Why You Should Be Setting Goals

Why You Should Be Setting Goals

by | Mar 20, 2020 | Business

Setting Goals is Your Big Picture Plan

You SHOULD be setting business goals for success

Are you setting the wrong type of goals?
Goal setting is one of the most underrated activities that you can do to grow your business. My partner and I take an annual retreat to Bali Indonesia at the end of each year to unwind and recharge for the year ahead. Here in this tropical paradise we will schedule a morning where we will focus on our goals. This is one of our fav activities we do together.

In our couples focus goals session we will cover the following:
1 Couple goals > how are we doing as a loving couple, are we having enough date nights, do we give each other enough attention.
2 House goals > we are saving to buy a block of land and build a home that has everything we need as very tall people
3 Finance goals > are we tracking on target for savings, do we have good money management and where are we wasting 💰
4 Family goals > are we seeing each of our families enough, are we being great family members, do we contribute.
5 Work goals > we want to be seen as professionals in our fields, are we being successful, do we get satisfaction from this
6 Business goals > we focus on our business ventures, results, new things, money and satisfaction

7 Individual project goals > we both have individual projects we work on and we update our goals for these and share with each other what we want to achieve this coming year. 

You can do your own goals session but this is what we do every year to align ourselves as a team, as a couple and as business owners. You don’t need to wait a year to do this or visit a tropical island. You can do it anytime you want to and where ever you want to. Thats the beauty of owning an online business.

For this post we will focus more on the business goals and finance related goals.

What would you say looks more attractive to you?

Making $10,000 per month or making 3 sales per day?

 

Most people would say $10k monthly is the best option. But why do you think that is? well lets say that 3 sales sounds like 3 small sales, and $10k monthly sounds like a lot of sales and is a decent return. 

Now you have $10k in mind as a goal, let’s run with $10k as one of your goals. Now how will you get that $10k? do you have a plan? break it down and tell me what you would do step by step to get there. In my consulting calls when I ask these questions I don’t hear very clear steps from the person Im speaking to. The most common answer is “Ill run ads to get the sales and thats how ill get to $10k mo”. 

Im very scared for the success of the person when I hear this. I need to know that the plan is in place and often it is not and the person has a very clear vision of $10k a month but no clear plan how to get there. 

Here are some guiding questions to help you define the steps:
Q1 > How much are you selling your product or service for?
Q2 > What are your margins from cost to sale?
Q3 > How much are you prepared to spend on Ads to get a sale?
Q4 > Are you using the best product or service as the focus sale?


Why i would ask these questions is because when you break it down it can be A LOT of work that you are doing instead of looking at the path that is most rewarding. The plan can help you get to the goal, if you chunk it down you can get to each milestone of your goal much easier. While it’s good to have the $ figure in mind, sometimes it’s a LOT easier to think of the number of sales that get you there.

What value is there for a customer to buy with you instead of Amazon or Target? If you can answer this then 5 points to you. If you stutter and fumble around for an answer you really need to work on your USP. That is your Unique Selling Position, why you are the go to for this product or service. Then I would ask you to know what your USP is and to review your page sales copy to see if your USP is reflected in the sales copy. Often I see direct copy and paste from a manufacturer or a catalogue 😥, PLEASE use unique and brand or USP focused sales copy. This will directly increase your sales because you went the extra step and created sales copy that speaks about your brand and your USP.

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Here are some real world examples

This is Donny’s Goal:
Your goal is to sell $10k of product You are selling a product that retails for $10  Each day you must sell 30-40 products per day to get to 90% of your target goal This is a grind and will be hard work Donny should increase the price of this product or use this an an upsell to a higher price target product where it is easier to sell higher priced items.Ultimately I would suggest Donny try and find a higher priced item he can sell to his audience.

This is Tara’s Goal: Your Goal is to sell $10k of product  You are selling a product that retails for $100  Each day you must sell 3 to 4 products to get 90% of your target goal This is an achievable goal.

Tara should include an upsell in the checkout that helps bump up the average order value.

With the above she is almost at her goal and just needs $1k to hit it where she can add a order bump product that will help her get that missing $1k.

What Steps Should You Take?

Here Are The Next Steps To Hit Your Goal

 

Now the steps to start getting those sales so you can get to your goal.
This is how you start getting traffic to your sales pages:

* Find your audience. Who has a problem you can solve with your product.
* Build your store/product list/sales pages.
* Build your audience by running Ads that gather the right data.
* Build your site out, use SEO to get your pages ranking organically.
* Plan your sales funnel, pricing and sequence of events.
* Build a sales funnel and pay for Ads to drive traffic to your pages.
* Reach out to people who need the solution.
* Make content, images and videos and demonstrate the solution.
* Leverage from others who have an audience.
* Supply and demand being the middle man/person.
* Nurtue your audience and bring people back to your sales pages

Maintain this approach to keep that sales cycle on repeat. THIS helps you get traction and moves you closer to that monthly goal of $10k. You might not get that in month 1-3 but stick with it and you will see results, even if you make $5k thats more than you had last month. Keep your work ethic up and that $5k  will grow in size month on month.

