Said in my best over-the-top salesman’s voice… “This trick will send your profits up, Up, UP!
What if I were to tell you that you could take whatever results you’re getting from your website now, and double them?
And if you could do it WITHOUT sending one extra visitor to your website…
Double your conversions…
Double your sales…
Double your revenue…
Double your profits…
Even better, what if I were to tell you that it’s stupid-simple to do… And yet, most online marketers never take the tiny effort that’s required?
It’s ALL true!
And while we’re going to be talking about this in the context of Web Wednesday and online marketing… This is as old as direct marketing itself!
Here’s our “weird” trick that doubles website conversions…
(And you’ll notice I stole that headline from all those “weird trick” ads that were all over the internet for what seemed like years — a point I’ll come back to in a bit…)
The secret to doubling your conversions is… TESTING!
Don’t feel let down too much.
I know you thought you were going to get some magic pill tactic where you could add one little image to your site, or tweak the colors, or add a headline, or some other malarkey…
Then again, if you thought that — you obviously don’t know me very well.
Anyways… On to my point. Well, kind of…
On the way there, a story, with…
An embarrassing admission!
I officially re-launched Breakthrough Marketing Secrets on April 14th. Before the re-launch, it was just another junk site on the internet. It got a few hundred monthly visitors, mostly syndicating content pulled in from all over the internet on autopilot. I didn’t even have an opt-in form, and the site had generated ZERO revenue in three or four years.
Starting April 14th though, I dedicated myself to writing one email like this every weekday.
Sharing some of my best lessons and observations on the type of proven direct response marketing methods used by the top marketers on then planet — many of them my clients.
To start, I made content my #1 priority.
I threw up a squeeze page.
I threw up some opt-in forms.
(And yes, the “vomit” double-meaning is appropriate.)
And I started writing daily articles. (Notice I stop using the “threw up” language here — hopefully the articles have been a step up!)
This very quickly started getting me regular readers. A few “viral” hits and thousands upon thousands of visitors came to the site. My subscriber base started adding up.
Hundreds of folks getting my emails every day — and I quickly grew complacent.
Swamped with other work, I assumed the “if you build it, they will come” attitude toward getting new subscribers.
I even stopped sharing the articles as often, in some of the places where they’d gotten the widest distribution.
Maybe you already know what happened next…
My flow of new subscribers tanked…
Now, for those of you who’ve been around a while, you know I love ya. But continuously bringing in new subscribers and leads is vital to the health of any publishing business like this (and yes, this is a business).
The longer I went on getting only a trickle of new subscribers, the more it bugged me. (With the amount of work that goes into EACH daily email, you want it to go out to at least a small handful of new subscribers.)
And so finally I got off my duff and decided to do something about it.
I wrote a couple times in the last week that I dove head-first into the Facebook advertising game.
My only update on that for now is it’s going well — and I continue to get the great results I expect.
As I told you before, it was a matter of walking the walk, if I’m going to talk the talk. I advocate paying to acquire new customers — so I better do it myself.
Then, as I started tinkering with Facebook ads…
I ran into another situation where I better start walking the walk.
You see, I’d done what a lot of online marketers do.
I wanted to get my ad campaign started quickly. So I put up a new squeeze page for the campaign. I turned on the ads, and started sending traffic to it.
Now, within Facebook, it’s really easy to test multiple ads. So I did.
And somewhat accidentally, I discovered something interesting. I had two blocks of copy, one above the ad, one below. And in a variation of the ad, I switched the two blocks.
Well, on this variation where the blocks of copy were switched, the results were actually HORRIBLE!
(I bet you didn’t think I was going to say that!)
And here was the really bad news…
The block of copy that had been switched in this “bad ad” to feature more prominently was… The HEADLINE on my ONE squeeze page! That’s right — I was using the under-performing copy at my most important point of conversion!
The good news was that this didn’t seem to be hurting conversions too badly. In fact, I was still getting a steady flow of leads.
And yet, if the results were so dramatically different on Facebook, perhaps this was something worth looking into.
And so yesterday I finally sucked it up…
And started a “Google Content Experiment” on that squeeze page. Testing the two headlines against each other. (I know how they work on Facebook, but that won’t necessarily translate to the same results on my website — or even to a different targeted Facebook audience, for that matter!)
That’s right, I finally sat down and, on my own site, started a split test.
This is going to let me compare two different versions of this squeeze page — with different headlines — against each other.
The one with the most conversions — as tested in the marketplace — will be crowned the winner.
And I’ll know for certain which works best.
I hate the word “should” but I should have been doing this from the beginning…
After all, I’m the guy who wrote a whole book on testing with Bob Bly…
I’ve been an adamant supporter of marketing testing for almost as long as I’ve been in the business…
I’ve run a ton of tests myself…
AND in nearly every client relationship I get my clients to do all sorts of critical testing.
It was high time that I start doing some serious testing on this project that I’ve devoted so much time to over the last five months.
And if this goes anything like the past situations where I’ve seriously devoted myself to testing…
Doubling my conversions should be pretty straightforward…
I’ve seen situations where a certain variation on a sales message increased conversions more than 15X over other variations.
Doubling is well within bounds of what you can get with testing.
Incremental increases of 15%, 25%, even 50% — while not as sexy as huge multiples — are standard.
And sometimes you hit on something that just works…
That takes off…
That you can throw a ton of traffic against, at a solid profit.
Like those “weird trick” ads I mentioned.
So many people turn their noses up at them in disgust.
I’m pretty sure they were almost a throwaway variation in an early test…
But they worked, and worked, and worked.
Multi-million-dollar fortunes were built on the back of those low-rent ads.
And ultimately, because results are the altar at which we pray here in the direct marketing religion, those ads are worth paying attention to.
Maybe not emulating directly — because even in this article, the ironic use of the phrase feels a little tired already.
And yet, thinking about the deep psychology that makes them so successful, and finding a way to use that in an upcoming test.
Who knows — just that may double your results, or better!
If you’re interested in the process of diving in and understanding the deep psychology of winning ads, you should seriously consider joining me in early November (well before Thanksgiving) at my Advanced Direct Response Copywriting Workshop.
A large part of what we’ll go into is the psychology behind successful direct response ads.
The “Early Bird” discount is still in full force (until the 15th)…
But for this week only, you can get your registration FREE. It’s part of the unlimited coaching offer at the very bottom of this page (scroll all the way down).
Yours for bigger breakthroughs,
Roy Furr
Editor, Breakthrough Marketing Secrets
