Income School Blog

9 Internet Marketing Hacks that Actually Work

When it comes to internet marketing, our philosophy is that content is king!  Create helpful content and Google will reward you with traffic.

That said, there are some really cool hacks you can use to make your content more effective at attracting traffic and then turning that traffic in to income for you.  Here are 9 of our favorite internet marketing hacks that have actually worked for us.

Hidden Party Coupon

This is a fun one that we’ve used thousands of times.

When customers see your cart and then they see that “coupon code” field, they sometimes feel cheated when they don’t have a coupon code.  So sometimes they’ll go searching in Google for a coupon code.  You’ve probably done it.  I know I have.  And if they can’t find one, they might even think twice about making a purchase.

So what we do is just make a page that we don’t link to from anywhere.  It’s just a page that nobody will find unless they actually go looking for it.  But when they find that page, they’ll see a big image of balloons and confetti and large print that says “You Found It!”.

Then show them a coupon code that’ll give them a small discount.  We usually do something like 5%.  For those customers that go searching, it makes their day.

Check the price on Amazon

We really don’t like posts that look like stores.  When your post just looks like a big advertisement for a product and then has a big button like this

[button type=”big” color=”red” newwindow=”no”] Buy this HERE![/button]

it just makes your site feel spammy.  Most people are looking for helpful information that feels trustworthy.  And spammy looking sites don’t feel very trustworthy

That’s why we stick with the simple approach of using a basic text link to send people to affiliate products.  Plus, we make that link non-threatening.  Instead of something like “Buy it here” we write it as an invitation.  “Click here for current pricing on Amazon.”

This makes our links much more effective.  And if you can get people to click on the link, you get the cookie in their browser and if they buy anythign on Amazon, the commission is yours!

Abandoned Cart

If you have a product on your website, whether it’s physical, digital, or some sort of subscription, you can boost your conversion rate really easily with this one hack.

How this works is first, customers add your product to their cart.  But then, for one reason or another they decide to leave.  Maybe they’re having second thoughts.  Maybe it’s not a good time.  Either way, in most cases it’s not likely that they’re coming back.  So what we do is make them an offer.  “Hey customer dude!  Would it make a difference if we offered you 20% off?”

We’ve used this tactic on some products and it has boosted sales on those products 10%.

A great tool for setting this up on your site is SendOwl.  We’ve been using SendOwl as the shopping cart and checkout tool for all of our digital products for some time now and we’ve been really pleased with not only the cool “abandoned cart” functionality, but also the simple and quick check out process.  Having a good tool for that has a big impact on converting sales.

Just in Time Webinars

Webinars are notoriously difficult to get people to.  You schedule them out, let your audience know they’re coming, get them to register, and then only 3 people how up.

So frustrating!

On the other hand, webinars can be a really effective way to connect with your audience, grow your audience, and convert your audience into customers.

So how do we get better attendance?

Just in time webinars.  Automated webinar software like EverWebinar allows you to record a webinar ahead of time and then set it up so that when someone arrives on the webinar page, is says “This webinar starts in 3 minutes” with a countdown timer.  People are way more likely to attend a webinar if it’s about to start.

Webinars are really effective because they feel more interactive.  And even though these webinars are pre-recorded, the software makes it feel more intimate than a pre-recorded YouTube video.

You can click here for a free 60-day trial of EverWebinar.

Active Campaign—Smart Marketing

Be smart about your marketing.

With today’s technology and analytics, smart marketing is not only possible, it’s also cost effective.  We strongly recommend ActiveCampaign for email marketing if you want to do this sort of smart, targeted marketing campaign.

Here’s how it works.

When someone signs up for your email newsletter, ActiveCampaign collects not just their email address, but their IP address too.  This allows ActiveCampaign to track where that user goes on your website.  Then, you can set certain user actions that will trigger ActiveCampaign to send out a specific email or offer.

For example, let’s say you have a fishing website.  You have content about bass fishing, saltwater fishing, salmon fishing, and so on.  Well, if you just created a new bass fishing course and want to let your audience know, those people who only read about saltwater fishing on your site aren’t going to care.  And if they get an email promoting that new course, they’re going to question whether or not your newsletter is a good fit for them.