Maintain this approach to keep that sales cycle on repeat. THIS helps you get traction and moves you closer to that monthly goal of $10k. You might not get that in month 1-3 but stick with it and you will see results, even if you make $5k thats more than you had last month. Keep your work ethic up and that $5k  will grow in size month on month.


Why One of Your Goals Should Be Opportunity
Retailers are going under left right and centre due to a number of reasons and some of it is a lack of ability to adjust to the market. For people like us working online we move fast and adjust very quickly. Big brands are going down in value because the competition by the smaller to medium sized alternatives. Software and processes are always evolving making it cheaper for businesses to do things. This makes more competition, and being aware of these changes and having goals GIVES YOU THE POWER to make moves. 

The moves you can make are seeing the gaps and taking action. Your goals should include a growth opportunity of some sort. The openings you see in the market are where you can make that small sprint towards your goal, lets say for example this very website is made with GroovePages a Click Funnels competitor

>> Get your Groove Pages lifetime deal here! <<

The market has been dominated by ClickFunnels for so long as they have GREAT marketing. The competitors only get any traction because ClickFunnels does not fulfil some function that the people not using ClickFunnels need. 


You hear these stories every day. A new competitor has emerged and is getting new interest instead of the industry leading platform in the example here its Click funnels. There are a lot of people who really dislike Click Funnels because of the aggressive sales tactics and highly priced monthly fees for what they get.

Groove Pages is a direct competitor of Click Funnels and partly G Suite by Google. They created the platform to take back some of the market from Click Funnels and while they are just about out of beta testing phase they still have a pretty decent product. My site is 100% built in Groove Pages. 

So how this plays onto goals and why it matters. Using opportunity as a goal to grow your business is a must. What Groove Pages did was to identify an opportunity where Click Funnels past users had complained about features and pricing. Now Groove Pages can slide into filling that gap in between what the users want and what the company was offering. 

This has allowed Groove Pages to gain a lot of traction by offering a more well rounded tool suite and a one time price point of $497 with several upsells if you want to expand on what your standalone product can do. They are creating a full kit of apps to fit into Groove Pages like mail, videos, webinar, automations, affiliate manager, cart, meetings, calendars and way way more.

>> Get your Groove Pages lifetime deal here! <<

This gap in the marketplace has allowed them to start moving towards their opportunity goal. The only thing they needed was a shot, now they have the voice and can raise more people to try their product and sign on as paying customers. The founders have openly said that they wanted to create a long shot goal of being seen asa rival to Click Funnels and by making a superior product. I say well done chaps the beta rollout has been very exciting with so many apps added already.

This should serve as a warning that all you need is a shot. Business will remain the same but the players will adapt and change as trends hit the market. A hot tip from me is to find businesses so set in their ways that its almost impossible for them to pivot or adapt to change like Banks they are so shaken by crypto they dont know what to do although now they have solidified themselves it took almost 4 years for them to adapt.

“Opportunity is everywhere”.
To strengthen your position for growth in your business consider taking a deeper relationship with your customers. Get a deeper understanding of your market and its competitors especially those ones that are so small they are just making a mumur because as things become more available those are the ones that will be coming out of nowhere. Your clients can spend their money on anything and they will, but you need to be the one that has the advantage.

A goal I set for myself under my business objectives, is to make spending money with me more attractive to potential customers. I would rather they spend the money with me where I can write them a value packed email and enjoy them becoming a customer than with someone else. I think you would agree with me on this that the money is better in your pocket.

Look, there’s a tonne of ways to hit your $ goal but if you structure your goals and plan how you’re going to attack it then take MASSIVE action – you will do it! But make those goals easier to achieve by breaking them up into the number of sales it will take to get you there so it’s not as daunting or that out of reach feeling. Again, easier said than done but definitely possible if you put in the work 👌.🍻

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What blog types are the best for affiliates

What blog types are the best for affiliates

by | Mar 20, 2020 | Affiliate Marketing, SEO

Types of Blogs You Can Use and Best Use Case Examples

As affiliate marketers we make a lot of our money from review type content, but what else can you use to to make money on your blog. Let’s go through a few examples and how you can best use them.


Types of Blog Posts That You Can Use
1 The Review
2 The Controversial Post
3 The Behind the Scenes
4 The How-To Guide
5 The Personal Experience
6 The Seasonal Time Based Post
7 The Practical Motivation Post

8 The Listicle Roundup



My Types of Blog Post That Can Make You Money 


Lets expand on each point listed here so you get a clear understanding of how important each one is and the best use case for them on your money webpages.


