Drips

Then we have the offer and promotion drips. When we are trying to get somebody to buy or when we maybe do a flash sale or send out a discount code, then that stuff would be in there too.

Let's see. Use psychology and personalization, reduce cart abandonment where drip campaigns go off the rail. That's a funny picture. I didn't take that. That's funny, but it looks like something Sebastian would do. Let's see, resend old content. Don't leave your sales staff. Drip automation software and so on and so forth.

Marketing automation is something that you need to have set up in your business.

If you haven't already addressed marketing automation and you don't have a plan for it, you don't have the emails that are supposed to go out or even an idea of how those need to go, then definitely by all means set up an action plan call with us. Over at doneforyou.com/start, you can book a call with my team and me.

What we're going to do is we're going to look at the sales funnel because the sales funnel is really kind of the big piece. I mean, it's the big visual component of your process. You have your lead magnets, you have your webinar registration page, you have your webinar replay page. You have all of that stuff up live in public, but then you have this underlying piece, which is marketing automation.

Sales funnels don't work without marketing automation.

A sales funnel that is just pages is very simply just pages. It is a collection of pages that do certain things, but without marketing automation, none of the rest of it works. When somebody signs up for your lead magnet, then they will get no emails telling them what to do next. If somebody signs up for your webinar that is going live in 15 minutes, they will get no replay emails without marketing automation. If somebody goes to your webinar and books a sales call without marketing automation, nobody would get the reminders for that sales call. Marketing automation is the glue that really brings all of this together.

It's something you need to address in your business, whether the sales funnel is built, or whether you're thinking about building a sales funnel, all of it needs to be addressed through this lens of marketing automation. Click funnels are great. The lead pages are fine. Optimizepress is fine. So many of these page funnel-building software is completely awesome, but they're page builders. They don't have this underlying kind of marketing automation component. Click funnels to have something. Does it do what you need it to do? Maybe it's a great scenario, maybe it's not. You just need to know what you're looking for and what that end result is and then what the capabilities of the software are going to be in order to really put everything together.

For Questions and Guide

We will be happy to explore that with you, all the way from a done-for-you sales funnel, all the way to sending traffic to marketing automation. Just go to doneforyou.com/start, book, fill out the little form, book your call and we will get started there. If you have any questions at all about getting all of this stuff set up, just comment below and I'll make sure to kind of backfill on any comments and answers and we'll go from there.

Thank you so much for joining me today. I will see you tomorrow. I think tomorrow we're going to talk about SMS maybe. We're going to talk about different marketing automation. I think it's going to be SMS. Show you a couple of cool examples. And then Friday, we're going to wrap up the marketing automation week and I will talk to you soon. All right. Thanks. Bye.

The post How To Set-up Drip Campaigns And Email Automation appeared first on Done For You.

In this week’s episodes of GSDdaily, we’re going to talk about fuck-ups. We’re going to talk about failing. We are going to talk about mistakes and pivoting fast. We’re just generally going to not have a whole lot of fun if you’re me. Here’s why. Over the weekend I downloaded a book. I listen to a lot of audiobooks. Anyway, last summer I went on this personal development journey. It was before last summer, but I started getting my shit straight last summer, towards the end of the summer. And I didn’t post on social media a whole lot. I didn’t do too many outward things. It was just one of those things where I just kept closing myself off and off. We’ll go into that at some point, we’ll go into why I did that maybe, or the mistakes that were made or any of that stuff.

My personal development journey…

Basically what happened was I was going through this personal development journey, I started listening to Anthony Robbins and I read these two books, two books at the same time. I read Superbetter and I read Anthony Robbin’s first book, the one he wrote in late 1987. Oddly enough, I read them at the same time. One was downstairs, one was upstairs. I just picked whatever one was available to me. And I’d read it.

Well, what happened was kind of odd because I was going through this Tony Robbins book and it was talking about changing your mind, changing your patterns, doing a lot of NLP, doing all that stuff. At the same time, I was reading Superbetter, which is how to live like gainfully. I was going through this particular section in Superbetter that was about these challenges. For those of you who know my story, I was a Pepsi truck driver 14 years ago. I went from high school, started working at Pepsi, making good money. Then I was sitting in the backroom one day, repacking these cubes or repacking like 12 packs.

Basically, when you go to a grocery store and somebody drops a 12 pack, those cans get put into a basket and they get shipped back to the Pepsi plant. Well, once they’re back at the Pepsi plant, there’s usually a back room, and all it is, it’s a huge room and it’s got a bunch of cans, there are bins and containers of like loose Pepsi cans that are chilling all over the room. And then there’s a wall of shelves with 12 pack containers and cubes and all of that stuff.

They didn’t have anything to do for me that day. I’m sitting on the pallet, packing these cans and I’m like, motherfucker I had a 4.4 GPA in high school but I decided that I didn’t want to go to college. I wanted to go out and work. So I landed at Pepsi making $60,000 a year, driving a semi-truck at 18, 19 years old. And I thought, I mean, at the time it was like, it was great money.

The realization that I need to go to College…

I’m sitting in the back, packing these cans and I’m like, I’m smarter than this. I can do more than this. That night I went in and put in an application to go to a local college, Mercyhurst or North East now. I live in North East actually, but I put the application in whatever. I was accepted. Ended up going to school full-time. And I’m driving a Pepsi truck full-time too.

The Pepsi truck, I’m working 50-60 hours a week driving a Pepsi truck. I’m going to college full-time at the same time. The one thing that got me through that, because all in all, it’s 80-90 hours a week. I’ve always worked a lot. I pull the Pepsi truck into the college, I park it long ways in the college parking lot, I go in, take a class and then I come back out, I jump in the Pepsi truck and I drive away. I continue on my route. The thing that got me through school was the fact that this particular college was trimester. Only 10 weeks of college at a time. All I had to do, I had to take three classes, four classes sometimes, and just concentrate on them for 10 weeks. Anybody can do anything for 10 weeks, anything.

If I had to work my ass off for 10 weeks, and then I got a little break and then I had to do it again, there was at least an end goal. I at least saw that end goal. I saw the end of that 10 weeks. And then before you know it, I’m in my second year of college and my third year of college. I was in college for five years, finished with two degrees. I started my business third year of college, quit Pepsi.

That was 14 years ago, 13, 14 years ago. Which leads me to now. Getting back to my original Superbetter Tony Robbins story. I am reading this Tony Robbins book and I’m reading the Superbetter book at the same time. And Tony Robbins is teaching you how to remove blockers, remove limiting mindsets, program your subconscious so that you can start moving ahead. At the same time, Superbetter is talking about these mini-challenges to do. And I was like, you know what, I could do anything for 10 weeks. That’s how I got through college. I could do anything for 10 weeks. Well, now I know that I can do anything for 30 days.

Challenge Yourself

I just made up my mind then. Last July, my first goal was to stop drinking Pop. So I stopped drinking Pop. It sucks because I was drinking a lot of Pop. Every month, it was kind of like my thing, like, we’ve got to noon, start drinking Pop, whatever. I didn’t drink a lot of water. So in July, I stopped drinking Pop and then successfully did that. I stopped drinking Pop. Then in August, I decided to stop chewing tobacco. I did that in August and that was fucking hard. I’m not even going to get into that on this show, but in September I decided … I just took two things that I liked. After all, I liked it because I liked chewing tobacco and I liked Pop. I just took two things away from myself. So now I need to give myself something back.

I started waking up early and I started, I was waking up at 7:30, at 8 o’clock every morning, going to bed at midnight. What I did was I stopped watching stupid ass Netflix shows at the end of the night, after my wife went to bed at like 9:30, 10:00, and just decided to go to bed with her and wake up in the morning and replace all the stupid shit that I was consuming at night with reading and stuff in the morning. So September, that was my September challenge, to start waking up early.

I started waking up at 6:00 or 6:30 and then 6:00 and then 5:30 and then 5:00. Then I settled at 4:30 being the time that I kind of woke up and that was good waking up when I went to bed at like 9:30 and wake up at 4:30, have ever since last September. That was successful. That was a successful 30-day challenge.

Then in October I was like you know if I could stop drinking Pop and I could stop chewing tobacco, two things that were, what I heard were hard. And they were fucking hard. I gave myself back time. I gave myself three hours a day in the morning before the rest of the world even wakes up. I’m reading the news, reading all the shit that you see me post in the morning, like on Done For You and the groups and all that stuff. All of that stuff is posted before 5:00 AM. So I just sign up to Hootsuite and I post that. If I see something that I think you guys are going to like, I post it.

All that shit is scheduled. Today’s articles, all scheduled. It’s done. I mean, everything you see from me today minus this video, it’s all going to be done. I gave myself back time. And then in October, I was like, you know what, we’re just going to fucking go for it. In October, my goal was to lose 30 pounds. And I’d fucking had no idea if I was going to be able to do it. No idea whatsoever. I was able to do me when I was younger. There was one time when I was like 18, I ended up losing like 90 pounds in 90 days. I was like 18, 19. You can do anything when you’re fucking 18, 19.

Now, being 39 … Or I’m 39 now. I was 38 last year. No idea. Maybe, maybe not. Ended up going through October, lost exactly 30 pounds. So now I’m down about 50. I kind of leveled off through the holidays and I’ve dropped and I’m kind of like leveled right now because of the pandemic and having to stay inside and all of that stuff. Man, I’m fucking like this is odd for me because people close to me know this, some of it even, but not like a whole lot. This 30-day challenge was the biggest kind of stepping stone into getting everything back on track.

Set a Goal

In the meantime, so I set some very ambitious goals. One of the goals that I have currently right now and for this year is to read one book a week. Well, in reading one book a week. There are some books that I started that I put down. Not many, but a couple. I post stuff sometimes on Facebook, but my wife and I had just started this book over the weekend, called The Power of Vulnerability. So this book is why we’re doing this week. It’s why we’re doing the week of fuck-ups. The things that I did wrong in my business and my life.

