What are the most effective ways to increase your revenue significantly and scale your business? Of course, everyone would love to know the answer to this question! Well, it’s very simple. Basically, the key step is to create additional ways to market your products or services.
I think many people make the mistake of using one single method and tuning out everything else. I see it, time and time again, with different companies—people getting stuck doing a particular method that works.
Don’t get me wrong; if you find something that brings you a certain amount of success, that’s definitely great news for you. But there are so many ways to market and grow your business that you may be missing out on much better opportunities if you simply get stuck and don’t explore.
Let me give you an example. Let’s say you’re an online company that’s marketing a digital product. The first thing you do is create a website. Then you can create a sales letter and send traffic to it, so people will buy from you. This classic strategy has worked for decades in boosting sales. This is my method number one. So, how do we improve this method?
For method number two, we can send people to an opt-in page or a lead-generation page. People provide their names and email addresses, allowing us to send a sales letter to them.
Now, here’s where we get an alternative marketing option or what I call “Plan B.” If leads don’t buy the digital product, we follow up with them using an improved version of the sales letter—a landing page. This particular version of a landing page I’m referencing involves the idea of sending a person to a page that features a brief description of what you’re offering and then pushing them onto the next phase.
On this particular landing page, you could show a video with a short paragraph or an image and a paragraph plus a call-to-action button. Then, if people become interested in what you have to offer, they click on the call-to-action button, letting you capture their name and email address. Or you can also simply send them directly to the actual sales letter—that’s method number three.
Now, onto method number four—a webinar. If you’re not using webinars in your marketing strategy and sales process, I’m telling you, you’re definitely missing out.
Webinars are the ultimate tool to engage and build a relationship with prospective customers. They convert much better than the standard website or sales letter mainly because they are premeditated.
Here’s what I mean by this: A person goes to a webinar page and selects a date and time to attend the webinar. Then, they have to actually remember the exact date and show up to watch the particular presentation. All these steps greatly increase the exposure of the target audience to your brand; they have to think things through, so your brand stays top of mind with prospects until the day of the webinar. With another 45 to 90 minutes or so of hearing you talk expertly about your product, the likelihood that people will make a purchase is pretty high.
So far, we’re really just talking about the sales process and not about driving traffic. What’s the next marketing step then? My method number five is called a short-view sales letter. A traditional long- form sales letter is what many marketers use for direct-response advertising. It’s one of those sales letters that scrolls on and on seemingly endlessly.
Why do we use such long sales letters? Well, it’s not the fact that they’re long. These long sales letters are effective because they provide all the essential information about your product or service on a single page. Think about it. If you ask a person to click something and visit another page, you could lose your prospective customer’s interest.
People want to know all about the benefits of your product or service without being tossed from one page to another.
Now, my fifth method—a quick-view sales letter—is simply a short version of the traditional sales letter. What I really mean is you can create a short, three-to-five-minute video talking about your product without any bait background information. It’s all straightforward. Just present your product—exactly how it benefits your target audience and solves their problem.
Tell people why they should buy your product and include a call- to-action button to guide them towards making a purchase. So, now, there’s your quick-view sales letter.
Then, we put a twist on this short-view sales letter, and we create a hybrid sales letter. My method number six combines the traditional and short-view sales letters, creating a versatile sales letter with a video at the top and a long-form sales letter underneath.
What’s the advantage of that? The major advantage of that hybrid sales letter is the ability to attract different types of audiences. Let me describe this to you. Many people are more likely to buy a product after watching a video, but some prefer to actually read the benefits of a product. A hybrid sales letter caters to both audiences, thus increasing your chances of making a sale.
Is there another type of sales letter we can use? Well, yes there is. I call it a zigzag sales letter. What makes a zigzag sales letter different is its format. For example, it can have a video at the top followed by a brief introduction and a few paragraphs. Then, it would dive into the features and benefits of your product or service.
The features and benefits are on the right side in text format, and there’s an image on the left. When you scroll down further, you’ll then see features on the left and an image on the right. The sales letter sorts of zigzags back and forth, forcing the eyes to move from left to right across the entire page. The idea behind this clever design is to keep a person engaged from start to finish. Many modern sales letters use this particular technique to increase conversions.
Now, at this point, we have seven different ways to sell your product or service. To recap, our seven marketing methods to attract prospective customers and generate sales are:
- Traditional Sales Letter
- Opt-In Page
- A Landing Page with a Video + Short Description + CTA or an Image + Description + CTA
- Webinar
- Quick-View Sales Letter
- Hybrid Sales Letter
- Zigzag Sales Letter
You may be thinking, does it matter if I have seven ways or just one way to market my product? Yes, because the reality is that every market reacts differently, and there’s one word I want you to remember: context. How you find a product and the context in which it is presented will ultimately determine whether you get interested and make a purchase. This is exactly why it’s critical to try different methods to sell products and services. Some methods may work on certain audiences and not on others, so you shouldn’t stick to simply one overused marketing technique.
People absorb information differently, which means you need to use marketing solutions that cater to different people.
For example, a webinar is fantastic for visual learners who like to watch videos, diagrams, and demonstrations to process information. You can also send people to a short video that allows them to make a quick decision. Others may prefer to scroll through a long sales letter with a combination of photos, texts, and videos.
You may also want to follow up with people who recently signed up for your newsletter. In this case, they have probably already seen your traditional long-form sales letter, so you don’t want to keep sending them to the same long-form sales letter. So, in this context, you could send a short video or invite them to watch your webinar to learn more about your products or services.
The key thing to remember is to explore different ways to market your business to connect with your target audiences effectively. You need to engage your prospective customers and persuade them to take action. With the seven marketing methods I explained in this article, you can appeal to different types of audiences and ultimately convert leads to sales.