1 The Classic Review & Recommendation Article


The goal of these blog types is to build confidence in the product or service by reviewing what it has on offer, the features benefits and drawbacks. You can review or recommend ANYTHING there is no limit to how much to review or what you can review.

Works really well when you know people may be on the fence about shelling out if the sales page is a bit vague of detail. The opportunity is then showing the readers what it looks like when you get it when its a physical product. If it is software or digital based readers love to see what it looks like after you log in. You can then show them any really cool features or really crap features like freezes often or does not do what it said it would.

Best Use Case: ANYTHING 


2 The Controversial Article 
As people we love a little bit of drama to distract us. We enjoy it even more if it’s someone else’s drama and when theres a controversial headline, claim or statement we seem to pay close attention to it. The goal of these types of articles is to generate discussions and debates from people either for something or against this is no place for fence sitters.

How does this work?
It works by taking something or someone that has an audience or a following and writing about something that will get the followers attention or get the haters attention. Once you have the attention of either side the article will be shared and engaged with by members of one side of the statement, this will then get the attention of the people from the other side of the statement and a debate between the various standpoints or features takes place.

Example: Why I Think Google Sheets Is Superior to Microsoft Excel

In the above example Im calling out all the Microsoft excel fans and waving my opinion of how much better Google Sheets is as a tool. This will make excel fans want to state how bad my choice was and how inferior Google sheets is in comparison. But the Google sheets lovers will add their feelings about how amazing Google sheets is and why its better because of XYZ features. 

Best Use Case: Promote only the strongest  offers in these articles. You need to be careful that this does not backfire in your face because of the opposing statements and left wing comments from the against camp.

My Secret Sauce Tip: Don’t promote any offer and use this article type to build your list and link in to your other pages that have offers for both of the products or services you wrote about in the controversial article.

Other examples might include
> Challenging popular opinions
> Sharing unpopular statements
> Highlighting shady or outdated industry practices
> Write about things that were hyped up but didnt actually work
> Write about changes you want made
> Write like your writing a letter to the person who peeved you off



3 The Behind The Scenes Post
I really enjoy these types of posts and think they really do grab your attention. When someone you follow online reveals more about their home life or gives you a tour of their office as an example you get drawn in because you want to know what is that persons life really like. We live in an age where AI, VR and a lot of special effects can be anywhere at any given moment so seeing some REAL behind the scenes stuff is highly entertaining.

Ive posted before about showing the storage containers for my ecommerce businesses and the packaging order process. I also showed what my studio looks like with all the mess of thousands of packets of product everywhere. The readers really enjoyed that article and the short video. This showed that I am an actual ecommerce store owner, I do order product and inventory and do have a storage facility. This works towards building more trust that I do what I say and am on the journey with the reader.

Best Use Case: Promoting training courses, masterminds and templates, how to guides.

Other Examples:
> Whats in your backpack
> Whats your phone look like
> Whats on your computer desktop/laptop screen
> What video/podcast recording gear do you use
> What does your garage look like
> What does your house look like
> Morning routines and rituals


4 The How-To Educational Guide Article
Another of my fav types of blog posts because they can really help people overcome obstacles. These are great for beginner audiences and medium level followings to get the roadmap to success or the final pat of the puzzle. This can also help you to generate really good case studies when the readers follow your steps and take action. You can promote more here because your audience is invested in learning and are hungry for information.

Best Use Case: Training, Masterminds, Guides, Templates, Scripts, Roadmaps and over the shoulder style offers.


5 The Personal Experience Article  
You can really use this type of blog post to your advantage because its coming from YOU and YOU are putting your face behind something. There is no higher trust signal than YOU holding the new backpack you are promoting saying how amazing it was on your recent trip to the Gold Coast. People see YOU and they see the product in your hands meaning YOU actually used it and YOU give it a 5 star rating.

Best Use Case: Anything will work with this type of post because you used it, and you can show how it helped you.

woocommerce revenue wins with seo-work-smarter
6 The Seasonal Time Based Post
You need to be quite active online and have a good reading on your niche for this one to work well. Having your finger on the pulse of your niche can help you get a headstart on others. You want to be using time based or season based activities and events to base topics around them, Black Friday is the most obvious choice for online marketers as its a HUGE money grab.

I do like the year ahead predictions or looking back at the year reviews of what worked what didnt. These are really good for people following your journey and walking in your footsteps so you can make recommendations and lead into your review posts that then promote specific deals and offers. 

If I was to use online marketing as an example the easiest wins for me would be keeping tabs on Google Updates and promoting software and tools to help manage this problem better or Facebooks ever changing algorithm would be an easy recommendation to join a specific training course or mastermind that deals primarily with Facebook Ads.