There was one particular thing that she shared in the book, Dr. Brené Brown, and that was the world is full of how-to’s and the world is full of roadmaps, which is true. I post a lot of that stuff. I post so many how-to’s and so many roadmaps and oftentimes like … Because that’s how my brain thinks. That’s what I look for. It is where I learned from, is I learned from how-to’s, I learned from roadmaps, I learned from processes, but a lot of people don’t. And if all you share as to how-to’s and you don’t get to the foundational piece of everything that is kind of getting something … Not troubling, but if you don’t share some of the story and some of the mistakes and some of the issues and some …

All of that stuff is equally important. It’s as important as the how-to. That’s why we’re going to go through and talk about some of the issues that I have been through, kind of in the bigger mistakes I’ve made. So all of that, that 14-minute litany to introduce this idea. I’m going to share this week the mistakes that I’ve made in the hope that you don’t make them too. We’re going to talk about things that I fucked up and tests that have failed and things that I didn’t even know that I was doing wrong until I looked back and then saw that I was doing them wrong.

Pivoting Fast

The first one, the one that I’m going to share with you today is this idea, and it’s a very prevalent idea right now, everybody cares and everybody’s talking about pivoting fast. This person pivoting fast. This business pivoting fast. They went from doing one thing and pivoting fast it towards a new direction. They went from making fucking T-shirts and now they’re selling masks. Awesome. Now, here’s the problem with pivots.

The disadvantage of Pivoting too many times

When you pivot too many times or when you do too many things, then your customers lose track. If you don’t give your idea, your thing, enough time to grow and to breathe into or enough spend, like ad spends, to grow into breathing, then it’s going to fail. It’s not going to fail because it was a bad idea. And it’s not because it didn’t have great execution. It’s going to fail because nobody fucking knew about it. That’s the nature of the internet. Nobody knows about the shit you’re building until you tell them about it.

My friend Mike Hill, posted a long time ago. It was kind of just a throwaway Facebook post, but I actually took a screenshot of it and I revisit it every once in a while. It’s this idea that everybody starts a business they create, an offer they create, a product, they write a book, whatever. They think that they made it, this is their thing. They could put it out into the world and people are going to buy it. When the truth and reality are, nobody even knows it fucking exists. You need to not only create the thing, bottle up your genius, but then you also need to write the posts. Also, you need to throw up the ads, you need to write the blog posts. You need to incessantly tell people about it for the next decade of your life, for it to sell.

Some things do go viral. Some things take off. That stuff happens, but it is very rare. It’s capturing lightning in a bottle. So what I still do on occasion and have done a lot of in the past is I create a bunch of shit and then I don’t ever give anything room to breathe or room to grow or I don’t ever pay enough attention to it. I mean, like literally, some of our software, we use it for clients, but we don’t necessarily promote it as we should. Same with books. Same with some courses every once in a while. My past is littered with products and offers and courses that I created, that I spent a lot of time creating because I love the creative part, but I didn’t do anything to help them grow.

Curately.org: Content Curation Software

We have a content curation software called Curately and we’ve made some money on it. We’ve done well, but nobody in my audience has seen anything about it for the last three or four years, because we basically moved it inside Axis and it’s kind of going through some recoding and stuff, but at the same time, me saying that is a fucking excuse, literally, you just witnessed it. The fact is, I mean, it’s great software, it works well. It’s in this transition, and I’m letting it be in this transition, even though it doesn’t necessarily need to be because I’m focusing on doing other things at the moment.

In looking at the things you’re creating, the businesses that you’re growing, look at the products that you’re creating. Some people have like one product, two products, three products, and they just go full board into that. So there’s a thing that Brendon Burchard, I remember like a decade ago when he started ramping up his business, way before the millions of people followed him, he used to share that his goal was to do and launch one thing a year, one product a year, one launch a year. And me, the incessant creator, I remember thinking, Jesus, I mean, you can create 18 products. You can create 18 businesses in a year.

1. Launch Product Annually

But here’s the thing. Brendon Burchard now has a million fucking followers, millions, billions, like 100, 10 million, 20 million, 30, whatever his number is, it’s ridiculous. His model was the right model, where you build something. You stick with it and you try different things, grow it and you think about it and you ponder it and you figure out all the different ways that you can bring somebody in. So way back then he launched a product called, it was the Experts Academy. Then it was Total Product Blueprint. Basically, he would launch a business, launch a product and then hang out and just do that thing for a year. Then the next year you would launch another product.

2. Give Offers/Products Room to Breathe

Five years into his career, he had five products. Then he started doing some books, then he did The Millionaire Messenger and he started writing some books and stuff on the front side, which is awesome. But he gave each of his offers room to breathe. Now, I am kind of in execution mode right now. Part of me talking through this idea with you is just that, it’s talking through it, because right now we’re creating a lot of content, we’ve got some books, we have some core offers. Everything that we are doing now is kind of being added to the matrix in the way that it needs to be added to the matrix so that we have some front ends and then we have some upsells. Or you can start at the top and go down.

Everything is being patterned correctly to sell and to be sequenced the most.

We’re, of course, using like sales funnel best practices and all that other stuff. I am not creating things to then just let them flail about. A long, long time ago, there was one week where I created three digital products. I remember being so excited about that because I went through and I brainstormed three products on a Monday. Then like Tuesday, I ended up creating all the slides for those three products. Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, I created all the videos for those products. And then I edited the videos through the weekend. I thought I was a badass. I was like, three products, one week, done.

Collectively, looking back on that, I wasted a week’s worth of time because none of them sold because I didn’t give any of them a chance to sell. I didn’t have any ads and didn’t do paid traffic. I don’t know, I might’ve emailed the list maybe once about each one of them, or maybe twice, kind of linking to a sales page. And then that was it. Whereas if I look at some of the more successful things that I’ve created, so Scriptly being one of them, all of the Done For You service offerings, being most successful. It’s the things that I continually revisit. Scripting, I promoted Scriptly incessantly for 9, 10, 12, 15 months after we launched it. Scripting is four and a half years old. Now, what’s part of  Axis and email copy up and everything.

But I literally, every week it was an email about Scriptly. I did monthly bonuses. I had like this entire month marketing calendar where all I did was I just created new front ends for this fucking piece of software. That is giving your offer room to breathe. It is growing a business. That is doing what you can to grow your business, grow your offer. And Scriptly was our most successful piece of software. In looking back, was it the most successful because of the promotion, or was it the most successful because it was a great piece of software? I guess that it was both things that contributed to it being our most successful piece of software.

But at the same time, I put mental bandwidth and I put effort and time, and energy into it. The same with our sales funnel stuff, same with any of Done For You service offers. We crushed those things because not only are they great offers, but we continually make them awesome offers and we continually make them awesome front ends. That is my mistake number one.

Making sure that you are creating things and then giving them enough room to breathe, giving them room to grow, putting marketing around them, writing blog posts, and content.

Because if you don’t do that, then you will always fail. Your products will always fail. My products always failed. The ones that I didn’t do anything with, I created to create, but I didn’t focus on them enough, those are the ones that failed. They will always be the ones that failed because a good idea is not enough. Great execution is not enough. Having a sales funnel is not enough. What do you do with it?

At the end of the day, that’s what you need to answer. It’s not having a sales funnel, it’s not having a website, it’s not having a product, it’s not having a book. It is what do you do after those things are online. It’s not enough to put a retail shop somewhere, on some street corner if it doesn’t get any traffic, nobody’s going to drive by, nobody’s going to see it. Your digital business is no different. If you just kind of throw up your signpost and that’s it, nobody’s going to buy it. So you have to put the effort into the marketing and the funnels and the traffic and the blog posts and all that other stuff.

That is a fuck-up number one for GSD Daily. Some of that felt good to talk about and some of it not. Tomorrow we’re going to do something different. Tomorrow we’re going to talk about fuck-up number two. I don’t know what it’s going to be yet, but I think … I just came to this morning. As I was running or jogging, I can’t classify what I do in the morning as really running. I run. I jog. So, yeah. And I was like, well, let’s talk about some of the mistakes that we made, I made, and then what people can do to avoid them and we’ll go from there.

For Questions and Guide

If you liked today’s episode, I hope you did, then give it a like or a thumb up, thumbs up. If you would like to get on and talk about an action plan call, get on and talk about your action plan for your business, and how you can avoid massive screw-ups like the one I just described, go to doneforyou.com/start.

The post How Pivoting Fast Affects Your Customers And What To Learn From It appeared first on Done For You.

It is Friday. I figured what better way to close up free traffic SEO week, is to show you a bunch of really cool SEO tools that will help you go farther. That’ll help you write better content, do a little bit of research faster that you can find the keyword phrases that you want to rank for. That you spend your time wisely in creating content because creating content sucks unless you’re a writer, and then you love it, and then this isn’t a chore. As a writer, most likely you don’t think about content from an SEO standpoint, from a what are people searching standpoint. You think of writing as this act of creativity, which oftentimes doesn’t necessarily hit home when it comes to writing engaging copy. That is fun. That’s what’s on the docket today.

For those of you who don’t know who I am. My name is Jason Drohn. I’m the creator of doneforyou.com where we specialize in creating offers, creating sales funnels and marketing automation, and doing the marketing that our clients need us to do for them to scale and grow. That leads us to today, which is free traffic. This entire week has been digging through organic traffic strategies so that you can get free traffic and not every single visitor who comes to your website is paid because that is awesome.

What happens if you turn off traffic?

Well, if you turn off traffic, and you rely 100% on traffic:

• you don’t have a business
• you don’t have revenue

That’s the bad part. All things need to be considered when it comes to traffic. You need to be looking at SEO, you need to be looking at paid traffic, organic, live streams, videos, the whole deal.

6 Powerful SEO Tools

Today we have a post that we’re going to work off of. These are seven free but powerful SEO tools for your toolkit. Now, the reason our episode today is six and not seven is, we’ve already talked about one of these things. It was either Tuesday or Wednesday we covered an entire session on the Yoast SEO plugin, which is a WordPress plugin that you can use, and it will help you optimize your content.  You tell it what keyword phrase you want to rank for, and then you go through and it will give you a checklist. Where you need to put the content, where it needs to go, all of that stuff. Yoast is fantastic from a blogging standpoint, but it’s just one of the SEO tools of the many out there that can help you rank for organic traffic.

Today we’re going to cover six other ones. The other thing is one of our clients that inspired me yesterday said, “Well, how can I do some research on some keyword phrases?” And I was like, “Oh, here’s a couple of SEO tools.” And then, I decided then I should probably do a little bit of training on these things. That way I can just send a video next time. Half of these dailies are inspired by clients who need something, and then they can just send a video next. Do you know what I mean?

