Success Lessons From The Bee Gees

Written by on April 29, 2011 · Leave a Comment

For the record, that is NOT a typo.

Yup, I’m talking about the disco Bee Gees. Maurice, Barry and the other guy. (I can never remember his name.) Here are some interesting facts about success the Bee Gees:

  • They’ve sold over 220 million records worldwide.
  • Won 9 Grammys.
  • They have just as many hits they’ve written for other artist as they have written for themselves. (See “Islands in the stream”  and others.. for a full list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bee_Gees )
  • The Saturday Night Fever Record is second only to Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller” album.

This is just a small sample of their success track record.  It is frankly amazing in today’s day and age. To top it off, they were a band from 1967 to 2003. An eternity in the music industry.

While watching a documentary on the Bee Gees a few night ago, something really stood out.

After all their massive success with Saturday Night Fever, there was a huge back lash against the Bee Gees. They released one more album and then didn’t release an album for almost 10 years.

In the interim, want to know what they did?

They wrote a song everyday.

I’m paraphrasing a bit, but this is the gist of what they said: “Even with all the success, we never stopped doing what got us there in the first place. Everyday, every morning, we would write a song. Sometimes together, sometimes separately, but we always wrote a song everyday.”

If you add up the number of years they were a band. That’s 37 years. Let’s say they took off weekends and holidays. That’s 250 days a year of writing. Multiply that by 37 and you get…

… 9,250 songs.

Selling 220 million albums and winning 9 Grammys doesn’t seem like such a big deal after all.

I would imagine there were some days they felt awful, tired, hungover, jet lagged, sick with the flu.. you name it. Yet, they still wrote everyday.

And look at the success.

Most people would put all their efforts into the excuses why they can’t do the basics everyday. In fact, in the time it would take them to hone their craft in the morning, they use that time to create excuses.

I’ve personally mentored under some very successful marketers and copywriters. They all, first thing in the morning, practice their craft. They write copy, send out an email to the list, they do something to serve their market everyday.

Then 30 years later they’re an overnight success.

Whether you like the Bee Gees or not (I personally think the music is outstanding) the lesson is very clear.

Your success in whatever you do; business, raising kids, being a great spouse, lie the ability to do the fundamentals day in and day out that bring that success.

 

Categories: Blog, How We Get You New Patients and Customers, Paid Advertising, Patient-Client Reactivation, Project and Client Management, Uncategorized, Updates and News, Updates and News, Web and Marketing Piece Design

Lots Of Traffic vs. The Right Traffic

Written by on April 14, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Getting traffic to your sites continues to be the #1 issue people bring up.  When evaluating a client’s funnel, I typically ignore their request for more traffic and diagnose the real issues which are their website, offer, or sales funnel.  But once we fix those things, it’s fine to get into traffic issues.

As I’ve always said, it’s not about how much traffic your get, it’s about getting the right traffic.  We can’t get people to respond if the offer doesn’t match what they want, so getting a bunch of people to the site isn’t the goal.

Traffic seems to be the one area where things change quite rapidly, and strategies and tactics that work one day, are not effective 3 months later.  Google remains the key source of targeted traffic for our clients, but we’ve noticed that Adwords (both Search and Content) seems to have lost some of its effectiveness as harnessing a consistent flow of visitors.  It has really become a game (yes, a game) of seeing how many places and sources you can get on Google’s first page.  So not just being in one of the top 3 spots on Adwords, it’s also being listed in the News items, Local listings, YouTube videos, organic listing, and social networks – specifically Facebook and Twitter.

For us, being an expert in Adwords, it’s a lot to keep up with all things traffic, so we’ve secured an alliance with a colleague and firm that spends all of their time in the “laboratory” to figure out what Google is doing and how to use new strategies to capture more virtual real estate.  We’re seeing tremendous results and DECREASING lead costs by employing more diversity and strategy to our traffic efforts, and utilizing all the technologies to be seen rather than just Google Adwords.  The fruits of this alliance will be rewarding for our clients moving forward.

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What’s Working, What’s Not Working

Written by on April 14, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Let’s talk about some reality in today’s market. It doesn’t matter if you are online or offline. Virtual or have a physical store.

We had the blessing of working in multiple markets, with diverse clients, and diverse product/service offerings.

We also have our personal network of colleagues that we keep in communication with as well (people like Perry Marshall).

You might be exception to the rules we state here.  All I am sharing is what I’ve seen and experienced.

What’s working well:
- Businesses that offer tangible solutions to problems, or tangible products with real value
- Products/Services that people are actively searching online for
- Patience in the sales cycle – willing to warm leads from cold visitor to warm lead to hot prospect
- Closing sales using the phone
- Multi-page websites versus landing pages
- Facebook fan pages
- Direct Mail
- Local business promotion using Google (Paid and Organic)
- Appointments

What’s not working well (some things are not working at all, some things are very difficult)
- Selling programs/membership online (we’ve tried inexpensive programs up to high-fee programs) and getting them to stick in brutal. My friend and co-worker Matt has done a ton of research on this and the stick rate by month is about 4 months for these kind of programs.
- Getting people to attend and stay for an entire webinar
- Launching new ideas and getting quick traction
- Traditional squeeze pages
- Point of purchase sales for anything other than inexpensive, common items
- Email deliverability
- Traditional SEO

This is a short list of what we’re personally experiencing.  Perhaps you’ve seen the same, or bucked the trend in one of these cases.  I’d love to hear your thoughts. Post your comments below.