Best Use Case: Building a calendar of events, holiday and seasons that you can promote offers using one of them as the reason or feature topic of why you are promoting the offer.

Other Examples:
> Deals per season
> Viral trends and why these worked articles
> Holiday & Event based posts
> Year month week predictions
> Be the first to release industry news


7 The Practical Motivation Post

Good marketing is really just clever storytelling if we were to break it down to the nuts and bolts of it. These do work very well especially if you have got results doing it or using the system and what not. You can use long form when its a more personal recommendation, allowing you to build a story into the content to help get your reasons across. 

If you have had anything inspire you, motivate you and just make your life easier then you can 100% promote it because it has helped you do something better. Mentally, physically and emotionally. These offers can get a lot of engagement especially from likeminded people in your audience.

Best Use Case: Promoting training courses and mastermind type offers.


8 The Listicle Roundup Article 
This is a really good way to cover off multiple affiliate offers in one post but not come across to aggressive in your pitch. If every recommendation and listed item has an affiliate link listed it may be overbearing for readers.

You would gather up roughly 7-10 of the best things, things being products, services, tools basically anything and create a list. You then review your list to what makes the best sense to be 1, 2 and 3 and why you are promoting them first these are your main money makers. The listicle works really well and you can use a similar principle with roundups and summaries to make some offer promotions. The really nice thing about listicles is you can break them up very easily so readers can digest the parts that they want.


Best Use Case:  Top 10 VPNs, These 7 Email tools or We selected these 5 finance coaching programs can work wonders. Use good content and high quality images. Identify the ones that have the most brand name traffic or search volume and highest payout and you can use them as the ones that you use your affiliate link on. 

My Secret Sauce Tip: Don’t link every listed item, only list the top 2 per category and only mention the brand name of the others with no link. Some companies have an SEO outreach team who monitors brand name mentions and may reach out to you to get a backlink listed. You can use this as an intro to people in that company or to get listed on the company website however you negotiate the deal.


Conclusion
Just having these different types of blogs wont be enough to make you money each blog still needs some basic SEO love. You will need to add some focus keywords and search intent analysis to get them ranking high enough for people to find and click on them.

I also suggest typing in similar topics, keywords and seeing what actually shows up first so you know the type of content to make and if you need more video content or meme based images. This really helps you know what is working and what people want to see. The best thing you can do is to get that posts live on your blog and come back and optimise them later. I do this on this blog and publish often with no images and then come back once Ive picked the images and decided where I want to internal link to so that the page makes sense and the layout is easy to read.

Pick some types of blogs write them out and make some money. Get those Click Bucks.

7 Tips To Sell More SEO Services

7 Tips To Sell More SEO Services

by | Mar 20, 2020 | Business, Marketing, SEO

These Tactics Make You More SEO Money

THE SEVEN RULES THAT HELP SUCCESSFULLY SELL PREMIUM SEO PACKAGES


When I started freelancing and fending for myself in this new industry of online marketing I was primarily selling pay per click, web design and SEO services as my core offerings. My goal was to always sell the prospect exactly what they needed and not what made me the most money and that they may not of needed but was nice to have. 

I am by no means a salesman, I hate selling and Im not a big fan of meeting new people and pitching them something they don’t really understand. That just seems awkward to me, and me selling face to face is awkward enough I do NOT look like the typical digital sales person being a large tattooed, bearded man I get a few strange looks when I meet people the first time in office settings haha. Fun Fact you will never see me in a business suit ever! I made a pact with myself that if I ever had to wear a corporate suit again I was doing the thing for work.

Make the agency fun think of culture

My goal was to sell $100k of marketing services for the year . I created myself a large database of businesses in my area that needed help with marketing thanks to help of a lead scraping tool called SCOPELEADS. This tool would let me put in locations, service types and some keywords and would go and bring back hundreds of results that matched my exact request. I spent a couple days building this so it got to a nice fat figure of businesses. When I had 200,000 businesses in that database I now had a playground I work in.

My Main Methods of Contacting these Businesses:
1 Email prospecting with website audits, SEO audits and more
2 Cold calling getting the manager or owner and highlighting the areas of improvement
3 Walking in cold to the physical business and trying to get the owner and manager

This was some time ago and I was starting out, when you start out the hustle is different you try to attack everything. These methods don’t scale well when you get bigger and bigger but for a one man show these were all I had to get the conversation started with these businesses.

What I learned is all of these methods really really SUCK! no one wants to talk to you or hear how their pride and joy website is missing all of these things they don’t understand. I had a of doors slammed in my face and was a hung up on a lot. But I did learn so much about what these business owners do want to hear and what hooks actually got them to take interest in what I was saying. I believe in  failing forward, so I may have lost 2,000 of those leads from my database but after 2,000 interactions I started picking up on what was working or at least intriguing the interest to take the conversation down other paths.