1. Page Speed Insights: A Google Tool

The first of the SEO tools that we’re going to talk about is page speed insights.  This is a Google tool, and basically what it does is it, if you’re regularly blogging, you’re trying to optimize for search. You’re doing some keyword research. One of the biggest factors is, is it loading fast enough? Here we have this page speed insight loaded up. We’re just going to enter done for you. I don’t know if it’s going to load fast or not. It used to load in three seconds.

2. W3 Total Cache: A WordPress Plugin

I did some optimization from SEO tools, or a WordPress plugin called W3 Total Cache. This is W3 Total Cache, which is a free plugin. It’s been downloaded and installed by like 17 billion websites. Active installations, one million, literally.

W3 Total Cache has a plugin that will integrate with Cloudflare. And Cloudflare is a DNS server. They’re a publicly-traded company now, but CloudFlare has this free CDN thing. What you do is on your website you then install this W3 Total Cache as a plugin, you go through and optimize it. I don’t remember where this article is. This is how I always find it. Basically, W3 Total Cache CloudFlare Set Up. If you Google, W3 Total Cache CloudFlare Set Up, then you get to this website. This very top listing here, to how to make WordPress faster.

Then what it does is it takes all of your static WordPress files and offloads them to CloudFlare, which is a free service, it’s a free CDN. And then CloudFlare makes money by, they have some SSL certificates, and they do some domain registry and all of that stuff. They make money in the fringes, but they have some paid plans. You don’t need to upgrade to a paid plan. They have a lot of free stuff that works incredibly well. But, if we go back here, so done for you, let’s see, what does this tell us? We’re pretty low. We have a score of nine. First content, tenfold paint. I don’t know what that means. This is probably something that we need to take a look at.

3. Pingdom Speed Test

The Pingdom speed test, there it is right there. Then you can go through and do a speed test here. Doneforyou.com. It’s going to test out of Washington, DC. It looks like we’re in the second queue where we’re in the queue. So it was running the test. We’re going to see what this loads up. As I said, the website is offloading all of the images, and all of that stuff to CloudFlare. Our load time is 1.71%, which is a D performance grade. That could stand to be slimmed down a little bit, anything under 3%, or it depends. It used to be anything under 4% or four seconds was awesome. Now it’s anything under two seconds. One second is pretty awesome. It’s just something you need to manage.

But anyway, back to our article. Faster sites are better sites.

4. Google Keyword Planner

Google keyword planner is a direct line into Google to see what keyword phrases people are searching for. And we did an entire episode on using Google keyword planner to create better content.

5. Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest is owned, now, by a guy named Neil Patel. Neil Patel is an internet marketing rockstar. He’s been around forever. I had a website called Marketing Hacks way back in the day. And the first podcast that we ever, ever, ever did was an interview with Neil Patel. That tells you how long ago. This was like 10, 11 years ago.

Consequently, all you have to do is enter a keyword phrase in Ubersuggest.  How about Facebook Advertising. We’re just going to see what comes up. Facebook advertising, you can of course register, and there’re plans and pricing, and all kinds of other stuff, but it’s going to give us a keyword overview. The search volume is 14,800. SEO difficulty is 38. Paid traffic difficulties, 52, and it’s 10.99 per click, on average. There’s our volume of how people are using that keyword phrase. Then we have some keyword ideas. This is a great little quick interface to find some keyword ideas quickly. Cost for Facebook advertising, how much, Facebook ads, Facebook advertising mockup. You can view all of them.

Then we have some content ideas. This is an actual blog post that was written with Facebook advertising. Dove apologizes for the racist Facebook advertising campaign, which is Facebook advertising right for your business. And then it shows the backlinks, and then also the social shares of that article. This one by King kong.com.au has a Facebook score of 13,728. So this shows you some traffic. Basically how popular some of these articles are.  You can do your keyword research here.

6. Moz Tool

Next is this Moz tool. Moz.com, which is a keyword Explorer. And we’re going to do Facebook advertising here to see what comes up. It looks like we need to create a free account for this guy, which I don’t have. I don’t think I have a free account for these guys.

At the end of the day, we want to get a good list of keyword phrases that we’re able to write content for. Furthermore, we create blog posts or headlines that are interesting enough to write content about. If you have a list of keyword phrases that you want to write about, make sure that the subject line, or the blog post title, is something that people are going to click through.  After all, you have kind of this dual-edged sword. You want to make sure that you create content that is worthy of people, that is not worthy of people, but that people are going to be interested enough to click through. However, you also want to make sure that content is keyword-loaded. You have good strong keyword phrases in there so that you can get traffic for a long time.

Other SEO tools

1. Keyword Tool.io

We talked about keyword tool.io. It’s right here. Keyword tool. This is great because you can do Google search, YouTube, Bing, Amazon, eBay. Let’s say we want to search Amazon. We want to do a day planner, maybe, I don’t know, let’s see what comes up. This is a CloudFlare. We just talked about CloudFlare. This is a CloudFlare DDOS protection thing. If we’re searching Amazon for a day planner, then we see all the keyword phrases that people are typing in Amazon. Day planner, academic year, 2020, 2021. Day planner At A Glance, Day Planner Blue Sky. There are lots of different ways you can cut up these keyword phrases.

2. MozBar

3. Kamaz

4. Yoast SEO Plugin

5. Google Trends

A couple of other SEO tools though. Some other ones that we’re going to be adding to this list, the first is Google Trends. Lately, especially pandemic-wise, there’s been such a shift in the keyword phrases people are using. This lockdown completely shifted everybody’s patterns and everybody’s behaviors. And a natural extension of that is the keyword phrases that they’re using in Google. It’s only natural that people are looking for things a lot differently. And as marketers, we need to understand that people are looking for things differently. And one of the best ways of doing that is to spot trends and do some, do research and look at what are the trends that are happening right now.

• Taylor Swift and Kim Kardashian

Of course, Taylor Swift and Kim Kardashian are part of the United States trends, but if you go to trends.google.com, then we’re going to type in Facebook advertising. Same keyword phrases that we’ve been typing through the rest of this stuff.  Here we see that our interest over time is pretty good. It looks like right at Christmas there was hardly any. It ducked way down. But then we look at sub-regions.  District DC, for whatever reason, was heavily searching Facebook advertising. That might’ve been a government thing. I don’t know. New York, Colorado. Then we see some related topics down below. Let’s look at the topic of public relations. Our public relations topic, we have public relations internships, blah, blah, blah. None of that is all that important.

• Camping

Let’s do something different. Let’s look up camping. We’re just going to look up camping, the search term.  Camping is way up, as you can probably expect. During summer, it looks like it’s way up as compared to last summer. As a result, we had a score of 75 last summer and we’re up at a hundred. The value for this point has partial incomplete data available. Colorado, super high. Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, camping open near me. So there are lots of ways you can cut up this data.

• Real Estate

Let’s look at the real estate just real quick. So real estate, we have an increase. Looks like it’s always been strong, but it dipped right there from March 15 to 21st. Dipped real good. Then it’s back up. It’s at a solid 100 right now. Real estate stocks, real estate offices near me. A lot of interest there too, you can cut all of this up. How about we do this. Cache for… All right. So it’s like real estate, just in general, quite a bit higher. All right, so that was Google trends.

6. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is a little bit one of the higher-end SEO tools. It gives you some insight into how people are sharing content.

• Tesla

Let’s look at Tesla real quick. It gives you some results, but basically how you interpret these results. Coronavirus, Tesla donates hundreds of ventilators to New York. This story got 356 Facebook shares, 435 Twitter shares, six Pinterest shares, 12 Reddit engagements, 24 links, and then the Evergreen score is 10, for a total engagement of 356,000. How BuzzSumo works are, they report on the articles that are the most viral. This is going to give you some ideas depending on how you want to cut it up. This is going to give you some ideas on writing viral content.

• Real Estate

Real estate let’s see what happens with real estate. The CEO, who is formerly homeless and now the owner of her own real estate firm is now building a $14 million affordable housing project. That is very, very engaging. It’s also a great headline or something like that is a great headline for a sales page.

You’re able to pick up some good ideas from here, too. Wealthy real estate investors get tax cuts in coronavirus stimulus. Chase now requires a 700 FICO score, 200% down to buy a home. Bank of America will allow borrowers to pause their mortgage, blah, blah, blah. This is all shareable stuff. It’s a good one. I talked about keyword SEO tools. I talked about W3, we talked about CloudFlare, we talked about this, and we talked about Pingdom. That’s really about it.

SEO Tools Standpoint

Based on an SEO tools standpoint, the most important thing is you’re doing your research early. Before you write the content and sit down at your computer and start typing something, you’re doing keyword research to find out what people are looking for. If you’re doing that, if you’re doing the keyword research before you write, then every single post, every single thing that you create is always going to have a long tail. It’s always going to send traffic forever, and that’s what content should be doing.

It should be not only just let you put something out there right now. Apparently, you can have an immediate impact. Maybe being able to share something immediately with your list or your audience or whatever, you also want that content to live for the next five or 10 years and consistently send you traffic forever. If that is the case, then spending six hours, writing a blog post right now is such a great time investment, or money investment if you’re paying a writer, then you’re getting something from it forever.

This is what content marketing, SEO, and organic traffic should be all about.

For Questions and Guide

Do you have any questions at all, anything at all, just go to doneforyou.com/start. Book an action plan call with my team and me, and we will put together a traffic strategy for you, put together a sales funnel strategy, whatever you need to grow and scale your business online, we will put together the plan. We will execute that plan for you if you want. Just going to doneforyou.com/start.

The post 6 Powerful SEO Tools For Your Website appeared first on Done For You.

Today, we’re going to talk about content marketing and some simple ways to generate creative content on demand for your business that doesn’t suck. Content is going to rank in Google, you’re going to be getting organic traffic for the rest of your life and the life of your business and website. But when you optimize and create content, when optimized correctly, then yes, you can get content for a long time. So for those of you who don’t know who I am, my name is Jason Drohn. I’m the creator of doneforyou.com and we specialize in creating offers, building sales funnels, and building marketing automation systems that help our clients grow and thrive online. And today, and this week, we have been talking about content marketing and search engine optimization and all things having to do with free traffic.

