Why Some Marketers Are Psychics
Posted on August 6, 2008 | Filed Under Copywriting, Offline Marketing, Online Marketing, Relationship Marketing
Why is it that successful marketers and online entrepreneurs seem to have this virtual “6th sense” when it comes to pinpointing hot, hungry, and highly profitable markets they can sell products to?
We see this again and again and again.
They seem to have this “Midas touch” when it comes to selling online. Any product they launch sells like gangbusters. Every promotion they do balloons their bank accounts. Every new market they enter becomes a surefire winner.
But ask them how they tap these hidden goldmines with an almost impeccable accuracy, and the likely response you will get is, “I don’t know, it just feels right.”
There’s a reason.
(Stay with me, because in a moment I’m going to show you how you can do this yourself, and you don’t have to be psychic or shell out a lot of money!)
Top marketers do what is often referred to as “viability research.” They want to know:
Is there a market out there with a need yet to be fulfilled?
Is that market identifiable, accessible, and above all, profitable?
Is there a product or solution that can satisfy that need?
Can they quickly and easily turn that need into a burning desire?
And more importantly, will it sell in spite of the competition?
Bottom line, is the market viable?
My beautiful wife, Sylvie Fortin, owns a company called Workaholics4Hire. For years her company served many of the top marketers. In fact, that’s how we met. I wrote copy for the same top marketers who hired her for outsourcing work.
Guess what’s her most sought-after service?
Aside from customer support and content development, top marketers have hired her company to conduct “Viability Research.” Yes, this intuitive skill top marketers seem to have in “prospecting for gold” online.
(An important caveat: “viability research” is not just your standard keyword research. In fact, keyword research is only a small piece of the puzzle.)
In our latest multimedia training product for instance, we offer hundreds of tutorials and streaming lessons that talk about making money online in just four simple steps:
Viability
Sourcing
Website
Marketing
The first step, “Viability,” is the most important one of all.
Why? Because if you ignore, skip over, or fail to carry out this important first step, then the rest of the formula falls down the tubes. Not only that, but you run a much greater risk of failing — and losing a lot of money and time in the process.
(If you do succeed by simply guessing your way online, it’s going to be a matter of luck. At best, you won’t be successful for very long, or you’re going to be stuck with a lot of refunds. Or both.)
In Success Chef, my wife discusses, in painstaking (yet practical) detail, the step-by-step process of conducting proper viability research.
Yes, I did say “proper,” because there’s a good way to do it and a bad way. A lot of people do it poorly, backwards, or incompletely.
(For example, many people will simply stop at keyword research thinking that, if a keyword is highly searched for, then there is a demand. Nothing can be further from the truth. What about competition? What about the way people want the product?)
The key behind conducting proper viability research is to answer three mission-critical questions. The first two are the easiest. (Even so, a lot of people still ignore them.) The third one is just as important if not more so.
So what are these three key questions?
Who is your market?
What do they want?
And how do they want it?
Those are the questions you must ask yourself, and the questions proper viability research answers for you — and oftentimes, a whole lot more!
Imagine the amount of money, work, and frustration you save yourself when you answer these questions, especially before you launch your next product.
— About the Author —
Michel Fortin is a direct response copywriter, marketing strategy consultant, and instrumental in some of the most lucrative online businesses and wildly successful marketing campaigns to ever hit the web. For more articles like this one, please visit his blog at http://www.michelfortin.com/ and subscribe to his RSS feed.
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Customers Won’t Discount Your Dishonesty
Posted on June 11, 2008 | Filed Under Business Management, Online Marketing, Relationship Marketing
By Michel Fortin
A recent coaching session touched upon the growing trend that some marketers have adopted to squeeze out sales from exiting traffic.
In other words, you visit a website and read the salesletter. You decide it’s not for you, so you leave. But when you try leave (either as you close your browser or simply hover your mouse outside of it), the website attempts to make a last-ditch offer.
The common practice is to offer a discount, and a recent trend is to make it through virtual sales assistant just before the prospect clicks away from the screen.
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Are All Business People Dishonest?
Posted on May 14, 2008 | Filed Under Business Management, Offline Marketing, Online Marketing, Relationship Marketing
Seems I’m ranting a lot these days, and a little more opinionated than the norm. Perhaps it’s my broken back,( http://www.michelfortin.com/breaking-my-back-promoting-new-product-literally/ ) which is killing me, that’s making me more sensitive or irritable. I don’t know.
But something someone recently said in my copywriters forum irritated me. And it’s not what this person said specifically, but the mindset behind it that’s bothering me.
In a thread about an Internet marketer who was recently arrested (yes, it had something to do with forced continuity, but it had more to do with refusing refunds and avoiding customers than it had to do with forced continuity itself), one member said:
“There is NO such thing as an honest business man. (…) Ask any accountant.”
Now, I have no clue as to why this person said this. And my opinion here is not about this person specifically. Again, it’s about the thinking process that some people have when they make such assertions.
Personally, I believe this view of business people is skewed, off, and wrong. It’s destructive, too.
In fact, copywriter Marcia Yudkin said it best. In her reply, she said this gem: “I feel sorry for you. That is a terrible philosophy to hold, hurtful to you and hurtful to the honest people who deal with you.”
Well said.
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Forced Continuity: A Different Perspective
Posted on May 7, 2008 | Filed Under Business Management, Offline Marketing, Online Marketing, Relationship Marketing, Revenue Generation
Preamble: In response to some excellent rebuttals as well as countless comments I’ve received on my previous post, “The Real Sinister Side of Forced Continuity,” I believe some people are missing the point of my argument, and I want to clarify a few things.
I’m not a lawyer by any stretch. But as a copywriter and business owner, I do know the rules enough to know that there’s a difference between “optional continuity,” “forced continuity,” and “hidden continuity.”
Optional continuity is self-explanatory. Forced continuity is a very common marketing practice (I’m not a fan of it, but I don’t mind it). In fact, there’s nothing wrong with forced continuity in and of itself.
What’s wrong is when it’s used in a wrong way.
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The Real Sinister Side of Forced Continuity
Posted on May 5, 2008 | Filed Under Copywriting, Internet Trends, Online Marketing, Relationship Marketing
Rant warning: what follows may offend some people. But I wanted to throw in my three cents on the topic of “forced continuity,” which seems to be the subject of a lot of debate these days.
Several well-known marketers have made offers of late with forced continuity. What it means is, the intended product you want to buy can only be purchased when you buy another (often, a continuous subscription) billed to your account every month or so until you cancel.
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