My confidence grew after figuring out these little 1% signals that I would use to compound and get the business owner invested in the conversation. I hate selling I really do but when it was becoming easier and easier I did kind a start to enjoy turning a no into a yes. A very weird turn of events but this sick little addiction to winning the conversation turned into sales and a steady stream of them closing me a nice little portfolio of new clients. I signed on 45 NEW clients over the span of 3 months. This got the attention of a bigger marketing agency who at the time was losing a lot of client (thanks to yours truly) so they made me an offer to sell my business to them for a nice little payday. I didn’t intend to be el solo while running a 47 client agency so this timed perfect with me scaling and then onboarding my new portfolio into their system and account manager team.
meme business in 2020

My sale of business was agreed on with one clause. That clause was that I work with the purchasing businesses sales and prospecting team to help them turn around their slump of no sales. I agreed of course I love training and developing talent. That was a no brainer. 

I don’t tell you this to impress, big note or get attention, but hopefully, motivate some people who may be starting out to take real action.Now Ive got the 7 tips below to help you level up with selling more SEO. Also because I know what it’s like selling SEO, it’s not an easy task the competition is fierce and the cowboys have made it damn hard to sell.

Seven Tips To Selling Premium SEO Packages
1. Only Target Businesses That Are Already Established And Have An Existing Investing Mindset.

2. Your Success Of Setting Clients Expectations, Will Be A Direct Reflection Of Your Retention & Revenue Success.

3. Frame SEO As A Long Term Growth Plan & You As The Vehicle That Can Only Take Them There.

4. What You Charge For Your Fees Should Be Directly Related To The Potential Value You Bring & The Size Of The Problem You Solve.

5. The Deeper & More Involved In The Client’s Business You Are, The Harder It Is For Them To Operate Without You.

6. Always Give & Deliver Value First. Give Your Best Stuff That Will Help Them Now Before You Ever Ask For The Sale.

7. You Are The Prize, Back Yourselves, Back Your Prices & Be Willing To Walk & Want Nothing!


This forms some of what Ive taught the sales and prospecting team at the agency I consult with thats helped them net $3.4 million in new business.



If you have an existing sales team ask yourself about how they sell and how good are their sales. You should be always reviewing your sales process and communications from sales person to business owner. Do you use the right language, do you highlight their pain points and then your solution all of these really simple conversation points play a pat in getting the conversation turned towards signing on for your services.

What ‘simple things’ can you do to improve sales?
Regardless of what is going on in the economy there are always simple things many businesses can use to improve their sales and profits. Sometimes making more sales is as simple as talking to more potential customers about what you sell. And there are a huge number of simple things you can do to attract more customers.

Here’s an interesting way to attract new customers that was both fun and extremely effective:
A hardware shop increased the number of people coming into their store with a fun competition. They put up a big sign in their window that said: “We guarantee that if you come into our store one of our people will professionally greet and welcome you within 15 seconds. If they don’t we will give you $50.00 worth of hardware of your choice free” People would walk down the street and read this sign. They would stop for a few seconds and then mentally say to themselves “That sounds interesting; I think I will check it out.” So they would walk inside the hardware store to see more about what was going on.

The store had a bell and buzzer on their door that sounded as soon as you went in. One of their salespeople would excuse themselves if they were dealing with a customer by saying something like “Can you just excuse me for 10 seconds” and then walk over to the person and welcome them to the store. “Thank you for coming in today, I’m just with someone else so please free to look around. I’ll be with you in a moment”.



This way the customer was always greeted professionally within 15 seconds of walking in to the shop.Now once the people were in the shop guess what many did?They said to themselves, “Well now that I’m here what can I buy that I might need?” Sales increased dramatically.What ‘simple things’ can you try this week to increase your own sales?The lesson which life repeats and constantly enforces is ‘look under foot.’
The great opportunity is where you are. John Burroughs

If you want to sell more of something I highly recommend taking stock of the following:
> your unique selling position
> your customers pain points
> your sales messaging and language
> your sales teams method for getting the actual signing of a sales contract/agreement

The sale is an important part of the process and your USP, your sales people and language even down to how they go for the handshake to confirm the deal are all compounding signals that can be improved by just paying attention to them.

I really hope this was helpful and you are able to implement some changes in your processes and business that result in you getting more sales and higher retainers for your services. If you liked this post please share it. Thanks.

Building An Agency: Service Pricing Models

Building An Agency: Service Pricing Models

by | Mar 20, 2020 | Business, Guides

Service Pricing Options for Everyone

Agency Pricing Has Caused Me So Many Headaches In The Past.