Promoting your website:  Content Blogging vs. Paid Traffic

We have this blog post we’re going to go through. This is 5 No-Brainer Content Creator Tactics. First of all, create content sucks. The worst times suck of having a digital business, is creating the content, creating the blogs, and stuff required to make that business run. At the end of the day, you create a website, you create a sales funnel and you put all of that stuff online and it just sits there until you either create content, which brings you traffic, or you start paying for traffic, which brings you traffic.

If you are paying for traffic, you can turn something on, and immediately, it’s rock and roll quickly. By the end of the day, you’re getting clicks. Hopefully, you’re getting leads. Hopefully, you’re getting sales. Create content blogging, of course, it just takes a longer, it takes a long time, because not only do you have to write the blog post, you also then have to do some on-page SEO, some on-page search engine optimization. You need to learn about that. Or, you can just be fucking lucky and you write a blog post and then boom, you’re starting to get paid traffic, or you’re starting to get free traffic. But that never happens. But writing content, I mean a good 1500 to 2000 word blog post, takes what? About six hours to write. And that’s if all you’re doing is writing.

If you’re like me and you have pings and notifications and messages and emails and all kinds of crazy stuff, then it doesn’t necessarily work nearly as well. Because then, you have that the switching, the context switching cost, which is where you’re pulled off of a task, then you have to, it takes like on average 60 minutes to kind of re-center. It’s at least double that for writing blog posts because writing blog posts is no fun.

What I have been doing, what you have been witnessing, which is let’s get on 10:00, we record a 20-minute video. We have that transcribed. Then, we post that to the blog post and we get ranked for some blogs. We get ranked for some keyword phrases and everybody’s happy. The Google gods are happy. The created content is happy. We’re getting free traffic and we’re able to work with an audience a little bit. We’re creating a video, which is awesome. There are so many different ways that we can use video. That is what I’ve been into lately, or at least since the beginning of the pandemic. It is what it’s evolved into and it’s working pretty well.

5 No-Brainer Content Creator Tactics

1. Create Content Online

You need content so that people know, like, and trust you. They bond with you and engage with you. They become aware of you and they aren’t necessarily being sold the first thing. As soon as they see you, they’re not necessarily being sold something. You must have content. Super important. All the big media buyers, every business that is growing quickly, it’s not just ads. There’s a lot of content in there. It might be content that is sent to you through an email list. It might be content, as an advertorial, but it is always content. There are always videos. There are always sales videos, there are YouTube channels, there are Instagram posts. There’s always content in the mix, even if it isn’t necessarily just blog posts.

From a creative content marketing standpoint, basically, you want to make sure that you are creating something at least a couple of times a week. I always try to tell me, all of our clients, you want to make sure that you’re creating, if it’s two a week, three a week, some piece of content. It might be a checklist, might be a blog post, whatever, but you want to make sure you’re doing something relevant, consistently. Now, first of all, don’t get all caught up about getting started, because, at the end of the day, everybody is met with a blank screen at some point. So what we end up doing and what we’ve talked earlier this week about, is doing keyword research and finding out what your prospects, what your readers want you to talk about.

If you do a little tiny bit of research before you go live or before you write something, then you have some direction. Being that you create content, being that you’re an expert, a subject matter expert, or else you wouldn’t necessarily have a business. Being an expert, or having the presence of mind to hire a great writer or somebody who is an expert that can write on your behalf, then you can create, that person can create content. It all starts with keyword phrases. It starts with this idea of trying to figure out what other people are searching for. Because if you know what people are typing into Google, you know what kind of content you can write that will attract them into your world, that will attract them to your blog post, or your website, or your sales videos, or any of that other stuff.

2. Create Videos

It is always where it starts, is the keyword research. Once you have an idea of where the keyword research takes you or what you need to do inside the keyword research, you can write a blog post. You can create a video, you can build a checklist, you can do whatever. It all starts with a keyword, a keyword phrase that you’re trying to start from. Now, I choose to do the video first. I have been doing this for so long that I don’t need scripting… And I’ve done literally, 17,000 calls. I’m okay on my feet because I’m at a standing desk. I’m fucking chipper this morning. I don’t know why. But anyway, so I’m okay on the fly, talking about this stuff, from a creative content marketing standpoint or email marketing or whatever.

Basically, what I’m doing is kind of what I revealed yesterday, was these videos oftentimes kind of rehash old blog posts and stuff. Or, at least get in and re-optimize them. But the video itself gives you leverage into the future.

        Video is the most accepted form to create content right now.

People watch the video, people listen to audio, which you can pull the audio out of the video, and then transcription is super cheap. It’s $1.25 a minute. One 20 minute video gives you like 4,000 written words that then, you can be posting on your blog tomorrow. That’s what we do. If you can discipline yourself to create video and you can set up a little studio or whatever. I mean, I got a little camera there. I got some lights here, which is going to screw up everything. But if you can discipline yourself to just do a little bit of video every single day, where you’re talking about something in your market, something that your audience will care about or like, then you can do anything with that.

You can reuse, repurpose, you can package it in a book. You can put the videos together as a course. But video content is the most mobile. You can do whatever you want with it. So that’s why the video is good.

3. Content Curation

Another option is content creation or content curation, I should say. When you create content curation, you’re using other blog posts as, or other content to inspire you. And what we have found, I mean, look at Pinterest. Pinterest is nothing but content curation. It’s seventeen things you can do with two-by-fours. And that one blog post has no original content. All it is is a summary of seventeen other blog posts that all have something about two-by-fours. That’s all content curation is. It’s assembling other people’s content into a more useful blog post or a more useful piece of content.

And that when done right, when done correctly, can bring a lot of traffic. I mean, some of those Pinterest articles, they get two, three, four thousand visitors a day, because they click it on Pinterest, “Oh, gee I have all kinds of two by fours in the garage. I wonder what I’m going to build today. Oh, here’s a blog. Here’s a post.” Blah, blah, blah. And then they pick something. “I’m going to build a step stool out of two by fours because this blog post had a really cute step stool and I clicked through, and here are the plans for it.”

That’s all content curation is. It’s using, it’s reusing and packaging other people’s content in a new way. It is the value that you bring as a content curator. You aren’t creating content, you’re packaging it differently. No different than a museum curator. They don’t create art, they just display the art. They source it, they bring it in-house, they display it, they light it, they just package it differently. It’s a big difference. Now, repurposing content is another one. What I’m doing right here, is repurposing content. I’m taking content that was written two or three years ago, and I’m refreshing it. We are adding, we’re going to add a video to this. We’re going to add the transcript to it. This is all still great stuff. You can pull out all the old links and all that other kind of stuff and add new links.

4. Repurposing Content

But at the end of the day, we’re refreshing this content. We’re repurposing it. I’ve been writing about digital business for 14 years now. There’s very little that I write new. I mean, I have a treasure trove of email copy that I just recycle. Furthermore, I rarely come up with new emails. I usually recycle something that I sent four years ago. And that’s the beauty of repurposing content. Same with sales copy. When it’s our stuff, I’ve already written so many sales videos and done so many webinars, that I use a piece of software called Scrivener. And basically, it’s like a, it’s an author’s tool. You can save your scripts and you can save your email copy, and you can save whatever. Any text-based copy, you can save into the Scrivener and then you can drag it around and drop it and it’s an author’s tool.

But earlier this year, I went and loaded up all of our old email copies. I loaded up a bunch of webinars. I loaded up sales copy that I wrote, that I’ve written a long, long time ago. And that is kind of, it’s just a rehash. I rarely come up with something from scratch now, because I just repurpose all the old stuff. After you’ve been at it a while, you can repurpose your old stuff, or you can repurpose stuff that you find that you like, you can just rewrite it.

5. Get into the Habit of Making Lists

List content, it works so well online. Having lists, the top 100 lists, the top 10 lists, the 5, top 5 lists, whatever, a good bit of very clickbait content are list posts. So it can be 7 WordPress plugins that you need. It’s a list. It’s a list of 7 plugins that maybe has a description above, below each one.

Or 100 ways to make chocolate chip cookies, whatever it might be, a list post of you just have links to 100 different chocolate chip cookie recipes. So that’s a list post that is content curated. So, there are lots of different ways to cut it up, but just know, list posts are very, they go viral pretty easily when presented correctly. And they end up having a lot of traction and Google loves list posts, because people like to share them a lot because you can. It’s good, it’s like a treasure trove of information all in nice little bite-sized chunks.

With that, the 5 ways of creating content as simply and as quickly as possible, the winner for me is absolute video. If you are okay with creating video, if you don’t mind holding a mobile phone up in front of you, or you don’t mind setting up a little setup like this or doing a webcam with the Streamyard, which is how we’re recording this, if you don’t mind that stuff, it is the simplest and easiest and quickest way to create content that you can then work with in the future.

Like I said, in our process, we create the video, I take the YouTube video, upload it into rev.com, which is where we get it transcribed, pay $1.25 a minute. So if it’s a 20-minute video, it costs $30 to $33, or whatever. Get it transcribed and then it kicks out the transcript. We post that on the blog post and then we just do some light formatting, Grammarly kind of checks and that’s it. And then we wait to see how it ranks.

And then once it starts ranking, we go back in and we rehab it and do sub-headlines and all that other stuff. So it becomes just a content optimization thing. But at the end of the day, content is how you get free traffic. You just have to invest the time in creating the content, or you can invest the money and save the time and get paid traffic. So it’s really, it’s up to you, how you want to go.

For Questions and Guide

If you would like to learn more about paid traffic, setting up sales funnels, building marketing automation, having my team kind of put all of it together for you, go to doneforyou.com/start, fill in the little form and we’ll schedule a call with you and kind of walk through everything. If you have any questions at all, or if you would like to ask a question for a future episode, go to doneforyou.com/blog.

The post Incredible Contents To Increase Website’s Ranking appeared first on Done For You.

This week we’re talking about SEO – Search engine optimization. Today we are talking about the software tool called Google Search Console. Now, not many people know of Master Tools’ existence.

Google Search Console

It’s kind of like if you’re a web designer/ developer, chances are you know that Google has this tool around. What it does is it gives you some pretty good insight into how you’re Google rankings organically in the search results and how your site is positioned.

It gives you some clarity around things like page speed, what page you’re Google rankings for specific keyword phrases. There are lots of cool things. What I’m going to do is we’re going to dig through Google Search Console for you. I’m going to show you some of the opportunities that I find in there and just kind of walk through them. Just real quick.