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Examples Of What’s Working Now

Written by on April 14, 2010 · Leave a Comment

I want to focus on what it’s taking to get people to respond on your website.  You know, there was a day when you could slap up a website with an opt-in box or order form and you’d get a ton of response without any attention paid to design, copy, or the offer itself.  Bad marketers could make things happen as much as the good marketers.

These days, you better be on top of your game, and really focus on details to get people to respond.

We’ve found that in a majority of the markets where we’ve worked, the traditional landing page has simply stopped working.  I think the landing page as we’ve been taught has reached such a critical mass, that people now are hip to what these pages are for, and know that they aren’t really getting anything for nothing and will be asked to buy something sooner or later.

What we’ve started working on are multi-page mini-sites with offers on each page.  (To see an example, go to:http://kinkadedreamscollection.com/)

In many cases, we’re finding that people are not only responding to these sites, they are spending several minutes on the site, reading, viewing, and listening to the information that’s being presented. (Prospects on the Kinkade site spend and average of 5 minutes)

It seems that the best approach is to give them a lot of quality information up front, give them the ability to click around a bit, and keep a consistent offer in front of them that appeals to exactly what they want.

Also, we’re finding that the traditional follow-up campaign to an email lead is pretty much worthless.  What we’ve done is still have that as part of our follow-up, but we’ve added in a phone call to the lead (so capture phone numbers!) and cut through all the hype and get right to their pressing question.  (Here is a good example of a site that get’s the name and phone number to get a follow up call.)

This seems to work well because not many online marketers will do this, or have the capability. The personal connection and attention are things people miss online, and will respond to when used without being pushy.

We’re also seeing some success by putting up inbound 1-800 numbers, getting them to skip the opt-in and get right to a sales associate.  This is especially true for service businesses, and businesses at a local level (which means you can geo-target and used local numbers instead of 1-800 numbers).

Getting back to the websites, we’ve noticed that design, color, and layout – which previously had little affect – now make all the difference in the world.  I used to say pretty websites don’t sell – I’m beginning to change my mind, but….

You better put good copy and offers on that pretty site.  (One more bonus, click here to see how we’ve made pretty and copy work.) All the pizazz in the world won’t sell squat unless you spend a lot of time connecting to your visitor with well-written, concise copy with a drop-everything-you-are-doing offer.  Even though we have to step up on the design, we got to REALLY step up on creating great offers and writing world-class copy.

It’s still possible to get people to respond, but you better be on your game to keep the flow going in this economy.

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What System Do You Use To Convert Leads Into Customers?

Written by on April 14, 2010 · Leave a Comment

First off, we have to say, we’ve been blown away at the number of requests to talk with us about your marketing. One of the reasons why there is such a gap between posts is the number of people who’ve taken us up on our offer of a free 30 minute consult.

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s get down to business. Today’s post…

No System To Convert Leads Into Customers = No Revenue

This should come as no surprise to you. Having a fool proof system to convert your leads into customers is critical to your long term success.

In talking with business owners for the past couple of weeks, it seems that everyone is seeing a slip in their business. Let’s face it, all of us had it pretty easy in business for some time. Only to see the rug ripped out from under us in the past 18 months.

Most businesses have no simple and fool proof way to follow up with a lead. What they have is a mumble jumble mess of half systems that might work if someone is paying attention.

Let me give you an example.

Recently we had a client in our office that does 7 figures a year in coaching. They sell a very high end coaching program to a very selective niche. What is amazing, is they have no system to follow up with a lead once it’s in the system. The sales have just sort of happened.

Granted they are  bit more sophisticated than most businesses.You have to be in order to get up to 7  figures a year. We made a few suggestions to improve their system.

I’ll share those in just a moment, but first let me tell why this system is built the way it’s built.

In today’s economy, your customers are looking for something very easy for you to create. They want a relationship with a provider they can trust. Which leads me to some very key insights we’ve discovered when it comes to converting more leads into more sales.

1. Don’t sell right off the bat. That’s like asking someone to marry you over the first cup of coffee. Sure it happens, but it happens less than you think.

2. Communicate in a mediums other than email. It is unstable and isn’t always delivered and read by the prospect.  Some of your prospects don’t like reading email and wish you’d do something else…

3. Picking up the phone is a lost art. We have personally and for a number of our clients made huge positive financial impacts by hiring virtual customer service reps to call and follow up with a prospect and see how we may serve them and their needs. (More on this later)

4. Don’t think your prospect is just like you. Too many times we have a customer in our office and they’ll say: “I love email, it’s my favorite way to communicate. I don’t like it when someone calls me.” Yes, that may be true, but for everyone of you, there is someone like me who prefers to get on the phone and get it handled.

When you bypass using the phone, you bypass over 33% of your prospects base prefer way of communication.

The bottom line is this, if you are not happy with the number of conversions of leads to customers, take a look at your systems. Maybe you need to add a phone calling program, monthly newsletter or you’re asking for the sale too soon. Fine tune your systems and you’ll see a dramatic increase in sales.

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