How do you price your agency or consulting services? I’ve tried so many different models its been a real journey working out what my customers find the most attractive model. There’s really no right answer for the best agency pricing model depending who you ask.

This article will review every agency pricing method available to you and break down the pros and cons of each.At the end, I’ll detail the system I use to determine the best pricing model that suits me and my client portfolio.

 Why is this such a headache for agency owners?

Here are the most popular agency pricing models.

Project Based Pricing.
This is when there is an agreement on pricing for a term based campaign for a client project. There will be a sheet of deliverables that everyone is aware of and a term sheet with start and end dates or at least a renewal date.

Pricing in this method is calculated per hour to deliver and calculated over the monthly deliverables and added up to form the yearly project cost. As an example my base rate is $150 per hour.

Examples
> 12 month SEO campaign charged per month at $1,500 for a local websites.
> $2,000 for a website technical health audit
> $450 for a landing page build

Key Takeaway:
Project based pricing is great to get quick contracts moving, these can be low cost up to very large project fees. Best use case is web design or sales funnels building where you are building things with end dates and not ongoing work. Ive found that the biggest killer with this model is scope creep where the agreed deliverables keep changing and the amount everyone agreed on becomes less and less as more changes take place.


Fixed Fee Pricing
Flat fee pricing charges a flat amount for your service. I generally look at this as an ongoing scope / engagement (i.e. monthly fee), not a one-off engagement. Calculate your pricing here by either productising your services so its clear or by calculating the hours to complete this deliverable.A lot of agencies start here because it’s simple to quantify, both from an agency management and client understanding perspective. Very popular pricing model if you deliver done for you jobs.

Examples:
> $100 Keyword research 50 pack
> $150 Done for you onpage SEO
> $150 Website tracking review

Key Takeaway:
Great for starting your agency and taking on smaller jobs. The pricing model is very clear everyone understands the outcome. Deliverables can be ticked off and hard to mess up. Best use case is smaller jobs and jobs for set budgets. A let down is that is fixed per job and hard to grow into monthly retainer, hard to get your team to invest focus into projects that are ending and not ongoing.



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Performance Based Pricing


This method I don’t recommend for new agencies its best suited for seasoned agencies and especially those running pay per click campaigns. Lead generation is also a really good use case where you can really demonstrate the phone ringing or the products selling. That then justifies your service fees and enables you to get paid no questions.

Examples:
> $40 per phone call or email lead
> $80 per phone call actual booking
> 20% of each sale from referral traffic
> Free SEO if we don’t rank you for Criminal lawyer Sydney in 90 days

Key Takeaway:
If you do perform the client will be very happy. If you get the targeting wrong you wont get paid. Very highly profitable method if you can produce the leads and sales, can take up your time setting thing sup with risk of no payment if it fails. While you have the traffic you may depend on the client to convert the lead to sale. Very hard to build reliable ongoing income especially if Google updates algorithms and Facebook bans advertising for face masks or supplements lol. You don’t control the traffic delivery channels.


Value Based Pricing Model


I really don’t use this method anymore because there are better cleaner pricing models that you can use. This method swap the time resource factor for a perceived “Value” that your work can attribute to the client campaign. This is best suited for agencies that have a great network of influencers, really good developers or programmers who can build custom tools.

I like to take the stance that working with me is the value. That might sound cocky but Ive worked pretty hard to build my process library and read markets. This in itself is my value add to any campaign I put my hands on. Clients unfortunately do not understand this, and rightly so they know their product and in most cases don’t understand what we do in online marketing.

I want to stress that this is for perceived value that you can be attributed for. There is no clear tracking where you can say that you built the Ad, got the click and then the visitor signed up for the product you cna report you were responsible for that sale. This method does not work like this.

Taking a finance calculator for example, Ive been contracted to build finance calculators before and I did my part that was to code up the loan repayment calculator and include a form of lead capture so that users were turned into leads. This was the easy part but figuring out the actual value took me some time to then track users actions and how that user turned into a lead or a sale and how much $ revenue that lead was worth. This is an absolute HEADACHE.

Examples:
> Influencer marketing campaigns
> Promoting press releases
> Building calculators and engagement tools

Key Takeaways
I don’t really do this anymore except when I include this in with an ecommerce services retainer. It’s very hard to clearly demonstrate you’re direct or attributed impact. This method relies on something you often cant track 100% and someone else or something else. When questioned by a client it can be hard to show your value that you directly contributed.


Retainer Based Pricing Model


This is my preferred agency pricing method. You get a retainer that is paid a month in advance and you can bank on these. If you start stacking clients this money adds up real fast. But this is great for forecasting revenue it feels more controlled from an operational level knowing every month this is the figure I get in retainer fees.

This works best when you can clearly demonstrate to the client that if they pay xxx monthly and you will do AB & C each month for them.