Oh, and for those of you who don’t know who I am, my name is Jason Drohn. I am the creator of Done For You.com. We specialize in helping people create offers, building sales funnels, and setting up marketing automation and traffic. The three pillars of what a solid stable online business is. That’s what we do for clients.

All right, we’re going to kick over into Google Search Console. This, it’s called search console, or has recently been named search console. We’re just going to walk around and just dig into how this looks.

Setting Up your account

What’s cool about the Search Console is set up. First, set up your company or your website by adding URL. Next, verify your account. Finally, you have to add a little bit of code. Once that is all done, you’ll have your overview.

We’ve gotten 6,700 web search clicks because we have many pages. These clicks went down when we drop off and deactivated a subdomain. Then we have, some mobile traffics and desktop traffics mobile usability. It gives us the reports for all of this stuff if we want to dig into it.

Performance

From an SEO standpoint, where we want to go play, if we go to the performance, then what you see here is in the last three months, there are three classifications. We have total clicks. We’ve got six, 6,700 clicks in total. Our website has shown up 350,000 times in the search results. On average, we have a 1.9% click-through rate. That means just under 2% of people who see our site, they end up clicking through the search results, which gives us a total clicks of 6,700. Then our average position is 44.

Basically what that means is, on average, our Google rankings will be 44th spot. Across all the keyword phrases that were ranked that we show up, for we’re ranked in the 44th spots for that. It’s either good or bad depending on how you look at it. I think it’s pretty damn awesome because we’re ranked on the first page for a lot of really great keyword phrases and we are ranked on pages three, four, five for a lot of other great keyword phrases.

Keyword Phrases

I tend to activate all three of these otherwise less, although I care less about the click-through rate. If we scroll down a little bit, then we see all the queries we are ranked four. Now, this tool only lets us see 1,000 keyword phrases. We’re ranked for a lot more than a thousand. I think it’s 8,900 or 9,200 keyword phrases or something like that. This software only gives us the top thousand.

How it’s arranged is it’s your topmost clicked phrase. So the keyword phrase done for you, we’ve got 456 clicks and on average we’re in position, 2.3. It’s the first result of a YouTube Google rankings. Done For You services. We have 174 clicks in position three. Dumping your lead magnets 130 clicks in position … looked like position two. Position one. Then dumping your agency we’re in the top position for 117 clicks.

There is a lot. This gives us all of the keyword phrases we’re ranking for organically. Now, this is important. It’s important. You want to look down through here and you want to celebrate the success of being ranked you like Done For You business, or for Instagram traffic, or VSL creator, which we’re in the sixth spot for. Done For You service, which we’re at 1.8 for. Dumping your funnels, number 3.7. The real opportunity isn’t necessarily in these.

Impressions

The real opportunity that you’re going to find is if you sort by impressions, you see that all of a sudden marketing automation agency has had 9,300 impressions. It means that DoneForYou has shown up 9,300 times. We are on the fifth page of Google and we’ve got zero clicks because nobody goes to the fifth page of Google.

If we were to check the Google rankings for that keyword phrase, then we start getting clicks. We start cleaning up. The keyword phrase, Facebook ads. We’re actually on the 91st page or the 91st position. On the ninth page, yeah. Ninth page of Google. Click fraud, we’re number 20. Marketing automation workflow, we’re number 34. Increase online sales, we’re number 40. SAS email marketing, 34.

You can see that if I just reverse engineer this a little bit, then I can say, “Okay, lead generation tactics. Consequently, I’m number 69 for this keyword phrase.” What page is number 69? Because there are lots of pages that could be ranked for it. What we do is we click it, lead generation tactics, and we see that we’ve got zero total clicks because we’re on the seventh page of Google, but 1700 impressions. We have our phrase here and now let’s just click over to pages and we’re going to see the page.

Oh, look at that, Advanced lead generation tactics. I’m going to click through here. We’re just going to open this guy in a new tab. It lets us see the keyword phrases like I have a video here. Lots of good content here. What we do is we end up going into a content optimization strategy. We will refresh the article and maybe add a new video. We will record a new podcast and have it transcribed.

Track Keyword Phrase Ranking

There are lots of ways that we can improve this, but the most important thing is we need to throw this guy on a spreadsheet and say, “Just track it.” Make sure that you come back and you’re going to be updating this blog post in the future. That is if we want to reverse engineer this and we want to go through and say, “Okay, what pages am I getting the most traffic for?” we can just click on pages.

Then we reverse it into impressions. Given for Done For You, there have been 23,000 impressions, 10 ad networks to monetize your site. There have been 15,000 impressions. Agencies, marketing automation, benefits, 12,000 impressions. You can go through and say, okay, now if we click on this page, then we’re going to go see where all the keyword phrases that we’re ranked for. Now we’re just looking at this page.

If you click queries, then bam, you see that this page, this 10, whatever it was, the Google rankings of this page is for 314 phrases. Overall, everything from best ad networks for small publishers, ad networks for small publishers, publisher ads, and CPM. Publisher ads we’ve got four impressions, two clicks. Now, each of these keyword phrases has its search results.

Let’s see where we are for this particular keyword phrase, Best ad networks. We are on the average position that is number 70. What you can do is you can end up reverse engineering all of your spots. You can say, “Okay, so for all of our keyword phrases, publisher ads, best ad network, we’re number 12.” We can back all of these locations out. Advertising network, we’re number 291. So that’s not going to matter. If we go up to the best ad networks for blogs, we’re in spot 54.

There are so many different ways that you can mix and match the data. You can also optimize the content once you see that it’s out there. In the first place, you’re using Google, which is the master of all search data. You’re letting Google show you what your blog post is already Google rankings towards so that you can optimize it a little bit better. We’re going to talk about that tomorrow. Optimizing blog posts and how to go through and put use a plugin called the Yoast SEO to optimize your SEO, optimize your content, so you can rank better organically for search results.

I just wanted to kind of dig through a secret little tool that we use all the time but nobody knows about and it’s free. That’s awesome too.

For Questions and Guide

If you have any questions or if you’d like to set up a call and go through organic traffic, paid traffic sales funnels, any of that stuff go to doneforyou.com/start. Furthermore, give me a call and we will take a look at what you’re doing and give you an action plan. Above all, if there are any future questions just go to doneforyou.com/blog, and we will get them answered in a future show

The post SEO Tactics For Your Website appeared first on Done For You.

Video Transcript:

Hey, what's up? This is Jason Drone. Welcome to GSD Daily, number 66.

So today we are going to talk about SEO. Search engine optimization. This is going to be search engine optimization week, which I'm pretty excited about because we have been getting a lot of questions about organic traffic and what should be done from a content marketing standpoint, how to optimize for organic traffic. All of that kind of stuff. So this is going to be an exciting week.

We haven't necessarily done too much as it relates to SEO. We've talked a lot about content marketing. We've talked about how to turn live streams into blog posts and how I do the content marketing piece, but we haven't necessarily done a tremendous amount on the ways that you can utilize content marketing online, and how Google picks it up and how you should write your meta descriptions and what you should do with keyword phrases and all that stuff.

So that's really what we're going to get into. For those of you who don't know who I am, my name is Jason Drohn. I'm the creator of doneforyou.com. We specialize in three things: creating offers, building sales funnels, and marketing automation. And those things combined to build the foundation of any business online. So that's really where our skill sets revolve around. This organic traffic piece is more along the lines of the automation part. So once your offers are built, once your sales funnels are built out, then you need a traffic source. You need a fuel source to grow and scale and sell to people because, at the end of the day, people are who you're selling to.

So there's that buyer psychology and all that other stuff that we talk about on this show daily. But at the end of the day, you sell it to people and people use search engines to search for things. To solve their problems, or to help solve their problems, I should say. So, at the end of the day, that's what you're doing. And that's what you're trying to position your site and your content and your offer to. You want to be in the place that they are searching so that your offer, your business, stands out to them when they are in the heat of the moment and they are ready to make a buying decision. They're actively looking for a solution. You are there. You're there to help them do what they need to do or help them solve the thing that they need to solve.

So that's the idea. That's why search engine optimization is so important. First of all, it's a very, very high-quality buyer. People know that there are paid search results and organic search results. They tend to prefer organic traffic results. How many times have you searched for something? And you immediately bypass the ads at the top of Google and go immediately to the organic rankings? The first couple that doesn't say 'sponsored'. I would bet that most of you do, to some degree or another.

So this week we're going to talk about getting in those search spots. How to get more traffic organically. There's a caveat to this. So all traffic costs something. Organic traffic content costs a ton because you're going to be writing content or you're paying somebody to write content, but you're still paying somebody for, inevitably, hopefully, to get traffic down the road. Or you're investing time in writing articles and creating content that you're hoping is going to get ranked and then bring in traffic down the road.

Now, this is not an exact science because of Google's search engine algorithms... It's a black box. So they update these things 20, 30, 50 times a month. So they roll out the big updates every once in a while, traffic gets all moved around. Your spots get recalculated and everything settles. And then a couple of months down the road, they do another update and then everything moves around. But the goal is to have enough keyword phrases in the top couple pages of Google, to give you some good stability, long term, and then work on maintaining those ranks and bettering those ranks. So we like to do an organic and a paid traffic strategy. So what it does is it reduces your reliance on paid traffic, but it doesn't necessarily just involve organic traffic.

So paid traffic is instant on, and organic traffic is, you create it and then hopefully down the road, somebody shows up because of it. So what we like to do is we like to do live streams that get transcribed. We boost those live streams with paid traffic. We advertise our stuff with paid traffic. And then the content brings that long tail traffic for the content that was created. So that's just part of our mantra, part of our strategy, is to mix the two well. To do good organic and to do well from a paid traffic standpoint, so that when you turn off your traffic, like around holidays, you're going to turn off your cold traffic and just run retargeted ads. Well, that way you're not sacrificing all of the traffic. You still got a bunch of organic traffic that is still coming to your website.

So there's a lot of SEO strategies there. We're going to talk about a lot of that stuff. But first, what we're going to do is we're going to dig into some of the actionable SEO strategies that are going to get you organic traffic. Now, this was an article written in 2019. And so this is part of our SEO strategies. So for those of you who are just tuning in now, part of the reason I do these GSD dailies is to update old blog posts and old content, because things change, but they change this much.