But since ActiveCampaign can keep track of where users go on your site, you can have that email sent only to your audience members who have visited pages about bass fishing.

This also allows you to target newsletters to customers based on their activities.  You can even integrate it with course software and send reminders out to participants who haven’t logged in for a while.

When you’re capturing this kind of data and you’re using a tool with such robust capabilities, the opportunities for targeted marketing are endless.

Deadline Funnel

The deadline funnel is a lot like the just in time webinar, except for product sales.

Sometimes you only want a product to be available for sale for a limited time.  Or maybe you’re offering a discount but only for a limited time.  That’s a great technique for pushing more sales because it adds urgency to the decision.  The problem is that offering products or sales for short durations makes those offerings visible to only a small number of people.

That’s where deadline funnel comes in.

Deadline funnel allows you to make products or sales available only for a limited time, starting when that customer arrives on the sales page.  The urgency is there, but your sale gets to be seen by way more people.  They only get 48 hours, or whatever time frame you set.  Deadline funnel keeps track of when they arrived and makes that countdown active for that specific user.

You can check out Deadline Funnel here.

Upsell

Do you want some fries with that?

~Every Fast Food Worker Ever

Businesses have been using the upsell technique for ages.  Why?  Because it works.

Customers that are interested in your main product are likely to be interested on add-on products if they go well together.  And while that’s true for fries and soft drinks, it’s also true for digital products.

Here are some of our top tips for a successful upsell.

  • The add-on product should be priced no more than half the price of the original product.  If I’m spending $50, $7 more doesn’t seem like a big deal.
  • Use a good tool that does upselling right.  We use SendOwl for selling all of our digital products.
  • SendOwl keeps the checkout process really simple.  Just enter payment info and you’re done.
  • On the Upsell, SendOwl makes the offer after processing the first sale.  This solidifies the first sale before the upsell, which can turn some customers away from the original sale.
  • SendOwl also processes the second order without making the customer re-enter their payment info.  Super simple, super fast.

The upsell is really effective if your audience is really transactional.  That is, this person is going to buy the product now but you may never hear from them again.  But if you have a really strong community or a loyal audience, then the upsell isn’t as important.  If your followers are likely to buy multiple products from you anyway, then getting a small upsell right now isn’t as valuable as maintaining your loyal customer base.

Subscription Confirmed.  Here’s the coupon I promised!

This is a really effective way to convert subscribers into customers.

When someone joins your newsletter, that first email is usually wasted.  A lot of the time, you just say something like, “Subscription Confirmed!  Thanks for subscribing.  You’re going to love this newsletter.”

What a waste!

This first email is your chance to connect and convert.  So do it!  Instead of a subject line that says “Subscription Confirmed” have it say somethign like “Subscription Confirmed.  Here’s the coupon I promised!”

The odds that they’re going to open this email go way up when they hear about a coupon.  And then the odds of them making a purchase go way up too.

This is really effective for us when we truthfully tell our subscribers that this is the only discount they will ever get for this product.  Then, we make it a really valuable coupon.

Google the exact name of a post instead of giving a link

When you record a podcast or YouTube video that you want to link to a post, instead of giving out a shortlink or prettylink that will take people directly to the post, tell them to google the exact name of the post.

This is really effective if your post is unique enough that it will show up on page 1 of Google for that exact search term.  So verify that first.  If you have to, ask them to add the name of your site to the end of the search term.

What this does is signal to Google that people that search that phrase really want your article because a bunch of people will search that exact phrase, click on your article, and then not immediately bounce.  We’ve seen this boost a post up on Google rankings really quickly, even for less specific search phrases.

That’s all folks

And that’s it!  9 hacks that have been tried and tested.  They’ve helped us boost traffic to our site and convert more sales than just having stellar content alone.  Just remember, no hack is a good replacement for solid, helpful content.  So start there.  Then use these hacks to get your content and your products in front of more people.

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