Examples:

> Local SEO $1,500 monthly for 5 hours 
> Social media marketing $2,000 monthly for 10 posts a month on 3 platforms
> Facebook Ad management $1,100 monthly to manage Facebook Ads with media spend of $4,000 monthly

Key Takeaways

I find this the best pricing model that works for me. If I understand what it costs me per hour to do the work and I know how long my team takes to deliver the work I can start to see per month what my expenses are verse what my ideal price point is and calculate the revenue. Boom Im now able to understand how my business is financially if I build this model and scale my client base. 


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Hourly Pricing Model


This makes a lot of sense to use hourly pricing IF you have a very systemized service list. Understanding your services as products will help you charge for these by the hour.  This compliments the retainer model.

I want to know for every person in my team, how much do I need to pay them per hour. Then I need to know what their output is per person like 6 hours a day or more. Then how many tasks they can do in 6 hours and then how many services can we deliver x team members x hour  x day and so on. This helps me clearly see what I have to pay internally and what I can deliver on verse what I can charge and fulfil.


Examples:

> Website Audit takes 8 hours each hour charged at $150 
> Build local website 25 hours of development charged at $170 per hour website sale cost $4250

Key Takeaway:

This works for me and works really well along side the retainer model. I am a processes nerd and need to itemise my services so that I know how long it takes to deliver and then how many I can deliver per day. The hourly pricing model is the smart way to price up your agency services. But the upfront work of listing and documenting your time to deliver so you can calculate expense verse revenue. 


What Pricing Model Do I Suggest?
I am a big fan of combining the hourly pricing model with the retainer model. I need my services to be listed like ecommerce products because I can list the features and how long it takes me to fulfil these per month and tell my client that this is the hours we put in and how long it takes to make this work or deliver this work. The delivery plan is clear includes what I am going to do and how long it takes me and its very easy to see my hourly rates and how long it will take to do everything and the price makes sense based on hours. 

Clients have all the information they need in front of them and can make the call if that suits them. I also offer a MacDonalds style small medium and large hours package that the client can choose the hour allocation that fits their budget or their need to feel that their campaigns are getting attention.

Now I want to give you some more reasoning why I like this combo so you can really understand and build this into your agency. I want you to build a financially strong agency and still be here in 2 years.

I have experienced alignment issues between my sales team, my finance/admin team and then my service delivery teams and the root cause of this alignment issue is pricing.

> Universal billing and sales systems: You want to use a sales system thats simple. Everyone needs to understand the pricing model and how it’s being billed. It’s common for sales people to throw in freebies or decrease sale amount to get the sale signed, this is often not communicated to the person who will be billing the client.
> Using hours to scale: When you use hours package its very easy to ask clients to increase the hours per month. Its also a common question from clients “why does this take so long?” well perfect mr client if you could increase the hours I can spend working on this campaign I can give you more attention and do more for you. Very easy way to turn a client on the small hourly package to a large hourly package.
> Adhoc client requests: You wouldn’t be an agency if you didn’t get those adhoc client requests with tight deadlines. This works so well with hourly pricing because all you need to do is say ok mr client that will take 3 hours thats 4150 per hour to do this do you agree with this, I’ll send you the invoice and BAM! extra 3 hours work added accounted for and managed.
> Transparency: The agency model has such a black cloud hovering over it because of the cowboys doing things with shortcuts, making a quick buck and just being shit in delivery of actual marketing services. When you can come to a meeting with a client have a marketing plan laid out, how many months estimate to hit target, how many hours per month to deliver the work and how much per hour that will cost to get the end results YOU look like a superstar because everything is in the open. 
> Resource tracking: hours are the best way to track your agency resources. If you have a process that is eating too many hours you can review it and decrease time to deliver. If you have a team member who is really slow to deliver you can identify why and try and improve productivity. Ive applied some CRO to my delivery when Ive identified a task that was eating delivery hours once we looked at it then we could optimise it. Reduce time spent to deliver increased productivity and the expense to deliver.

I think it’s critical that you know your cost per seat of team members and then time to complete tasks so you know how to calculate delivery. This removes the unkown you will have a plan for when to add new team members or hold hiring and when to look at outsourcing verse keeping it all in-house for delivery.

“Maths Don’t Lie!”.

To truely scale your agency you need clients and its not so easy to just add more clients. Why I pay attention to my internal systems so closely is because by doing some simple optimisation of my people and systems. Knowing when to make strategic moves can be the difference between you making $5k a month or $20k a month (more if you follow this blog).