So for this particular example, when you see 'Planning your SEO strategy for 2019'... First of all, 2019, having it in a title phrase is great when it's 2019. Because people search for SEO 2019, but when it's 2020, that's not so good, right? So I usually don't do dates. I didn't write this article. Good content, but personally, if I'm going to write something, I write it for the long tail and not for even like a year-long hit. I will write it for something that can still be getting traffic in 10 years.

And these update SEO strategies... This is what we call content optimization. So basically when a blog post starts getting a lot of traffic, then what we do is we update it, and then it pushes it even further up the ranks in Google. So this, what you're witnessing, is me updating this blog post. Because what's going to happen is this GSD daily now is going to be posted right at the top. And then we're going to add all the transcript for this blog post down below here, or down below at the bottom of the post. And it's going to turn this, probably 2000 word, blog post into 6,000 words, 6,500 words or so, once the transcript gets added. And it's going to be multimedia content. There are pictures in here. So ultimately it's just going to rank a whole lot better than what it is, even right now.

Now, I'm just going through this. So let's see, 'Planning your SEO strategy for 2019.' Google does have a 60, 70% market share. So when you're optimizing for organic traffic, you want to optimize for Google.

Now, there are two different schools of thought when it comes to SEO, there is what is considered black hat. And there is what is considered white hat. So the black hat is all of the weird things that can be done to rank. But black hat SEO strategies, although it is effective for the short term, is never effective for the longterm.

So over the years, there's been lots of black hat SEO strategies. Duplicate content, invisible text, and stuffed keywords redirecting the user to another site or a page. All kinds of stuff. Kind of deviant stuff that you wouldn't do because you have a legitimate, real business, a business that you want to grow in scale.

So you're going to be over in this white hat realm over here. So the white hat realm is relevant content. So having well-labeled pages, having images, having relevant links and references, good HTML, unique page titles, meta descriptions. All of that stuff. all good stuff. So don't even worry about it. Just note that the black hat exists. Every once in a while you'll see something in black hat SEO strategies that might be used.

When Google released an algorithm update three or four years ago, there was an interesting thing that people were doing, which was, they were basically... They had a timer. Not a timer, but they had like a WordPress plugin that they made. So it looked like there were people who were commenting on a blog post. So it was scrolling down the thing and then reloading the page and all kinds of other stuff. So it ended up being interesting on that front. And so ultimately what ended up happening was it worked for a little bit, not for very long. Google came around and updated their algorithm. And it didn't necessarily work too much after that.

Let's see. Okay, there we go. Now, some additional stuff. So, a time for action. SEO strategies are constantly evolving. So you always want to make sure to be further ahead than everybody else. Content is the indomitable king.

So I'm going to share my screen. My cam link here decided it didn't want to work anymore. All right. So share screen, application windows. This is why we have redundancy, right? There we go. All right.

So content is king always has been. Quality content is a key area of focus. You want to make sure that the intent of your content is something that is going to serve your users. Serve your readers. And then you want to also give them somewhere else to go. So you want to make sure that the article is between 1500 and 2000 words, which sucks.

I mean, it sucks writing that. It does. 1500 to 2000 words is a lot of content, but the easier way to do it is to do a live stream like this. Record 15 minutes of content, and then it's going to be about 2000 words. Then you can pare it down to 1500 or whatever. But if you record it and transcribe it, it's going to be a whole lot better than spending six hours in front of your keyboard banging something out and just spending an entire day writing one blog post that may or may not get traffic. It's easier to do a video, transcribe it, throw it out there. And if it ranks, awesome. Figure out what to do with it next. But if it doesn't, that's fine too. You only spent 15 minutes on it or 25 minutes, if you posted it.

You want to make sure to have attention-grabbing titles and descriptions. We talked about split testing titles last week. I think it was last Monday or last Tuesday. We talked about using the Thrive Themes Headline Optimizer plugin so that you could see what titles pulled the best.

So rather than talk about it, let's go look at that again. So just to bring it top of mind. All right. So this is a plugin called Thrive Themes Headline Optimizer. And basically what it does is it lets me split test blog post headlines. So the last time we looked at this, it was... We had a couple of blog posts. I had just deactivated a bunch of them. So here you can see that our average engagement rate is 42% for today. Now, if we look down through here, these are all the blog posts that I'm split testing currently.

So, here's one. How to maximize sales funnel conversion. I look for basically anything that has more than a hundred visitors. Because that lets me know that it's a little bit further along in terms of testing the validity. So this doesn't. Here's one. 'Four sales funnel SEO strategies for automated selling'. This has 78. So we're going to just go in and see what headlines are responding the best. This is the actual blog post, but overall, this 'Automated selling with these proven sales funnel SEO strategies' is getting 29.17% click-through while the original, which is 'Four sales funnel strategies for automated selling' is only getting 18% engagement rate. So all things considered, this last subject line sucks. This one right here, 'Automated selling with these proven sales funnel strategies' is by far the winner.

So just a little simple software, a little simple little WordPress plugin. It is paid. You do have to pay for it. But I can single-handedly say that since I installed this thing probably four months ago and started actively split testing headlines, or subject lines, we have probably increased our traffic 20% just because of this. Because your better subject lines bring more search traffic. They bring more social traffic. They bring more engagement. So what you're able to do is you're able to see exactly what somebody is looking for. Somebody interested in here.

And check this one out. So How to maximize sales funnel conversion. So we're just going to click on this one, 'How to maximize sales funnel conversion'. All right. So let's go look at this result. Let's see what these are. Check this out. So engagement rate over time. Look at that red one. So green. Wow. Check this out. So green is the original. 'How to maximize sales funnel conversion'. This thing is an absolute dog compared to the red one, which is currently the winner. So the red one, 'A guide at to sales funnel conversion'...

The post SEO Strategies That Will Get Your Traffic From Search appeared first on Done For You.

Video Transcript:

Hey, what's up. This is Jason Drohn. Welcome to today's presentation This is GSD Daily number 65.

And we're going to talk about intelligence, gathering intelligence on your competitors. Spying on your competitors, ripping off their campaigns and their keyword phrases, and then using that data to help you generate more revenue online. Make more money, right? It's a little weird, I know... It's not weird, it's something we do every day. And you're better agencies, you're better providers, you're better... I mean, if you have somebody on your team who has this skill, you're going to be able to generate a lot more money a lot quicker, because you're using everybody else's data to find out what works and what doesn't. Today I'm going to walk you through a tool. SEMrush is the name of the software. It's a paid application obviously, you can't get anything quality for free.

For reason, this is high-grade stuff and what it provides in terms of analytics, and terms of competitor research and capability are... You could see everything your competitors are doing, everything that's working at least. We're going to go through that in a minute. For those of you... Let me shut my door there. For those of you who don't know who I am. My name is Jason Drohn, creator of a doneforyou.com and we specialize in three things, creating offers, building sales funnels, and then setting up marketing automation that works. And everything we do is about building a foundation for a business online, something that gives you sales on autopilot automatically. Today I had not a significant amount of... This is episode 65.

I have talked about a lot of different stuff as it relates to internet marketing, I'm starting to run out of stuff, that isn't a rehash of a previous thing. What we're going to be doing is we're going to start diving into some of the tools that I use, or that my team uses daily. We're going to talk about using things to execute some of the bigger things that we've talked about in previous episodes, like sales funnels and stuff. We have laid much groundwork already in the daily series, and talking about sales funnels, and talking about Facebook traffic, and talking about organic search rankings, and products, and offers, and all that other stuff that I'm going to start diving in deeper into specific things. And then those specific things we can roll up into the sales funnels, which is ultimately what we've already discussed, so I'm pretty excited about that. Next week, we're going to dig into organic traffic, so we have a lot of clients who are starting to explore organic traffic, starting to explore live streams, and SEO, and some of those things.

Next week we're going to talk about On-page SEO, finding keyword phrases, using keyword phrases, what we do to get rankings and all that stuff, and cover I think, a day. Today we're going to talk about spy tools if you will. The tool that we're going to discuss today is an application called SEMrush. SEMrush is a wicked awesome tool for SEO. And it works nice for SEO but more than that it gives you a lot of competitor data, a lot of competitor intel that you can use to spy on people who are advertising against you or people who are doing business in your same spaces. I'm just going to go through the tool. We're going to discuss the different areas of it and how we use it. Now, you probably are going to use it differently, or you might not, who knows. But the domain that we're tracking in here right now is done for you, I've been using SEMrush for years.

We have several options on the left-hand side, we've got domain analytics, keyword analytics, we've got projects, marketing insights, gap analysis, SEO content template, all kinds of internet stuff. Now, if we just scroll down this page a little bit, you're going to see that in terms of position tracking, we have visibility of 26.48%. And then we have some audits and some on-page checkers and stuff, but where this stuff comes into play. We're going to click into the domain analytics, so you can see some numbers. Now here this 38 is our authority score. We have an authority score of 38, our organic search traffic, we have 308 keywords, then we have 80, so these numbers are not right. If you look at our Google Analytics, we're getting about 300, 400 organic visitors a day.

Then can we scroll down here, and we see our traffic trend, so we can see that one. 2019, then up in March our traffic started trending up. Then we have our keyword rankings down below. You can see how many keyword phrases we have in the top three, so currently, if you follow this report. Now, this report is all... it's not like we're tying in Google webmasters, or Google Analytics, or anything like that. This keyword is generated on their side from their bots and crawlers. Here we have the top three, we have 13 keyword phrases in the top three. There's a lot more than that. We have 35 in the top 4 to 10, so a total of 722 keyword phrases that it found in the keyword results.

Now, if you look at our organic keywords here, you can see those 722 keywords, and we will see... Here, we're looking at organic competitor research, we are ranked in the first position for done for you, advanced lead generation systems, first position, DFY funnels, first position, free traffic Instagram, first position, DFI sales funnel, second position, so you can go through and see all of the keyword phrases that were ranked for. DFI funnels, Scriptly, webinar maker we're in the seventh spot. Done for your webinars, done for your webinar, so there are all kinds of stuff on the first page of Google, as everything above 10 is the first page of Google. CRO KPI done for your courses, that's interesting, we're up to the 12th spot there. We'll have to check that out. That's a pretty hot little keyword phrase. And that is really what we do.