The biggest takeaway you should have from this is
1 Itemise your service list
2 Know your cost per seat
3 Build those delivery estimates
4 Use hourly pricing model with retainer model

Use the agency pricing model that best suits your business and don’t just blindly follow me here as I dont know your business. Take stock of what you have currently and identify if you need to focus on anything before you start to grow. If you have an agency already this is aimed at you review your processes, review your team members hourly allocations and then look at your pricing models.

New agency owners this was built just for you to help select the methods you use to charge for your services. I hope this helps you make a successful agency that ranks and banks.

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Design Amazing Webpages

Design Amazing Webpages

by | Mar 20, 2020 | Business, Guides, Marketing

How You Can Design High Converting Web Pages

Webpage Layout Success 

I know that when I browse online I’m looking for things that peak my interest. I want to be entertained and delighted its not a big ask but it is my browsing habit that I understand. I want to see interesting and informative websites serve me helpful content and unique images that are not blurry.

Now as a marketer I know most of my webpages I work on Im either selling a product or a service or influencing a visitor to take an action that will lead to that next step being a transaction or enquiry to something that makes money. This is unavoidable as a online marketer we have to be making ourselves or someone else money to be employed. 


The Key Elements of A High Converting Webpage Are:
1 Focus header with crisp clear hero image and CTA
2 Uncluttered page layout using 3-5 main elements

3 Clear calls to action per page 
4 Clear micro conversion points per row
5 Content that helps move the user into the conversion phase
6 Images that help inform the user that your product/service works
7 The Story carries throughout the webpage

Lets expand on each point listed here so you get a clear understanding of how important each one is and the best use case for them on your money webpages.


Number 1 Focus Header & Hero Image Explained:
When you first land on a webpage you land on the header and are usually greeted by a hero image or banner that should instantly confirm the reason you clicked through to this page is what this page is about.

User flow example.
You searched for “Website chat bots” and the first results claims that its all about website chat bots this meets your first needs.
You click through to the website and you should be greeted by an image and messaging that confirms that this webpage serves website chat bots as its primary focus. If you were greeted by a picture of a gym shoe you would be wondering WTF does that have to do with fixing my problem with my website live chat feature.

Number 2 How Uncluttered Webpage Layouts Matter:
I learnt a lot of webpage layouts working in ecommerce, my sole goal 90% of the time is to get the user to land on the webpage and read just enough to know that the product we have on the page is right for them. The next logical step is to make buying that product as easy as can be usually a 2 click process.

Most of the time I would suggest product images to the left and the key notes, features and pricing immediately on the right with a ADD TO CART or BUY NOW button directly under the key description points. This converts very well and if you look at ecommerce stores now almost 99% of them do this layout as a standard because it works.

You do not want to clutter that flow in any way, your other content needs to go below the product. Every bit of content even the SEO juice content and reviews get pushed down the page to keep that transactional flow first and foremost. No distractions no clutter.


Number 3 Expanding on Clear Calls to Action:

The number one hook point you have on your webpages are the Calls to Action or in short CTA. These are what make people take action and when you find the winning formula for your webpage you will notice an increase in leads & conversions. 

Number 4 Can You Include Micro Conversions In Your Webpage?
Yes you can once that number 1 priority goal has been established. You never want to confuse people with too many options and want to keep the overarching goal to be 1 page 1 goal. There are however micro conversions you can include per webpage row.

A row on your webpage if you think of your webpages like excel spreadsheets, you have rows going across the spreadsheet and columns running down the spreadsheet and they work together to help align data into easy to read sections. Your webpages are based from this type of organisational design using rows and columns to build the page.

You may have also guessed at this point that I’m a huge nerd and you are 100% correct I love this stuff.

Now back to the spreadsheets example, taking my webpage here I am using a x1  column downward layout with a x4 row across layout. Within each one of the four rows I can add small micro goals to influence the bigger goal we have of the page. 

Number 5 Why Your Content Matters 
Content used on your webpage helps to build the story behind the product or the service.

Number 6 How Images Help Influence Action
Nothing speaks as loudly to your website visitors as images. Use the wrong image and you will see a high bounce rates in your analytics, but use an image people connect with and you will see people stay on the webpage and engage more with the page because they feel this page connects with them and what they are looking for.

Number 7 Are You Telling Your Story Throughout the Webpage?
Good marketing is really just clever storytelling if we were to break it down to the nuts and bolts of it.


Conclusion
If you want to take this serious you need a basic understanding of design vs function. I cant count on one hand the number of arguments Ive had with UX designers because of conversion impact issues by design getting in the way. Funny that a UX designer could block transactions but it happens when you don’t understand the full spectrum of the sales funnel.

Keep the webpage you care about to a 1 page 1 goal limit and you will start to get a feel for what works for various things you sell. Don’t rush into things always test and measure to understand how behaviour and patterns work towards the transaction flow of your webpages. Keep it super simple until you know you have it under control.
Thanks for reading and put what you read into practice.