Like we kind of troll through these keyword phrases and find where are our opportunities and if our opportunities, like let's say this done for your courses, it was in the 24th spot. Now it's in the 12th spot. We increased by 12. And the page that it is directing to is doneforyou.com. Well, knowing that it's like well, okay, we offer done for your course creation services. We create offers, so in knowing that it's like you know what, we're going to add something to the homepage for done for you courses linking off to our product to continue ranking for that keyword phrase, so I need to write that down while I'm still thinking about it. Marketing automation workflow, we're in the 27 spots. There are all kinds of keyword phrases here, so this gives you some insight into how your website is doing in the search engines.

But here's the thing, it's not all just that. We can go back out and let's get rid of this bubble here, and we're going to go back to overview, and we can see backlinks, we can see the advertising competitor research, but more than that, we can go into the competitors. Let's look down here, this competitive positioning map, and what you will see is all of the competitors that are, that are ranking for, and advertising for keyword phrases, just like us. We have DFI templates, Marketing Funnel Academy, we have clientsattraction.com has 19 keyword phrases and their traffic is 10. We have machines, we have ranktree.net, which has 156 keywords and 93. And then over here, we have doneforyou.com, which has 722 keywords and traffic of 308.

Needless to say, we're doing pretty well when it comes to our competition. And then we have a list of all of our organic competitors, so Marketing Funnel Academy, client attraction, RY machine, John McNeil has, it looks like three common keywords, a total of 214 keyword phrases, they have traffic of 71. And then we have 2 common keyword phrases, but 472 search rankings and 428 traffic. Let's see if there's anybody else down here. Digital matchbox, we have Rojo consultancy has 559 traffic... is 2300. The easy webinar is ranking for some of the common phrases that we are... They have 2, 618 keyword phrases. You can pinpoint all of your competitors here, from an organic standpoint. Now, if we go, we can go into advertising competitor research and we see the different positions, so traffic costs, we see the keyword phrases. The keyword phrases where we are ranking for. Then we can go into, let's see, we got position changes, and then competitors for advertising competitor research. These are competitors for our ads, so home business promo CFPRO, CFpro tools by ClickFunnels pro tools, they have some traffic going.

Iloveclickfunnels.com has a lot of traffic going. Let's look over at... we're just going to go into I Love Click Funnels, we're just going to see what they do. Their keyword phrase is ClickFunnels on average, their position number one. This is the URL of their landing page and is here, so we're going to go up and we're just going to look at this guy. This is their landing page. Hey Russell, if ClickFunnels is so darn good, why are you giving me two weeks for free? I don't have any idea what this is about, but it's maybe a video of some sort. And because I want you to make money before I make money. I'm so confident that when you see that... Anyway, whatever. That was an example of an ad. Now let's go back, we're going to go back and look at our competitors again. These are all paid, traffic competitors. We're going to go into FunnelHub here and look at... so FunnelHub is also advertising on the keyword phrase, click funnels, And they're just going right to a homepage.

Let's go look at that, so this is FunnelHub. It magnifies your authority, fixes leaky funnels, creates ownership of your traffic managers' perceptions, so this is Funnel hub, and apparently... Create my Funnel hub? Okay, cool. Now let's look at their ads. Funnel hub looked okay, right? I mean, so let's look at their ads, take control of free traffic start building your Funnel hub. Funnel hub helps you create a website to organize all of your funnels offers in one place, blah, blah, blah. Eh, is that? I mean, is that a solid ad? Maybe. Let's look at history and see how long it's been up. Well, this ad it's got 544, the traffic is 544. Click cost is 471, that's quite expensive for the keyword phrase, click funnels, like we're spending 70 cents for the keyword phrase, quick funnels. And it looks like this ad was in the maximum position in ad earned for a given keyword on a particular month, so 3, 1, and 3.

They're advertising pretty heavily right now for these two keyword phrases and then their pages are here, so now that is tied to some advertising competitor research. Then if we look at display advertising for Funnel hub, so the best tool for build sales funnels, okay. The best tool for build sales funnels, that's Funnel hub's display banner ad. That's unimpressive. But anyway, you get the idea, you get to kind of kick through, look and see what your competitors are doing. You get to dive into their stats, you get to look and see what keyword phrases they're ranking for. You get to see their ad copy. Everything about their campaign, you get to see through this one tool and you also get to track your competitor research, your keywords, your phrases.

You can do some keyword competitor research, putting together projects and stuff. They just created some sort of a content writing tool too. I don't know anything about it, but here's some global volume of Funnel hubs. There are lots of ways you can slice and dice the data. I mean, there's so much information in here that you can literally spend all day in here and just do nothing but competitor research, research your stuff, find different ways to exploit your data and rank better. But oftentimes whenever I start working with a client we're always looking for opportunities inside SEMrush for them, that we can go exploit for them. If you have any questions at all about signing or any questions at all about finding your competitor's information, building sales funnels, running traffic, all that stuff, then go to doneforyou.com/start. Sign up for an action plan call with my team and I. And then we'll put together a plan for you selling more stuff, creating offers, getting more traffic, setting up marketing automation.

And if there's anything we can do to help kind of talk through something on a future episode, go to doneforyou.com/GSD and done, and I will talk to you soon. All right. Thanks. Bye.

The post How Competitor Research Guide You To Choose The Best Ad Campaign appeared first on Done For You.

Today we’re going to talk about niche marketing strategy and niches are super important for a variety of reasons, but most notably they are important because they help you sell more stuff. Oddly, I am having a daily session about niches because for our stuff we don’t niche all that much.

People come to us because they have a variety of different offers, products, and things that they are wanting to sell and we help them. Everything from low-ticket digital products and courses, all the way up to high-ticket stuff, we have models for that. Part of the reason why we have a lot of different ways that we can go about selling things is that people come to us for e-comm or digital products or myriad things. But what that has helped us do is see how to sell them lots of different niches and that that part is important in niche marketing strategy.

The adage is when you are talking to everyone, you’re talking to no one. It is very, very true in sales funnels and copywriting. If you are not talking to one particular person or if you don’t have a marketing avatar, somebody in mind for your products and your programs, especially when you’re writing, then it’s just going to fall on deaf ears and nobody is going to respond at all.

For those of you who don’t know who I am, my name is Jason Drohn. I’m the creator of doneforyou.com. You can see the logos all over the place, all over right there. We specialize in three things.

• help companies and individuals create offers
• build sales funnels
• do marketing automation.

Niche Marketing Strategies

That’s kind of our wheelhouse. If it lives online, then we do it. Today we’re going to talk about niche marketing strategy and the three things that you need to keep in mind to build and create stuff for your niches and how dialing in on your thing and segmenting your thing is going to be the difference between selling not a whole lot of stuff and selling a lot of stuff.

1. Focus on One Particular Person/Avatar

When it comes to niches it’s important that you niche down and you focus on one particular person, one customer avatar.

It is going to give you a voice for everybody who is like them. I mean, good sales copy is written to do this, to do something like this very similarly. Your sales copy when it’s written for one person, everybody else writes themselves into the story. You are writing to one person, you are expressing the challenges, bottlenecks, and roadblocks to this one person. In doing so you are writing other people into the story.

What they’re able to do, or what you’re able to do, is you’re able to sell thousands of people just like them because they resonate with the message. The problem is when you write general stuff, then nobody resonates with the message and then everybody thinks it’s for somebody else. Everybody thinks it’s for someone other than the person who you’re writing for, which is them. That’s why a niche marketing strategy is so damn important.

2. Make Different Front End for Every Single Avatar

Now, when you’re writing copy and writing lead magnets and building stuff for sales funnels and everything else, what you need to do is you need to have a different front end for every single one of your avatars. For every person who could be a fit for your market, you want to have a different front end for that person. We’re rolling out a couple of lead magnets, a sales funnel for a client this week, and they have a lot of different folks, a lot of different front ends, a lot of different prospective customers. They work with a lot of different types of customers. What happens is they’re like, “Well, you know, we have this lead magnet. Do you want to add in for this other niche marketing strategy? Or do you want to create a whole separate lead magnet?”

I’m like, “Well, I think we have to create a whole separate lead magnet to get in front of this other customer group so that way they know we’re talking to them, you know?” The segments are very similar but different enough. If in your marketing, let’s say you sell right down the middle. Half of the people you sell to are, let’s say, software developers, and the other half of the people you sell to are business owners. Software developers and business owners, they’re going to have two different thoughts when it comes to what they’re looking for in your offer.

A software developer is going to be looking to offload some of the work onto your team. A business owner is looking for cost to savings, time management. There’s a lot of different things that when you put yourself into that niche, into that brain, that prospect, then what you’re able to do is pinpoint their specific challenges and what is going to help move the needle for your business for them.

You’re going to be able to say, “Yes, my product does this for you and only you.” But in talking directly to them, you’re also talking to the 100,000 people who are just like them. That’s what a niche marketing strategy is. That’s the power of writing and building a niche marketing strategy. If you have lots of different segments, whether it’s job roles or lots of different kinds of verticals, you need to think about the niche and write directly for that person. Now, another example, let’s say you’re in the health and fitness market. Let’s say you have a product that will help lose weight and that’s it, which is like half the people in health and fitness. Now, if you have a product that will help lose weight, who is it catered explicitly to?

Is it specifically catered to the person who is 75 pounds overweight or 20 or 30 pounds overweight, or they’re trying to lose that last 10 pounds of fat? Who is it that you are creating your copy or offer for? Because there’s such a wide variation between the person who is losing their last 10 pounds and losing 70 pounds. I mean, the person who is losing 70 pounds, really nutrition 101, get up and move, that kind of stuff is going to make a monumental difference for them. It is not for the person who was losing 10 pounds.

Sales and Marketing Copy

Your sales and marketing copy needs to be addressing that particular group that you were looking to target, male, female, what age groups, how athletic are they. But you need to have a clear idea in your mind for that person. But in niching it out, you should have, one sales video for men and one sales video for women, or one sales video for busy moms and one sales video for stay-at-home dads or whatever.

Like you can niche out the sales material and the offer can be the same, but what you’re doing is you’re targeting the person. And the thing is just targeting one person at first. I mean, we run into this all the time. Somebody’s like, “Well, my niche is X, or it could be Y, or it could be Z. How about we just do all of them and test all of them and then we’ll see which one wins?”

The problem with that though is oftentimes… I mean, ad budget and time and budget is limited, you know? Oftentimes, especially if it’s an ad budget, it’s like let’s say you have an ad budget of $5,000 to test. Well, if you’re testing three niches and then splitting it down the middle on all three, then you’re looking at what, $1,500, $1,700 per niche.

Would it be more advantageous to just throw all five grand at the one niche and test deep, test a lot of different ad combinations, a lot of different landing pages, or just sprinkle some ad budget on three niches and test across them? It’s probably going to be deep in one if you have a limited budget of $5,000. Of course, you’re going to be making sales, you’re going to be getting leads, and all that other stuff. You’re going to spin it over into a new ad budget, but do you get the same level of growth by sprinkling it between three different niches?

Do you know what I mean? In niche marketing strategy, it’s important to think about stuff like that. Sure. You can throw all of them out there, but do you give anyone thing enough runway to do anything with it, to make a difference in your business, to generate leads, to get sales? Because if you pull the trigger and then you stop $100 bucks, $200 bucks in, you didn’t learn anything. You learned that you pulled the trigger too soon. It’s what 100 clicks, 200 clicks, and maybe a couple of leads, a couple of sales, whatever? But you didn’t get far enough along to do anything substantial with it, you know?

Selling Affiliate Products

That’s is why you end up doing niche marketing strategy. Now, another thing is if you’re selling affiliate products, niches are wildly important, actually going after one particular vertical, like business development or like health and fitness or like investing. But when you’re going after one niche and one avatar, it doesn’t mean they’re not going to buy other things. You might have a lead magnet that is straight into business development of companies that are a million dollars or more, or whatever.

Those people, yeah, they’re going to be buying business development courses, but they’ll also buy self-help. They’ll buy Tony Robbins stuff. They will buy coaching. They’ll buy the software. They’ll buy an investment, any kind of investment advice. Even though you are specializing in one niche marketing strategy, it doesn’t mean they won’t buy other things. Look for those kinds of sideways side door relationships that you can use to generate some side hustle income, especially through affiliates or partnerships or JVs or whatever. It’s going to help in the long run.

3. Be Clear With Your Niche’s Features and Benefits

The third reason, the third tip I have here, is it makes it easier, more viral. The other thing about niches is when somebody can distinctly say this is what you do, it helps them share what you do. One of the things I’ve always been fascinated with sales copy is everybody says that the features and benefits are important in sales features and benefits are essential, like little bullet blocks and stuff, but the features and benefits, aren’t just important for the reader. They’re not just important for the person who is buying your offer. They are equally important for that person justifying their decision to others.

Here’s what I mean. Have you ever read a sales letter or bought something and you found yourself justifying your decision to somebody else with language that was in the sales copy? It wasn’t your original thought, but the thought was planted in your head from sales copy or marketing copy, and then you used that thing verbatim to justify your decision to somebody else. I mean, it happens all the time, but the next time you do it, notice it because I’m sure you’re doing it. I do it all the time. It’s like, “Well, you know, I bought this…” This little video thing here, I’ll show you.

This thing is what is called a SlingStudio. What it lets me do is it lets me switch between camera angles. This is an iPhone. This is a webcam. Then I can hook some different camera angles up to it and then I can just switch back and forth. Then I have a little audio switcher unit so that it switches between the iPhone monitor and then also a mic. This thing, I was like, “Well, you know what? Here’s why I want to buy it. I want to buy it because I can save local recordings of my videos and I don’t have to worry about the streaming quality on Facebook and YouTube.”

SlingStudio

Where did I get that thought? I got that thought from the SlingStudio website that said, “You can save your recordings locally, and then you don’t have to worry.” Literally, like I took it verbatim and then I justified my purchase decision with that, but it makes total sense. It makes… I’m their perfect ideal candidate because I started doing the live streams and then I was like, “Well, okay. You know, I’m going to start using these for different things, social media videos down the road.

I’d like to archive a good solid copy of my videos, something that isn’t compressed in YouTube’s random algorithm with a big video that’s 200 megabytes.” Do you know what I mean? I want to be able to use it in the future. That has been the learning curve in the last couple of weeks, but I justified my purchase decision because they knew that I was their buyer.

They knew that I was their niche, somebody who just started live streaming, who has a couple of cameras, and they want to do it a little bit differently. Maybe they’re creating digital products. Maybe they’re doing some live event kind of stuff, which I’m not doing, but I use their feature and benefit to justify the decision. They niched me out perfectly and they have different niches. If you look at SlingStudio, they’re niched for band members, they’re niched for drone video enthusiasts, pun intended, they’re niched for all kinds of different people.

At the end of the day, they know that by focusing on a couple of segments, they’re able to sell a lot of products.  Being able to share what SlingStudio does, I am now talking to you about them on this live stream. It means that now I’m giving them a bunch of free press. Basically, just delivering a good experience and then also making it easy for me to talk about them.

Do you know what I mean?

• Concentrating on a niche is important.
• Attract your ideal buyer.

Who is your ideal buyer?

Your ideal buyer is the person that you say they are by writing sales copy for them. That is going to be your ideal buyer. That is going to be the person who does business with you. Everything starts in the discipline of thinking about your customer avatar. Who do you want to work with? How much do you want to charge? What level should they be playing at to work with you? And then from there you get into the niches and writing sales copy, building sales funnels for that person.

Does anybody has any questions about niches and rolling out niches and some of the collateral or whatever you need for niches? Happy to answer any questions.

I guess that I don’t have any like real things that I can share in terms of niches, like screen stuff. Finding niches… One of them… There is some discovery kind of stuff that I usually go through. Whenever I’m looking for niches or I’m looking for ideas, there’s always a couple of places that I go to.

Now, whenever I’m looking for niche ideas, product ideas, I’m looking to do some research into what niches to go into. It is whether about creating a product or affiliate offers, which for the most part we just do stuff on behalf of clients. Like we build our stuff, of course. We build our software, in terms of like info products, we just help facilitate client niches. Whenever I need to do research, there are always three places I go to.

3 Best Sites to explore Niche Marketing

The first is ClickBank. ClickBank is an affiliate marketplace, a digital marketplace that they grew up around affiliates. There are the Dummies books, which is dummies.com, and they have entire research and development teams that do nothing but figure out niches and that’s what they write books for. And then the third one is Amazon book bestsellers.

These are three places that I like to go and explore what people are buying. If you can find something in one of these three places, you have some pretty good insight into what niche is. It will also give you an idea of what a segmented niche is and how to speak to that segmented niche. It will also determine what kind of material they are buying and resonating with, and then also how popular it is.

1. Clickbank

The first is we go over to ClickBank. A lot of times we go to… Let’s see. Kind of redid their homepage here. So we’re going to go to browse products. Now we have a lot of different categories here. There are e-business and e-marketing, games, health and fitness, self-help. We’re just going to go to e-business and e-marketing. And then here we see there are several products, Thumbnail Blaster, Sqribble with a Q, Empire.

You’ve got to love all this stuff. And then there are subcategories. Affiliate marketing, general, video marketing, there are lots of different kinds of ways that they end up cutting up this e-business. But what we’re doing is we’re seeing… This is a discipline in segmenting down. Here, under affiliate products, or here under thumbnail blast or general or video marketing, those are going to end up being some individual products, some niched down products.

Now, if we went back to like health and fitness, we’re going to go to product categories. We’re going to go to health and fitness. Then here we have Keto. We have Natural Synergy, The Power of Hormones. Cacao bliss, one bottle, one-time supply. Dietary supplements. There are lots of ways you can end up drilling down, but you can tell… I mean The Power of Hormones, Natural Synergy, and Carb Shifting Keto, those products are niched to a particular segment. Obviously, this is Keto. The power of hormones is a how-to guide on balancing hormones for women age 25 to 55. These people know exactly who their niche is and they are writing for that niche.

2. Dummies

Now, if we go to Dummies, then we look at browse topics. Then again, you can browse games, personal finance. Let’s hit games. And then underneath we have… Let’s do Cryptograms, just to see. We have Cracking Codes and Cryptograms for Dummies Cheat Sheet. And then we have some articles focusing on these… We’re going to end up… Let’s see, I’m going to look at their books. Browse topics. Let’s go-to personal finance. We’ve got our top weekly articles. All right. Emerging market in Russia.

3. Amazon

All right. We’re going to head over to Amazon. There we go. Here we have Maker and Kids Tech Guides. And my screen froze. There we go. Okay. Electronics for Dummies, Twitch for Dummies, Helping Kids with Coding. I mean, these people are masters of their niche. They have a book for a niche. A lot of times it ends up being discipline-based, but it’s everybody who is looking for information on Raspberry Pi or like the little Raspberry control units. The person who was into that Raspberry Pi is going to be a maker.

It covers connecting the Pi to other devices and teaches you basic Linux system admin. It also explores creating simple hardware projects, shows you how to create web pages. They know who their buyers are just by having the book and then writing to the person who would be into that book. Also, they know that niche, but they didn’t put the Raspberry PI book also with Linux coding. There might be a little bit in there, but they didn’t sell it all as one book. They broke it out into different niche marketing strategies so that the person who was into Raspberry Pi could buy the Raspberry Pi book.

This sounds general and basic, but it’s amazing how many people try to put all their stuff into one basket. Then sell it as one basket, and then it doesn’t sell because nobody knows who they’re talking to. If we look at Amazon bestsellers, we have our department’s over here on the left. If we look at engineering and transportation, then we see that some of the best-selling books inside engineering and transportation. We’re in engineering transportation in automotive and then we can dive down into classic cars. These are the books that are inside that segment that are selling well.

Spend a couple of minutes, dive down a little bit, see what your people are buying.

It just lets you explore niche marketing strategy and lets you explore topics and verticals and dive down into the thing that is working well in that particular space, which gives you a great tool or great set of tools to begin exploring your niches and kind of most people don’t do this research. Most people don’t spend 10 minutes and get an idea of who their buyer is. They just think they know. Don’t do that. It’s going to give you a lot of insight into your niche, how you should write to them, how you should talk to them, how you should sell to them, and then go from there.

For Questions and Guide

If you would like to schedule a strategy session to talk about this in your business, go to Doneforyou.com/start and set up an action plan call. Fill out the little form. Then from there, we’ll get on the phone, talk about your sales funnel, your traffic, any of that other stuff. If you need anything else, just let me know and I’ll talk to you soon.

The post The Best Niche Marketing Strategy To Increase Your Leads appeared first on Done For You.